I Think That Consciousness Has Always Been

Within Psychology And Neuroscience, Some New And Rigorous Experimental Paradigms For Studying Consciousness Have Helped It Begin To Overcome The Stigma That Has Been Attached To The Topic For Most Of This Century.

Because The Idea Of Zombies Seems To Make Sense, And Seems To, In A Certain Sense, Be Possible, I Think One Can Use That To Argue Against The Thesis That Everything Is Purely Physical. Now Many People, I Think, Agree That The Idea Of Zombies Are Conceivable, Including People Who Want To Be Physicalists.

Actually, I Think My View Is Compatible With Much Of The Work Going On Now In Neuroscience And Psychology, Where People Are Studying The Relationship Of Consciousness To Neural And Cognitive Processes Without Really Trying To Reduce It To Those Processes.

I Think That Consciousness Has Always Been The Most Important Topic In The Philosophy Of Mind, And One Of The Most Important Topics In Cognitive Science As A Whole, But It Had Been Surprisingly Neglected In Recent Years.

I Had The Idea That It Would Be Wonderful To Be A Physicist Or A Mathematician Maybe 500 Years Ago Around The Time Of Newton When There Were Really Fundamental Things Just Lying Around To Be Discovered.