2

What is the difference between "access" consciousness and "phenomenal" consciousness as described by Ned Block? Loosely it seems like "access" consciousness is with regards to the "intellect" (thoughts, understanding, decision making... what we call cognitive processes) whereas "phenomenal" consciousness is about "sensation".

Taken from here https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/

"The problem arises because “phenomenal consciousness,” consciousness characterized in terms of “what it’s like for the subject,” fails to succumb to the standard sort of functional explanation successful elsewhere in psychology (compare Block 1995). Psychological phenomena like learning, reasoning, and remembering can all be explained in terms of playing the right “functional role.”"

Although I agree phenomenal consciousness has this issue... I see the same issue in access consciousness too. It feels like something to understand something. It feels like something to make a decision. There is an experience of "understanding" that simultaneously involves those functional roles, as well as a phenomenal role... but it is one and the same experience that is both phenomenal and functional. I don't see how to split the two parts.

So even if all experience consisted of only cognitive processes (decisions, reasoning etc.) without sensation, I'd still say we'd be faced with the hard problem. I don't see how we can reduce "reasoning" to physical properties (mass, charge, location etc).

If indeed it didn't feel like anything to have those cognitive processes... why would we even call it consciousness?

Ameet Sharma
  • 2,951
  • 1
  • 11
  • 25
  • Access consciousness is that aspect of it where "feels like" is bracketed out. It *also* takes some processing to understand something, to make a decision, to access and transform information, etc., and it takes some modeling to explain how this is done. Some of it is done unconsciously and some consciously, *that* is access consciousness. Indeed, even explaining *that* some of mental processing should have feels attached to it and some not, and which is which (e.g. by Dennett's "cerebral celebrity"), is still part of access consciousness. It leaves out explaining the feels themselves as such. – Conifold May 29 '23 at 21:12
  • @Conifold, "Indeed, even explaining that some of mental processing should have feels attached to it and some not, and which is which (e.g. by Dennett's "cerebral celebrity"), is still part of access consciousness." So the hard problem still applies to access consciousness? – Ameet Sharma May 29 '23 at 21:21
  • No. Access and phenomenal consciousness share some of the objects of study, but they study different aspects of them. The hard problem is orthogonal to what is studied as access consciousness. – Conifold May 29 '23 at 22:04
  • "some consciously, that is access consciousness. "... yeah, but if it is done consciously... I don't see how the "feels like" is bracketed out. The "feels like" is the very thing that is causing/involved in the processing. ie: I grasp the pythagorean theorem and I consciously act on it. The consciously acting on it feels like something... it's not an additional tacked on thing. There may be additional feelings attached to experiences like "i feel happy" after learning something... but that's not what I mean here. – Ameet Sharma May 30 '23 at 02:48
  • The feels are irrelevant to the processing in a suitable sense by definition. They are qualities (1-place relations), and processing only concerns relational information (2 and more place relations). The feels seem relevant because they color the happenings, so to speak, perhaps they are even causally efficient. But that makes no difference correlationally, i.e. what grasping lines up, or what "conscious acting" does functionally. A functional model can line up and do the same things without any feels attached, even if it is metaphysically necessary for them to be so attached in reality. – Conifold May 30 '23 at 04:56
  • There are all kinds of phenomenal aspects of heat: the warmth of the sun, the warmth you feel in your face when you are embarrassed, the pain when you burn yourself, ... but these are all ignored in physics. The physicist looks only at the physical aspects of heat--the physical changes that take place based on temperature. Gas pressures increase, objects expand, color changes as the heat becomes extreme. The physicist reduces heat to just these things. Psychologists do the same thing when they reduce mental processes to just their function. – David Gudeman May 30 '23 at 07:17

0 Answers0