A Roadmap for Connecting Theories of Consciousness and Models of Visual Working Memory
Trey Boone, Gerardo Viera, Lara C. Krisst
The MIT Press eBooks November 3, 2026 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/15862.003.0016 (opens in new tab)
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AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness is a central question in consciousness research, contrasting dissociative theories (which claim phenomenal consciousness can overflow access) with nondissociative theories (which deny such overflow and require that phenomenally conscious information be available for report and reasoning). |
Abstract
Imagine that you're sitting at a win dow staring into the dark night while a raging storm passes by.You know you're looking out onto your back garden, but you can't see anything.It's just darkness.Suddenly, a flash of lightning illuminates the entire scene for a moment.In that flash you get the sense that you have just glimpsed the entire garden.You saw it all.But if you were pressed to report what you saw, perhaps to report any damage brought by the storm, there would be surprisingly few details that you could accurately report.Here is the question: In that flash of lighting, did you consciously see more of the garden than you could report?Or did you actually fail to (consciously) see the entire garden?This question lies at the heart of consciousness research.How does phenomenal consciousness, that is, the "what-it's-like" aspect of experience, relate to access consciousness, that is, the availability of information for report and reasoning?In the lit er a ture on the science of consciousness, a prominent answer to this question is given by dissociative theories of consciousness (Block 1995(Block , 2007(Block , 2011(Block , 2023;;Lamme 2003Lamme , 2010)).According to dissociative theorists, phenomenal consciousness can overflow access consciousness. 1 One can be phenomenally conscious of some information without having cognitive access to that information.Proponents of nondissociative theories, on the other hand, deny that phenomenal consciousness can overflow access in this way.According to these theories, if some state is phenomenally conscious, then it must be the case that the information carried by that state is also available for report and reasoning.