The Unity of Phenomenal Consciousness and The Unity Thesis: A Critical Study

Abstract

Consciousness occupies a fundamental place in our daily life. Conscious experience always comes as a unified phenomenon. We find many different senses of ‘unity’. The main purpose of the thesis is to present a critical discussion of the unity of phenomenal consciousness and also the critical evaluation of the unity thesis proposed by Tim Bayne in his magisterial work entitled ‘The Unity of Consciousness’ published in 2010.The thesis is divided into seven chapters including introduction and concluding remarks. I begin my discussion with definition and nature of different types of consciousness in chapter 1. In the 2nd chapter I have focused only on the nature of phenomenal consciousness and also the possibility of the unity of phenomenal consciousness critically. In the third chapter of the thesis I have critically explored the nature of phenomenal unity and the unity thesis of consciousness following Tim Bayne. In the fourth chapter, I have considered some arguments in defense of the unity thesis. Some philosophers oppose the unity thesis and they argue on the basis of some facts of behaviourally and clinically disordered patients and claim that there are some kinds of breakdown of unity in consciousness of these persons. These opposite views have been discussed in chapter five. In chapter six, I discuss some recent criticisms against the mereological account and I have tried to respond from my own standpoint. In the concluding observations, I argue that there are some positive aspects to explain the nature of the unity of phenomenal consciousness without involving any kind of category mistakes. Again with the help of this thesis, I shall be able to explain the problem of consciousness effectively and get the plausibility of achieving a unique way to explain the historical problem without any ambiguity. Lastly, I think that the unity thesis of Tim Bayne is more revolutionary than the others to deal with the problem of consciousness like Kantian Copernican Revolution. After dwelling upon the arguments for and against of the unity thesis I came to the conclusion that the cases of disunity as shown by the opponents are nothing but the contextual manifestation of the unity. The whole matter can be represented in an argumentative form. The concept of disunity necessarily comes after the concept of unity. Without the existence of unity, there is no plausibility of the explanations of this disunity. Unity of phenomenal consciousness always remains as the locus of the socalled- disunity.