Chapter 16: Kinds of Consciousness

Jacob Berger

Forthcoming in Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Introduction, Benjamin D. Young & Carolyn
Dicey Jennings (eds.), Routledge.

Brief Outline
Consciousness is central to our lived experience. It is unsurprising, then, that the topic has captivated
many students, neuroscientists, philosophers, and other theorists working in cognitive science. But
consciousness may seem especially difficult to explain. This is in part because the term
“consciousness” has been used in many different ways. The goal of this chapter is to explore several
kinds of consciousness: what theorists have called “creature,” “phenomenal,” “access,” “state,”
“transitive,” “introspective,” and “self” consciousness.
The basic distinctions among these kinds of consciousness are described in Section 1. Section
2 raises potential challenges for explaining these varieties of consciousness and describes a few current
theories of them. Section 3 closes the chapter by exploring directions for future work in the cognitive
science of consciousness. Along the way, some of the possible interrelationships among these kinds
of consciousness are discussed.

Keywords:
Creature consciousness: an individual is creature conscious when the individual is awake and
mentally responsive to stimuli—rather than, for example, asleep or anaesthetized.
Phenomenal consciousness: a mental state is phenomenally conscious when there is something
that it is like for the individual to be in that state.
Access consciousness: a mental state is access conscious when the information contained in that
state is available for use in thought and behavior: for example, the state’s information may be used
as a premise in reasoning or for the rational control of action and speech.
State consciousness: a mental state is state conscious when an individual is subjectively aware of
being in that state.
Transitive consciousness: an individual is transitively conscious (or, as some simply put it, aware)
of something when the individual is mentally responsive to that thing, typically either by perceiving
or having a thought about it.
Introspective consciousness: a conscious mental state (or, equivalently, an individual) is
introspectively conscious when the individual is subjectively aware of being in that state in a
deliberate and attentive way.
Self-consciousness: an individual is self-conscious when the individual is subjectively aware of
itself.

1. Introduction

1.1 What are the various kinds of consciousness?

Perhaps nothing in the universe is more familiar to us than our consciousness, but perhaps nothing
seems as hard to explain! A major obstacle to the study of consciousness has been the fact that people
have used the term “consciousness” and related expressions such as “awareness” in many different
ways. As a result, theorists over time have distinguished several kinds of consciousness, although there
remains significant debate about how these kinds may relate to one another, or even whether they
exist. This chapter thus begins by reviewing a few of the major types of consciousness discussed by

cognitive scientists (for versions of these distinctions, see, e.g., Rosenthal 1986; Block 1995; Carruthers
2016).
Probably the most commonly described notion of consciousness is what some philosophers
have called “creature consciousness”. We often characterize someone as conscious if she is awake
and responsive to her environment—as opposed, for example, to being asleep or in a coma. As you’re
reading this sentence now, you’re currently creature conscious insofar as you are awake and actively
engaged with the text (and will, hopefully, remain that way through the end of the chapter). As you lie
in bed tonight sleeping, in contrast, you’ll be creature unconscious.
While this is a perfectly ordinary way to use the term “conscious”, it is hardly the only way.
Creature consciousness is a feature of individuals, but we often describe mental states such as desires,
hopes, fears, and perceptual states as being conscious too. Many would describe a visual experience
of the words on this page as a “conscious mental state”. Such states make up what people often call
one’s “consciousness” in general. And in contemporary consciousness studies, many theorists follow
Block (1995) in distinguishing at least two ways that mental states can be conscious. On one hand,
many maintain that mental states exhibit phenomenal consciousness when, to adapt an expression
of Nagel’s (1974), there is something that it is like to be in them. What it is like for one to consciously see
the color red is quite different than what it is like for one to consciously hear the sound of a trombone
or to consciously smell the odor of lasagna. These characters or qualities of phenomenally conscious
states are often called “qualia” (or “quale” in the singular).
On the other hand, a mental state exhibits what Block dubbed “access consciousness” when
the information contained in it can be used in thought and behavior, such as resulting in speech. If
you consciously hear a friend ask you to pass the salt, for instance, then your auditory experience of
that question is access conscious insofar as the information contained in it can change what is going
on in your mind and consequently drive what you do. The experience might cause you to think that
your friend wants the salt and to say “Sure, here you go” while passing your friend the salt.
Philosophers before the 20th century such as such as Descartes (1641/2008) or Locke
(1690/1975) rarely described mental states as conscious, however. To the extent that such thinkers
discussed consciousness in general, they often spoke of the mental states of which we are aware (on
Locke, see, e.g., Weinberg 2016). After all, common sense seems to hold that if one is in a mental
state, but in no way aware of being in that state, then that state is not in any way conscious. As we
shall see, there is much evidence for such states, such as cases of so-called “subliminal perception”,
wherein one perceives something, but one is in no way aware that one perceives it (e.g., Marcel 1983).
In that case, it would seem that one’s perceptual state is unconscious. But if that is correct, then it
follows that mental states are conscious only if one is somehow aware of being in them. Many theorists
thus claim that a mental state exhibits what is often called “state consciousness” when one is suitably
aware of being in it.
It is plain, however, that we can be aware of mental states in ways that have nothing to do
with their being state conscious. If your therapist informs you that you have certain negative thoughts
about your parents that you are completely unaware of, you may become aware of those thoughts, but
you may not become aware of them in a way that makes them state conscious. When it comes to our
mental states that are state conscious, we seem to be aware of them simply “from this inside,” as it
were—that is, in a suitably subjective or first-personal way. One is aware of something in a subjective
way when one’s awareness does not seem to depend on inference or observation. If a visual perception
of red is to be state conscious, then it must seem in this subjective way to you that you see red.
This characterization of state consciousness may nonetheless sound circular—explaining state
consciousness in terms of awareness or consciousness. But it instead relates state consciousness to an
arguably distinct sort of consciousness. In addition to speaking of states of consciousness, we often
speak of an individual’s being conscious (or aware) of something. Since this use of ‘conscious’ refers

to one’s being directed at an object, philosophers sometimes call the phenomenon “transitive
consciousness”. An individual is transitively conscious of something when one is mentally responsive
to it in some way—typically, for example, by perceiving or having a thought about it. As you’re reading
this sentence right now, for example, you are transitively conscious of the sentence by seeing it and
not transitively conscious of the wall behind you. Since the states in virtue of which one is transitively
conscious of things can and often do occur without themselves being state or phenomenally
conscious, as in cases of subliminal perception, some theorists question whether or not transitive
consciousness should be called a kind of “consciousness” at all (e.g., Carruthers 2016). In any case,
our characterization of state consciousness is not circular: a mental state is state conscious only if one
is suitably transitively aware of it.
Often conflating these distinctions between state, transitive, phenomenal, and access
consciousness, cognitive psychologists frequently call any kind of conscious state an instance of simply
‘awareness’ or ‘conscious awareness.’
In addition to state consciousness, other forms of transitive consciousness are so interesting
that they are often discussed in their own rights as specific kinds of consciousness. We can be and
often are, for example, subjectively aware of our conscious states in a kind of deliberate and attentive
way. As you read this sentence, you are having a visual experience of the words on this page or screen,
but with some effort you may be able to shift your focus from the words to your experience itself: you
may become deliberately and attentively aware of your experience as your experience. In such cases,
such states (or, equivalently, individuals) exhibit introspective consciousness. Similar remarks go
for self-consciousness, which is arguably a form of subjective awareness of one’s self. When, for
example, you think “I should go to the store later,” your thought is not simply that someone or other
should go to the store, but that you yourself should; you are self-conscious.
Other theorists draw additional distinctions among kinds of consciousness not discussed in
detail here. On the basis of the study of altered states of consciousness (e.g., conditions due to brain
damage, anesthesia, or seizures), for example, some theorists propose that there are different levels or
kinds of consciousness. These levels may include the so-called “minimally conscious state” (MCS),
wherein persons with traumatic brain injury are behaviorally similar to those in vegetative states but
nonetheless retain some aspects of typical brain function (see, e.g., Boly et al. 2013). Such levels
arguably correspond to different degrees of physiological arousal. It is unclear, however, whether these
proposed levels of conscious states simply are or correspond to the kinds of consciousness discussed
in this chapter, such as atypical phenomenal states or degrees of creature consciousness (see, e.g.,
Bayne et al. 2016). But this chapter plainly cannot explore all of the ways in which cognitive scientists
use “consciousness”—and so focuses on a few of the central distinctions only (but see also, e.g., Lycan
1996).

Box with 3-5 Paragraphs on neuroscientific findings relevant to topic

Can these different kinds of consciousness be explained in terms of or at least associated with other
psychological functions or processes in the brain? Giving an answer to this question is difficult, in part
because the relationships among the kinds of consciousness remain controversial. We can, however,
make reasonable guesses about how some kinds may be explained in other psychological or neural
terms (for overviews, see, e.g., Chapters 17 and 18).
That a creature is awake and responsive to its environmental stimuli—that is, that there is
creature consciousness—seems to be a reasonably straightforward neurological phenomenon,
arguably explainable in terms of the activity of certain specific biological systems. There is growing
consensus, for example, that the subcortical region of the brain called the “thalamus” is implicated in
explaining sleep/wake cycles (e.g., Gent et al. 2018).

Likewise, whether or not one has transitive consciousness of something in one’s

environment via perception—by seeing it, for example—depends on the normal functioning of the
relevant sensory systems in the brain. In the case of vision, this organization is the visual system, which
includes a sensory organ—the eye—as well as the so-called “visual pathway” through the brain to the
primary visual cortex (V1).
While the root of the expression “to introspect” is something like “to look inside,” it is
doubtful that introspective consciousness literally involves some kind of inner eye seeing your mind.
Rather, such sophisticated forms of transitive consciousness, including also self- and state
consciousness, may implicate brain regions that underlie the capacity to think about or evaluate one’s
thinking—the faculty often known as “metacognition”—or that underlie flexible complex cognition
known as “executive functioning” more broadly, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC).
Likewise, it is reasonable to think that access consciousness involves what is known as
“working memory”—the psychological system responsible for holding information “in mind” over
short delays in order to complete various tasks (see, e.g., Prinz 2012)—or the related central cognitive
or neural area of the brain often known as the “global-neuronal workspace” (GNW) (e.g., Dehaene et
al. 2006). The GNW is theorized to involve frontal and parietal areas of the cortex, which possess
long-range neural connections to, and thus make information available to, a variety of psychological
or neural subsystems including those responsible for verbal report, such as Broca’s area.
Whether or not any of these brain areas relate to phenomenal consciousness is particularly
controversial. Some theorists maintain that phenomenal consciousness is completely distinct from
access or any kind of transitive consciousness. On such views, phenomenal consciousness may involve
only certain kinds of recurrent neural activity within the relevant areas of sensory cortex (e.g., Lamme
2003). Opposing theories link phenomenal consciousness with certain kinds of thought, cognition, or
higher-order awareness—and thereby explain it in terms of brain areas including frontocortical regions
such as dlPFC (e.g., Lau & Rosenthal 2011), neural realizers of working memory (e.g., Prinz 2012), or
the GNW (e.g., Dehaene et al. 2006).
Ultimately, the neuroscientific findings relevant to explaining these varieties of consciousness
depend on the best theories of those phenomena in psychological terms, matters which have yet to
be settled.

1.2 Can these kinds of consciousness occur independently?

Many thinkers in history have either confused these various kinds of consciousness with one another
or explicitly characterized them in terms of one another. Nowadays, however, most theorists recognize
the above distinctions. To better appreciate the differences, let’s now consider some situations wherein
these kinds of consciousness appear to occur independently from one another.

1.2.1 Transitive consciousness and conscious states

At first sight, it might seem reasonable to think that all instances of transitive consciousness involve
conscious states. Since we often do not think about unconscious states, it might seem that if you’re
transitively conscious of a lasagna by seeing it in front of you, your visual state must be either state,
phenomenal, or access conscious. Indeed, many thinkers in history such as Descartes (1641/2008)
assumed that we are aware of all of our mental states—that all mental states are (state) conscious. But
there are many commonsense and experimental reasons to think that mental states can occur without
being conscious in any way—that there are states that make us transitively conscious of things without
our being aware of them, without exhibiting widespread mental impact, and for which there is nothing
that it is like to be in them. As noted, for instance, there is much evidence of subliminal perception,

wherein people claim not to see stimuli such as a color or shape presented to them, although such
stimuli nonetheless influence their behavior in various ways (see, e.g., Marcel 1983). Or consider so-
called “implicit bias”—the phenomenon wherein people often act in biased ways towards certain
social groups, although they report that they maintain no negative attitudes against these groups (see,
e.g., Greenwald et al. 1998). Many maintain that such behavior is best explained by perceptual and
cognitive states that are subliminal or not conscious in any way (for more on such phenomena, see
Chapter 22). Again, even though we do often say that we are aware or conscious of things by being in
certain mental states, the fact that we can be mentally responsive to things via states that are themselves
not conscious in any way leads some to question whether so-called “transitive consciousness” is best
regarded as a kind of consciousness at all.

1.2.2 Creature consciousness, transitive consciousness, and conscious states

While a person plainly cannot be transitively conscious of anything without being in some mental state
or other, it would seem that a person can be transitively conscious of things even if she is not creature
conscious. There is, for example, experimental work that shows that people can learn things presented
to them via recordings during sleep (e.g., Windt et al. 2016). Likewise, though it may sound odd to
think that you can be unconscious—asleep or in a coma—but in conscious states, such situations
arguably can and do happen. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming, wherein people are dreaming and
know that they are dreaming, suggests that there can be states that are conscious—be it state, access,
or even phenomenal—when an individual is not (totally or in a typical way) creature conscious.

1.2.3 Introspective consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscious states

It is hard to imagine that one could be introspectively conscious of a mental state without that mental
state’s being conscious. But most theorists today would deny that we are introspectively aware of all
of our conscious mental states. If you are listening to some sweet tunes, you can, with some mental
effort, focus your attention on your auditory experience of the music, although you typically do not
focus in that way. So introspective and phenomenal consciousness plainly can occur independently. It
is easier to confuse introspective and state consciousness, however, as both phenomena involve
awareness of mental states. But introspective consciousness is deliberate and attentive—a kind of
awareness of one’s states that is arguably itself state conscious—whereas state consciousness is
typically thought to involve a kind of background awareness that may not itself be state conscious.
Many theorists have, however, argued that there can be no state consciousness without self-
consciousness, as one cannot be subjectively aware of being in a mental state without being aware of
oneself as being in that state.

1.2.4 Access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness

Why distinguish phenomenal from access consciousness? Here are two scenarios due to Block (1995),
which seem to motivate the distinction. First, imagine you’re involved in a deep discussion before
realizing that there has been a loud drilling noise in the street outside. It might seem that at first your
auditory experience was not access conscious—insofar as one could not report on it—although the
experience of the sound was phenomenally conscious all along. On the flip side, the phenomenon of
so-called “superblindsight” might seem to demonstrate the possibility of access without phenomenal
consciousness. Blindsight is a pathological condition wherein people with damage to the visual cortex
are able to distinguish between various stimuli in forced-choice scenarios, despite genuinely
maintaining that they cannot see them, which suggests that they unconsciously see those stimuli (see,

e.g., Chapters 17 and 22). And Block imagines that a person with blindsight could, through training,
become skillful at endorsing, reasoning with, and reporting on the visual stimuli presented to her.
While a person with this sort of superblindsight would have no visual phenomenal consciousness, her
visual states would arguably have become access conscious. Superblindsight does not really exist; it is
a philosopher’s thought experiment. But if such an imaginary scenario is possible, then there can be access
without phenomenal consciousness.

1.2.5 Access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, and state consciousness

As we shall see, some theorists distinguish the mental qualities or characters of mental states such as
perceptual or emotional states from their (state) consciousness. On that kind of view, a subliminal
visual perception of the color red exhibits a reddish quality, whether or not one is subjectively aware
of being in it. But even if that’s correct, it seems wrong to say that there is something that it is like to
be in such a state if one is in no way aware of being in it, which illustrates that the notions of
phenomenal and state consciousness may coincide to some extent. But perhaps there can be states
that are state conscious, but that are not qualitatively or phenomenally conscious. It is questionable,
for example, whether or not there is anything that it is like to think the conscious thoughts of which
we may be subjectively aware (but see, e.g., Montague 2016). Likewise, it may seem that a mental state
cannot be state conscious without being access conscious, as the former may seem to be a special case
of the latter. There is, however, experimental evidence that people can solve complex problems
without being aware at all that they are thinking about them (e.g., Dijksterhuis & Strick 2016),
suggesting that states that are access conscious can occur without being state conscious.

2. Contemporary Issues

2.1 Background theories: “hard” and “easy” problems of consciousness

Although creature consciousness has not struck many theorists as raising deep philosophical
questions, other kinds of consciousness have appeared trickier to explain. The nature of perceptual
states that engender transitive consciousness remains a matter of much debate in the philosophy
and science of perception (see, e.g., Schellenberg 2018). Similarly, philosophers in history such as Kant
(1787/1998) as well as many contemporary theorists have proposed complex accounts of the natures
of introspective consciousness and self-consciousness (see respectively, e.g., Kind 2005 and
O’Brien 2007). The latter notion remains particularly controversial; many thinkers in Western
philosophy such as Hume (1739/2000) and those working in Buddhist and other Eastern traditions
(see, e.g., Ganeri 2017) have denied that there are selves or that one can be subjectively aware of a self.
In contemporary consciousness studies, however, state consciousness—and perhaps more
often phenomenal consciousness—is often regarded as the problem of consciousness. Indeed, since
many thinkers throughout history assumed that all mentality is conscious, the problem of
consciousness was often conflated with the question of the nature of the mind more generally—what
is often called the “mind-body problem” in philosophy. Though many theorists have attempted to
explain the mind or consciousness in ordinary physical terms—proposing various theories (see, e.g.,
Chapters 17 and 18)—many today still maintain that phenomenal consciousness resists naturalistic
explanation.
Phenomenal consciousness may seem particularly hard to explain because it appears to be
dissociable from all other kinds of consciousness. To see why, consider the philosopher’s thought
experiment that we can conceive of so-called “philosophical zombies”—not the brain-eating creatures
in horror movies, but rather individuals exactly like us in terms of their physical make up and behavior,

but lacking phenomenal consciousness altogether (e.g., Chalmers 1996). Such creatures are stipulated
to be awake and to be able to respond to stimuli in their environments, but there is nothing that it is
like to be them. While a zombie may say “ouch” or writhe on the ground if harmed, it does not
phenomenally consciously feel pain. If philosophical zombies are possible, then at least creature (and
arguably access) consciousness can occur despite the total absence of phenomenal consciousness.
On the basis of this and related considerations, some philosophers maintain that phenomenal
consciousness constitutes what Chalmers (1996) has dubbed the “hard problem” in the philosophy of
mind. On this view, we know introspectively that we have phenomenal consciousness, but it would
seem impossible to explain it in ordinary physical terms. For such reasons, philosophers often accept
views such as versions of mind-body dualism, according to which the phenomenal and the physical
are fundamentally distinct kinds of things or properties, or versions of panpsychism, which holds that
everything in the universe exhibits a kind of consciousness. At best, cognitive science can search for
the so-called “neural correlates” of (phenomenal) consciousness (NCC)—that is, the neural states or
processes that accompany, but that are not identical with, phenomenal consciousness (see, e.g.,
Chapter 18).
The hard problem is often contrasted with so-called “easy problems”, which are easy insofar
as we can see (at least in principle) how we might explain the relevant mental functions psychologically
or neuroscientifically. These phenomena include many or all of the other sorts of consciousness
discussed here, such as access consciousness: the mental ability to discriminate stimuli through our
senses, to report our experiences in words, to focus attention, and to control behavior. Though we do
have the beginnings of neural explanations of many of these mental functions, most experimentalists
would likely attest that these problems are not easy in any other manner than this one.
Of course, whether or not we can generate viable theories of the various kinds of
consciousness depends on whether and how these kinds may relate to one another. The mere fact that
some theorists have distinguished some kinds of consciousness does not prove that they are genuinely
distinct phenomena, or even things that actually exist (see Anthony 2002). Some theorists now
propose that phenomenal consciousness depends on other kinds of consciousness—kinds that
arguably can themselves be explained physically (e.g., Carruthers 2016).

2.2 Some contemporary theories that relate kinds of consciousness

Because Chapters 17 and 18 survey several theories of consciousness, the nature and prospects of
these theories will not be reviewed here in detail. Rather, this section explores only a few examples of
the kinds of psychological and neuroscientific mechanisms put forward by some of the major theories
of state or phenomenal consciousness, to illustrate the ways in which some kinds of consciousness
may be interrelated (see Table 1 for an overview of some differences between major theories).

Table 1: Main empirical predictions by major theories of conscious awareness

Reprinted from Lau & Rosenthal (2011, 333) with kind permission from the authors and Elsevier.

Consider first so-called “higher-order” (HO) theories, which in the first place seek to explain
state consciousness in terms of distinct states of HO transitive awareness (such states are HO insofar
as make one aware of being in other mental states). Since it would seem that we can be transitively
conscious of things either by perceiving or having thoughts about them, such views often fall into
roughly two categories: higher-order thought (HOT) and higher-order perception (HOP) theories, on
which a mental state is state conscious just in case one is transitively conscious of oneself as being in
it either via a suitable HOT or HOP (see respectively, e.g., Rosenthal 1986; Lycan 1996). On such
views, what is it to state consciously see the color red is to have the suitable HO state that one sees
the color red. And such HO states are typically thought to be themselves not state conscious. On such
views, introspective consciousness occurs when HO states of awareness become themselves state
conscious via yet HO HO states of awareness.
HO theories arguably also account for phenomenal consciousness. HO theories typically
distinguish the mental qualities or characters of the relevant first-order (FO) qualitative states of which
we may be subjectively aware, such as the reddish quality of a visual perception of red, from the HO
states in virtue of which such states may be conscious—that is, in virtue of which there is something
that it is like for one to be in such states. Once again, if one is in a visual state but in no way aware of
being in it, it would seem that there is nothing that it is like to be in that state, even if the state is
distinctively qualitative or visual. But this entails that a qualitative state is phenomenally conscious only
if one is suitably aware of oneself as being in it. HO theories thus explain phenomenal consciousness
in terms of transitive consciousness of one’s mind or self, along with whatever account one might give
of the relevant qualities or properties of FO states. If such views are correct, the phenomena described
in thought experiments regarding superblindsight and philosophical zombies would be impossible,
and arguably inconceivable. In other words, there may be no hard problem after all.
Proponents of FO theories typically maintain either that state and phenomenal consciousness
do not coincide and that the central phenomenon in consciousness studies to be explained is
phenomenal consciousness, or that state consciousness can be explained somehow trivially, without
positing distinct states of HO awareness about the phenomenal states. And FO theorists criticize HO
views in many ways. Some have argued, for example, that HO theories cannot satisfyingly explain
cases of HO misrepresentation, such as a situation wherein one is aware oneself as seeing red via a
suitable HOT, and yet one does not see red (e.g., Neander 1998). In reply, HOT theorists often urge
that the possibility of such misrepresentational HOTs is not only coherent, but also theoretically
advantageous, explaining otherwise puzzling phenomena such as Charles Bonnet syndrome, wherein

individuals report complex color experiences despite neural and behavioral evidence that they do not
and cannot see colors in their environment (e.g., Lau & Rosenthal 2011).
In any case, FO theories locate phenomenal consciousness in features of FO states. As an
illustration, consider the FO theory perhaps most widely endorsed by contemporary cognitive
neuroscientists, which grounds consciousness in the GNW (e.g., Dehaene et al. 2006). By examining
large-scale comparisons of conscious and unconscious states, GNW theorists hypothesize that the
difference consists in states’ being “present in” the GNW—and so available for impact on a wide
range of mental functions and behavior.
But like many theories in contemporary consciousness studies, GNW theory is questionable.
For one thing, some GNW theorists have suggested that there cannot be globally broadcast states
without a kind of HO awareness of or access to them, potentially collapsing the distinction between
FO and HO views (e.g., Naccache 2018). Moreover, as noted above, there is evidence of reasoning
processes that occur completely outside of people’s awareness—that is, it would seem that there are
states that are at least state unconscious and arguably not phenomenally conscious in the GNW. One
might even think that such evidence undermines the very idea of access consciousness. As was the
case with transitive consciousness, if we can be in mental states that can have widespread mental
impact and yet be totally unaware of them, it is hard to see why such states deserve to be called
“conscious”.
It is similarly common for opponents of these various theories to argue that these theories
simply confuse kinds of consciousness. HOT theory, for example, strikes many critics as instead a
theory of self- or introspective consciousness. Likewise, GNW theory may at best appear to be an
account of access consciousness, not phenomenal consciousness. Or consider integrated-information
theory (IIT) (e.g., Tononi et al. 2016), which holds that an individual’s degree of consciousness
depends on levels of informational integration—roughly, the amount of information reflected by the
connections among information-carrying units within the cognitive system. IIT is often posited as a
theory of phenomenal consciousness or at least access consciousness. But the view developed
primarily out of studies of altered conditions of consciousness such as sleep, wherein it was found
that there is less general cortical coherence, and so less informational integration, in sleep than in
wakefulness. But it is questionable whether or not phenomenal consciousness comes in degrees. This
suggests that IIT is perhaps better conceived of as a theory of creature consciousness, for which the
notion of degrees of consciousness may seem more appropriate.

3. Future Directions

Today, consciousness in all of its varieties has come into its own as right as a subject of respectable
scientific study (e.g., Michel et al. 2019). But there remains much work to be done.
With regard to state or phenomenal consciousness, the majority of work to date has focused
on perceptual consciousness—and in particular visual consciousness. But it is unclear whether and to
what extent experiences in other perceptual modalities—such as smell—are similar to visual
experiences (see, e.g., the essays in Young & Keller 2014). Similarly, there are other sorts of state or
phenomenal consciousness, such as the experience of ownership or agency over our actions (e.g.,
Mylopoulos 2017), which may demand individual accounts. Some of this research is ongoing, but there
is much room for development.
There is also much opportunity to explore clinical applications of insights into consciousness.
There are many clinical disorders that seem to involve disruptions of consciousness, such as
schizophrenia (see, e.g., the essays in Gennaro 2015), and some potential treatments of these disorders
would seem to require a more complete understanding of the relations among varieties of
consciousness.

Likewise, clarifying the various kinds of consciousness would naturally shed light on whether
or not certain nonhuman animals or even artificially intelligent machines do or might exhibit some
forms of consciousness (e.g., Boly et al. 2013). If we are going to build machines that do not merely
mimic the outward signs of consciousness, but actually have it, then we have to know what
consciousness in all of its forms is.
Many ongoing and future projects in consciousness studies thus involve further clarifying the
relationships between the various kinds of consciousness. Some, for example, have recently raised
doubts about much of the experimental evidence for subliminal perception (e.g., Phillips 2018), urging
that what may seem to be unconscious mentality in phenomena such as blindsight may be instead
either weakly state or phenomenally conscious or, to use an expression of Dennett’s (1969), not even
mental but subpersonal—that is, not a psychological feature of a person but a property of a subsystem
of the person such as the retina. If it turns out that there really are no unconscious mental states, then
perhaps we must relinquish the distinction between state or phenomenal and transitive consciousness.

Summary of Key Ideas:

This chapter discusses various kinds of consciousness: what has been called “creature,” “transitive,”
and “state” consciousness, “phenomenal” and “access” consciousness, and “introspective” or “self”
consciousness. It is far from settled that these kinds refer to distinct—let alone existing—phenomena.
But there is much promising theoretical and experimental work seeking to clarify the relationships
between these seemingly distinct kinds of consciousness and aiming to evaluate the evidence for and
against accounts of these phenomena. While there remains much work to be done, it is reasonable to
hope that we may one day explain the genuine kinds of consciousness in terms of the functioning of
the brain.1

Further Readings:

Blackmore, Susan. 2017. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Kriegel, Uriah. 2020. The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Morton, Peter & Mylopoulos, Myrto. 2020. Philosophy of Mind: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,
Third Edition, Broadview Press.

Schneider, Susan & Velmans, Max. 2017. The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Second Edition.
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1
I thank Carolyn Dicey Jennings, William Lycan, Michael Martínez-Raguso, Myrto Mylopoulos, David Rosenthal,
Benjamin Young, and audience members of a work-in-progress session at Idaho State University—in particular, James
Norris, Evan Rodriguez, James Skidmore, and Russell Wahl—for their many helpful comments on drafts of this
material.

Wu, Wayne, 2018. The neuroscience of consciousness. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta,
Edward N. (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/consciousness-
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Discussion Topics:

● How do these kinds of consciousness differ from one another?

● What (hypothetical) experimental evidence would demonstrate that these kinds of consciousness
are distinct?
● Are some kinds of consciousness more difficult to explain neuroscientifically than others? Why?

Terms for index:

Access consciousness
Blindsight
Block, N.
Chalmers, D.
Creature consciousness
Descartes, R.
First-order (FO) theories of consciousness
Global-neuronal workspace (GNW) theory
Higher-order theories of consciousness
Higher-order thought (HOT) theories
Higher-order perception (HOP) theories
Implicit bias
Integrated-information theory (IIT)
Introspective consciousness
Lucid dreaming
Locke, J.
Mind-body problem
Minimally conscious state (MCS)
Nagel, T.
Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC)
Phenomenal consciousness
Philosophical zombies

Self-consciousness
Subliminal perception
Superblindsight
State consciousness
Transitive consciousness