Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio
Damasio Pantheon, 367 pp., $28.95 What exactly is consciousness?
There are a number of senses of the word in ordinary speech, but
there is one that is most important for philosophy and science:
consciousness consists of qualitative, subjective states of
feeling or sentience or awareness. These typically begin when we
awake from a dreamless sleep and they go on until we fall asleep
again or otherwise become unconscious. Dreams are a form of
consciousness. Consciousness, in short, is a matter of the
qualitative experiences that we have. To understand
qualitativeness, think of the difference between drinking beer,
listening to music, and thinking about your income tax. Each
experience has a distinct quality. The Mystery of Consciousness,
Con't. September 29, 2011