title: Higher-order awareness, misrepresentation and function.
abstract: Conscious mental states are states we are in some way aware of. I compare higher-order theories of consciousness, which explain consciousness by appeal to such higher-order awareness (HOA), and first-order theories, which do not, and I argue that higher-order theories have substantial explanatory advantages. The higher-order nature of our awareness of our conscious states suggests an analogy with the metacognition that figures in the regulation of psychological processes and behaviour. I argue that, although both consciousness and metacognition involve higher-order psychological states, they have little more in common. One thing they do share is the possibility of misrepresentation; just as metacognitive processing can misrepresent one's cognitive states and abilities, so the HOA in virtue of which one's mental states are conscious can, and sometimes does, misdescribe those states. A striking difference between the two, however, has to do with utility for psychological processing. Metacognition has considerable benefit for psychological processing; in contrast, it is unlikely that there is much, if any, utility to mental states' being conscious over and above the utility those states have when they are not conscious.
authors.affiliation: Program in Philosophy and Concentration in Cognitive Science, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016-4309 USA. davidrosenthal@nyu.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rosenthal
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans