Science and the Self-Referentiality of Consciousness

In this paper, we study the extent and limits of scientific inquiry about consciousness. We first insist on the exceptional status of conscious experience, which is no proper object of investigation, but rather an actual presence and a precondition of any investigation. To better characterize this status, we develop the concept of “radical self-reference”. Questioning about consciousness is radically self-referential in so far as it is itself an act of consciousness. This suggests that consciousness is existentially primary; a kind of primacy which clearly departs from the ontological primacy advocated by property dualists or panpsychists. We then notice that, accordingly, science has some basic features which hinder in principle its approach of consciousness: it distantiates from its objet, whereas consciousness is at no distance; it tends to formulate truths that do not depend on one’s situation, whereas consciousness is what it is like to be situated; it claims that physical explanations are self-sufficient, thus threatening to reduce consciousness to an epiphenomenon. These remarks tend to increase the “hardness” of the “hard problem” of the origin and existence of consciousness. Yet, we also point out that scientific inquiries are able to clarify a host of interesting issues about the forms and development of consciousness. We thus present a discussion about the significance of evolutionary arguments about consciousness. We wonder whether higher order features of consciousness such as reflectivity or self-knowledge can be considered as “spandrels” of evolution (mere side consequence of other features),