In this blog series, we’ve been discussing consciousness and how it relates to various cognitive functions, such as attention, emotions, and self-regulation. While “consciousness” can be defined in various ways theoretically, we’re primarily concerned with the subjective experience of “phenomenal consciousness” in humans and other organisms. To illustrate this idea, the philosopher Thomas Nagel (1974) challenged us to imagine “what it’s like to be a bat.” But before we can even think about what it’s like to be a bat, can we properly explain what it’s like to be “ourselves”?

What is phenomenal consciousness?

This question can be relatively easy to answer: It’s the rich experience you’re having right now, comprised of the things that you see, hear, touch, and think. It is, essentially, what it feels like to be you. This includes your personal experience of how the world around you appears, along with your memories and various internal biological processes (thoughts, aches, pains). If we consider the Freudian perspective, phenomenology would include the focus on how one feels subjectively, or “introspection.”

While your subjective experience typically is quite rich and full of information, phenomenal consciousness does not “present” all the information that is processed by your nervous system. As we have argued, the various information-processing mechanisms, such as attention, process so much information to support a human’s successful interaction with the environment that only a subset of this information can enter phenomenal consciousness.

Phenomenal consciousness as a limited experience of the world

Humans are impressive information-processing systems. The amount of data that is detected and processed by our different systems is remarkable. Consider all the sensory channels: visual, auditory, touch, smell, taste. These systems “subconsciously” process information constantly and typically reliably.

Usually, we become aware of only relevant or important information, which means we can only report on a fraction of the information processed that supports our decisions and actions. For example, have you ever wondered if you turned off the oven or locked the door on your way out of your house? These actions have become so automatic that they require very little conscious attention, and thus they’re easily forgotten or overlooked. Indeed, if we remembered everything we see or do, we’d probably not be as efficient as we are.

Not only do we have access to sensory information, but we also have internal information from proprioception (e.g., balance, body aches) and from self-reflection (e.g., thoughts). Planning any action requires processing and organizing this information, and this occurs with different levels of awareness. Compare your experience of cooking a new recipe in a friend’s kitchen to your experience of making tea in your own house. You’ll probably notice that one task takes much more effort and conscious awareness than the other.

Conscious attention and effortless attention

From all the information processed by our complex systems, the subset that we phenomenally experience can be called conscious attention (i.e., the stuff we can report seeing, hearing, or feeling). What enters conscious attention varies according to context or subjective needs. A good example here is to recall how much effort it took when you first learned a new skill, like playing the piano or playing tennis. When first interacting with a piano or tennis racket, the experience was more “effortful” as you had to attend to many different aspects of the stimuli: the location of the piano keys and pedals or your grip on the racket and posture. Over time, these processes become more effortless, associated with a certain expertise in using the tools.

In these examples, the phenomenal experience of the activity changes with expertise. It began by devoting more resources to focus on the tools and how to perform appropriate actions. This evolved into requiring less focused attention on the task’s mechanical aspects but more on planning, like anticipating a special kind of backhand that would result in a winning shot or focusing on the auditory feedback that allows you to better communicate emotion through your piano-playing rather than simply executing a correct sequence of notes. Phenomenal experiences vary in many ways and are affected by context, past experiences, and immediate needs.

Hopefully, these examples help clarify what theorists mean when they say “phenomenal consciousness.” To summarize, it’s the attentive, first-person, vividly rich, yet incredibly limited, subjective experience of all the different kinds of information available to you.

What is the purpose of phenomenal consciousness?

This question is a widely debated and investigated topic in various fields of cognitive science, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. Because of the overlap between attention and consciousness (theoretically, neurologically, behaviourally), it’s been philosophically difficult to argue clearly for a unique functional role that consciousness provides. Since attention processes the information that’s in consciousness, why do we even need phenomenal experience?

As mentioned above (and in previous posts), we know the brain processes information and makes decisions and coordinates actions outside of our awareness. We don’t need to have a rich conscious experience of taking steps as we walk along a busy sidewalk while adjusting our movements to avoid other pedestrians or tripping on the curb. While sometimes we may have richer experiences of walking, we typically can also navigate through our day without much deliberation or effortful attention because of our expertise in doing such things in generally predictable environments. Some argue that the more predictable a situation is, the less it needs to be at the forefront of conscious experience (e.g., see Solms & Friston, 2018). Perhaps then, consciousness is particularly important for novel and unpredictable situations.

Phenomenal consciousness also tends to involve affective information related to the visceral nature of being alive. In other words, our feelings. This is associated with valence judgments assessing if the informational input is a good thing or a bad thing and then highlighting the extreme cases we need to really attend to (e.g., dangerous situations).

So we can think of phenomenal consciousness as something that helps us in more complex or unpredictable situations (e.g., learning new technical skills, navigating through unpredictable environments). It also helps us be more aware of crucial stimuli that will inherently benefit survival or other life-maintaining skills (e.g., see our homeostasis post).

While these are not the definitive or unarguable roles of phenomenal consciousness, they certainly could be part of its function. The exciting challenge lies in the scientific explanation of these possible functional roles and determining what information that phenomenal consciousness provides that is not already being processed effectively and silently by our complex cognitive and neurological systems.

— Harry & Carlos

References