Philosophy Cannot Ground Science: The Unjustified Use of ‘Consciousness’ in the Scientific Field
Keywords:
Phenomenal consciousness, Category mistake, Meaning as use, Wittgenstein, EliminativismAbstract
For many, putting in doubt the existence of phenomenal consciousness is absurd since the distinction between appearance and reality does not apply to it. Many cognitive scientists and neuroscientists accept the existence of consciousness in virtue of such reasoning. The present work questions that justification. Consciousness is a concept whose scientific meaning comes from philosophy or colloquial language. From this, it concludes that the “self-evident nature of consciousness” is not a scientifically valid statement. This philosophical assumption rests on a category mistake in scientific language use.
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