Consciousness Reconsidered

In 'Consciousness Reconsidered,' Owen Flanagan presents a broad and engaging argument that we are on the way to understanding consciousness within the natural order.

He advocates for 'constructive naturalism,' a methodology that integrates first-person reports of phenomenal experiences, psychological models, and neurophysiological data to explain consciousness.

The book addresses various philosophical positions, including eliminativism and non-naturalism, and argues for the importance of subjective consciousness in the natural world.

Flanagan draws on insights from cognitive neuroscience, neural Darwinism, and connectionist brain architecture to provide a synthetic theory of consciousness that emphasizes its essential role in human intelligence and purposeful behavior.