Consciousness and the Social Brain

for some of the contents of consciousness, especially some aspects of self-knowledge, but other aspects of consciousness are left unaddressed. The social theories of consciousness have notorious gaps.
    The attention schema theory could be seen as a type of social theory of consciousness. The brain constructs a description or model of awareness and attributes it to other people. The same machinery also attributes awareness to oneself. The theory therefore borrows heavily from social approaches to consciousness. Yet because of the specifics of the theory, it avoids some of the standard pitfalls. In eachof the following sections, I discuss a specific, common criticism of the social approach to consciousness. I also discuss how the attention schema theory might be able to add usefully to the approach, fill in some missing pieces, and avoid the same criticisms.
Self-Awareness versus Awareness in General

    All of the social theories of consciousness described in the previous section focus on knowledge about mental events such as what emotions one is feeling, what thoughts one is having, and especially one’s personal reasons for performing this or that action. Why did I choose to stand up and walk here? Why did I choose to say what I said? Why did I eat a cookie instead of a banana? The social theories of consciousness focus on the narrative that I use to explain my actions to myself. All of these mental processes—choices, thoughts, and emotions—are important, but they involve internal events only. The social theories of consciousness leave unaddressed the consciousness of external events. Of course, the brain constructs a narrative to explain its own behavior and its own thoughts. The hypothesis is sound. But how does that narrative relate to the raw sensory experience of, say, green, or pain, or the sound of G above middle C? Social theories tackle the question of self-awareness, not awareness in general.
    The attention schema theory neatly solves this nagging problem of the social theories of consciousness.
    Like other social approaches, the attention schema theory is about the brain reconstructing, or modeling, or describing a brain state. But the brain state in question is highly specific. It is not an emotion, or a thought, or a motive. It is attention. In the present theory, the brain constructs a descriptive model of attention. Attention can be applied to a color, a sound, a touch, an emotion, a thought, a movement plan, and many other things external and internal. Attention is not limited to self-attention. It is a general operationthat can be applied to almost any type of information. In the present theory, since awareness is a descriptive model of attention, and since attention can be applied to a vast range of information, awareness can encompass the same huge range of information. The theory is not limited to self-knowledge, to a narrative about personal choices, or to any single aspect of mental life. The theory adequately covers the necessary range of information. If the brain can focus attention on
X
, then according to the present theory, it can be aware of
X
, because awareness is a model of the act of attention.
    Few previous theories of consciousness have this advantage. They apply to some limited set of information, such as self-knowledge, visual information, or information about one’s own physical body, and leave unexplained the majority of stuff that can enter awareness. The attention schema theory has the advantage of encompassing the right range of information. If you can pay attention to
X
, then you can be aware of it.
Consciousness in the Absence of Other People

    Another common criticism of the social approach to consciousness is easily explained and easily dismissed. If my consciousness depends on the machinery in my brain for social interaction, and if I am alone, interacting with no other person, then why am I still conscious? How am I aware of the picture on the wall if nobody else is in the room also looking at the same picture? Shouldn’t consciousness disappear as soon as I absent myself from a social context?
    This common criticism is, to some extent, artificial. Of course, the machinery for social cognition is still present in my brain, whether I am in a social group or not. Even if I were in solitary confinement in jail for a month, my brain would still contain that circuitry, and I could still use that circuitry to construct a narrative or an understanding of myself. To make