Intrinsic Universal Structures and Extrinsic Local Functions

Contemporary consciousness science faces an impasse: competing theoretical frameworks, structuralist vs. functionalist, universal vs. local, intrinsic vs. extrinsic, appear to be inducing philosophical deadlocks and conceptual standstills. While these debates have generated valuable insights, they have proceeded in parallel, without a systematic framework for understanding their relationships and implications. We contend that these parallel disputes reflect deeper, unresolved tensions in conceptualizing consciousness. These debates can be addressed by recognizing three fundamental dimensions that encompass models of consciousness at a meta-theoretical level: perspectives, scope, and explanatory medium. Along these dimensions, we show how clusters of extrinsic-local-functional and intrinsic-universal-structural approaches naturally emerge, transforming theoretical conflicts into tractable disagreements about dimensional priorities and offering new pathways for empirical investigation.