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Unity of Consciousness Human consciousness usually displays a
striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain,
one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the
pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as
aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the
time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called
the unity of consciousness. More generally, it is consciousness
not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but of
A-and-B-and-C together, as the contents of a single conscious
state. Historically, the notion of the unity of consciousness
has played a very large role in thought about the mind. Indeed,
as we will see, it figured centrally in some of the most
influential arguments about the mind from the time of Descartes
to the 20th century. In the early part of the 20th century, the
notion largely disappeared for a time, but since the 1960s,
analytic philosophers and others ha