What concept of consciousness?

Abstract

This chapter tries to establish what it is that is being referred to by consciousness and how one should recognize an instance of it. Here, the chapter engages in a rigorous search for such criteria. Since it suggests that different criteria can dissociate, the chapter questions whether there is any unitary phenomenon. The criteria that it considers appear to yield answers that are consistent with each other only when behaviour is integrated and coherent. The chapter concludes that consciousness is related to behavioural integration and that studying behavioural integration is therefore the way to study consciousness. Clearly, many different mechanisms in the brain contribute to the coherence or integration of its end-product, behaviour. The important point is that these integrative processes can be studied experimentally, both at the behavioural and at the neurobiological level; and they can, in principle, be modelled in computational devices.