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Neural activation, information, and phenomenal consciousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 1999

Max Velmans
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London SE14 6NW, Englandm.velmans@gold.ac.uk www.gold.ac.uk/academic/ps/velmans.html

Abstract

O'Brien & Opie defend a “vehicle” rather than a “process” theory of consciousness largely on the grounds that only conscious information is “explicit.” I argue that preconscious and unconscious representations can be functionally explicit (semantically well-formed and causally active). I also suggest that their analysis of how neural activation space mirrors the information structure of phenomenal experience fits more naturally into a dual-aspect theory of information than into their reductive physicalism.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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