ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the consciousness into three broad types, ranging from the most empirically tractable to the most abstract and philosophical. Philosophical theories of consciousness-being philosophical-have mainly addressed the more abstract questions, particularly those that threaten materialism and/or point toward a special metaphysical nature of the mental. Issues in consciousness studies break down into three categories: specific phenomena that are of philosophical interest but are primarily empirical; more general phenomena that demand philosophical attention but are still scientifically tractable; and questions that seem, in principle, to resist scientific treatment and have afforded arguments against materialist theories of mind. Scientists and even philosophers often speak of “consciousness” as if the term had a single and easily identifiable referent. In fact, as the previous chapter has made clear, at least six or seven different phenomena and issues have been lumped together under the label.
