Has Nelkin Discovered Anything about Consciousness?

The most important fact about persons is that they
are conscious, but contemporary philosophers, who ignore
Wittgenstein"s work in this area, present incredibly
distorted views of consciousness. The central principle of
Wittgenstein"s later philosophy is that meaning is use. The
word "consciousness�, like "awareness�, is used ordinarily
more-or-less synonymously with "experiencing� and with
"knowing�, but in a much narrower range of situations (e.g.
when someone is coming out of a faint). "Consciousness�
does not denote anything ontologically real; instead, it has
uses. Philosophers extend the sense of the word to include
all experience or our entire mental life.