My proposal is that the two definitions you describe can, themselves, be understood in two different ways - one as you suggest, two distinct categories with a cause > effect relationship, and another as a single continuum or spectrum of sense which is both inseparably physical and phenomenal but diffracted, like the electromagnetic spectrum. I consider that the electromagnetic spectrum represents a diffraction of a single force/field into quantitative wavelength-frequencies (scales of spatio-temporal repetition) that can be described in terms of magnetic and electric effects on matter. We infer that there are invisible, intangible forces propagating through space as 'energy' when I am increasingly convinced that while this model is probably necessary to model physical phenomena, what is actually happening is that we are projecting mechanism onto a distant and unfamiliar perceptual frame (or 'world'). Why we project unconscious manipulation by external forces rather than scaled down sense and motive in the microcosm is explained through the symmetry of sense and motive itself. Just as the amplitude of magnetic strength runs orthogonally to the amplitude of electric strength (and I think this is what EM is, a 'waving' of potency or force of sensitivity and motive power rather than literal waves-of-'energy' that exist independently of matter), I suggest that there is a sense-motive conjugate to electro-magnetism. This conjugate is absolutely symmetrical to EM in every way. Where EM is literal, generic, external, public, a-signifying, entropic, etc, SM is the contrary; figurative, proprietary, internal, private, signifying, teleological, etc. This symmetry is so absolute and universal, and our immersion within it so inescapable, that we cannot see the forest for the trees, so to speak. I call it 'the elephant in every room'. Not only splitting our attention between the forest and the trees problematic, we would need to add to that a splitting of the sense of a literal forest made of literal trees outside and a figurative tree of figurative forests inside. Just as this paragraph exists as a physical hierarchy of sentences, words, characters, pixels, and electronically manipulated matter across space, there is an experiential narrative that can be recovered *through* the experience of reading and understanding (don't get me started on understanding... http://multisenserealism.com/2012/04/07/we-come-from-the-land-down-nter/). This meaningful experience can be said to 'insist' and it can be described as figurative also as it attracts and binds many associations on many levels but has no central body, rather than a literal body that must be literally associated with other physical bodies by sharing the same space. The notion that everything 'makes sense' in its own way, and that sense itself limits us from making sense of that very fact is convoluted but I think that it is probably the case. I think that Sense - Motive - 'time' has to the primitive cosmic essential, and that it reflects back on itself as Matter - Energy - 'space'. Space and time are ultimately nothing more than cavities separating-multiplying matter-energy (space) and sense-motive (time). I know this is probably dense and exhausting to try to follow - I try to make it as concise as I can, but it's really a whole new view of the cosmos. It's not at all unprecedented, Leibniz, Spinoza, mystics like Jacob Boehme and Robert Fludd were on to the same kinds of ideas but I think that what they lacked in scientific grounding can now begin to be recovered. I think that what we have seen in quantum physics and information theory has taken us into a metaphysical never-never land of de-presented realism and re-presented alienation from realism. Only through the understanding of perception can we begin to grasp how empiricism itself inherently obscures subjectivity and makes it appear as its symmetrical doppleganger. The puppet master turns himself into a puppet of external forces. Using a Multisense Realism framework instead, we can see human consciousness as the top of a nested hierarchy of subconscious sensorimotive-phenomenological/electromagnetic-physical integrated inertial frames (worlds). We ourselves are a part of larger/higher inertial frames that we are weaving though our attention and actions together and which draw us progressively ahead, black monolith style, to our own teleological super-significance. Anyways, I should get packed and everything for TSC. Anyone else going? Let me know if you want to meet up.

To me it seems there are two working definitions of consciousness: The phenomenal and the physical. The distinction between these two I feel is key, because - for example in my theory - the phenomenal consciousness (i.e. the sum total of an individual's qualia) is in fact NOT approachable via science in any meaningful sense as it is composed private epiphenomena which exist in their own dimension. However, the physical mechanistic consciousness (i.e. the ever nebulous region/regions of the brain which lead to qualitative experience) - it seems - is approachable via science. Any thoughts on this?

To me it seems there are two working definitions of consciousness: The phenomenal and the physical. The distinction between these two I feel is key, because - for example in my theory - the phenomenal consciousness (i.e. the sum total of an individual's qualia) is in fact NOT approachable via science in any meaningful sense as it is composed private epiphenomena which exist in their own dimension. However, the physical mechanistic consciousness (i.e. the ever nebulous region/regions of the brain which lead to qualitative experience) - it seems - is approachable via science. Any thoughts on this?