Slide 1
Phenomenal consciousness is how experience feels
Phenomenal consciousness concerns what an experience is like for the subject. Seeing colour and feeling pain are familiar starting examples.
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The topic differs from merely being awake or being able to report information. Those capacities often accompany experience, but philosophical theories must explain how the concepts relate instead of defining away their differences.
Slide 2
Access consciousness concerns information available for use
Information can be available for reasoning, reporting and action. Access consciousness names this functional availability in a prominent philosophical distinction.
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Imagine information displayed on a control panel and available to several operators. Availability concerns how the information can be used; the analogy does not establish that a control panel has an inner experience.
Slide 3
Linking brain processes to experience leaves further questions
Research can link experiences with physical processes. A philosophical account also asks why or how those processes involve an experienced perspective.
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Finding a reliable indicator helps identify when something occurs. Explaining what makes it that kind of phenomenon is a further task, just as a diagnostic marker and a theory need not perform identical roles.
Slide 4
Theories disagree about what explains the felt perspective
Some theories seek a physical or functional explanation of experience. Others argue that such explanations leave an essential feature out.
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Disagreement concerns both the target and the standard of explanation. A theory that explains reportability may be judged successful by one approach and incomplete by another that emphasizes phenomenal character.
Slide 5
Experience, access and wakefulness are distinct questions
A precise discussion identifies whether it concerns experience, access, self-awareness or wakefulness. Related words do not guarantee identical problems.
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When someone says a machine is conscious because it reports its state, the evidence directly concerns reporting. A further argument is needed to connect that capacity with whatever richer sense of consciousness is intended.
Sources
- Consciousness
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Consciousness
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy