Searching for Consciousness, Redux

I am following up on my last post, because a few days ago I happened to stumble onto a journal article that is certainly the best amalgamation I have come across of where our current scientific understanding of consciousness is taking us:  The Source of Consciousness by Ken A Paller and Satoru Suzuki.  And more to the point, the information the authors present reads practically like a point by point summary of the empirical findings that have emerged since Jaynes wrote OCBBM that support his contentions that I addressed in my last post about how introspective consciousness is not needed for so many of our cognitive functions.  

I would strongly encourage anyone interested in the topic to read the whole article, as it is brief and, uncharacteristically for an academic journal article, well written and easy to follow.  In it they summarize, with references to the research, how, for example:

• One can can closely examine an object or image and still be unaware of it.
• One can apprehend something, study it and make a judgement about it without using conscious introspection.
• There are certain blind people who actually do see moving objects and can respond to them--its just that the visual information they take in is not accessible to consciousness.  (The phenomenon is know as 'blindsight'.)
• Through brain damage or induced illusions a person can perceive her own conscious awareness being disassociated and separated from parts of her physical body or entire body.  (Think "out of body experiences".)
• Free will may be an illusion as there is mounting evidence that we make decisions unconsciously and then afterward consciously rationalize those decisions to ourselves.  (It's just that it is only obvious to us when we see it happening in uncle Harry and our teenagers.)

Apparently, I am not the only one that was impressed.  A group of seven leading researchers in the field of cognitive science published an equally short and well written piece in support of Paller and Suzuki's article titled Consciousness Science: Real Progress and Lingering Misconceptions.  The broader point of both pieces is to argue that scientific inquiry into consciousness is the only legitimate way to explain it (as opposed to metaphysical and philosophical accounts).  However, the response to Paller and Suzuki does site a variety of sources that support Paller and Suzuki's contentions about the limitations of consciousness and particularly empathizes, "We now know, contrary to many peoples intuitions, that attention and awareness are dissociable:  attention of various types can function in the absence of consciousness..."

In turn, Paller and Suzuki published a one page thank you (included in the previous link), and allude to a few different lines of research that could prove fruitful for further exploration.  They sum up their understanding as follows:

"Consciousness reflects a specific mode of information processing wherein information is explicitly available for intentional (goal-directed) control of attention, memory, and thoughts. By contrast, information can remain largely intangible to intentional control mechanisms via the unconscious mode of processing, but still automatically direct attention, evoke memory, and induce thoughts."

Even though most of these ideas would be shocking to the general public, the above conclusions of all these researchers indicate that the field of cognitive science has moved swiftly forward and has become quiet comfortable with much of what Jaynes was telling us 40 years ago!