title: Experiencing more complexity than we can tell.
abstract: Abstract The notion of unreportable conscious contents is misguidedly premised on the idea that access necessarily follows phenomenal representation. We suggest instead that conscious experience should be viewed as a constructive, dynamical process that involves representational redescription: The brain continuously and unconsciously performs signal detection on its own representations, so developing an understanding of itself that subtends conscious experience. Cases where phenomenality seems to overflow access are thus illusory and depend on interactions between task instructions and stimulus complexity. We support this perspective through recent evidence suggesting that properly graded, qualitative subjective reports appear to be exhaustive in revealing conscious knowledge.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychiatry, Neuroimaging Group , University of Cologne , Germany.
authors.forename: Bert
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Timmermans
authors.forename: Bert
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Windey
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cleeremans