This document discusses the unity and subjectivity of consciousness. It proposes the attention account of phenomenal unity, which is that experiences are phenomenally unified when they form an "attention system" where some experiences are more central than others. It argues that attention structurally organizes experiences in consciousness rather than just affecting their content. Forming an attention system may be necessary and sufficient for phenomenal unity. The account is compatible with different views on whether experiences are usually unified. It also discusses whether a holistic view is warranted, where the experiences in an attention system depend on and help constitute each other.

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The Subjectivity and Unity of Consciousness unified.
Attention and Phenomenal Unity
Sebastian Watzl

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Overview
 Conscious Experiences
 Phenomenal Unity of Consciousness
 Towards the Attention Account of Unity
 Holism
 Unity or Disunity of Attention (Systems)

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Conscious Experience

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 When you are listening to music, when you are looking at the scene in front
of you, when you are smelling the scent of a rose, when you are tasting a a
bitter chocolate, when you feel a cramp in your thigh, when you are
deliberating about what to do this summer, when you feel a rush of anger, ...
 There is something it is like for you.
Conscious Experience

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 Conscious experiences = events/processes
where there is something it is like to undergo
or engage in them
 “Something it like”
 a first person quality (conscious
subjects have an “inside”)
 a point of view or subjective
perspective on the world.
 Conscious experiences = events/processes
that instantiate phenomenal properties
(properties that make a difference to what it is
like)
Conscious Experience

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 Is the phenomenology of
conscious experience an un-
analyzable “feel”, an internal
“qualitative glow”?
Subjective Perspectives

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Appearance
Reality
Subjective Perspectives

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 By having conscious experiences, you appear to inhabit a
certain world.
 This world is the world of appearance, it is characterized by
how things appear to the subject of the experience.
 Because conscious experience presents appearances, we can
ask: is the world how it appears to me in my experience or
is it different?
Subjective Perspectives

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You
Various
appearances =
contents of
consciousness =
qualities of
consciousness
What makes those
appearances
appear to you =
subjectivity of
consciousness
Subjective Perspectives

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The Phenomenal Unity of
Consciousness

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Phenomenal Unity Experiences e1 … eN are phenomenally
unified iff there is an experience E that subsumes e1 … eN
 Phenomenal Condition on Phenomenal Unity If E subsumes e1, then
what it is like to have E and e1 is what it is like to have E.
Phenomenal Unity

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Questions about Phenomenal Unity
 Are experiences unified?
 The Unity Thesis Necessarily, all experiences of a single subject are
phenomenally unified.
 The Restricted Unity Thesis In almost all non-pathological cases all
experiences of a single subject are phenomenally unified.
 The Disunity Thesis The experiences of most subjects under most
normal circumstances are not phenomenally unified.
 Given that some experiences are phenomenally unified, can we
provide a substantial account of what that unity consist in?
 Can we explain why experiences are unified when they are?

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Questions about Phenomenal Unity
 Are experiences unified?
 The Unity Thesis Necessarily, all experiences of a single subject are
phenomenally unified.
 The Restricted Unity Thesis In almost all non-pathological cases all
experience of a single subject are phenomenally unified.
 The Disunity Thesis The experiences of most subjects under most
normal circumstances are not phenomenally unified.
 Given that some experiences are phenomenally unified, can we
provide a substantial account of what that unity consist in?
 Can we explain why experiences are unified when they are?

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Locating Phenomenal Unity
 Phenomenal Unity might be located in:
 Facts about the contents of consciousness (Content Views of Unity)
 The contents form a spatially unified world (spatial relations connect all
contents of consciousness)
 The contents form a logically unified world (logical relations connect all
contents of consciousness; e.g. conjunction)
 Facts about the subjectivity of consciousness (Subjectivity Views of
Unity)

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Against Content Views of Unity
 Phenomenally unified
experiences arguably may not
present a unified world
 A subject might have phenomenally
unified experiences that are
structured around spatially
disconnected bodies(Dainton,
Bayne)
 The contents need not form a
spatially unified world

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Against Content Views of Unity
 Phenomenally unified
experiences arguably may not
present a unified world
 A subject might have phenomenally
unified experienced in fundamentally
different modalities (“kinds of
experience”), like perception,
conscious thought, emotion, or
action-awareness (Bayne)
 The contents need not form a
logically unified world.

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What Unifies Perspectives?
 In virtue of what do the various
experiences – that might be of
different kinds and that might not
present a unified world – still form a
single, unified perspective?
 Is it a brute fact that one set of
experiences forms a whole that
subsumes them while another one
does not?
 Or can a substantial account of the
unity-making relations be provided? +
+

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Towards the Attention Account
of Unity

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 In other work (Watzl 2011, under review), I have argued that the
phenomenal contribution of attention is not exhausted by how
attention affects appearances (how the world looks, sounds, smells,
etc. to the subject).
 My central argument was the counterpart argument. Here is a rough
restatement:
 Attention experiences have appearance replicas that present exactly the
same appearances without attention.
 The phenomenology of attention experiences is different from their
appearance replicas.
 So, the phenomenology of attention experiences is not exhausted by
appearances.
 To capture the missing aspect of phenomenology I have suggested
Structuralism.
Background

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Attention structures the subject‟s stream of
consciousness so that some of its parts are more central
than others
Structuralism

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Auditory
experience
of the
saxophone
Auditory experience
of the piano
Conscious emotion
(anxiety about
musical skills)
Building Experiences

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+
+
+
Mereology
E = e1 + e2 + e3
+ …
Building Experiences

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Higher attentional
priority
Structure
E = e1 < e2 < e3 <…
= experiencing 1
more centrally than
2 ...
Building Experiences

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… is peripheral to …(converse: … is more central than …)
experience of the
piano
experience
of the
saxophone
Phenomenal Structure
Conscious emotion
(anxiety about
musical skills)

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PhenomenalQuali
ties
explained by appearances
Phenomenal Structure

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PhenomenalStructure
not explainedby appearances
Phenomenal Structure

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A holistic feature of
conscious experience.
Characterizing you
complete perspective
PhenomenalQuali
ties
explained by appearances
PhenomenalStructure
not explainedby appearances
Phenomenal Structure

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 What about a form of intentionalism where phenomenal character
supervenes on content and attitude (attitude intentionalism)
 Two constraints on a proper development of such a view (against Speaks
2010, Pautz 2010, Wu 2011).
 Inseparability
 looking at something ≠ seeing + attending
 attentively thinking about something ≠ thinking + attending
 Distribution
 (almost) everything in the visual field is attended to some degree.
An Atomistic Alternative

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Atomistic AdverbialismAttention (adverbially) modifies experiential
attitudes (experiencing x more or less attentively) [Chalmers: think
of this as “degrees of experiential presence”]
 E = experiencingA=.9 (content) + experiencingA=.2 (content) + ...
 The “contents” here can‟t be propositional (since you attend to features,
objects, states of affairs and not propositions).
 Because of that Atomistic Adverbialism probably will be committed to local
holisms (e.g. since you can‟t experience redness without shape)
 Atomistic Adverbialism and Structuralism in some ways are close siblings. Their
relationship mirrors the one between utilities first views (~ Part-Modification
Views) vs. preference rankings first views (Structuralism)
 They differ crucially, though, with respect to the questions central to our present
topic: structuralism is a holistic theory of (an essential aspect of) the
phenomenology of attention; adverbialism is an atomistic theory.
Mereological
building!
An Atomistic Alternative

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Reasons to prefer structuralism over atomistic adverbialism
 Fits better with the intuitive contrastive conception of attention on
which attending to one thing implies for other things to recede into the
background: no absolute levels of conscious attentiveness.
 Fits better with what is scientifically known about attentional
processing: attentional processing prioritizes one things over others:
no absolute levels of attentive processing.
An Atomistic Alternative

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Objection
 But can‟t attention be split equally between to perceived items or between two
tasks? Isn‟t there, in fact, empirical evidence suggesting that, for example,
visual attention works quite independently (and hence does not interfere with)
auditory attention? (Mole 2010 referring e.g. to Allport, Antonis and Reynolds 1972)
Reply
 Splits of attention are compatible with structuralism: the topology of attentional
structure might be more complex than the “stack model” I used to get the idea
started would suggest (see below).What we need is only that some parts of
experience are experienced peripherally whenever some are experienced
centrally.
 Several independent attention systems are also compatible with structuralism,
provided that each has the structure I suggested. I will return to the issue about
the unity of the attention system below.
An Atomistic Alternative

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 Let e 1 > e2 and e 1 > e3. Then e3 is more peripheral than e2 just if e 2 >
e3.
 Can be applied intermodally as well as intramodally.
Some Developments

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 a is the focus of attention in attention scenario α =Def it is not the
case that in α there exists an item x such that x a and ex > ea.
 e is at the center of a subject‟s mental life in attention scenario α =Def
it is not the case that in α there exists a part ex of α such that ex e and
ex>e.
 not every experience need to have a center/focus. E.g.:
 Attention is equally split between a and b in attention scenario α =Def
it is not the case that in α: (ea >ebor eb> ea)and for all items x: (if x a
and x b then ex > ea and ex >eb)
an object, event,
property, process, ..a part of experience
Some Developments

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 e is at the fringe of a subject‟s mental life in attention scenario α =Def
it is not the case that in α there exists a part ex of α such that ex e
and e > ex. (the dual of the center)
 prob. every mental life has a fringe.
 Center and fringe need not differ in appearances (though in most
actual cases they will).
 Attentional priority is correlated with a variety of effects on appearances (see above).
But it does not consist in those effects.
 Being central, peripheral or at the fringe are structural (and hence holistic) features of
the field of consciousness. One cannot specify what it is to be at the fringe of
consciousness without mentioning how one part of experience is related to all the other
parts).
Some Developments

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The phenomenology of an attentionally structured complex E consisting
of parts e1 … eN does not supervene on the monadic phenomenal
properties of e1 … eN, but includes phenomenal relations (such as the
peripherality relation) between the parts.
Phenomenal Entanglement

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An experiential episode E is peripherality connected =Def for all e1 and
e2: if e1 is a part of E and e2is a part of E, then there is a peripherality
path between e1 and e2.
Peripherality connected
(though with attention split symmetrically)
Not Peripherality connected
Peripherality Connectedness

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Let‟s call an experiential episode that is peripherality connected an
attention system.
One attention system Two attention systems
Attention Systems

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Sufficiency If e1 … eN form an attention system, then e1 … eN are
phenomenally unified.
 Why? If e1 …eN form an attention system, then there is a phenomenal episode
E = {e1 …eN}> such that what it is like to undergo E and e1 (same for e2 …eN)
is what it is like to undergo E.
 For example: E = experiencing the background peripherally to both piano and
saxophone.
Sufficiency

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 If we also had the following, we would have a substantial account of the unity of
consciousness.
? Necessity e1 … eN are phenomenally unified, only ife1 … eNform an
attention system.
 Note:
 In the Jazz example, the piano is experienced as accompanying the
saxophone and hence relevant to it (it‟s experience is thematically unified
with the experience of the saxophone). Thematic Unity is obviously not
necessary for phenomenal unity. But thematic unity is also not required for
forming an attention system. A background experience might be peripheral to
a foreground experience and yet completely irrelevant to it.
Necessity?

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? The Attention Account of Unity e1 … eN are phenomenally unified
iff (and because) e1 … eN form an attention system.
The Attention Account of Unity

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 The attention account of unity is compatible both with the unity thesis,
the restricted unity thesis and the disunity thesis
 Given the attention account of unity, which of these thesis is true will
depend on whether subjects necessarily,in almost all non-pathological
cases, or hardly ever have a unified attention system.
The Attention Account of Unity

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Holism

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Holism?
Before we answer whether forming an attentional system is necessary for
phenomenal unity, let‟s ask some questions about those attentional systems. In
particular, I want us to look at the following interconnected set of questions:
 Is (some form of) phenomenal holism true of attentional systems?
 How should we think of the peripherality relation and what it relates (is
peripherality an internal or an external relation)?
 Would the parts be conscious experiences, if they would not be not part of
some attentional system?

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Holism?
Phenomenal Holism (Lee) The experiential parts exist in virtue of the
experiential whole.
 Phenomenal Holism arguably implies:
Modal Dependence Necessarily, the parts exist only if the whole exists.
 Notes:
 As Lee notes, the parts (and the whole) here need to be understood as particular
token events, not as types (a blue experience, the type, of course can exist without
being part of the specific whole of which it is actually a part).

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Holism?
So we should ask
 Do the parts of an attention system exist in virtue of the attention system
existing?
The “Experiential Arithmetic” Conception (term by J. Campbell)
Attentional Systems = Experiences plus Structure. Subjects have experiences, and then
attention adds (more) structure between them.
 On this conception, the answer is pretty clearly: no. Peripherality relations are external
relations. Their holding is not essential for the parts of such systems to be what they
are.
 The experiential arithmetic conception, though, is not required and indeed it is not very
plausible. Just to get us started:
 Phenomenally, it seems plausible to say that it is essential to that experience of the
piano that it was peripheral.

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Holism?
Phenomenally:
 Quite appealing to say that the parts of an attention episodes would have
been different experiences in a different attention system (even though, of
course, those other experiences would have instantiated the same
phenomenal qualities). [see also Chudnoffon Gurwitsch]
 This is, I think, a substantial point: the holding of these phenomenal relations
makes a difference to what each part is like.

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Holism?
Content Atomism and Consciousness Holism
 Lee discusses views that separate the specific contents of an experience
from the fact that this experience is conscious. Higher-order-representation
theories, obviously, are of that kind.
 In such cases, Lee suggests, the contents of consciousness (e.g. color,
shape, etc.) might be atomistic properties, while fact that they are consciously
experienced might primarily be a property of the whole (and only derivatively
a property of the parts).
 If attentional processes are “what brings a stimulus to consciousness” (Mack
and Rock) and if they do so (in part) by creating attentional structure, then we
might here have a plausibly version of a view of this kind: contents are not
conscious unless attention captures them.
 See also Prinz on Co-attention, phase-locked firing and neural resonance.

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Holism?
The Systems First Conception
The neural systems that realize attention systems and those that
make suitable neural representations conscious are the same
systems.
 Can allow unconscious attention if certain representations aren‟t suitable.
 Evidence (just the evidence that is discussed as evidence for attention being necessary for
consciousness):
 Hemi-neglect: a neurological disorder where attention is unable to reach into one
hemifield: neural representations of that hemi-field, though otherwise suitable, seize
to be conscious (consciousness can be recovered if a salient stimulus draws some
attention to that hemi-field).
 Subjects tend to seize to be conscious of stimuli as their attention is withdrawn (see
Cohen et al. 2012)

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Holism!
Summary:
 It is phenomenally plausible that
their place in an attention system is
part of the nature of the parts of that
system.
 It is scientifically plausible that the
neural structures that realize
attention systems and those that
realize consciousness are the same
structures.
 Given that, it is plausible that holism
is true of attention systems.

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Experience is)?

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 We don‟t yet know how big the attention systems are:
 If they are as big as phenomenally unified experiences, then the
attention account of unity is plausible.
How “big” are attention systems?

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 What drives the intuition that spatially or
attitude-ionally disconnected experiences
are nevertheless phenomenally unified:
 Bayne (an others): subsumed by a single
“phenomenal perspective”
 I “get” the intuition when I think of
phenomenal perspectives in terms of
focus and periphery (as attention
systems): when I focus on the visual
world in front of me, my conscious
thoughts, emotions, action-awareness
recede into the background. When I focus
on my conscious thoughts, the visual
world recedes into the background.
Intuitive Considerations

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 Attention systems have the
intuitive characteristic of a
perspective:
 They have foreground and
background.
 They have boundaries (the “fringe”)
 Very natural to say of two people
who focus on different things or in
different ways as having different
“outlooks” or perspectives.
Intuitive Considerations

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 Do we “get” the idea of a single phenomenal perspective, if we
imagine not just spatially disconnected experiences, but experiences
that do not form a single attention system?
Suppose that you focus hard on consciously planning how to balance the
various parts of your life over the next weeks: friends, family, work, spare
time activities. At the same time you also focus intensely on the visual
world in front of you. Objects there capture your attention, you are as
vividly aware of them as you can be. Yet that has no effect on the
intensity of your planning thoughts. Not just do both of these activities go
smoothly, but they both are – completely unrelated – foregrounds of your
awareness.
 I submit not to get the intuition of a unified phenomenal perspective in
such a scenario. If this were how things are, I would think of two
streams of consciousness within a single subject.
Thought Experiment

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 Do split-brain patients have
unified or dis-unified streams
of consciousness?
 I won‟t attempt to answer this
question!My interest rather: which
considerations bear crucially on
answering this question.
Split Brains

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 Bayne, Levy, Gazzaniga, etc.:
 „Attention remains largely integrated in the split-brain patient‟
(Gazzaniga 1987), hence split brain patients have a unified
stream of consciousness.
 „Inter-hemispheric activation will march in step with changes in the
subject‟s attentional focus‟ (Bayne 2009, p. 294)
 Attentional disunity in the split-brain would provide strong evidence
for phenomenal disunity (cf. Bayne 2012, p. 215)
 Suggestion: attentional disunity is strong evidence for
phenomenal disunity because it is constitutive of it.
Split Brains

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 Some data have been taken to suggest that the neural
attention systems aren‟t very well unified.
 On the basis of such data and commitment to something close to the
attention account of unity, Prinz 2012 suggests the phenomenal disunity of
consciousness.
 But the same data and commitment to (at least) the restricted unity thesis
might be used to undermine the attention account of unity.
How Unified is Attention?

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 Two types of questions:
 Is attention a unified kind? Or is “attention” rather a label for a number of
fundamentally disunified phenomena?
 Do all so-called attention-paradigms in the empirical literature study a single
phenomenon?
 Unified Kind Question
 Is there a single “resource” shared by all “attention-demanding” tasks?
 Is attention in X independent from attention in Y (where X and Y: visual and
auditory modality; left and right hemisphere; tasks that rely on distinct neural
architecture)?
 Unified Systems Question
How Unified is Attention?

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 The unified kind question is, in a sense, more fundamental:
 If attention is not a unified kind, then the question about the unity of attention systems
cannot even be coherently formulated globally: we will first have to specify which
phenomenon we are discussing before we can ask whether there is one or several
independent systems with respect to that phenomenon.
 In another sense, though, a complete answer to the unified kind
question might not be necessary for the purposes of today‟s
discussion:
 As long as there is one phenomenon that matters for conscious experience in the way I
have suggested, it would not matter if there are also phenomena labeled “attention” that
have nothing to do with it.
 Might take structuralism as providing an account of what the unified
phenomenon is.
The Unified Kind Question

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 The unified systems question is what
matters most directly for present concerns.
Some evidence suggesting dis-unified
attentions systems:
 Between the Hemispheres: Alvarez and
Cavanagh 2005 for multiple object tracking.
 Not observed in other attention demanding
tasks like visual search (Luck et al. 1989).
Specific to multi-focal spatial attention
(Alvarez et al. 2012).
 Data most consistent with a single
attention system whose specific shape and
capacity shows hemispheric dependence
(dividing attention between the
hemispheres makes local spatial
suppression easier, but not visual search)
The Unified Systems Question
Alvarez et al. 2012
Alvarez and Cavanagh 2005

61. +
 Between audition and vision: Allport et al. 1972 “Disproof of the single channel
hypothesis”: performance in Auditory Speech Shadowing does not interfere with
performance in Sight-reading of piano music.
 A lot of work on crossmodal interference (e.g. crossmodalstroop task) certainly
undermines the idea that there is one auditory and one visual attention
system.
 The view with the strongest support seems to be that there are brain regions
(e.g. anterior cingulate cortex) dedicated to monitoring for conflict between a
variety of systems and biasing competition in line with task demands and
goals. Arguably just part of a single attention system.
 Data (again) most consistent with a single attention system whose specific
shape and capacity shows dependence on the systems it is engaged with
(dividing attention between modalities e.g. makes stimulus detection easier,
but not identification. See e.g. Bonnel and Hafter 1998)
The Unified Systems Question

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 Intuitive and scientific support for the attention account of unity.
 No clear evidence for disconnected attention systems.
 [Design argument for a single attention system. See e.g. Allport 1984,
Neumann 1984]
Summary

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The End