Consciousness and the Social Brain

I have heard the following argument that I think may capture a deep and unspoken assumption. The brain has highly integrated information. Highly integrated information is (so the theory goes) consciousness. Problem solved. Why do we need a special mechanism to inform the brain about something that it already has? The integrated information is already in there; therefore, the brain should be able to report that it has it.
    When put explicitly, this argument has some obvious gaps. The brain contains a lot of items that it can’t report. The brain contains synapses, but nobody can introspect and say, “Yup, those serotonin synapses are particularly itchy today.” The brain regulates the flow of blood through itself, but nobody has cognitive access to that process either. For a brain to be able to report on something, the relevant item can’t merely be present in the brain but must be encoded as information in the form of neural signals that can ultimately inform the speech circuitry.
    The integrated information theory of consciousness does not explain how the brain, possessing integrated information (and, therefore, by hypothesis consciousness), encodes the fact that it has consciousness, so that consciousness can be explicitly acknowledged and reported. One would be able to report, “The apple is green,” like a well-calibrated spectral analysis machine. One would be able to report, “The green here is darker; the green there is lighter; the green is not white; the green is not red; the skin of the apple provides a shiny texture; there is a bright reflection here but not there; the apple is almost round but dented at the top.” One would be able to report a great range of information that is indeed integrated. The information is all of a type that a sophisticated visual processing computer, attached to a camera, could decode and report. But there is no proposed mechanism for the brain to arrive at the conclusion, “Hey, green is a conscious
experience
.” How does the presence of conscious experience get turned into a report?
    To get around this difficulty and save the integrated information theory, we would have to postulate that the integrated information that makes up consciousness includes not just information that depicts the apple but also information that depicts what a conscious experience is, what awareness itself is, what it means to experience. The two chunks of information would need to be linked. Then the system would be able to report that it has a conscious experience of the apple. In that case, the integrated information theory and the attention schema theory converge and become the same theory. I suggest this is the correct way to modify the integrated information approach to resolve its difficulties.
    Toward the beginning of this book, in Chapter 2 , I described a schematic formulation of the problem of consciousness (see Figure 2.2 ), Arrow A is the mysterious process by which neuronal machinery leads to consciousness. Arrow B is the mysterious process by which consciousness causes changes in neuronal machinery, allowing us to report that we have it. Almost all theories of consciousness address themselves to Arrow A and ignore the presenceof Arrow B. But Arrow B is the only scientific handle that we have on consciousness. The fact that consciousness can at least sometimes be reported is its only verifiable attribute. Any scientific theory of consciousness must explain in principle how the stuff can lead to our ability to report its presence. The attention schema theory is, in its essence, the result of working backward from the reportability of consciousness while keeping within the constraints of the brain as an information-processing device.

12
Neural Correlates of Consciousness

    In the last two chapters I discussed some prominent scientific theories of consciousness that fell into two general categories: the social perception approach and the integrated information approach. Not all scientific work on consciousness, however, is driven by theory. One useful approach to consciousness is more look-and-see: study the brain itself, examine any quirks of perception or quirks of brain function that might be relevant to the question, and keep one’s scientific eyes open in case insight can be gained.
    The difficulty with this explorative approach, however, is that one must look in the right place. It is difficult to guide the exploration without a theory to point the way. In my view, the