On the "pointing Function" of Consciousness. (*)

Consciousness has the seemingly magical property of making meaningful things happen in the brain, merely by "pointing" it at some event --like the sentence you are reading now. Skilled readers have no detailed understanding of the fast and very complex processes that are evoked by simply looking at words. After preperceptual unconscious processing, the printed words become visually conscious and may be echoed in inner speech; a momentary subjective pause ensues, and out comes a conscious "sense of meaning." The meaning phase may be associated with evoked potentials in the 400-600 msec range, although conscious meanings can sometimes emerge after seconds, hours, and even months of largely unconscious incubation (Baars, 1988). (1)