What is a Theory of Consciousness a Theory of?—The Search for Criterial Constraints on Theory

Abstract

When are psychologists entitled to call a certain theoretical construct “consciousness?” Until the past few years most cognitive psychologists avoided dealing with conscious experience, in part because of a widespread view that there are no reliable empirical constraints to provide a foundation for theory. Today there is an increasing willingness to address the question. But how do we find the relevant empirical constraints? This article maintains that we only need to specify the minimal conditions of occurrence and nonoccurrence of a conscious experience, as expressed in a reliable way by subjects. One can do this by contrastively analyzing closely matched pairs of psychological events which seem to differ only in respect to the fact that one member of the pair is conscious, while the other is not. The article discusses five sets of such phenomena, and suggests some general properties that characterize them. Much of the empirical evidence needed for a theory of consciousness already exists today–only the theory itself is lacking.