Consciousness matters: phenomenal experience has functional value

Abstract

‘Why would we do anything at all if the doing was not doing something to us?’ In other words: What is consciousness good for? Here, reversing classical views, according to many of which subjective experience is a mere epiphenomenon that affords no functional advantage, we propose that subject-level experience—‘What it feels like’—is endowed with intrinsic value, and it is precisely the value agents associate with their experiences that explains why they do certain things and avoid others. Because experiences have value and guide behaviour, consciousness has a function. Under this hypothesis of ‘phenomenal worthiness’, we argue that it is only in virtue of the fact that conscious agents ‘experience’ things and ‘care’ about those experiences that they are ‘motivated’ to act in certain ways and that they ‘prefer’ some states of affairs vs. others. Overviewing how the concept of value has been approached in decision-making, emotion research and consciousness research, we argue that phenomenal consciousness has intrinsic value and conclude that if this is indeed the case, then it must have a function. Phenomenal experience might act as a mental currency of sorts, which not only endows conscious mental states with intrinsic value but also makes it possible for conscious agents to compare vastly different experiences in a common subject-centred space—a feature that readily explains the fact that consciousness is ‘unified’. The phenomenal worthiness hypothesis, in turn, makes the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness more tractable, since it can then be reduced to a problem about function.

Brain-heart interactions in the neurobiology of consciousness

“…In the same direction, recent theoretical developments on consciousness have rooted the neurobiology of conscious experiences to the monitoring of bodily activity as well [6][7][8]. However, in consciousness research the questions outnumber the answers, and a consensus on whether visceral activity is required for consciousness is not in place yet, together with the debate on what consciousness exactly is [9], whether consciousness is required for emotions [10,11], and what are the functions of consciousness [12]. In this paper, the theory and the experimental evidence on the role of the heart in cognitive functioning are discussed, together with the links to different theories on the neurobiology of consciousness.…”

Pre-Molecular Assessment of Self-Processes in Neurotypical Subjects Using a Single Cognitive Behavioral Intervention Evoking Autobiographical Memory

“…As an intended outcome, this cognitive stimulation generated a more focused, awake, and aware mental state [ 131 , 132 , 133 , 134 ]. Secondly, and concerning the Assessment Protocol, which aimed at mental health profiling, our neurotypical sample was later studied by four self-report measures.…”

Multilevel development of cognitive abilities in an artificial neural network

“…In our particular model, the conscious level does not comprise all the features of consciousness but rather emphasizes the necessary functional elements, such as the working memory. Functional characteristics are, indeed, essential for the study of consciousness, and may even fundamentally help to solve the hard problem ( 47 ). Here, the learning process is based on the idea of sequential network maturation, when the local areas are trained before the global connections ( 48 , 49 ).…”