Azenet Lopez

Consciousness science is brimming with theories attempting to explain what consciousness is and how it can be identified in natural and artificial systems. These theories often make different and conflicting claims, evincing that the road to a mature theory of consciousness is still long and convoluted. In this paper, we propose that a promising way forward that at the same time facilitates addressing urgent questions about consciousness is what we call a building block approach. Building blocks are the simpler elements making up a theory, such as key notions or assumptions that contribute to explain important aspects of the phenomenon of interest. A building block approach recommends shifting the focus to these simpler elements of theories of consciousness while minimizing commitment to specific theoretical proposals. Here, we demonstrate how building block approaches can contribute to the assessment, integration and unification of diverse theories in consciousness science, by discussing what roles two potential building blocks, namely, attention and information generation, (should) play in theories of consciousness.

Split-brain subjects can consciously perceive and identify two stimuli presented simultaneously but separately in opposite hemifields. Yet, they seem to lack a conscious experience of the two stimuli together, as they cannot judge whether these are the same or different. Such breakdowns in experiential or phenomenal unity would carry important implications for philosophical reflection on the essential properties of conscious experience, as well as for scientific theorising about consciousness’ neural and functional bases. Extant models supporting the preserved unity of split-brain consciousness secure unity in a subject or agential sense, but do not explain how right- and left-side conscious experiences could be unified in the problem cases. Here, I offer a new model that supplies the missing phenomenal unity. Based on the construct of layers of conscious experience, my model acknowledges breakdowns in local experiential layers but warrants preserved unity in global ones. A supporting argument draws on the preserved attentional capacities of split-brain subjects. My proposal goes beyond extant research in that it focuses on the conjoint phenomenology of simultaneous right- and left-side experiences, highlights the conceptual connections of phenomenal unity to attention, and discusses the impact of specific split-brain attentional capacities on the unity of right- and left-side experiences.

Split-brain subjects can consciously perceive and identify two stimuli presented simultaneously but separately in opposite hemifields. Yet, they seem to lack a conscious experience of the two stimuli together, as they cannot judge whether these are the same or different. Such breakdowns in experiential or phenomenal unity would carry important implications for philosophical reflection on the essential properties of conscious experience, as well as for scientific theorising about consciousness’ neural and functional bases. Extant models supporting the preserved unity of split-brain consciousness secure unity in a subject or agential sense, but do not explain how right- and left-side conscious experiences could be unified in the problem cases. Here, I offer a new model that supplies the missing phenomenal unity. Based on the construct of layers of conscious experience, my model acknowledges breakdowns in local experiential layers but warrants preserved unity in global ones. A supporting argument draws on the preserved attentional capacities of split-brain subjects. My proposal goes beyond extant research in that it focuses on the conjoint phenomenology of simultaneous right- and left-side experiences, highlights the conceptual connections of phenomenal unity to attention, and discusses the impact of specific split-brain attentional capacities on the unity of right- and left-side experiences.

The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) might be our current best bet at a scientific explanation of phenomenal consciousness. IIT focuses on the distinctively subjective and phenomenological aspects of conscious experience. Currently, it offers the fundaments of a formal account, but future developments shall explain the qualitative structures of every possible conscious experience. But this ambitious project is hindered by one fundamental limitation. IIT fails to acknowledge the crucial roles of attention in generating phenomenally conscious experience and shaping its contents. Here, we argue that IIT urgently needs an account of attention. Without this account, IIT cannot explain important informational differences between different kinds of experiences. Furthermore, though some IIT proponents celebratedly endorse a double dissociation between consciousness and attention, close analysis reveals that such as dissociation is in fact incompatible with IIT. Notably, the issues we raise for IIT will likely arise for many internalist theories of conscious contents in philosophy, especially theories with primitivist inclinations. Our arguments also extend to the recently popularized structuralist approaches. Overall, our discussion highlights how considerations about attention are indispensable for scientific as well as philosophical theorizing about conscious experience.

Attention makes things look brighter and more colorful. In light of these effects, representationalist philosophers propose that attentive experiences represent more determinate color properties than inattentive experiences. Although this claim is appealing, we argue that it does not hold for one of our best conceptualizations of content determinacy, according to which an experience has more determinate contents if it represents a narrower range of values within the relevant dimension. We argue that our current empirical evidence fails to show that attention has this kind of effect on color perception. We then offer an alternative, representationalist-friendly account of the attentional effects, as changes in vividness.

This paper reconciles an inconsistency between the benefits of mind wandering and a prominent conception of attention in philosophy and cognitive psychology, namely, the prioritization view. Since we prioritize the information in a task less if we are doing it while mind wandering compared to solely concentrating on it, why does our performance in the task sometimes improve when we are mind wandering? To explain this, we offer a conception of diffuse attention that generalizes from external to internal forms of attention and captures deep commonalities between the two (Chun et al. 2011). We conceptualize mind wandering as an instance of internal diffuse attention that also induces diffuse attention in other concurrent tasks. Moreover, pace the prioritization view, certain tasks are in fact better performed with diffuse attention, which prioritizes information less than focused attention. Our account of mind wandering as an instance of the more general category of diffuse attention improves upon current leading philosophical views of mind wandering (such as Irving 2016) by better explaining the interaction between mind wandering and other tasks.

Visual experiences often feel crisper, sharper or more vivid when one pays attention to the seen object. According to some representationalist theories of perception, these felt effects occur because attentive experiences represent more determinate or precise properties than their inattentive counterparts: a color experience represents vermillion rather than red if the color is perceived with attention rather than without it. Recently, this idea has been expressed in terms of ranges of feature values represented, so that attentive experiences shall represent narrower ranges than inattentive experiences. However, the latter claim seems to run counter to evidence, recently discussed by Block (2015), that neither spatial attention nor attention as deployed in the attentional blink paradigm alters the ranges of properties represented in visual perception. In this chapter, I clarify what these findings in fact tell us about the representational contents of visual perception and argue that they do not refute the representational account of the attentional effects.

A standing question in consciousness science is whether consciousness arises gradually or in a sudden way. This empirical question is connected to a metaphysical one, concerning the kind of property that consciousness is, i.e., graded or categorical. Recently, Lee (2022) suggested that settling this question requires deciding which theory of consciousness is true. Applying an insight from Wiese (2020), this chapter pursues a way of approximating answers by examining properties that are necessary for consciousness, which consciousness must have regardless of which theory turns out true in the end. One such property is attention. This chapter suggests that attention is connected to consciousness in such a way that a graded view of the former brings support for a graded view of the latter. To this effect, evidence is discussed that degrees of attention are reflected in several acknowledged dimensions of consciousness. The upshot of this view is that the transition from unconscious information processing to conscious experience is gradual and is a function of degree of attention.

Attention makes things look brighter and more colorful. In light of these effects, representationalist philosophers propose that attentive experiences represent more determinate color properties than inattentive experiences. Although this claim is appealing, we argue that it does not hold for one of our best conceptualizations of content determinacy, according to which an experience has more determinate contents if it represents a narrower range of values within the relevant dimension. We argue that our current empirical evidence fails to show that attention has this kind of effect on color perception. We then offer an alternative, representationalist-friendly account of the attentional effects, as changes in vividness.

How are attention and consciousness related? Can we learn what the contents of someone’s consciousness are if we know the targets of their attention? What can we learn about the contents of consciousness if we know the targets of attention? Although introspection might suggest that attention and consciousness are intimately connected, a good body of recent findings in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience brings compelling reasons to believe that they are two separate and independent processes. This paper attempts to bring attention and consciousness back together to make the study of attentional distributions an essential ingredient for the study of the contents of consciousness. My proposal has two main components. First, I introduce a framework for systematizing the relations between attention in its different forms and consciousness in its different forms. Although philosophers and cognitive scientists have repeatedly highlighted the importance of such systematization, most details are still to be worked out. Here I take an initial stab at this project based on the notion of degrees of informational enhancement. Second, I introduce the notion of vicarious attention to account for a kind of additional processing benefit that comes for free when attention is allocated to a target. I then propose that this kind of processing must also be considered when mapping attention targets into contents of consciousness.