Unifying Theories of Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention

Unifying Theories of Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious Attention Harry Haroutioun Haladjian (h.haladjian@uws.edu.au) School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney Bankstown Campus, Penrith, NSW 2751 Australia Carlos Montemayor (cmontema@sfsu.edu) Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University San Francisco, CA 94132 USA Abstract One of the more challenging research areas in cognitive science is the attempt to understand how the brain supports consciousness. This historically philosophical endeavor is now actively studied in the sciences, with research on visual attention being an especially promising area that can further our understanding of consciousness. A major problem with this cross-disciplinary pursuit, however, is that for philosophers and scientists, the terms consciousness, attention, and conscious attention are ambiguous and used differently even by those within the same academic discipline. The goal of this paper is to begin laying the groundwork for a unified study of consciousness by delineating common terminology for attention and consciousness and by identifying the relationship between the two within the study of conscious attention. This includes categorizing current theories according to a spectrum of theoretical complexity. Keywords: attention; consciousness; conscious attention; philosophy of mind; perception. Introduction Although the relationship between consciousness and attention has been at the center of recent discussions in cognitive science, the proposals for this relationship are based on assumptions that are problematic. For instance, it is often assumed that the terms “attention” and “consciousness” unambiguously describe specific types of mental phenomena that can be identified experimentally. There is empirical evidence, however, that there are different types of attention, with different neural correlates that cannot be reduced to one another (Parasuraman, 2000), which complicates the attempt to establish a clear relationship between attention and consciousness. Furthermore, while many authors think that it is plausible to define “attention” in terms of several basic types of attention, other theorists think that defining “attention” is hopeless (see Allport, 1993; Johnston & Dark, 1986). Similarly, some theorists think that there are at least two types of consciousness (e.g., Block, 1995), and that only one of them is strictly related to the subjective experience of conscious awareness. Other theorists think that the “hard problem” of consciousness (i.e., the study of phenomenal or subjective experience) makes the empirical study of consciousness, unlike the study of perceptual attention, intractable (e.g., Chalmers, 1996; Nagel, 1974). Finally, there are theorists who think that the hard problem of consciousness is just a pseudo-problem, and that consciousness can and must be studied empirically (e.g., Churchland, 1996; Dennett, 2005). These contrasting opinions and approaches have complicated the study of consciousness in relation to attention, often resulting in a gridlock of concepts between opposing theories. It is possible, however, that many of the current theories on consciousness are not necessarily in opposition, since there may be semantic ambiguities producing these disputes. Because of the polysemy of the terms “attention” and “consciousness”, one should avoid stipulating definitions without first delineating empirical and theoretical constraints that such definitions must satisfy. It is crucial to determine whether the different theoretical perspectives refer to the same types of attention and the same types of consciousness. Based on empirical findings and a theoretical classification of the possible views on this topic, we propose definitions for forms of consciousness, forms of attention, and forms of conscious attention in order to provide a foundation to compare and move forward different theories. Another goal of this paper is to offer a brief account of recent theories on consciousness, with a focused consideration of how empirical research on attention can provide the grounding for an empirically-driven account of consciousness. One way to do this is by analyzing recent theories on consciousness and attention by categorizing them according to a spectrum of theoretical complexity, starting with the theories that impose the strictest requirements on the interpretation of empirical findings to those that allow the widest range of possible interpretations. For instance, Jesse Prinz (2012) has defended the view that consciousness is just attention. This “strict” view entails that there cannot be any finding about attention that is not a finding about consciousness and vice versa. Although an identity approach is parsimonious, since it reduces that kinds of cognitive processes associated with consciousness and attention to a single type, it creates the problem of reducing significantly the room for interpretation. For example, the desideratum of empirical adequacy seems to demand more theoretical leniency for the interpretation of research findings that indicate disassociations between attentional processing and conscious awareness. Should it not be possible that some form of attention exists without consciousness, even if consciousness cannot occur without attention? Michael Cohen and colleagues (2012) argue in favor of this possibility. At the extreme opposite of the spectrum, one