Talk:Consciousness

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Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.

• Archive 1 ( // to 21/10/05)
• Archive 2 (21/10/05 to 13/04/07)
• Archive 3 (13/04/07 to 29/11/09)

GA Reassessment

Consciousness

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:25, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

There is a lot of uncited text throughout the article. Some sections rely upon block quotes, which create copyright concerns, make the text more difficult to read, and increase the word count. This information might be better summarized in prose. The article, at over 11,000 words, is above the recommended length at WP:TOOBIG, I think summarising most of the block quotes will resolve this, but I think information can be spun out. The lead does not summarise all major aspects of the article. Z1720 (talk) 16:15, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@Phlsph7: you're our foremost expert(/masochist) at crafting articles on these large, philosophical concepts. No pressure to participate in this process, but just flagging it in case it piqued your interest. Ajpolino (talk) 18:01, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I agree with the points raised by Z1720. The lead covers only the problem of definition and there are several unreferenced passages and unnecessary quotes that should be replaced by regular prose. These points could be addressed in the scope of the GAR, but given the length of the article, this is not a quick fix. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:53, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree about the length, although I would not flunk it on just this basis if the reference issues were resolved.

Also, whatever the outcome of the rating reassessment, rewriting the lead would be a major improvement to the article. I'm not volunteering, but I think it would be possible to do a pretty good job in less than an hour.

If no one takes this on during the GAR, maybe consider sharing on the talk page? It's not often you encounter an active solicitation to rewrite the lead of such a general article. Someone will step up. Patrick (talk) 16:39, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

@Patrick Welsh: GARs are transcluded onto article talk pages, so this information will be there. You could also start a new section for the lead on the talk page, as it might lead to collaboration. Z1720 (talk) 17:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Very long article

This article is quite long and as a result hard to read and digest. I suggest separating some sections, somehow, to give the reader a better overview. It is a complicated subject of course, but that in itself suggests the need for a better overview. Yesterday, all my dreams... (talk) 22:33, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Julian Jaynes

The article contains too many references to the decidedly non-mainstream researcher Julian Jaynes, who probably (for the record, I'm familiar with the arguments in his book) confused explicit introspection with implicit awareness of one's own experience. Although, for example, in the article on Higher Order Theories in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, we are warned that:

'It is worth emphasizing here that HOT theory does not say that having conscious states requires having introspective states, that is, having conscious HOTs. Conflating introspection with having mere unconscious HOTs (and therefore simply having first-order conscious states) may lead to a misguided straw man argument against HOT theory.' (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/)j Ilmarinen3 (talk) 18:52, 15 April 2026 (UTC)