Consciousness Position Paper

Consciousness science has more theories than decisive tests. For decades, rival programs could each claim support from their own experiments, run under their own assumptions. One response has been the adversarial collaboration: rival theorists agree in advance on predictions and on the experiments that would test them. A 2025 Nature editorial argued that the time for this model has come, because it forces each side to say clearly what its theory claims and what would count against it (Nature 2025).

That demand applies to philosophical positions as much as to scientific theories. A position that can't be stated precisely can't be tested, criticized, or improved. The position paper is the form in which researchers meet this demand. It states a question, takes a stance, maps the rivals fairly, and names the objection it most needs to answer.

Phenomenology has a particular stake in these debates. Every theory of consciousness starts from some description of experience, often an unexamined one. Phenomenology supplies disciplined descriptions of the structures a theory must fit: the lived body, temporal flow, pre-reflective self-awareness. But a phenomenological voice is heard only when it's stated with the same clarity and fairness as its rivals. A paper that invokes phenomenology without tying it to a claim, or that treats description as refuting neuroscience outright, won't persuade readers from other disciplines. This content reflects the field as of September 2026.

Professional Context

You're a researcher preparing a position paper for an interdisciplinary workshop on consciousness. The workshop brings together philosophers, neuroscientists, and AI researchers. It selects papers for discussion based on clarity, fairness to rivals, and originality. A vague or one-sided paper won't be discussed.

Your task is to take a clear stance on one live question and show what a phenomenological perspective contributes that rival approaches miss.

What You'll Create

You'll write a 1,000–1,500 word position paper on one current question in consciousness studies. The paper has five components:

• the question, stated precisely, and your position on it
• a map of at least two rival positions
• the phenomenological grounding of your position
• support from enactivism or 4E cognition, neurophenomenology, or the blind spot argument
• the strongest objection to your position, and your reply

Skills in Action

The project draws the whole course together. The hard problem and the responses to it, or the scientific theories of consciousness, give you the rival positions to map. Phenomenological description supplies the structures of experience your claim relies on. Enactivism, neurophenomenology, or the blind spot argument supplies a framework that links those structures to a research program. Forming a position turns all of it into one argument.

Portfolio Value

A finished paper is a research writing sample: a defensible position on a live question, stated precisely enough to be tested and fair enough to be taken seriously by readers outside philosophy. It's the kind of text that could be submitted to a workshop, developed into a journal article, or used to open the framework section of an interdisciplinary proposal.

References

• Nature. 2025. "Make Science More Collegial: Why the Time for 'Adversarial Collaboration' Has Come." Editorial. Nature 641 (8062): 281–82.
  • Free: Nature (free to read)

Deliverable Overview

You'll write one position paper: a phenomenologically informed stance on one current question in consciousness studies, 1,000–1,500 words long. The paper has five required components, and component 4 offers a choice among three resources:

1. The question, stated precisely, and your position on it
2. A map of at least two rival positions, drawing on the responses to the hard problem or the scientific theories of consciousness
3. The grounding of your position in at least one phenomenological structure of experience
4. Support from enactivism or 4E cognition, neurophenomenology, or the blind spot argument
5. The strongest objection to your position, and your reply

Use a section heading for each component so your argument is easy to follow. If you cite sources, use Chicago author-date citations and include a References list. The References list doesn't count toward the word limit. Citations are optional.

Detailed Requirements

1. The Question and the Position

State one question in consciousness studies precisely. Say which systems, states, or beings it concerns, and which sense of "conscious" or "self" is at issue. Then state your position as a claim that could be wrong: a reader should be able to say what would count against it.

2. Rival Positions

Map at least two rival positions. Draw them from the responses to the hard problem (physicalism, illusionism, panpsychism, dualism) or from the scientific theories of consciousness (global workspace, integrated information, higher-order, predictive processing). State each in its strongest form, and say why its defenders hold it.

3. Phenomenological Grounding

Name at least one phenomenological structure of experience, such as the lived body, temporal flow, horizon, pre-reflective self-awareness, the minimal self, or sense-making. Describe it concretely, and show how your claim depends on it. The link between the structure and the claim must be explicit.

4. Supporting Resource (Choose One)

• Option A: Enactivism or 4E cognition. Use a named variety of enactivism, or one of the four E's, to support your claim.
• Option B: Neurophenomenology. Show how disciplined first-person reports and neural data could test or refine your claim.
• Option C: The blind spot argument. Show how the argument bears on how your question is usually framed.

Choose the resource that fits your question best. You don't need to address the others.

5. Objection and Reply

State the strongest objection to your position, in a form its defenders would accept. Then reply to it with a reason. If the objection forces you to narrow your claim, say so. That's a strength, not a weakness.

Success Criteria

Your paper meets the requirements when it:

• States a precise question and a clear position that could be wrong
• Maps at least two rival positions accurately and fairly
• Grounds the position in a named phenomenological structure, linked explicitly to the claim
• Uses enactivism or 4E cognition, neurophenomenology, or the blind spot argument accurately in support of the position
• States the strongest objection fairly and replies to it with a reason
• Keeps claims proportionate, without overclaiming what phenomenology settles

Quality Indicators

Adequate work includes all five components, states a claim, and uses its concepts accurately.

Excellent work does more. It treats rivals in their strongest form. It ties the phenomenological description directly to the claim, so that removing the description would weaken the argument. Its supporting resource does real work, not decoration. Its objection is one the author would find hard to answer, and the reply either answers it or narrows the claim openly. Throughout, it says what the position doesn't claim.

Step-by-Step Guidance

Step 1: Choose a question. Pick a question you care about and can state in one sentence. The live questions below are optional starting points.

Step 2: Sharpen it. Specify which systems, states, or beings, and which sense of the key terms. "Could AI be conscious?" becomes "Could a system without a living body have experience with a first-person point of view?"

Step 3: Map the rival positions fairly. Write two or three short paragraphs, one for each rival, as its defenders would put it.

Step 4: State a claim that could be wrong. Write it in one sentence. Then write one sentence saying what would count against it.

Step 5: Name its phenomenological grounding. Name the structure of experience your claim relies on, and describe it concretely.

Step 6: Choose a component 4 resource. Choose enactivism or 4E cognition, neurophenomenology, or the blind spot argument, whichever connects your grounding to a research program most directly.

Step 7: Write the strongest objection before your reply. Draft the objection first, as strongly as you can. Only then write the reply.

Step 8: Revise for precision. Cut hedges that make the claim untestable. Cut claims that go beyond what your grounding supports. Check that each rival would recognize its own position.

Resources

• Component checklist. Before you finish, confirm that your paper has these headed sections:
  1. The question and the position
  2. Rival positions
  3. Phenomenological grounding
  4. Supporting resource: enactivism or 4E, neurophenomenology, or the blind spot argument
  5. Objection and reply
• Live questions as starting points. Each comes with one free source:
  • AI consciousness: could a system without a living body be conscious? A multidisciplinary report assesses current AI systems against indicator properties drawn from scientific theories (Butlin et al. 2023).
  • Disorders of consciousness and anesthesia: what do behavioral and neural measures miss? A large study found that some unresponsive patients show signs of following commands in brain imaging (Bodien et al. 2024).
  • The self: is there a minimal self beneath the narrative self? An encyclopedia entry surveys phenomenological accounts of self-consciousness (Gallagher and Zahavi 2023).
  • Animal consciousness: how far does experience extend? An encyclopedia entry surveys the question and its methods (Allen 2026).
• Annotated exemplar excerpt. The excerpt below shows a strong objection-and-reply section for a different question from the four above: whether habitual actions involve a sense of agency. Use it as a model of stating an objection fairly and replying with a reason, not as a template to copy.

Objection. My claim is that habitual actions, such as typing a familiar password, involve a sense of agency, though not an explicit one. The strongest objection comes from those who distinguish the sense of ownership from the sense of agency (Gallagher 2000). On their view, agency is felt most clearly when an action is initiated deliberately, and habitual actions feel like something that simply happens through me. If that's right, my claim confuses owning a movement with authoring it.

Reply. The objection is right that habitual actions lack a felt moment of decision. But the sense of agency isn't only that moment. When my fingers stumble on the password, I experience the error as mine, as my doing going wrong, not as an event befalling me. That experience of the error as mine would be puzzling if no sense of agency were present before it. So I narrow my claim: habitual actions involve a pre-reflective sense of agency, one that becomes explicit when the action is interrupted. That narrower claim could still be wrong. It would be undermined if people reported interrupted habits as happening to them rather than as their own mistakes.

Annotations: The excerpt states the objection in a form its defenders would accept, and it credits its source. The reply concedes what the objection gets right and gives a reason grounded in a described experience. It narrows the claim openly, and it ends by saying what would count against the narrower claim.

• Your own notes. You may draw on any notes or journal entries you've written as you worked through these ideas.

Tips and Common Pitfalls

• Summarizing instead of arguing. A paper that surveys the debate without taking a position won't meet the requirements. State your claim early.
• Straw-manning rivals. Stating a rival in a weak form makes your paper less persuasive, not more. Ask whether its defenders would accept your summary.
• Grounding the claim in phenomenology only in name. Naming "the lived body" isn't enough. Describe the structure and show how the claim depends on it.
• Overclaiming what phenomenology can settle. Phenomenology describes the structures a theory must fit. It doesn't, by itself, refute a neuroscientific theory or settle a metaphysical question.

References

• Allen, Colin. 2026. "Animal Consciousness." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/.
• Bodien, Yelena G., Judith Allanson, Paolo Cardone, Arthur Bonhomme, Jerina Carmona, Camille Chatelle, Srivas Chennu, et al. 2024. "Cognitive Motor Dissociation in Disorders of Consciousness." New England Journal of Medicine 391 (7): 598–608.
  • Free: Accepted manuscript, University of Kent repository (CC BY)
  • Publisher: doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2400645
• Butlin, Patrick, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino, Yoshua Bengio, Jonathan Birch, Axel Constant, George Deane, et al. 2023. "Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness." arXiv:2308.08708.
  • Free: arXiv
• Gallagher, Shaun. 2000. "Philosophical Conceptions of the Self: Implications for Cognitive Science." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (1): 14–21.
  • Free: Author's site (not checked)
  • Publisher: doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01417-5
• Gallagher, Shaun, and Dan Zahavi. 2023. "Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/.