Do we have different kinds of consciousness?
In the previous chapters, we have discussed several aspects of consciousness. We started from our own intuitions, and now we will examine the theories put forward by researchers based on their own intuitions. This section will discuss the main qualities of different kinds of consciousness, as expressed by contemporary researchers.
Access to consciousness
Block (1991) distinguishes two types of consciousness or at least two distinct phenomena to which the word consciousness refers. The first is what he calls access to consciousness, that is to say the specific conscious experiences that allow access to information from different mental processes, including verbal reports. If, for example, in reasoning about a problem, I explain my reasoning to another person, my report will reveal something about the way in which I access my consciousness, my awarenesses, this involving access to information about my own reasoning. For example, again in playing a crossword puzzle, I may indicate that I am thinking of an anagram for a particular definition. I may talk aloud about the letters I am using and how I am going to arrange them. These reports are evidence that I have conscious access to the process of solving a crossword puzzle. Of course, there may be a moment when the solution comes as an inner flash, which is another way of saying that I do not have conscious access to the process of arriving at the solution.
These verbal reports are techniques based on the analysis of protocols (Ericsson and Simon, 1980): people are encouraged to give reports aloud while performing a task, and their conscious accounts are taken as evidence of the processes involved. Young and Block (1996) suggest that we are conscious or that We access consciousness when we think about a mental state, describe its contents, and use it to guide action. This definition could be extended to include emotions and memories. because acts of recognition and memories also involve access to consciousness; Just like perception when we are conscious of accessing perceptual information about our environment.
Perception can be conscious or non-conscious. Conscious perception is defined in terms of becoming aware of aspects of our environment through the integration of stored knowledge and sensory information. Conscious perception is a means of accessing consciousness. In conscious perception, we access information derived from our perception of the world. Thus, you can make verbal reports of what you see and compare them to those of others. The reports may be different. But all of this proves access to our perceptions.
Consciousness appears to allow access to the same information for other mental processes: Being aware of the shrub outside my window allows me to identify the object, reason about it, and communicate about it.
Phenomenal consciousness
The second type of consciousness Block discusses, phenomenal consciousness, is the aspect of consciousness we already discussed when we discussed "diffuse feelings," sensations, or impressions. To understand what phenomenal consciousness is, imagine you are enjoying a cup of coffee. Your conscious experience can be described in terms of the information you have access to, with your perceptions providing you with enough information to recognize the liquid as coffee. Depending on how you take your coffee, you will also be able to distinguish the taste of milk or sugar. You will be able to judge its temperature, even roughly. If you are more experienced than I am, you might even be able to recognize the origin of the coffee used.
However, phenomenal consciousness goes beyond this type of information. It encompasses the experience or feeling of tasting coffee. Nagel (1974) in an article entitled 'What is it like to be a bat' explains what phenomenal consciousness is: If an organism is conscious, then it must know what it feels like to be that organism. If a bat is conscious, then there must be something that is like being a bat. Nagel's position helps us resolve some of the problems involved in the coffee example. To understand our conscious experience of tasting coffee, we should be able to describe what it is like to taste coffee, information that can be obtained in multiple ways. For example, temperature can be measured with a thermometer. We can see whether milk is mixed with the coffee or not. But all of this information can be obtained without tasting coffee, and so it does not help us understand the experience of tasting coffee. According to Nagel, this tells us nothing about what the experience or sensation of tasting coffee is like.
Consciousness and control
Young and Block distinguish these two types of consciousness, access to consciousness and phenomenal consciousness, from two other types of consciousness: pilot consciousness and self-awareness. Controlling consciousness refers to the conscious experience that arises from reflecting on one's own actions and mental states. This form of consciousness allows us to control our own mental state and perhaps to act when the result of the control reveals deviations from the initial goal. Even the simple act of unwrapping a candy and putting it in your mouth involves a form of control. We usually take this control for granted, and it's only when something goes wrong that we realize we should have controlled things a little more closely.
James Reason wrote a journal about the mistakes we make every day. He asked participants to write down every time they made a mistake in any action. He found that a number of mistakes were attributable to a lack of control (Reason, 1979). One participant reported, "Taking the wrapper off the candy, putting the paper in my mouth, and throwing the candy in the trash." Another wrote, "When I leave for work in the morning, I usually give my dog biscuits and put earrings in front of the hallway mirror. One morning I threw the earrings at the dog and saw myself trying to attach a dog biscuit to my ears." Another also reported, "I was about to get into my bathtub when I discovered I was still dressed."
Reason's explanations for these errors rely on a distinction between two kinds of mental processes: first, attention, and the fact that even automatic processes require cognitive resources.. For Reason, complex action sequences probably contain largely automated processes. However, to execute the sequences correctly, he suggests that at certain points, the way in which the sequences are carried out must be controlled, perhaps to choose between two automatic processes. This is when attention or conscious control of the sequence of actions is necessary.
Lack of conscious piloting can also be seen in patients suffering of anosognosia, an inability to recognize one's own illness or disability. Damasio describes one of his patients, DJ, who was totally paralyzed on her left side. Although she was unable to move her left arm and hand, she said she was perfectly healthy and had no disability. Doubts only arose when she was asked to move her arm and found herself unable to do so. She would then say that 'this arm didn't move much by itself' (Damasio, 1999). In cases like this, patients seem to block out certain aspects of their awareness; their conscious ability to control their bodily behavior seems diminished.
Self-awareness
Young and block (1996) introduced a fourth type of consciousness, self-consciousness, a form of consciousness that involves a concept of the 'Self' and its use in thinking and reflecting on oneself. Self-awareness involves not only awareness of oneself here and now, but also in the past and future. It thus suggests a very broad sense of awareness, one that encompasses an autobiographical approach to the self. Unsurprisingly, cases of amnesia The periods during which autobiographical memory is interrupted highlight some aspects of self-awareness. We have presented the case of Damasio's patient DT, who experienced temporary amnesia after suffering a head injury. After the accident, DT appeared agitated and lost and no longer seemed to know who he was. Another example is HM, who was no longer able to form new long-term memories after epilepsy surgery, which had major consequences for his sense of self. Even in old age, he believed he was a young man and that his friends and family, who had died, were still alive. Apparently, his identity had frozen at the time of the surgery when he was 25 (Carter, 1998).
Asomatognosia also gives an idea of what may be involved in self-consciousness. This is a state in which the patient seems unable to recognize their own body and, more curiously, unable to even recognize that they have a body. Damasio describes patient LB who experienced episodes of this condition after suffering a cardiac arrest. During one of these episodes, LB was apparently unable to sense her body, although her mind was alert and active. Although she could pinch herself, she felt nothing at the time, although the feeling returned after a few minutes. She also described another episode as follows: 'I didn't lose the sense of being, but just my body' (Damasio, 1999). LB had apparently lost the awareness of having a body, the sense of having an embodied self. In fact, DT hadn't exactly lost this sense. Rather, she seemed to have lost a sense of her own autobiography. Perhaps there are different kinds of Self-consciousness or different kinds of Selves.
A framework for studying consciousness
Visit four types of consciousness that I have just presented fit perfectly with the few themes that we intuitively addressed in the previous chapter. For example, we explored the importance of language and memory. We also talked about the fact that our descriptions of consciousness were dominated by the descriptions of objects of which we are conscious. With Block's research, we have described how access to consciousness occurs from the perception and memory as demonstrated by verbal reports. We also studied something that is much more difficult to describe: the process of experimenting with feelings. We also tried to describe the phenomenal consciousness and define what it could be to be aware of something (which was mainly studied by phenomenology).
These different types of consciousness allow us to better understand some of the real-life cases we have examined. During sleepwalking episodes, such as that of Ken Parkes, we can now say that there is probably no access to consciousness or self-awareness. There would however be a form of piloting by consciousness, otherwise it would be impossible to explain complex action sequences. Although we can only speculate about Ken Parkes' phenomenal consciousness, we will return to this question at the end of this study on consciousness. Cases of blindsight are perhaps the most telling examples of phenomenal consciousness, since there is some access to consciousness. Patients are not aware of seeing certain visual stimuli, but can, under certain circumstances, indicate their presence. Finally, post-traumatic amnesia seems to involve a different kind of impediment, although everything seems to indicate that at this level, the patient has access to all forms of consciousness except Self-consciousness.
One consequence of this framework of four forms of consciousness is that a comprehensive theory of consciousness will have to explain many different kinds of phenomena. In fact, when we study some specific theories, we may find that they explain only some aspects of consciousness. Thus, since there are different types of consciousness, The question is whether a single theory can provide a comprehensive explanation applicable to all cases.
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