"'There is nothing we know more intimately than consciousness, but there is nothing harder to explain.'
... cognitive psychologists tend to define consciousness as the awareness of internal and external events (e.g., mental phenomena and stimuli in the environment, respectively).
... common to all definitions of consciousness is the implicit distinction between consciousness and the content of consciousness.
'When people are conscious, they are always conscious of something. Consciousness always has an object.'
In contrast, a so-called state of consciousness (SoC) tends to be defined as '[the set] of mental episodes of which one can readily become directly aware'. ... (this) definition represents a theoretical confusion of consciousness and its contents by explicitly stating that a SoC is the content (i.e., mental episodes) available to conscious awareness. That is, when the qualifier 'state' is affixed to consciousness, 'it' [consciousness] is held to be content. Consequently, the term states of consciousness rests on a conflation of consciousness and content whereby consciousness is erroneously categorized in terms of content rendered perceptible, presumably, by itself. Again, we refer to this as the consciousness/content fallacy.
Implicit in the consciousness/content fallacy is the fallacious notion that during a SoC, consciousness may observe its own qualities.
(But) consciousness cannot directly experience 'itself' as a perceptible object, for then it would cease to be the subject. ... analogous to a sword that cannot cut itself...
Definitions of altered states of consciousness (ASCs)... postulate that it is the shifts, deviations, or differences in subjective experience, psychological functioning, or mental functioning that constitute an ASC.
If one accepts the definition of consciousness as being conscious of something, then it would seem to follow that during an ASC it is the altered phenomenal properties (e.g., visual mental imagery, body image, time sense) that consciousness may be aware of, rather than the state of consciousness.
(The) definition of phenomenal field as 'absolutely anything that is in the total momentary experiencing of a person, including the experience of the self' is adopted and applied to 'phenomenal properties.' It is arguable that if one defines phenomenal properties in this way, then an altered pattern of phenomenal properties encapsulates what has been referred to ... as phenomenal and non-phenomenal objects of conscious awareness, that is, the content that a privileged observer may be aware of during what (has been) referred to as an ASC. One may then recommend that the term altered state of consciousness be supplanted by a new term, 'altered pattern of phenomenal properties.' It would seem that by reconceptualizing the notion of an ASC in this manner, the confusion of consciousness with the content of consciousness is avoided.
(In conclusion) when the qualifier 'state' is affixed to consciousness, 'it' [consciousness] is held to be content. This is referred to as the consciousness/content fallacy. It is also contended that the consciousness/content fallacy is avoided if one reconceptualizes an ASC as an altered pattern of phenomenal properties."
Rock AJ, Krippner S. "Does the concept of 'altered states of consciousness' rest on a mistake?" International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 2007; 26(1): 33–40. http://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies/vol26/iss1/5
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