IB Philosophy 6.2.1 Cognitive Science and the Concept of the Self Key Definitions

Consciousness: the state of subjective awareness in which an individual experiences thoughts, sensations, and perceptions with a first-person, qualitative character: the 'what it is like' quality of mental life.

the view, associated with Patricia Churchland, that folk-psychological concepts such as belief, desire, and the self are radically false and will ultimately be replaced by more precise neuroscientific vocabulary, much as the concept of phlogiston was eliminated by modern chemistry. If eliminative materialism is correct, the hard problem of consciousness may dissolve rather than be solved.

Functionalism is a theory of mind holding that mental states are defined by their causal roles rather than by the physical substrate that realises them. According to this theory, what makes something a mental state is the functional role it performs in mediating inputs, outputs, and other mental states, not whether it occurs in neurons or silicon.

The hard problem of consciousness is David Chalmers' term for the question of why physical brain processes give rise to subjective experience at all, as distinct from the easier problems of explaining how the brain processes information and controls behaviour.

the pre-reflective, immediate sense of being a subject of experience, including the sense of ownership (this body is mine) and sense of agency (I am acting). Identified by Shaun Gallagher, the minimal self is present before any conscious self-reflection and is more basic than the narrative self.

the richer, autobiographical layer of personal identity formed by weaving memories, intentions, and social roles into a coherent life story. Daniel Dennett describes it as a "centre of narrative gravity": not a real entity inside the brain but an abstract point around which our self-stories converge, raising the question of whether the narrative self is a genuine feature of reality or a useful fiction.

Qualia are the subjective, felt qualities of conscious experience, such as the redness of red or the painfulness of pain. These qualities resist objective scientific description because they can only be known from the inside, making them central to the hard problem of consciousness.