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This chapter critically surveys some of the leading philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. The philosophical theories include dualism, representationalism, and higher-order accounts. Scientific theories include the global workspace, the left-brain interpreter, temporal binding, and accounts that link consciousness to the experience of a self. All these theories are found to be wanting, but they are used to develop a set of desiderata that an adequate theory of consciousness should meet. A theory should provide an account of subjective character, the fact that consciousness arises at the first-order, the fact that consciousness does not rely on central systems, the unity of consciousness, the possibility of selfless experience, the function of consciousness, the way different levels of explanation are integrated in consciousness, and puzzle-producing nature of phenomenal knowledge.

This chapter addresses another Kantian topic: the unity of consciousness. It looks at certain arguments that have been made against the unity of consciousness to determine whether they are good arguments against the unity thesis as we understand it. After fleshing out the unity thesis further, it applies the thesis to certain currently popular philosophical theories of consciousness, arguing that the thesis is incompatible with these theories: if the unity thesis is true, then these theories are false. The goal is not to conclusively prove the unity thesis, and indeed it is not certain that it is true. But it is suggested at least that the thesis is plausible, that it captures a strong intuition about the nature of consciousness, and that there are no knockdown arguments against it. If the thesis is true, it is likely to have important consequences for a theory of consciousness.

This chapter draws on the theory of the cognitive subject presented and defended in earlier chapters to develop Kantian alternatives to contemporary views of the self-ascription of belief, knowledge of other minds, and the explananda of theories of consciousness. It also shows that Kant’s new method of ‘transcendental’ argument is successful in the case of the representation ‘I-think’ for reasons that cannot be extended to other seemingly crucial concepts.

Many scientists hope that brain research will identify the material nature of conscious states. Papineau argues that when it comes to the “hard problem” of identifying the material referents of phenomenal concepts, scientific research can only take us so far. This is because phenomenal concepts are vague and do not point determinately to specific material states. This chapter also looks at Higher‐Order Thought (HOT) and representational accounts of consciousness.

Where Georg Lukács’s partisan work explores the implications of Leninist thought or Marxist theory, this chapter suggests that Karl Mannheim is at greater pains to extend this thought into a theory of consciousness in general. Varieties of ideological thought—Utopias or ideology proper—are possible, but the approach to the truth of affairs is made possible only on the basis of a free-floating declassed intelligentsia. Contemporary fulminations against ideology paradoxically see the intellectuals of a society as the source of this evil influence rather than a ground for its demystification. At all events, whatever one’s response to ideology or the possibility of its transcendence, in addition to the classes that in the Marxist schema underlie and explain ideology, the stratum of intellectuals—or more generally the intelligentsia—emerges as a significant locus of ideology or its demystification.

This chapter evaluates the AIR theory (attended intermediate-level representations) against the desiderata presented in Chapter 1. The AIR theory explains the subjective character by appeal to vectorwaves. It explains the fact that consciousness arises at the first-order, by appeal to attention, which does not require meta-representation. It explains the fact that consciousness does not rely on central systems, because attention involves availability to working memory, but not necessarily encoding. It explains unity by attentional resonance. It explains the possibility of selfless experience, by denying a phenomenal self. It relates the function of consciousness to action selection. It integrates levels of explanation by appeal to neurofunctionalism. And it appeals to the nature of working memory encodings to explain phenomenal knowledge. The AIR theory does a better job with these desiderata than some other theories.

This chapter addresses the three questions on the unity of consciousness: What is the unity of consciousness? Is consciousness necessarily unified? How can the unity of consciousness be explained? The central project is to isolate a notion of unity on which the unity thesis is both substantive and plausible — this chapter aims to find a more precise version of the unity thesis that is neither trivially true nor obviously false. It looks at certain arguments that have been made against the unity of consciousness, to determine whether they are good arguments against the unity thesis. And finally, after fleshing out the unity thesis further, the chapter applies the thesis to certain currently popular philosophical theories of consciousness, arguing that the thesis is incompatible with these theories: if the unity thesis is true, then these theories are false.

Chapters 3 and 4 defend a theory according to which conscious states are attended intermediate-level representations, or AIRs. When expressed this way, the AIR theory described the psychological correlated of consciousness, but not the neural correlates. This chapter asks how consciousness arises in the brain, and thus seeks the neural correlates of AIRs. Intermediate-level representations are hypothesized to be realized by temporal patterns in populations of neurons, or vectorwaves. Vectorwaves, it is argued, are important for distinguishing states with different qualitative character. Attention is said to be realized by neural oscillations within the gamma band. This confirms older theories that relate consciousness to gamma activity, but this theories differs from some others by relating gamma to attention rather than binding. Putting these two elements together, the neural correlates of AIRs are gamma vectorwaves.

This chapter discusses emotion and sets a framework for approaching the relation between affective state and consciousness. It describes multiple routes to action, some of which involve implicit or unconscious emotional processing, and one of which involves multiple-step planning that leads to a higher-order syntactic theory of consciousness.

How and why can neural activity in general and specifically stimulus-induced activity be associated with consciousness? This is the central question in the present chapter. I suggest a Spatiotemporal model that conceives both brain and consciousness in predominantly Spatiotemporal terms rather than being based on specific contents and their neural processing by the brain. This amounts to a Spatiotemporal theory of consciousness (STC). I discuss two specific Spatiotemporal mechanisms that I deem relevant for consciousness. The first Spatiotemporal mechanism refers to “Spatiotemporal integration and nestedness” that describe how different frequencies/regions are coupled and linked, i.e., integrated, and subsequently contained, i.e., nested, with each other. Again, based on empirical findings, “Spatiotemporal integration and nestedness” may predispose the level/state of consciousness, i.e., NPC. The second Spatiotemporal mechanism consists in “Spatiotemporal expansion” that allows to expand the stimuli’ specific points in time and space beyond itself by the brain’s spontaneous activity and its spatiotemporal structure. Based on various empirical findings, I suggest “Spatiotemporal expansion” a sufficient neural condition of consciousness, i.e., a neural correlate of the content of consciousness (NCC). Both spatiotemporal mechanisms are specific in that they can distinguish consciousness and unconsciousness: there is “Spatiotemporal expansion” rather than “Spatiotemporal constriction” and there is “Spatiotemporal nestedness” rather than “Spatiotemporal isolation”. This illustrates the specificity of the Spatiotemporal mechanisms which argues against what can be described as “argument of non-specificity”. Moreover, the STC is based on Spatiotemporal mechanisms rather than mere Spatiotemporal features which renders our Spatiotemporal model non-trivial which can be put forward against what can be described as “argument of triviality”. Taken together, the Spatiotemporal model of consciousness as suggested in the STC is neither non-specific but specific in empirical terms nor trivial on conceptual-logical, phenomenal, and ontological grounds.

The chapter summarizes the discussions on perception between Churchland, Ramachandran, and Dennett. The arguments focus on a central issue—the relationship between the actual visual experience and one's internal neural representations. A detailed discourse on Dennett's Theory of Consciousness is provided, with particular focus on his explanations on the phenomenon of “filling in.” The chapter points out several weaknesses in Dennett's work, arising from his attempt to reconcile essentially divergent beliefs on philosophy as it relates to persons and science as it relates to “sub-personal” processing. Three concerns are identified: first, the supposed transparency of content and a person's capacity to make mistakes in describing one's own visual experience must be reconciled; second, an explanation on the similarity of our neurological experiences with both abstract and detailed veridical content must be given; and third, computational content must be provided to support his claim of content being transparent to consciousness.

This chapter argues against Uriah Kriegel’s “self-representational theory of consciousness,” which states that the structure of conscious states includes an element of self-reference. This self-referential or self- epresentational aspect of conscious mental states goes back to Aristotle and Franz Brentano, who argued that “every mental act includes within it a consciousness of itself. Therefore, every mental act, no matter how simple, has a double object, a primary and secondary object.” Three views are discussed in detail in this chapter: First, Brentano’s “pure self-referentialism,” which states that a conscious mental state is literally directed back at Itself, is criticized. Second, the chapter examines whether peripheral self-directed awareness accompanies all conscious states or not. Finally, responses are addressed to arguments presented in support of Kriegel’s view of self-representation.

This chapter begins with a defense of the HOT Thesis, stating that a version of the HOT theory is true and thus a version of reductive representationalism is true. Current theories of consciousness attempt to reduce it to mental representations of some kind, which philosophers often refer to as intentional states; these states have representational content, i.e. mental states that are “about” or “directed at” something. Before a defense can be established, it is important to explain several iterations of representationalism and make a case for the reductionist approach to consciousness. Searle’s well-known Connection Principle is examined as well and its critical examination used to argue the point that intentionality is partly prior to consciousness. The chapter concludes with an exploration into the nature of mental content in light of the HOT theory.

This chapter focuses on the “Conscious Of” (CO) Principle—that conscious states are states we are conscious of—and its role in theorizing about the relation between phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness. This intuitive principle is sometimes offered in support of the idea that necessarily, phenomenally conscious states are represented in the minds to which they belong—which in turn has been used to support higher-order (including self-representationalist) theories of consciousness (HORTs). It is argued here that the CO Principle, when combined with an at least equally intuitive “Is Conscious” (IC) Principle (viz., that being conscious of something is a conscious state) leads to an intolerable regress of self-representation, unless we either adopt a self-representationalist account, or endorse only such interpretations of CO that render it useless to HORTs (of which several are suggested). The latter option is preferable as both more parsimonious and less mysterious. Finally, attention is given to construals of CO that take all consciousness to essentially include self-consciousness in some other (“reflexive” but non-representational or non-objectual) sense. In support of this, it has been said that consciousness is “self-presenting” or “first-personally given,” or that it contains “for-me-ness” or “mineness” in its very character. But those claims admit of reasonable interpretations that offer no aid to the notion that a (perhaps nonobjectually) reflexive self-consciousness is essential to phenomenality. Nonetheless, there is reason to think a kind of self-consciousness is inherently part of experience (at least in the visual case), insofar as there being someone to whom things look somehow—an active situated perceiver (a “look-er”)—is implicit in its phenomenal character. But it would be misleading to take this to speak in favor of the view that conscious states self-reflexively, non-objectually “point at” themselves (or at “a self”). Taken altogether the findings here lend support the perspective that phenomenality is not to be explained as a type of self-directed intentionality or representation, but rather: varieties of self-consciousness are to be understood as forms of phenomenality.

Quantum mechanics is a groundbreaking theory: it not only is extraordinarily empirically adequate but also is claimed to having shattered the classical paradigm of understanding the observer-observed distinction as well as the part-whole relation. This, together with other quantum features, has been taken to suggest that quantum theory can help one understand the mind-body relation in a unique way, in particular to solve the hard problem of consciousness along the lines of panpsychism. In this chapter, after having briefly presented panpsychism, Valia Allori discusses the main features of quantum theories and the way in which the main quantum theories of consciousness use them to account for conscious experience.

While interest in synesthesia among cognitive scientists has been steadily increasing in recent years, one question remains relatively unexplored: what is the relationship between synesthesia and consciousness? In this chapter, we consider some central aspects of this relationship and focus our discussion on two main questions. First, we explore the question of whether synesthesia can occur unconsciously. We identify some complications that arise in interpreting some of the relevant empirical results, and then endorse an affirmative answer to this question based on the limited findings available. Second, we look at four major theories of consciousness and evaluate their predictions regarding the neural correlates of consciousness using synesthesia as a test case. We highlight the ways in which findings concerning the neural correlates of synesthetic experience would seem to offer support for or against these major theories.

This chapter discusses contemporary perspectives on the role of consciousness in decision-making and action production. Everyday experience and common sense suggest that the subjective experience of will causes overt movement. But some neuroscientific research seems to provide evidence against this notion, with some claiming consciousness has no causal role in decision-making and action. Scientific perspectives that retain a role for consciousness vary across at least two dimensions. First, perspectives differ in whether consciousness has an active, online, immediate role in producing action (proximal) or a delayed, modulatory role—perhaps related to learning or planning (distal). Second, perspectives differ in whether consciousness itself generates actions or decisions or modulates them by inhibiting or vetoing decisions and actions generated by unconscious processes. These two dimensions define four quadrants, each with predictions about how action-related neural mechanisms relate to consciousness. The chapter places contemporary action-oriented theories of consciousness into these quadrants.

This chapter proposes four policies of ethical design of human-grade AI. Two of the policies are precautionary. Given substantial uncertainty both about ethical theory and about the conditions under which AI would have conscious experiences, the chapter argues that we should be cautious in our handling of cases where different moral theories or different theories of consciousness would produce very different ethical recommendations. The other two policies concern respect and freedom. The chapter argues that if we design AI that deserves moral consideration equivalent to that of human beings, then AI should be designed with self-respect and with the freedom to explore values other than those we might impose.

This chapter, an excursus, embarks on a more philosophical interpretation of consciousness and experience. Building on Thomas Nagel and Niklas Luhmann, it is argued that human consciousness, defined as a process of self-reproduction of never-ending new possibilities, is perplexed by the task of imagining its own nonexistence. Given that consciousness is not equipped for this task, that is to imagine death (its own nonexistence), it will react with a search for meaning, a context for the existential threat. The excursus argues that this leads to the highly accelerated activity of consciousness. It may result in a phenomenon reported by a certain number of near-death experiencers, namely, the life review. In short, then, the life review is a highly accelerated search for meaning. These deliberations are further substantiated by a comparison with “wake-up dreams,” in which a similar structure becomes visible.