Mainstream Consciousness Discourse as Lexical Disambiguation Failure
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The term consciousness is used for partially overlapping targets: subjective experience, wakeful state, cognitive access, reportability, metacognition, functional organization, self-modeling, and forms of meaning or stake participation. When a discussion shifts among these targets without notice, apparent disagreements can be produced by lexical equivocation or invalid transfer of properties across domains. This paper develops lexical disambiguation failure as a diagnostic hypothesis rather than a verdict on the field. It proposes that consciousness claims be represented through an explicit term, sense, target, domain, transformation set, invariant or predicate, operational indicator, evidence basis, and cross-domain mapping. Claims can then be classified as well-formed, underspecified, equivocal, mapped, substantively disputed, or empirically unresolved. Disambiguation does not solve consciousness, prove that distinct senses name distinct phenomena, or eliminate genuine theoretical conflict. It provides a procedure for locating which disagreement is lexical, which is methodological, which concerns evidence, and which survives after the participants share a target.
Author: Ableman, Adam
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225014743