Psyche 9(08): 'The Contents Of Phenomenal Consciousness' by Antti Revonsuo
Patrick Wilken
PSYCHE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON CONSCIOUSNESS
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THE CONTENTS OF PHENOMENAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
ONE RELATION TO RULE THEM ALL AND IN THE UNITY BIND THEM
Antti Revonsuo
Department of Philosophy and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
University of Turku
Turku FIN-20014
FINLAND
Copyright (c) Antti Revonsuo 2003
PSYCHE, 9(08), February 2003
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v9/psyche-9-08-revonsuo.html
KEYWORDS: phenomenal consciousness, unity of consciousness, binding,
explanation, explanatory gap, phenomenal space.
COMMENTARY ON: Dainton, B. (2000). *Stream of Consciousness: Unity and
Continuity in Conscious Experience.* London: Routledge.
ABSTRACT: *Stream of Consciousness* is a detailed and insightful
analysis of the nature of phenomenal consciousness, especially its
unity at a time and continuity over stretches of time. I find
Dainton's approach to phenomenal consciousness in many ways sound but
I also point out one major source of disgreement between us. Dainton
believes that to explain phenomenal unity and continuity, no reference
to anything outside experience is required. Thus, he postulates a
fundamental experiential relation called co-consciousness which is
supposed to do all the explanatory work. On the contrary, I hold that
to truly explain features of consciousness such as phenomenal unity
and continuity, reference to mechanisms outside the phenomenal realm
are necessary.
1. INTRODUCTION
This is one of the best and most original books on consciousness that I
have read for a long time. It is written in a beautifully clear style,
the argumentation is entirely lucid and proceeds in a systematic manner.
Best of all, and unlike most recent consciousness books on the market,
*Stream of Consciousness* mostly deals with the nature and internal
structure of phenomenal consciousness itself, rather than with brain,
computation, quantum physics, zombies, blindsight, representation,
intentionality, and other topics whose connection to phenomenal
consciousness is indirect at best and nonexistent at worst. And not only
does it *deal with* the issue, but manages to make a significant
contribution to the literature on consciousness.
The book is full of insights, arguments and important conceptual
distinctions. It would take another book to cover all of it within the
scope of a single review. Therefore, I will focus especially on the
following questions:
What is the place and the significance of a purely phenomenological
approach, such as Dainton's, in the science of consciousness?
When it comes to the nature and the explanation of consciousness,
what kind of fundamental assumptions does Dainton commit himself
to, and are the commitments plausible and fruitful for the
empirical science of consciousness?
2. THE ROLE OF PHENOMENOLOGY IN THE SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
In the Preface, Dainton notes that although the recent interest in
consciousness has led to a burgeoning literature, relatively little of
it is concerned with phenomenological issues. Instead, most make an
attempt to understand the *relationship* between consciousness and the
brain (or the physical world). He points out that to understand the
relationship between those two entities, we first need an understanding
of each of them. Therefore it is premature to try to solve the problem
of the explanatory gap before we understand what lies at *both* sides of
the gap.
I can only agree with these observations. I would express the same
concern in the following way: once we are committed to realism
concerning the phenomenal realm, we need a science of consciousness that
takes this commitment seriously (Revonsuo 2000, forthcoming). In
traditional branches of science (e.g. biology), taking some domain of
phenomena seriously means that what is first required is a detailed and
systematical description of the phenomena in their own terms or at their
own level of description. All science must start by the identification
and systematic description of the *explanandum*. Only after we have an
understanding of the nature of the *explanandum* can we start to
construct hypotheses regarding the possible underlying *mechanisms* that
might be invoked, in order to explain the phenomenon. To invoke
explanatory mechanisms before the nature of the *explanadum* is clear
will not lead to successful theoretical explanation, for in that case it
is difficult to understand what the mechanisms are supposed to explain
and whether they bear any intelligible explanatory relationships to the
actual *explanandum*.
Therefore, at this early stage of its development, the science of
consciousness should direct considerable resources to the systematic
study of phenomenological issues, in order to first construct a detailed
map of the phenomenal level of description. The explanatory gap, or the
question whether the phenomenal level can be intelligibly related to any
physical or neurobiological levels in the brain, can be dealt with only
after such a description is available. In any case, there is every
reason to believe that an understanding of the inner structure and
dynamics of the phenomenal level might render the gap less unbridgeable,
for the features of the phenomenal level (how it is structured, how it
dynamically changes across time, and so on) offer top-down constraints
for the science of consciousness in the search for potential explanatory
mechanisms in the brain.
It seems that Dainton realizes the role and value of the top-down
constraints offered by phenomenological description; on p. 23 he writes
that situations in which the phenomenological data conflict with
accepted science may well provide valuable clues as to how the relevant
science might be revised and improved. I agree with this: once we have a
detailed description of the phenomenal level, it will suggest what sorts
of lower-level neural phenomena might be closely associated with the
higher phenomenal level, even if such phenomena would not yet have been
discovered by neuroscience (and even if they were for the time being not
discoverable due to current methodological limitations in neuroscience,
see Revonsuo 2001). At least it gives us a clue what kind of entities
neuroscience should be looking for if it wishes to explain
consciousness.
However, I would like to add that even in the multidisciplinary science
of consciousness, phenomenal descriptions should not be given any
*absolute* authority over other sources of data. The advisable strategy
would rather be along the lines of Owen Flanagan's (1992) "natural
method": to treat phenomenology, empirical psychology and neuroscience
all with equal respect, and in cases of conflict, any or all stories may
have to be revised. It is conceivable that in some cases (e.g.
confabulation, false memories) phenomenological descriptions are
inaccurate or unreliable and therefore neuroscience does not need to
accommodate them. However, such a situation is likely to be an exception
rather than the rule.
A phenomenological approach such as presented in *The Stream of
Consciousness* is not only useful, I believe it is absolutely necessary
if the science of consciousness is ever going to make any progress at
all. Without the phenomenological approach, the science of
consciousness may become a fatally degenerating branch of science that
is incapable of characterizing its core explanandum in any clear and
systematic manner.
3. DAINTON'S FUNDAMENTAL COMMITMENTS
Dainton's starting point is, not surprisingly, "robust, full-blooded
realism about consciousness". This commitment alone rules out
eliminative and reductive physicalism. However, he is also committed to
the reality of the physical world, which rules out phenomenalism and
idealism, and he furthermore rejects substance dualism. Other than that,
he remains neutral as to the precise nature of the matter-consciousness
relationship. He calls his approach "moderate naturalism". Still, he
clearly expresses sympathy for what he calls "phenomenalized
materialism" or the view that the intrinsic character of at least some
physical entities is phenomenal, but he remains uncommitted to this
view.
On the issue of the nature of perception, Dainton commits himself to
indirect realism according to which we are never directly in touch with
external physical objects but our perception of them is mediated by
phenomenal entities directly present for us. Perceptual experience comes
in the form of "world-presenting"; perceptual contents are experienced
as being "out there", but in fact the contents are projected mental
entities, not the external stimulus objects themselves somehow directly
perceived. He summarizes the implications of this view of perception (p.
18): "there is a sense in which we are all enclosed in spheres of
virtual reality, phenomenal spheres somehow produced by activities
within our own brains: all we are directly aware of are the contents
within these spheres." He adds that this is not how it seems to us; we
seem to be surrounded by ordinary material objects rather than by
experience. However, critical phenomenology inescapably leads us to this
counter-intuitive conclusion.
My role as a critic becomes increasingly difficult here, for I cannot
detect any significant disagreement between Dainton's view and the
Virtual Reality metaphor of consciousness that I have proposed as the
starting point for the science of consciousness (Revonsuo 1995, 2000,
forthcoming). Dainton is surely correct when he says that the view is in
conflict with our naive intuitions. Our deeply rooted intuitions are
probably the main reason why indirect or representative realism is so
difficult to accept. In my own work I have tried to show that if we take
the dreaming brain as a model system for consciousness science, then it
becomes much easier to see that the internal workings of the brain must
be fully sufficient for producing an entire sphere of externalized or
projected experience. Dreaming is produced by the internal activation of
the brain, yet experienced as "being-in-the-world" or as "world-
presenting", not as a mental image inside our heads. What Dainton calls
projection I have called the "Out-of-the-Brain" -illusion: even during
dreaming, we do not conceptualize our experience as the experience of
being trapped inside the brain or of seeing how the brain looks like
from the inside. On the contrary, we experience direct presence in and
full immersion into a phenomenal (dream) reality, which must however
reside entirely within the confines of the brain. According to this
view, veridical perception differs from dream experience only in one
sense: whereas dream experience creates a virtual presence in an
imaginary world, perception creates a kind of telepresence experience:
the feeling of direct presence in the center of the external world
physically surrounding the organism; yet the experience-generating
mechanisms (and the experience too) remain literally within the confines
of the brain.
4. THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS: SIMPLE OR RELATIONAL?
A further fundamental commitment that Dainton makes in the first
chapters of the book is the rejection of a relational or bi-polar
structure of consciousness. He calls the doctrine that consciousness has
a relational "awareness-content" or "act-object" -structure by the name
of "the A-thesis". He argues, to my mind quite convincingly, that there
are no grounds to believe that the A-thesis is correct. It is difficult
to see what sort of an entity the contentless awareness postulated by
the A-thesis is supposed to be and why it would be needed. The wide
acceptance of the A-thesis is probably due to the mistaken idea that
experience should be modeled after perception, as some sort of internal
perception. Dainton does an excellent job in showing the A-thesis
untenable.
One currently popular version of the A-thesis seems to be widely
accepted within the philosophy of mind. Those who advocate
representationalism or some variety of an intentional analysis of
consciousness typically defend the view that consciousness is a
representational relation between the *vehicle* and the *content* (or
object) of consciousness. This variety of bipolar analysis leads to the
view that the contents of consciousness are not in the brain and that
phenomenology "ain't in the head" (as Tye once put it). Dainton does not
dicuss representationalism, but it should be pointed out that also the
representationalist doctrine is in conflict with the Simple Conception
of experience adopted by Dainton. This is because representationalism
implies a *relational* analysis of consciousness, if not in terms of
"act-object", then in terms of "vehicle-content". In contrast to this,
the Simple Conception is an entirely *non-relational* view of
consciousness. Thus, it would seem to be difficult to accept both a
representationalist analysis and the Simple Conception of consciousness
at the same time, for any such view would have to accept two
fundamentally conflicting views the relational and the non-relational
of the basic underlying structure of consciousness.
According to the Simple Conception, consciousness is inseparable from
phenomenal contents; contents are intrinsically conscious, or
self-revealing. Dainton seems to be unaware that a similar view has very
recently been defended by Stubenberg (1998). When phenomenal
consciousness itself (instead of intentionality, representation, or
organism- environment interaction) is considered of primary significance
in a theory of consciousness, various authors, independently of each
other, tend to end up with a simple, non-relational conception of
experience. I have to confess that such a non-relational theory of
experience seems to me the most promising avenue for the future science
of consciousness. Therefore it should be adopted as the working
hypothesis in the theoretical core of the science of consciousness
(Revonsuo, forthcoming). Indeed, perhaps the time is ripe for the Simple
Conception to seriously challenge or even overthrow functionalism and
representationalism as the dominating philosophy of consciousness.
5. PHENOMENAL AND NON-PHENOMENAL SPACE
Chapter 3 is devoted to phenomenal space. Dainton acknowledges that to a
very large extent our consciousness is spatial, and that an
understanding of the unity of consciousness requires an understanding of
phenomenal space. The traditional view that consciousness is wholly
non-spatial is based on questionable assumptions originating either in
Cartesian dualism or in the act-object separation between consciousness
(which is supposed to be non-spatial) and its (external perceptual)
objects or contents which are spatial. Our phenomenology has an
undeniable spatial character and no theory of consciousness committed to
the primacy of phenomenology can brush this fact under the carpet.
But simply admitting the spatial character of the phenomenal level is
only the first step. It must be followed by an analysis of the
implications of such a position. Dainton provides us with a sensible
distinction between two possible types of phenomenal space: P-space and
V- space. A P-space is a substantival phenomenal space; space which in
itself possesses some phenomenal reality, even in the absence of any
other phenomenal properties or objects. A P- space is necessarily a
phenomenally experienced expanse, even if it is totally empty. A V-
space is not like that; by contrast, it is in itself a phenomenal
vacuum, a phenomenal nothingness. However, other phenomenal properties
or objects are experienced as spatially related within this in-itself
non-phenomenal space. A V-space does not consist of any phenomenal
substance. As Dainton points out, and I have no objections, our
phenomenal space seems to be a V-space rather than a P-space.
Still, I am not fully convinced by Dainton's arguments and thought
experiments to the effect that phenomeno-spatial unity would not be a
necessary condition (and perhaps also the underlying explanation) for
co-consciousness. Although he admits that spatiality is a very important
factor in phenomenal unity, he suggests that there is reason to believe
that experiences, although altogether dissociated phenomeno-spatially,
could somehow be co- conscious. He describes a science-fiction scene in
which a subject's audio-visual experience comes from sensory organs
located at a mountain top and at the same time bodily experience
(including voluntary movement) is fed into the subject's consciousness
from a body diving and swimming at the bottom of the ocean. This bizarre
arrangement would lead, according to Dainton, to a situation in which
the two channels of experience would be co-conscious (i.e. being
experienced together as synchronous component parts of a single stream
of consciousness) but still entirely unconnected in any spatial manner.
The subject of course would pay more attention either to one or the
other channel of information at any one time but both streams would be
conscious at the same time.
This argument is weakened by the well-known fact that our perceptual
system (and our consciousness) abhors incoherent sources of input. For
example, if two different objects or images are presented to the two
eyes, either they are merged into one, if coherent enough (binocular
fusion), or only one of them will be seen at any one time (binocular
rivalry). Thus, a more plausible prediction as to Dainton's thought
experiment would be that: 1) Either the two coherent streams of
information compete for access to awareness and therefore only one of
them is experienced at any one time or 2) They will be merged together
into a very unusual phenomenal world: You seem to be on a mountain-top
as regards your audiovisual experience, but somehow you also seem to
have an invisible body located there; furthermore the whole space around
you seems to be filled with a cold, invisible liquid surrounding your
body. There are also invisible objects and surfaces all around you. If
you move your body, you feel that you can move relative to the fully
transparent liquid and its invisible objects, but curiously enough you
stay still in relation to the mountain-top. The entire invisible liquid
world seems to be moving in relation to the visible world, rather than
you moving inside the liquid world. Thus, in this case of the streams of
information merging into one there would be experience of only one
phenomenal space, albeit a very peculiar one: an audiovisual phenomenal
space filled with transparent liquid moving in relation to your
invisible body and the surrounding invisible objects.
There seem to be cases of altered states of consciousness in which
people experience themselves in two places at once (e.g. out-of-the-body
-experiences). Are they good evidence for fundamental spatial disunity
in consciousness? The cases I am familiar with seem rather more like a
dissociation between visual perspective and bodily awareness. The
experience is usually described as one where "I could see myself from
the outside", which indicates that the visual field is constructed from
a disembodied perspective, but a human character identified as "me" or
as "my body" appears as one distinct object amongst others in the visual
field. Sometimes the two spatial frames of reference (the normal
embodied and the abnormal disembodied perspectives) can alternate or one
can rapidly turn into the other. Still, at any one time the world is
seen either from the embodied or the disembodied perspective, not two
perspectives at once. Thus, these cases do not seriously challenge the
fundamental spatial unity of consciousness.
Of course one can always argue that spatially dissociated experiences
might still be possible in some non-human consciousness. Perhaps, and
perhaps not. I would be inclined to say that in such cases the alien
creature possesses more than one single center of consciousness or that
it houses more than one subject. Thus, I am inclined to treat
phenomeno-spatiality as the basic unifying feature of human
consciousness, and also as an explanation of why the relation of
co-consciousness holds. Furthermore, I believe that the postulated
phenomenal spatiality must in turn be explained by referring to even
lower, non-phenomenal levels of organization. By contrast, Dainton takes
co-consciousness to be the ultimate explanation of binding and the unity
of consciousness, and says that there is no need to postulate any
unifying principle over and above experience and inter-experiential
relations.
6. DAINTON'S EXPLANATORY STRATEGY DOES NOT DELIVER GENUINE EXPLANATIONS
There is one conspicuous difference between my view and Dainton's when
it comes to the explanation of consciousness. I suppose we both agree
that the systematic description of phenomenal consciousness is a
necessary first step towards an explanation of consciousness. But what
should we do when we proceed from mere *description* to actual
*explanation*? This is the point where we take different courses.
When seeking for an explanation of the unity of phenomenal
consciousness, Dainton prefers to stay entirely within the phenomenal
level and postulate explanations that refer to nothing outside the
experiential realm: "[E]xperience is self-unifying, in that to
understand the unity we find within experience, we do not need to look
to anything above, beyond or external to experience itself" (p. 236).
I fear that this strategy of explanation renders the relation of
co-consciousness inexplicable, after all. It is difficult to see how the
phenomenal features of experiences (such as unity) can be made
intelligible solely by referring to further phenomenal features of
experiences, or by labelling the phenomenal features themselves with
technical terms such as "co- consciousness". In order to truly *explain*
the features of consciousness, one must leave the phenomenal level and
refer to something outside of it.
That is exactly what the strategy of explanation that I favour does. I
have proposed that consciousness should be treated as one specific
biological level of organization in the brain, and to explain the
phenomenal level its internal structure, unity, dynamics, and
organization reference to the underlying non-phenomenal levels is
appropriate, indeed necessary (Revonsuo 2000, 2001, forthcoming). This
explanatory strategy is no different from the one used in the biological
sciences to explain other complex biological phenomena at high levels of
biological organization: by seeking the lower-level features that could
actually constitute and support the features of the higher level
phenomenon. Conversely, features of the higher-level phenomenon act as
top-down constraints to what count as the possible underlying
explanatory mechanisms at the lower level. This explanatory strategy can
be called multi-level or cross-level mechanistic explanation.
The core idea of this strategy is that intelligible constitutive
relationships must be identified between the higher and the lower levels
of organization. To explain unity at a higher level (such as the
phenomenal unity of consciousness) some lower-level non-phenomenal
mechanism must be identified that makes the higher-level unity
intelligible. Unless intelligible inter-level relationships are found,
the relations between levels remain merely correlative and thus do not
manage to explain the higher-level phenomena (e.g. the "neural
correlates of consciousness" are not really explanations of
consciousness).
7. WHEN UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS FALLS APART
Dainton explicitly states in the Preface that he has concentrated on
getting a clear picture of *typical* streams of consciousness and of the
most *general* features of experience. He has thus deliberately
neglected altered states of consciousness (e.g. meditation, dreaming,
drug states) and pathologically deteriorated consciousness (the data
arising from neuropsychology). This restriction is understandable, for
it would most likely have been impossible to include all these diverse
and plentiful sources of data within the scope of a single book.
However, from the perspective of the science of consciousness, altered
states and deteriorated or distorted consciousness constitute at least
as important sources of data as our everyday normal consciousness does,
if not more so. We should remember that in several other branches of
science the anomalous cases have proved to be the theoretically most
important ones. For example, when charting the cognitive architecture of
mind, cognitive neuropsychologists concentrate on the patterns of
*deficient* performance that emerge after selective brain injury. Those
unusual patterns reveal dissociations between functions that normally go
tightly together, thus revealing the organization of the underlying
mechanisms, and the limits of possible patterns of performance. The
theory of the normal cognitive architecture must be capable of
accommodating and even predicting all the in-principle possible
deficient patterns of performance.
In the case of consciousness, it seems to me that the unusual patterns
of phenomenal experience occurring during dreaming, drug states, and
after brain injury surely contain crucially important information as to
the possible structure and the underlying mechanisms of consciousness.
Anomalous distortions of consciousness (such as found in unilateral
neglect, simultanagnosia, dream bizarreness etc.) in many ways violate
our expectations of what phenomenal experience is like and in what kind
of forms it can be manifested. Those anomalous cases have to be
accommodated by any comprehensive account of the phenomenal realm, for
they are actual even if not very typical forms of subjective experience.
Furthermore, they may reveal the underlying mechanisms that are at work
beneath the surface of the normal unity of consciousness, for in many of
the anomalous cases it is some specific aspect of the normal phenomenal
unity that is missing or malfunctioning (Revonsuo 1999).
By contrast, the anomalous neuropsychological cases and unusual
phenomenological dissociations do not have all that much significance in
Dainton's phenomenological approach to explanation. Dainton seems to
believe that the phenomenal unity of consciousness does not *have* any
underlying explanatory mechanisms; the unity of consciousness should not
be explained by referring to underlying non-phenomenal mechanisms. In
Chapter 4 Dainton does mention in passing some of the relevant
neuropsychological syndromes, but hardly gives them the kind of
treatment they would deserve.
It would be interesting to find out how Dainton's purely
phenomenological approach treats something like the following cases as
possible sources of data about the binding and unity of consciousness.
Epileptic absence seizures appear to involve a total cessation of
phenomenal flow for a few seconds at a time, but do not necessarily have
any influence on phenomenal continuity (Damasio 1999). Absence seizures
would thus be relevant to the discussion of phenomenal time in Chapter
5.
Cerebral akinetopsia is a rare neuropsychological syndrome that involves
an inability to see phenomenal continuity in visual objects:
The visual disorder complained of by the patient was a loss of
movement vision in all three dimensions. She had difficulty, for
example, in pouring tea or coffee into a cup because the fluid
appeared to be frozen, like a glacier. In addition, she could not
stop pouring at the right time since she was unable to perceive the
movement in the cup (or a pot) when the fluid rose. ...In a room
where more than two people were walking she felt very insecure and
unwell, and usually left the room immediately, because 'people were
suddenly here or there but I have not seen them moving'. .. She
could not cross the street because of her inability to judge the
speed of a car, but she could identify the car itself without
difficulty. 'When I'm looking at the car first, it seems far away.
But then, when I want to cross the road, suddenly the car is very
near.' She gradually learned to 'estimate' the distance of moving
vehicles by means of the sound becoming louder (Zihl, Von Cramon &
Mai 1983, p. 315).
For this patient, there were only stationary visual objects which did
not move, but appeared as suddenly jumping around. She could see the
objects clearly at different distances and locations, but she had no
idea what happened to them between these locations. For her, the objects
did not move, they just jumped from one position to the next, but there
was nothing in between (Heywood and Zihl 1999).
If there is an explanation as to why a bilateral injury of area V5 leads
to loss of temporal continuity, I expect the explanation must be
constructed in terms of underlying non- phenomenal mechanisms rather
than in terms of experiential relations within consciousness. Thus,
co-consciousness and the (dis)continuity of consciousness must be
explained by referring to mechanisms outside consciousness, rather than
declaring such relations fundamental and inexplicable.
8. PHENOMENAL SPATIALITY AND CO-CONSCIOUSNESS
Dainton treats co-consciousness as a more fundamental feature of
experience than its spatiality. By contrast, I am inclined to treat
(phenomenal) spatiality as the fundamental feature of the phenomenal
level. However, I do agree with Dainton that the spatiality in question
is not substantival phenomenal spatiality (P-space), but rather a
V-space.
It seems to me that the idea of a V-space might pave the way for an
intelligible explanation of phenomenal unity. In the framework of
multilevel biological explanation, the fact that consciousness is based
on a non-phenomenal V-space suggests that there must be some high- level
neural phenomenon in the brain (perhaps a coherent bioelectrical or
electrophysiological field) which is the physical substrate of the
non-phenomenal V-space. This spatially organized but non-phenomenal
system is exactly the kind of entity that could help us to bridge the
explanatory gap: it is in itself wholly non-phenomenal (a phenomenal
vacuum, as Dainton says), yet it allows all the phenomeno-spatial
organization to be manifested at the higher phenomenal level. It has one
foot in the non-phenomenal realm, the other in the phenomenal realm (I
elaborate these ideas in Revonsuo, forthcoming). It is rather intriguing
that cognitive neuroscientists have recently discovered that some sort
of content- independent, spatial representation appears to be necessary
for information to be incorporated into consciousness (Kanwisher 2001).
If consciousness is based on a non-phenomenal, neurally implemented
V-space, as I suggest, then that is exactly the direction in which we
should expect the empirical evidence to converge.
This naturalistic multilevel approach to the explanation of
consciousness denies that the level of consciousness could be both
described and explained by staying within the phenomenal realm. To
*describe* consciousness, it is necessary to confine oneself to the
phenomenal level; but to *explain* consciousness, it is necessary to
relate the phenomenal level to the nonphenomenal.
9. CONCLUSION
*The Stream of Consciousness* is a definite contribution to the field of
consciousness studies. It shows that the field is in urgent need of a
clear and systematic account of the phenomenal level itself: the level
of purely phenomenal description. No other branch of science
(neuroscience, cognitive science etc.) involved in the study of
consciousness is going to deliver such an account; the study of
consciousness must do the job on its own. Although Dainton's account of
the unity and continuity of consciousness will have to be integrated
with (and constrained by) phenomenal descriptions from other sources of
evidence (especially altered states of consciousness and
neuropsychology), his analyses provide a plausible and well-founded
starting point for further work at the phenomenal level of description.
However, anyone who expects to find genuine explanations for the unity
and continuity of consciousness will be disappointed. Co-consciousness
is taken as the fundamental experiential relation that binds all the
distinct phenomenal contents together and provides the unity and
continuity of consciousness. But co-consciousness itself cannot be
explained. Dainton's explanatory strategy forces him to stay within the
phenomenal level as he constructs the explanations. I believe that many
empirically minded scientists share my view that a genuine explanation
goes beyond the level of description where the *explanadum* itself is
identified.
A book titled *The Stream of Consciousness* easily raises high
expectations, since it immediately brings to mind the classical writings
of William James. I must say that at first I did wonder whether the book
(or indeed *any* book) could fulfil such expectations. Now, after
reading the *Stream of Consciousness* I am pleased to say that its
content fully justifies the grand title.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Antti Revonsuo is supported by the Academy of Finland (project #45704).
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