This paper challenges the idea that consciousness is inherently mysterious, arguing that confusion stems from flawed assumptions about subjectivity. It proposes that scientific, empirical methods can explain consciousness without invoking non-physical or unknowable properties.
Isabel Góis ultimately reframes consciousness not as an unsolvable riddle, but as a problem distorted by our own expectations. She shows that much of the confusion comes from trusting introspection too much, demanding impossible standards from science, and clinging to vague everyday concepts as if they were precise truths. Once those are stripped away, consciousness stops looking mystical and starts looking like a difficult—but ordinary—scientific challenge.
This shifts how we should approach debates. Instead of asking “What is consciousness?” as if there must be a single, perfect definition, we should ask better, smaller questions—about awareness, control, and mental processes—that can actually be tested. Her work explains why past debates have stalled, but it leaves open the real scientific task: identifying the mechanisms in the brain that produce conscious experience and refining the concepts we use to describe it.
After reading her, the reader should feel less mystified and more grounded. Consciousness is not a sacred exception to science—it is a frontier. The challenge is not that it cannot be explained, but that we must be willing to rethink how we ask the question in the first place.