Abstract
If, as Tulving1 asserts, “consciousness as an object of intellectual curiosity is the philosopher’s joy and a scientist’s nightmare”, this is due to the fact that it does not seem to answer the prerequisites of the Galilean method of scientific research. Indeed it is difficult to find a definition of consciousness which allows us to narrow down the field of inquiry, just as it is difficult to “measure” it and interpret the results of its possible measurement. The fact that consciousness has always more or less implicitly been considered a unitarian entity is largely responsible for most of these problems. From this point of view, the only possibility of defining consciousness lies in distinguishing it from the unconscious: consciousness is that which is not unconscious. This is where all the unresolved and unresolvable questions that have excluded consciousness from any line of inquiry stem from. But a definition of consciousness is in itself impossible, if by definition you mean an arbitrary definition of the meaning of consciousness, or of how the term should be used. It is equally impossible to limit a priori the field of concepts which make reference to consciousness. This is not because this type of descriptive process is in itself wrong. Indeed, it is quite easy to define a “glass” either by deciding arbitrarily that it is an object that usually contains liquids and which is used to drink from, or by seeing all or part of a series of concepts which concern the idea of drinking something from an object as leading back to glass.
Keywords
- Phenomenal Experience
- Intellectual Curiosity
- Metaphysical Problem
- Ontological Relationship
- Abstract Painting
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Barba, G.D. (2002). Varieties of Consciousness. In: Memory, Consciousness and Temporality. Neurobiological Foundation of Aberrant Behaviors, vol 3. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1741-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1741-2_3
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