Phenomenal Consciousness

The term “phenomenal consciousness” is the least understood in the field of consciousness neuroscience. Despite many hypotheses in explaining the existence of phenomenal consciousness and its neural correlates, deep understanding of such concept is lacking. This can be plausibly attributed to the fact that it is almost scientifically difficult to study and most hypotheses were derived from inferences. On the other hand, “access consciousness” is significantly more understood, as there are scientific methods in studying such concept. These two terms, “phenomenal consciousness” and “access consciousness” are branched under one big term of “ consciousness”.

The concept of consciousness is highly debatable and its definition can be considered

Authors like Block argued that subjective experience could be distinct from cognitive functions (Churhland, 2005; O’Brien and Opie, 2001), supporting the distinction between the two types of consciousness. However, there are opposing views that support the idea that access consciousness is inclusive of its phenomenal state (Kouider, Dehaene, Jobert, & Le Bihan, 2007; Crick & Koch, 1997), supporting the idea that phenomenal and access consciousness are not

Furthermore, with the dynamic view suggesting that phenomenal consciousness is not separated from access consciousness, it question the necessity of studying phenomenal consciousness. Section 2 will review the distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness by discussing Block’s argument of phenomenology overflowing cognition using Sperling’s partial report paradigm and the modified version of it. In addition, other models: Global workspace and higher order representation will be discussed as support explanation for the separation. Section 3 discusses the dynamic view of consciousness, which supports the integration of phenomenal and access consciousness. The dynamic view includes () and multi-access model as explanation of the inseparability of the two types of consciousness. With the dynamic view, the section will also discuss the necessity of studying phenomenal consciousness if the subjective experience is indeed embedded in cognitive functions. This raises the possibility of excluding phenomenal consciousness if the access consciousness constitutes the phenomenal states of experience. Section 4 will summarize the findings and examine future directions for