Higher-order thought (HOT) theory says that a mental state is conscious when and only when represented by a conceptual, belief-like mental state. Plausibly, HOT theory predicts the impairment of HOT-producing brain areas to cause significant deficits in consciousness. This means that HOT theory can be refuted by identifying those brain areas that are candidates for producing HOTs, then showing that damage to these areas never produces the expected deficits of consciousness. Building this refutation is a work-in-progress, with several key components (...) of it already existing in the literature (e.g., Boly et al. in J Neurosci 37(40):9603–9613, 2017; Kozuch in Mind Lang, 37(5):790–813, 2022). This article pulls together and supplements these earlier components so as to provide a comprehensive lesion-based argument against HOT theory, one which offers extra data and arguments in support of it, and which also addresses common objections. (shrink)

I present an empirically based argument for the plausibility of misrepresentation as posited by some higher-order theories of consciousness. The argument relies on the assumption that conscious states are generated by processes in the brain. The underlying idea is that if the brain generates conscious states then misrepresentation may occur. The reason for this is that brain states can be corrupted and, accordingly, a conscious state that is at least partly caused by a corrupted brain state may be a misrepresentation. (...) Our body of knowledge from cognitive and behavioral neuroscience lends support to the idea that corruption of neural states is both possible and relatively frequent. If this is the case, I argue, it is plausible that occasionally such corruption may result in misrepresentation. I support this claim by arguing that the most prevalent theoretical alternative to the occurrence of misrepresentation—the so-called no-consciousness reply—seems less supported by our current knowledge in the domain of consciousness and cognition. This way of arguing for misrepresentation is different from other empirically based arguments in the debate because it is a meta-level argument resting on a general premise that most participants in the debate can accept. (shrink)

It has been suggested that the core neural bases for visual phenomenal consciousness and for access consciousness are located in anatomically separate regions. If this is correct, and if, as Block suggests, the core neural substrate of visual phenomenality is located early in the visual cortex where detailed chromatic information is available, then it would be reasonable to infer that our intuitions of chromatically rich visual phenomenality are plausible. It is furthermore suggested that during perception cognitive access to this chromatic (...) cornucopia is mediated through mereologically superordinate concepts that regionally characterize both semantic and quantitative integrated properties within complex visual percepts. Such concepts contain much less information than do the particulars that they characterize, implying that the information represented in phenomenal consciousness greatly exceeds the information in the accompanying access consciousness. (shrink)