A conceptual framework for consciousness

Abstract

This article argues that consciousness has a logically sound, explanatory framework, different from typical accounts that suffer from hidden mysticism. The article has three main parts. The first describes background principles concerning information processing in the brain, from which one can deduce a general, rational framework for explaining consciousness. The second part describes a specific theory that embodies those background principles, the Attention Schema Theory. In the past several years, a growing body of experimental evidence-behavioral evidence, brain imaging evidence, and computational modeling-has addressed aspects of the theory. The final part discusses the evolution of consciousness. By emphasizing the specific role of consciousness in cognition and behavior, the present approach leads to a proposed account of how consciousness may have evolved over millions of years, from fish to humans. The goal of this article is to present a comprehensive, overarching framework in which we can understand scientifically what consciousness is and what key adaptive roles it plays in brain function.

Keywords: attention; awareness; consciousness; evolution; theory of mind.

Fig. 1.

Comparison between the body schema and the attention schema. (A) The body schema is a bundle of information that represents the physical body and that leads to better control of the body, better understanding of the body configurations of other people, and cognitive beliefs and linguistic claims about one’s own body. (B) The attention schema is a bundle of information that represents attention and has similar consequences as the body schema.