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What is Consciousness?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Norton Nelkin
Norton Nelkin*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of New Orleans
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of New Orleans, Lakefront, New Orleans, LA 70148, USA.
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Abstract

When philosophers and psychologists think about consciousness, they generally focus on one or more of three features: phenomenality (how experiences feel), intentionality (that experiences are “of” something, that experiences mean something), and introspectibility (our awareness of the phenomenality and intentionality of experience). Using examples from empirical psychology and neuroscience, I argue that consciousness is not a unitary state, that, instead, these three features characterize different and dissociable states, which often happen to occur together. Understanding these three features as dissociable from each other will resolve philosophical disputes and facilitate scientific investigation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 1993 , pp. 419 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1993

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Carolyn Morillo, Alan Soble, Jim Stone, Edward Johnson, Richard Hall, Martin Davies, and A. J. Marcel for commenting on an earlier version of this paper and for providing useful suggestions for its improvement. Kent Bach provided helpful comments when a version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (10 June 1990). Audience comments there, at the Tulane Seminar for Current Research, and at the Louisiana State Philosophy Convention were also helpful. I would especially like to thank an anonymous reader for this journal who asked many thought-provoking questions concerning an earlier draft, resulting in an improved presentation of the ideas.

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