Inclusive Consciousness: A Very Brief History

This paper contrasts two views of consciousness I call the narrow view and the inclusive view. Although this distinction bears on many contemporary issues, my main goal is historical. I want to argue that the inclusive view of consciousness (IC) was overarching in late 19th and early 20th century and was replaced at some point by the narrow conception, which later became the default view in philosophy of mind. The paper has four sections. Section 1 introduces the distinction between the narrow and the inclusive view of consciousness. Section 2 traces the origins of IC back to a significant debate internal to Scottish philosophy. Section 3 offers textual evidence that IC was shared by early phenomenologists and early analytic philosophers alike. And Section 4 briefly addresses the sources of the narrow conception of consciousness in C.I. Lewis and the Vienna Circle.