title: Is the Mind Conscious, Functional or Both? creator: Velmans, Max subject: Cognitive Psychology subject: Epistemology subject: Philosophy of Mind description: What, in essence, characterizes the mind? According to Searle, the potential to be conscious provides the only definitive criterion. Thus, conscious states are unquestionably "mental"; "shallow unconscious" states are also "mental" by virtue of their capacity to be conscious (at least in principle); but there are no "deep unconscious mental states" - i.e. those rules and procedures without access to consciousness, inferred by cognitive science to characterize the operations of the unconscious mind are not mental at all. Indeed, according to Searle, they have no ontological status - they are simply ways of describing some interesting facets of purely physiological phenomena. publisher: Cambridge University Press date: 1990 type: Journal (Paginated) type: PeerReviewed format: text/html identifier: http://cogprints.org/245/1/velmans8.html identifier: Velmans, Max (1990) Is the Mind Conscious, Functional or Both? [Journal (Paginated)] relation: http://cogprints.org/245/