Consciousness or Conscience: A Two-Dimensional Space for the Study and Understanding of Conscious Experience

Abstract

Resumen The study of consciousness faces theoretical fragmentation that, in Spanish, is aggravated by the unexplored distinction between "consciencia" (basic phenomenal experience) and "conciencia" (moral reflection). This work proposes an organizational framework-the twodimensional space of consciousnessdefined by two analytical axes: on the one hand, phenomenological domains (sensory, affective, cognitive, and reflective) that recurrently emerge in clinical and experimental literature; on the other, a dynamic integration continuum whose regions (absent, fragmentary, global, reflective) characterize the degree of global coherence of neural activity. No new ontology of the mind is postulated, but rather a conceptual infrastructure that allows describing and comparing existing theories within a common coordinate system. The framework: (a) organizes theories such as IIT, GWT, and Damasio, showing their differential emphases; (b) clarifies the consciencia/conciencia ambiguity by situating them as emphases on different domains; (c) allows describing normal and pathological states, as well as phylogenetic comparisons, in a common space; and (d) generates testable predictions about clinical dissociations and neural correlates. Conceived as a comparative metalanguage-not as an ontological theory-this two-dimensional space seeks to organize interdisciplinary dialogue, reduce terminological confusion, and guide future research.