ABSTRACT
Where does consciousness begin? Panpsychists tend to hold that it is wherever there is sufficient complexity, regardless of whether that means attributing consciousness to inanimate matter, even at atomic scales. But most contemporary philosophers and scientists of mind suppose that consciousness starts with qualia—what it is like experiencing whatever one is currently experiencing—awareness of which is knowing in the sense that creatures equipped with language can report it. Kant, following Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, charted a middle course, extending consciousness beyond knowing, reportable kinds of awareness to include everything present to us in sensation, whether or not we do, or even can, discern and attend to it—but no further. For them, the difference between sensational consciousness and its absence marks the divide between consciousness and non-consciousness, so that even creatures with the barest minimum of sensation count as conscious. Thus, in relation to the mind-body problem, everything beyond that minimum, qualia included, has to be regarded as an inessential extra. Subjects/authors discussed include vertebrate and invertebrate consciousness, attention, seeing in three dimensions, phylogenetic relativity, complex chemistry, perception of time, the mind-body problem, qualia, neural correlates of consciousness, the information theory of consciousness (ITT), objectivity, realism, the Copernican complex, Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch, Andrew Barron and Colin Klein, and Jon Mallatt and Todd Feinberg.
