Conscious Perceptual Experience as Representational Self-Prompting

John Dilworth Western Michigan University [Journal of Mind and Behavior 28 no. 2 (2007), 135-156] The self-prompting theory of consciousness holds that conscious perceptual experience occurs when non-routine perceptual data prompt the activation of a plan in an executive control system that monitors perceptual input. On the other hand, routine, non-conscious perception merely provides data about the world, which indicatively describes the world correctly or incorrectly. Perceptual experience instead involves data that are about the perceiver, not the world. Their function is that of imperatively prompting the perceiver herself to do something (hence "self-prompting") via the monitoring activities of her executive control system. The theory explains both phenomenal consciousness and "what it is like" to be perceptually conscious of an item. In addition, as applied to early perceptual attention, the self-prompting theory can explain how and why consciousness evolved.