Prolog
Humans inhabiting the Earth have a persistent habit of thinking
about themselves as of a special kind of living creatures
distinguished from all the other beings by possessing something they
call consciousness. There may be different views on the adequacy of
this idea, from complete denial of its real grounds to the mystic
adoration of consciousness as a glimpse of God. While the both
extremes lead to the impossibility of scientific study, the major part
of researchers prefer to be pragmatic and adopt various kinds of
"technical" approach, dealing with specific models of consciousness
incorporating some of its aspects related to the particular science;
however, this can only be a temporary solution, and the fundamental
questions concerning the nature of consciousness arise with more
vigor, when development of some research technique approaches the
limits of its applicability. Therefore, it would be desirable to have
a sound foundation on which a unified view on consciousness could be
based, providing a common frame for all the special sciences
investigating the particular manifestations of consciousness, and thus
avoiding much misunderstanding due to the confusion of terms and
methodological incompatibility. Such a general view cannot be
produced within science and with scientific methods—this is a task
for a philosopher. However, philosophy of consciousness may be
unfolded in different ways, some of them oriented to the methodology
of science, and some others of a rather aesthetic, or ethic turn.
Scientific study of consciousness is to carefully discriminate
consciousness from the rest of the world. Such an analytical attitude
necessarily puts apart "consciousness" and "not consciousness",
opposing them. As it always happens, oppositions like that can only
be established in a limited domain, and science should never be
considered as the only available way of comprehending consciousness.
Thus, it is nonsense to ask science how it feels to be conscious, or
how a conscious being ought to behave. These are not scientific
problems, though they might also be treated analytically, resulting in
a new directions of scientific research—which however deal with
specifically scientific formulations answering to questions quite
different from original.
Still, any study of consciousness, scientific or not, has to
reflect three main aspects, which I will conventionally refer to as:
- Ontology of consciousness: what is the place of consciousness in
the hierarchy of Nature?
- Epistemology of consciousness: is it possible for conscious
beings to comprehend themselves?
- Ethics of consciousness: what is consciousness for and why
comprehend it?
Ignoring either of these questions would make the study essentially
incomplete and hence unsatisfactory, provoking people to seek for
other possible ways. In other words, we are first interested in what
consciousness is "in itself", then we consider how it looks "for
itself", and we have to complete out inquiry investigating how
consciousness "for itself" could arise from what it is "in itself",
and inversely how consciousness grows in the process of self-comprehending
and self-determination.
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