Consciousness and the Social Brain

know about myself as a physical thing to which the awareness can be anchored? I do not believe I have ever had that type of experience. I suspect the body schema is fairly robust and is more or less continuously computed. But I can imagine brain damage that might severely disrupt the body schema. In that case I would guess that, even in the absence of a sense of physical self, awareness is still possible, although it would be an unusual, altered type of awareness.
    What about
PA
, the physical embodiment that is computed specifically for awareness, the information that awareness is located in my body, that it emanates from me? We already know that
PA
can be dysfunctional. In the out-of-body experience, awareness is assigned an incorrect point of origin and spatial perspective. 3 , 4 What would happen if I had no
PA
, if my model of awareness had no physical anchor? Suppose that, due to damage, my brain is no longer able to compute
PA
. My awareness is constructed as pure experienceness, timeless and spaceless, with no particular source or anchor in my body or anywhere else. I would guess that such a state is possible and qualifies as another unusual, altered type of awareness.
    The only component left that seems, in this thought experiment, to be absolutely necessary for awareness is
MA
, the model of the mental attributes of awareness. In the attention schema theory,
MA
is information. It is a nuanced, rich description, the brain’s way of describing to itself the essence of signal enhancement. Without
MA
, a brain has no basis to detect, conclude, report, process, assign a high degree of certainty to, or have anything else to do with awareness.
MA
defines experienceness. It defines awareness.
    These thought experiments of separating one component from another are philosophically intriguing. But are any such manipulations possible in actuality? Can a brain compute the components separately? Certainly brain damage might take out one function or another, but can the normal healthy brain compute the components separately?
    The theory makes a clear though subtle prediction: yes, the components can come apart. They can be computed in isolation, without binding one component to another. But they can come apart only in the absence of attention.
    Attention does more than enhance one set of signals and suppress other, outcompeted signals. Attention has the effect of binding together the signals that have won the competition. Attention builds a single, unified representation. For example, when you pay attention to an apple, then the greenness, the roundness, and the motion of the apple are fused together into a single informational unit. Accessing one chunk of information necessarily also accesses the other chunks. When your attention is not focused on the apple, the features are not bound in that manner. The system can even become confused, and you may accidentally attribute the wrong color to an object. One of the properties of attention, therefore, is that it glues together disparate computed features. In the present theory, awareness is a computed feature. To bind it to another chunk of information requires attention.
    It may be possible outside of attention, at the fringes of attention, or close to sleep to be aware, simply aware, without being aware of something, and without processing that you are the being who is aware. (One is reminded of some of the goal states of Buddhist meditation. Clear your mind of all thought. Achieve a pure awareness.)
    Note that for such a state to occur, in the present theory, your brain must construct an attention schema, a model of attention, even though no focused attention is actually present. The model is incorrect. Certainly the brain can produce incorrect perceptual models. Such things happen. For example, in the absence of light entering the eye, the visual system computes representations that can be seen as dim floating colors and shapes. Likewise, in the absence of actual focused attention occurring in your brain, in theory the relevant circuitry should be able to construct a model of you directing a focused attention, and in theory that model is awareness, just awareness, unbound, unattached to a subject or an object, without a spatial or a temporal structure, without a location. Pure essence. Pure experienceness. Butif you focus your attention on the question, or on anything else, on a nearby object, on your inner state, on a thought, on an emotion, then the binding should fall