Consciousness Ambiguous

46 Pages 11384 Words

s said about the term’s alleged senses, moreover, is often either highly controversial or unilluminating—all of which suggests that there is something rather amiss with the practice. This will become clearer as we proceed.



In what follows I argue for two main points. The first—which occupies us for most of the paper, and involves an excursion into linguistic matters—is that not only is it not obvious which are the multiple meanings of ‘consciousness’ within the literature, but it is also questionable whether the term as currently used by consciousness researchers is ambiguous at all.[1] While it will turn out that the opposite thesis—that ‘consciousness’ is univocal, or has a single meaning, within the literature—is also open to doubt, I shall suggest that that is the rational default position to adopt. My answer to the question in the title—‘Is ‘consciousness’ ambiguous?’—therefore, will be a qualified ‘no’. I call the thesis that ‘consciousness’ is ambiguous within the current c...