Abstract
Phenomenal awareness can emerge without attention
Highlights
The views that top-down attention is necessary for consciousness (Cohen et al, 2012a,b) and that consciousness is independent of top-down attention (Tsuchiya et al, 2012) have clashed
We consider some instances where simple conscious experience, i.e., phenomenal awareness emerges without top-down attentional deployment: 1. Sensory experiences can be brought about artificially by brain stimulation such as when using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
The loss of top-down control and attention in typical everyday dreams is evidenced by the peculiar feeling that accompanies lucid dreaming, where due to training some top-down control over the dream content becomes available for the subject (e.g., Voss et al, 2009)
Summary
The views that top-down attention is necessary for consciousness (Cohen et al, 2012a,b) and that consciousness is independent of top-down attention (Tsuchiya et al, 2012) have clashed. Based on the current evidence it may be agreed upon that conscious experience cannot be dissociated from bottom-up exogenous attention (Tsuchiya et al, 2012). It is possible that there is phenomenal consciousness emerging without bottom-up attention, but empirical evidence for this is either lacking or too much controversial at present.
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