How best to study the function of consciousness?

摘要

A central project within the scientific study of consciousness is that of uncovering the role that consciousness has in behavior. Under some accounts, the temporary retention of information (short-term or working memory) is accomplished via the maintenance of a conscious representation of that information, and is a candidate function of consciousness (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968; Baars and Franklin, 2003). However, recent experiments demonstrating that stimuli rated by observers as invisible can nevertheless be retained over a delay period, suggest that working memory (WM) may, under some conditions, operate unconsciously (Soto et al., 2011; Bergström and Eriksson, 2014). Accepting this conclusion would raise important questions about the classical view that WM may be a biological function of consciousness. Complicating this line of research, however, are long-standing concerns in the study of unconscious cognition as to whether one can be certain in establishing complete unawareness. Here, I discuss how recent conceptual and methodological advances in the study of visual awareness might profitably be adapted to study the role of awareness in WM and to study the functional consequences of conscious perception more generally.