Abstract

Consciousness takes many forms. There’s the visual awareness of a yellow school bus, the ­auditory consciousness of its engine’s roar, the olfactive experience of its exhaust fumes, etc. There’s also the cognitive awareness of objects, facts, and states-of-affairs when thinking of Budapest or of the French elections, when endorsing the classical properties of logical consequence. Not to mention other kinds, including emotions, bodily sensations, etc. These forms of consciousness differ in a variety of respects: whether they are tied to a specific sense organ (if at all), their distinctive phenomenology (what “it is like” to be in such-and-such conscious psychological state), the sorts of things they make us aware of (colors, sounds, smells, cities, social phenomena, or logical properties, etc.), and the different functions they occupy in our psychological lives (their contribution to rational thought-processes, to the acquisition of evidence and knowledge, how they can lead to action and behavior, etc.).