What is consciousness?

Overview

Consciousness is commonly defined as the totality of first-person experience – what it is like to perceive, think, feel or be aware at all [1]. Philosophers label this the phenomenal or subjective aspect of mind. Despite its familiarity, no consensus exists on how it arises or how, if at all, it can be reduced to physical processes.

A landscape of explanations

Havlík & Velmans (2024) survey contemporary positions and sort them into a six-part “landscape” that tries to map the space of live options [1].

Physicalist identity views – consciousness is neural/functional activity (e.g. Global Neuronal Workspace, Recurrent Processing).
Higher-order & representational views – it comes from thoughts or brain systems that represent other mental states.
Emergentist/complexity views – sufficiently integrated information or causal power (e.g. IIT) makes experience appear.
Panpsychist family – matter carries proto-experience all the way down; brains merely organise it.
Dual-aspect & neutral monism – mind and matter are two aspects of a deeper underlying stuff.
Illusionist/deflationary views – phenomenal feel is a cognitive construct; there is nothing over and above information-processing.

The paper emphasises that these camps often talk past one another because they answer different questions (functional role v. metaphysics) and rely on different epistemic standards (third-person data v. first-person givens).

Phenomenological “moments of awakening”

Scott Alexander’s essay collects introspective reports where people suddenly notice that their own stream of awareness is unstable, assembled, or downright constructed [2]. Examples include:

Realising that the internal monologue can switch off without “the self” disappearing.
Seeing colours or agency temporarily blink out under meditation or psychedelics.
Noticing that pain, desire, or the sense of being a thinker can fragment into sub-processes.

These anecdotes lend support to deflationary or higher-order accounts: if experience can be “edited” in ways that track attention or meta-representation, maybe the feeling of a unified glow is an interpretive overlay rather than a further ontological ingredient.

Current public discourse

Consciousness research straddles neuroscience labs, analytic philosophy departments, contemplative traditions and, increasingly, AI safety forums.

Empiricists focus on neural signatures (P3b, ignition, fronto-parietal loops) and build testable models such as GNW or HOT.
Theoretical physicists and mathematicians explore IIT-style formalisms or quantum proposals, though critics cite lack of decisive predictions.
Panpsychism has re-entered mainstream debate after long exile, partly because it dodges the “hard problem” by putting experience in the basement; skeptics worry it dilutes explanatory content.
Illusionists argue the hard problem dissolves once we understand why we report qualia; defenders of realism reply that reports presuppose what they aim to debunk.
Meditation, psychedelic therapy and neuro-tech provide growing first-person data that any theory must now account for, fuelling cross-talk between scientists and practitioners.
In AI circles, questions about whether large language models could ever be conscious have revived functionalist arguments and spotlighted ethical stakes.

The conversation is thus fragmented but dynamic: progress in one strand (e.g. better neural correlates) often forces reframing in another (e.g. revamped metaphysics).

Key outstanding questions

Can we derive subjective character from objective descriptions, or must we accept an explanatory gap?
Which neural (or computational) features are necessary and sufficient?
Is “what it’s like” an illusion created by higher-order inference?
How should we test theories that posit non-neural substrates (panpsychism, dual-aspect monism)?
What ethical status should we grant to non-human or artificial systems if markers of consciousness remain disputed?

Sources

[1] Havlík, M. & Velmans, M. A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations (2024). Surveys six major families of theories; notes methodological divides between empirical, phenomenological and metaphysical approaches. https://www.factfaq.com/resources/A_landscape_of_consciousness_-_Toward_a_taxonomy_of_explanations_%282024%29.pdf

[2] Alexander, S. Moments of Awakening (Astral Codex Ten, 2023). Collects introspective accounts where people glimpse the constructed nature of awareness; used here to illustrate phenomenological evidence often cited by illusionists or higher-order theorists. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moments-of-awakening

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