Mansell’s Perceptual Control Theory

Clinical psychologist Warren Mansell proposes Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) in which “reorganization is the process required for the adaptive modification of control systems in order to reduce the error in intrinsic systems that control essential, largely physiological, variables.” It is from this system, he says, that primary [phenomenal] consciousness emerges and “is sustained as secondary [access] consciousness through a number of processes including the control of the integration rate of novel information via exploratory behavior, attention, imagination, and by altering the mutation rate of reorganization.” Tertiary [self-awareness] consciousness arises when “internally sustained perceptual information is associated with specific symbols that form a parallel, propositional system for the use of language, logic, and other symbolic systems” (Mansell, 2022).

Mansell's objective is to give an “integrative account of consciousness,” which “should build upon a framework of nonconscious behavior in order to explain how and why consciousness contributes to, and addresses the limitations of, nonconscious processes.” Such a theory, as noted, “should also encompass the primary (phenomenal), secondary (access), and tertiary (self-awareness) aspects of consciousness” and “address how organisms deal with multiple, unpredictable disturbances to maintain control.”

Such categories of consciousness come about, according to PCT, because of “purposiveness,” which is “the control of hierarchically organized perceptual variables via changes in output that counteract disturbances which would otherwise increase error between the current value and the reference value (goal state) of each perceptual variable” (Mansell, 2022).