WHY “CONSCIOUSNESS” MEANS WHAT IT DOES
Neil C. Manson
Metaphilosophy 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2010.01681.x (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 2 |
| Key points | Argues that “consciousness” is polysemic and that univocalism about consciousness is implausible, drawing on the history of philosophy and psychology and semantic theory. Proposes that recognizing this polysemy clarifies thought and talk about consciousness and explains why the term means several related things. |
Abstract
Abstract: “Consciousness” seems to be a polysemic, ambiguous, term. Because of this, theorists have sought to distinguish the different kinds of phenomena that “consciousness” denotes, leading to a proliferation of terms for different kinds of consciousness. However, some philosophers—univocalists about consciousness—argue that “consciousness” is not polysemic or ambiguous. By drawing upon the history of philosophy and psychology, and some resources from semantic theory, univocalism about consciousness is shown to be implausible. This finding is important, for if we accept the univocalist account then we are less likely to subject our thought and talk about the mind to the kind of critical analysis that it needs. The exploration of the semantics of “consciousness” offered here, by way of contrast, clarifies and fine‐tunes our thought and talk about consciousness and conscious mentality and explains why “consciousness” means what it does, and why it means a number of different, but related, things.