Philosophical Psychology
February 15, 2026
Benjamin Kozuch
The Higher-Order Theory (HOT) of consciousness holds that mental states become conscious when they are represented by another mental state. Most HOT theorists maintain that it is the higher-order, rather than the lower-order, state that supplies the content of conscious experience. This view entails that, for a state to become conscious, its content must be represented in the brain regions that...
Frontiers in Psychology
2026
Benjamin Kozuch, Peter Kok
This article presents a framework for identifying the neural correlates of a low-level component of visual consciousness, base experience, defined as the spatial arrangement of colors experienced across the visual field. We propose a content-matching method that compares the content of base experience with that represented by candidate neural systems, treating content matches and mismatches as...
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2024
Benjamin Kozuch
5 citations
Contemporary consciousness research has given rise to numerous theories in both the philosophical and neuroscientific domains (such as higher-order theory and global neuronal workspace), raising the question as to how well each is supported. This article develops a relatively novel method for determining this, which is to use evidence, not just from a theory's own domain, but also from its...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
June 26, 2024
Benjamin Kozuch
Abstract Recent years have seen the rise of several theories saying that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a neural correlate of visual consciousness (NCC). Especially popular here are theories saying that the PFC is the ‘content NCC’ for vision, i.e. it contains those brain areas that are not only necessary for consciousness, but also determine ‘what’ it is that we visually experience (e.g....
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
September 22, 2023
Benjamin Kozuch
3 citations
Local Recurrency Theory (LR) holds that recurrent loops of neural activity localized to the visual cortex are necessary and sufficient for visual consciousness (if certain background conditions obtain). LR’s popularity has recently waned in favor of theories holding that higher-level types of processing are necessary for consciousness (e.g., the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and Higher-order...
Mind & Language
November 1, 2022
Benjamin Kozuch
Proponents of the higher‐order (HO) theory of consciousness (e.g., Lau and Rosenthal) have recently appealed to brain lesion evidence to support their thesis that mental states are conscious when and only when represented by other mental states. This article argues that this evidence fails to support HO theory, doing this by first determining what kinds of conscious deficit should result when...
The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness
July 9, 2020
Benjamin Kozuch
1 citation
In its classical form, epiphenomenalism is the view that conscious mental events have no physical effects: while physical events cause mental events, the opposite is never true. Unlike classical epiphenomenalism, contemporary forms do not hold that conscious mental states always lack causal efficacy, only that they are epiphenomenal relative to certain kinds of action, ones we pre-theoretically...
Mind & Language
August 31, 2018
Benjamin Kozuch
10 citations
The idea that attention is necessary for consciousness (the “Necessity Thesis”) is frequently advocated by philosophers and psychologists alike. Experiments involving inattentional and change blindness are thought to support the Necessity Thesis, but they do so only if subjects failing to notice the target stimulus are also not conscious of it. This article uses commonsense phenomenological...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Benjamin Kozuch, Uriah Kriegel
Why is there need for a philosophy of consciousness, in addition to the science of consciousness? For two reasons: first, as a young science operating as yet under no guiding paradigm, the science of consciousness has been subject to considerable confusion regarding its methodological, conceptual, and philosophical foundations, and it is philosophy’s mandate to address such confusion in an...