Editorial
Consciousness Science 2002:
past, present, and future.
By Antti Revonsuo
The present
wave of the scientific study of consciousness could soon celebrate its 10th
anniversary. It was sometime in the early 1990's when the topic of
consciousness made a final breakthrough and the multidisciplinary studies on
consciousness became a distinct, respectable field of scientific inquiry, with
its own academic journals, conferences and societies. The pioneering spirit of
the 1990's seems to have been driven by the conviction, explicit in conference
slogans and book titles, that we are steadily progressing towards a Science of
Consciousness.
At this
point in the development of the field it might be a good idea for the field to
take stock and evaluate what has been achieved, and where to head next. At the
theoretical and philosophical level, the main achievement is that the
different options as to the fundamental nature of consciousness have been
systematically charted and vigorously explored. However, it still remains
unclear what kind of a philosophical approach should be taken as the basis of
the Science of Consciousness. In any case, one thing is clear: If we want to
have a genuine SCIENCE of 
consciousness,
at some point the consciousness research community will have to discontinue
endlessly arguing about the philosophical alternatives and for the time being
just settle with something reasonably plausible in order to make progress with
the actual empirical science of consciousness.
A unified
empirical research program could be built on that kind of shared philosophical
and theoretical basis. Unfortunately, so far empirical consciousness research
has not been formed around any particular theory and philosophy of
consciousness, but has been either fairly untheoretical in nature or only
loosely committed to standard cognitive science and neuroscience which
unfortunately do not have sufficient theoretical tools to deal with
subjectivity. Furthermore, different empirical approaches seem to embrace
entirely different background assumptions about the nature of consciousness.
Just to mention a few examples of the wild variety of views: Some believe that
consciousness is radically embodied and not located in the brain at all
whereas others seek for it in the brain under the label �the neural correlates
of consciousness�. Some believe that consciousness is a biological phenomenon
that falls in the domain of neuroscience whereas others speculate that it must
be essentially a quantum phenomenon, therefore falling into the domain of
physics to explain. Thus, there is a fair degree of disunity and disagreement
about the basic nature of both consciousness and the appropriate ways to study
it.
In
view of this disunity both at the philosophical and empirical levels, a plea for
unity might be in place. If consciousness science is to make significant
progress in the future, it will have to establish a more unified research
program on consciousness. Otherwise, it runs the risk of being perceived (by
mainstream science and those who fund it) as too incoherent and incapable of
advancing to a stage beyond mere philosophical argumentation. If the field is
stuck with 
such a situation for
another decade, we might not have to wait long until some new wave of
behaviorism and eliminativism will try to raise its ugly head, arguing that the
so-called science of consciousness has shown no progress because of its
philosophical and methodological weaknesses. That, of course, is the worst
scenario, but it may be helpful to remind ourselves about it every once in a
while. Sometimes even worst scenarios do come true and last time in the history
of psychology when consciousness was for a while taken seriously, the worst
scenario eventually did come true in the form of behaviorism.
One important
ingredient of a more unified research program is a growing empirical database
that is acknowledged and shared by the community of researchers working within
the field. So far, it has been difficult to picture what exactly constitutes the
database for consciousness science: the relevant research is published in
scattered journals and it has not been entirely uncomplicated to keep track of
all the important new findings in the field.
This is where
the present web-magazine, Science and Consciousness Reviews, steps in. One of
its functions is to offer a quick and easy channel to the latest developments in
the field of empirical consciousness research, both for researchers and
interested lay people. Its editorial policy naturally reflects the views of the
Editors and Editorial Board members as to what is deemed as significant
additions to the database of consciousness science, and hence, what
consciousness science itself is all about. If a theoretically and empirically
more unified Science of Consciousness is to slowly emerge during the next ten
years or so, perhaps SCR will be able to make a small contribution to its
emergence.
Prof. Antti Revonsuo
Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
University of Turku
Turku FIN-20014
FINLAND
[email protected]
