Abstract
Consciousness is very intimately related to other notions like intentionality and representation. Consciousness presupposes representation and intentionality. But we seem to be able to use representations without being conscious of them. For example, blindsighted people may have no conscious access to representations while actually using them. Consciousness is also inseparable from the notion of quale: the phenomenal qualitative look or flavor of a subjective experience. At first sight, we cannot have qualia without being conscious of them. Taking into account these two facts we have a tendency to consider intentionality as related to content (the reference to an object or state of affairs under some mode of presentation, giving the truth conditions of some proposition) and consciousness as related to some qualitative way of having access to content. On one hand we do not need a representation of the qualitative aspect of experience as such, a metarepresentation of some quale, to have a qualitative conscious experience. We just have to experience the things our experience is about. On the other hand consciousness of an experience seems to require that we have in mind some representation of the representational experience as such. And the qualitative aspect of our experience seems to be part of the mode of presentation of the objects or state of affairs we are referring to.
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Notes
The examples that Ned Block gives of P-consciousness without A-consciousness are either trivial or disputable. Surely we can have “sensational” experiences without conceptual attitudes (knowing or believing, for instance). But when we are engaged in an intense conversation and suddenly at noon realize that there was a lot of noise outside all along, (p. 234) it is difficult to decide whether it is an example of P-consciousness without A-consciousness, or simply a case of focusing on the conversation against a background of noise and nevertheless we take it into account in the control of our action, even for its representational aspects (for instance, we could introduce examples of noisy works in the conversation in preference to others). The notion of “access” needs some elucidation, all the more so since it is a dispositional notion, and I will try to carry out this explanation later.
Some procedures might be too complex.
These two aspects can be experienced separately, according to some philosophers, but consciousness can involve both of them as well.
Kant’s synthesis was such a coherent and re-processable gathering of information.
Computers can “learn” in a peculiar sense of the term, if they obey heuristic devices we have equipped them with. Connectionist networks seem to learn in a more “spontaneous” way, but up to now the definition of what is valued as a relevant discrimination cannot be ensured without exogenous human intervention.
If you adopt a weak HOT theory, like David Rosenthal (in the weak HOT theory, the higher order thought is metarepresentational just because it refers to the representation it is about, not because you are thinking about this representation as such in the strong sense of the term) you can relate synthesis of the core pattern with lower level representation and higher order thought with the application of a stored pattern or concept to this synthesized pattern. What is missing in the weak HOT theory is the relation to the other biological functionings.
Edelman claims that first order consciousness implies comparing cognitive patterns and values, axiological patterns, which are the results of the evolution of the species. I see no need to consider values or axiological patterns as stored in an isolated way and a different format. Value appears to emerge from the co-constraints that every functioning of an organism imposes upon the others. If for example some pattern makes the perceptive functioning compatible with the others, and even enhances the activity of other functionings, then it is valued by this very compatibility and enhancement.
R. Jackendoff, Consciousness and the computational Mind, MIT Press, 1987, Cambridge, Massachusetts
If we take for granted the phi-experience, which seems disputable.
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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Livet, P. (1999). Consciousness as Valued Procedural Mode of Apprehension. In: Fisette, D. (eds) Consciousness and Intentionality: Models and Modalities of Attribution. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 62. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9193-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9193-5_4
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