Higher-order theories of consciousness

Higher-order theories of consciousness postulate that consciousness consists in perceptions, thoughts, or beliefs about first-order mental states. In particular, phenomenal consciousness is thought to be higher-order representation of perceptual or quasi-perceptual contents, such as visual images.

Higher-order theories are distinguished from other cognitive/representational accounts of consciousness which suggest that merely first-order mentality of certain sorts constitutes consciousness.

Higher-order theory can account for the distinction between unconscious and conscious brain processing. Both types of mental operations involve first-order manipulations, and according to higher-order theory, what makes cognition conscious is a higher-order observation of the first-order processing.

In neuroscience terms, higher-order theory is motivated by the distinction between first-order information in early sensory regions versus higher-order representations in prefrontal and parietal cortices.

Also called inner-sense theory, this version of higher-order theory proposes that phenomenal consciousness consists not in immediate sensations but in higher-level sensing of those sensations. Or put another way:

One motivation for this approach is that it accounts for phenomenal consciousness absent beliefs or behaviors associated with those experiences—so that, e.g., someone could feel pain without necessarily exhibiting functional reactions to pain.

David Rosenthal is a foremost advocate of this view. It claims that a mental state is conscious when it's the subject of a higher-order thought (HOT). Phenomenal consciousness in particular corresponds to a certain kinds of mental states (e.g., visual inputs) that are the subjects of HOTs. Rosenthal excludes the special case in which one learns about one's lower-order states by conscious deduction. For instance, if psychoanalysis could reveal one's unconscious motives, this would not suddenly make them conscious.

The dispositionalist mirrors the actualist view except that the first-order mental state needn't actually be thought about—it only needs to be available to potentially be thought about.

While actualist accounts would seem to require immense higher-order computation on all first-order percepts, dispositionalist accounts do not; they merely require availability of first-order information. Such availability could come from, e.g., global broadcasting as in the Global Workspace Theory.

Self-representational higher-order theories consider the higher-order state to be constitutive or internal to its first-order state. This may be either because

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