THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS ■ 27hoped, and suffered from birth to death. Although we believe that there
are “things” outside consciousness, we have direct evidence only of
those that find a place in it.
As the central clearinghouse in which varied events processed by
different senses can be represented and compared, consciousness can
contain a famine in Africa, the smell of a rose, the performance of the
Dow Jones, and a plan to stop at the store to buy some bread all at the
same time. But that does not mean that its content is a shapeless jumble.
We may call intentions the force that keeps information in con
sciousness ordered. Intentions arise in consciousness whenever a person
is aware of desiring something or wanting to accomplish something.
Intentions are also bits of information, shaped either by biological needs
or by internalized social goals. They act as magnetic fields, moving
attention toward some objects and away from others, keeping our mind
focused on some stimuli in preference to others. We often call the
manifestation of intentionality by other names, such as instinct, need,
drive, or desire. But these are all explanatory terms, telling us why people
behave in certain ways. Intention is a more neutral and descriptive term;
it doesn’t say why a person wants to do a certain thing, but simply states
that he does.
For instance, whenever blood sugar level drops below a critical
point, we start feeling uneasy: we might feel irritable and sweaty, and get
stomach cramps. Because of genetically programmed instructions to
restore the level of sugar in the blood, we might start thinking about
food. We will look for food until we eat and are no longer hungry. In
this instance we could say that it was the hunger drive that organized
the content of consciousness, forcing us to focus attention on food. But
this is already an interpretation of the facts—no doubt chemically accu
rate, but phenomenologically irrelevant. The hungry person is not aware
of the level of sugar in his bloodstream; he knows only that there is a
bit of information in his consciousness that he has learned to identify
as hunger. If
Once the person is aware that he is hungry, he might very well
form the intention of obtaining some food. If he does so, his behavior
will be the same as if he were simply obeying a need or drive. But
alternatively, he could disregard the pangs of hunger entirely. He might
have some stronger and opposite intentions, such as losing weight, or
wanting to save money, or fasting for religious reasons. Sometimes, as
in the case of political protesters who wish to starve themselves to death,
the intention of making an ideological statement might override genetic
instructions, resulting in voluntary death.