The River of Consciousness

Consciousness constructs a continuous perception of reality from a discontinuous series of “perceptual moments.” 

The late Dr. Oliver Sacks details how people experience consciousness as a continuous phenomenon, an unbroken flow, which he compares to a river. Sacks cites philosopher William James, who, in his Principles of Psychology, referred to awareness as “the stream of consciousness.” However, James wondered if that continuity might be an illusion.

He referred to fellow philosopher David Hume’s 18th-century conjecture that the mind perceives time as a series of separate moments it splices together into the subjective experience of a continuous flow. Writing in 1890, James compared Hume’s notion to the zoetrope – a precursor of the movie projector – which produces an illusion of movement by rapidly showing a series of still images.