?
Consciousness as self-description in differences
Modern philosophy of consciousness has not come up with any acceptable theory of consciousness so far. Philosophers are still not able to reach agreement, though they have come to a deadlock, as all the possible approaches seem to have been exhausted and all the arguments have been repeatedly discussed. It may be assumed that the crisis has been caused by the factors rooted in the initially wrong attitudes to knowledge or, more specifically, in epistemology focused on first-order cybernetics. The situation may be changed, if philosophy of consciousness can be refocused on second-order cybernetics. It means that any attempts to apply the subject-object model to consciousness and specifically to reflection should be given up, while consciousness should not be seen as certain objective essence observable by a researcher. It also means that the principles underlying theories of consciousness should be revised: Any attempts aimed at explaining the mechanism of generating consciousness by non-consciousness should be abandoned.
The research shows that the epistemology underlying second-order cybernetics can eliminate many of the paradoxes typical of present-day theories of consciousness that are related to different versions of reductionism. It also explains that, in contrast to the dualistic subject–object model used for description of consciousness, the latter can and should be seen as a strictly self-describing system, where the diversity of forms and states is explained by inherent differences.