ABSTRACT
In Chapters 2 to 5, I have summarised the case against both dualist and reductionist accounts of the nature of consciousness. Chapters 6 and 7 provide an alternative, ‘common-sense’ analysis of conscious phenomenology that does not require it to be anything other than it seems. According to the reflexive model I develop, phenomenal consciousness neither is mysterious in the sense of res cogitans, nor does it reduce to a state or function of the brain. That said, there is little doubt that the phenomenology of human consciousness relates closely to the activities in human brains. Some activities in the visual system have causal effects on consequent visual experiences; some activities in the somatosensory system appear to cause tactile experiences, and so on. Other activities appear to correlate with (co-occur with) experiences. According to many theorists, once experiences appear, they in turn have causal effects on, and functions in, subsequent brain activity. In the present chapter we examine these relationships with care.
