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A Map of Consciousness Studies: Questions and Approaches.

Takuya Niikawa

Frontiers in Psychology 2020 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.530152 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Keywords Approach to consciousness Consciousness science Philosophy of consciousness Questions about consciousness
Citations 18
Key points Proposes a map of consciousness studies structured around five fundamental question categories and demonstrates its application to two major theories of consciousness.

Abstract

This article aims to present a map of consciousness studies, which consists of a list of fundamental questions about consciousness and existing approaches to them. The question list includes five fundamental categories: Definitional, Phenomenological, Epistemological, Ontological, and Axiological. Each fundamental category is divided into more determinate questions. Existing approaches to each question are also classified into a few groups, presenting principal researchers who take each kind of approach. In the final section, I demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed map of consciousness studies by applying it to examine the integrated information theory and the global workspace theory of consciousness.