What does it mean for consciousness to be multidimensional? A narrative review.
Front Psychol June 20, 2024 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1430262 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Narrative review Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key findings | The main unresolved issues in the multidimensional study of consciousness are dimension selection, dimension aggregation, and ethical considerations. |
Abstract
A recent development in the psychological and neuroscientific study of consciousness has been the tendency to conceptualize consciousness as a multidimensional phenomenon. This narrative review elucidates the notion of dimensionality of consciousness and outlines the key concepts and disagreements on this topic through the viewpoints of several theoretical proposals. The reviewed literature is critically evaluated, and the main issues to be resolved by future theoretical and empirical work are identified: the problems of dimension selection and dimension aggregation, as well as some ethical considerations. This narrative review is seemingly the first to comprehensively overview this specific aspect of consciousness science.