scholarly journals The methodological puzzle of phenomenal consciousness

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Partial Report ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Theoretical Proposal

Is phenomenal consciousness constitutively related to cognitive access? Despite being a fundamental issue for any science of consciousness, its empirical study faces a severe methodological puzzle. Recent years have seen numerous attempts to address this puzzle, either in practice, by offering evidence for a positive or negative answer, or in principle, by proposing a framework for eventual resolution. The present paper critically considers these endeavours, including partial-report, metacognitive and no-report paradigms, as well as the theoretical proposal that we can make progress by studying phenomenal consciousness as a natural kind. It is argued that the methodological puzzle remains obdurately with us and that, for now, we must adopt an attitude of humility towards the phenomenal. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Partial report is the wrong paradigm

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170350 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Stazicker
Keyword(s):  
Standard Model ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Partial Report ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Information Processes ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
Independence Hypothesis

Is consciousness independent of the general-purpose information processes known as ‘cognitive access’? The dominant methodology for supporting this independence hypothesis appeals to partial report experiments as evidence for perceptual consciousness in the absence of cognitive access. Using a standard model of evidential support, and reviewing recent elaborations of the partial report paradigm, this article argues that the paradigm has the wrong structure to support the independence hypothesis. Like reports in general, a subject's partial report is evidence that she is conscious of information only where that information is cognitively accessed. So, partial report experiments could dissociate consciousness from cognitive access only if there were uncontroversial evidence for consciousness that did not imply reportability. There is no such evidence. An alternative, broadly Marrian methodology for supporting the independence hypothesis is suggested, and some challenges to it outlined. This methodology does not require experimental evidence for consciousness in the absence of cognitive access. Instead, it focuses on a function of perceptual consciousness when a stimulus is cognitively accessed. If the processes best suited to implement this function exclude cognitive access, the independence hypothesis will be supported. One relevant function of consciousness may be reflected in reason-based psychological explanations of a subject's behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Why and how access consciousness can account for phenomenal consciousness

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lionel Naccache
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Belief Attribution ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Global Workspace ◽  
Subjective Reports ◽  
Ned Block

According to a popular distinction proposed by the philosopher Ned Block in 1995, our conscious experience would overflow the very limited set of what we can consciously report to ourselves and to others. He proposed to coin this limited consciousness ‘Access Consciousness' (A-Cs) and to define ‘Phenomenal Consciousness’ as a much richer subjective experience that is not accessed but that would still delineate the extent of consciousness. In this article, I review and develop five major problems raised by this theory, and show how a strict A-Cs theory can account for our conscious experience. I illustrate such an A-Cs account within the global workspace (GW) theoretical framework, and revisit some seminal empirical findings and neuropsychological syndromes. In this strict A-Cs perspective, subjective reports are not conceived as the mere passive broadcasting of information to the GW, but as resulting from a dynamic and active chain of internal processes that notably include interpretative and belief attribution stages. Finally, I list a set of testable predictions, of unsolved questions and of some counterintuitive hypotheses. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Phenomenal consciousness and cognitive access

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Overgaard
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Phenomenal Content ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Ned Block ◽  
Existing Data

In consciousness research, it is common to distinguish between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Recently, a number of scientists have attempted to show that phenomenal content can be empirically separated from cognitive access and, accordingly, that the mental content that is accessed is not (always) identical to the content that is experienced. One notable position is that of Ned Block who suggests that phenomenal content overflows cognitive access. I will review the evidence and show that existing data, in fact, do not demonstrate overflow. I will further argue that overflow is theoretically possible—yet highly difficult to empirically demonstrate—under the condition that ‘cognitive access’ is defined as working memory or attention. However, if ‘access’ is defined as information becoming ‘cognitively available’, in a broader sense, I will argue that a separation between subjective experience and access is impossible. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Does Perceptual Consciousness Overflow Cognitive Access? The Challenge from Probabilistic, Hierarchical Processes

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Gross ◽  
Jonathan Isaac Flombaum
Keyword(s):  
Change Detection ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Partial Report ◽  
Common View ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
Ned Block

Does perceptual consciousness require cognitive access? Ned Block argues it does not. Central to his case are visual memory experiments that employ post-stimulus cueing—in particular, Sperling’s classic partial report studies, change-detection work by Lamme and colleagues, and a recent paper by Bronfman and colleagues that exploits our perception of ‘gist’ properties. We argue contra Block that these experiments do not support his claim. Our reinterpretations differ from previous critics’ in challenging as well a longstanding and common view of visual memory as involving declining capacity across a series of stores. We conclude by discussing the relation of probabilistic perceptual representations and phenomenal consciousness.

scholarly journals Downgraded phenomenology: how conscious overflow lost its richness

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily J. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Change Blindness ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Inattentional Blindness ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment

Our in-the-moment experience of the world can feel vivid and rich, even when we cannot describe our experience due to limitations of attention, memory or other cognitive processes. But the nature of visual awareness is quite sparse, as suggested by the phenomena of failures of awareness, such as change blindness and inattentional blindness. I will argue that once failures of memory or failures of comparison are ruled out as explanations for these phenomena, they present strong evidence against rich awareness. To accommodate and explain these massive failures of awareness, any theory of phenomenal consciousness must downgrade phenomenology to a degree where it is functionless or, ironically, does not reflect what we experience. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Challenges for theories of consciousness: seeing or knowing, the missing ingredient and how to deal with panpsychism

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor A. F. Lamme
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Visual Consciousness ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Made In

Significant progress has been made in the study of consciousness. Promising theories have been developed and a wealth of experimental data has been generated, both guiding us towards a better understanding of this complex phenomenon. However, new challenges have surfaced. Is visual consciousness about the seeing or the knowing that you see? Controversy about whether the conscious experience is better explained by theories that focus on phenomenal (P-consciousness) or cognitive aspects (A-consciousness) remains, and the debate seems to reach a stalemate. Can we ever resolve this? A further challenge is that many theories of consciousness seem to endorse high degrees of panpsychism—the notion that all beings or even lifeless objects have conscious experience. Should we accept this, or does it imply that these theories require further ingredients that would put a lower bound on beings or devices that have conscious experience? If so, what could these ‘missing ingredients’ be? These challenges are discussed, and potential solutions are offered. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Consciousness without report: insights from summary statistics and inattention ‘blindness’

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Usher ◽  
Zohar Z. Bronfman ◽  
Shiri Talmor ◽  
Hilla Jacobson ◽  
Baruch Eitam
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Simple Relation ◽  
Attentional Focus ◽  
Summary Statistics ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Task Relevance ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Visual Elements ◽  
Cognitive Access

We contrast two theoretical positions on the relation between phenomenal and access consciousness. First, we discuss previous data supporting a mild Overflow position, according to which transient visual awareness can overflow report. These data are open to two interpretations: (i) observers transiently experience specific visual elements outside attentional focus without encoding them into working memory; (ii) no specific visual elements but only statistical summaries are experienced in such conditions. We present new data showing that under data-limited conditions observers cannot discriminate a simple relation (same versus different) without discriminating the elements themselves and, based on additional computational considerations, we argue that this supports the first interpretation: summary statistics (same/different) are grounded on the transient experience of elements. Second, we examine recent data from a variant of ‘inattention blindness’ and argue that contrary to widespread assumptions, it provides further support for Overflow by highlighting another factor, ‘task relevance’, which affects the ability to conceptualize and report (but not experience) visual elements. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

scholarly journals Facing up to the hard question of consciousness

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Dennett
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Sound Theory ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
The Hard Problem

The so-called hard problem of consciousness is a chimera, a distraction from the hard question of consciousness, which is once some content reaches consciousness, ‘then what happens?’. This question is seldom properly asked, for reasons good and bad, but when asked it opens up avenues of research that promise to dissolve the hard problem and secure a scientifically sound theory of how the human brain produces the (sometimes illusory) convictions that mislead us. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access'.

scholarly journals Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access from the perspective of capacity-unlimited working memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Gross
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Representational Capacity ◽  
The Rich

Theories of consciousness divide over whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse in specific representational content and whether it requires cognitive access. These two issues are often treated in tandem because of a shared assumption that the representational capacity of cognitive access is fairly limited. Recent research on working memory challenges this shared assumption. This paper argues that abandoning the assumption undermines post-cue–based ‘overflow’ arguments, according to which perceptual consciousness is rich and does not require cognitive access. Abandoning it also dissociates the rich/sparse debate from the access question. The paper then explores attempts to reformulate overflow theses in ways that do not require the assumption of limited capacity. Finally, it discusses the problem of relating seemingly non-probabilistic perceptual consciousness to the probabilistic representations posited by the models that challenge conceptions of cognitive access as capacity-limited. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access'.

scholarly journals Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access: an introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1755) ◽  
pp. 20170340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Fazekas ◽  
Morten Overgaard
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Cognitive Access ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Novel Approaches ◽  
Access Mechanisms

The problem of perceptual consciousness—the question of how our subjective experiences (colours as we see them; sounds as we hear them; tastes, etc., as we feel them) could be accounted for in terms of brain processes—is often regarded as the greatest unsolved mystery of our times. In recent literature, one of the most pressing questions in this regard is whether the neural basis of perceptual consciousness is independent of the neural basis of cognitive access mechanisms that make reporting and reflecting on conscious experiences possible. The Theme Issue focuses on this central problem of consciousness research and aims to contribute to the field by critically discussing state-of-the-art empirical findings, identifying methodological problems and proposing novel approaches. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’.

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