UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal

Many of those in the cognitive science community have neglected consciousness as atopic of rigorous scientific discourse, a neglect which resulted in the disjunction between thephilosophy and science of consciousness. Theorists or researchers often create a misconceptionfor consciousness by considering it exclusively as an abstract phenomenon without anygrounding in neurology. In doing so, they neglect consciousness’ rightful play alongside naturalorder. Others, in contrast, have considered consciousness solely by the neurology, aconsideration that fails to fully capture its robustness. Furthermore, many fail to recognize theimportance of the contingent social aspect of consciousness. Thus, by not closing this gap, thecommunity has created a dis-unified understanding of the most fundamental aspects of thehuman mind. As such, the solution to this so-called “hard problem of consciousness” is toaddress our limited conception of consciousness by bridging this gap between the contingentsocial, phenomenal, and neurological understandings of the mind.