CONSCIOUSNESS

90 1. Philosophy
space, information integration, attended mid-level representation....), and neurobiological
theories (local reentrant, thalamo-cortical loop, synchronous oscillatory.....). Although most
of these theories are developed and defended in isolation, there are open questions about the
degree to which they might be successfully combined. Some combinations are obviously
contradictory but others might be jointly accepted. At a minimum this might be a matter of
mere consistency among pairs or larger groups of theories. However, there are cases in which
diverse theories can be combined in complementary or mutually supportive ways. Such combinations
might occur in at least three ways: 1. Different theories many describe consciousness
at different levels of organization, and a lower level theory may describe processes or
mechanisms that implement those at a higher level. This may occur within a given domain,
e.g. a lower level of cognitive processing implementing a higher level of cognitive processing
or across domains as with a neurobiological process providing the substrate for a cognitive
model of consciousness.) 2. Different theories may describe distinct and separate aspects of
consciousness, each of which needs to be included in a comprehensive account (a bit like “the
blind men and the elephant”). These parts or aspects of consciousness may divide at different
scales: at the very macro level, e.g. the supposed distinction between access consciousness
and phenomenal consciousness, or at more micro levels - e.g. the distinction between conscious
and unconscious processing may apply differently with respect to memory than it does
with respect to perception. 3. Two or more models of consciousness may describe what turn
out to be mutually interdependent aspects of consciousness. Integrating the two theories (or
models) in such a case may provide an important and useful reconceptualization of each. The
union of the two may transform our understanding of each in a way that allows us to better see
how they together contribute to the nature of consciousness. I will provide a quick overview
or “map” of some of the leading philosophical, cognitive and neurobiological theories/models
of consciousness. I will then briefly survey some of the major prospects for integration among
them with regard to each of the three types listed above. I will then focus on one particularly
promising possibility for integration. That option aims to transformatively combine the reflexive
view of consciousness as a form of self-awareness (whether higher-order or same-order)
with global integration accounts. Both prior theories undergo a significant reconceptualization
in the process of integration. The integrated account also provides an explanatory link
between access and phenomenal consciousness, and deepens the connections to various proposed
neural susbtrates. PL9
102 The Phenomenal Element Benjamin D. Young
(Philosophy, City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, NY)
Olfactory consciousness suggests a new theory of qualitative consciousness, which can
predict the epistemic explanatory gap (Levine, 1983, 1993) without regress to a metaphysical
gap (Kripke, 1980; Chalmers, 1996; Jackson 1982, 1986, 1993; Chalmers & Jackson, 2001).
To demonstrate this conclusion the paper defends three key claims. First, it is argued that
we smell objects. The olfactory object is identified as the chemical structure of molecular
compounds or mixtures within odor clouds. The molecular structure itself is responsible for
the quality of smell, which suggests that we smell matter. Second, based on research of blind
smell (Schwartz, 1994, 2000; Sobel, 1999), mate selection (Wilson & Stevenson, 2006), and
selection of social acquaintances (Li, et al., 2007), it is argued that qualitative consciousness
within the olfactory system arises at the sensory level. Third, the content of our olfactory experiences
is nonconceptual. Evidence for this claim derives from the properties of molecular
compounds (Earley, 2005, 2007), the mechanism olfactory transduction (Friedrich & Laurent,
2001; Schaefer, 2007), our psychological ability to recognize odorants within a complex odor
(Laing, 1998; Livermore and Laing, 1998), and our ability to track olfactory objects (Porter
et al., 2005, 2007), which all suggest that olfaction employs a combinatorial and functionally
compositional system of representation (van Gelder, 1994; Young, 2003) that does not obey
classical concatenative compositionality (Fodor, 1981, 1987; Fodor & Pylyshyn 1988; Fodor
& McLaughlin 1990). The consequences of accepting these three claims are a new understanding
of consciousness and the qualitative nature of our experiences. While the quality of
smell is inherent to a chemical object, we can only know what it smells like and gain access to