Consciousness, Culture, and Significance

Abstract

The chapter offers a new view on consciousness and culture by investigating their relation to significance. Against the widespread restriction of consciousness to phenomenal aspects and that of culture to “thick description,” Durt argues that consciousness discloses aspects of significance, while culture encompasses shared significance as well as the forms of behavior that enact significance. Significance is intersubjective and constantly re-instantiated in new contexts of relevance rather than belonging to single individuals (cf. Gallagher, this volume). It is embedded in the shared world to which we relate by cultural forms of thinking and sense-making. Bringing together insights on the role of consciousness for the constitution of the world from Husserlian phenomenology with those on cultural forms of behavior by Wittgenstein and Ryle, Durt distinguishes different levels of significance accomplished by embodied consciousness and interaction. He explains that the real issue underlying “hybrid” concepts of the mind does not consist in embodied versus disembodied systems of production (cf. Di Paolo and De Jaegher, this volume), but in different levels of significance accomplished by consciousness and culture. Consciousness is embodied on every level, and it integrates different levels of significance.