science

Thinking About Consciousness

Thinking About Consciousness is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Thinking About Consciousness rather than just read about it. In short: Thinking About Consciousness by David Papineau, is a book (published in 2002) about consciousness that describes what Papineau calls the 'Intuition of Distinctness'. He does not so much attempt to prove that materialism is right (although he presents his 'Causal argument' for it in the first chapter) as analyse why dualism seems intuitively plausible.

Key takeaways

Thinking About Consciousness belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Thinking About Consciousness to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Thinking About Consciousness from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Thinking About Consciousness by David Papineau, is a book (published in 2002) about consciousness that describes what Papineau calls the 'Intuition of Distinctness'. He does not so much attempt to prove that materialism is right (although he presents his 'Causal argument' for it in the first chapter) as analyse why dualism seems intuitively plausible. He makes various propositions for future research in his book.

Causal argument In the first chapter of his book, Papineau offers the causal argument as what he considers the best argument for materialism:

Conscious mental occurrences have physical effects All physical effects are fully caused by purely physical prior histories The physical effects of conscious states are not always overdetermined by distinct causes. Materialism follows. Although Papineau recognises that it is possible to reject these premisses, he claims that to do so leads to empirically implausible conclusions.

Conceptual dualism Not to be confused with property dualism, or ontological dualism, conceptual dualism suggests that we have two different ways of thinking about the properties of a single substance. The distinctness between these different kinds of concepts is what causes the 'intuition of distinctness', which Papineau suggests is responsible for dualism, and why it is such an attractive hypothesis. Specifically, Papineau says that these two types of concepts are distinct, because the phenomenal concepts possess some part of the actual experience. Our concept of red includes a 'faint copy' of red, whereas our conception of the human perceptual system includes no such faint copy.

Reaction Susan Blackmore characterized Papineau's book as "definitely written for philosophers rather than psychologists or neuroscientists" because of its focus on abstruse philosophical arguments. She concludes that "Papineau has helped explain why" it's so easy for us to think there's an explanatory gap for consciousness, though she doubts that Papineau's insistence that consciousness is an inherently vague concept will dampen neuroscientific efforts to understand it better.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Thinking About Consciousness

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Thinking About Consciousness claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Thinking About Consciousness before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Thinking About Consciousness ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Thinking About Consciousness

In research: Thinking About Consciousness appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Thinking About Consciousness in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Thinking About Consciousness is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2002 English-language non-fiction books, 2002 non-fiction books, Books about consciousness, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Thinking About Consciousness outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Thinking About Consciousness in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Thinking About Consciousness means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Thinking About Consciousness out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Thinking About Consciousness in simple terms?

Why does Thinking About Consciousness matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Thinking About Consciousness?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Thinking About Consciousness.