Consciousness as a natural kind and the methodological puzzle of consciousness

Henry Taylor

doi:10.1111/mila.12413

Consciousness as a natural kind and the methodological puzzle of consciousness

Henry Taylor^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Philosophy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

A new research programme conceives of consciousness as a natural kind. One proposed virtue of this approach is that it can help resolve the methodological puzzle of consciousness, which involves distinguishing consciousness from cognitive access. The present article raises a novel problem for this approach. The problem is rooted in the fact that there may be episodes of conscious experience that have not been classified as such. I argue that conceiving of consciousness as a natural kind cannot distinguish consciousness from cognitive access.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	316-335
Number of pages	20
Journal	Mind & Language
Volume	38
Issue number	2
Early online date	7 Apr 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12413
Publication status	Published - Apr 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

cognitive access
consciousness
global workspace theory
methodological puzzle
natural kinds
recurrent processing

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10.1111/mila.12413

taylorh2021consciousness
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Cite this

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Consciousness as a natural kind and the methodological puzzle of consciousness

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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