On A Distinction BetweenAccess and Phenomenal Consciousness

By BRENT SILBYDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of CanterburyNew ZealandCopyright (c) Brent Silby 1998www.def-logic.com/articles

In his paper "On A Confusion about a Function of Consciousness", NedBlock claims that the concept of consciousness is best described as amongrel concept.

For Block, the word "consciousness" refers to many different concepts andphenomena that have been bundled together under the one concept.Block suggests that we run into problems when we analyse certainaspects of consciousness using premises that cannot be applied to otheraspects of consciousness. In an effort to clear up the confusion associatedwith reasoning about consciousness, Block breaks consciousness downinto several different concepts. In this paper I will be concerned only withwhat Block calls

access consciousness

and

phenomenal consciousness.

These two concepts appear to constitute his primary distinction anddeserve attention. I will consider David Chalmers' contribution to the issueand will then outline an alternative view offered by Daniel Dennett.

Block's Primary Distinction

Ned Block draws a distinction between two different types of consciousness -

phenomenal

and

access

. This distinction arises from thethought that the phenomenal properties of consciousness are of adifferent character to the cognitive, intentional or functional properties of consciousness. For Block, the phenomenal properties of consciousness areexperiential properties. These properties are categorized as beingproperties of

phenomenal consciousness

(P-conscious properties).P-conscious states include the experiential states we have when we see,hear and have pains.On the other side of the coin, we have what Block refers to as

accessconsciousness

(A-consciousness). This non-phenomenal category of consciousness encapsulates the tasks involved in cognition, representationand the control of behavior. A state is A-conscious if it is poised to be used

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for the direct rational control of thought and action. The important pointto note here is that for a state to be A-conscious, it is not enough for thatstate to be available for use. It must be

poised

and ready to go. Blocksuggests that we may have many representations of facts that areavailable for use if somehow re-activated, but their mere availability doesnot make them A-conscious. For example, we may have once learned thatthe Earth is 93 million miles away from the sun and this fact is availablefor use whenever needed. However, this information is not A-consciousbecause it is not yet poised for the control of behavior.

Block believes that A-Consciousness and P-Consciousness usually occurtogether but in some cases they may not.In order to help us acquire a full understanding of the difference betweenP-consciousness and A-consciousness, Block provides some examples of A-consciousness without P-consciousness and of P-consciousness withoutA-consciousness. These examples are intended to clear up any confusionwe may have between these two distinct categories of consciousness.

'A' without 'P' and 'P' without 'A'

Blindsight is a well documented phenomenon that occurs in people whohave suffered damage to certain areas of their visual cortex. These peoplehave a blind region in their visual field, and though they are aware of theirblind spot, they cannot see anything that is presented to them in thatarea of space. The important feature of blindsight is that althoughsubjects are unaware of stimuli in their blind spots, they have an uncannyability to `guess' as to the location, motion and direction of such stimuli.In these cases their appears to be some visual awareness without thephenomenal properties that normally occur with visual awareness. ForBlokc, cases of blindsight point to instances of absent P-consciousness.Block cannot say, however, that these people have A-consciousness of thestimuli in their blind region, because the content of the blind region is notavailable for the

rational control of action

. Blindsight patients must beprompted by an experimenter before they will `take a guess'. It is unlikelythat a hungry blindsight patient would spontaneously reach for achocolate in his blind region. But, says Block, imagine a

super-blindsighter

who had acquired the ability to guess

when

to guess about the content of her blind field. Even though she doesn't

see

the objects in her blind field,she can spontaneously offer verbal reports about those objects.Information about her blind field just spring into her thoughts. A super-blindsighter would be A-conscious but not P-conscious. Whether there areany super-blindsighters is an empirical question that has not beenanswered yet, but this does not affect Block's point. It is enough for Blockthat they are conceptually possible. To emphasize this conceptualpossibility, Block points to evidence that the human visual system is

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divided into two separate subsystems - the ventral and dorsalsubsystems. In blindsight there seems to be damage to the ventralsystem, which Block claims is closely connected to P-Consciousness.

The ventral system is responsible for object recognition and classification,while the dorsal system is involved in computing spatial features such aslocation and motion. Block believes that because the visual system iscomprised of these two visual subsystems, it would also be conceptuallypossible to find cases of P-Consciousness without A-Consciousness. Thismight occur if someone incurred damage to their dorsal system, whiletheir ventral system remained intact. Of course, if Block's distinction isaccurate, we would probably not know if someone was P-Conscious of events in their visual field without being A-Conscious of those eventsbecause a lack of A-Consciousness implies that content is not poised forthe control of behavior. This includes behavior such as making thestatement: "I see a red object."There are other possibilities of P-Consciousness without A-Consciousnessbecause, obviously, the P-Conscious / A-Conscious distinction does notonly apply to visual events. The distinction applies to all events involved inbehavior and awareness. As an example of P-Consciousness withoutA-Consciousness, Block asks us to imagine a situation that involves theauditory system. Suppose that you are involved in a conversation withsomeone when suddenly you notice the existence of a constant noise thathas been occurring throughout the entire conversation. Perhaps yousuddenly notice the steady ticking of a clock. The sound has been there allalong and you were aware of it all along but you were not

consciously

aware of it. According to Block, you were P-Conscious of the noise, butyou were not A-Conscious of it. In other words, even though you wereP-Conscious of the sound of the clock, that information was not poised forthe direct rational control of action until you noticed it. It was at that pointthat the noise of the clock had an influence on your behavior andthoughts. I think that if, at this point in time, you thought back over thepast few minutes, you might realize that you were aware of the tickingsound all along. The important point is that it took A-Conscious awarenessof the sound to shift your attention to the sound of the clock and toenable you to even consider that it had been there all along.

Assessing Block's Distinction

On the surface, Block's distinction between access and phenomenalconsciousness looks like a useful way of explaining the problem of consciousness. It allows us to seek cognitivist explanations for behaviorwithout having to find a way of including the phenomenal properties of experience in those explanations. Perhaps once we have gained acomplete understanding of how access consciousness works, we could

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