The "consciousness problem" is not the problem.

Although the concept of consciousness is not necessary for the behavioral scientist, it is closely related to a number of psychological concepts that are generally believed to be necessary. Consciousness may be defined as the very short-term memory of a just-completed perceptual act. It may thus be understood as a psychological consequence of psychological antecedents. The question of how brain processes result in consciousness is a misleading one and should be replaced by questions concerning the relationships between the brain and perception, memory, and the other psychological processes that precede consciousness.     

Is Iconic Memory Iconic?

Short-term memory in vision is typically thought to divide into at least two memory stores: a short, fragile, high-capacity store known as iconic memory, and a longer, durable, capacity-limited store known as visual working memory (VWM). This paper argues that iconic memory stores icons, i.e., image-like perceptual representations. The iconicity of iconic memory has significant consequences for understanding consciousness, nonconceptual content, and the perception–cognition border. Steven Gross and Jonathan Flombaum have recently challenged the division between iconic memory and VWM by arguing against the idea of capacity limits in favor of a flexible resource-based model of short-term memory. I argue that, while VWM capacity is probably governed by flexible resources rather than a sharp limit, the two memory stores should still be distinguished by their representational formats. Iconic memory stores icons, while VWM stores discursive (i.e., language-like) representations. I conclude by arguing that this format-based distinction between memory stores entails that prominent views about consciousness and the perception–cognition border will likely have to be revised.     

Aspects of the unity of consciousness and everyday memory failures

We argue that analyzing everyday memory failures in terms of the "unity of consciousness" can elucidate the bases of such failures. A perfect unity amongst one's mental states is rare. In extreme cases the unity of consciousness can breakdown in dramatic fashion (e.g., in Dissociative Identity Disorder), but such breakdowns also occur in less dramatic ways that affect us in everyday life. For example, disruptions in the unity of consciousness can result in everyday memory failures, such as forgetting to put on a tie for an important formal meeting. After providing some philosophical background into the notions of "unity of consciousness" and "functionalism," we offer preliminary analyses of three examples of everyday memory failure. We then introduce and develop what we call the "unity model" of memory failure and show how it explains the examples. We also describe different ways that unity can break down which, in turn, can lead to memory failure and inappropriate behavior. We then show how slips of action and other kinds of cognitive failures (e.g., memory blocks) differ from everyday memory failures. Finally, we examine alternative models (e.g., Absentmindedness and Multimodal) arguing that the unity model is preferable, and then show how our model is consistent with some experimental results.     

From visual sensations to the seen-now and the seen-from-here

Summary If, as Gibson last proposed, we become aware (in the introspective attitude during visual perceiving) of the seen-now and the seen-from-here as such, there must occur not only outer awareness of these surfaces, but also a kind of inner awareness of certain of their experiential effects upon us. From Gibson's perspective, this conclusion would seem to mean that his ecological account must return, in this context, to visual sensations; or preferably it must include visual-perspectival appearances proceeding normally unnoticed in the stream of consciousness during visual perception of the environment.     

国内近十年来意识和无意识关系研究的新成就

近十年来,国内掀起了从自然科学途径进行意识和无意识对比研究的新热潮,尤其在实验范式的引进、修正、完善和模型建构方面,做出了中国学者自己的贡献。错误记忆、内隐时间及不注意视盲等新领域的触及代表了国内学者在意识研究内容上的丰富。“钢筋水泥”、“意识涌现”及“车站监视室”等模型的提出,代表了中国学者在意识研究理论方面的创新。当前国内意识研究与国外基本同步,但存在着“研究领域泛化,神经机制探讨有限,跨学科整合力度有待深化”的问题。     

Autobiographical memory: exploring its functions in everyday life

This special issue of Memory spotlights research that uses a functional approach to investigate autobiographical memory (AM) in everyday life. This approach relies on studying cognition, in this case AM, taking into account the psychological, social, or cultural-historic context in which it occurs. Areas of interest include understanding to what ends AM is used by individuals and in social relationships, how it is related to other cognitive abilities and emotional states, and how memory represents our inner and outer world. One insight gained by taking this approach is that levels and types of accuracy need not always be regarded as memory "failures" but are sometimes integral to a self-memory system that serves a variety of meaningful ends of human activity. Previously hypothesised functions of AM fall into three broad domains: self, social, and directive. Each of the contributions addresses how AM serves one or more of these functions and thereby examines the usefulness and adequacy of this trio.     

The imagination: cognitive, pre-cognitive, and meta-cognitive aspects

This article is an attempt to situate imagination within consciousness complete with its own pre-cognitive, cognitive, and meta-cognitive domains. In the first sections we briefly review traditional philosophical and psychological conceptions of the imagination. The majority have viewed perception and imagination as separate faculties, performing distinct functions. A return to a phenomenological account of the imagination suggests that divisions between perception and imagination are transcended by precognitive factors of sense of reality and non-reality where perception and imagination play an indivisible role. In fact, both imagination and perception define sense of reality jointly according to what is possible and not possible. Absorption in a possible world depends on the strengths of alternative possibilities, and the relationship between core and marginal consciousness. The model may offer a parsimonious account of different states and levels of imaginal consciousness, and of how "believed-in imaginings" develop and become under some circumstances "lived-in experiences."     

Perception,Memory, and Duration: The Binding Problem and the Synthesis of the Past

Theories of perception and of memory are closely allied. The binding problem (which considers how bits of perception are reassembled by the brain) leads to neurophysiological subjectivism. This could be outflanked by arguing with Bergson that perceiving consciousness is out in the world. Thus the brain would bind only behavioral “maps.” In turn, consciousness would retain our personal pasts. Such personal (episodic) memories both help us to recognize present objects and to perform creative acts. Memory, although retentive, is also creative. This is important in rethinking biological and evolutionary memory.     

Bergson and the holographic theory of mind

Bergson’s model of time (1889) is perhaps the proto-phenomenological theory. It is part of a larger model of mind (1896) which can be seen in modern light as describing the brain as supporting a modulated wave within a holographic field, specifying the external image of the world, and wherein subject and object are differentiated not in terms of space, but of time. Bergson’s very concrete model is developed and deepened with Gibson’s ecological model of perception. It is applied to the problems of consciousness, direct realism, qualia and illusions. The model implies an entirely different basis for memory and cognition, and a brief overview is given for the basis of direct memory, compositionality and systematicity.     

Temporal binding, binocular rivalry, and consciousness.

Cognitive functions like perception, memory, language, or consciousness are based on highly parallel and distributed information processing by the brain. One of the major unresolved questions is how information can be integrated and how coherent representational states can be established in the distributed neuronal systems subserving these functions. It has been suggested that this so-called "binding problem" may be solved in the temporal domain. The hypothesis is that synchronization of neuronal discharges can serve for the integration of distributed neurons into cell assemblies and that this process may underlie the selection of perceptually and behaviorally relevant information. As we intend to show here, this temporal binding hypothesis has implications for the search of the neural correlate of consciousness. We review experimental results, mainly obtained in the visual system, which support the notion of temporal binding. In particular, we discuss recent experiments on the neural mechanisms of binocular rivalry which suggest that appropriate synchronization among cortical neurons may be one of the necessary conditions for the buildup of perceptual states and awareness of sensory stimuli.     

Unconscious consciousness in Husserl and Freud

A clarification of Husserl's changing conceptions of imaginary consciousness (phantasy) and memory, especially at the level of auto-affective time-consciousness, suggests an interpretation of Freud's concept of the Unconscious. Phenomenology of consciousness can show how it is possible that consciousness can bring to present appearance something unconscious, that is, something foreign or absent to consciousness, without incorporating it into or subordinating it to the conscious present. This phenomenological analysis of Freud's concept of the Unconscious leads to a partial critique of Freud's metapsychological determination of the Unconscious as a simple, internally unperceived representational consciousness. It also suggests an account of how a reproductive inner consciousness can free the subject from the experience of anxiety by allowing for possibilities of self-distanciation and symbolic self-representation that protect the subject from traumatic affection by and through its own instinctual drives.     

心智游移、工作记忆对初中生阅读理解的影响

心智游移（mind wandering,MW）是一种特殊的注意分散状态,是个体内部自发的一种非自主内源性意识体验。选取101名初一学生被试,采用心智游移频率问卷和SART测验研究初中生的心智游移特质和状态,并分别考察两种角度中的心智游移、工作记忆对初中生阅读理解的影响,结果表明：（1）初中生的心智游移相对较低;（2）心智游移影响初中生的散文阅读;（3）工作记忆影响初中生的散文阅读,且心智游移在其中起调节作用。     

Experience,action and representations: Critical realism and the enactive theory of vision

This paper defends a dynamic model of the way in which perception is integrated with action, a model I refer to as ‘the navigational account’. According to this account, employing vision and other forms of distance perception, a creature acquires information about its surroundings via the senses, information that enables it to select and navigate routes through its environment, so as to attain objects that satisfy its needs. This form of perceptually guided activity should be distinguished from other kinds of semi-automatic responses to visual stimuli that do not necessarily involve conscious experiences. It essentially involves inner states, which involve both the awareness of phenomenal qualities, and also a representational component. The navigational account is compared here with the enactive approach to perception, which opposes the view that perceptual experiences are inner states. This paper argues that a full account of perception raises a number of different questions. One central explanatory project concerns questions about the kinds of processes that currently enable a creature to identify and respond appropriately to distant objects: the answer, it is argued, lies in acknowledging the role of conscious inner representations in guiding navigational behaviour through complex environments. The fact that perception and action are interdependent does not conflict with the claim that inner representational states comprise an essential stage in visual processing.

Plotinus on the Inner Sense

Recently, there has been a growing interest in ancient views on consciousness and particularly in their influence on medieval and early modern philosophers. Here I suggest a new interpretation of Plotinus’s account of consciousness which, if correct, may help us to reconsider his role in the history of the notion of the inner sense. I argue that, while explaining how our divided soul can be a unitary subject of the states and activities of its parts, Plotinus develops an original account of consciousness that appeals to an inner sense. In contrast to ‘the outer senses’, which perceive sensible things out there in the world, this sense, for him, perceives the activities of the parts of our soul, thus enabling us to be conscious of them as a single subject. I suggest that Plotinus devises his account of this psychic power in the light of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation of the Aristotelian ‘common sense’. Since in Alexander the ‘common sense’ enables us to be conscious as a single subject of sensations from different modalities, Plotinus uses it as a model to explain how we can be the conscious subject of all the states and activities of our soul.     

Advancing the dialogue between inner and outer empiricism: A comment on O’Nualláin

In a recent contribution to New Ideas in Psychology, Seán O’Nualláin draws out a distinction between inner and outer empiricism, and suggests that consciousness research can benefit from analysis in both directions, that is, via the exploration of facts and relations that facilitate a third-person understanding of consciousness (by reference to an analysis of the structures, processes, and functions of the brain) and via the direct exploration of conscious experience itself, both in terms of its computational (content filled) and non-computational (content empty) aspects. In positing a substrate of subjectivity independent of the contents of consciousness (and, more specifically, a state of “nothingness”), Ò’Nualláin follows a long tradition deeply rooted in mythical, religious, and esoteric schools of belief and practice. Although there is considerable debate amongst philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists as to whether or not a non-computational view of consciousness is viable, O’Nualláin accepts that such a possibility does exist. Further, he suggests that a dialogue between the inner and outer empiricists will be fruitful. In this comment I, critique Ò’Nualláin's initial thoughts on the subject and draw out a series of useful distinctions that will help to advance the dialogue between inner and outer empiricism. Critical amongst these distinctions is explicit reference to (1) ontological and epistemological interdependencies in consciousness research, and (2) states of consciousness that describe the transition from “mindfulness” through “nothingness” to “no-mind”.     

Time, action, and consciousness

Time plays a central role in consciousness, at different levels and in different aspects of information processing. Subliminal perception experiments demonstrate that stimuli presented too briefly to enter conscious awareness are nevertheless processed to some extent. Implicit learning, implicit memory, and conditioning studies suggest that the extent to which memory traces are available for verbal report and for cognitive control is likewise dependent on the time available for processing during acquisition. Differences in the time available for processing also determine not only the extent to which one becomes conscious of action, but also provides the basis for making attributions of authorship to experienced acts. In this paper, we offer a brief overview of these different findings and suggest that they can all be understood based on the fact that consciousness takes time. From this perspective, the availability of representations to conscious awareness depends on the quality of these representations - the extent to which they are strong, stable in time, and distinctive. High-quality representations occur when processes of global competition have had sufficient time to operate so as to make the system settle into the best possible interpretation of the input. Such processes implement global constraint satisfaction and critically depend on reentrant processing, through which representations can be further enriched by high-level constraints. We discuss these ideas in light of current theories of consciousness, emphasizing the fact that consciousness should be viewed as a process rather than as a static property associated with some states and not with others.     

Measuring pain: an introspective look at introspection

The measurement of pain depends upon subjective reports, but we know very little about how research subjects or pain patients produce self-reported judgments. Representationalist assumptions dominate the field of pain research and lead to the critical conjecture that the person in pain examines the contents of consciousness before making a report about the sensory or affective magnitude of pain experience as well as about its nature. Most studies to date have investigated what Fechner termed "outer psychophysics": the relationship between characteristics of an external stimulus and the magnitude and nature of pain experience. In contrast, Fechner originally envisioned that "inner psychophysics" should investigate the relationship between physiological states and subjective experience. Despite the lack of established research tradition, inner psychophysics has a potential utility in elucidating underlying mechanisms for the production of phenomenal self-report. We illustrate this, using causal modeling analyses of the accuracy of self-reported pain ratings from our laboratory. We submit that the results are inconsistent with representationalist assumptions. Converging trends from several domains of consciousness studies seem to suggest that we need to abandon the unquestioned doctrine of representationalism and search for a more viable framework for understanding the generation of subjective self-report.     

Subjective experience is probably not limited to humans: the evidence from neurobiology and behavior

In humans, conscious perception and cognition depends upon the thalamocortical (T-C) complex, which supports perception, explicit cognition, memory, language, planning, and strategic control. When parts of the T-C system are damaged or stimulated, corresponding effects are found on conscious contents and state, as assessed by reliable reports. In contrast, large regions like cerebellum and basal ganglia can be damaged without affecting conscious cognition directly. Functional brain recordings also show robust activity differences in cortex between experimentally matched conscious and unconscious events. This basic anatomy and physiology is highly conserved in mammals and perhaps ancestral reptiles. While language is absent in other species, homologies in perception, memory, and motor cortex suggest that consciousness of one kind or another may be biologically fundamental and phylogenetically ancient. In humans we infer subjective experiences from behavioral and brain evidence. This evidence is quite similar in other mammals and perhaps some non-mammalian species. On the weight of the biological evidence, therefore, subjectivity may be conserved in species with human-like brains and behavior.     

The time of consciousness and vice versa

The temporal granularity of consciousness may be far less fine than the real-time information processing mechanisms that underlie our sensitivity to small temporal differences. It is suggested that conscious time perception, like space perception, is subject to errors that belie a unitary underlying representation. E. R. Clay's (The Alternative: A Study in Psychology, 1882) concept of the "specious present," an extended moment represented in consciousness, is suggested as an alternative to the more common notion of instantaneous experience that underlies much reasoning based on the "time of arrival" in consciousness.