THREE FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 

THREE MAIN FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 

 

Claudio Ferreira Costa*

 

 

Abstract

The proposed tripartite model distinguishes sensory consciousness (basic awareness of stimuli, present in animals), reflexive consciousness (meta-cognition, awareness of mental states, found in humans and some apes), and thinking consciousness (propositional judgments integrated in belief networks). What we call consciousness emerges from representational and integrative functions across these domains.

 

Key-Words: consciousness, representation, philosophy of mind.

 

My aim in this paper is to distinguish three primary forms of consciousness: sensory, reflexive, and thinking consciousness. This tripartite distinction offers a theoretical advantage by encompassing, in the simplest terms, what we meaningfully describe as conscious phenomena in the first place.

 

 

1. Sensory consciousness

 

The first form of consciousness was once vividly characterized by John Searle as what we regain when we wake up in the morning and what we lose when we fall into a dreamless sleep, or lapse into a coma, or die (2002: 7).

   David Armstrong employed the expression perceptual consciousness, though I regard awareness of events as the more accurate designation (Armstrong 1980: 55-67).[1] The former term is evocative, yet in certain respects misleading. Consider the case of a subject experiencing a headache: she is conscious of the headache, but she does not perceive it as one perceives an external object; rather, she feels it. The same distinction applies to affective states such as emotions: feelings are not perceived; they are felt. Nevertheless, I contend that feelings, taken in isolation, cannot constitute consciousness. Consciousness requires a broader framework within which such feelings are integrated and apprehended.

   Of course, awareness of events refers to the state of being awake, aware, and responsive to one’s environment. It entails a basic level of cognition, encompassing the processes of perceiving external stimuli and registering internal bodily or mental states. In clinical contexts, physicians often describe a patient in a coma as having lost consciousness, and historically, diagnostic methods such as the caloric reflex test – introducing cold water into the ear canal – were employed to assess residual responsiveness. Awareness of events can be largely indirectly reached, derived from third-person observation and, secondarily, from first-person access through reflexive awareness.

   This form of consciousness is considered the most primitive. Even non-human animals, such as mice, exhibit it, as they respond to both external stimuli and internal bodily conditions. When a mouse is sedated with chloroform, we may say that it has lost consciousness, specifically in this sensory sense.

   Yet, the boundaries of consciousness remain problematic. If consciousness is defined simply as perceiving the external world and internal states, then an excessive range of organisms would qualify as conscious. Bees, ants, shrimp, and even unicellular organisms such as paramecia demonstrate perceptual responsiveness, but it would be misleading to attribute consciousness to them. A newspaper headline once proclaimed: “Scientists have discovered that flies are conscious.” Without reading further, one could reasonably doubt the claim, for consciousness requires more than mere sensory responsiveness. As with many psychological concepts, the term conscious is appropriately applied only to organisms that exhibit sufficient mental and behavioural complexity.

   The concept of understanding differs fundamentally from that of perception. While it may be said that flies or shrimps perceive aspects of the external world, it is far less plausible to attribute to them any genuine capacity for understanding. This is because understanding presupposes the ability to exhibit sufficiently complex forms of behaviour. For this reason, we are not inclined to speak of insects as possessing, losing, or regaining event consciousness, since their perceptual experience does not approximate the richness of human sensory-perceptual awareness. Although the boundaries of consciousness are not sharply defined, linguistic usage reflects a kind of practical wisdom: while the domain of sensory consciousness may reasonably extend to mammals such as mice, it would be conceptually incoherent to extend it much further.

   Moreover, the notion of sensory consciousness underscores the fact that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. Living organisms differ profoundly from mechanical automatons, and it would be misguided to expect consciousness in the latter. A camera, for instance, may produce images that correspond to states of affairs, but it does not do so autonomously. Such images lack psychological intentionality and biologically grounded aims; they require an interpreter to recognize them as representations. Even when machines appear to imitate intentionality, this imitation ultimately depends on external programming by human agents. This consideration supports the view that non-biological machines, however sophisticated, cannot be genuinely conscious.

 

2. Reflexive consciousness

The second, and more significant, form of consciousness is what may be termed reflexive consciousness. Reflexive consciousness, which seems to include self-consciousness, can be understood as the cognitive representation of one’s own mental states.

   It involves the simultaneous awareness and representation of internal experiences, a process that may be described as reflexive cognition. The objects of such reflexive cognition include sensations, feelings, desires, perceptions, and even higher-order states such as thoughts and beliefs. Since many first-order mental states are themselves cognitive or representational, their second-order reflexive cognitions are appropriately characterized as meta-cognitions or meta-representations.

   Reflexive consciousness thus constitutes consciousness in its most robust sense. It is typically, though not exclusively, a human phenomenon. While certain great apes appear capable of reflexive awareness, it is absent in mice and, more strikingly, in newborn human infants.[2] In this respect, reflexive consciousness marks a qualitative distinction between mere sensory awareness and the higher-order self-representational capacities that define mature human cognition.

   An instructive example of reflexive consciousness can be found in the experience of a persistent but faint headache. One may carry such discomfort throughout the day without attending to it. Yet, the moment attention is directed toward the sensation, its presence becomes evident, and language enables one to articulate that the headache is conscious. In this case, attending to the discomfort constitutes a reflexive cognition—a second-order awareness or belief about the state itself.

   It is precisely this reflexive dimension that distinguishes human consciousness in its fullest sense. The capacity to report verbally on one’s internal states, such as declaring “I have a headache,” provides compelling evidence of reflexive consciousness. Unlike mere sensory awareness, reflexive consciousness entails the ability to represent, reflect upon, and communicate one’s own mental states, thereby marking a defining feature of mature human cognition.

   The notion of reflexive consciousness was articulated by Armstrong, who likened it to a computer’s self-scanning function. He offered a significant account of its evolutionary emergence, referring to it as introspective consciousness. According to his proposal, the mental processes of living organisms became progressively more complex and sophisticated through evolutionary development. As this complexity increased, these processes generated drives that required simultaneous monitoring; processes that had to be controlled, organized, and directed by a higher-order mechanism. (Armstrong 1980: 65-66)

   This higher-order instance, we may add, is responsible for reflexive consciousness itself: the capacity to form suitable cognitions of lower-order mental states. In this way, reflexive consciousness arises not merely as an extension of sensory awareness but as a structured, second-order system of representation, enabling organisms to recognize, evaluate, and regulate their own mental activity.

The principal objection to the monitoring hypothesis is that reflexive cognitions are merely thoughts generated by simultaneous lower-order mental states. On this view, reflexive cognitions, typically second-order cognitions, lack causal influence on the very states that produce them Rosenthal 2008).  However, this conclusion is not compelling for two reasons.

First, reflexive cognitions that render lower-order states conscious appear to arise through the act of attending to those states, rather than being generated by the states alone. Attention, therefore, plays a mediating role in the production of reflexive awareness. Second, according to the causal theory of action, reasons can exert causal effects, and reasons for action are nothing more than beliefs combined with desires or volitions. If this account is accepted, then reflexive cognitions, insofar as they are asserted thoughts, that is, beliefs, can acquire causal efficacy when appropriately associated with volitions that direct attention.

Through this association with volitional processes, reflexive cognitions can regulate lower-order mental states and thereby influence the actions that arise from them. Reflexive consciousness, in this sense, is not epiphenomenal but functionally integrated into the causal architecture of cognition and action.

Since first-order mental events can generally be regarded as representations, reflexive consciousness necessarily involves reflexive representations or meta-cognitions of these states. Accordingly, reflexive consciousness may be described in two complementary ways. In a relational sense, often termed transitive consciousness, we are conscious of our first-order states. In a non-relational sense, as state consciousness, we say that first-order mental states themselves are conscious.[3] Thus, one may assert, “I am conscious of my feelings for Julia” (transitive consciousness) or, alternatively, “My feelings for Julia are conscious” (state consciousness). Reflexive representations enable us to become aware of first-order mental states, though they cannot themselves be objects of direct awareness. To achieve consciousness of reflexive representations, they would need to be taken as objects of further meta-reflexive cognitions (meta-meta-cognitions), and so on. As David Rosenthal has observed, the thought at the highest level of this hierarchy always remains beyond the reach of consciousness.

The relation between reflexive and sensory consciousness is particularly instructive. First-person awareness of sensory consciousness is possible only because we can form reflexive cognitions, or representations, of sensory and perceptual states. In this respect, perceptual consciousness is paradoxically a non-conscious form of consciousness. A cat, for example, may recognize a dog and feel fear, yet it is unlikely to be conscious of confronting its archenemy or even of being afraid.[4]

The adoption of the concepts of reflexive and sensory consciousness provides a useful framework for explaining several intriguing empirical phenomena:

 

1. Somnambulism (Sleepwalking)

Sleepwalkers are able to sit up, walk, and even engage in potentially hazardous activities while asleep, yet afterward they are unable to recall their actions. This can be explained by positing that reflexive consciousness is inactive, while sensory consciousness continues to function. The absence of reflexive monitoring prevents the encoding of experiences into memory, despite ongoing sensory-driven behavior.

 

2. Blind-sight

Individuals with blind-sight suffer lesions in region V1 of the visual cortex, impairing the integration of visual information. Although they report no conscious visual experience, they can nonetheless respond accurately to stimuli in their impaired visual field—for example, by catching objects or navigating around obstacles. This phenomenon suggests that sensory visual consciousness remains intact, but reflexive consciousness of visual states is absent. Consequently, the individual is unable to reflect upon or report the experience of “seeing,” despite demonstrable sensory processing.

 

3. Libet’s Experiments on Readiness Potential

Libet’s experiments reveal that unconscious neural activity—the readiness potential—precedes the conscious awareness of a decision to act. The readiness potential emerges approximately 350 milliseconds before the action, whereas conscious awareness of the decision arises only about 200 milliseconds prior to movement. This temporal gap can be explained by distinguishing between sensory and reflexive consciousness: sensory consciousness coincides with the readiness potential, while reflexive consciousness arises later, enabling meta-cognitive monitoring. Importantly, Libet also demonstrated that subjects retain the capacity to suppress or withhold the action during the intervening period, underscoring the regulatory role of reflexive consciousness. These findings highlight the extent to which sensory consciousness operates beneath awareness, while reflexive consciousness provides the reflective dimension of agency.

 

4. Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams are characterized by the dreamer’s awareness of dreaming and the ability to exert volitional control over dream content. Such dreams are typically experienced with heightened clarity and are more easily recalled upon waking. Reflexive consciousness offers a compelling explanation: when meta-cognitive representations of dream processes emerge, the dream state becomes reflexively accessible, thereby enhancing both awareness and memory.

 

The principal alternatives to reflexive accounts of consciousness are what may be termed integrationist views.[5] According to these perspectives, conscious states are not defined by their being the object of reflexive cognition, but rather by their capacity to be integrated into the broader system of the subject’s mental states and motor functions—particularly in relation to action and speech. By contrast, unconscious mental states tend to remain isolated: they cannot be rendered conscious through their ordinary associations with other cognitive states, nor are they typically connected to the motor system, especially to speech, as exemplified in cases of non-reportable subliminal perception. From this standpoint, repressed and subliminal states are unconscious not because they lack meta-cognitive representation, but because they fail to achieve sufficient integration with the wider mental system. Thus, two competing explanatory frameworks emerge: the integrationist and the reflexive.

At this juncture, I wish to propose a reconciliatory hypothesis. My suggestion is that integration is ordinarily mediated by reflexive cognition, which possesses a binding property: the capacity to integrate the first-order state it refers to with a system of other states. Bernard Baars’s metaphor of the “theater of consciousness” in his global workspace theory—an integrationist model—provides a useful illustration (1997). In this metaphor, a conscious state is likened to a mental state illuminated by the spotlight of attention, enabling it to be broadcast to the wider auditorium of pre-conscious and unconscious states. While compelling, I would add that reflexive cognition itself constitutes the spotlight directed by attention. This proposal has intuitive appeal: when we become aware of a mental state, we necessarily recognize it through cognitive means, and in doing so, we inevitably relate it to other states and, at least potentially, to the entire system, including the motor system.

Consider, for example, a patient undergoing a temporal lobe epileptic seizure. Such a patient may act and even speak, thereby exhibiting a degree of integration. Yet this integration is deficient, justifying the description of a “narrowed field of consciousness.” Crucially, reflexive consciousness is absent, as evidenced by the patient’s inability to recall his actions after recovery. In my view, reflexive cognition and integration are inseparable; reflexive cognition functions as a mechanism for enhancing integration. They are two aspects of a single unifying process.[6]

Finally, this reconciliatory proposal also addresses a central objection often raised against reflexive accounts of consciousness—namely, that they fail to provide a criterion for distinguishing between reflexive cognitions that confer consciousness and those that do not (Seager 1999: 82). My proposed solution is that the criterion lies in the binding property of a non-inferential, simultaneously reflexive cognition generated by attention. What renders a reflexive cognition suitable for consciousness is precisely its capacity to integrate the lower-order state it refers to into the broader system of mental states.

 

3. Thinking consciousness

A final, more controversial point concerns the need to posit an additional form of consciousness to accommodate certain resilient intuitions. In many cases, we appear to be conscious of things that do not fall neatly into the categories of present perceptual, sensory, or emotional experience, nor are they simultaneously meta-represented by specific mental states. Suppose, for example, that I think that:

 

1.      Heinrich Schliemann discovered the site of Troy.

2.      The sum of the internal angles of a Euclidean triangle is 180ºThe Moon is a large spherical rocky object orbiting the Earth.

3.      It is impossible that the same thing be and not to bed not be the same thing at the same time and in the same respect.”

4.      The Moon is a large, spherical, rocky object orbiting the Earth.

5.      The sum total of matter and energy in a closed system remains constant over time.

6.      I cannot simultaneously go to a movie and to my favourite restaurant.

 

We may regard such judgments as constituents of thinking consciousness insofar as they do not require metacognition to be conscious. They appear conscious “by luminescence”: their very presence entails awareness of their content. Reflexive meta-cognition may accompany them, but it is not necessary; even when entertained without reflection, they are already conscious in a substantive sense.

   This possibility seems grounded in their position within a broader network of beliefs. A judgment may be conscious because it is verified, for example, the claim that Schliemann discovered Troy, supported by reports of the excavations at Hisarlik in the 1870s. It may be derived from axioms of geometry, or sustained by philosophical argument, as in Aristotle’s defense of the principle of non-contradiction. In each case, the judgment’s integration within a system of beliefs confers its conscious status.

   Some philosophers have inferred from this that conscious mental states intrinsically generate reflexive higher-order representations. Yet this view is implausible: it would eliminate the possibility of unconscious mental states and lacks intuitive support. Consider the thought that I cannot simultaneously attend the cinema and dine at my favourite restaurant. One is conscious of this thought without reflexive awareness, because its content is apprehended against a background of perceptual and representational structures referring to external states of affairs. Thinking consciousness thus functions analogously to reflexive consciousness, rendering us aware of the sensory experiences or formal principles implicated in our present judgements.

   Present judgments, then, acquire their conscious status not merely through reflexive awareness but through their representational and integrative roles. This perspective challenges the primacy of what Ned Block (2008) termed access consciousness, defined as information available for reasoning, reporting, and action. Block’s account implies that statements (1)–(6), even when not presently entertained, belong to access consciousness by virtue of their availability.

   My suggestion is that access consciousness belongs to consciousness only in a secondary, derivative sense. An ordinary language examination is called for here. We can say that we know the truths of statements (1) to (6) without thinking about them. We can say we are aware of such truths, that we have the consciousness of them, but not that we are conscious of them. We cannot even say that these available judgments belong to our consciousness unless we unduly confuse consciousness with mentality. The conclusion is that, by calling access consciousness a form of consciousness, Block confuses something that results from being conscious with being conscious itself.

 

 

 

References:

 

Armstrong, David. The Nature of Mind. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980.

Armstrong, D. M. Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

Baars, Bernard J. In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Block, Ned. “Consciousness and Cognitive Access.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108, no. 1 (2008): 289–317.

Lycan, W. C. Consciousness and Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Rosenthal, David. “Consciousness and Its Function.” Neuropsychologia 46, no. 3 (2008): 829–840.

Rosenthal, David. “Explaining Consciousness.” In Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, edited by David J. Chalmers, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Russell, Bertrand. An Outline of Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1970.

Seager, William. Theories of Consciousness: An Introduction and Assessment. London: Routledge, 1999.

Searle, John R. Consciousness and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

 

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* Full Professor, UFRN; e-mail: ruvstof@gmail.com

[1] Armstrong’s expression ‘perceptual consciousness’ is suggestive, but somewhat misleading: if a person has a headache, she has perceptual consciousness of it; however, she is not perceiving, but rather feeling her headache. The same holds for emotions or feelings: feelings are felt, not perceived, although feelings alone cannot in my view be conscious.

[2] The reflexive theory of consciousness has its origins in the philosophical tradition. But it was introduced into the contemporary philosophy of mind by David Armstrong in the already mentioned paper, as a theory of higher-order perception. David Rosenthal has over the years developed a detailed version of the reflexive view of consciousness as demanding a simultaneous and suitable higher-order thought about a lower-level state in order to make it conscious. If we understand words like ‘perception’ and ‘internal vision’ in the first theory as mere metaphors, and the word ‘thought’ in the second theory as a mere act of cognitive experience that does not necessarily require language, then both theories tend to merge into a single theory, because a higher-order cognitive representation or experience seems to be an essential common element of both. Only the emphases are different. I also think that Rosenthal is mistaken in believing that his theory is incompatible with Armstrong’s and W. C. Lycan’s view that reflexive consciousness has a monitoring function, as the development of my text shows. In my exposition, I try to be neutral and use the vague and ambiguous term cognition as something assumed in both views. (See Armstrong 1999: 114-120; Lycan 1996, Ch. 2; : 120, (, Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 114-120; Rosenthal 2002).

[3] The distinction between a relational and a non-relational way is explained in Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy, chap. XX. David Rosenthal and most theorists call these ways of speaking about consciousness, respectively, transitive and intransitive states of consciousness.

[4] Defenders of first-order theories of consciousness tend to reduce state consciousness to sensory consciousness. As a result, they find it hard to explain the unconsciousness of many states of awareness.

[5] Integrationist views of consciousness were already held by thinkers from Kant to Freud. But they have, in different ways, also been emphasized in the contemporary philosophy of consciousness by Daniel Dennett (with his view that consciousness is cerebral celebrity), by Ned Block (with his definition of access-consciousness as the poising of a state for free use in reasoning and for directing action), by Bernard Baars (with the view that consciousness is the broadcasting of content under the spotlight of attention to the global mental workspace), by G. M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi (with the idea that consciousness corresponds to the brain’s ability to integrate information), and by many others.

[6] Reflexive cognition is not the only way to achieve integration. As we will see, thinking consciousness could also have an integrative dimension, and we should not confuse the two.