# Being No One : The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity  ## Metadata - Author: [[Thomas Metzinger]] - Full Title: Being No One : The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Document Tags: [[favorite]] [[philosophy]] [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/17064027 - Source File: Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference1 THOMAS METZINGER (2023-12-17 18-46-27).pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > In § 275 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein (1953) pointed to the naive realism inevitably brought about by transparent, phenomenal experience.10 Interestingly, many authors today have returned to the notion of transparency, employing it as a useful conceptual instrument. Robert van Gulick has developed a functionalist analysis of transparency in terms of the speed, reliability, and global interdependence of phenomenal representations in combination with an accompanying lack of access to earlier processing stages.11 For qualia, Sydney Shoemaker has pointed out that we have no introspective access to the nonintentional features of one’s experience that encode this content;12 Gilbert Harman has defined the transparency of experience as an unawareness of intrinsic non- intentional features;13 and Michael Tye now uses the concept at many places in many of ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkfxbpx85913aphf46st0c5e)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] > It has been know since the time of Aristotle that the brain is insensate. For instance, cutting the cortex itself evokes no pain. Further, the brain has no sensory apparatus directed toward itself. There is no way the subject, from the “inside,” can become aware of his own neurons, from the “inside.” They can be known only objectively from the “outside.” There is no inner eye watching the brain itself, perceiving neurons and glia. The brain is “transparent” from the standpoint of the subject, but not from the standpoint of an outside observer. We may say, therefore, that a neural state that instan- tiates consciousness does not refer to itself. A conscious neural state entails a meaning state that, from the subject’s standpoint, refers to something that is materially not that state. (Feinberg 1997, p. 87) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkfx68q4tbrt08cmhxk0h4mf)) > However, a neural state carrying intentional content (a “meaning state”) could also be an unconscious state, that is, a nonphenomenal meaning state. Therefore, in order to attack the explanatory target of phenomenal transparency, further constraints on other levels of description are needed. In principle it would be conceivable for an unconscious neural state, as a matter of fact, to refer to itself as a vehicle of representation—but this would ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkfx7mwr1ynahxbbx23nk9py)) > not yet imply it becoming phenomenally opaque. Phenomenal opacity and transparency are determined by the degree to which the system as a whole has attentional access to earlier stages of neural processing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkfx7x3petmgket89j0bvwqh)) > Unfortunately, almost nothing is known today about the neural basis of phenomenal transparency. As soon as the minimally sufficient neural correlates for specific forms of phenomenal content are available, however, we may research the degree of availability of earlier processing stages leading to the establishment of these correlates in the system. Such a research program would have to be oriented toward the “principle of attentional availability” I have introduced above: the degree of phenomenal transparency is inversely proportional to the degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages. Trans- parency, therefore, can be viewed as a functional property of the neural process carrying the respective phenomenal content. A closer investigation of the temporal resolution of attentional processing relative to such earlier phases of dynamical, neural self- organization may be of particular interest. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkfx83rr5f3j30rp0v5mp232)) ## New highlights added February 7, 2025 at 6:13 PM > What does it mean to say that a certain partition of the conscious human self-model is, in the phenomenological sense, opaque? If I engage in typical cognitive activities like rea- soning, and if I then direct my introspective attention to this process as it unfolds, I expe- rience myself as operating with internal representations that I am deliberately constructing myself. They do not imply the existence of their simulanda, and they might be corefer- ential with other mental representations of myself without me knowing this very fact. Self- directed attention to this part of the conscious self-model makes a difference between vehicle and content globally available. In other words, there is a certain partition of the conscious self-model for which introspective access, that is, access by the higher-order mechanism of self-directed attention, is not exhausted by its representational content properties. What is available are earlier processing stages (see section 3.2.7). For my own thoughts a reality-appearance distinction exists: I assume their existence as self-generated simulata, but what I do not know is if they actually are representata, in terms of possess- ing a representandum in the real world. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkg1rjscb8sqhwmpsnkd3g5g)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] ## New highlights added February 8, 2025 at 3:14 PM > A second phenomenological characteristic is important. There are large classes of phe- nomenal states in which our self-model is completely transparent and we do not think or engage in higher-order processes of self-modeling like self-directed attention and cogni- tion. If we are not jealous, or fully immersed in physical activities, there will be phases in which our PSM is devoid of any opaque content. In a certain, equally important, sense we are “one with ourselves” in such situations. We do not distance us from ourselves by generating higher-order self-representational content, as it were, and the philosophical mind-body problem would never occur to us. Phenomenal self-transparency can exist without opaque components. Many animals and most human infants may be in this stage. However, phenomenologically, the opposite situation never exists: there simply are no phe- nomenal state classes in which we experience ourselves as pure, disembodied spirits, not possessing any location in physical or behavioral space (see section 7.2.3.2). The think- ing subject needs the bodily self, and this situation is clearly mirrored on the level of phe- nomenal self-modeling. There simply is no conscious self-representation characterized by opaque content in its entirety; cognitive self-reference always takes place against the back- ground of transparent, preconceptual self-modeling. More about this later. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkgpjbyhzt4515dqkzt7pfr9)) > One further interesting consequence of this short representationalist analysis of strong first-person phenomena in the sense of Lynne Baker is that the phenomenal first-person perspective is a condition of possibility for the emergence of a cognitive first-person perspective. Cognitive self-reference always is reference to the phenomenal content of a transparent self-model. More precisely, it is a second-order variant of phenomenal self- modeling, which, however, is mediated by one and the same integrated vehicle of repre- sentation. The capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself* consists in being able to activate a dynamic, “hybrid” self-model: Phenomenally opaque, quasi-symbolic, and second-order representations of a preexisting phenomenally transparent self-model are being activated and continuously reembedded in it. This process is the process of introspection4. In this process, not the conscious reality-model, but the self-model suddenly satisfies the per- spectivalness constraint: Reflexive self-consciousness consists in establishing a subject- object relation within the PSM. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkgpm58gyvwnza6ec56fr3r9)) > Earlier we had made a slightly metaphoric use of ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkgq1phkek7kmp1dy31jqz1k)) ## New highlights added February 9, 2025 at 10:10 AM > 3.2.7 Transparency ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmxh214q1jxg4pe23m7rfkt)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] > Today, a broad definition of phenomenal transparency on which most philosophers would probably agree is that it essentially consists in only the content properties of a mental representation being available for introspection, but not its nonintentional or “vehicle properties.” Typically, it will be assumed that transparency in this sense is a property of all phenomenal states. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmxkdv1yd8yns5y1t2eyvgb)) > In § 275 of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein (1953) pointed to the naive realism inevitably brought about by transparent, phenomenal experience.10 Interestingly, many authors today have returned to the notion of transparency, employing it as a useful conceptual instrument. Robert van Gulick has developed a functionalist analysis of transparency in terms of the speed, reliability, and global interdependence of phenomenal representations in combination with an accompanying lack of access to earlier processing stages.11 For qualia, Sydney Shoemaker has pointed out that we have no introspective access to the nonintentional features of one’s experience that encode this content;12 Gilbert Harman has defined the transparency of experience as an unawareness of intrinsic non- intentional features;13 and Michael Tye now uses the concept at many places in many of ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmxp4tvqfc58e2pbc65srbe)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: some useful references here perhaps > Let me now introduce my own working definition of phenomenal transparency, the definition with which I want to work hereafter. Transparency in this sense is a property of active mental representations already satisfying the minimally sufficient constraints for conscious experience to occur. For instance, phenomenally transparent representations are always activated within a virtual window of presence and integrated into a unified global model of the world. The second defining characteristic postulates that what makes them transparent is the attentional unavailability of earlier processing stages for introspection. “Introspective attention” is here used in terms of the concepts introspection1 and intro- spection3. What is attention? In short, attention is a form of nonconceptual meta- representation operating on certain parts of the currently active, internal model of reality. It “highlights” these parts, because it is a process of subsymbolic resource allocation. The earlier the processing stages, the more aspects of the internal construction process leading to the final, explicit, and disambiguated phenomenal content that are available for introspective attention, the more will the system be able to recognize these phenomenal states as internal, self-generated constructs. Full transparency means full attentional unavailability of earlier processing stages. Degrees of opacity come as degrees of attentional availability. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmxsjvwj7sp9vxtygwnxkmk)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: metzinger's definition of transparency. > This definition diverges from earlier notions of phenomenal transparency in allowing us to describe two important facts about phenomenal consciousness which philosophers have frequently overlooked. First, cognitive availability of the fact that currently active phe- nomenal contents are the final products of internal representational processes is not enough to dissolve or weaken phenomenal transparency. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmxzs076gfmdxcayjjt214s)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] > concept of the book you are holding in your hand as only being a special form of repre- sentational contents almost does not change the character of your phenomenal experience at all—at least not in a way that would be relevant to the current context. However, there seems to be a relevant difference between cognitive and attentional processing, between conceptual and nonconceptual metarepresentation of first-order phenomenal states. Only if you could actually attend to the construction process itself would you experience a shift in subjective experience, namely, by adding new and nonconceptual content to your current model of reality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmy24b2q4s740z2nkp51vxw)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] > Second, this definition departs from the classic vehicle-content distinction. The standard way of defining transparency would be to say that only content properties of the phenomenal representata are introspectively available to the system, and not vehicle properties. The vehicle-content distinction is a highly useful conceptual instrument, but it contains subtle residues of Cartesian dualism in that it always tempts us to reify the vehicle and the content, by conceiving of them as distinct, independent entities. A more empiri- cally plausible model of representational content will have to describe it as an aspect of an ongoing process and not as some kind of abstract object. What we need is embodied content, as it were—an ongoing and physically realized process of containing, not “a” content (see, e.g., P. M. Churchland 1998, unpublished manuscript; Clark 1997; Opie and O’Brien 2001). In particular, describing phenomenal transparency in terms of the atten- tional availability of earlier processing stages has the advantage of being able to develop many different, fine-grained notions of degrees of transparency and opacity. For different phenomenal state classes resulting from functionally different types of processing, it may also be possible to describe not only variable degrees but also distinct kinds of transparency and opacity. This allows for a much more realistic description of certain phenomenolog- ical features pertaining to different classes of conscious states. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmy3k1vy4mp3p6shcxtg6e4)) > Second, transparency is here conceived of as a property of phenomenal representata in a subsymbolic medium, that is, of nonlinguistic entities under an empirically plausible theory of mental representation, and not as a property of a context. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmyakzyn88xsmrwdcaj0mjb)) > Transparency as a property of contexts is not what I am talking about here. Phenomenal transparency can exist in nonlinguistic creatures, lacking any form of cogni- tive reference. Phenomenally transparent representations could supervene on a brain in a vat, whereas referentially transparent ones arguably could not. However, certain complex phenomenal contents can potentially constitute certain types of linguistic contexts; in particular, opaque phenomenal contents contributing to higher-order forms of mental self- representation can do so (see section 6.4.4). It is interesting to note how, once again, there is a connection between referential and phenomenal transparency: in both cases we have something like an implication of the existence of the entities represented. Sentences con- stituting extensional contexts imply the existence of the entities mentioned within them. Fully transparent phenomenal representations force a conscious system to functionally become a naive realist with regard to their contents: whatever is transparently represented is experienced as real and as undoubtedly existing by this system. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmybv42278wcgcvjbx7ny87)) > . To give an example, transparency in this sense can be a feature of a server in the Internet. The three defining characteristics of this notion of transparency are, first, that it accepts unmodified user information as input; second, that it delivers user information that is unmodified with respect to form and informational content on the output side; and third, that user information may well be internally changed and reprocessed in many different ways, but is always retransformed into the original format before reaching the output stage without causal interaction with the user. E-mail is the obvious example. A single message that you send to your friend may be chopped up in many different portions, each of these taking many different roads and “hops” through the net before being reassembled on the other side. The user has no access to the subpersonal mecha- nisms underlying successful personal-level communication. Obviously, phenomenal trans- parency in the sense intended here is not a property of technical systems. However, it is interesting to again note the parallel that emerges if we look upon the neural correlate of consciousness or the conscious model of reality as a medium: This medium is transparent insofar as the subpersonal processing mechanisms contributing to its currently active content are attentionally unavailable to high-level introspective processing. Phenomenal color vision is transparent, because we cannot direct our personal-level attention to the ongoing activity of the relevant processing mechanisms in our visual cortex. All we get seems to be the final result, G. E. Moore’s conscious sensation of blue. Let me give a beautiful—but much more complex—example provided by Jonathan Cole (1998): con- sciously perceived faces can be transparent as well. Looking into each other’s faces we frequently directly see the emotion expressed, because, as Cole puts it, the human face is an “embodied communication area.” In seemingly immediate emotional communication we do not take the face as a representation of the other’s emotional state—the face, although still given as a sensory representation, becomes transparent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmykw3byyz1dkjj9330dmyz)) > Again, it must be noted that transparency is not a necessary condition for the ascription of conscious states. Phenomenal transparency varies greatly among different subclasses of phenomenal states, because it is a gradual property of such states. In short, I would claim that the distribution of transparency and opacity throughout phenomenal space processes an interesting variance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmynjac75396xhwerdwxmfc)) > On the other hand, it must be noted that applying the transparency constraint now and for the first time allows us to formulate a minimal concept of phenomenal experience: conscious experience, in its essence, is “the presence of a world.” The phenomenal presence of a world is the activation of a coherent, global model of reality (constraint 3) within a virtual window of presence (constraint 2), both of which are transparent in the sense just introduced (constraint 7). The conjunction of satisfied constraints 2, 3, and 7 yields the most elementary form of conscious experience conceivable: the presence of a world, of the content of a world-model that cannot be recognized as a model by the system generating it within itself. Neither a rich internal structure nor the complex texture of subjective time or perspectivalness exists at this point. All that such a system would experience would be the presence of one unified world, homogeneous and frozen into an internal Now as it were. In short, the transparency of representational structures is the decisive criterion for turning a model into an appearance, into an apparent reality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmyqvgg99x0scgekj4dssc5)) > Transparency is a special form of darkness. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmyrna1fm54jw2bdm45w5s2)) > The phenomenology of transparency is the phenomenology of apparently direct perception. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmz2s457fzy31f4sa3e7z69)) > Therefore, trans- parency of phenomenal content leads to a further characteristic of conscious experience, namely, the subjective impression of immediacy. It is important to note that the naive realism caused by phenomenal transparency is not a philosophical attitude or a kind of belief. It is a global kind of phenomenal character, which could also be enjoyed by a non- linguistic animal entirely incapable of forming beliefs. On the other hand, many bad philo- sophical arguments concerning direct acquaintance, infallible first-person knowledge, and direct access are clearly based on an equivocation between epistemic and phenomenal immediacy; from the fact that the conscious experience, for example, of the color of an object, carries the characteristics of phenomenal immediacy and direct givenness it does not follow that any kind of nonmediated or direct kind of knowledge is involved. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmz7ne7c88bwb0j6nrmjczb)) > Of course, opaque phenomenal representations exist as well. Opacity appears precisely when darkness is made explicit—at the moment we consciously represent that something actually is a representation ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmzbecjgjp3baypkp4w5ekn)) > Here are some first examples of opaque state classes: most notably, consciously experienced thoughts, but also some types of emotions, pseudo- hallucinations, or lucid dreams are subjectively experienced as representational processes. Such processes sometimes appear to us as deliberately initiated cognitive or representa- tional processes, and sometimes as spontaneously occurring, limited, or even global phe- nomenal simulations, frequently not under the control of the experiential subject. In such cases we know that they do not present realities to us, but only possibilities: the informa- tion that they are representational processes, the content of which may or may not prop- erly depict an external reality, is globally available for attention, cognition, and behavioral control. Many authors describe phenomenal transparency as an all-or-nothing phenome- non. To do phenomenological justice to conscious experience, however, demands a more differentiated description. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmzde4rhey0cv51kp7qjw8v)) > Then there is the phenomenon of pseudohallucination (see section 4.2.4), exhibited by all persons who know that they are hallucinating while they are hallucinating. If a subject in a laboratory experiment and under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug like LSD or 2- CB observes abstract geometrical patterns on the wall, breathing and slowly evolving into deeper and ever deeper forms of ineffable beauty, the subject will frequently be aware of the representational character of her visual experience in that subregion of his phenome- nal space. Typically, the subject will immediately have doubts about the correctness of his experiential state and take back the “existence assumption,” effortlessly going along with visual experience in standard situations. My claim is that what this subject becomes aware of are earlier processing stages in his visual system: the moving patterns simply are these stages (see also section 4.2.4; for a mathematical model of visual hallucinations, see Ermentrout and Cowan 1979; Bressloff, Cowan, Golubitsky, Thomas, and Wiener 2001). This first example of simple, abstract hallucinations also yields an interesting new way of describing the phenomenology of transparency versus opacity: transparent experience is conscientia,15 the experience of not only knowing but also knowing that you know while you know; opaque experience is the experience of knowing while also (nonconceptually, attentionally) knowing that you may be wrong. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmzghmhy83nz3hy2sa9y310)) - Tags: [[psychedelic aesthetics paper]] - Note: Check 4.2.4 ## New highlights added February 9, 2025 at 11:41 AM > . Importantly, however, the par- adigmatic examples of fully opaque state classes are deliberately initiated processes of ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmzv65a29z4r09keqvsnvqr)) > conscious thought. In these cases we really experience ourselves as deliberately con- structing and operating with abstract representations, ones that we have generated our- selves and which can, at any time, turn out to be false. W ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmzvq5tkd3b5bfdy5m4td9y)) > It must be noted that there are also forms of thought which are localized at the other end of the spectrum, between phenomenal transparency and phenomenal opacity. If we slide into manifest daydreams, we frequently experience cognitive processing not as cog- nitive processing anymore. A further point to be noted when discussing the phenomenol- ogy of transparency and opacity is this: not only individual phenomenal contents can exhibit a variable degree of transparency; the same is true of global phenomenal world- models as well. Right after a traffic accident the whole world can appear as “unreal” or as “dreamlike” to us. The same phenomenon is known in stress situations and in transi- tory phases during certain psychiatric syndromes. However, the best and most basic example of an almost fully opaque, global phenomenal state is the lucid dream (see LaBerge and Gackenbach 2000; Metzinger 1993; and section 7.2.4 in particular). There are interesting transitions between ordinary dreams and lucid dreams, because there are degrees of lucidity. For instance, one can, as a passive witness, very clearly notice that all this is a dream (attentional and cognitive availability of information about the representa- tional character of the overall state) without necessarily also knowing about one’s freedom of the will, without realizing that one is an agent who can start to fly or pass through walls (availability of information concerning the representational character of the overall state for behavioral control). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkmzyjzgm8g545vqf6jd1ak0)) > They make the possibility that they actually might be misrepresentations globally available for cognition, attention, and behavioral control. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn00jvt1hgg8s818j6y10v9)) > The representational carrier of your phenomenal experience is a certain process in the brain. This process, which in no concrete way possesses anything “booklike,” is not con- sciously experienced by yourself; it is transparent in the sense of you looking through it. What you are looking onto is its representational content, the existence of a book, here and now, as given through your sensory organs. This content, therefore, is an abstract prop- erty of the concrete representational state in your brain. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn02znkv79g4e263890ny8q)) > Phenomenal representations are those for which we are not able to discover the difference between representational content and representational carrier on the level of subjective experience itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn05r800gm77mtk52vmknyz)) > Imagine that you suddenly discover that the book in your hands does not exist in reality. Ahallucination now becomes a pseudohallucination. On the level of phenomenal experience the additional information that you are not looking directly onto the world, but “onto” an internal representational state—which momentarily seems not to be a good instrument for gaining knowledge— becomes available. The phenomenal book state becomes opaque. The crack in the window catches your attention. What you are losing is sensory transparency; you are becoming conscious of the fact that perceptions are generated by sensory organs and that those organs do not function in an absolutely reliable manner in all situations. There are, however, more comprehensive types of phenomenal opacity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn1yb232nwjfncxqj7rby6e)) > Let us make a second assumption. You now suddenly discover, that not only this particular book perception but also all of your philosophical reflections on the problem of consciousness are currently taking place in a dream. This dream then becomes a lucid dream (see section 7.2.5). The fact that your phenomenal life does not unfold in a world, but only in a world-model, now becomes globally available. You can use this information to control action, for further cognitive processing, or to guide your attention. What you are losing is global transparency. It is interesting to note how cognitive availability alone is not sufficient to break through the realism characterizing phenomenal experience. You cannot simply “think yourself out” of the phenomenal model of reality by changing your beliefs about this model. The transparency of phenomenal representations is cognitively impenetrable; phenomenal knowledge is not identical to conceptual or propositional knowledge. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn208zc5zm8xqf59v9zvb9f)) > Classic philosophical examples of opaque mental representations, of course, are good old propositional attitudes. Because of their association with a mode of presentation, beliefs and other propositional attitudes are semantically opaque, because they can represent their objects in different ways—at least this is a background assumption shared by many philosophers (which I do not intend to discuss further at this point). Your belief that you now hold a book in your hands differs from your belief that you are now holding a book about the “self-model theory of subjectivity” in your hands, because you could know the content of one of those two propositions without knowing the content of the other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn23g46k1fyjmfbhhz2j4yg)) > Semantic transparency of internal data structures is, in two respects, a great advantage for any biosystem having to operate with limited temporal and neural resources. First, it minimizes computational load. Second, it creates the most important “architectural” precondition for planning processes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn25fhvgdrmnsaj6nxg2v7b)) > in terms of an old-fashioned computationalist metaphor: Conscious experience, for a biological system, generates a simply structured user surface for its own nervous system. Naive realism, inevitably accompanying the closedness of its surface (constraint 10), is an advantage. It only confronts the system with the final results of its own processing activity, and it does so by making them available for the control of action while simultaneously protecting the system from losing contact with external reality by getting lost in an introspective exploration of the underlying mechanisms. Therefore, our representational architecture only allows for a very limited introspective access to the real dynamics of the myriad of individual neural events out of which our phenomenal world finally emerges in a seemingly effortless manner. I have already emphasized this fact on the epistemological level by introducing the concept of “autoepistemic closure”: conscious experience severely limits the possibilities we have to gain knowledge about ourselves. Subjective experience has not been developed in pursuing the old philosophical ideal of self-knowledge, but it has been evolutionarily successful, because it has enabled a more flexible form of action control. Phenomenal opacity is simply the degree of attentional availability of earlier processing stages, and the degree depends on how adaptive it was to make these earlier processing stages globally available. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkn2bqe4ghezbytrjv7g4tzm)) ## New highlights added February 10, 2025 at 10:41 PM > nal content ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkrkex6ew63m2rnxezsegj3f)) > If, at the same time, you introspectively observe the mental states evoked in you by reading this—maybe boredom, emotional resistance, or sudden interest—then the contents of your consciousness are mental representata and not the neural process of construction itself. There is a content-vehicle distinction. In short, if we talk about the contents of subjective experience, we do not talk about the underlying process under a neuroscientific description. What we talk about are phenomenal “content properties,” abstract features of concrete states in the head. At least under a classic conception of representation there is a difference between vehicle properties and content properties. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jkrke71w638qb4avjx21mpyy))