Definition
A claim about consciousness says which of these it means.
- Phenomenal. There is something it is like for the subject to be in the state (Nagel, LIT-096).
- Access. Information is available to specified reasoning, control, decision or report processes. The distinction from the first is Block’s (LIT-643): a deficit that removes a capacity together with consciousness does not show that the capacity is a function of phenomenal consciousness, since access is lost too (THEORY-091); and phenomenal consciousness may overflow access (THEORY-103).
- Self-consciousness. The system represents or attends to aspects of itself as itself. TERM-045’s senses of “self” say which self.
- Wakefulness or arousal. A clinical or behavioural state of responsiveness, distinct from any particular conscious content.
A12: “Access, reportability, self-modeling, organized interpretation, and agency do not individually establish phenomenal consciousness by definition. Their relationships to phenomenal consciousness require substantive theories and evidence.” That is the question of the evidence-for-experience line, which this term does not answer.
What it is not
- A theory of consciousness. A12: “phenomenal consciousness itself should not be defined through a preferred neural, computational, or organizational theory. Otherwise a theory proposing that consciousness is constituted by a particular organization becomes true by stipulation.” The phenomenon is kept apart from its candidate explanations and from its indicators.
- A phenomenal perspective. TERM-072’s third sense, a perspective that is phenomenal, is one use of sense 1; an organizational perspective (its sense 1) carries no claim about experience.
- Evidence. A behavioural or architectural indicator of consciousness is not thereby a constitutive condition of it (ADR-056’s distinction between criterion and indicator).
Note of 2026-11-01: sense 4 runs three properties together
Sense 4 reads “Wakefulness or arousal. A clinical or behavioural state of responsiveness”. Metzinger (2020, LIT-1946, NOTE-1498, pp. 32–33; 2024, LIT-1943, NOTE-1499, pp. 36–37) separates three properties under those words:
- arousal, “a graded physical property of the human brain”, the level of cortical activation;
- tonic alertness, “a graded functional property determining the capacity for sustained attention”;
- wakefulness, “a graded phenomenal property”, the experience of tonic alertness, and so a case of sense 1.
His dissociation is unresponsive wakefulness: a sleep–wake cycle, so arousal and some alertness, without wakefulness in his phenomenal sense. “An organism can be tonically alert without knowing that it is alert” (2020, p. 33). He also argues the converse is possible: wakefulness in a low-arousal state, in lucid dreamless sleep (2020, p. 13).
On that usage, sense 4 as worded holds a physical and a functional property, while “wakefulness” names a phenomenal one. A claim using sense 4 should say which. The term’s warning, “access, reportability, self-modeling … do not individually establish phenomenal consciousness”, applies to alertness as well. The definition is unchanged. No status, title or warrant changes.