Introspective evidence is still treated with great suspicion in cognitive science. This work is designed to encourage cognitive scientists to take more account of the subject's unique perspective.

Scientific research on consciousness is attempting to gather data about the relationship between consciousness and the physical world. The basic procedure is to measure consciousness through first-person reports, measure the physical world and look for correlations between these sets of measurements. While this work has focused on neural correlates of consciousness, it has also been proposed that information states in the brain might be linked to consciousness. This paper uses Floridi’s distinction between dedomena, data and information to state this claim (...) more precisely and suggests that the best starting point for this work is the potential correlation between data patterns and consciousness. Floridi’s method of levels of abstraction is used to understand how data can be measured at different levels of abstraction in the brain and the paper examines a number of problems with this work, which could make it difficult to prove that data patterns are correlated with consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A-consciousness may be regarded as the visibility of information that is the output of a process within a community of other processes. The most prominent function of “public” dissemination of information is giving access to it to processes whose relevance is not clear at the moment of dissemination. The function of P-consciousness may be outside the realm of cognition.