For the modern realists, consciousness is both cognitive and functional, and those two traits are integrated. The primary purpose of consciousness is to be aware of reality. The complementary purpose of consciousness is to use its awareness of reality as a guide to acting in that reality. For the postmodern antirealists, by contrast, consciousness is functional—but it is not cognitive, so its functionality has nothing to do with cognition. Two key concepts in the postmodern lexicon, “unmasking” and “rhetoric,” illustrate the significance of the differences.
