BETWEEN EXTREMES

Philosophers have not always regarded consciousness with suspicion. Some have treated consciousness itself and the inner world believed to be revealed to conscious attention – a world of desires, purposes, sensations, emotions, and judgments – as basic, evident realities. According to these philosophers, consciousness is not some motley illusion with no reality behind it. On the contrary, the world of conscious experience is the least peculiar, least precarious realm to investigate. The world of matter has seemed more of a riddle to unravel than the realm of mind. For it appears, or at least it has appeared to many philosophers in the past, that the mental world of conscious, subjective experience is immediately present or given. We do not have to engage in a weighty inferential process to determine, say, whether we are in gripping pain. Introspection (which literally means looking into or looking within) discloses our feelings and emotions with a unique surety; the etymology of the word “consciousness” hints at the certainty available in conscious life, being derived from the Latin term, conscientia, for knowledge (knowing something with others).