Consciousness Ambiguous

46 Pages 11384 Words

Is ‘Consciousness’ Ambiguous?



(appears in Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(2), 2001, 19-44)

Abstract: It is widely assumed that ‘consciousness’ (and its cognates) is multiply ambiguous within the consciousness literature. Some alleged senses of the term are access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, state consciousness, creature consciousness, introspective consciousness, self consciousness, to name a few. In the paper I argue for two points. First, there are few if any good reasons for thinking that such alleged senses are genuine: ‘consciousness’ is best viewed as univocal within the literature. The second point is that researchers would do best to avoid the semantics of ‘consciousness’, since resorting to “semantic ascent” typically serves no clear purpose in the case of consciousness, and confuses matters more than anything else.



…if we always insisted on precise definitions we all would be speechless almost all the time. Definitions and precise theoretical constructs are the final product, not the starting point of inquiry.

—Lawrence Weiskrantz (1988, p. 183)





Introduction



As anyone acquainted with the consciousness literature well knows, it is common for works on consciousness to contain—usually somewhere near the start—a discussion of the semantics of the word ‘consciousness’ (and its cognates: ‘conscious’, ‘consciously’, etc.). And in spite of there being little widespread agreement among researchers on most matters falling within the domain of consciousness studies, when it comes to ‘consciousness’ it is virtually universally agreed is that the term is multiply ambiguous. The idea, moreover, is not merely that lay people use the term with various meanings, or that they use it differently from how researchers do, or that the term has had different meanings throughout its history. It is that researchers themselves currently use t...