Viewed from a first-person perspective consciousness appears to be necessary for complex, novel human activity - but viewed from a third-person perspective consciousness appears to play no role in the activity of brains, producing a "causal paradox". To resolve this paradox one needs to distinguish consciousness of processing from consciousness accompanying processing or causing processing. Accounts of consciousness/brain causal interactions switch between first- and third-person perspectives. However, epistemically, the differences between first- and third-person access are fundamental. First- and third-person accounts (...) are complementary and mutually irreducible. (shrink)

Velmans (1991a; 1991b) proposed that consciousness plays a minor explanatory role in the information processing approach and that unconscious mechanisms process stimuli and responses and intervene between them. In contrast, the present commentary describes a thought experiment suggesting that, although input information is initially processed unconsciously, subsequent processing involves consciousness, and consciousness plays an important role in the explanation of behavior.