How many kinds of consciousness?
Consciousness and cognition December 1, 2002 David M Rosenthal 118 citations
Ned Block's widely used distinction between phenomenal consciousness (raw subjective experience) and access consciousness (information available for reasoning and action) is flawed because it smuggles in unargued theoretical assumptions. The distinction between phenomenal and reflexive consciousness also suffers from this problem. While mental states with qualitative character differ from those without, being conscious is the same property for both. Block's notion of access consciousness does not capture what we intuitively mean by a mental state's being conscious. More critically, his concept of phenomenal consciousness is ambiguous between two distinct mental properties, which begs important theoretical questions. Once these are distinguished, qualitative consciousness can be explained by a model like the higher-order-thought hypothesis.