Intermediate Level Theory of Consciousnesslocation different from the target object (an ‘invalid’ cue), those same capacities are diminished.
Again, it is supposed that the cue acts to grab attention. Once attention is allocated to the area,
it is available to process the stimuli that appear in that location. There is also the ‘cocktail party
effect,’ where we are able to pick out our name being said in the din of many conversations,
whose contents we would never otherwise be conscious of. It is thought that salient information
like this automatically grabs attention. The supposition is that it is another case of attention to a
stimulus creating consciousness of that stimulus.
We have, then, the most basic formulation of Prinz’s AIR theory of consciousness: con-
sciousness arises when and only when intermediate level representations are modulated by
attention. I call it a ‘basic’ formulation, because it does not go as far as possible in distancing
Prinz’s view from the views of others. Many hold that attention is important for consciousness,
from neuroscience-oriented theorists (Baars 1988; Crick and Koch 1990) to philosophers of
the higher-order representation theories of consciousness (Lycan 1996; Rosenthal 2005). To
distinguish Prinz’s view, it is important to understand what he has in mind by ‘attention’. Once
we are clear on what it means to modulate IRs by attention, we will have the full theory of
consciousness.
What Prinz seizes on is the thought that when attention is paid, information flows through
the system in a different way than it otherwise would. Again, Prinz uses the same methodo-
logical line as when determining the mechanism that makes IRs conscious: compare cases of
stimuli to which attention is paid with stimuli two which attention is not paid and see what the
differences are. We already know that processing can occur deep in the brain in the absence of
consciousness, and the same is true for unattended stimuli, as well. In cases of binocular rivalry
(where each eye is presented with a different stimulus, but we only visually experience the win-
ner of the rivalry between the processing of the stimuli), we know that attention is the main
determinant of what we visually experience. Yet the unattended, unconscious stimuli can still
cause priming. So, processing for these stimuli proceed to the higher levels. Yet one important
difference between the loser and the winner of the rivalry is that only the former is available
for executive processes. We can, that is, report about the stimulus, reason about it, remember
it for as long as we like, and examine it in detail. The loser can activate semantic networks in
the brain (a high-level of processing) but it is unavailable for these kinds of processes. We can-
not report about those stimuli or remember them. We have, then, an interesting difference
between attended stimuli and unattended stimuli: the former, but not the latter, are available to
these executive processes. Of course, there is already a psychological mechanism thought to be
responsible for these other processes called working memory (see Baddeley 2007). Working mem-
ory is where information can be controlled by the subject for various purposes—for memory,
for action guidance, for report, etc. To support this connection between attention and working
memory, Prinz offers two pieces of evidence. First, there are studies that show that when two
shapes are laid on top of each other, and subjects are asked to focus only on one of them, it is
only the attended shape that is recalled after a short delay interval. The attention to that shape
seems to have made it available to working memory. Second, there is evidence that as working
memory is filled (with distractor tasks, for instance), cases of inattentional blindness increase.
Apparently as working memory capacity diminishes, so does our attentional capacity (and thus
consciousness of stimuli right in the middle of our sensory fields).
The simplest explanation of these results would be to hold that attention and availability to
working memory are identical. This is the explanation Prinz favors. What attention is, then, is
the processing of stimuli that makes the representations of them available to working memory
and executive processes. A nice feature of this hypothesis about the nature of attention is that
it explains what ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ attention have in common. Top-down attention