Understanding Consciousness

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Understanding Consciousness is a philosophical text written by Max Velmans, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmith's College, University of London. The book is a study in the philosophy of mind, in which Velmans discusses problems concerning the two principal theories of consciousness prevalent today, reductionism and dualism, before offering his own theory of consciousness, called reflexive monism.

Both reductionism and dualism are guilty, Velmans asserts, of not paying enough attention to the phenomenology of consciousness, the condition of being aware of something. Reductionism, for example, attempts to reduce consciousness to being a state of the brain; thus consciousness is nothing more than its neural causes and correlates. This, Velmans says, is guilty of breaking Leibniz's assertion that, in order for A to be identical to B (that is, for consciousness to be a state of the brain), the properties of A must also be the properties of B. Velmans here argues that the subjective, phenomenal experience of consciousness is entirely unlike the neural states of the brain, and thus may not be reduced to them; that is, the phenomenal properties of consciousness are not identifiable with the physical brain states that arguably cause them.