Built on functionalist grounds, it carves up the subject matter by declaring that the most elusive parts need a fundamentally and intrinsically different solution. Their difficulty is relative, among other things, to the kind of solution one is looking for and the tools used to accomplish the task. I claim that conscious experience is not a transcendental, paranatural, mystic or magic phenomenon. It is tractable and approachable with scientific methods. However, one must look not only for non-reductionist views to approach it, but also for views that avoid the dogmas here described.
Conscious experience is a living phenomenon and it has to be understood as such.
Accordingly, our understanding of it has to make sense at several levels, from evolution to morphophysiology, from neuroanatomy to language. I put forward an approach to conscious experience which is free of the dogmas that make the study of conscious experience so difficult. Well, this was an experiment, and here is the outcome. We still think of it as an experiment, an exploration, without any definite conclusion. The role of consciousness in contemporary scientific thought is similar to the role of death in everyday emotional life.