CONSCIOUSNESS

142 3. Cognitive Sciences and Psychology
forms invariably is directly and intimately engaged in cognitive processes, because such processes
invariably require some means of control: consciousness provides the means of that
control; consciousness is that control. This paper will outline the functional contribution of
consciousness to cognitive processing, and provide an operational elucidation, together with
supporting mechanisms linked to specific brain activity, to explain how cognitive processing
itself develops through major transitional phases as each individual matures. In particular, basic
human cognition, at first similar to the processing of other mammals, is shown to respond
to an exogenous form of control vehicle whose remarkable efficacy leads to the introduction
of new kinds of cognition. The major survival benefit of this elaborated cognitive competence
is to catalyse the introduction of deliberate navigational tasking to exadaptively complement
a default and reactively instrumental form of challenge response. At each stage of advanced
cognitive processing, it is the emerging flexibility of new kinds of conscious control over
cognition that lead each transition. Empowered by a syntactically sequence-oriented cognitive
phase catalysed by linguistic symbolism, the ultimate transition to self-conscious control
is formulated upon a previously un-described form of internal perspective-taking over
many forms of knowledge, which serves in the case of the self-model to afford a particular
two-dimensional field of control over navigational tasking which subsumes simpler forms of
conscious control. The process-oriented ratio-cognitive mode of sequence control thus gives
over to a more target-oriented 2d-balance-board (‘intuitive’) form of control. Unable to be
repudiated once acquired, the operational self-model, characteristic of navigational tasking,
systematically invests in the (forgone) behavioral repertoire which increasingly subserves intelligent
performance. Seeing cognitive work, cognitive progress and cognitive control as
three separate analytical dimensions of the higher-order percept-action cycle, one can trace
the mammalian episodic unit of behaviour (stimulus control, via cues) into a quad-template,
sequence-management framework of phrasic instrumental competences (sequence control,
via symbol-pointers). Extensive experience and automation of stereotyped sequence-management
foreshadows a redirection of attentive focus towards external objectives, where a
vector-oriented target-choice system of control (self control) capable of training expectations
towards achievability begins to take over. Three major phases of cognitive advance delineate
cognitive development, themselves predicated upon variously five (capabilities), three (levels)
and two (stances) principal components of cognition. Consciousness as control, cognitive
processing itself and cognitive representation thus continue to morph coherently from
less- into ever more-elegant, efficient and effective forms of cognition as domain mastery
progresses. It is precisely the experience of this progress that eventually yields the personal
conviction that so much remains to be known. P3
197 Imagination and the Psychology of Mind-Wandering Peter Langland-Hassan
(Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO)
Imagining is an important form of “mind-wandering” or “stimulus-independent” thought.
Are the mental states that constitute imaginings (and “conceivings”) sui generis in their basic
nature, or can they be identified with better understood mental states, such as perceptions and
beliefs? By what principles do imaginative mental states causally interact with other mental
states? How precise can we be about their functional role? In seeking traction on these questions,
I set out a number of desiderata for a psychological theory of imagination. These include
features such as imagination?s creativity, its usefulness in practical reasoning, its link to judgments
of possibility, its active nature, and its occasional limits. I then outline an account of
both “propositional” and “sensory” imagination aimed at satisfying these desiderata. According
to this account, both propositional and sensory imagining consist in forming or retrieving
beliefs in conditional probabilities. To (propositionally) imagine that it is raining is (roughly)
to infer or retrieve beliefs in conditionals of the form: “Probably, if it were raining, then x, y,
and z.” To (sensorily) imagine a blue apple is to infer or retrieve a believed conditional of the
form: “Probably, if there were a blue apple it would look roughly like: A,” where A represents
the contribution of a mental image to the imagining. While such view allows for an attractive
explanatory reduction of imagination to belief, many will find it counterintuitive. I indicate
how certain features of imagination?e.g., its creativity and freedom?that seem to clash with