6 - Consciousness: a theory

Summary

When it comes to consciousness, a natural first focus is on awareness. However, awareness simpliciter seems too broad to define consciousness since there seems to be unconscious awareness. The discussion of the previous chapter distinguishes three types of awareness: phenomenality (CN), PA-awareness (C1), and apperception (C2). We saw that none of these accounts for everything we mean by “consciousness.” Each omits important features. I will argue that these failures do not imply that there is a fourth thing consciousness is, nor that there is nothing consciousness is. Two major possibilities remain. The first is that these analyses fail because consciousness is a noncomposite state embodying all three features of the previous analyses. Because these previous analyses are but partial analyses of consciousness, they fail as total analyses. But each is a partial analysis of the state we call consciousness. Consciousness is what Natsoulas (1989b) calls a “self-reflective” state: one that is all of these at once. The second possibility, and the one to be defended, is that no noncomposite state, consciousness, exists. Rather than being three features of a single, noncomposite state, these three features characterize different states of human beings, each of which is labeled “consciousness.” While these three features can, and often do, occur together compositely in human experience, each of the first two can exist independently of each other and of apperception. Because they frequently co-occur, the three are taken to be features of a single, noncomposite state.