Phenomenal Consciousness

Abstract

The paper deals with the analysis of Block's notion of two kinds of consciousness: phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Following Block, it is argued that insufficient attention has been paid to phenomenal aspects of our mental life in contemporary philosophy of mind. And it is exactly due to these aspects the task of explanation of consciousness turns out to be the hard problem. But Block's approach to phenomenal consciousness has a number of disadvantages. First of all, it allows epiphenomenalism. To avoid negative consequences of epiphenomenalism Dennett's suggestion to consider the problem of phenomenal consciousness as the matter of "richness of content" and "degree of influence" is adopted in the paper. In accordance with his ideas, it is proposed to consider phenomenal consciousness as informational processes that achieve certain level of complexity and integrity.