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The projecTive Theory of consciousness:
from neuroscience To philosophical psychology
Alfredo Pereira Jr.1
absTracT: The development of the interdisciplinary areas of cognitive, affective and action neurosciences
contributes to the identification of neurobiological bases of conscious experience. The structure of
consciousness was philosophically conceived a century ago (HUSSERL, 1913) as consisting of a
subjective pole, the bearer of experiences, and an objective pole composed of experienced contents. In
more recent formulations, Nagel (1974) refers to a “point of view”, in which qualitative experiences
are anchored, while Velmans (1990, 1993, 2009, 2017) understands that phenomenal content is
composed of mental representations “projected” to the space external to the brains that construct them.
In Freudian psychology, the conscious mind contains a tension between the Id and the Ego (FREUD,
1913). How to relate this bipolar structure with the results of neuroscience? I propose the notion of
projection [also used by Williford et al. (2012)] as a bridge principle connecting the neurobiological
systems of knowing, feeling and acting with the bipolar structure. The projective process is considered
responsible for the generation of the sense of self and the sense of the world, composing an informational
phenomenal field generated by the nervous system and experienced in the first-person perspective. After
presenting the projective hypothesis, I discuss its philosophical status, relating it to the phenomenal
(BLOCK, 1995, 2008, 2011) and high-order thought (ROSENTHAL, 2006; BROWN, 2014)
approaches, and a mathematical model of projection (RUDRAUF et al., 2017). Eight ways of testing
the status of the projective hypothesis are briefly mentioned.
Keywords: Projection. Consciousness. Cognitive. Non-Conceptual. Feeling.
1 inTroducTion
The interdisciplinary effort of building a theory of consciousness is a
central feature of contemporary philosophical and scientific scenario. Several
authors, including Edelman (1989), Crick (1994), Block (1995), and Damásio
(2000), have proposed the existence of different types of consciousness, while
other authors, including Tononi [see Tononi et al. (2016)], Koch (2003),
1 Professor at São Paulo State University (Unesp), Botucatu, SP – Brasil. E-mail: alfredo.pereira@
unesp.br
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0101-3173.2018.v41esp.11.p199
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PEREIRA JR., A.
and Dehaene and Changeux (2013), have addressed the neural correlates of
conscious activity.
Equally important for the epistemological foundation of a science of
consciousness is the identification of the psychological features of conscious
activity (NAGEL, 1974; VELMANS, 2009; HARNAD, 2011; NORTHOFF,
2016), focusing on the triad of conscious mental functions: cognitive (BAARS,
1988), affective (PANKSEPP, 1996; BARRETT; RUSSELL, 1998; BARRETT,
2017) and enactive or action-related (JEANNEROD, 1998), as well as an
adequate treatment of the degrees of phenomenal consciousness putatively present
in different biological species (CARRARA-AUGUSTENBORG; PEREIRA
JR., 2012).
In contemporary philosophy, the presentational reality of lived
experience has been variously referred as the lifeworld (HUSSERL, 1947),
and addressed with existential categories as care and angst (HEIDDEGER,
1962), pre-reflexive experience (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1945) and forms of life
(WITTGENSTEIN, 1969), while the classical Cartesian thinking substance is
replaced by experiential concepts (for instance, the minimal self discussed by
Zahavi, 2017).
Non-reductionist approaches face the challenge of relating the activity
of the nervous system - and its extension in psycho-neuro-immuno-endochrine
pathways, interacting with the physical, biological and social environment -
with the phenomenal experience of organisms that is accessible only to the
first-person perspective (NAGEL, 1974). This challenge gave rise to the field
of neurophenomenology, containing different philosophical views about the
nature of the brain and conscious experience, and their relations (VARELA,
1996).
Two central psychological features of conscious experience are
the subjective “point of view” (NAGEL, 1974), the bearer of qualitative
experiences (“what it is like to be”), and the location of perceived objects and
processes outside the brain, or “perceptual projection” (VELMANS, 1990,
1993, 2009, 2017). These aspects are common and almost obvious in our
conscious lived experiences, but very hard to explain neuroscientifically.
The development of neuroscience and psychology in the “brain decade”
(1990-2000) gave rise to the interdisciplinary areas of cognitive, affective
and action neurosciences, advancing in the task of elucidating the dynamic
structure of conscious activity. This structure was philosophically conceived a
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century ago as consisting of a subjective pole capable of experiencing, and an
objective pole composed of the experienced contents (HUSSERL, 1913). In
Freudian psychoanalysis, the structure of the conscious mind was conceived
as a interplay between the Id and the Ego (FREUD, 1913). Morsella (2005)
understands that consciousness involves a tension between subjective desires
and objective needs. How to relate this bipolar structure to the results of
neuroscience?
The conventional way of addressing this problem is to identify the
cerebral correlates of subjective desires and objective constraints. In McLean’s
(1986) triune brain model, primitive impulses relate to the “reptilian brain,”
emotions with the “limbic system,” and logical-rational-moral thinking with
the functions of the neocortex, centred on pre-frontal circuits.
The distinction of the limbic system as an emotional center, and the
associative cortex (in the human species, especially the prefrontal cortex) as the
seat of reason and self-consciousness, is common in neuropsychology [see Stuss
et al. (1994)]. A popular distinction, but without conclusive neuroscientific
support, concerns hemispheric specialization: the right hemisphere would be
“more emotional” and the left hemisphere “more rational.”
Alternatively, a recent approach based on neuro-astroglial interactions
relates feeling with hydro-ionic waves in living tissue and cognition with axonal
action potentials (partially) isolated from those waves by myelin [see Rocha,
Pereira Jr. and Coutinho (2001), Rocha, Massad and Pereira Jr. (2005), Pereira
Jr. and Furlan (2009, 2010), Pereira Jr. (2007, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015a, b,
2017), Pereira Jr. et al. (2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018)]. In this approach,
there are two types of signal processing in the brain: one based on continuous
hydro-ionic waves in living nervous tissue, corresponding to feelings, and
the other based on discrete electrical pulses through axons isolated by a
myelin layer, corresponding to the processes of sensory transmission, mental
representation, logical thinking and motor control. Ionic waves in the nervous
tissues and axonal pulses in the neural networks interact intimately; graded
neuronal potentials generate waves, and these waves modulate synapses,
reinforcing or depressing the frequency of action potentials.
Here I make a theoretical synthesis aimed to promote an interdisciplinary
integration of philosophical psychology with neuroscience. The concept of
projection, based on the work of Max Velmans (1990, 1993, 2009, 2017)
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and discussed by Willford et al. (2011) and Rudrauf et al. (2017), is used as a
“bridge” between neuroscience and philosophical psychology.
The conceptual progress achieved with this formulation leads to other
questions: How to explain the projection operation? How to scientifically test
hypotheses in this regard? The existence of projective operations was inferred
on the basis of psychophysical, phenomenological, and related considerations
within philosophical psychology, but investigation of the neurobiological bases
of intero- and exteroceptive projection requires interdisciplinary approaches
to support conjectures about the structures and functions underlying them.
The test of the projective hypothesis can be made in several areas of
investigation and therapeutic practices, namely: neurophenomenology;
systematic introspection; meditation; hypnosis; brain stimulation;
psychopharmacology, psychoanalysis and psychophysics. I briefly indicate
how each of these methods of investigation and/or therapeutic practices could
contribute to elucidate the status of the projective process.
2 deparTing from The neurosciences
Human conscious activity consists of three sets of mental functions,
addressed by the respective branches of neurosciences:
2.1) Cognitive neuroscience addresses the knowing function, which
is supported mainly by neocortical neural circuits, in particular by the
triangulation of associative areas: parietal, temporal and pre-frontal. This
function is composed of several sub-functions (perception, learning, memory,
attention, logical-mathematical thinking, planning, moral judgment, decision
making, as covered in the chapters of the classic work edited by Gazzaniga,
1993);
2.2) Affective neuroscience deals with the feeling function, supported
mainly by subcortical structures such as the gray periaqueductal area
(PANKSEPP, 1998), the limbic system (including glia and other tissue
components), insula, somatosensory cortex, central nervous system connections
with the enteric and cardiac nervous systems, and also with the endocrine and
immune systems. I use the term feeling from (DAMASIO, 2000) to refer to
the conscious experience of all types of sensation and emotions;
2.3) Neuroscience of action addresses the acting (or open behavior)
function, which is supported by the motor system, including the pre-motor
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and motor cortices, cerebellum, basal ganglia, vestibular system, connections
with sensory areas responsible for “corollary discharge” (WURTZ, 2013),
pyramidal axonal connections with neuro-muscular junctions, sensors and
muscle effector mechanisms involved in movement and kinesthetic perception
(JEANNEROD, 1997).
The approach to conscious experience arising from the combination of
the three branches of neurosciences, focusing on knowing, feeling and acting,
is illustrated in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Conscious system. The conscious system system is an open and dynamic one,
interacting with the environment. It is composed of three functions: knowing, feeling and
acting. Human consciousness is dynamically constituted by the interactions between the
three functions in time cycles [a first version of this type of diagram was published in
Pereira Jr. et al. (2013)].
3 The projecTion hypoThesis
Two approaches in philosophical psychology have helped researchers
to address the features of phenomenal experience. First I cite the distinction
between first and third-person types of knowledge (NAGEL, 1974). Nagel
proposes: “Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single
point of view.” (NAGEL, 1974, p. 437). However, the subjective point of view
is not to be conceived in terms of a substance or soul, in the Cartesian tradition,
but as derived from natural experiences and their supporting biological
mechanisms, as in his example of an animal (the bat) using echolocation (a
biophysical perceptual apparatus).
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Conscious experiences of an organism can be referred to a point of view,
constituting the first-person perspective. The same reasoning can be applied to
objective phenomena, for which the third-person perspective is adequate:
In speaking of the move from subjective to objective characterization,
I wish to remain noncommittal about the existence of an end point,
the completely objective intrinsic nature of the thing, which one
might or might not be able to reach. It may be more accurate to think
of objectivity as a direction in which the understanding can travel.
(NAGEL, 1974, p. 443).
From this quote it is clear that the third-person perspective was
conceived by Nagel as a directionality of understanding implying some type
of projective process. This directionality is closely related to philosophical
concepts such as the “aboutness” [for a review, see Bourget and Mendelovici
(2017)] and the “transparency” of mental representations (TYE, 1996, 2002).
Velmans (2012) offers a similar account, in a clarifying footnote:
Although I have borrowed the term ‘the thing itself ’ from Kant […] this
is not an unknowable thing-itself (an aspect of Kant’s thought that has
been found problematic even by many Kantians). If human knowledge
is one manifestation of a wider reflexive process by which the universe
itself comes to know itself, there is ultimately no separation between
knower and known, and knowledge becomes a form of self-knowledge.
Kant was of course right to stress that human knowledge is constrained
by the ways that human perceptual and cognitive systems operate and
cannot therefore provide observer-free knowledge of the world as it is in
itself. Consequently it may not be possible for the embodied human
mind to fully know the nature of its own ground of being. That does not,
however, rule out partial, uncertain, species-specific knowledge […] that
is entirely conventional in science.
The third-person perspective of science is a special type of inter-
subjective agreement (VELMANS, 2009) based on methodological
constraints and empirical/experimental testing of hypotheses, leading to what
Nagel (1986) called “the view from nowhere”. Knowledge about conscious
experiences derives from first-person experiences, or “what it is like to be” a
conscious experiencer, which provides what Varela and Shear (1999) called
“the view from within”.
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The second approach I cite is the discussion of projection by Velmans.
How can we relate the phenomenal space of subjective experiences to the
physical space objectively described in science? A scientific approach is found
in psychophysics, by comparing subjective evaluations of spatial properties
(such as distance, length) with objective measures (VELMANS, 2009). We
know from neuroscience that conscious perception requires the processing
of signals in the nervous system, and the representation of the characteristics
of the perceived objects in the brain; for instance, in visual perception a two-
dimensional retinotopic image of a perceived object is formed in the occipital
primary visual area, by means of a pattern of activation of columns of neurons.
However, when this image is consciously perceived, the represented object is
experienced as being located “out there in the world” external to the brain.
How is this experience possible?
Velmans (1990, 1993) assumes the existence of information processing
from a stimulus external to the brain to the central nervous system, where a
representation of properties of the stimulus is formed. However, the conscious
experience of the properties of the stimulus is not referred to brain activity,
but somehow projected to the location of the stimulus, as shown in Figure 2:
Figure 2: Perceptual projection. A conscious subject receives light ray signals from an
external stimulus (a cat); she forms a neural representation of the animal in her brain, and
then the neural causes/correlates of consciousness produce an experience of the cat-in-the-
world; how is this projection possible? Figure by Velmans (2017), used with permission.
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Velmans’ (1990, 1993, 2009, 2012, 2017) discussion of perceptual
projection can be summarized in three sentences:
1) We perceive objects and processes by means of the formation of
neural representations in our brains, but
2) The lived experience we have of physical objects and processes
implies that they are located “out there”, in the experiential physical space;
therefore,
3) We “project” our neural representations into the experiential physical
space in such a way that conscious experience is not of a solipsistic kind (it is
not “locked” in the brain), but somehow “reflects” reality.
One attempted explanation of perceptual projection is in terms of
the concept of information. Phenomenal and correlated neurophysiological
spaces are thought to have the same informational structure: “(The) mind
can be thought of as a form of information processing.” (VELMANS, 2012).
Considering the first person phenomenology of a subject S and their neural
correlates (viewable from the third-person perspective of an external observer
E), he claims that
the information structure of what S and E observe is identical, but it is
displayed or “formatted” in very different ways [...] the information
displayed in experiences and their physical correlates can be thought of as
two manifestations of this information processing [...] the nature of mind
is not either physical or conscious experience; it is at once physical and
conscious experience. For lack of a better term we may describe this nature
as psychophysical. (VELMANS, 2012).
The bipolar structure of consciousness can be conceived as a phenomenal
informational field composed of a subjective pole (the sense of self ) and an
objective pole (the sense of the world ). This field, according to my hypothesis,
is constructed by means of a projection of neural activity; being experienced in
the perspective of the first person (NAGEL, 1974), that is, by the individual
who projects it. It is possible to conceive Nagel’s concept of “point of view”
as a projective operation, in this case an inwardly directed one, while perceptual
projection goes in the outward direction. In this approach, not only the sense
of the world, but also the sense of self, or “point of view” (NAGEL, 1974) are
considered as resulting from projective operations; the sense of self is constituted
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by an introceptive projection, while the sense of the world is constituted by a
perceptual projection following the exteroceptive direction.
The subjective pole, or sense of self, is conceived as the “attractor” in
the dynamics of sensory, emotional and affective systems of the living body.
The attractor state is generated in the feeling history of the individual, and
projected as an invariant “identity” in time; the result of this projection is the
sense of self [as further elaborated and discussed in Reddy et al. (2019)].
The objective pole, or sense of the world, is the projection of
representations from the nervous system to its extensions related to the
homeostasis and control of the body, which include neuro-muscular junctions,
kinesthetic sensors in muscles, the cardiac and enteric nervous systems [for a
discussion of the possible effect of emotions in the psycho-neuro-endocrine-
immune system, see Pregnolato, Damiani and Pereira Jr. (2017)]. Feedback
cycles between the central nervous system and the extra-cerebral structures of
the motor system can give rise to the sense of the world, in which the world is
understood as an “intensional object”, not as a “thing in itself ”.
In neurobiological terms, such a projection is made from the centre
to the periphery of the nervous system, forming the “egocentric space”
(TREHUB, 1991), in which the agent who experiences the contents is at the
centre, defining a proximal space, and the external world is situated at the
distal end, as a field of perception and action. This informational field, which
is present exclusively within the first person perspective of the agent, extends
beyond the living body, projecting itself into physical space.
In conscious experience, the subjective “point of view” and the
objects “out there in the world” can be interpreted as two directions of
understanding: one inwards the conscious agent, the other outwards. In this
interpretation, the “subjective” and “objective” poles of consciousness [the
“noetic-noematic” divide, according to Husserl (1913)] are not conceived
as Cartesian metaphysical substances, but as constructs within an organism’s
lived experience.
The bipolarity of the conscious mind can be found in the distinction
made by Freud, on the basis of the philosophy of Schopenhauer [for an update
on the contemporary influence of this philosopher, see Merker (2013)],
between the Id (principle of pleasure) and Superego (principle of reality). The
interplay of the two generates the concept of Ego (FREUD, 1923) and also
supports a concept of “projection” (ORNSTON, 1978) in psychodynamic
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theory. Projection was conceived as a defence mechanism, which engages
processes similar to those operating in normal perception.
A parallel conceptual development, also related to the Husserlian
structure of consciousness and the related temporal dynamics of retention and
protention [see a review of Husserl’s theory of time perception in Pereira Jr.
(1990)] is found in Williford et al. (2012). The authors first claim that “one
typically retends not only the objects experienced, but the ways in which the
objects were experienced… The reflexive structure also grounds the sense that
it was an experience that happened “to me”. One remembers (and retends)
this very subjectivity-grounding structure. And when one says “this happened
to me” one is implicitly identifying the current structure of reflexivity with the
past one.” (WILLIFORD et al., 2012, p. 327).
These authors also claim:
Reflexivity enters into the structure of temporality via protention. One
protends or projects the upcoming episode of consciousness. One is
surprised if one’s expectations are violated - if a familiar melody takes
a strange turn, etc. But one always protends that the experiences of the
future will be one’s own […] No matter how one’s experiences turn out,
the projected structure of subjectivity will necessarily be there, if there is
any experience at all. (WILLIFORD et al., 2012, p. 327).
The progress that is achieved with this formulation is challenged by
another conceptual issue: how to explain the projection operation?
My proposed approach to the problem is to find the ground of
projective operations in the context of neurobiological structures and
functions. The existence of projective operations was inferred on the basis
of phenomenological and related psychophysical considerations, but the
investigation of the neurobiological basis of the projective operations (inward
and outward) requires an interdisciplinary investigation.
I propose the concept of an extended conscious domain (ECD),
characterized by a lived experience or presentation that occurs in the “egocentric
space”, having the subjective point of view at its center, and the world of
objects “out there” as the horizon. In order to generate the ECD with its
two projected poles, the subjective one (point of view) and the objective
one (objects and processes out there in the world), a system containing at least
two components is necessary - in the same way that, in projective geometry
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(RUDRAUF et al., 2017), in order to generate a line at least two points are
necessary.
Mitterauer (2013), in this regard, proposes a “dialogical” model of the
conscious mind, in which the subjective and objective poles correspond to the
activity of two signaling networks in living tissue, the astroglial (subjective)
and the neuronal (objective). In the same way, I conceptualize the interplay of
two partners (Figure 3):
a) Feelings in living tissue, generating the sense of self as a temporal
invariant pattern, or ‘attractor”, and
b) Mental representations carried by patterns of spiking neurons,
generating the sense of the world.
Figure 3: Extended conscious domain (containing two “’virtual” poles). Two kinds of
brain/mind processes (mental representations in neuronal spiking patterns and waves of
feeling in living tissue) interact (continuous bidirectional arrows). From their interaction
two poles are projected (dashed unidirectional arrows): the sense of self as a point of view,
and the sense of the world containing 3D objects outside the brain/mind system (e.g.,
Velmans’ cat).
According to the above hypothesis, the point of view is an interoceptive
projective extension of subjective feeling experiences, and the objects and
processes out there in the world are exteroceptive projective extensions of the
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mind/brain representations of them; in our conscious experience, we project
the external world on the basis of the representations we make from signals
received from stimuli.
The proposed concept of ECD is different from the concept of a
representational “virtual reality” proposed by Lehar (2003) and Metzinger
[(2009); see also Revonsuo (2010)], for two reasons: first, the virtual reality
is composed of mental representations, while the ECD is a presentational
domain. The ECD is not intrinsic to the representations; on the contrary, the
representations are components of the ECD, being used to allow projective
operations that generate the extended domain. Second, the ECD is not locked
in the brain, but phenomenally extended to the domain of interaction with
the world. Although having this aspect in common with the concept of an
“extended mind” proposed by Clark (1996), the ECD is different because
Clark explicitly avoids phenomenological externalism, by focusing solely on
external functional relations, as with the use of technological artifacts. These
functional relations extend our cognitive capabilities, but not the range of
phenomenal consciousness.
Velmans (2012, 2017) discusses how the structure of the phenomenal
mind instantiated in a living brain is affine to the structure of the world out
there, referring to a “common ground of being”: “Experimental psychology
has made it clear that even processes that we normally think of as “conscious”
for the reason that they result in conscious experiences rely on unconscious or
preconscious processing that gives rise to those experiences”. This approach
helps to understand the unconscious generation of the consciously experienced
ECD:
There is one universe (the thing-itself), with relatively differentiated parts in
the form of conscious beings like ourselves, each with a unique, conscious
view of the larger universe of which it is a part. In so far as we are parts of
the universe that, in turn, experience the larger universe, we participate in
a reflexive process whereby the universe experiences itself. (VELMANS,
2012).
A mathematical model of mental projection, on the basis of projecti-
ve geometry and the Bayesian type of statistical inference, using conditional
probability, was recently proposed by Rudrauf et al. (2017). Although the
authors did not share the same references I use in the above reconstruction of
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the projective operation, their model seems to be compatible with mine. In
the conclusion of the paper, they claim:
One important incentive for deriving generative models of consciousness
is the possibility of using such models as mathematical tools for the
development of a phenomenological psychology, based on sound formal
and computational foundations. If our model contains some truth, a future
formal psychological science may include the study (and the classification)
of possible conscious states based on projective solutions from projective
geometry in the context of processes of active inference driven by the
minimization of free energy. (RUDRAUF et al., 2017, p. 129).
A comparison of the proposals would require detailed discussions that I
cannot carry here; however, it should be noted that formal and computational
reconstructions may be not adequate for fully describing or explaining all the
phases of conscious experience that I identify in the next section.
4 The dynamical sTrucTure of The flow of consciousness
My effort towards the construction of epistemological foundations for
a theory of consciousness began with the identification of a “referential nu-
cleus” of the concept of consciousness in the context of scientific research:
Consciousness is a process that occurs in a subject (the living individual);
the subject has an experience (he/she interacts with the environment,
completing action-perception cycles), and the experience has reportable
informational content (information patterns embodied in brain activity
that can be conveyed by means of voluntary motor activity). (PEREIRA
JR.; RICKE, 2009).
This preliminary concept, while indicating the kind of phenomenon
that is conscious, is incomplete, because it does not describe the dynamical
structure of the flow of consciousness.
Advances in cognitive, affective and action neurosciences have
suggested – on the basis of the activity of the nervous system – that mental
activity can occur, in biological species, in different degrees of self-awareness.
The results indicate that mental activity is composed of three layers:
a) Non-conceptual features of sentience, present in the whole
phylogenetic scale;
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b) Enactive capabilities that emerge with animals able of learning how
to control their behaviour by means of mental representations, and
c) Conceptual features that depend on cognitive capabilities (such
as our sophisticated verbal language), which develop progressively in the
evolutionary process.
In the neuro-astroglial interaction model of mental activity (PEREIRA
JR.; FURLAN, 2010; PEREIRA JR. et al., 2013; PEREIRA JR., 2017;
PEREIRA JR. et al., 2017), feeling is a necessary component of conscious
experience [as argued in Pereira Jr. (2013)]. Without feeling, all we have
is non-conscious mental processing, limited to the processing of afferent
information, formation of representations and activation of motor control
in response to environmental stimuli. With the presence of feeling, there is
a modulation of neuronal activity according to the valence attributed to the
qualities of the stimulus, thus influencing the behavioral response.
The concept of feeling used in this context is broader than the common
usage in the context of the neurobiology of emotions. “Feeling” here is
synonymous to “experience of qualia”; for instance, to feel the taste of wine is
to experience the quale of wine; to feel the smell of a rose is to experience the
quale of a rose. Taking feeling as the epicentre of conscious activity, the flow of
human consciousness can be analysed as a dynamic structure involving three
layers and six phases, in which the previously mentioned functions (knowing,
feeling and acting) are integrated.
The three layers are:
a) Non-conscious activities: They encompass physical and informational
processes in the agent’s body and environment, including brain physiological
processes that support conscious processes, but do not appear as conscious
contents;
b) Non-conceptual conscious activities: I use the term “concept” in the
Platonic sense of “idea”, in a theoretical framework that approaches Aristotle’s
philosophy. Concepts are here conceived as “mental forms” instantiated in
the minds of people; minds that are not separated from their bodies and
interact with a physical, social and cultural environment. An essential feature
of concepts is that they can be used in logical processes. I mean by “cognition”
the apprehension and combination of concepts, according to logical rules
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and using a language (verbal or imagery). Feeling comprises non-conceptual
dimensions of lived experience, that is, dimensions that are not captured in
logical-linguistic processes that characterize human rationality, but can be
referred a posteriori by means of metaphors and/or descriptions of the types of
context in which they are experienced. For example, pain is a non-conceptual
experience that can be described by means of analogies (pain as a kind of
“wave that runs through the body”) or descriptions of the context in which it
is generated (a dental caries affecting the nerve, a burn, a needle sting, etc.).
“Thought by images” in Aristotle (SILVA, in press) could be considered as
non-conceptual, or even as non-reflective experience, if (and only if ) such
images are in the sensible and/or sentimental plane; however, images can also
be elevated to a conceptual plane, when they become icons (in the sense of
Peirce); in this case, they lend themselves to cognitive chains, that is to say,
semeiose;
c) Conceptual conscious activities: These activities encompass all
conscious activities conceptually explained and recognized, by means of the
use of language, images, maps and symbols, being logically linked and cabaple
of being used to make rational arguments.
An analysis of the flow of consciousness reveals a structural dynamism;
it is possible to identify a sequence of phases of the conscious flow. In the
reconstruction of conscious experience I propose, these phases progress in the
direction of growing self-awareness. The dynamic structure of consciousness
is represented by a graph showing the “degree of conceptualization x degree
of self-awareness” (see Figure 4). The illustrative graph is rather simplified,
representing the flow of consciousness only as progressively toward greater
self-awareness, but we observe in practice that the movement of consciousness
can also be in the regressive sense, for example, by paying more attention to
spontaneous living, when our thoughts encounter obstacles to progress in a
given abstract direction.
The constitutive phases of the process are shown in the below diagram
(Figure 4).
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PEREIRA JR., A.
Figure 4: Analysis of the flow of consciousness. Conceptual “peaks” (interpreted, thought
and voluntary) refer to conceptual conscious activities, elaborated by means of mental
representations built with symbols, maps and/or images. The non-conceptual “valleys”
(sentient, automatic, intuitive) refer to non-conceptual first person conscious experiences.
(Original figure by Alfredo Pereira Jr).
The meaning of the phases is:
1) Sentient: This phase includes the experience of biologically induced
states of consciousness [pain and pleasure, basic sensations such as hunger and
thirst; see Panksepp (1996)], as well as new or surprising sensory stimuli [for a
definition of sentience, see Allen and Tretsman (2016)]. In human perception
this phase covers the first 300 milliseconds after exogenous or endogenous
stimulation, but can be prolonged in time if the stimulus continues to be
present, as in the case of chronic pain sensations. Sensations are not conceptual,
in the sense that at first they are not cognitively recognized; yet, even without
being conceptualized, they are consciously experienced. Cognitivist theories of
consciousness may consider this phase to be non-conscious, or implying only
“implicit knowledge”, because in this kind of view the initial categorisation
and interpretation of input is usually thought of as “pre-conscious”, rather
than conscious. This is in opposition to the “explicit” subsequent cognition
in terms of logical categories expressed in communicable language. However,
our first-person experience of feelings can also be interpreted as being not
dependent on logical categorization and expression in language (which can,
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of course, occur a posteriori); and, more important for my argumentation,
detailed examination of neural correlates [see, for instance, Woodruff (2017)]
reveals that sentience satisfies the minimum conditions to be present in many
biological species, which do not share our logical and linguistic capabilities;
2) Interpreted: In this phase, raw experience is interpreted and
categorized within a cognitive framework that includes some kind of language,
but not necessarily a symbolic one. We often use maps and multimodal images
(visual, auditory, tactile) to interpret and categorize our sensations, resulting
in mental representations of them. Emotional feelings (WANG; PEREIRA
JR., 2016) are typical of this phase; for example, the sensation of pain can be
generated in the first 300 ms after the harmful stimulus, but the emotional
feeling of pain, which depends on the individual history, requires a longer time
for its formation, and can be suppressed in extreme situations, as in the case
of a person going through a life-threatening region, and suffering from a leg
injury. She continues to walk, suppressing the emotional feeling of pain for
some time; in this case, the biological survival adaptive mechanism changes
the interpretation of the raw sensation, supressing the related emotion for a
while;
3) Automatized: This phase corresponds to automatic formation of a
chain of mental representations, in the case of familiar stimuli, and/or the
activation of a learned response to unfamiliar stimuli. Conscious experiences
arise in seemingly automatic fashion, in the sense that we can’t under most
circumstances control what we experience. Once the stimulus representation
is formed, previously established connections trigger an internal response,
which can also trigger a mechanical behavioural response. In the “automatic
mode,” we do not conceptualize the experience, but monitor it to see if the
proper response is performed; for example, when cycling or swimming (and
other cases that neuroscientists put under the label of “procedural memory”).
For instance, driving a car while focusing conscious attention on another task
(e.g., the cell phone) is a conscious automatized experience, because the road
is consciously monitored; in other words, the periphery of conscious attention
is not necessarily unconscious (CARRARA-AUGUSTENBORG; PEREIRA
JR., 2003);
4) Thought: This phase is based on logical inferences using verbal
or non-verbal language, being possibly present in all animal species able of
learning a range of different responses to environment stimuli and choosing
the most adequate, depending on the context. Having a conversation is usually
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PEREIRA JR., A.
regarded as one of the best examples of a non-automatic, thinking activity,
for the reason that we need to respond in ways that are flexible and often
novel. There are several, formal and informal, types of inference, which can be
modelled in several ways, including probabilistic methods. An introspective
account of the thinking phase can reveal its intrinsic structure. Introspection
turns the lens of enquiry back towards itself and scrutinizes the conscious
process (WEGER et al, 2018);
5) Intuitive: The intuitive phase comes after thinking, when
unconscious processes irrupt into consciousness, without a direct connection
with the previous phase. Intuition can be conceived as an unconscious process
triggered by conscious thinking, leading to conscious manifestations of
inner dispositions, without a direct connection with the results achieved in
the previous thinking process; however, emergent intuitions often respond
to objective questions, as in scientific discovery (MARTON et al., 1994)
and economic decision (MOREWEDGE; KAHNEMAN, 2010) domains.
Intuition can still be regarded as a personal conscious reaction to current lived
experiences, on the basis of unconscious determinations; it is basically a dialogue
of the conscious with the unconscious. In Eastern traditions, this phase is
paradoxically related to the “dissolution” of the subject-object dichotomy. It
is possible to solve this paradox by introducing a dynamic concept of the self,
satisfying the principles formulated by Nagarjuna [see Reddy et al. (2019)];
6) Voluntary: The so-called “will” (free or not), or the desire, is a
connection between the conscious episode being formed and the actions to
be executed in the physical and social environment. Behaviour in response
to stimulation can occur non-voluntarily, by means of reflex or automatic
mechanisms. Voluntary action is mediated by connections of the central
nervous system (mostly the motor cortex) with skeletal muscles. When
stimuli are processed and integrated into a conscious episode, it is possible to
influence behaviour towards them by means of the modulation of the activity
of the pyramidal neurons of the motor cortex by tissue waves of feeling. The
action control signals [as the corollary discharge; see Jeannerod (1999)] can
also shape the conscious episodes we experience. This phase corresponds to
the protagonism of the agent in the practical context, from our everyday
desires to cultural achievements that embody the goals of a society. Self-
consciousness, resulting from the process of self-awareness, is conceived as the
meta-cognitive capacity of an agent to perceive herself as the subject of the
flow of consciousness and the action resulting from it.
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The identification of six phases of the flux of consciousness should help
us to address central issues about the status of conscious projection.
5 The philosophical sTaTus of projecTion
The concept of projection was proposed to explain the generation of
the senses of self and the world, the two poles of the informational field, upon
which the dynamic structure of conscious experience is built. The domain of
experience delimited by the two poles constitutes a phenomenal informational
field in “egocentric space,” having the subjective point of view in the center
and the world of objects as horizon.
The senses of self and world are generated from the interaction of three
conscious functions, knowing, feeling and acting. The issue here addressed is
if the projection process is based on properly cognitive (knowing) or non-cognitive
(feeling and/or acting) operations.
In the non-cognitive approach to conscious activity, the projection
process is related to:
1) The emerging functions that generate the sense of self, related to the
structures of the nervous system that support feelings, as studied by affective
neuroscience;
2) The emerging functions that generate the sense of world, related to
the structures of action-perception, as studied by the action neuroscience.
The sense of self is proposed to be a dynamic invariant in the feeling
domain. The self is the entity who feels (for example, sensations of pleasure
and pain); this dynamic invariant is projected into phenomenal experience
as the embodied entity that constitutes the subject of conscious experiences.
The sense of the world is generated as an intensional object in the domain of
action, as an image of the organized set of objects to which the perceptive and
enactive representations refer; the sense of the world is projected into physical
space-time through efferent structures of the living body, appearing as a reality
external to the brain/mind.
In the first-person perspective of the conscious agent, the projection
of an information field from the CNS to the efferent pathways connected to
the periphery of the body (for practical purposes, considering eye muscles as
being also peripheral) can have the same phenomenal effect, as if the signal
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PEREIRA JR., A.
was actually projected to the distal regions of the egocentric space. Recent
neuroscientific research has identified several extension of the CNS in the
whole human body: the enteric nervous system, the cardiac nervous system,
the interactions of the nervous with the endocrine and immune systems, as well
as neuromuscular connections by which the brain controls our actions in the
physical and social environment. The muscular effectors are connected to body
sensors, forming signalling loops that extend the central nervous system to the
periphery of the living body and its interfaces with the external environment.
These findings add to previously known mechanisms of muscular kinaesthetic
and proprioceptive sensors, which close the loops between the central nervous
and the peripheral nervous systems. The looping pathways compose a broader
view of the nervous system as a continuous signalling system, having a center
and a periphery.
In this theoretical picture, the formation of the ECD by means of
projection can be interpreted as a psychophysical process that moves from
the central neural structures that instantiate feelings to the periphery of the
extended nervous system and its interface with the external world. The main
theoretical consequence is that the spatial location of objects is extended
to the whole nervous system (beyond the brain) and its interfaces with the
environment. However, the phenomenal field resulting from the processes
of projection, is an information field perceived only by the individual who
projects. This feature of the ECD is consistent with the hologram analogy
presented by Velmans (2017). The neural mental representations that
encode information about the 3D experienced realities are “in the head or
brain”, but the percepts are projected to the outside. He makes a question
and gives a answer:
How do phenomenal cats and other phenomenal objects which are
perceived to be located and extended in space get to be out there? Nothing
physical is projected by the brain: there are no light rays projected
through the eyes to illuminate the world, contrary to the beliefs of ancient
Greek thinkers such as Empedocles. Rather, “perceptual projection” is
a psychological effect produced by unconscious perceptual processing
[...] A projection hologram has the interesting property that the three-
dimensional image it encodes is perceived to be out in space, in front of its
two-dimensional surface, provided that it is viewed from an appropriate
(frontal) perspective and it is illuminated by an appropriate (frontal) source
of light. Viewed from any other perspective (from the side or from behind),
the only information one can detect about the object is in the complex
interference patterns encoded on the holographic plate. In analogous
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fashion, the information in the neural projection hologram is displayed
as a visual, three-dimensional object out in space only when it is viewed
from the appropriate, first person perspective of the perceiving subject
[…] Viewed from any other third-person perspective, the information in
S’s “hologram” appears to be nothing more than neural representations in
the brain (interference patterns on the plate). (VELMANS, 2017).
In this approach, the non-conceptual phases of the conscious process
have relative autonomy in front of the conceptual phases, as suggested by
Freud himself (FREUD, 1913) and denied by Rosenthal (2006). The neuro-
biological bases of the projective process are identified within the cerebral and
bodily subsystems of feeling and acting, not necessarily apprehended by the
(conceptually explicit) knowing system (Figure 5). Contrasting with the high
order thought-type approaches, in the diagram below the existence of a sense
of self and a sense of world does not depend on conceptual apprehensions of the
respective concepts, which can happen a posteriori; during the experience of the
projection the concepts are not conscious, but they can emerge a posteriori in the
composition of the whole conscious episode.
Figure 5: Non-conceptual phenomenal projection. The sense of self emerges in the sphere
of feeling and the sense of the world emerges in the sphere of acting; both remain in non-
conceptual phases of the flux of consciousness (or pre-reflexive, according to Merleau-Ponty,
1945).
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PEREIRA JR., A.
In the cognitivist approach, considering the arguments in this respect
raised by theories of high order thought (HOT) (ROSENTHAL, 2006;
LEDOUX; BROWN, 2017), the processes that generate the senses of the self
and the world depend on a conceptual apprehension.
Arguing for HOT, Rosenthal (2006, p. 307) asks: “Why should
verbally expressing our cognitive states be sufficient for those states to be
conscious, whereas verbally expressing our emotions is not?” He correctly
recognizes that: “Being conscious is an additional property that some
psychological states have and others do not […] When a mental state is
conscious, one is in some way conscious of that state.” Being “conscious
of”, according to him, requires some degree of conceptualization that is
not achieved by emotional processes. In Rosenthal’s analysis, there are only
two ways by which we can be immediately conscious of a mental state: by
means of a “inner sense” (conceived within the empiricist model of sensory
perception), or by means of conceptual thinking:
The only qualities that figure when we are aware of our mental states are
the qualities of the states we are aware of, not qualities that pertain to our
awareness of those states. When we see something consciously, for example,
the only relevant qualities are the colour qualities of our visual sensations
[…] For these and other reasons, we must reject the idea that, when
our thoughts, feelings, and sensations are conscious, we are perceptually
aware of those states. Still, we are conscious of them somehow. The only
alternative is that we have thoughts about these states. (ROSENTHAL,
2006, p. 311).
In the conceptual consciousness conception, the results of the projective
process become conscious only when expressed at the cognitive sphere (Figure
6), by means of a “high-order thought”. In the neurobiologically based
proposal of LeDoux and Brown (2017), the neocortex is identified as the
integrative center of the mammalian brain where conscious thoughts are
formed. In this approach, both the feelings/emotions and the enactive spatio-
temporal representations of the world, formed in other circuits and regions
of the nervous system, would have to be cognitively accessed, conceptually
formulated and referred to the system itself, to become conscious. All mental
representation supported by different parts of the nervous system depend on
conceptual thinking to become effectively conscious.
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Figure 6: Conceptual consciousness. In this approach, the projection of the senses of the
self and the world, and its integration into an informational field, begins in the spheres of
feeling and acting, but is only completed when projected in the cognitive sphere by means
of a “high order thinking” or “meta-cognition” (in the sense of forming knowledge about
one’s own consciousness).
A way out Rosenthal’s dilemma of “empiricism against rationalism”
can be found (besides Freud’s metapsychology) in contemporary affective and
enactive neurosciences, which have revealed the possibility of non-conceptual
feeling and acting experiences, corresponding to the valleys of the flow of
consciousness in Figure 4. However, any attempt to solve this issue at this
moment is premature, because we are just beginning to formulate the right
questions. In this regard, the existence of two alternatives for the interpretation
of the projection process is beneficial for our philosophical and scientific
investigations.
6 TesTing The hypoThesis
How can we discuss and test the perceptual projection hypothesis and
its ontological status (i.e., being based on affective and enactive processing, or
being mostly cognitive)? To do so, we will resort to an important discussion in
the context of neurosciences and the philosophy of the human mind, having
as the main protagonists Ned Block and David Rosenthal, with incursions in
philosophical psychology and in neuroscience.
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Block (1995, 2008, 2011) assumed a position in favour of the existence
of non-cognitive phenomenal consciousness, which would not depend on a
posteriori cognition to exist: “My first conclusion then is that the overlap
of the neural machinery of cognitive access and the neural machinery of
phenomenology can be empirically investigated. Second, there is evidence
that the latter does not include the former.” (BLOCK, 2008, p. 498). Block’s
approach points to the possibility of non-conceptual phenomenal consciousness,
which would include – according to our hypothesis - the projection process.
This type of conscious activity has the capacity of forming memories that can
be conceptually rescued and reported a posteriori.
The latter stages in the formation of a conscious episode influence how
we experience the representations formed in the earlier stages, as shown, for
instance, by results of experiments with backwards masking [see examples and
discussion in Pereira Jr. (2017)]. Considering that later stages can influence
representations of input, a method for testing Block and Rosenthal’s proposals
was suggested by Brown (2014), himself advocate of a HOT-type approach:
If phenomenal consciousness depends in any way on high order cognitive
functioning, then we must be able to altering the conscious experience of
the subjects by interfering with areas of the brain believed to be involved
in higher order cognition while leaving unprocessed first-order processing.
(BROWN, 2014).
This suggestion is important for the testing of the various theories of
consciousness.
Affective neuroscience [as formulated by Panksepp (1997)] can
explain the biological basis of emotions and feelings, and action neuroscience
(JEANNEROD, 1999) can explain the schemes we use to control behaviour,
but at first sight they do not seem adequate to explain the two components
of the phenomenal domain, the senses of self and of the world. The projection
process operates as a bridge principle to connect these neural systems with the
phenomenal field. If we interpret projection as a higher order conceptual or
meta-cognitive operation, we should agree with David Rosenthal’s HOT, as
argued by Brown; if we interpret the projection as a non-conceptual operation,
the decision should be given to Block.
However, agreement with Block does not imply accepting his
distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness (BLOCK,
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1995). The issue currently discussed under the name of “overflow” can be
conceived as independent from the distinction between phenomenal and
access consciousness. In Block’s view (BLOCK, 2011), “overflow” means
that phenomenal consciousness is broader than access consciousness.
However, if there is not such a distinction, and all consciousness is
assumed to be phenomenal, the formulation of the problem is different.
In this case, the discussion is about the six phases (sentient, interpretive,
automatic, thought, intuitive and voluntary; see Figure 4) within phenomenal
consciousness. The preferred hypothesis is that the senses of self and world do
not depend on thinking; they are more related to other phases of the flow of
consciousness (Figure 5). The alternative hypothesis, based on the proposals
of Rosenthal, Brown and LeDoux, considers the conceptual thought phase
central and necessary for any conscious experience (Figure 6).
I identify eight ways of discussing and testing the dependence of
phenomenal consciousness on higher order cognitive operation; these
different ways will be better elucidated and discussed in the course of our
future research:
1) In Neurophenomenology: When searching for the cerebral
correlates of first person experiences, it is interesting to check with adequate
experimental planning whether the areas related to the HOT processes would
necessarily be activated when people non-verbally report their apprehension of
the sense of the self and the sense of the world. In first-person reports of effects
of neuropathology (traumatic or non-traumatic neurological lesions), sensory
impairment or induced deprivation of different intensities and modalities, for
example blindness, amblyopia, deafness, it should be possible to dissociate
properly cognitive effects from affective and enactive components;
2) In Freudian metapsychology: One could alter affective experiences
by means of a conceptual rationalization of the unconscious factors involved
in the projective process, as in psychodynamics. Rosenthal (2006, p. 307)
notes that “according to psychoanalytic theory, the beneficial effect of
treatment results largely from unconscious states’ coming to be conscious”;
however, “simply expressing affective states in words cannot ensure that those
states will be conscious. One must go further and explicitly report or describe
those states” by means of a conceptual expression (ROSENTHAL, 2006, p.
307-308). The projective operation, in this case consisting of the conceptual
expression of affects, can be tested by means of looking for exceptions to the
rule, as in the cases of parapraxis discussed by Rosenthal (2006);
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PEREIRA JR., A.
3) In Hypnosis research: Hypnotic suggestion, affecting meta-cognitive
processes, may also affect sensory and/or affective experiences. There is an
ongoing debate regarding the processing stage at which suggestion blocks
information from breaching consciousness. Highly suggestible individuals
have a metacognitive deficit pertaining to intentions and/or to the interoceptive
and environmental signals relating to sense of agency. There is evidence for a
fairly selective deficit (TERHUNE; HEDMAN, 2017). It would certainly
be interesting to consider the processing stage where disrupted awareness
emerges;
4) In Pharmacological psychiatry: In this field we find many evidences
of effects of psychoactive drugs that selectively affect cognitive processes,
affective processes, and motor processes [see a review in Wang and Pereira
Jr. (2016)]; one can then discuss the degrees of dependence between such
processes;
5) In Brain stimulation therapies (electric, magnetic): In this area of
experimental research, it can be verified whether the stimulation of a specific
area of cognition, affection or motor control, can have direct and/or secondary
effects on another area(s). In regard to the projection process, do changes in
the experienced structure of the self and the world correlate with stimulation
of cognitive, affective and/or motor areas?;
6) In the Epistemology of meditation: One can discuss, from reports of
meditators, and eventually also using records of EEG patterns of brain activity
(regarding the paths and phases of the meditation process), whether or not
they correspond to the dynamic structure illustrated in Figure 4;
7) In Psychophysics: There is a rich literature on the mechanisms
involved in spatial perception; for example, on object size and perceived
distance [see Silva et al. (2006)]. There is also a literature on the ways the
perception of space can be altered (VELMANS, 2009, p. 162-164) and on
the effect of automatic unconscious operations, based on the action system,
determining features of conscious perception (BHANGAL et al., 2018);
8) In Systematic introspection: Using the method of Weger et al.
(2018), one can evaluate the determinations of thought and feeling in
conscious dynamics.
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7 concluding remarKs
In this paper, I raised an argument in favour of the projective theory
of consciousness providing a link between the neurosciences and the domain
of phenomenal consciousness. The nature of the projective process is still not
well defined; it may be the result of the integration of distributed conscious
processes in the nervous system, or a properly conceptual process based on the
cognitive circuits embodied in the mammalian neo-cortex. A theoretical choice
between the two alternatives is related to the concept of consciousness that is
assumed, and to conjectures about the existence of conscious experiences in
a diversity of species along the phylogenetic scale, most of which do not have
human cognitive capabilities. At the present stage of investigation of conscious
activity, the main conclusion is that the hypothesis of projection is amenable
to philosophical and scientific treatments. The discussion of the concept of
perceptual projection and its relations with related approaches (as predictive
coding), and the ways of empirical investigation, are rich and promising.2
PEREIRA JR., A. A teoria projetiva da consciência: da neurociência à psicologia filosófica.
Trans/Form/Ação, Marília, v. 41, p. 199-232, 2018. Edição Especial.
resumo: O desenvolvimento de áreas interdisciplinares das neurociências (cognitiva, afetiva e da ação),
contribui para a identificação das bases neurobiológicas da experiência consciente. A estrutura intrínseca
da experiência consciente foi filosoficamente concebida há um século como consistindo de um pólo sub-
jetivo, o portador de experiências, e um pólo objetivo, composto dos conteúdos experimentados. Em for-
mulações mais recentes, Thomas Nagel refere-se a um “ponto de vista”, no qual experiências qualitativas
são ancoradas, enquanto Max Velmans entende que o conteúdo fenomenal é composto de representações
mentais “projetadas” para o espaço externo ao cérebro que as constrói. Na psicologia freudiana, a mente
consciente contém uma tensão entre o Id e o Ego. Como relacionar esta estrutura bipolar com os resul-
tados da neurociência? Proponho a noção de projeção (também utilizada por Williford et al., 2012) como
princípio-ponte, conectando os sistemas neurobiológicos do saber, sentir e agir com a estrutura bipolar.
O processo projetivo é considerado responsável pela geração do sentido do eu e do sentido do mundo,
compondo um campo fenomenal informacional gerado pelo sistema nervoso e vivenciado na perspectiva
da primeira pessoa. Após apresentar a hipótese projetiva, discuto seu status filosófico, relacionando-o às
abordagens fenomenológicas, à teoria do pensamento de ordem superior e ao modelo matemático da
projeção. Oito maneiras de testar o status da hipótese projetiva são brevemente mencionadas.
palavras-chave: Projeção. Consciência. Cognitivo. Não conceitual. Sentimento.
2 I am grateful to FAPESP (São Paulo State Research Funding Agency) for support of this research;
to Drs. Max Velmans and Chris Nunn, for critical comments; Dr. David Rosenthal, for clarifications
about HOT; and Drs. Kenneth Williford, Claudia Carrara-Augustenborg, Michael Woodruff, Manuel
Moreira da Silva and Enidio Ilario, for suggestions and encouraging comments.
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PEREIRA JR., A.
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