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The future of consciousness

In Antti Revonsuo & Matti Kamppinen (eds.), Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. pp. 205 (1994)

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  1. How many concepts of consciousness?Ned Block - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):272-287.
    With some help from the commentators, a few adjustments to the characterizations of A-consciousness and P-consciousness can avoid some trivial cases of one without the other. But it still seems that the case for the existence of P without A is stronger than that for A without P. If indeed there can be P without A, but not A without P, this would be a remarkable result that would need explanation.
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  • More empirical cases to break the accord of phenomenal and access-consciousness.Talis Bachmann - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):249-251.
    Additional experiments show that P-consciousness and A consciousness can be empirically dissociated for the theoretically so phisticated observer. Phenomenal consciousness can have several degrees that are indirectly measurable.
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  • Evidence that phenomenal consciousness is the same as access consciousness.Bernard J. Baars - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):249-249.
    Block seems to propose untested answers to empirical questions. Whether consciousness is a “mongrel problem,” rather than a single core fact with many facets, is an empirical issue. Likewise, the intimate relationship between personal consciousness and global access functions cannot be decided pretheoretically. This point is demonstrated by the reader's private experience of foveal versus parafoveal vision, and for conscious versus unconscious representation of the many meanings of common words.
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  • Consciousness without conflation.Anthony P. Atkinson & Martin Davies - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):248-249.
    Although information-processing theories cannot provide a full explanatory account of P-consciousness, there is less conflation and confusion in cognitive psychology than Block suspects. Some of the reasoning that Block criticises can be interpreted plausibly in the light of a folk psychological view of the relation between P-consciousness and A-consciousness.
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  • Perception-consciousness and action-consciousness?D. M. Armstrong - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):247-248.
    Block's distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness is accepted, and it is agreed that one may be found without the other, but his account of the distinction is challenged. Phenomenal consciousness is perceptual consciousness, and it is a matter of gaining information of a detailed, nonverbal sort about the subject's body and environment. Access consciousness is good, old-fashioned introspection.
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  • Toward an ontological interpretation of Dennett's theory.Michael V. Antony - 2002 - Philosophia 29 (1-4):343-369.
    While "Consciousness Explained" has received an enormous amount of attention since its publication, there is still little agreement on what Dennett’s account of consciousness is. Most interpreters treat his view as an instance of one or another of the standard ontological positions (functionalism, behaviorism, eliminativism, instrumentalism). I believe a different metaphysical account underlies Dennett’s view, one that is important though ill-understood. In the paper I attempt to point in the direction of a proper characterization of that account through the use (...)
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  • Feeling of knowing and phenomenal consciousness.Tiziana Zalla & Adriano P. Palma - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):271-272.
    In Feeling of Knowing cases, subjects have a form of consciousness about the presence of a content (such as an item of information) without having access to it. If this phenomenon can be correctly interpreted as having to do with consciousness, then there would be a P-conscious mental experience which is dissociated from access.
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  • More on prosopagnosia.Andrew W. Young - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):271-271.
    Some cases of prosopagnosia involve a highly circumscribed loss of A-consciousness. When seen in this way they offer further support for the arguments made in Block's target article.
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  • Should we continue to study consciousness?Richard M. Warren - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):270-271.
    Block has attempted to reduce the confusion and controversy concerning the term “consciousness” by suggesting that there are two forms or types of consciousness, each of which has several characteristics or properties. This suggestion appears to further becloud the topic, however. Perhaps consciousness cannot be defined adequately and should not be considered as a topic that can be studied scientifically.
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  • The limits of neuropsychological models of consciousness.Max Velmans - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):702-703.
    This commentary elaborates on Gray's conclusion that his neurophysiological model of consciousness might explain how consciousness arises from the brain, but does not address how consciousness evolved, affects behaviour or confers survival value. The commentary argues that such limitations apply to all neurophysiological or other third-person perspective models. To approach such questions the first-person nature of consciousness needs to be taken seriously in combination with third-person models of the brain.
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  • Consciousness is not a natural kind.J. van Brakel - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):269-270.
    Blocks distinction between “phenomenal feel” consciousness and “thought/cognition” consciousness is a cultural construction. Consciousness (and its “subspecies”) is not a natural kind. Some crosscultural data are presented to support this.
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  • Consciousness does not seem to be linked to a single neural mechanism.Carlo Umiltà & Marco Zorzi - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):701-702.
    On the basis of neuropsychological evidence, it is clear that attention should be given a role in any model of consciousness. What is known about the many instances of dissociation between explicit and implicit knowledge after brain damage suggests that conscious experience might not be linked to a restricted area of the brain. Even if it were true that there is a single brain area devoted to consciousness, the subicular area would seem to be an unlikely possibility.
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  • Blindsight, orgasm, and representational overlap.Michael Tye - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):268-269.
    It is argued that there is no fallacy in the reasoning in the example of the thirsty blindsight subject, on one reconstruction of that reasoning. Neither the case of orgasm nor the case of a visual versus an auditory experience as of something overheard shows that phenomenal content is not representational.
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  • On giving a more active and selective role to consciousness.Frederick Toates - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):700-701.
    An active role for conscious processes in the production of behaviour is proposed, involving top level controls in a hierarchy of behavioural control. It is suggested that by inhibiting or sensitizing lower levels in the hierarchy conscious processes can play a role in the organization of ongoing behaviour. Conscious control can be more or less evident, according to prevailing circumstances.
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  • Don't leave the “un” off “consciousness”.Neal R. Swerdlow - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):699-700.
    Gray extrapolates from circuit models of psychopathology to propose neural substrates for the contents of consciousness. I raise three concerns: knowledge of synaptic arrangements may be inadequate to fully support his model; latent inhibition deficits in schizophrenia, a focus of this and related models, are complex and deserve replication; and this conjecture omits discussion of the neuropsychological basis for the contents of the unconscious.
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  • Ultimate differences.G. Lynn Stephens & George Graham - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):698-699.
    Gray unwisely melds together two distinguishable contributions of consciousness: one to epistemology, the other to evolution. He also renders consciousness needlessly invisible behaviorally.
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  • The homunculus at home.J. David Smith - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):697-698.
    In Gray's conjecture, mismatches in the subicular comparator and matches have equal prominence in consciousness. In rival cognitive views novelty and difficulty especially elicit more conscious modes of cognition and higher levels of self-regulation. The mismatch between Gray's conjecture and these views is discussed.
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  • What is an agent that it experiences P-consciousness? And what is P-consciousness that it moves an agent?Roger N. Shepard - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):267-268.
    If phenomenal consciousness is distinct from the computationally based access-consciousness that controls overt behavior, how can I tell which things (other than myself) enjoy phenomenal consciousness? And if phenomenal consciousness 'plays no role in controlling overt behavior, how do human bodies come to write target articles arguing for the existence of phenomenal consciousness?
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  • Consciousness beyond the comparator.Victor A. Shames & Timothy L. Hubbard - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):697-697.
    Gray's comparator model fails to provide an adequate explanation of consciousness for two reasons. First, it is based on a narrow definition of consciousness that excludes basic phenomenology and active functions of consciousness. Second, match/mismatch decisions can be made without producing an experience of consciousness. The model thus violates the sufficiency criterion.
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  • Communication and consciousness: A neural network conjecture.N. A. Schmajuk & E. Axelrad - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):695-696.
    The communicative aspects of the contents of consciousness are analyzed in the framework of a neural network model of animal communication. We discuss some issues raised by Gray, such as the control of the contents of consciousness, the adaptive value of consciousness, conscious and unconscious behaviors, and the nature of a model's consciousness.
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  • Block's philosophical anosognosia.G. Rey - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):266-267.
    Block's P-/A-consciousness distinction rules out P's involving a specific kind of cognitive access and commits him to a “strong” Pconsciousness. This not only confounds plausible research in the area but betrays an anosognosia about Wittgenstein's diagnosis about our philosophical “introspection” of mysterious inner processes.
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  • Prospects for a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness.Antti Revonsuo - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):694-695.
    In this commentary, I point out some weaknesses in Gray's target article and, in the light of that discussion, I attempt to delineate the kinds of problem a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness faces on its way to a scientific understanding of subjective experience.
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  • Conscious and nonconscious control of action.Antti Revonsuo - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):265-266.
    I criticize Block's examples of P-consciousness and A-consciousness for being flawed and the notion of A-consciousness for not being a notion of consciousness at all. I argue that an empirically important distinction can be made between behavior that is supported by an underlying conscious experience and behavior that is brought about by nonconscious action-control mechanisms. This distinction is different from that made by Block.
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  • Unitary consciousness requires distributed comparators and global mappings.George N. Reeke - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):693-694.
    Gray, like other recent authors, seeks a scientific approach to consciousness, but fails to provide a biologically convincing description, partly because he implicitly bases his model on a computationalist foundation that embeds the contents of thought in irreducible symbolic representations. When patterns of neural activity instantiating conscious thought are shorn of homuncular observers, it appears most likely that these patterns and the circuitry that compares them with memories and plans should be found distributed over large regions of neocortex.
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  • The elusive quale.Howard Rachlin - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):692-693.
    If sensations were behaviorally conceived, as they should be, as complex functional patterns of interaction between overt behavior and the environment, there would be no point in searching for them as instantaneous psychic elements within the brain or as internal products of the brain.
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  • Reticular-thalamic activation of the cortex generates conscious contents.James Newman - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):691-692.
    Gray hypothesizes that the contents of consciousness correspond to the outputs of a subicular (hippocampal/temporal lobe) comparator that compares the current state of the organism's perceptual world with a predicted state. I argue that Gray has identified a key contributing system to conscious awareness, but that his model is inadequate for explaining how conscious contents are generated in the brain. An alternative model is offered.
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  • The control of consciousness via a neuropsychological feedback loop.Todd D. Nelson - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):690-691.
    Gray's neuropsychological model of consciousness uses a hierarchical feedback loop framework that has been extensively discussed by many others in psychology. This commentary therefore urges Gray to integrate with, or at least acknowledge previous models. It also points out flaws in his feedback model and suggests directions for further theoretical work.
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  • How access-consciousness might be a kind of consiousness.Thomas Natsoulas - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):264-265.
    In response to the objection that his “access-consciousness” is not really consciousness but a matter of the availability of certain information for certain kinds of processing, Block will probably have to argue that consciousness in a more basic, familiar, traditional sense is an essential component of any instance of access-consciousness and thus justifies the name.
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  • Phenomenal and attentional consciousness may be inextricable.Adam Morton - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):263-264.
    In common sense consciousness has a fairly determinate content – the (single) way an experience feels, the (single) line of thought being consciously followed. The determinacy of the object may be achieved by linking Block's two concepts, so that as long as we hold on to the determinacy of content we are unable to separate P and A.
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  • Comparators, functions, and experiences.Harold Merskey - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):689-690.
    The comparator model is insufficient for three reasons. First, consciousness is involved in the process of comparison as well as in the output. Second, we still do not have enough neurophysiological information to match the events of consciousness, although such knowledge is growing. Third, the anatomical localisation proposed can be damaged bilaterally but consciousness will persist.
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  • We've only just begun.William G. Lycan - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):262-263.
    Block contends that the concept of consciousness is a mongrel concept and that researchers go astray by conflating different notions of “consciousness.” This is certainly true. In fact, it is truer than Block acknowledges, because his own notion of P-consciousness runs together two, or arguably three, quite different and separable features of a sensory state.
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  • Human consciousness: One of a kind.R. E. Lubow - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):689-689.
    To avoid teleological interpretations, it is important to make a distinction between functions and uses of consciousness, and to address questions concerning the consequences of consciousness. Assumptions about the phylogenetic distribution of consciousness are examined. It is concluded that there is some value in identifying consciousness an exclusively human attribute.
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  • Access denied.Dan Lloyd - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):261-262.
    The information processing that constitutes accessconsciousness is not sufficient to make a representational state conscious in any sense. Standard examples of computation without consciousness undermine A-consciousness, and Block's cases seem to derive their plausibility from a lurking phenomenal awareness. That is, people and other minded systems seem to have access-consciousness only insofar as the state accessed is a phenomenal one, or the state resulting from access is phenomenal, or both.
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  • Correlating mind and body.T. J. Lioyd-Jones, N. Donnelly & B. Weekes - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):688-688.
    Gray's integration of the different levels of description and explanation in his theory is problematic: The introduction of consciousness into his theorising consists of the mind-brain identity assumption, which tells us nothing new. There need not be correlations between levels of description. Gray's account does not extend beyond “brute” correlation. Integration must be achieved in a principled, mutually constraining way.
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  • Phenomenal access: A moving target.Joseph Levine - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):261-261.
    Basically agreeing with Block regarding the need for a distinction between P- and A-consciousness, I characterize the problem somewhat diflerently, relating it more directly to the explanatory gap. I also speculate on the relation between the two forms of consciousness, arguing that some notion of access is essentially involved in phenomenal experience.
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  • Access and what it is like.Bernard W. Kobes - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):260-260.
    Block's cases of superblindsight, the pneumatic drill, and the Sperling experiments do not show that P-consciousness and Aconsciousness can come apart. On certain tendentious but not implausible construals of the concepts of P- and A-consciousness, they refer to the same psychological phenomenon.
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  • Triangulating phenomenal consciousness.Patricia Kitcher - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):259-260.
    This commentary offers two criticisms of Block's account of phenomenal consciousness and a brief sketch of a rival account. The negative points are that monitoring consciousness also involves the possession of certain states and that phenomenal consciousness inevitably involves some sort of monitoring. My positive suggestion is that “phenomenal consciousness” may refer to our ability to monitor the rich but preconceptual states that retain perceptual information for complex processing.
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  • Septohippocampal comparator: Consciousness generator or attention feedback loop?Marcel Kinsbourne - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):687-688.
    As Gray insists, his comparator model proposes a brute correlation only – of consciousness with septohippocampal output. I suggest that the comparator straddles a feedback loop that boosts the activation ofnovelrepresentations, thus helping them feature in present or recollected experience. Such a role in organizing conscious contents would transcend correlation and help explain how consciousness emerges from brain function.
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  • On distinguishing phenomenal consciousness from the representational functions of mind.Leonard D. Katz - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):258-259.
    One can share Block's aim of distinguishing “phenomenal” experience from cognitive function and agree with much in his views, yet hold that the inclusion of representational content within phenomenal content, if only in certain spatial cases, obscures this distinction. It may also exclude some modular theories, although it is interestingly suggestive of what may be the limits of the phenomenal penetration of the representational mind.
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  • Information synthesis in cortical areas as an important link in brain mechanisms of mind.Alexei M. Ivanitsky - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):686-687.
    To explore the mechanism of sensation correlations between EP component amplitude and signal detection indices were studied. The time of sensation coincided with the peak latency of those EP components that showed a correlation with both indices. The components presumably reflected information synthesis in projection cortical neurons. A mechanism providing the synthesis process is proposed.
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  • Mind – your head!R. P. Ingvaldsen & H. T. A. Whiting - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):685-686.
    Gray takes an information-processing paradigm as his departure point, invoking a comparator as part of the system. He concludes that consciousness is to be found “in” the comparator but is unable to point to how the comparison takes place. Thus, the comparator turns out not to be an entity arising out of brain research per se, but out of the logic of the paradigm. In this way, Gray both reinvents dualism and remains trapped in the language game of his own (...)
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  • Perspective, reflection, transparent explanation, and other minds.S. L. Hurley - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):684-685.
    Perspective and reflection have each been considered in some way basic to phenomenal consciousness. Each has possible evolutionary value, though neither seems sufficient for consciousness. Consider an account of consciousness in terms of the combination of perspective and reflection, its relationship to the problem of other minds, and its capacity to inherit evolutionary explanation from its components.
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  • Blocking out the distinction between sensation and perception: Superblindsight and the case of Helen.Nicholas Humphrey - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):257-258.
    Block's notion of P-consciousness catches too much in its net. He would do better to exclude all states that do not have a sensory component. I question what he says about my work with the “blind” monkey, Helen.
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  • Psychopathology and the discontinuity of conscious experience.David R. Hemsley - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):683-684.
    It is accepted that “primary awareness” may emerge from the integration of two classes of information. It is unclear, however, why this cannot take place within the comparator rather than in conjunction with feedback to the perceptual systems. The model has plausibility in relation to the continuity of conscious experience in the normal waking state and may be extended to encompass certain aspects of the “sense of self” which are frequently disrupted in psychotic patients.
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  • Phenomenal fallacies and conflations.Gilbert Harman - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):256-257.
    A “fallacy” is something like the sense-datum fallacy, involving a logically invalid argument. A “conflation” is something like Block's conflation of the (alleged) raw feel of an experience with what it is like to have the experience. Trivially, a self is conscious of something only if it accesses it. Substantive issues concern the nature of the conscious self and the nature of access.
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  • The contents of consciousness: A neuropsychological conjecture.Jeffrey A. Gray - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):659-76.
    Drawing on previous models of anxiety, intermediate memory, the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, and goal-directed behaviour, a neuropsychological hypothesis is proposed for the generation of the contents of consciousness. It is suggested that these correspond to the outputs of a comparator that, on a moment-by-moment basis, compares the current state of the organism's perceptual world with a predicted state. An outline is given of the information-processing functions of the comparator system and of the neural systems which mediate them. The hypothesis (...)
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  • Guilty consciousness.George Graham - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (2):255-256.
    Should we distinguish between access and phenomenal consciousness? Block says yes and that various pathologies of consciousness support and clarify the distinction. The commentary charge that the distinction is neither supported nor clarified by the clinical data. It recommends an alternative reading of the data and urges Block to clarify the distinction.
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  • (1 other version)Consciousness and its (dis)contents.Jeffrey A. Gray - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):703-722.
    The first claim in the target article was that there is as yet no transparent, causal account of the relations between consciousness and brain-and-behaviour. That claim remains firm. The second claim was that the contents of consciousness consist, psychologically, of the outputs of a comparator system; the third consisted of a description of the brain mechanisms proposed to instantiate the comparator. In order to defend these claims against criticism, it has been necessary to clarify the distinction between consciousness-as-such and the (...)
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  • Consciousness is for other people.Chris Frith - 1995 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (4):682-683.
    Gray has expanded his account of schizophrenia to explain consciousness as well. His theory explains neither phenomenon adequately because he treats individual minds in isolation. The primary function of consciousness is to permit high level interactions with other conscious beings. The key symptoms of schizophrenia reflect a failure of this mechanism.
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