Consciousness Ambiguous

46 Pages 11384 Words

he term with several distinct meanings or senses. Some examples of such alleged senses are these:



(1) Block’s (1991; 1993; 1994; 1995a,b) phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, monitoring consciousness, reflective consciousness, self consciousness.

(2) Rosenthal’s (1986; 1993a,b; 1997; forthcoming) state consciousness, creature consciousness, transitive consciousness, introspective consciousness.

(3) Armstrong’s (1981) minimal consciousness, perceptual consciousness, introspective consciousness.

(4) Tye’s (1995) higher-order consciousness, discriminatory consciousness, responsive consciousness, phenomenal consciousness.

(5) Nelkin’s (1989; 1995; 1996) C1, C2, CS.



The expressions in (1) - (5), and many others beside them, are often taken to express what the word ‘consciousness’ alone expresses on various occasions of its use; that is, they are construed as synonymous with different senses of ‘consciousness’.



The practice of addressing the semantics of ‘consciousness’ in works on consciousness is in many ways odd. Lists of the term’s senses vary considerably from theorist to theorist (though there is also much overlap), and in many cases researchers offer their own idiosyncratic lists with little constraint and without defense or criticism of others’ proposals. However if semantics is to be taken seriously—as a branch of linguistics say—one cannot simply choose a term’s meaning(s) in a natural language. Semantics is not that easy! What should also give one pause is how poorly motivated such terminological discussions often are. Their relevance to the works that contain them is frequently unclear at best, and in most cases any important points can be made simply by employing the word ‘consciousness’ and making distinctions about consciousness when deemed necessary, but ignoring semantics entirely. What get...