Physicist Carlo Rovelli recently proclaimed that consciousness is just another physical thing, while materialist philosophers argue that consciousness is simply one brain state observing another. What such views miss, argues Manfred Frank, a leading figure in contemporary German philosophy, is that consciousness comes with a built-in awareness of itself—an awareness that exists prior to any introspection or observation. Consciousness does not observe itself in the way we observe objects; rather, it dissolves the distinction between observer and observed altogether. This is why consciousness cannot be simply another object in the world, but instead exists in an entirely different dimension.

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If we had no consciousness our lives would be devoid of meaning. We have been immersed in this medium since before we were born and remain in it even in our dreams. And we do so without any effort on our part. Apart from when it is interrupted by deep sleep or we are unconscious after fainting or during anaesthesia, we remain in this state or are enveloped in it throughout our entire lives. Nothing is more familiar to us than consciousness; it is so familiar that we rarely notice it or attend to it.

Consciousness must therefore be clearly distinguished from attention. As the philosopher Ned Block observed, “one can be aware of what one is not attending to.” While it makes perfect sense to urge someone to pull themselves together, to concentrate, to pay attention, or to think carefully, it would make little sense simply to say to someone: “Be conscious!” To understand such a command you would have to be a being that is already conscious.

We must also distinguish consciousness from knowledge. This becomes especially clear when we consider that we may have experiences that present themselves with the greatest clarity, yet which we are unable to classify correctly. For example, I may see the shade Red-128 and yet take it to be Red-120. However, the fact that I am misclassifying it in no way prevents me from seeing precisely what I see.

Is this not the reason why something that appears to be the most obvious and familiar thing in the world can at the same time become our greatest philosophical riddle? The fact that we are so unconditionally certain of our own consciousness does not mean that we possess infallible knowledge of it. It is in fact difficult to imagine that philosophy—be it the intellectual traditions of Eastern Asia or those of the Western world—would ever have arisen without the puzzlement occasioned by the riddle of consciousness, not to mention its later derivatives, psychology and neuroscience.

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We can also view the mystery of consciousness from another perspective. It has the remarkable characteristic of being informed of its own existence or presence without the mediation of a second instance. In other words, every conscious state implies a form of self-consciousness.

Since Descartes, philosophers have reserved the term “immediate” for this distinctive mode of self-awareness, meaning quite literally a form of awareness that is not mediated by a second instance such as “introspection” or an “inward glance.” We often use these two terms quite unreflectively in everyday talk when referring to processes that we call “inner.” Yet they are misleading metaphors. Strictly speaking, anyone who attempts to turn their gaze “inward” will find literally nothing there—nothing, at least, that could be described as an inner object of observation.

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