Consciousness doesn't overflow cognition

Theories of consciousness can be separated into those that see it as cognitive in nature, or as an aspect of cognitive functioning, and those that see consciousness as importantly distinct from any kind of cognitive functioning. One version of the former kind of theory is the higherorder-thought theory of consciousness. This family of theories posits a fundamental role for cognitive states, higherorder thought-like intentional states, in the explanation of conscious experience. These states are higher-order in that they represent the subject herself as being in various world-directed first-order states and thus constitute a kind of cognitive access to one’s own mental life. This distinctive cognitive access is postulated to account for what it is like for one to have a conscious experience. One important challenge to this approach is Block’s case for phenomenological overflow (Block, 2007, 2011, 2012). The basic argument is that, overall, the balance of evidence favors the identification of phenomenal consciousness with firstorder non-cognitive states rather than our cognitive access to those states. Emerging clearly from the ensuing debate is that Block’s argument is meant to establish that phenomenology overflows working memory. This is important because, unlike other theories, the higher-order thought theory can allow that our conscious experience overflows working memory. In addition, it can account for the subjective impression that there is overflow even if there isn’t. Take the so-called Amsterdam paradigm (Sligte et al., 2008), which builds on Sperling’s (1960) partial report paradigm. In these experiments, subjects are presented with a change-blindness-type scenario. For instance, they might be presented with a clock-like formation of rectangles. One array is presented followed by a variable interval and a second array, which may or may not contain a rectangle that had changed its orientation. Subjects are cued to the location of the potential change at various points during this process and then asked at the end if anything changed. Sligte et al. distinguish between what they call the “visual icon,” which is a highly detailed but brief positive afterimage occurring shortly after stimulus presentation, and what they call “fragile short-term memory,” which is less detailed but longlasting. Subjects are able to perform the task successfully even when cued up to 6 s after the original presentation of the stimulus. Block argues, largely on the basis on informal reports by subjects, that the best way to explain these findings is by positing a richly detailed phenomenally conscious experience of all of the shapes, rather than a sparsely detailed conscious experience corresponding to what is represented in working memory. Because the higherorder thought theory does not make the claim that encoding in working memory is required for conscious experience the theory could in principle accept this claim. The higher-order thought theory can allow that our phenomenal consciousness (that is, the contents of the relevant higherorder thoughts) overflows working memory. The relevant higher-order thoughts will be as detailed as the stream of consciousness, which, however sparse that is, will still be more detailed than what is encoded in working memory. What it cannot allow is that there is phenomenal consciousness in the absence of suitable higher-order thoughts instantiating a kind of cognitive access to the first-order states. On the other end of the theoretical spectrum is the claim that only what is in working memory is phenomenally conscious and subjects are mistaken about the detail of their conscious experience. If so, then the conscious experience of subjects in the Amsterdam paradigm is to some degree generic, partial, fragmented, or degraded. The reports of “reading the answers off of conscious experience” may, to some extent, be confabulated. Subjects can do the task, they have the impression that they saw all of the rectangles, and they give a commonsense explanation. If this is the case then the higher-order theory will account for this by positing correspondingly fragmented, generic, or partial contents of the relevant higher-order states. So at this point there may or may not be phenomenal consciousness that overflows working memory, but whatever the conscious experience of subjects in these experiments turns out to be we can explain it on the higher-order thought theory. This is because the higher-order thought theory makes the general claim that people may be aware of first-order states in virtue of some of the state’s properties (that they are letters, that they are blocks, that they are arranged in various ways, that this particular block is oriented in that particular orientation, etc.), but not necessarily in virtue of all of their properties. Nonetheless, the information that the first-order states encode is causally efficacious. Higher-order-thought theories maintain that the information that is represented by the first-order state is partially unconscious, not that the first-order state itself is unconscious.