Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology, edited by Dan Zahavi, Oxford University Press, 2012
From the Introduction:
The explanation of consciousness is often seen as one of our greatest
intellectual challenges. If so, we surely need to start from an adequate
conception of just what is to be explained. And since the right way to understand
talk about consciousness is notoriously unclear and disputed, this is no simple
matter. This call for clarity arises not just from an interest in seeing
consciousness explained, but from the desire to understand its place in our
knowledge and in our values. So potentially much is at stake. This task of
clarification is a central concern of phenomenology as I interpret it here.