First-Order—Overview

First-order representationalism (FOR) seeks to account for consciousness in terms of, or by reducing to, external, world-directed (or first-order) intentional states (Gennaro, n.d.). In other words, consciousness can be explained, primarily, by understanding how the directedness of our mental states at objects and states of affairs in the world is generated directly by those objects and states of affairs (Searle, 1979). (This distinguishes first-order theories from higher-order theories, which hold that, in contrast, a mental state is conscious only if the subject has a higher-order thought or perception about that mental state.)

Core Ideas and Philosophical Accounts

Fred Dretske asserts that “the phenomenal aspects of perceptual experiences are one and the same as external, real-world properties that experience represents objects as having.” He argues that “when a brain state acquires, through natural selection, the function of carrying information, then it is a mental representation suited (with certain provisos) to being a state of consciousness.” (In contrast, “representations that get their functions through being recruited by operant conditioning, on the other hand, are beliefs.”) (Dretske, 1997).

As philosopher Peter Carruthers explains, “the goal [of FOR] is to characterize all of the phenomenal—‘felt’—properties of experience in terms of the representational contents of experience (widely individuated). On this view, the difference between an experience of red and an experience of green will be explained as a difference in the properties represented—reflective properties of surfaces, say—in each case. And the difference between a pain and a tickle is similarly explained in representational terms—the difference is said to reside in the different properties (different kinds of disturbance) represented as located in particular regions of the subject's own body” (Carruthers, 2000).

Neuroscientific Frameworks and Neural Correlates

Philosopher Neil Mehta and anesthesiologist George Mashour describe FOR as consisting of “sensory representations directly available to the subject for action selection, belief formation, planning, etc.” They posit a neuroscientific framework, “according to which neural correlates of general consciousness include prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, and non-specific thalamic nuclei, while neural correlates of specific consciousness include sensory cortex and specific thalamic nuclei” (Mehta and Mashour, 2013).

FOR's core philosophical idea, Mehta and Mashour state, is that “any conscious state is a representation, and what it’s like to be in a conscious state is wholly determined by the content of that representation. By definition, a representation is about something, and the content of a representation is what the representation is about. For instance, the word ‘dolphins’ (representation) is about dolphins (content).” But, they clarify, “a representation is not identical to its content.” The English word “dolphins” has eight letters, but dolphins themselves do not have any letters. “Conversely, dolphins swim, but the word ‘dolphins’ does not swim.”

This distinction leads to the strong view that neural states seem to have very different properties than conscious perceptions. “For instance, when someone consciously perceives the color orange, normally there is nothing orange in that person's brain. First-order representationalists explain this by holding that a conscious perception of orange is a representation of orange, and (as the ‘dolphin’ example shows) the properties of a representation can be very different from the properties of its content” (Mehta and Mashour, 2013).

Comparisons with Higher-Order Theories

FOR's core neurobiological idea is that “each specific type of conscious state corresponds to a specific type of neural state.” Ned Block seeks to “disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal consciousness.” He argues that, in a certain sense, “phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility.” He posits that “we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if we assume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified (other things being equal) by the explanations it allows” (Block, 2007c).

Block hypothesizes that the conscious experience of motion is a certain kind of activation of visual area V5, which suggests that sensory systems are the neural correlates of sensory consciousness. He further speculates that what's required for consciousness in general are connections between these cortical regions and the thalamus, “which suggests that sensory and perhaps post-sensory systems … are the neural correlates of general consciousness, as well” (Block, 2007c).

Block says he favors the first-order point of view, and if it is right, he says, “It may be conscious phenomenology that promotes global broadcasting, something like the reverse of what the global workspace theory of consciousness supposes. First-order phenomenology may be a causal factor in promoting global broadcasting; but according to the global workspace theory, global broadcasting constitutes consciousness rather than being caused by it” (Block, 2023, pp. 8–9).

With a pungent example, Block compares first-order representationalism with higher-order representationalism, higher-order theories (HOT). “We have two perceptions that equally satisfy the descriptive content of the HOT, but one and not the other causes the HOT. But that gives rise to the problem of how a thought to the effect that I am smelling vomit could make a perception of crimson a conscious perception. The perception of crimson could cause the HOT while a simultaneous first-order smell-representation of vomit does not cause any higher-order state. The consequence would be that the perception of crimson is a conscious perception and the perception of vomit is not, even though the subject experiences the perception of crimson as if it were the perception of vomit.”

Block concludes that “a descriptivist view based on content is inadequate” and that “the difficulty for the HOT theory is that it is unclear what relation has to obtain between a HOT and a perception for the perception to be conscious” (Block, 2023, pp. 425–426).