In the second section of my paper I review research that attempts to inform our understanding of the first-person experience using the third-person perspective of science. This approach takes at its starting point a theoretical distinction between experiential consciousness (corresponding to the contents of on-going experiences) and meta-consciousness (or meta-awareness—the terms are used interchangeably) corresponding to the explicit re-representation of the contents of experiential consciousness. These levels are illustrated by the case of mind-wandering while reading. In this context, experiential consciousness corresponds to the content of the mind-wandering episode and meta-awareness is initially absent but suddenly emerges with the realization that one was mind-wandering rather than attending to the text.
An important implication of the distinction between experiential consciousness and meta-consciousness is that people can have experiences (e.g., mind-wandering) that they either fail to notice explicitly (temporal dissociations) or notice but manage to mischaracterize (translation dissociations). I review a program of research that has fleshed out this distinction in various contexts, with a particular focus on mind-wandering. Using assorted methodologies including the combination of experience sampling measures, self-catching, and behavioral measures, we find evidence that people routinely fail to notice episodes of mind-wandering but are nevertheless accurate at reporting it when they are directly queried.[2]
Gottschling devotes the bulk of her remarks to discussing efforts to develop a third-person science of first-person experience. In general, she is sympathetic to the approach. However, she raises a variety of concerns and makes a number of useful suggestions. As noted, I will not endeavor to respond to all of her concerns; however, there are several that stand out, and so I will consider them in turn.
Gottschling’s primary reservation about the distinction between experiential consciousness and meta-awareness is that she is not persuaded by my characterization of experiential consciousness. Essentially she does not see how it is possible to “distinguish conscious processes which are not accessed from unconscious activity” (Gottschling this collection, p. 11). Although it is true that there are some situations where it may be difficult to distinguish experienced but not meta-aware from unconscious processes (as in the case of potentially unconscious emotions, see Schooler et al. 2015), often this distinction is quite straightforward. For example, when people are surprised to suddenly realize that they are mind-wandering instead of paying attention to what they reading. In this case, it is evident that they were experiencing the contents of the mind-wandering as they are typically able to report them. It is simply that they had not engaged in the reflective process of noting that they were mind-wandering instead of reading. In short, Gottschling is unpersuaded by a mental state—“conscious processes which are not accessed”—that I never actually postulated. Essentially, she layered onto the construct the notion that experiential consciousness is not accessed, and then criticized it for this reason.
In fact, although I am not committed to the notion that non-conscious higher order thoughts underpin all conscious thoughts (Rosenthal 1986), I have no problem with Gottschling’s attempted revision to my notion of experiential consciousness, namely that it represents a third-order level of consciousness. Indeed I have speculated about this possibility in the past (see Schooler et al. 2015). I am therefore entirely comfortable with Gottschling’s suggestion that “meta-awareness would include a third-order state, in his terminology a re-re-representation whereas the experience of mind-wandering would involve only a second-order state, a re-representation” (this collection, p. 16). Just so long as the second-order cognition is not experienced as a reflection about experience, I have no problems with whatever non-conscious higher-order cognitions may be required to produce it.
Although Gottschling’s concerns with the notion of experiential consciousness seem to be largely a product of her reading into my distinction more than was intended, her suggestion that it may be helpful to consider more fine-grained levels of meta-awareness is a worthwhile idea that merits development. As Gottschling observes, there is a need for “an improved taxonomy of different kinds of reflection and 'taking stock' ... awareness itself might come in degrees and at differently levels of representation” (this collection, p 20). Indeed, one feature that has been notably absent from my discussion of meta-consciousness (here and elsewhere) is consideration of the possibility of monitoring processes that may take place at the experiential level, without explicit re-representation at the meta-level For example, sometimes when people are on-task they may experience a palpable sense of sustained attention without having explicitly to note to themselves that they are on-task. Similarly, when mind-wandering, people sometimes report that they knew they were mind-wandering. This awareness, however, may not necessarily be associated with an explicit acknowledgment of that fact. Rather they maintain a continuous unstated awareness that they are off-task. In short, a further distinction may be needed between a non-propositional “feeling of awareness” that one is doing something (“experiential monitoring”) and the verbal/ propositional state of meta-awareness that may occur when people intermittently take stock of their mental state, as when one suddenly thinks to themselves, “Darn! I was mind-wandering again!”
The notion that sometimes people explicitly re-represent their state to themselves (meta-awareness) whereas other times they simply “just know” they are in that state (experiential monitoring) would also be consistent with alternative mindfulness practices (Thompson 2014). For instance, open-monitoring involves monitoring the content of experience from moment-to-moment without deliberately attending to any particular object (Lutz et al. 2008). Open-monitoring cultivates an aspect of mindfulness described as “observing”, measured with items such as “When I walk, I deliberately notice the sensation of my body moving” (Baer et al. 2006). This seems akin to what I am referring to as experiential monitoring. A somewhat different practice involves labeling one’s experiences as they occur with short tags like “thinking,” “feeling,” or “sensation.” This cultivates an aspect of mindfulness called “describing”, measured with items such as: “My natural tendency is to put my experiences into words.” This process of re-representing experience in words seems akin to meta-awareness.
The distinction between experiential monitoring and meta-awareness might also speak to another of Gottschling’s concerns, namely the question of whether meta-awareness is necessarily all-or-none (as I intimated) or more continuous (as she proposes). Although research would be required to tease out this conjecture, it seem quite plausible to me that experiential monitoring might take place at a continuous level with individuals ranging from either dimly to explicitly aware of what they are doing. In contrast, a more discrete process may occur when individuals suddenly realize that they are engaging in a mental state (e.g., mind-wandering) that they had not previously noticed.
Several other concerns that Gottschling raises about my paper, including the possibility of unconscious emotions and how the distinction between experiential consciousness and meta-awareness relates to other distinctions of consciousness (including those of Dehaene et al. 2006; Block 1995 and Rosenthal 1986) are discussed in other locations (e.g., Schooler et al. 2015). While she points out a number of other modest blemishes that I will not address, ultimately the approach for gaining a third-person perspective of first-person experience that I articulated in section 2 of my paper appears logically intact.