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Consciousness as a Scientific Concept

A Philosophy of Science Perspective

  • Book
  • © 2013

Overview

Authors:
  1. Elizabeth Irvine

    1. , Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Tübingen, Germany

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  • Comprehensive overview of scientific methods used in Consciousness Studies
  • Applies a Philosophy of Science perspective to the study of consciousness
  • Contains a description of the contents of consciousness and their properties ?

Part of the book series: Studies in Brain and Mind (SIBM, volume 5)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages 1-1
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  2. The Scientific Study of Consciousness

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 1-14

  3. Subjective Measures of Consciousness

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 15-39

  4. Measures of Consciousness and the Method of Qualitative Differences

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 41-55

  5. Dissociations and Consciousness

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 57-69

  6. Converging on Consciousness?

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 71-92

  7. Conscious Mechanisms and Scientific Kinds

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 93-121

  8. Content-Matching: The Case of Sensory Memory and Phenomenal Consciousness

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 123-134

  9. Content-Matching: The Contents of What?

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 135-150

  10. Scientific Eliminativism: Why There Can Be No Science of Consciousness

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 151-169

  11. Conclusion

    • Elizabeth Irvine
    Pages 171-173

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 12-12
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Keywords

About this book

The source of endless speculation and public curiosity, our scientific quest for the origins of human consciousness has expanded along with the technical capabilities of science itself and remains one of the key topics able to fire public as much as academic interest. Yet many problematic issues, identified in this important new book, remain unresolved. Focusing on a series of methodological difficulties swirling around consciousness research, the contributors to this volume suggest that ‘consciousness’ is, in fact, not a wholly viable scientific concept.  Supporting this ‘eliminativist‘ stance are assessments of the current theories and methods of consciousness science in their own terms, as well as applications of good scientific practice criteria from the philosophy of science. For example, the work identifies the central problem of the misuse of qualitative difference and dissociation paradigms, often deployed to identify measures of consciousness. It also examines the difficulties that attend the wide range of experimental protocols used to operationalise consciousness—and the implications this has on the findings of integrative approaches across behavioural and neurophysiological research. The work also explores the significant mismatch between the common intuitions about the content of consciousness, that motivate much of the current science, and the actual properties of the neural processes underlying sensory and cognitive phenomena. Even as it makes the negative eliminativist case, the strong empirical grounding in this volume also allows positive characterisations to be made about the products of the current science of consciousness, facilitating a re-identification of target phenomena and valid research questions for the mind sciences.​

Authors and Affiliations

  • , Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Elizabeth Irvine

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