ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the traditional obscurities of the notion of consciousness, the difficulties of a medium whose total transparency renders it unapparent, of phosphorescence so universal as to cast no revealing shadow, or of a presenting activity whose fate is to be hidden behind what it presents. Consciousness is not therefore the name of some perfectly pellucid medium, nor of universal phosphorescence or shadowy activity, but a term covering all the forms and guises of esse apparens, the ways in which things appear without appearing as different. Conscious orientations of a conflict do not rest on our linguistic conventions, but our linguistic conventions rest upon it. The use of verbal expressions is an ineliminable element in the advanced life of consciousness. A reflexive pose of consciousness must be so easy and natural, as to be plausibly listed among the definitory properties of consciousness, as it has been by many philosophers.
