I just read this very interesting paper out in Cortex taking a novel approach to assessing the role of the prefrontal cortex in consciousness. The interesting idea in the Rowe, Garrido, and Tsuchiaya paper linked to here is the idea of looking at whether there is even enough information being sent to the PFC to account for the contents of consciousness. What they seem to have found was that there is, and it is there whether or not the subjects have to report or are likely aware of the stimulus. They say,

Most strikingly, during Phase 1 (that is, no-report and half of participants unaware of the face stimuli), when prefrontal theories would predict that classification accuracy should fall to chance for the IB participants, we found above-chance classification of face stimuli using the pattern of connectivity between sensory and prefrontal locations regardless of awareness. Further, this classification accuracy remained largely the same, regardless of the presence or absence of reports and awareness (Figure 4). This aspect of the finding is hard to reconcile with any existing theories of consciousness and call for a revised account whereby PFC involvement may be ubiquitous regardless of awareness.

Potentially, a phenomenon that is close to our finding may be “unconscious working memory” (see Soto et al., 2011 and review by Gambarota et al., 2022), which also implies non-conscious prefrontal activity (Soto & Silvanto, 2014) and challenges HOT and GNWT. 

They go on to say why they think this challenges GNWT but do not elaborate on their proposed challenge to higher-order theories. There may or may not be a challenge to a certain implementation of higher-order theories, but there is no challenge to a model like Joe LeDoux’s which sees the lower-order states of which we become aware to be themselves in the prefrontal cortex.

Either way, I think this highlights the importance of talking more about how it is that these psychological level constructs (higher-order representations, etc), get mapped onto the brain.

I made it through an entire semester with no teaching responsibilities at CUNY! For the first time in 20 years! Oh, and I wrote a book!

I started as a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Brooklyn College, in the Fall of 2003. I came to the Grad Center with an M.A. in philosophy (from the University of Connecticut, where I thought I was going to get my PhD but didn’t), and some teaching experience from SF State (where I was supposed to complete my M.A. but didn’t, it’s a long story!). Brooklyn College was the first time I had been hired to teach philosophy at a college I did not attend (even though it was part of the university I attended). The rest is, as they say, history.

I started thinking I maybe should write a book back in the summer of 2021, when I was preparing for this talk. It seemed like it would be a lot of work, and it was easy to forget about it once the fall of 2021 hit. I was once again plagued by thoughts of writing a book in the summer of 2022, and by that time there seemed like there may even be some interest in such a project. I wrote up a book proposal and started seriously working on a draft in July of 2022.

I worked on it in every spare second I had from August 2022 until early January 2023. This mostly consisted of dashing out thoughts before rushing off to class, or running out in the middle of dinner to implement a change that occurred to me. During that time I felt like I was barely keeping the ship afloat. It was at that point that I knew that I needed to devote more time to writing the book, or wait until I wasn’t teaching to work on it. I put the project on hold in January 2023, when the Spring semester started, and applied for research leave for the fall of 2023. I figured that if I got it, I would devote my full effort to the book. If I didn’t, I was going to put the draft on my website and leave it at that. I did get the research leave and I have been spending 9-10 hours every day since September 2023 to get to where it is now. All in all it has really only been 9 months of writing time (spread over a year and a half), but it feels like an eternity!

It is now in a state that I would consider ‘good enough for government work’ and since I am a government employee, that is good enough for me. I haven’t put anything up here because there is still a small chance that this may be published. However, if anyone wants to see the current draft email me and I’ll send it.

I am still on research leave until March 1st at LaGuardia and I will also be co-teaching the Neuroscience and Philosophy of Consciousness course with Tony Ro at the Graduate Center starting at the end of January. In the meantime, I will be taking a break for some family time until early January. When I get back I am still hoping to get into Consciousness Live! and my YouTube channel more generally. Stay tuned!