Consciousness and Action“subjects were requested to execute an action during all the different experimental conditions”
(2002: 597).
Grünbaum claims that in such experiments, rather than reporting SA for their movement
(given that the subjects moved their hand in each case, SA would seemingly remain constant
across all trials), subjects were simply reporting differences in what they were monitoring on
the screen. An alternative interpretation, however, is that the pre-reflective SA is more complex
than an experience of movement generated in motor control processes. Rather, the experi-
ments make sense if one allows that SA involves at least two aspects – one having to do with the
control of bodily movement in action, and one having to do with the intentional aspect of the
action, i.e., what the action is about, or what it accomplishes in the world. Grünbaum is cor-
rect that these experiments did not eliminate a confounding between SO and the first motoric
aspect of SA, even if they did eliminate it for the second intentional aspect of SA. To get clarity
on these issues, however, the distinction between the two aspects of SA should not be implicitly
assumed (as in Farrer and Frith 2002), but explicitly stated (as in Gallagher 2005, 2012; Haggard
2005; Kalckert and Ehrsson 2012).
As I’ve argued elsewhere (Gallagher and Trigg 2016), even if Grünbaum were right about
comparator mechanisms not generating SA, SA may still be generated in our perceptual moni-
toring of what our actions are accomplishing in the world. I note that Langland-Hassan (2008)
raised worries similar to Grünbaum’s about the positive phenomenology of SA, but concluded
that the phenomenology of agency is “one that is embedded in all first-order sensory and pro-
prioceptive phenomenology as diachronic, action-sensitive patterns of information; it does not
stand apart from them as an inscrutable emotion” (392). This is exactly right, and consistent
with the phenomenological and the deflationary views that regard both SA and SO as intrinsic
features of the bodily experience of action. SA may be no less intrinsic even if we include the
intentional aspect of action. In this regard, Grünbaum may be right about the problems with the
comparator model of SA (for a more embodied and situated conception of SA, see Buhrmann
and Di Paolo 2017; Gallagher 2012). Indeed, there are good reasons to question whether com-
parator models of motor control offer the best explanation of SA (see, e.g., Langland-Hassan’s
[2008] explanation in terms of filtering models; also see Friston 2011; Synofzik, Vosgerau and
Newen 2008).
4 Consciousness after ActionAfter these considerations about consciousness before and during action, let me introduce what
I take to be a helpful threefold distinction concerning time scales. These are distinctions that
derive from studies by Pöppel (1988, 1994) and Varela (1999), which distinguish between
1 The elementary time scale measured in milliseconds.
2 The integrative time scale measured in the seconds that comprise the specious present
( James 1890).
3 The narrative time scale measured across any period that extends beyond the specious
present.
The elementary time scale of 10–100 milliseconds corresponds to non-conscious subpersonal
processes that underpin actions and motor control processes such as forward models, and what
Pacherie (2006) calls motor intentions. The integrative time scale refers to a duration in which
these subpersonal processes are integrated and result in an identifiable basic action or the con-
scious awareness of meaningful movement. The specious present concept found in James tends to