CONSCIOUSNESS

68 1. Philosophy
This ambivalence about our conscious nature would be similar to a fish being confused about
water and needing an explanation regarding the nature of water. Imagine if the fish world
had to commission other fish to study the nature of water because no one in the fish kingdom
had a clue about water. Is this some kind of dissociative identity disorder? Just as the fish
is immersed in water and sustained by the water so are we immersed in consciousness and
sustained by consciousness. Every aspect of our being is consciousness, our ability to move,
to think, to love, to will, to know, to create, to invent, solve problems, to appreciate and feel
the beauty in patterns of music, art, architecture, dance, decorative arts and culinary arts.
Your ability to recognize patterns, to form abstract concepts in mathematics, engineering, law,
philosophy, politics, legal systems, government, this is all part of the conscious experience.
We have several thousand years of people experiencing transcendent states of consciousness
in every religion of this world, are they all deluded or is this part of consciousness too? So
if you are in such an ambivalent state about who and what you are you might want to take
at look at whether you are really enjoying the conscious experience. Do you love being you,
are you in love with living, do you enjoy being? Look at your emotional state, what are the
prevailing emotions, are they fear, anger, sadness, confusion and boredom? Is this the reason
you say I have no mind, no will, is it out of a psychic void, a loss of sense of self, loss of the
self-love? So what you see as the nature of consciousness just might be a reflection of what
you see in your self and when you can come out of that cocoon of despair and self induced
narcotization, you might just notice that this thing called consciousness is quite wonderful. In
fact, we should not have to study it at all, what we should do is celebrate it every moment we
draw breath through this body. Enjoy the multitude of new ideas that play like a kaleidoscope
in our minds. Enjoy your ability to dream, to create, to hope and most of all to find meaning
and unity with every aspect of the universe around you. P7
57 Introspection, What? Eric Schwitzgebel (Department of
Philosophy, UC Berkeley-Riverside, Riverside, CA)
Self-knowledge – knowledge of one’s own mind, in particular – arises in six completely
different ways, none of which neatly deserve the label “introspection” I’ll argue that the six
methods work together, in different proportions and combinations in different cases, and that
there is no distinctive faculty of introspection. Nonetheless, there’s a commonality among the
class of cognitive activities properly regarded as introspective: All involve a particular type of
attention to conscious experience. C8
58 Introspective Methodologies in the Science of Consciousness Maja Spener
(Philosophy, Oxford, United Kingdom)
It is commonly said that the science of consciousness depends on introspective access to
phenomenology. Scepticism about such access has led some to doubt the possibility of genuine
progress in that science. Others have maintained that the limitations of introspection can
be overcome in a properly conducted science of consciousness. I show that there is truth to
both perspectives, depending on which questions about consciousness one investigates. Along
the way, I provide a taxonomy of introspection-based methodologies used in both psychological
and philosophical investigations of consciousness. C8
59 Could Radical Empiricism Guide Neurophenomenology as the Future of
Neuroscience? Eugene Taylor (Humanistic/Transpersonal Psych,
Saybrook University, Cambridge, MA)
Neuroscientists such as Francis Crick and Francesco Varela have touted William James
as a player in the solution to the so-called Hard Problem in the neurosciences - that elusive
relation between the brain and the mind. William James’s phenomenology of immediate experience,
what he called radical empiricism, in fact has much in common with contemporary
developments in neurophenomenology. Not the least of these involve an overthrow of the
subject/object dichotomy in favor of intersubjectivity, the motives of the scientist influencing
what he or she studies, the phenomenology of the science-making process itself, and the
humanistic implications of the neuroscience revolution that forecast an end to reductionistic