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Key points
- Phenomenal consciousness cannot be the sole source of intelligent capacities.
- Attention is required for creating a common world, or communicative background.
- The divergence of conscious experiences, however, can offer a diversity of perspectives and creativity.
In this blog series, for the last 9 years, we have explored the implications of the differences between consciousness and attention. One difference is about the divergent paths taken by species towards intersubjective communication (fueled by competition, cooperation, and joint attention) and towards a radical kind of subjectivity that eventually led to cognitive individuality and uniqueness, at least in humans (and perhaps close relatives of humans).
While cognitive uniqueness (what in philosophy is called “phenomenal consciousness” or “what it is like” to be you, from the point of view of your awareness) naturally builds on organismic autonomy, it is in considerable tension with cognition and intelligence in general, because of the radically private nature of consciousness. For instance, the set of possible kinds of radical subjectivity are less constrained by the environment than the constraints on the types of attention routines that animals can use.
The evolution of complex communication, in particular, enriches attention in ways that allow for marked increases in intelligence. On the other hand, consciousness makes subjects diverge from a common or standard type of mentality. The difference between consciousness and attention is, therefore, more complicated than the simple necessity or sufficiency claims that are frequently discussed in the literature, namely, whether attention is necessary or necessary and sufficient for consciousness (or other combinations of this relation). So-called “access consciousness”, or the reportable kind of consciousness we use in action and decision-making, may just be attention, while phenomenal consciousness may be a graded phenomenon, some aspects of it more homeostatic than others, others more formatted through language (e.g., introspection).
A consequence of the difference between consciousness and attention for future research is that we need to focus on how consciousness radically diverges among individuals, and how this phenomenal divergence is modulated and tempered by the convergence of joint attention and language (or not, as might be the case of introspection and inner narrative). This is a dynamic relation, rather than a static dependence relation. We call this thesis: “divergent consciousness, convergent attention.”
Views that propose that consciousness is fundamental and immediate, and that it provides a unique kind of knowledge, get something right, which is that consciousness is a unique connection that brings familiarity to our cognitive capacities. But these views are wrong in proposing that this is our only way to connect with the world and, in particular, to communicate. For this, attention is needed. An implication of this conclusion, which we have explored in other posts, is that consciousness is not the same as intelligence, including artificial intelligence. Attention is essential for intelligence, which is a publicly available good and stands in contrast to your private conscious awareness, which is uniquely valuable to you.
With respect to contemporary theories of consciousness, the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) has the consequence that radical divergence (unique to an individual) is compatible with convergence with other individuals, through evolution (this seems to be a unique feature of IIT). But more needs to be said about how attention is involved here. Other theories of consciousness, such as the Global Neuronal Network Theory (GNWT) may explain convergence simply through information processing and neural activation, but might find it difficult to explain radical divergence. Is this the main difference between access and phenomenal consciousness? Is GNWT better suited at explaining access consciousness and IIT better suited at explaining phenomenal consciousness?
This point is so important that it can be made independently of the empirical literature, which favors the dissociation between consciousness and attention. If phenomenal intelligence is radically private, then it cannot be publicly assessable or communicable. Since phenomenal consciousness is radically private, we cannot create a common world through it alone. Phenomenal consciousness cannot be the sole source of intelligent capacities. Thus, phenomenal consciousness is not necessarily a source of convergence.
A slightly stronger claim is that phenomenal consciousness is a source of divergence. When combined with language, for instance, the contribution of language as conscious inner dialogue is divergent. Spontaneous and intrusive thoughts or memories can become a source of divergence. In this way, one could even classify certain costs of consciousness, such as inner distraction through introspection, and an obsession with inner language.
With regard to attention, the environment itself is not sufficient to explain the whole range of intersubjective coordination. Agents with capacities for attention are crucial to explain salient constancies for the action perception loop. Phenomenal consciousness itself is not sufficient to explain success in communication and action. Therefore, phenomenal consciousness is not a source of convergence. Attention is needed to explain convergence, both in the form of binding properties mapped from external information and also in terms of intersubjective attention that allows for communication and joint action. If phenomenal consciousness is a source of convergence, it is very important to explain how something radically private could achieve this without the involvement of the convergence functions of attention.
Are there advantages to being conscious? Clearly there are! Dreams are radical departures from environmental constraints, and provide fertile ground for the exploration of artistic and spiritual experiences. Art, our familiarity with the world, the immediacy of our biological needs, and our sense of embodiment, they all seem to depend fundamentally on phenomenal consciousness.
It is perhaps through this divergence of conscious experience that we find diversity in perspectives and creativity. The question now emerges: is this divergence an evolutionary advantage for conscious complex organisms? Or is this divergence detrimental to the survival of species with extreme versions of it?
