May Conscious Mind Give a “Scientific Definition” of Consciousness?

Open Journal of Philosophy 9 (4):439-451 (2019)
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Abstract

The mind when posing the question “what is consciousness?” (i.e. “The Hard Problem of Consciousness”, THPOC) will encounter an unsurmountable conflict of interest. The hope that by investigating the “neural correlates to consciousness” (NCCs) one might come to a “scientific (conceptual)” definition of consciousness is then paradoxical. In fact, the investigation of NCCs might unveil only “operational” (functional) properties of the mind. Nevertheless, the pieces of information deriving from these investigations seem to be striking. To this respect, there is a growing evidence of a dual-state activity in mind, corresponding to the activities of a conscious (explicit) mind (C) and an unconscious (implicit) mind (U), respectively; moreover, C and U do not share any conceptual connection with psychoanalytic Conscious and Unconscious. In detail, C is the domain where thoughts (as well as images and music) can be managed; instead, U exhibits a biophysical/biochemical activity. In order to communicate with each other, a transduction of one language into the other must reciprocally occur; it is notable that the investigation of NCCs leads to the conclusion that it is right that transduction process accounts for the unsurmountable question about THPOC. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the dual state activity in mind stands on a probabilistic-deterministic mechanism; this functional property of the mind is incompatible with the existence of free-will (FW) but not with C’s FW illusion. In summary in the current literature, there is a unique cognitive model that is compatible with all these evidences, i.e. “The Bignetti Model” (TBM).

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References found in this work

Facing up to the problem of consciousness.David Chalmers - 1995 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3):200-19.
A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness.Bernard J. Baars - 1988 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Facing up to the problem of consciousness.D. J. Chalmers - 1996 - Toward a Science of Consciousness:5-28.
Quining qualia.Daniel Dennett - 1988 - In Anthony J. Marcel & Edoardo Bisiach, Consciousness in Contemporary Science. New York: Oxford University Press.

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