Are we explaining consciousness yet?
Abstract
Theorists are converging from quite different quarters on a version of the global neuronal workspace model of consciousness, but there are residual confusions to be dissolved. In particular, theorists must resist the temptation to see global accessibility as the cause of consciousness (as if consciousness were some other, further condition); rather, it is consciousness. A useful metaphor for keeping this elusive idea in focus is that consciousness is rather like fame in the brain. It is not a privileged medium of representation, or an added property some states have; it is the very mutual accessibility that gives some informational states the powers that come with a subject's consciousness of that information. Like fame, consciousness is not a momentary condition, or a purely dispositional state, but rather a matter of actual influence over time. Theorists who take on the task of accounting for the aftermath that is critical for consciousness often appear to be leaving out the Subject of consciousness, when in fact they are providing an analysis of the Subject, a necessary component in any serious theory of consciousness.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
C1 evolved as an information-processing architecture that addresses the information-pooling problem.
“We hypothesize that consciousness in the first sense (C1) evolved as an information-processing architecture that addresses this information-pooling problem ( 20 -23 ).”
From What is consciousness, and could machines have it? (2017) · cites this paper as [22]
Cites
Searle, J. R. (1980) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00005756 · Cited by 6,954 · see citing works
The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness
(2000) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.37-6553 · Cited by 5,998 · see citing works
Chalmers, D. J. (1996) · Cited by 1,708 · see citing works
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
Chalmers, D. J. (1998) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780203826430-11 · Cited by 1,334 · see citing works
The astonishing hypothesis: The scientific search for the soul
(1994) · Ethology and Sociobiology · doi:10.1016/0162-3095(94)90016-7 · Cited by 1,114 · see citing works
<i>The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics</i>
Penrose, R., & Landauer, R. (1990) · Physics Today · doi:10.1063/1.2810599 · Cited by 1,110 · see citing works
Time and the observer: The where and when of consciousness in the brain
Dennett, D. C., & Kinsbourne, M. (1992) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00068229 · Cited by 1,015 · see citing works
Self-citation(1998) · Cited by 693 · see citing works
Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science
Petitot, J., Varela, F. J., Pachoud, B., & Roy, J.-M. (1999) · Stanford University Press eBooks · Cited by 660 · see citing works
Nonzero: the logic of human destiny
(2000) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.37-6234 · Cited by 488 · see citing works
Pessoa, L., Thompson, E. T., & Noë, A. (1998) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x98001757 · Cited by 426 · see citing works
Dennett, D. C. (1993) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/5782.003.0022 · Cited by 386 · see citing works
Self-citationTHE EVOLUTION OF INTELLIGENCE AND ACCESS TO THE COGNITIVE UNCONSCIOUS.
Rozin, P. N. (1976) · Cited by 386 · see citing works
Unconscious perception: Attention, awareness, and control.
Debner, J. A., & Jacoby, L. L. (1994) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037//0278-7393.20.2.304 · Cited by 263 · see citing works
Consciousness in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience
(2013) · Psychology Press eBooks · doi:10.4324/9780203773659 · Cited by 181 · see citing works
Toward a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates
Ameroff, S., Kaszniak, A. W., & Scott, A. C. (1998) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 167 · see citing works
Explaining consciousness : The hard problem
Shear, J. (1997) · Zygon® · Cited by 122 · see citing works
Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness
Dennett, D. C. (1996) · Journal of Consciousness Studies · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Self-citationConsciousness and Commentaries
Weiskrantz, L. (1998) · International Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1080/002075998400411 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Ross, D., & Magazine, T. T. P. (1999) · The Philosophers Magazine · doi:10.5840/tpm1999686 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
First-person methods in the science of consciousness
Chalmers, D. J. (1999) · Cited by 22 · see citing works
No bridge over the stream of consciousness
Dennett, D. C. (1998) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x98281751 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Crick, F., & Koch, C. (2003) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn0203-119 · Cited by 1,492 · see citing works
Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience
Block, N. (2007) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x07002786 · Cited by 1,146 · see citing works
AT THE INTERFACE: DYNAMIC INTERACTIONS OF EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE
Ellis, N. C. (2005) · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · doi:10.1017/s027226310505014x · Cited by 893 · see citing works
What is consciousness, and could machines have it?
Dehaene, S., Lau, H., & Kouider, S. (2017) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aan8871 · Cited by 855 · see citing works
Autobiographical memory and sense of self.
Prebble, S. C., Addis, D. R., & Tippett, L. J. (2013) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/a0030146 · Cited by 466 · see citing works
Are there levels of consciousness?
Bayne, T., Hohwy, J., & Owen, A. M. (2016) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.03.009 · Cited by 438 · see citing works
Smallwood, J., Brown, K., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2012) · Brain Research · doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2011.03.072 · Cited by 379 · see citing works
Of, for, and by the people: the legal lacuna of synthetic persons
Bryson, J. J., Diamantis, M. E., & Grant, T. D. (2017) · Artificial Intelligence and Law · doi:10.1007/s10506-017-9214-9 · Cited by 368 · see citing works
Toward a physical basis of attention and self-regulation
Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2009) · Physics of Life Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2009.02.001 · Cited by 230 · see citing works
The radical plasticity thesis: How the brain learns to be conscious.
Cleeremans, A. (2011) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00086 · Cited by 170 · see citing works
Cleeremans, A., Achoui, D., Beauny, A., Keuninckx, L., Martin, J.-R., Muñoz-Moldes, S., Vuillaume, L., & de Heering, A. (2020) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.11.011 · Cited by 142 · see citing works
Francken, J. C., Beerendonk, L., Molenaar, D., Fahrenfort, J. J., Kiverstein, J. D., Seth, A. K., & van Gaal, S. (2022) · Neuroscience of Consciousness · doi:10.1093/nc/niac011 · Cited by 102 · see citing works
“…what would constitute an explanation, and how valid experiments should be designed (Block 1995; Chalmers 1995, 2000; Dehaene and Naccache 2001; Dennett 2001; Lamme 2006; Tononi 2008; Dehaene and Changeux 2011; Doerig et al. 2020; Hohwy and Seth 2020); see Seth and Bayne (2022) for a review.”
BackgroundConsciousness and metarepresentation: A computational sketch
Cleeremans, A., Timmermans, B., & Pasquali, A. (2007) · Neural Networks · doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2007.09.011 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
Francken, J., Beerendonk, L., Molenaar, D., Fahrenfort, J. J., Kiverstein, J., Seth, A., & van Gaal, S. (2021) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/8mbsk · Cited by 20 · see citing works
A beautiful loop: An active inference theory of consciousness.
Laukkonen, R., Friston, K., & Chandaria, S. (2025) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106296 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
“3).”
Evers, K., Farisco, M., & Pennartz, C. M. A. (2024) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2024.103668 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
The presence of consciousness in absence seizures
Bayne, T. (2011) · Behavioural Neurology · doi:10.1155/2011/128567 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
- Authors
- Dennett, D.
- Affiliations
- Tufts University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Dennett, D
- ORCID
- Dennett, D
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2001-04
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 1-2
- Pages
- 221-237
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2006649625
- Cited by
- 329
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 13.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Free Will and Agency
- Keywords
- consciousness, global accessibility, phenomenal consciousness, information accessibility, theory of consciousness
- MeSH terms
- Brain, Consciousness, Humans, Psychological Theory
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
