Consciousness, Theories of

Phenomenal consciousness is the property mental states, events, and processes have when, and only when, there is something it is like for their subject to undergo them, or be in them. What it is like to have a conscious experience is customarily referred to as the experience’s phenomenal character. Theories of consciousness attempt to account for this phenomenal character. This article surveys the currently prominent theories, paying special attention to the various attempts to explain a state’s phenomenal character in terms of its representational content. Phenomenal consciousness is the property mental states, events, and processes have when, and only when, there is something it is like for their subject to undergo them, or be in them. There is something it is like to smell coffee brewing. Having the experience of smelling coffee brewing is thus a phenomenally conscious state. What it is like to have a conscious experience is customarily referred to as the experience’s phenomenal character. Theories of consciousness attempt to account for this phenomenal character. Such theories are often divided, in the first instance, into physicalist and anti-physicalist. Physicalist theories attempt to account for phenomenal consciousness in (micro)physical terms. Anti-physicalist theories claim that this is impossible. Perhaps a more fundamental division is into reductive and non-reductive theories. Reductive theories attempt to account for phenomenal character in non-phenomenal terms. Non-reductive ones do not. Whether the relevant phenomenal terms can in turn be accounted for in (micro)physical terms is left an open question at this stage. Although most philosophical work has concentrated on reductive theories, some has been devoted to non-reductive ones as well. By claiming that phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively accounted for in non-phenomenal terms, a non-reductive theory treats phenomenal consciousness as a fundamental feature of the world. It thus considers that there are (at least) two fundamental kinds of feature in the world: physical and phenomenal; for this reason, this sort of view is known as dualism (from the Latin word for “two”). As just noted, fundamental features cannot be accounted for in terms of other features. Thus if phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, it cannot possibly be accounted for in non-phenomenal terms. But this does not mean © Blackwell Publishing 2006 Philosophy Compass 1/1 (2006): 58–64, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00008.x