access consciousness

Access Consciousness

The aspects of consciousness that are available for use in reasoning, reporting, and controlling behavior. It’s the information you can consciously “access” - think about, talk about, and act on.

Contrasted with phenomenal consciousness (what it feels like).

You’re only consciously aware of what you can imagine explaining to someone else
Access consciousness = the content of your 2nd-order selves (your models of how others see you)
Why? True “report” requires predicting how others will understand you
This social modeling determines what enters awareness

Bennett's Reinterpretation

You’re only consciously aware of information that exists in your 2nd-order selves - your models of “what others think I think/feel/intend”

Why? Because “report” means human-like communication.
To communicate meaningfully, you must predict how others will interpret your signals. Gricean pragmatics
This prediction IS your 2nd-order self, and it determines what enters conscious awareness.

Without 2nd-order selves, you might:
Feel pain (1st-order experience)
React to pain (behavior)
Have complex internal states

But cannot:
Report pain meaningfully - reporting requires predicting how others interpret signals
Reason about pain socially - requires modeling others’ understanding
Have human-like access consciousness

The boundary of access consciousness isn’t just internal availability
It’s about what can enter the social/communicative space

Information trapped in 1st-order experience - no matter how intense - isn’t “accessible” the way human consciousness makes things accessible

Why We Can't Remember Being Babies ( childhood amnesia)

Infants likely have rich 1st-order experiences, but without 2nd-order selves, these experiences can’t be encoded in the socially-structured, language-ready format that enables later recall and report

No 2nd-order self = no access consciousness = no episodic memory