A Map of Consciousness Studies: Questions and Approaches

• Main Author: Takuya Niikawa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-10-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: consciousness; consciousness science; philosophy of consciousness; approach to consciousness; questions about consciousness
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.530152/full

This article aims to present a map of consciousness studies, which consists of a list of fundamental questions about consciousness and existing approaches to them. The question list includes five fundamental categories: Definitional, Phenomenological, Epistemological, Ontological, and Axiological. Each fundamental category is divided into more determinate questions. Existing approaches to each question are also classified into a few groups, presenting principal researchers who take each kind of approach. In the final section, I demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed map of consciousness studies by applying it to examine the integrated information theory and the global workspace theory of consciousness.