Accounting for Consciousness: epistemic and Operational Issues

1 23

AxiomathesWhere Science Meets Philosophy ISSN 1122-1151 AxiomathesDOI 10.1007/s10516-014-9232-0

Accounting for Consciousness: Epistemicand Operational Issues

Frederic Peters

1 23

Your article is protected by copyright and all

rights are held exclusively by Springer Science

+Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint

is for personal use only and shall not be self-

archived in electronic repositories. If you wish

to self-archive your article, please use the

accepted manuscript version for posting on

your own website. You may further deposit

the accepted manuscript version in any

repository, provided it is only made publicly

available 12 months after official publication

or later and provided acknowledgement is

given to the original source of publication

and a link is inserted to the published article

on Springer's website. The link must be

accompanied by the following text: "The final

publication is available at link.springer.com”.

ORI GIN AL PA PER

Accounting for Consciousness: Epistemicand Operational Issues

Frederic Peters

Received: 10 October 2013 / Accepted: 5 January 2014

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Within the philosophy of mind, consciousness is currently understood as

the expression of one or other cognitive modality, either intentionality (represen-

tation per se), transparency (immediacy of cognitive content consequent upon the

unawareness of underlying representational processes), subjectivity (first-person

perspective) or reflexivity (autonoetic awareness). However, neither intentionality,

subjectivity nor transparency adequately distinguishes conscious from nonconscious

cognition. Consequently, the only genuine index or defining characteristic of con-

sciousness is reflexivity, the capacity for autonoetic or self-referring, self-moni-

toring awareness. But the identification of reflexivity as the principal index of

consciousness raises a major challenge in relation to the cognitive mechanism

responsible for operationalizing such a reflexive state. Current reliance by higher-

order and intrinsic self-representational theories on self-representing data structures

to achieve reflexive self-awareness is highly problematic, suggesting a solution in

terms of a self-referential processing regime.

Keywords Consciousness � Subjectivity � Reflexivity � Introspection

1 Introduction

Consciousness research has traditionally embraced input from three major sources;

psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. Where psychologists have

sought to characterize consciousness in terms of known cognitive processes

(attention, working memory, executive function), and neuroscience and has looked

to various physico-biological mechanisms (40 Hz oscillations, standing waves,

quantum events, neural network connectivity), philosophy of mind, for its part, has

F. Peters (&)

University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Axiomathes

DOI 10.1007/s10516-014-9232-0

Author's personal copy

over recent decades, been focused to a large extent on understanding consciousness

as the expression of a particular cognitive modality—as the expression of either

intentionality, transparency, subjectivity, or reflexivity. Within this focus, con-

sciousness has been equated either with internal cognitive representation as such

(intentionality); or with the immediacy of representational content consequent upon

the invisibility of representational processing to the subject (transparency); or again,

with subjectivity itself, following Nagel’s dictum that ‘‘[t]he fact that an organism

has conscious experience at all means basically that there is something it is like to

be that organism’’ (1974, p. 436). Finally, and more recently, some research has

begun to focus on reflexivity—the capacity for autonoetic or self-monitoring

awareness (acting cognitively upon itself)1—as the defining characteristic of

consciousness.

It is the purpose of this paper to argue that neither intentionality, subjectivity, nor

transparency adequately distinguishes conscious from nonconscious cognition; that

while these three modalities are indeed characteristics of intentional cognitive

representation as such, they do not differentiate conscious from nonconscious

mentation, and cannot be said, therefore, to constitute the defining characteristic of

consciousness. Consciousness, in this perspective, embodies an additional ingredi-

ent over and above subjective, transparent, or intentional cognition, and that

defining ingredient is reflexivity, brought about, in all likelihood, by a reflexive

processing regime which transforms characteristics of the representational vehicle

into an autonoetic state. It is in virtue of reflexivity that consciousness is rightly

characterized as a state we are explicitly aware of being in (Janzen 2008, p. 69ff;

Kriegel 2003, p. 131; Lycan 2001; Rosenthal 2000, p. 265, 2005, p. 3; Van Gulick

2004, p. 69; Weisberg 2008, pp. 162, 176). But the identification of reflexivity as the

principal index of consciousness raises a major challenge in relation to the cognitive

mechanism responsible for operationalizing such an autonoetic state. Current

reliance by higher-order and intrinsic self-representational theories on self-

representing data structures to achieve reflexive self-awareness is highly problem-

atic, suggesting a solution in terms of a reflexive processing regime.

2 Consciousness as Intentionality

Many if not most theories equate consciousness, in one way or another, with

information processing, the representational activity of the brain, or cognitive system.

The position has been formally defended by philosophers such as Dretske (1995), Tye

(1995), Byrne (2001), and Crane (2001), but also forms the basis of claims that

consciousness is essentially integrated, multimodal representational processing

(Tononi and Edelman 1998; Tononi and Koch 2008) linguistically-coded information

(Edelman 1989), spatially coded information (Revonsuo 2006), globally broadcast or

globally available information (Baars 1988), strongly activated information

1 Reflexivity is used here to connote cognitively operating upon or referring to itself in the same sense

that a sentence is reflexive if it has the same subject and object, as in ‘‘The man washed himself’’. Here

the subject operates upon himself. Just so, cognitive reflexivity involves a cognitive process operating

most immediately upon itself, thereby knowing itself or recognizing itself most immediately.

Axiomathes

123


(Grossberg 1999), or a constantly varying field of cognitive content—emotions,

thoughts, perceptions (Polger and Flanagan 2002). In these theories, conscious

awareness is basically equated with representational activity as such, or of a particular

kind, in the sense that the awareness of experience is exhausted by or fully reducible to

the intentional content of experience.

However, as several critics have pointed out (Carruthers 2005, pp. 44–45; Lurz

2003, p. 30; McGinn 1997, p. 529; Thomasson 2000, p. 201), the assertion that

conscious awareness and representational content are one and the same amounts to

the claim that all intentional states are conscious by virtue of being intentional, as a

consequence of their having intentional content, which in effect nullifies the

distinction between conscious and unconscious representational states. The problem

for this thesis is that the evidence for the conscious–unconscious distinction is now

incontrovertible (Baars 1997a, b; Milner and Goodale 1995), and the ‘‘intention-

ality-only’’ characterization of consciousness is simply incapable of explaining this

distinction. Moreover, it has been pointed out (Chalmers 2004; Kriegel 2002a;

Levine 2006) that representation as such does not necessarily generate a conscious

state. Research in relation to the cognitive (or psychological) unconscious

(Kihlstrom 1993; Lurz 2003, pp. 26–27; Velmans 1991) has demonstrated that a

substantial degree of multimodal informational integration takes place precon-

sciously, including subliminal perception, preconscious semantic and featural

analysis (Goldman 1993), the ascription of emotional valences (LeDoux 1992),

implicit learning (Underwood 1990), and memory retrieval and reconstruction

(Velmans 1991). Motor output resulting from the integration of perceptual and

semantic inputs (verbal instructions) appears in the motor cortex well before the

subject is consciously aware of the movements (Dehaene et al. 1998). Similarly,

linguistic analysis, takes place for the most part preconsciously (Reason 1984).

Consciousness, it would seem, equates with some characteristic of cognitive activity

over and above representation or intentionality as such.

3 Consciousness as Subjectivity

Many analysts have come to support Thomas Nagel’s claim that subjectivity is that

attribute of intentional representation which makes for conscious awareness.

According to Nagel, conscious mentality is configured in terms of a first person

point of view, yielding subjective experience which is tangible for that cognitive

creature alone. If conscious mentality were not configured subjectively there would

be no conscious experience, and consequently, for Nagel, subjectivity is the heart of

consciousness.

The fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means basically that

there is something it is like to be that organism… [F]undamentally, an

organism has conscious states if and only if there is something it is like to be

that organism—something it is like for the organism. (1974, p. 436)

While Nagel’s insistence that subjective cognition is necessarily conscious

cognition was never supported by detailed argument or empirical evidence,

Axiomathes

123


numerous scholars have followed his lead in linking consciousness closely with

subjectivity, often to the point of equating the two (Flanagan 1992; McGinn 1991;

Searle 1993; Stubenberg 1998; Van Gulick 2004). For John Searle, as a primary

example, consciousness has several features, the most important of which is

subjectivity:

[A]lthough consciousness is a biological phenomenon, has some important

features that other biological phenomena do not have. The most important of

these is what I call ‘subjectivity’. There is a sense in which each person’s

consciousness is private to that person, a sense in which it is related to his

pains, tickles, itches, thoughts, and feelings in a way that is quite unlike the

way that others are related to those pains. (1993, p. 310).

Where consciousness is defined by properties such as unity, intentionality, gestalt

structure, mood, and familiarity (Searle 1992, p. 127ff), subjectivity, he says, is

‘‘that feature of consciousness by way of which there is something that it is like or

something that it feels like to be in a certain conscious state’’ (1993, p. 311). For

Leopold Stubenberg, on the other hand, to be conscious is to subjectively experience

qualia: ‘‘Having qualia is what being conscious consists in. That is, having qualia

must account for the fact that it is like something to be us’’ (1998, p. 33). For

Stubenberg as well as Searle, then, consciousness is conscious simply in virtue of

cognitive experience being subjective. Robert Van Gulick proposes a similar

equation when he writes: ‘‘[T]he reflexive meta-intentionality associated with

conscious states… [derives] from the implicit self-perspectuality that is built into

the intentional structure of conscious experience itself’’ (2004, pp. 84–85, cf. 2006,

pp. 24, 28). And finally, Dan Zahavi, referencing Flanagan (1992, p. 194) reiterates

Nagel’s initial, unsubstantiated assertion that subjectivity is inherently conscious,

that consciousness is an intrinsic concomitant of subjectivity: ‘‘[I]nsofar as there is

something it is like for the subject to have experiences, there must be some

awareness of these experiences themselves; in short, there must be self-awareness…Thus, in our view, phenomenal consciousness is simply a primitive type of self-

awareness’’ (Zahavi and Parnas 1998, pp. 689–690; cf. Zahavi 1999, pp. 21–22,

2005a, p. 46, 2005b, p. 312). But is this equation of consciousness with subjectivity

warranted, or is consciousness something more than subjectivity simpliciter?

Subjectivity can be understood in terms of two dimensions. Ontologically,

subjectivity is defined by the fact that self-relative cognitive experience—whether

conscious or unconscious—only exists for the subject operationalizing that cognitive

state; the subject has literally to be that cognitive state (the cognitive system

operationalizing that state) in order to realize or have access to those cognitive

characteristics: in that sense at least, subjectivity is ontologically subjective as Searle

suggested (1992, pp. 42, 93–95, 2002, p. 23). Epistemologically, subjectivity is

characterized by an explicit first-person perspective (1stPP) whereby the spatially

extended manifold is configured egocentrically in relation to the subject as

centerpoint, such that perceptions involve the use of what are often called egocentric

directional vectors such as up, down, left, right, behind, in front and so forth (the

immediacy or privileged epistemic access associated with subjectivity will be

discussed below as primarily an expression of transparency). But neither of these

Axiomathes

123


dimensions implies an explicitly conscious mode of cognition. Ontologically, most

cognition is in fact nonconscious. Epistemically, the spatial 1stPP operates noncon-

sciously as well. Blindsight patients can manually locate objects without conscious

awareness of their location vis-a-vis the subject (Schlicht 2011, pp. 504–505).

Nocturnal dreams retain an egocentric perspective, again without consciousness

(Farthing 1992, p. 259). Nonspatial egocentric reference frame value judgements are

exercised nonconsciously (Kunst-Wilson and Zajonc 1980), as are self-relating

emotions (Neisser 2006, p. 8). Subjectivity as such, then, does not implicate conscious

awareness at all, and because it does not, there is no satisfactory way of distinguishing

conscious from nonconscious cognition on the basis of subjectivity alone.

4 Consciousness as Transparency

Transparency constitutes yet another significant characteristic or epistemic mode of

intentional cognition, which has been enlisted in support of arguments for

consciousness as intentionality,2 but also deemed the engine of consciousness in

it own right. Cognitive representations, it is generally agreed, are not only

intentional (about something other than themselves), but further and equally

significant, this intentionality is transparent or invisible—we are unaware of there

being a representational medium (the neuropsychological processes and data

structures giving rise to our internal experience of the world), and thus unaware that

our cognitive experience is an internal representational process rather than the direct

apprehension of ourselves and the world around us which it seems to be. This

unawareness applies even to our thoughts and feelings, which appear to us as

internal to ourselves and not ‘‘out there’’ in the world, yet at no time betray the fact

that they are the result of complex representational processes. Our perceptual,

emotional, and conceptual processes are transparent in the sense that we are only

ever aware of the end product of the representational process and never of the

process itself, nor even of the fact that a representational medium exists beneath our

thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

The unawareness of the representational processes underlying our experience

was discussed within philosophy of mind both by Wittgenstein, as Metzinger points

out (2003b, p. 355), and later by Harman, who wrote:

Eloise’s visual experience does not just present a tree. It presents a tree as

viewed from a particular place…. But this does not mean that Eliose’s visual

experience in any way reveals to her the intrinsic properties of that experience

by virtue of which it has the content it has…. I want to argue that she is not

aware of those intrinsic features of her experience by virtue of which it has

that (tree) content. Indeed, I believe that she has no access at all to the intrinsic

features of her mental representation that make it a mental representation of

2 Curiously, transparency has been deemed both the engine of consciousness, as Metzinger proposes, as

well as the basis of the claim that consciousness itself is invisible or diaphanous, such that we see through

our conscious awareness to the objects or representational content we are aware of (on which see Hume

1739–1740; Moore 1903; Tye 1995; Dretske 2003; Crane 2003).

Axiomathes

123


seeing a tree…. she is not aware of, as it were, the mental paint by virtue of

which her experience is an experience of seeing a tree [my emphasis] (1990,

38–39).

This transparency of intentionality, the unawareness of the cognitive construc-

tional process underlying our experience, gives rise to a sense of immediacy and

incorrigibility about our experience, an unquestioned sense that the world is as we

experience it; and more importantly, the sense that we are in direct, unmediated

contact with the world—a form of naıve realism (Alston 1999, p. 182; Martin 2002).

Updating Harman’s ‘‘mental paint’’ locution, Metzinger writes,

[F]rom the perspective of the experiencing self, the field of phenomenal

consciousness is transparent. This simply means that we do not experience

phenomenal states as phenomenal states, but that we, as it were, look through

them. They seem to bring us into direct contact with the world…. We do not have

the feeling of living in a three-dimensional film or in an inner dimensional [mind]

space:… our conscious life always takes place in the world. We do not

experience our conscious field as a cyberspace generated by the brain but simply

as reality itself, with which we are in contact in a natural and unproblematic

way… a direct and seemingly immediate manner. (Metzinger 1995a, pp. 11–12,

cf. 2003a, p. 164)

Immediacy then, is a direct result of transparency, the unawareness of represen-

tational processing, the awareness only of representational product. However,

Metzinger goes further and effectively equates this immediacy-from-transparency

with consciousness. An egocentric representational structure whose status as

cognitive structure is transparent (invisible, unnoticed) to the subject, is capable of

delivering a sense of seemingly unmediated ‘‘self-presence and self-givenness’’ to

oneself as well as the world (1995b, p. 453, 2003b, p. 358). This first person

perspective activated cognitively as a transparent self-model is sufficient for

consciousness, he claims, sufficient to account for ‘‘conscious systems operating

under transparent self-models’’ (2000, p. 290). In his more fully-elaborated Being

No One (2003a), Metzinger repeats this equation of transparent immediacy with

consciousness at a more basic, personal level:

What is inaccessible to conscious experience is the simple fact of this

experience taking place in a medium. Therefore, transparency of phenomenal

content leads to a further characteristic of conscious experience, namely, the

subjective impression of immediacy…. What does it mean to say of a mental

state that it is conscious?… [Representational] content will be minimally

conscious if it is, at the same time, integrated into a virtual window of

presence (an internally generated ‘‘Now’’), and into a single, coherent, and

globally available model of reality while earlier processing stages—and

therefore its representational character as such—are attentionally unavailable,

that is, if it is a transparent form of content…. Any system possessing

representational mental states, but no virtual window of presence, and no

single, global, integrated and transparent model of reality is unconscious.

(2003a, pp. 169–170, 558–559, 561)

Axiomathes

123


The ‘‘window of presence’’ or explicit sense of nowness is for Metzinger the

temporal dimension of transparent immediacy (2003a, pp. 15–17). But immediacy,

both spatial and temporal, is the consequence of transparency, the unawareness of

representational processing and awareness only of representational product. With that

equation in mind, Metzinger’s three minimal constraints for consciousness reduce to

two, a model of reality (1) cognized transparently (2). For Metzinger, then, the

transparent immediacy of the self/world model constitutes consciousness. Dretske

(1995, 2003) also invokes transparency to bolster his claim that consciousness consists

of representational activity as such. And Weisberg, in his commentary on Metzinger’s

major monograph, agrees that ‘‘taken together, transparency and perspectivalness

form a well justified working concept of consciousness’’ (2005, p. 12).

But do they? The insufficiency of perspectivalness or subjectivity to underwrite

consciousness has been discussed above. As to the former, it appears that the

transparency of intentional representation is absolutely precluded from acting as a

direct support for conscious cognition, for it is difficult if not impossible to imagine

how transparency, the unawareness that our experiences are mental constructs,

could give rise to the immediate, explicit awareness of our experiences in the first

place. The notion is incoherent. Unawareness cannot possibly be said to constitute

or give rise to awareness.

Transparency is better understood as a dimension of the intentional mode of

representation, a dimension of the fact that the representational vehicle (the

cognitive processes giving rise to cognitive representation) does not signify itself

but is always about something other than itself, and is unaware of being so. As such,

transparency is true of both conscious and nonconscious cognitive states, and is not

sufficient, therefore, to differentiate the two.

5 Consciousness as Reflexivity

Intentionality, subjectivity, and transparency have been deemed the defining

characteristics of consciousness. But while all are significant characteristics of

intentional representation as such, in both its nonconscious and conscious modes,

none of the three is sufficient to distinguish conscious from nonconscious modes of

cognition. The necessary additional ingredient for rendering intentional, subjective,

transparent representation conscious, for distinguishing conscious from noncon-

scious cognition, is reflexivity.

Reflexivity points to the referring-back-upon-itself or autonoetic character of

awareness. Common linguistic usage of the term ‘‘consciousness’’ as reflexivity is

captured in the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of consciousness as ‘‘the

reflex act whereby I know that I think, and that my thoughts and actions are my own

and not another’s.’’ The understanding of consciousness as reflexivity, in the sense

of knowing-that or being-aware-that one is perceiving, thinking, feeling or doing

has been highlighted by a significant quorum of contemporary scholars, character-

izing consciousness as ‘‘a process that takes note of itself’’ (Perlis 1997, p. 513),

‘‘states [that] represent themselves’’ (Kriegel, p. 370), ‘‘direct reflective awareness

of [a] mental-occurrence instance… not contemporaneously mediated by any other

Axiomathes

123


mental-occurrence instance’’ (Natsoulas 1993: 137), ‘‘concurrently aware of its own

transpiring’’ (Smith 1989, p. 81), ‘‘higher-order self-referential representational

activity’’ (Flohr 1995, p. 160), and ‘‘a perception-like awareness of current states

and activities in our own mind’’ (Armstrong 1981, p. 61). Most widely recognized,

perhaps, is Rosenthal’s formulation (his ‘‘transitivity principle’’) that consciousness

is a state that one is aware of being in (2005, pp. 3–4, see also 1986, p. 335, 1993,

p. 199, 1997, pp. 736, 742; and cf. Byrne 1997, p. 104; Gennaro 2005, 13–17, 2006,

p. 222, 2012, p. 28; Janzen 2008, ch 3; Kriegel 2003, p. 131, 2004, p. 191; Lycan

2001, p. 3; Natsoulas 1996, p. 269; Smith 1988, p. 28; Van Gulick 2004, p. 69,

2006, p. 12; Weisberg 2008, pp. 162, 176). It is also understood that this awareness

of being in the conscious state is prereflective, indicating that before initiating any

additional metacognitive operations such as self-attention or discursive thought, and

independent of them, I am already directly acquainted or ‘‘self-intimate’’ with the

my self-consciousness (Flanagan 1992, p. 194; Goldman 1970, p. 96).

The point is significant. While some analysts have argued that the reflexivity

evident subjectively in conscious awareness is constituted by a deliberate

introspective gesture of the mind (Armstrong 1997, p. 724; Kind 2001, p. 151;

Lycan 1996, pp. 13–14, 69–70; Lyons 1986; Smithies and Stoljar 2012, p. 203),

many scholars point out that this cannot be the case, that consciousness does not

require introspection because conscious reflexivity occurs spontaneously, as it were,

without the need for some elaborate post hoc process of inferring or reasoning that

one is aware (Goldman 1970, p. 96; Kriegel 2004, pp. 189–198; Rosenthal 1997,

p. 738), nor certainly the need for any secondary introspective refocusing of

attention on the internal aspect of the currently cognized moment (Flanagan 1992,

p. 194; Janzen 2006; Kriegel 2003, p. 105; Stubenberg 1998, p. 99; Zahavi 1999,

p. 17ff). On this basis, Kriegel (2003, pp. 104–105) and Janzen (2006, p. 329, 2008,

p. 106)4 enumerate four important distinctions between immediately reflexive

consciousness and subsequent introspection and reflection; the former, they point

out, is not effortful while the later requires deliberate effort to remain focused on

just those inner mental events as opposed to external, perceptually-mediated

content; the former is involuntary or automatic (you cannot choose not to be

3 Smithies and Stoljar (2012: 20–21 N12) read Rosenthal’s higher-order thought theory of consciousness

as claiming that ‘‘a mental state is phenomenally conscious if and only if one knows by introspection that

one is in that mental state.’’ But this is incorrect. Rosenthal actually distinguishes consciousness from

introspection, where the latter, he insists ‘‘involves more than a mental state’s being a conscious state.

Introspecting a mental state is deliberately and attentively focusing on that state. Nonintrospective

consciousness, by contrast, requires no special act of attention. Every introspected state is therefor a

conscious state, but not conversely’’ (1997: 745). For Rosenthal, the two are not equivalent (cf Van

Gulick 2001). Nonetheless, inasmuch as higher order theories in general invoke some additional cognitive

act (thought about, belief about …) in relation to the primary cognition, they are closer to the

understanding of consciousness reflexivity as consequent upon an act of introspection than to the

understanding of consciousness as intrinsically relfexive without need of any such additional cognitive

act.4 Janzen (2008: 106) also references similar positions outlined by Gurwitsch (1950: 6) and Smith (1989,

Ch 2, Sect 3.2). Similarly, Zahavi notes (1999: 17) that refutation of the introspective model (the

‘‘reflection model’’) of consciousness can be found in the Heidelberg School of German philosophers,

including Heinrich, Frank, Pathast and Cramer. Kriegel (2009a, b: 179) cites argument for cosc as

prereflective in continental Phenomenologists Husserl, Saarte, Merleau-Ponty and Gurwitsch.

Axiomathes

123


conscious) where the latter requires volition, is a matter of choice; the former is

constant, ongoing, while the latter is temporary and intermittent; finally, the former

is ubiquitous, self-aware at every moment where the latter is infrequent. Both

Zahavi (1999: 18) and Schooler (2002: 340–341) point out, fifthly, that where the

former is immediate, instantaneous, a subsequent reflective act of introspection

requires time to activate, implying temporal distance between the two cognitive

acts. And Schooler (2002: 342–343) adds a sixth distinction, that there are

‘‘translational dissociations between consciousness and introspection’’. That is,

introspection is able to discern, only imperfectly, the characteristics of non-verbal

and viscero-emotional conscious experiences (cf. Schwitzgebel 2008) and therefore

cannot be coextensive with consciousness.

On the basis of these six distinctions, then, introspection and consciousness

cannot be equated. In addition, the argument has been made animals and children

who we would normally account as conscious, do not possess the metacognitive

apparatus which would allow one to source the former in the latter (Kriegel 2009b,

p. 195; Zahavi 2004, p. 76; Gennaro 2004, pp. 5–6; Lurz 2003, p. 27; van Gulick

2006, p. 13). Consciousness, on this basis, must reflect some form of reflexive

cognitive capacity prior to introspection. Finally, one can note that arguments

relating to the transparency of conscious awareness, (the claim that consciousness

without introspection is transparent or unnoticed, and therefore cannot be reflexive

unless introspected (Tye 1995, p. 30; cf Dretske 1997, p. 6), have been refuted by

evidence (see below p. 19) that cognition does indeed track features of the cognitive

state as well as its representational content, and therefore is quite capable of

registering the reflexivity intrinsic to a self-referential processing regime or state

without requiring an additional introspective refocusing of attentional focus. In sum,

consciousness as an automatic, ongoing form of self-awareness, cannot be

considered an act of deliberate introspection, best understood as a moment of

consciousness with a deliberately internal focus of attention.

However, this well-supported characterization of consciousness as prereflective

reflexivity, while correctly referencing the way consciousness seems in subjective

experience (as expressed in common linguistic usage), often assumes that subjective

experience is self-validating. Philosophers in particular, from Descartes (1641/1884,

vii, pp. 160, 246) through Husserl (1931/1960) to Chalmers (1995, p. 206), Flanagan

(1984, p. 315), and Smith (1988) have taken this reflexivity to be a self-validating or

incorrigible fact. But this sort of Cartesian incorrigibility claim derives in large

measure from epistemic transparency, the unawareness of representational

processing giving rise to cognitive states, and it involves, as Thompson points out

(2007, p. 140), the untested assumption that there is necessarily an isomorphism

between the content of subjective experience and the structure of the underlying

psychological representations and processes, such that the way the psychological

moment seems to the subject is a direct reflection of the cognitive components and

their operation. And complete—even partial—isomorphism is unlikely to be the

case given that the brain does not use time, space, or any of the sensory qualities

(colour, texture, smell, shape etc.) to represent time, space, and the sensory qualities

(it uses electromagnetic activity which does not manifest in terms of colours,

shapes, noises etc.) (Dretske 1995, p. 36; cf. Lycan 1990, p. 111).

Axiomathes

123


In fact, subjective cognitive experience can accurately be described as somewhat

of a ‘‘grand illusion’’ in several important ways. Most generally, subjective

perception, in all sensory modes, arises in terms of a distal world of spatially-

extended, seemingly-concrete objects and events ‘‘out there’’ while comprised, in

fact, of cognitive representations within the brain (Levine 2006). Moreover, when

visually perceiving, we seem to be seeing everything there is to see, but, in fact—as

change blindness and inattentional blindness show—see only a portion, which is,

furthermore, neither as detailed as it seems to be nor as picture-like as it seems to be

(Blackmore et al. 1995; Clark 2002). Other aspects of subjective cognitive

experience have also been accounted more illusion than reality. The subjective

sense of free will, it has been argued (Libet 1985; Wegner 2002), is illusory because

it follows rather than causes the act (although see Mele 2006, 2008 for

counterarguments). We claim to know more than we actually do (Nisbett and

Wilson 1977), and in cases of denial, subjects claim to be able to do things that they

cannot, in fact, do. It has been claimed that even our sense of self is in many ways

illusory (Churchland 2002b; Dennett 1992; Metzinger 2003a, b; Stubenberg 1998,

p. 277).

What then of conscious reflexivity? Is self-awareness merely seemingly so or

actually so? Since isomorphism between subjective experience and cognitive

structures is clearly not the case, current consensus (Clark 2002, p. 4; Dennett 1991,

pp. 96–97, Dennett 2003, p. 22; Guzeldere 1995, p. 115; Noe 2007, p. 244;

Schwitzgebel 2007, p. 108; Thompson 2007, p. 140) holds that conscious self-

awareness, while it does indeed arise for the subject in a seemingly reflexive fashion,

is not necessarily so at psychological and neurological levels. It could be reflexive

all the way down, as it were, but subjectively seeming to be so does not guarantee

that outcome without further proof. It remains for empirical investigation to

determine whether subjective experiences really are as reflexive as they seem.

In that regard, as a general background to the empirical reality of reflexive

cognitive processing, it should be noted that self-reference forms an integral part of

cognitive architectures generally in that behavior has to be related to internal

homeostatic needs via feedback mechanisms (Peters 2009, 2013; Churchland 2002a,

b); and secondly, cognitive systems have developed more proactive feedforward

capacities which allow for the prediction of outcomes in relation to current needs

(Grush 2004; Peters 2010). Self-reference is a necessary structural constituent of

cognitive architectures generally. The question then, is whether cognition provides a

more tightly congruent form of self-reference in the form of immediately reflexive

processing circuitry. In the following, evidence is canvassed from four distinct areas

of research which point to the conclusion that consciousness is genuinely, and not

merely seemingly, reflexive, in the sense of delivering self-awareness in the form of a

self-recognizing, self-perceiving, self-remembering and self-knowing cognitive

state.

Firstly, when conscious, cognition recognizes itself immediately. Philosophy has

canvassed whether self-awareness or ‘‘I-consciousness’’ is genuinely immune to error

through misidentification—whether it is possible to merely seem to be self-

recognizing without actually being so. Ipseity implies a capacity for immediate,

unmediated self-recognition such that I always know which one is me, which one I am,

Axiomathes

123


and I experience myself (I continuously identify myself) as being identical through

time. As the philosophers have it, one cannot think an ‘I’-thought without knowing that

it is in fact about oneself (Castaneda 1988; Perry 1979; Shoemaker 1968, 1994). The

argument is that this self-recognition is noninferential (it does not rely on perceptual

identification or the recognition of something objective to one). As Shoemaker put it,

‘‘one refers to oneself and ascribes properties to oneself without having to identify as

oneself anything [else] that is presented to one’’ (1996, p. 196). But the production of

such an ongoing act of noninferential self-recognition requires a reflexive form of

recognitional knowing, a form of ongoing self-recognizing self-awareness (in the

sense of consciousness aware of itself, not consciousness aware of a self as object).

Proust (2003) has emphasized the necessity of reflexive awareness for self-

recognizing ipseity by pointing out that we recognize ourselves as ourselves as a

continuing subjective entity—a ‘‘continuant’’—not by repeatedly identifying ‘‘I’’

moments of the past with a currently cognized ‘‘I,’’ but by continuously self-

recognizing oneself as the same ‘‘I’’ at every moment. Conscious cognition then, can

be accounted genuinely reflexive in the sense of self-recognizing over the course of

every conscious moment.

Secondly, when conscious, cognition perceives or monitors itself most imme-

diately, prior to any additional cognitive (i.e., attentional) gesture. It has always

seemed self-evident, indeed logically incontestable, that when conscious, the mind

is aware of itself. Guven Guzeldere makes the point succinctly: ‘‘The very fact of

questioning the nature of my consciousness renders the fact of our not being in some

way self-aware, a blatant contradiction’’ (1995, p. 115; cf. Janzen 2008, ch. 3). But,

as discussed above, for cognition to seem (even logically) to be epistemically in

touch with itself does not count as empirical evidence that it actually—

psychologically—is self-aware. However, while current consensus rejects the

notion that conscious self-awareness is incorrigible or self-validating, experimental

psychology does at least tacitly accept the empirical reality of privileged or

immediate access by the mind to its own epistemic status or state, on which basis it

is able to metacognitively monitor and modify cognitive functions necessary to

produce voluntary actions (Koriat and Goldsmith 1996). Numerous experimental

protocols have been devised to track this practical capacity to direct cognitive

functions on the basis of being concurrently aware of them, as for example, when

learning new material (Koriat 2000, p. 150), deliberately retrieving information

from memory (Koriat and Goldsmith 1996), or planning an approach to a complex

problem (Kluwe 1987). That this metacognitive knowledge (and control) of specific

mental content requires a more basic preexisting awareness by the mind of its own

state, can be appreciated from the fact that we are in a knowing state regardless of

whether that state has content or does not—the fact that we have the capacity to

know that we know or do not know (the ‘‘feeling of knowing’’), to know that we do

or do not remember, to know that we do or do not understand, that we are attending

to ‘‘x’’ and not ‘‘y,’’ that we believe ‘‘y’’ and not ‘‘z,’’ that I am having more trouble

learning ‘‘a’’ than ‘‘b,’’ that I have forgotten, realized, decided, want and so on.

These are all, in a sense, blindsight-type epistemic situations in that one is most

basically aware not of the content, which may well be absent, but aware of the state

of knowing in relation to present or absent content. Being aware of the state of

Axiomathes

123


knowing is, for the cognitive system, equivalent to a state self-awareness. Reflexive

awareness as a kind of ongoing self-perceiving then, is well within the capacity of

the cognitive system, and conscious cognition can be accounted genuinely reflexive

in the sense of self-perceiving.

Thirdly, when conscious, cognition is involved in a process of immediate,

ongoing self-remembering rather than the processing of sensory input or behavioral

output. Several lines of evidence, from psychological, neurological, and philosoph-

ical analysis, converge to indicate that consciousness is not qualia, not awareness-

of-content, but rather awareness of itself. While consciousness is routinely regarded

as some form of content activation—as stably activated information (O’Brien and

Opie 1999), strongly activated information (Grossberg 1999; Kinsbourne 1997),

distinctively activated information (Tononi and Edelman 1998), strongly and stably

activated information (Crick and Koch 2003), phonologically-formed information

(Jackendoff 1987), and so on—there is, on the contrary, considerable evidence

indicating that conscious awareness is nothing of the sort, that conscious awareness

is first and foremost an awareness of itself rather than of content other than itself.

Philosophers point out that conscious experience exhibits qualitative features not

identical to the particulars of the objects represented (Janzen 2008, pp. 143–147;

Kind 2008, pp. 293–294; Pace 2007, p. 329ff; Smith 2004, p. 99; Stubenberg 1998,

§7.4.1–7.4.2, p. 161ff; Zahavi 1999, pp. 23–34). These features include the

distinction between sensory modes of representation (auditory, visual etc.), as well

as between perceptual as distinct from conceptual (inner thinking), emotional (inner

feeling) and occasionally pseudo-hallucinatory content (Metzinger 2003b, p. 359).

Additionally we notice the temporal duration of experience which is a feature of the

representational process and not its content, and there is the persistent, explicit

awareness that the entire perceptual panorama exists in relation to ‘‘me,’’ which

again is a characteristic of the structure of the cognitive process not its content. The

ongoing, unchanging character of these structural elements, in contrast to the

momentary, ephemeral quality of individual informational contents, suggests that

consciousness is a structural or modal feature of the cognitive process and not its

content, and that the reflexivity of conscious cognition reflects reflexivity in the

processing vehicle (see conclusion).

At the psychological level, analysts note that in various forms of dissociation,

consciousness persists without access to and thus in the absence of content.

Blindsight, subliminal perception, and hemispatial neglect constitute three of the

most frequently cited conditions of normal conscious awareness functioning to the

exclusion of perceptual input. In the case of simultagnosia (Balint’s syndrome),

there is an inability to grasp the whole field of vision in its entirety such that

individual objects disappear with no impairment of arousal, alertness, or cognition

(Damasio 2000, p. 353). It could be argued, in fact, that the cognitive system

functions successfully because it is able to dissociate informational input from

conscious awareness, such that it has developed a specific mechanism to manage

this dissociation—attention—which selects specific inputs for inclusion into the

conscious state.

Finally, when conscious, cognition refers to or knows itself most immediately.

Where philosophy has concluded that self-awareness or ‘‘I-consciousness’’ is

Axiomathes

123


genuinely immune to error through misidentification, psychology has canvassed

whether conscious self-awareness is immune to error through misattribution—that

is, whether it is possible to seem to be awake and reflexively self-aware without

actually being so. This issue arises in relation to the condition of ‘‘false awakening’’

(FA), which is typically described as involving a nonconscious, dreaming subject

who mistakes highly realistic internal dream content (where normal dream spatial–

temporal discontinuities are absent or greatly attenuated (Buzzi 2011, pp. 110, 113;

Cheyne 2004, p. 8; Green and McCreary 1994, p. 67) for veridical perceptual

content and concludes, explicitly, within the dream, that s/he has awoken and

perceiving in the real external world (Buzzi 2011, p. 110). In FA, the subject thinks

(falsely) that s/he has awakened and is proceeding with the morning routines when

in fact s/he is still lying in bed and dreaming the entire event.

On the traditional assumption that dreaming only takes place in nonconscious

sleep states, the subject’s conclusion that s/he is awake (or has awakened) is deemed

to be false (‘‘false awakening’’). And if this assessment were accurate, then it would

true to say that it is indeed possible to seem to be awake and reflexively self-aware

without actually being so. However, the evidence suggests that the assessment is not

accurate, that these subjects do not merely seem to be awake when actually asleep,

but are, in fact, awake and reflexively self-aware. This can be taken as an indication

that reflexive self-knowing cannot be simulated, that reflexivity is not a mere

seeming but an actuality.

The assessment that these subjects are asleep and merely dreaming they have

awoken, has been based on the mistaken assumption that the conscious awake state

can only be associated with veridical sensory-based perception, and not with

internally-generated dream content. But this is not the case. Nonconscious states can

involve either external perceptual input (as during parasomnia), or exclusively

internal informational content, as occurs during nonconscious sleep states (REM

and NREM) which contain nonveridical dream content. Similarly, conscious states

vary as to the source of their content. The normal waking state involves veridical

external perception and mobile environmental interaction. Abnormal waking

conditions, on the other hand, include the locked-in state which is conscious,

perceptually active but immobile, and sleep paralysis, which is again conscious and

immobile (REM paralysed), but includes both veridical external perceptual and

intrusive internal dream content (Cheyne 2004, p. 6). In addition, there are

conscious awake states accompanied by internally-generated content exclusively,

including metachoric states where representation of self and environment are

entirely hallucinatory, generated from internal cognitive sources (Green 1990),

including change blindness, where a change in visual stimulus is unnoticed and the

subject’s visual experience is generated from memory (Rensink et al. 1997), and

lucid dreaming (LD), which involves a state of conscious self-awareness during

internally-generated dream content (LaBerge 1985; Green 1968).

False awakening is best regarded as a kind of lucid dreaming. Where dream sleep

states are characterized by an unselfconscious acceptance of the bizarre anomalies

of the dream world (Kahan and LaBerge 1994, p. 250; LaBerge and DeGracia 2000,

pp. 270, 278) along with an uncritical assumption the dream situations are real

(Cicogna and Bosinelli 2001, p. 2), in lucid dreaming, by contrast, one enjoys

Axiomathes

123


conscious self-awareness sufficient to metacognitively judge the dream content to

be dream content and not sensory-sourced perceptual content (Green 1968, p. 15;

Kahan and LaBerge 1994, p. 252); to control the narrative content of the ongoing

dream (Kahan and LaBerge 1994, p. 251; LaBerge 1985, pp. 38–39, 106–108),

again, not typical of dream sleep (Mamelak and Hobson 1989); to remember details

of one’s waking life as of one’s waking life (Green 1968, pp. 15, 87; Kahan and

LaBerge 1994, p. 251), which doesn’t occur in sleep states (Globus 1987, p. 82); and

finally, where amnesia is typical of most sleeping dream states (Farthing 1992,

p. 317ff; Hobson 1988), in lucid dreaming one retains the capacity to remember the

details of the lucid dream, and to perform predetermined actions during the dream as

a signal to the laboratory (Farthing 1992, p. 327ff; LaBerge 1988). FA is akin to

lucid dreaming and other metachoric states in that it is a highly rational, self-critical,

and self-reflective, conscious awake state, where, in parallel with LD, one is capable

of: (1) exercising an explicit metacognitive judgement (correct or not) upon one’s

state (Buzzi 2011, p. 114; Green and McCreary 1994, p. 68); (2) remembering the

content of one’s present FA state (Buzzi 2011, p. 115; Delage 1919; Green and

McCreary 1994, p. 69); (3) deliberately controlling the narrative content of dreams

as they progress (Buzzi 2011, p. 113); and (4) remembering details of one’s waking

life as of one’s waking life (Cheyne 2004, p. 9; Green and McCreary 1994, p. 68).

Not only do FA and lucid dreaming share the same conscious, self-aware state,

but they are more similar than usually portrayed in regard to that crucial matter of

state recognition. LD is formally defined as the conscious dreaming state wherein

the subject notices the highly anomalous character of the dream content and

correctly identifies it as dream (Green 1968, p. 15). FA, by contrast, is typically

defined by the fact that the subject fails to correctly identify dream content as such

(Buzzi 2011, p. 110). But the contrast is overstated. Lucid dreamers frequently

misidentify the status of the dream content (Green and McCreary 1994, pp. 15–18,

67), and even when explicitly aware that the experiential content is not veridical

perception but dream narrative, frequently interact with the dream characters as if

they were real (Cheyne 2004). In neither case does the misidentification of cognitive

content compromise the conscious status of their cognitive state. This prognosis

agrees with Cheyne’s finding that many FAs are in fact instances of sleep paralysis,

which he describes as a conscious state with a combination of veridical perception

and hallucinatory content (2004, p. 8).

‘‘False awakening’’ then, is a misnomer, because it does not involve an

‘‘awakening’’ from dreaming sleep to conscious perception, but merely a false

judgement about the source of content during an ongoing conscious state. It is not a

case of merely seeming to be awake, but of actually being awake but misjudging the

source of the content. When the informational source subsequently shifts to

veridically sensory-sourced perception, the subject erroneously concludes, in

retrospect, that they must have previously been asleep and only dreaming of being

awake. In fact, they were awake all along, and only the source of the informational

content has changed. Therefore, consciousness, is, as it were, immune to error

through misattribution. It is not possible to merely seem to be self-aware (awake)

without actually being so. Consciousness involves genuine operational reflexivity in

the sense of self-knowing.

Axiomathes

123


In sum, consciousness can be accounted genuinely reflexive in the sense that it

comprises a cognitive state which is immediately self-recognizing, self-perceiving,

self-remembering, and self-knowing.

6 Reflexivity Poses the Principle Epistemic and Operational Challengefor Theories of Consciousness

Reflexivity challenges the epistemic adequacy of theories that lack it, and the

operational adequacy of theories that have it. Attempts to explain consciousness

have been framed in terms of intentionality, subjectivity, transparency, and

reflexivity, but only the latter—reflexivity—isolates the critical epistemic ingredient

that distinguishes conscious from nonconscious modes of cognition. That is to say, a

‘‘consciousness’’ that lacks reflexivity, simply isn’t conscious. Indeed, epistemically

deficient accounts that ignore reflexivity can even insist that ‘‘consciousness’’

obtains in patently nonconscious states such as dreamless sleep (Block 1995; Nelkin

1995), REM sleep (Tononi 1998) and anaesthetic stupor (Block 1995).

On the other hand, theories which do attempt to account for consciousness as

reflexivity are equally challenged, but on the operational rather than the epistemic

front.

Accounting for the reflexive, autonoetic capacity in terms of a credible cognitive

mechanism constitutes, arguably, the major challenge for any theory of conscious-

ness as reflexivity (Gennaro 2006: 226ff). Although the recognition of reflexivity as

the primary characteristic of consciousness enjoys significant historical and

contemporary support, there remains significant ongoing discussion as to the

mechanism responsible, as to how reflexivity is achieved through the medium of

intentional representation. Space precludes a detailed analysis of ongoing debates,

but it is becoming increasingly apparent that current attempts to explain the

cognitive mechanism of reflexivity, either in terms of higher-order representation

theories5 or intrinsic, self-representational theories,6 may well have reached an

impasse, and this for two reasons, both of which derive from the almost universal

reliance on intentional data structures of one sort or another.

The first problem is that the direction of intentionality, the direction of cognitive

reference in any and every representational data structure is antireflexive, away from

5 Where first order accounts of consciousness discount or ignore reflexivity altogether, or reduce it to

either subjectivity or transparency (as discussed above), higher-order representational theories are

explicitly focused on explaining consciousness as reflexivity, casting the consciousness-yielding

representational process in terms of a higher-order data structure directed towards first-order content.

Several cognitive data structures have been proposed to cognitively activate or operationalize the crucial

awareness-of capacity, including higher-order perception (Armstrong 1981; Lycan 1996), higher-order

belief (Dennett 2003), and higher-order-thought (Rosenthal 1997; Weisberg 1999).6 Where higher-order theories rely on a two-state representational structure to achieve reflexive self-

awareness (consciousness),’’intrinsic’’ theories posit a single self-representational state. Aristotle has been

read as advocating this understanding (Caston 2002), while Brentano is usually credited with initiating

this approach in the modern era (Thomasson 2000; Kriegel 2003, 2005; Zahavi 1999), and has been

followed most recently by Natsoulas (1996), Kriegel (2003), Van Gulick (2004), Smith (2004) and Janzen

(2008).

Axiomathes

123


the representing structure towards that which is represented, towards the content the

state is about. It is this very other-directedness or ‘‘aboutness’’ which makes

transparency (ignorance of the representing vehicle) possible. Intentional data

structures do not and cannot reference themselves in an actively reflexive manner

because the direction of intentionality does not allow it. In this regard, Kriegel writes:

[F]or a content to be conscious is not at all for it to be represented by itself, or

for the mental state that carries it to represent itself to carry it, or anything in

the vicinity… So it is simply false that a mental state’s representation of itself

is conscious in virtue of the state representing itself to represent itself. (2009b,

pp. 126–127, cf. 2005, pp. 39, 43–44, 48, 50; cf. Levine 2001, pp. 171–173;

Zahavi 1999, p. 6ff)

The second problem for current theories of reflexivity is that while intentional

data structures cannot reference themselves in an actively reflexive manner, neither

can they cause first-order content to become conscious simply as a consequence of

their being directed toward that first-order content. This objection, conventionally

referred to as ‘‘the problem of the rock,’’ has been raised by a host of analysts

(Block 1994, p. 212; Byrne 1997, p. 110ff; Carruthers 2011; Gennaro 2004, p. 6,

2006, p. 225; Goldman 1993, p. 366, 1997, p. 113; Janzen 2008, pp. 93–94,

113–114; Kriegel 2002b, pp. 522–523; Lyyra 2009, p. 70; Natsoulas 1996, p. 276;

Smith 2004, p. 95; Stubenberg 1998; Thomasson 2000, p. 198; Van Gulick 2001,

p. 294, 2004, pp. 71–72, 2006, p. 14; Zahavi 1998, pp. 693, 695).

But if intentional data structures can neither reference themselves reflexively nor

confer reflexivity on another, first-order structure, how is reflexivity to be achieved? The

solution may lie not in the data structure but in the way it is processed. Psychology has

long favoured processing mechanisms such as attentional highlighting (Harth 1993),

short-term working memory (Johnson-Laird 1988), the global broadcasting of

information (Baars 1988), and recurrent (but not immediately reflexive) processing

loops (Lamme 2006) as the principal explanation for the cognitive generation of

consciousness. Within Philosophy of Mind, both Kriegel (2009b, p. 224, n. 37; 2005,

pp. 49–51, 2007, p. 901) and Gennaro (2006, pp. 237–240; cf. Schlicht 2011) have

emphasized the capacity of the cognitive processing regime to create a genuinely new,

causally distinct cognitive event. Their particular mechanism—integration—is not

exclusively associated with conscious processing (see ‘‘Consciousness as Intentional-

ity’’ above), and therefore insufficient to the task, but a reflexive processing regime most

certainly could underwrite a reflexive form of cognitive awareness. Arguably then, the

secret to reflexive self-representation, lies not in a self-referential data structure but in a

self-referring reflexive processing regime of some kind (Peters 2010, 2013).

References

Alston W (1999) Back to the theory of appearing. In: Tomberlin J (ed) Philosophical perspectives 13

(epistemology). Blackwell, Malden, MA

Armstrong D (1981/1997) What is consciousness? In: The nature of mind. Cornell University Press,

Ithaca NY, pp 55–67. Reprinted in Block N, Flanagan O, Guzeldere G (eds) The nature of

consciousness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 721–729

Axiomathes

123


Baars BJ (1988) A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Baars BJ (1997a) In the theatre of consciousness: global workspace theory, a rigorous scientific theory of

consciousness. J Conscious Stud 4:292–309

Baars BJ (1997b) In the theatre of consciousness: the workspace of the mind. Oxford University Press,

Oxford

Blackmore SJ, Brelstaff G, Nelson K, Troscianko T (1995) Is the richness of our visual world an illusion?

Transsaccadic memory for complex scenes. Perception 24:1075–1081

Block Ned (1994) Consciousness. In: Guttenplan SD (ed) A companion to the philosophy of mind.

Blackwell, Oxford, pp 210–219

Block N (1995) On a confusion about a function of consciousness. Behav Brain Sci 18:227-87

Buzzi G (2011) False awakenings in light of the dream protoconsciousness theory: a study in lucid

dreamers. Int J Dream Res 4:110–116

Byrne A (1997) Some like it HOT: consciousness and higher-order thoughts. Philos Stud 86:103–129

Byrne A (2001) Intentionalism defended. Philos Rev 110:199–240

Carruthers P (2005) Consciousness: essays from a higher-order perspective. Oxford University Press,

Oxford

Carruthers P (2011) Higher-order theories of consciousness. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia

of philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/consciousness-

higher/

Castaneda H-N (1988) Self-consciousness, demonstrative reference, and self-ascription. In: Tomberlin JE

(ed) Philosophical perspectives. Ridgeview, Atascadero, pp 405–454

Caston V (2002) Aristotle on consciousness. Mind 111:751–815

Chalmers DJ (1995) Facing up to the problem of consciousness. J Conscious Stud 2:200–219

Chalmers DJ (2004) The representational character of experience. In: Leiter B (ed) The future for

philosophy. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 153–181

Cheyne JA (2004) Borderlands of consciousness: between dream world and wake world. Paper presented

at Toward a science of consciousness 2004 Tucson, Arizona, April 10, 2004

Churchland PS (2002a) Brain-wise: studies in neurophilosophy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Churchland PS (2002b) Self-representation in nervous systems. Science 296:308–310

Cicogna PC, Bosinelli M (2001) Consciousness during dreams. Conscious Cogn 10:26–41

Clark A (2002) Is seeing all it seems? Action, reason and the grand illusion. J Conscious Stud 9:181–202

Crane T (2001) Elements of mind. Oxford University Press, New York

Crane T (2003) The intentional structure of consciousness. In: Smith Q, Jokic A (eds) Consciousness:

new philosophical perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 33–56

Crick FC, Koch CA (2003) Framework for consciousness. Nat Neurosci 6:119–126

Damasio AR (2000) Disorders of complex visual processing. In: Mesulam MM (ed) Principles of

behavioral and cognitive neurology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 332–372

Dehaene S, Naccache G, Le Clec H, Koechlin E (1998) Imaging unconscious semantic priming. Nature

395:597–600

Delage Y (1919) La Reve. Les Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

Dennett D (1991) Consciousness explained. Little Brown, Boston

Dennett D (1992) The self as a center of narrative gravity. In: Kessel F, Cole P, Johnson D (eds) Self and

consciousness: multiple perspectives. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp 103–115

Dennett DC (2003) Who’s on first? Hetero-phenomenology explained. J Conscious Stud 10:19–30

Descartes R (1641/1884–1891) Meditations on first philosophy. In: The philosophical writings of

descartes, vol 2 (trans: Cottingham J, Stoothoff R, Murdoch D). Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge

Dretske F (1995) Naturalizing the mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Dretske F (1997) What good is consciousness? Can J Philos 27:1–15

Dretske F (2003) How do you know you are not a zombie? In: Gertler B (ed) Privileged access and first

person authority. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, pp 1–14

Edelman G (1989) The remembered present: a biological theory of consciousness. Basic Books, New

York

Farthing WG (1992) The psychology of consciousness. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Flanagan O (1984) The science of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Flanagan O (1992) Consciousness reconsidered. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Flohr H (1995) Sensations and brain processes. Behav Brain Res 71:157–161

Axiomathes

123


http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/consciousness-higher/

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/consciousness-higher/

Gennaro RJ (2004) Higher-order theories of consciousness: an anthology. John Benjamins, Philadephia,

PA

Gennaro RJ (2005) HOT theory between a rock and a hard place. J Conscious Stud 12:3–21

Gennaro RJ (2006) Between pure self-referentialism and the (extrinsic) HOT theory of consciousness. In:

Kriegel U, Williford K (eds) Consciousness and self-reference. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,

pp 221–248

Gennaro R (2012) The consciousness paradox: consciousness, concepts, and higher-order thoughts. MIT

Press, Cambridge, MA

Globus GG (1987) Dream life, wake life: the human condition through dreams. SUNY Press, Albany, NY

Goldman AJ (1970) A theory of human action. Prentice-Hall, New York

Goldman AJ (1993) Consciousness, folk psychology and cognitive science. Conscious Cogn 2:364–382

Goldman AJ (1997) Consciousness, folk psychology and cognitive science. In: Block N, Flanagan O,

Guzeldere G (eds) The nature of consciousness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 111–126. Reprinted

from Conscious Cogn 2:364–382

Green C (1968) Lucid dreams. Hamish Hamilton, London

Green C (1990) Waking dreams and other metachoric states. Psychiatr J Univ Ott 15:123–128

Green C, McCreary C (1994) Lucid dreaming: the paradox of consciousness during sleep. Routledge,

London

Grossberg S (1999) The link between brain learning, attention and consciousness. Conscious Cogn 8:1–44

Grush R (2004) The emulation theory of representation: motor control, imagery and perception. Behav

Brain Sci 27:377–442

Gurwitsch A (1950) Marginal consciousness. Ohio University Press, Athens, OH

Guzeldere G (1995) Problems of consciousness. J Conscious Stud 2:112–143

Harman G (1990) The intrinsic quality of experience. Philos Perspect 4:31–52

Harth Eric (1993) The creative loop: how the brain makes a mind. Addisson-Wesley, New York

Hobson JA (1988) The dreaming brain. Basic Books, New York

Hume D (1739–1740) A treatise on human nature. Clarendon Press, Oxford

Husserl E (1931/1960) Cartesian meditations: an introduction to phenomenology (trans: Cairns D).

Kluwer, Dortrecht

Jackendoff R (1987) Consciousness and the computational mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Janzen G (2006) The representational theory of phenomenal character: a phenomenological critique.

Phenomenol Cogn Sci 5:321–339

Janzen G (2008) The reflexive nature of consciousness. John Benjamins, Philadelphia, PA

Johnson-Laird PN (1988) A computational analysis of consciousness. In: Marcel AJ, Bisiach E (eds)

Consciousness in contemporary science. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 357–368

Kahan TL, LaBerge S (1994) Lucid dreaming as metacognition: implications for cognitive science.

Conscious Cogn 3:246–264

Kihlstrom JF (1993) The continuum of consciousness. Conscious Cogn 2:334–354

Kind A (2001) Qualia realism. Philos Stud 104:143–162

Kind A (2008) How to believe in qualia. In: Wright E (ed) The case for qualia. MIT Press, Cambridge,

MA, pp 285–298

Kinsbourne M (1997) What qualifies a representation for a role in consciousness? In: Cohen JD, Schooler

JW (eds) Scientific approaches to consciousness. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp 335–355

Kluwe RH (1987) Executive decisions and regulation of problem solving. In: Weinert F, Kluwe R (eds)

Metacognition, motivation, and understanding. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp 31–64

Koriat A (2000) The feeling of knowing: some metatheoretical implications for consciousness and

control. Conscious Cogn 9:149–171

Koriat A, Goldsmith M (1996) Monitoring and control process s in the strategic regulation of memory

accuracy. Psychol Rev 103:490–517

Kriegel U (2002a) PANIC theory and the prospects for a representationalist theory of phenomenal

consciousness. Philos Psychol 15:55–64

Kriegel U (2002b) Consciousness, permanent self-awareness, and higher-order monitoring. Dialogue

41:517–540

Kriegel U (2003) Consciousness as intransitive self-consciousness: two views and an argument. Can J

Philos 33:103–132

Kriegel U (2004) Consciousness and self-consciousness. Monist 87:182–205

Kriegel U (2005) Naturalizing subjective character. Philos Phenomenol Res 71:23–57

Axiomathes

123


Kriegel U (2007) A cross-order integration hypothesis for the neural correlate of consciousness.

Conscious Cogn 16:897–912

Kriegel U (2009a) Self-representationalism and phenomenology. Philos Stud 142:357–381

Kriegel U (2009b) Subjective consciousness: a self-representational theory. Oxford University Press,

New York

Kunst-Wilson WR, Zajonc RB (1980) Affective discrimination of stimuli that cannot be recognized.

Science 207:557–558

LaBerge S (1985) Lucid dreaming. J.P. Tarcher, Boston

LaBerge S (1988) The psychophysiology of lucid dreaming. In: Gackenbach J, LaBerge S (eds)

Conscious mind sleeping brain. Plenum Press, New York, pp 135–153

LaBerge S, DeGracia DJ (2000) Varieties of lucid dreaming experience. In: Kunzendorf RG, Wallace B

(eds) Individual differences in conscious experience. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 269–307

Lamme VA (2006) Towards a true neural stance on consciousness. Trends Cogn Sci 10:494–501

LeDoux JE (1992) Emotion and the amygdala. In: Aggleton JP (ed) The amygdala: neurobiological

aspects of emotion, memory, and mental dysfunction. Wiley-Liss, New York, pp 339–351

Levine J (2001) Purple haze. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Levine J (2006) Conscious awareness and (self-)representation. In: Kriegel U, Williford K (eds) Self-

representational approaches to consciousness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 173–197

Libet B (1985) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behav

Brain Sci 8:529–566

Lurz R (2003) Advancing the debate between HOT and FO theories of consciousness. J Philos Res

27:25–46

Lycan W (1990) What is the ‘subjectivity’ of the mental? In: Tomberlin J (ed) Philosophical perspectives

4. Ridgeview, Atascadero, pp 109–130

Lycan W (1996) Consciousness and experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Lycan W (2001) A simple argument for a higher order representation theory of consciousness. Analysis

61:3–4

Lyons W (1986) The disappearance of introspection. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Lyyra P (2009) Two senses for ‘givenness of consciousness’. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 8:67–87

Mamelak AN, Hobson JA (1989) Dream bizarreness as the cognitive correlate of altered neural behavior

in REM sleep. J Cogn Neurosci 3:201–222

Martin MGF (2002) The transparency of experience. Mind Lang 4:376–425

McGinn C (1991) The problem of consciousness. Blackwell, Oxford

McGinn C (1997) Missing the mind: consciousness in the swamps, review of Fred Dretske’s Naturalizing

the Mind. Nous 31:528–537

Mele AR (2006) Free will and luck. Oxford University Press, New York

Mele AR (2008) Recent work on free will and science. Am Philos Q 45:107–130

Metzinger T (1995a) The problem of consciousness. In: Metzinger T (ed) Conscious experience.

Schoningh, Paderborn, pp 3–40

Metzinger T (1995b) Faster than thought: holism, homogeneity and temporal coding. In: Metzinger T (ed)

Conscious experience. Schoningh, Paderborn, pp 425–461

Metzinger T (2000) Subjectivity of subjective experience. In: Neural correlates of consciousness, MIT

Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 285–306

Metzinger T (2003a) Being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivity. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Metzinger T (2003b) Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self reference. Phenomenol Cogn Sci

2:353–393

Milner D, Goodale M (1995) The visual brain in action. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Moore GE (1903) The refutation of idealism. In: Philosophical papers. Routledge and Kegan Paul,

London. Reprinted in Mind 12:433–453

Nagel T (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philos Rev 83:435–450

Natsoulas T (1993) What’s wrong with appendage theory of consciousness. Philos Psychol 6:137–154

Natsoulas T (1996) The case for intrinsic theory 1. J Mind Behav 17:267–286

Neisser JU (2006) Unconscious subjectivity. Psyche 12(3):1–14

Nelkin N (1995) The dissociation of phenomenal states from apperception. In: Metzinger T (ed)

Conscious experience, Schoningh, Paderborn, pp 3–40

Nisbett RE, Wilson TD (1977) Telling more than we can know: verbal reports on mental processes.

Psychol Rev 84:231–259

Noe A (2007) The critique of pure phenomenology. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6:231–245

Axiomathes

123


O’Brien G, Opie J (1999) A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience. Behav Brain Sci 22:127–196

Pace M (2007) Blurred vision and the transparency of experience. Pac Philos Q 88:328–354

Perlis D (1997) Consciousness as self-function. J Conscious Stud 4:509–525

Perry J (1979) The problem of the essential indexical. Nous 3:3–21

Peters F (2009) Consciousness and self-regulation. J Mind Behav 30:267–290

Peters F (2010) Consciousness as recursive, spatiotemporal self location. Psychol Res PRPF 74:407–422

Peters F (2013) Theories of consciousness as reflexivity. Philos Forum 44:341–372

Polger T, Flanagan O (2002) Consciousness, adaptation and epiphenomenalism. In: Fetzer JH (ed)

Consciousness evolving. John Benjamins, Philadelphia, PA, pp 21–42

Proust J (2003) Thinking of oneself as the same. Conscious Cogn 12:495–509

Reason J (1984) Lapses of attention in everyday life. In: Parasuraman R, Davies D, Beatty J (eds)

Varieties of attention. Academic Press, NY, pp 515–549

Rensink RA, O’Regan JK, Clark JJ (1997) To see or not to see: the need for attention to perceive changes

in sciences. Psychol Sci 8:368–373

Revonsuo A (2006) Inner presence, consciousness as a biological phenomenon. MIT Press, Cambridge,

MA

Rosenthal D (1986) Two concepts of consciousness. Philos Stud 49:329–359

Rosenthal D (1993) Thinking that one thinks. In: Davies Martin, Humphries GlynW (eds) Consciousness:

psychological and philosophical essays. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 197–223

Rosenthal D (1997) A theory of consciousness. In: Block N, Flanagan O, Guzeldere G (eds) The nature of

consciousness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 729–754

Rosenthal D (2000) Consciousness and metacognition. In: Sperber D (ed) Metarepresentation:

proceedings of the tenth Vancouver cognitive science conference. Oxford University Press, New

York

Rosenthal D (2005) Consciousness and mind. Oxford University Press, New York

Schlicht T (2011) Non-conceptual content and the subjectivity of consciousness. Int J Philos Stud

19:491–520

Schooler JW (2002) Re-representing consciousness: dissociations between experience and meta-

consciousness. Trends Cogn Sci 6:339–344

Schwitzgebel E (2007) No unchallengeable epistemic authority, of any sort, regarding our own conscious

experience—Contra Dennett. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6:107–113

Schwitzgebel E (2008) The unreliability of naive introspection. Philos Rev 117:245–273

Searle J (1992) The rediscovery of the mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Searle J (1993) The problem of consciousness. Conscious Cogn 2:310–319

Searle J (2002) Consciousness and language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Shoemaker S (1968) Self-reference and self-awareness. J Philos 65:555–567

Shoemaker S (1994) Self-knowledge and ‘‘inner sense’. Philos Phenomenol Res 54:249–314

Shoemaker S (1996) The first-person perspective and other essays. Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge

Smith DW (1988) Rey cogitans: the unquestionability of consciousness. In: Otto H, Tueidio J (eds)

Perspectives on mind. Kluwer Academic, Norwell, pp 25–33

Smith DW (1989) The circle of acquaintance. Kluwer, Dortecht

Smith DW (2004) Return to consciousness. In: Smith DW (ed) Mind world: essays in phenomenology

and ontology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 76–121

Smithies D, Stoljar E (2012) Introspection and consciousness: an overview. In: Smithies D, Stoljar E

(eds) Introspection and consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 3–26

Stubenberg L (1998) Consciousness and qualia. John Benjamins, Philadelphia, PA

Thomasson A (2000) After Brentano: a one-level theory of consciousness. Eur J Philos 8:194–209

Thompson E (2007) Look again: phenomenology and mental imagery. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6:137–170

Tononi G (1998) Consciousness as integrated information: a provisional manifesto. Biol Bull 215:216-

242

Tononi G, Edelman GM (1998) Consciousness and complexity. Science 282:1846–1851

Tononi G, Koch C (2008) The neural correlates of consciousness: an update. Ann N Y Acad Sci

1124:239–261

Tye M (1995) Ten problems of consciousness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Underwood G (1990) Conscious and unconscious representation of aspectual shape in cognitive science.

Behav Brain Sci 13:628–629

Axiomathes

123


Van Gulick R (2001) Inward and upward: reflection, introspection, and self-awareness. Philos Top

28:275–305

Van Gulick R (2004) Higher-order global states (HOGS): an alternative higher-order model of

consciousness. In: Gennaro RJ (ed) Higher order theories of consciousness: an anthology. John

Benjamins, Philadelphia, PA, pp 67–92

Velmans M (1991) Is human information processing conscious? Behav Brain Sci 14:651–726

Van Gulick R (2006) Mirror, mirror—is that all? In: Kriegel U, Williford K (eds) Self-representational

approaches to consciousness. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 11–39

Wegner D (2002) The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Weisberg J (1999) Active, thin and hot! An actualist response to Carruthers’ dispositionalist HOT view.

Psyche 5(6):1–7

Weisberg J (2005) Consciousness constrained. Psyche 11(5):1–20

Weisberg J (2008) Same old, same old: the same-order representation theory of consciousness and the

division of phenomenal labor. Synthese 160:161–181

Zahavi D, Parnas J (1998) Phenomenal consciousness and self-awareness: a phenomenological critique of

representational theory. J Conscious Stud 5:687–705

Zahavi D (1999) Self-awareness and alterity: a phenomenological investigation. Northwestern Univeristy

Press, Evanston, IL

Zahavi D (2004) Back to Brentano? J Conscious Stud 11:66–87

Zahavi D (2005a) Subjectivity and selfhood. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

Zahavi D (2005b) Being someone. Psyche 11(5):1–20

Axiomathes

123


Accounting for Consciousness: epistemic and Operational Issues

Documents

Transcript of Accounting for Consciousness: epistemic and Operational Issues