Recent Work on Consciousness: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Empirical

ABSTRACT

Broad-spectrum philosophical resistance to physicalist accounts of conscious awareness has condensed around a single and clearly identified line of argument. Philosophical analysis and criticism of that line of argument has also begun to crystallize. The nature of that criticism coheres with certain theoretical ideas from cognitive neuroscience that attempt to address both the existence and the contents of consciousness. Also, experimental evidence has recently begun to emerge that will serve both to constrain and to inspire such theorizing. The present article attempts to summarize the situation.

Keywords

consciousness - qualia - reduction - dualism