TOWARDS A UNIFIED THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  

 

TOWARDS A UNIDIWS THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 

 

Summary

 This article advances the claim that a higher-order theory of consciousness offers the most promising candidate for a general theory capable of unifying disparate approaches. Consciousness, it is argued, manifests in two fundamental forms: Experiential consciousness—the immediate awareness of the world and bodily states, shared with non-human animals. Reflective consciousness—the capacity to monitor and represent one’s own mental states. This distinction provides explanatory leverage for phenomena such as somnambulism, blindsight, lucid dreaming, and Libet’s experiments, while also accommodating some of the most compelling insights of first-order theories.

Keywords: perceptual consciousness; theories of consciousness; introspection; philosophy of mind.

Sumário:

 Este artigo avança a afirmação de que uma teoria de ordem superior da consciência oferece o candidato mais promissor para uma teoria geral capaz de unificar abordagens díspares. Argumenta-se que a consciência se manifesta em duas formas fundamentais: consciência experiencial — a consciência imediata do mundo e dos estados corporais, compartilhada com animais não humanos. Consciência reflexiva — a capacidade de monitorar e representar os próprios estados mentais. Essa distinção fornece uma alavanca explicativa para fenômenos como sonambulismo, visão cega, sonhos lúcidos e os experimentos de Libet, ao mesmo tempo em que acomoda alguns dos insights mais convincentes das teorias de primeira ordem.

Palavras-chave: consciência perceptual; teorias da consciência; introspecção; filosofia da mente.

 

1. Introduction

The concept of consciousness is notoriously polysemic, and the philosophical landscape is populated by a multitude of competing theories. The central question, then, is whether a general theory of consciousness is possible—one that can reconcile what is right in these divergent accounts. The present article contends that a two-level model of consciousness is best suited to this task.

The proposed framework rests on a linguistic and conceptual analysis of how the term consciousness is employed in ordinary discourse, supplemented by empirical findings. The thesis is that consciousness divides most fundamentally into two levels:

(A) Experiential consciousness: constituted by first-order mental states, encompassing perceptions, sensations, affects, and reactive dispositions.

(B)  Reflective consciousness: constituted by higher-order mental states, including the cognition of mental states, introspection, and self-awareness.

This segmentation, it is argued, captures the most basic structure of the concept. Reflective consciousness depends upon experiential consciousness, yet the two are often conflated because they typically co-occur. For clarity, they must be distinguished, thereby avoiding conceptual overlap and illuminating their relation of dependence.

 

2. Experiential Consciousness

John Searle famously characterized consciousness as “what happens when we wake up, spend the whole day with it, and which disappears when we sleep dreamlessly, when we fall into a coma, or die” (Searle, 2002: 7). While this description may encompass moments of reflective awareness, it most consistently captures esperiential consciousness, the form of consciousness that accompanies wakefulness and perceptual engagement with the world.

  Among the phenomena of wakefulness, perception stands out as a constant. It is therefore tempting to treat perceptual consciousness as a fundamental category, defined by the continuous awareness of the surrounding environment (Armstrong 1968; Armstrong 1999, ch. 10). Indeed, the extension of the term consciousness to animals seems to support this view: we readily say that rabbits or hamsters are conscious insofar as they perceive and respond to their environment. When sedated, they “lose consciousness,” and medical tests—such as eliciting a reflex by spraying water into the ear—are designed precisely to detect residual perceptual awareness.

  Yet difficulties arise if perception alone is taken as the criterion. A newspaper headline once proclaimed that “scientists discovered that flies have consciousness.” If perceptual navigation suffices, then flies qualify. But should we also ascribe consciousness to paramecia, which reverse their cilia when threatened, or to bacteria, viruses, carnivorous plants, and even robots? Few would be willing to extend the concept so far. The boundaries of perception are broader than those of consciousness, which seems to apply only to organisms with a certain threshold of mental and behavioral sophistication.

   The alternative, therefore, is to situate perception within the broader category of experiential consciousness. It is more coherent to say that insects lack experience than to deny them perception. Experiential consciousness encompasses not only perceptual states but also sensations, volitions, cognitions, and reactive dispositions—the automatic input-output processes of the mind. On this account, hamsters may be said to possess experiential consciousness, but flies and paramecia do not.

   Importantly, experiential consciousness extends beyond external perception to include internal states such as pain, proprioception, and affect. Emotions like anger, plausibly attributed to reptiles, exemplify consciousness at this level. For this reason, the term “experiential consciousness” is preferable: it designates a form of awareness we share with many animals, though not with simpler organisms.

   Finally, it must be noted that perceptual consciousness is typically ascribed from a third-person perspective. We infer that an animal is conscious because its behavior indicates perception and reaction. The animal itself, however, cannot linguistically articulate or recognize its own consciousness. This underscores the pre-reflective character of experiential consciousness and highlights the need to distinguish it from reflective consciousness, which involves the capacity to represent and thematize one’s own mental states.

 

3. Reflexive Consciousness

The second fundamental sense of the term consciousness—one that can be verified in its usage—is what I call reflective consciousness, generalizing an intuition first articulated by John Locke. In his Essay (1690: II, i. 4), Locke introduced this notion by highlighting the ideas the mind forms when it reflects upon its own mental states: perceiving, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, and willing. These he termed “ideas of reflection,” that is, ideas about the ideas of perceiving, thinking, doubting, and so forth. In other words (though Locke did not employ this terminology), when the mind turns back upon its own acts, it produces second-order cognitions of its first-order mental states—“ideas of ideas,” in his phrase. The existence of such higher-order cognitions is the hallmark of reflective consciousness.

   A similar concept was introduced into contemporary philosophy of mind by D. M. Armstrong, who described mental states as objects of higher-order perception, drawing inspiration from Kant’s notion of an “inner sense” (1980, pp. 55–67). First-order states such as sensations, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, and volitions become conscious when they are taken as objects by higher-order states. An example may clarify this: imagine someone with a faint toothache throughout the day. The pain only becomes conscious when attention is directed toward it—when it becomes the object of reflection. The expression “It only hurts when I think about it” acquires here a precise philosophical meaning.

   The most significant idea advanced by Armstrong was the explanation he offered for the emergence of consciousness. For him, when first-order systems reach a sufficiently high level of complexity, the rise of higher-order mental states capable of monitoring them becomes necessary. Consciousness, in its most relevant sense—present only in human beings and certain animals—emerges precisely when biological organisms develop capacities for self-monitoring.

   Within this framework, it is appropriate to adopt the term reflective consciousness in a broad sense, encompassing particular cases such as introspective thought and self-awareness. Another point worth noting is that the term experiential consciousness is generally employed in the third person. We know that a rabbit possesses experiential consciousness by virtue of its behavior, which in some respects resembles our own. Yet we doubt that it has reflective consciousness. Access to experiential consciousness in ourselves is not straightforward, since it is almost always overlaid by concomitant reflective experience. Hence, the term reflective consciousness is used primarily in the first person. I may affirm: “I am conscious that I am writing.” However, I cannot be equally certain that the reader, while following the text, is exercising reflective consciousness.

   There is evidence that some animals are also capable of reflective consciousness. One example comes from a problem-solving test with orangutans, in which the experimenter presents the animal with a task he knows it cannot solve. Upon realizing its failure, the orangutan covers its face with its arm in an unmistakable gesture of shame. It is conscious that it itself has erred. The gesture is interpreted as evidence of reflective consciousness, reinforcing the idea that these primates possess a sophisticated level of self-awareness. Another form of evidence is the capacity of a child or animal to recognize itself in a mirror (Gallup 1970). Recognition of the image as one’s own is a sign that the individual has attained self-awareness, that it has reached reflective consciousness of its perceptions. Reflective consciousness as self-recognition has been observed not only in primates such as orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos, but also in dolphins, elephants, and certain birds.

   Another thinker who studied reflective consciousness was David Rosenthal (2005). He rejected Armstrong’s notion of perception of internal states, considering the perceptual metaphor clearly inadequate. In its place, he introduced the concept of higher-order thought. We are conscious of a thought, an emotion, a sensation, or a perception only when we have a second-order thought that reflects it. This second-order thought, as Rosenthal noted, remains unconscious. For it to become conscious, a third-order thought must emerge, taking the second-order thought as its object, and so on. According to Rosenthal, the thought at the top is never conscious, which explains why theories of consciousness as higher-order thought took so long to be developed.

   It cannot be said that Rosenthal’s theory differs substantially from Armstrong’s proposal. I suggest replacing the terms perception and thought with cognition, a notion that would likely be acceptable to both. We may thus say that forms of reflective consciousness emerge when mental states become objects of higher-order cognitions.

   It is important to emphasize that reflective consciousness necessarily presupposes sensory consciousness. In other words, reflective consciousness could not develop without the prior existence of sensory consciousness, since the latter serves as its foundation. Immediate experience, linked to perception and feeling, constitutes the basis upon which processes of self-monitoring and introspection characteristic of reflective consciousness are built. Beyond this, sensory consciousness, as we shall soon see, has little of the “conscious” in the stronger sense of the term.

 

4. Addressing Problems

The admission of a distinction between experiential and reflective consciousness allows us to resolve certain classical problems in the philosophy of mind while simultaneously reinforcing the dichotomy's pertinence.

   Sleepwalking. Individuals in a state of somnambulism are capable of moving about while asleep, even avoiding obstacles and opening doors, without being consciously aware. Upon awakening, they typically fail to recall their actions. The explanation lies in the fact that the system of sensory consciousness remains active, whereas reflective consciousness is “switched off.” For this reason, we do not say that the sleepwalker is conscious: his sensory consciousness operates unconsciously, and thus does not constitute consciousness in the strong sense of the term. From a neuroscientific perspective, sleepwalking corresponds to the inactivity of prefrontal cortical areas—responsible for reasoning, judgment, and decision-making—while subcortical regions, such as the cerebellum and motor circuits, remain active. This enables the sleepwalker to perform simple tasks without possessing reflective awareness of his actions

Lucid Dreams.Another phenomenon that can be illuminated by the distinction between sensory and reflective consciousness is that of lucid dreaming. These are vivid oneiric experiences that occur shortly before awakening, or that can be experimentally induced under laboratory or therapeutic conditions. In such cases, the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming and, to some extent, is able to direct the unfolding of dream events. For this reason, such experiences are also referred to as “conscious dreams.” Lucid dreaming is hybrid in nature: the body remains in REM sleep, while the mind partially awakens, enabling the dreamer to recognize the dream state. The activation of reflective consciousness opens the possibility of voluntary intervention—choosing to fly, altering

Blindsight. The condition of “blindsight” provides a further case in point. A person with blindsight suffers a lesion in the V1 region of the occipital cortex, resulting in blindness in the visual field corresponding to the opposite hemisphere. Yet such individuals are able, with high probability, to correctly guess the direction of a moving object before them. Moreover, they may succeed in avoiding obstacles, despite lacking conscious awareness of visual perception.

   The explanation is straightforward: the subject has lost reflective visual consciousness, and thus does not experience seeing in the strong sense. Nevertheless, she retains sufficient perceptual consciousness to preserve certain functional properties, allowing, for example, the avoidance of obstacles. From a neuroscientific perspective, the distinction is well grounded. A lesion in the occipital V1 area eliminates the subjective experience of “seeing.” Yet secondary visual pathways—such as those routed through the superior colliculus and pulvinar—remain operative. These pathways enable the brain to process visual information unconsciously, sustaining a residual form of sensory-perceptual awareness.

The Libet Experiment. Benjamin Libet’s celebrated experiment has become a landmark in debates concerning consciousness and free will. In it, participants were instructed to perform a hand movement in response to a luminous stimulus. The central discovery was that approximately 350 milliseconds prior to the conscious decision to act, the brain already exhibits the so‑called readiness potential (Bereitschaftspotential), recorded via electroencephalogram. This potential indicates that motor preparation is underway, even though the subject is not consciously aware of the process. Once the conscious decision emerges, the subject retains only the possibility of vetoing the action—choosing not to move the hand.

   The theory of the dual form of consciousness offers a compelling explanation of this phenomenon. The readiness potential corresponds to experiential consciousness unaccompanied by reflective consciousness. Hence, the subject lacks conscious access to the initial process. Only after roughly 350 milliseconds does reflective consciousness arise, enabling the monitoring of first‑order mental states. It is precisely this monitoring function that allows the subject to interrupt the action in a deliberate manner.

   Libet himself, along with many neuroscientists, interpreted these results as evidence against free will, since unconscious decision‑making appears to precede conscious choice. Such an inference would be correct if our states of consciousness were exhausted by sensory consciousness, which—as argued earlier—does not qualify as consciousness in the strong sense. In that case, human action would indeed resemble the behavior of rabbits or hamsters. Yet the human decision‑making process is far more complex, and free will can be defended within a more refined version of compatibilism (Costa 2006). From this perspective, free will emerges in complex acts of decision grounded in reasons (beliefs + desires)—such as paying taxes, studying for an exam, purchasing a house, or initiating legal proceedings. These acts invariably presuppose the intervention of reflective consciousness in the reasoning that precedes decision.

   This analysis also addresses the objection that, even if causal antecedents of our decisions and actions can be identified, we nonetheless feel free in deciding and acting. The response is that this feeling of freedom arises from the absence of higher‑order cognitions capable of monitoring and integrating the decision‑making process. Since such cognitions would themselves require an even higher level of awareness, the complete knowledge of causal factors is structurally impossible, entailing an infinite regress. Hence the inevitable, though illusory, “sense of freedom.”

   In sum, Libet’s experiment demonstrates that in very simple decisions (such as the reflex act of pressing the brake at a red light), action preparation begins unconsciously and is only subsequently appropriated by reflective consciousness. This reinforces the thesis that reflective consciousness confers the genuine “status of consciousness” upon mental states, enabling both monitoring and the possibility of redirecting or vetoing action.

 

5. Contrast with First‑Order Theories

Contemporary literature presents a wide variety of theories of consciousness, with differing degrees of plausibility. Among them, the so‑called first‑order theories stand out, seeking to explain consciousness in terms of basic mental states. From the standpoint of the analysis developed above, such theories typically collapse the two fundamental forms of consciousness—experiential and reflective—into a single attempt to investigate the phenomenon as a whole. While this procedure has in many respects been fruitful, it also entails the loss of important conceptual distinctions. To show how the distinction just considered can account for first‑order theories, I now examine three examples.

   The first theory to consider is Daniel Dennett’s “multiple drafts” model (1991). As is well known, the brain operates through parallel processes, most of them unconscious and mutually competitive. Some of these processes succeed in the competition and thereby become conscious. From the standpoint of second-order theory, the mental process that attains consciousness is precisely the one that has become the object of higher-order cognition. Dennett’s account thus reveals an intriguing mechanism by which mental processes are transformed into objects of higher-order awareness.

   Another first-order theory is Bernard Baars’s “global workspace” model of consciousness (1997). For Baars, the mind resembles a stage upon which the spotlight of consciousness is directed. Whatever is illuminated by the spotlight becomes the principal actor—the mental states rendered conscious. Beyond the spotlight lies the preconscious penumbra of the surrounding audience. Baars acknowledges the existence of metacognition, which points toward higher-order cognition, though he does not elaborate upon its details. From the perspective of second-order theory, however, the metaphor of the spotlight must be interpreted as higher-order cognitions that render first-order states conscious. In this sense, Baars’s workspace theory is best understood as a metaphorical, though in some respects enriching, formulation of the reflective conception of consciousness.

   A third first-order theory worth noting is Ned Block’s distinction between phenomenal consciousness (P-consciousness) and access consciousness (A-consciousness). The former concerns the subjective aspect of experience—the “what it is like” of pain, for instance, the qualia. The latter concerns the availability of information for cognitive processes such as reasoning, language, and action. It is straightforward to interpret Block’s phenomenal consciousness as the result of reflective cognition upon first-order mental states, the awareness of qualia such as pain. But what of access consciousness? One way to explain it would be to treat it as a third form of consciousness, sometimes called propositional or discursive consciousness. For example: I am conscious that the Moon is Earth’s satellite, that in Newtonian mechanics force equals mass times acceleration, that 7 + 5 = 12, and I can employ this information in reasoning or action. I am conscious of all this, but this consciousness is dispositional rather than occurrent. Consequently, it seems distinct from the two fundamental forms of consciousness considered.

   Yet perhaps it is more accurate to regard “access consciousness” (or propositional, or discursive consciousness) as a derivative sense of the term “consciousness.” These propositions ultimately depend upon reflective cognitions of prior sensory-perceptual states. Thus, I am conscious that the Moon orbits the Earth, of Newton’s second law, or that 7 + 5 = 12, only because of prior reflective awareness of perceptual states—seeing the Moon, feeling the resistance of physical bodies, counting seven pears and five apples, and summing them to twelve fruits. In this way, when we speak of access consciousness, the term “consciousness” applies only in a derivative sense, ultimately dependent upon reflective awareness of first-order mental states. Access consciousness, then, is secondary, for it could not exist without the fundamental forms of consciousness already explained.

 

 

6. Conclusion

The proposal of a dual structure of consciousness emerges as a formulation that is simple, intuitive, and at the same time effective in organizing the problematic at hand. Models such as Dennett’s, which emphasize competition among parallel processes, or Baars’s, centered on the global workspace, may be understood as functional descriptions of the mechanisms by which sensory-emotional contents are selected and disseminated. Yet such contents only become fully conscious when illuminated by reflective cognition. In this regard, Block’s notion of “access consciousness” contributes to clarifying a significant aspect of what may be called “having consciousness,” albeit in a derivative sense.

   The perspective suggested here could provide greater conceptual clarity, avoiding confusions between unconscious perceptual experience and full consciousness. Moreover, it enables theoretical integration: first-order conceptions may be regarded as complementary, rather than as rivals, to the reflective framework. Finally, the proposal outlines a comprehensive vision by advancing a simple architecture for thinking about consciousness, without relinquishing the explanatory richness of more complex models.

   Summarizing: a consistent research program, aimed at the construction of a general theory of consciousness, should admit two fundamental levels, within which existing categories may be situated as explanations of stages or specific components of the process.

 

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