Consciousness operationalized, a debate realigned.

The paper revisits the debate about cognitive phenomenology, elaborating and defending a proposal that the test for irreducible phenomenology is the presence of explanatory gaps. It argues that the debate should be aligned between non-conceptual and conceptual or propositional phenomenology, rather than between sensory and cognitive phenomenology. The authors defend three varieties of non-sensory, non-conceptual phenomenology: valence, a sense of approximate number, and a sense of elapsed time.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper revisits the debate about cognitive phenomenology. It elaborates, defends, and improves on our earlier proposal for resolving that debate, according to which the test for irreducible phenomenology is the presence of explanatory gaps. After showing how proposals like ours have been misunderstood or misused by others, we deploy our operationalization to argue that the correct way to align the debate over cognitive phenomenology is not between sensory and (alleged) cognitive phenomenology, but rather between non-conceptual and (alleged) conceptual or propositional phenomenology. In doing so we defend three varieties of non-sensory (amodal)1 non-conceptual phenomenology: valence, a sense of approximate number, and a sense of elapsed time.