The orthodox view that phenomenal consciousness is unified at any moment—a single thing produced by one brain mechanism—is mistaken. Instead, conscious experience is a multiplicity, an aggregate of phenomenal elements, each generated by a distinct consciousness-making mechanism in the brain. Cognitive science therefore requires a multi-track theory of consciousness: a computational model that recognizes the manifold nature of experience and its distributed neural basis.
Philosophers now largely reject reductionism to microphysics in favor of functional explanations for the special sciences, but a closer look at scientific practice shows that the actual explanatory strategy is mechanistic: appealing to active material entities organized to produce target phenomena. The authors argue that phenomenal consciousness will also be explained mechanistically, as the activity of specific neural mechanisms in the brain. This perspective implies that consciousness has a complex structural essence, which the chapter explores.