What is consciousness? What can we say about this elusive topic? This essay addresses these questions by presenting, for the most part, highly edited excerpts from Helminiak’s (2015) Brain, Consciousness, and God.

Evidence on the Mind

We must begin with attention to ourselves. There is no other option because we have access only to our own consciousness, not to anybody else’s. Within our own mental functioning, we have evidence on consciousness; we experience our minds and their workings.

Relying on such experience, Bernard Lonergan proposed an account of consciousness, which I summarize here. He counts the experience of our inner mental life as evidence. He speaks of this evidence as “the data of consciousness” (1957/1992, p. 299; also pp. 95, 260, 358; 1972, pp. 8-9, 201-202); and he insists that these data are as valid in the realm of the mind as are “the data of the senses,” to which the natural sciences limit themselves, in the realm of physical realities. This insistence is hardly novel although its explanation is highly debated. The whole field of non-behaviorist psychology rests upon it, especially in its psychotherapeutic application. Psychologists and counselors presume that people know something of what is going on in their hearts and minds. On the basis of personal experience, we all now presume, at least to some extent, that we can know our own minds by attending to them. In striking contrast to the ancients, for example, we do not imagine thinking to be conversation with the gods or clever insights to be inspirations from the muses (Snell, 1960).

Thus, in its own way, in a manner appropriate to its object, Lonergan's account of consciousness, like natural science, is empirical. It relies on evidence. It is no mere speculation. It is a form of science, that is, evidence-based explanation. It depends on a phenomenology-like attentiveness to one's own mind (Lonergan, 1980/1990, pp. 270-271). Lonergan calls this process “self-appropriation” (pp. 2-21)—popularly, “getting to know yourself” or, in terms that resonate with Eastern meditative theory, “realizing what you really are.” Accordingly, his theory is grounded in the evidence that is relevant to the mind and that is available, presumably, to anyone who cares to attend to the workings of her or his own mind.

Not all would agree about human access to data on consciousness. Some would resist broadening the legitimate evidence of science to include inner mental experience, objecting that it is not “available for public observation.” Yet the appeal to supposed “objective” sense data can appear to be as subjective as the appeal to inner mental experience. Bishop George Berkeley, the quintessential idealist, made this very argument in response to John Locke’s nascent empiricism at the birth of modern science. Idealism is the position that reality is only ideas in our mind. Berkeley argued that all “reality” (as in the movie The Matrix) is just subjective experience: Even sense experience is an inner mental phenomenon, as private as the experience of anything else. Indeed, any perceptual experience—“I hear a gushing sound; I see a plume of white rising up into the sky”—is a report of an inner experience: “I see, I hear.” Any appeal to “objective sense data” relies on personal awareness, so the sense data that support scientific theorizing depend on subjective experience and report (5.7.3). There is no avoiding this state of affairs. We have no reportable human experience free of subjective components. The basis of reports of inner conscious experience is no different from the basis of reports of outer sense experience: We have access to both the data of sense and the data of consciousness only through our own consciousness. In this sense, both are inner experiences. Nonetheless, a gratuitous, narrow requirement of science has limited legitimate evidence to sense experience and, in effect, limits reality to the material or physical.

This materialist limitation on science becomes a key methodological problem when the topic is consciousness. The upshot of such limitation must be that consciousness simply could not be a valid topic for science. Many scientists would just leave it at that and beg off discussing consciousness. Whether respectfully or dismissively, they would let others pursue the topic however they wished, insisting simply, all the time, that such an enterprise is not science. There are conflicting opinions on this matter, for example, the positive positions of David Chalmers (1996, pp. xiii, 215-216), of Sam Harris (2014, pp. 198-199), of Roger Penrose (1994, pp. 12, 50), and of Daniel Siegel (2018, e.g., pp. 4, 88, 60, 158), and the negative position of Daniel Dennett (1991, pp. 70-71, 450).

The Makings of a Science of Consciousness

If there is something there to be explained, if data are available, inquiry can ensue, and hypothesis and verification (or falsification) could follow. Or else the hypothesis could be refined or replaced, and so on da capo. Such an open-ended process of ever more accurate, evidence-based, cumulative explanation is science. If many come to the same conclusion by following this same knowing process, then an accumulation of similar results in an array of independent subjects would support the shared conclusion about inner mental events. Many noses would have been counted; the research results would have been replicated. To be sure, this replication would have occurred in different subjects and been reported by different investigators; but adjusted to match its particular subject matter, this procedure does not differ from standard scientific replication: It, too, appeals to different representative instances on the part of different investigators. Such a rigorous process of evidence-based explanation is nothing other than science.

Thus, following Lonergan, I proceed by accepting the presupposition of mental experience and go on to try and make sense of it. I presuppose that our experience of mind and consciousness expresses some kind of sui generis reality. The challenge is to accept the data as given and to explain them.

Disconcertingly but unavoidably, anyone who claims to have no such mental experience disqualifies him- or herself from productive discussion (Lonergan, 1972, pp. 16-17). The point is not to try and tell others what is going on in their minds. The point is simply an unavoidable question with a rather obvious answer: Is someone worth hearing out who denies ever having had any mental experience? who refuses to own such experience as significant in its own right? who shirks the responsibility such experience seems to entail? Such a denial discredits any interlocutor.

Socrates argued in a similar way against the skeptics millennia ago. In self-contradiction, skeptics argue knowingly that nothing can be known. Or, as regards consciousness, theorists presuppose and employ the functioning of aware, intelligent, and reasonable consciousness to construct creatively elaborated arguments to dismiss the reality of consciousness. Again in self-contradiction, they express their mind to argue that mind does not exist. Their doing belies their saying; their actions contradict their speech. To me, this threat of self-disqualification—Hegel’s “procedural self-contradiction” (see Donceel, 1974)—is an insurmountable bulwark that makes invulnerable Lonergan’s starting point, namely, the mental experience we all have and use.

Lonergan’s Theory of Human Knowing

Thus, Lonergan (1957/1992) begins with an empirical question, “What is happening when we are knowing?” (p. 16) or, phrased otherwise, “What am I doing when I am knowing?” (p. 779, note f). This latter phrasing is more accurate because, in the nature of the matter, I can approach an answer only through my own experience. I cannot examine what transpires in other people’s minds. The instances of human knowing to which I have access are uniquely my own. Moreover, if such is the case, it matters little what others speculate, argue, conclude, insist, or opine. I cannot deny my own experience without denying the denier, myself. As Descartes argued incontrovertibly, Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I exist. In this peculiar matter, no one is asked, or could ever responsibly be able, to take someone else’s word for it—as in that ludicrous, druggy party question, “Are we having fun yet?” Each must speak for her- or himself, and the stakes in this enterprise are high. Hanging in the balance is a personal belief about what I am—and you, too, dear reader—as a human being.

The general answer to that question is as follows. As a knower, in the pursuit of knowledge, I attempt to make sense of the puzzling given that I encounter. First, awareness of data that prompts wonder or awe is the starting point of every intellectual endeavor. Second, when wonder turns to question and, after appropriate effort, insight occurs, I generate an idea, and I formulate it in an interpretation, a hypothesis, a theory, a proposed explanation. Third, naturally concerned that my understanding actually be correct, I check it against the given data (and wisely, I would also consult with others). Then via another kind of insight, I grasp that my understanding does indeed account for all the data and leaves no further relevant questions unanswered. I am constrained by the very demands of my own mind to affirm my explanation: Eureka! I have correct understanding. I know. Or, no, I was mistaken.

This three-stage process of knowing is built into the human mind. It shows that, more than just awareness, consciousness is dynamic. It urges us toward the whole of the universe. Its process is spontaneous. It constitutes a movement that is relentless, ongoing, ever self-correcting, ever further integrating, ever self-refining. It expresses a “detached, disinterested, and unrestricted” (p. 696), a “pure desire to know” (pp. 372-375). Its ultimate ideal goal is the understanding of everything about everything, and often its urgency does not let us rest.

Finally, beyond knowing, there is a fourth dimension of dynamic consciousness that turns from knowing to doing. A further question spontaneously arises, What am I going to do about it? How should I respond to the new knowledge I just achieved? And I ponder the matter, and I make a decision and act.

More technically and summarily formulated, human intellectual process entails four activities:

•    experience,

•    understanding,

•    judgment, and

•    decision.

Lonergan’s account of consciousness is unique in discerning this dynamic dimension of consciousness. Other accounts understand consciousness merely as awareness. They do not attend to the constructive character of consciousness (Helminiak, 2014).

This account is the result of Lonergan's attending to his own mind and his building on the thought of others before him—such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant, Georg W. F. Hegel, John Henry Newman, David Hilbert, Albert Einstein, Edmund Husserl, Kurt Gödel. Newsweek (Anonymous, 1970) styled Lonergan the Thomas Aquinas of the twentieth century: Both integrated the science and philosophy of their day.

In his standard terminology, Lonergan refers to experience, understanding, judgment, and decision as intellectual operations on four successive “levels of consciousness.” Given that consciousness is not a physical reality, the term level is obviously a metaphor. It implies no actual scaffolding or layering—and, ultimately, because of the interaction among the levels, not even a fixed sequence, although, as presented, the levels do build on each other. (Helminiak, 1996, pp. 101-103; 2014). Rather, levels suggests distinct but interrelated facets, aspects, or functions of human conscious operation. I honor Lonergan's metaphor of “level” as a convenient way to name and refer to the four aspects of conscious functioning.

Consciousness and Other Kinds of Responsiveness

It is commonly said that humans enjoy (some form of) consciousness in common with Fido and other non-human animals. Through varying degrees of internal processing, we and they respond flexibly and appropriately to environmental and internal stimuli (Donald, 2001, pp. 106-113, 137-148). Expressing natural and spontaneous functions within the organism, the animal responses are systematic, not random, and not automatic or mechanical, either. They evince genuine mentality, internal processing that results in differential responses. The term conscious could apply. In fact, it is used widely in these cases. One could avoid ambiguity by adding an adjective to qualify the consciousness in question. Exemplifying this strategy, Lonergan (1957/1992) uses terms such as “extroverted consciousness” (p. 277), “extroverted biological anticipation and attention” (p. 279), or “sensitive consciousness” (p. 276), and he offers the example of a kitten approaching a saucer of milk (p. 276). Bekoff (2002, p. 92) offers the term “perceptual consciousness.”

Yet this further complication remains: Humans not only respond to sensate stimuli but can also become explicitly aware of the stimuli as such. We humans can focus attention on the stimuli and name, interrelate, and expound on them. In humans the contents of sensitive consciousness can be subsumed within intellectual consciousness. Thus, those contents become present to humans via consciousness: We not only respond to sensate stimuli as do other animals, but we can also be explicitly aware of many of those stimuli. We are able to reflect on them and even to manage our responses to them—thoughtfully, discursively, analytically, deliberately, purposefully.

The point to be highlighted is this: These two kinds of responses, animal and human, are not one and the same. I can unconsciously scratch an itch, but if in the least I reflect on it and say to myself, “This itches,” I am already operating in a world of meaning; I am operating in the human realm of a distinctive kind of self-conscious experience. As humanly conscious, I bring meaning and terminology to a sensation. I objectify and ponder it per se. That is, I can experience the sensate itch or the color red or the feeling of cold also as data within consciousness; and easily enough in these cases, I can name the experiences, and I can treat them as explicit objects of my subjective (i.e., personal) awareness and wonder. Unlike the animals, we do not merely react to organic, sensate feelings. We can think about them—as I am doing here. Much of the content of which we are aware is such sensate and perceptual input. It constitutes the data of the senses, processed through perception and imagination (i.e., internal imaging).

Thus, there is extraverted “sensitive consciousness,” which humans share with other animals. Additionally, there is intellectual consciousness, by which sensate matters (and others) become possible objects of self-conscious human awareness, question, and thought. In two intertwined “modes,” consciousness entails (a) a self-presence and (b) a presence to an object. In this latter regard, consciousness is called “intentional.” Making for easy misunderstanding, sensation is also intentional: Both consciousness and sensation regard an agent and some object. In its philosophical usage, the term intentional does not carry the popular and psychotherapeutic meaning of deliberate or planned: Therapists instruct us to act intentionally. Rather, in the philosophical case the term carries the root Latinate meaning—in + tendere = to stretch or extend toward—and signifies directedness. (Forman, 1999, p. 182, n. 22, characterizes the popular and the philosophical meanings of intentional as “volitional” and “cognitive” respectively.) Intentionality implies a subject-object duality and emphasizes the objective pole of subjectivity: The subject is directed toward, concerned about, reflecting on some object; the subject intends the object.

For the sake of clarity in the present discussion, when I use the term consciousness, I restrict its reference to that distinctively human dimension of the mind, intentional consciousness. It is a double consciousness by which humans, (a) present “to” themselves, can also become (b) present to other contents of attention as the (a) subject engages some (b) object. This is the distinctively human consciousness that Lonergan (1972) explicated and implicitly defined by distinguishing and interrelating four levels and two modes. It is the consciousness that, with him, I am freely also calling human spirit and to which I appeal as the primordial basis of spirituality. It is the consciousness that, when experienced in itself and apart from any object, constitutes mystical experience (Forman, 1999; Harris, 2014; Roy, 2003). I want to highlight intentional consciousness as a uniquely human property. Not even to mention the response of thermostats to their environments, as some theorists actually do (e.g., Chalmers, 1996, pp. 293-297)—if, as regards animals, others would call an appropriate organismic response to sensate stimuli an expression of “consciousness,” I would not. I prefer a term such as sensate or perceptual responsiveness, which much more accurately names what is at stake in non-human animals: They are responding to stimuli. For the sake of clarity, I choose to limit the term consciousness to distinctively human consciousness.

The Simultaneously and Concomitantly Dual Nature of Human Consciousness

Summarizing Lonergan’s (1957/1992, pp. 299-300) analysis of consciousness, I elaborated the four levels on which human consciousness or spirit functions: experience, understanding, judgment, and decision. I also noted that this functioning implicates two complementary modes: In Lonergan’s (pp. 344-346; 1972, pp. 6-9) terminology, consciousness is (a) conscious as well as (b) intentional. (For this same dual understanding of consciousness and varied terminology in theorists such as Henri Bergson, Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, William James, Jean-Paul Sartre, and John Searle, see Forman, 1999, and Roy, 2003).

As intentional, consciousness is directed toward some object; intentionality is consciousness of something. This is the most common understanding of consciousness, and many theorists just stop there. By consciousness in this sense, the subject tends toward, attends to, regards, is aware of an object. I repeat that in this case intentional is used in its Latinate root meaning of “having external reference” or “tending toward,” not in the more common English sense that implies deliberation, choice, planning, or design. Yet even as the subject is (b) intending some object, paying attention to it; simultaneously and concomitantly, in another mode the intending subject is also (a) conscious “of” him- or herself as the intending subject.

This latter consciousness is not that of a subject’s regarding an object; that is, through this consciousness the subject does not become an object of concern or reflection to him- or herself in the same way that some other thing could become an object of interest. When I think or wonder or talk about me, about myself, I make myself an object of concern. This objectifying self-presence is different from my being conscious “of” myself. To indicate the difference, I use quotation marks to flag a peculiar usage of the preposition. Grammatically, a preposition takes an object, but I need the preposition to reference a psychological subject. The subject is present “to” him- or herself precisely as the aware subject, experiencing him- or herself as aware of an object (Helminiak, 1984; 1996, pp. 43-59; Lonergan, 1957/1992, pp. 344-346). This presence “to” oneself is the more fundamental to the nature of human consciousness. It is because of this presence “to” oneself that the subject is present to the object being experienced. The subject attains to an object within an experience “of” him- or herself as the “experiencer”—namely, the experiencer of that particular object.

Much usage makes little distinction between the English terms consciousness and awareness. Following the very helpful suggestion of Louis Roy (2003, pp. 27, 29) and, earlier, of Daniel Dennett (1969, pp. 114-115), as best I can, I reserve the term aware to refer to intentionality, that is, a subject’s relationship to some object; and I use the term conscious to refer to that uniquely human, non-objectified self-presence that constitutes subjectivity (5.1.2).

Thus, by way of example, even as I am regarding the density of expressway traffic outside my window, my attention wholly taken up by my detailed observation, I am also simultaneously conscious of my subjective act of seeing. Thus, if asked, I could easily shift my attention to my activity and reply, “Why, I was looking at the early traffic build-up.” If I did not in some way experience my looking as well as experience the traffic, how could I ever speak of my looking? Within human sight are both the object seen and the act of seeing. It is precisely because of the seeing, present “to” the subject in a non-objectified mode, that the seen can be present to the subject in an objective mode. The seen is experienced in the seeing, which is present “to” the seer.

This expressway example is merely perceptual; it regards the experience of simple visual input. Yet the bimodal nature of consciousness pertains also in intellectual experience. When I have a needed insight and finally resolve a problem, for example, I am aware of the solution, but I am concomitantly also conscious of my finding it. Indeed, I tend to be more conscious in this intellectual realm than in the merely perceptual because I up the ante, as it were, when I perform acts with more personal investment. Hence, having had an insight, having resolved my problem, I can go on to articulate the answer, my answer, the answer I have achieved. I am aware of the answer, to be sure: It was my object of all-consuming concern. Yet there is another dimension to my experience. I was also conscious “of” my subjective act of achieving the answer—not by thinking about it, but by doing it, indeed, by being it. So I can easily—spontaneously, unthinkingly, prosaically—promote the non-objectifying conscious act to an objectifying intentional awareness and state outright, “I found the answer.” The same is true, and with increasing intensity, when I weigh the evidence to make a judgment of fact or, further, when I ponder some matter to make a decision.

Through consciousness I am present in two different modes—one presence is directed toward an object, and the other presence regards myself as the acting subject. Within my presence “to” myself as the experiencing subject, I experience the intended object.

I have also called these two kinds of consciousness reflecting and non-reflecting (Helminiak, 1996, p. 45). Reflecting consciousness is intentional. By reflection, one is aware of some object; one reflects upon it. Reflection entails a this-against-that, a subject engaging an object. On the other hand, non-reflecting consciousness is simply conscious. By non-reflecting consciousness one is present “to” oneself, not as an object of reflection, but as the reflecting subject. This non-reflecting mode of subjective experience—experience “of” one’s subjectivity as such—is inherent in consciousness; it determines the peculiar nature of consciousness; it is fundamental.

Even while experiencing some object in one mode, in this other mode one experiences oneself, one is present “to” oneself, one has a “sense” of oneself as the “experiencer” of the object—apart from any advertence to oneself. Chalmers (1996, p. 197) seems to allude to this same, subtle dimension of consciousness and offers the suggestive term, acquaintance. As a result of this “sense” of oneself, one could later promote one’s non-reflecting consciousness to reflecting consciousness: One could attend to the data of experience, make intentional what was previously only conscious, and then articulate the past experience. One could say what one was doing: “I was looking at the early traffic build-up” or “I found the answer.” Yet even as one was now speaking of one's past experience, having become an object to oneself, another backdrop of non-reflecting consciousness would always already be operative, ever constituting the subjectivity of the subject, ever ready itself to become an object of further explicit awareness: “I said I was looking,” “I exclaimed I found the answer.”

The subject is always more than what can be articulated. I am always more than what I can say about me. The reported “me” never exhausts the agent “I” because the subject “I” is ever acting anew, ever generating further potential content for subsequent reflection about “me.” This possibility is real even when one may be articulating, not an experienced object, but a prior subjective experience and the self involved in it.

This peculiar bimodal phenomenon is the essence of human subjectivity (Helminiak, 1996, pp. 43-59). Because of it, we are present “to” ourselves, and we can come to know what we experience within this presence. We can know other objects. More importantly in the present case, we can also come to know ourselves. This presence “to” oneself constitutes data not only on any intentional object of interest but also on oneself, the subject who is intending the object. This presence “to” oneself constitutes (a) the data of consciousness (b) into which inquiry can provoke insight and interpretation and (c) against which judgment can test the interpretation (2.1.6)—thus applying to consciousness itself the three levels of consciousness that constitute knowing: experience, understanding, and judgment. This process parallels the textbook version of scientific method: (a) observation of data, (b) hypothesis about the observed data, and (c) verification of the hypothesis against the data. Thus, as in Lonergan’s analysis, in the three-step process of human intellectual knowing, we can even know our knowing: we experience the process; we have data on it (2.1.5). Consciousness provides not only the data of sense, perceptual content (5.2.1), but also the data of consciousness. Hence, we can experience ourselves as knowers and, thereby, go on to question that experience and then come to know our knowing.

Similarly, because of presence “to” oneself, we also have the experience of ongoing identity, the consistent experience “of” the one who is having the experiences. We have the experience of an “I.” This non-objectifying experience is Chalmers’s (1996) “sense of self” (p. 10) in a lonely reference to this quintessential aspect of consciousness. More substantively, this experience is the subjectivity that William James (1890/1950, Vol. 1, Ch. 9) expressed with metaphors: the continuous flow of a river or a stream of consciousness and of thought. He wanted to indicate the continuity of the subject who experiences the multiple objective contents of consciousness. Less metaphorically, in comparison to a physical feeling, James notes “an obscurer feeling of something more; …of nothing objective at all but rather of subjectivity as such, of thought become ‘its own object’” (p. 305).

That Consciousness is Supposedly Always Awareness of Something

I cannot stress enough that the “self-consciousness” in question is not the everyday experience of one's becoming to oneself an object of awareness or concern; it is not about adverting to oneself or thinking about oneself; it is not about reflecting on oneself; it is not about becoming the object of one’s own awareness, the “me” to one’s “I.” Nonetheless, such a perceptualist interpretation is the understanding that theorists commonly give to consciousness: awareness of an object. “Westerners [in contrast to Eastern philosophers] have usually assumed that consciousness is necessarily intentional” (Wainwright, 1981, p. 120, as cited in Forman, 1999, p. 77). “The doctrine of intentionality is so widely accepted today that it is nearly an act of intellectual heresy to call it into question” (Forman, 1999, p. 67). But a shortsighted theory of knowing modeled on sensation and perception sustains this common opinion: It’s this against that. As if consciousness were another version of sensation wherein a physical receptor encounters a physical stimulus, consciousness is also imagined to be the confrontation of the subject and some object. Then, over and above the responsiveness of animal sensation and perception, the wondrous novelty of human consciousness that emerged in natural history tends to go unnoticed. Problematically for most current thinking, human self-presence is not a physical or material affair; rather, it is spiritual, and its very peculiarity is the nature of the spiritual. In stark contrast, however, the slogan says that consciousness is always consciousness of something. All too simply, consciousness is defined only as intentionality, and consciousness as conscious is overlooked. Natsoulas (1978) emphatically makes this point, saying, “It is arguably our most basic concept of consciousness. One’s being conscious, whatever more it might mean, must include one’s being aware of something” (p. 910). Even after considering an early version of my position here, Natsoulas (1986) insisted that, “understood in the usual way,” consciousness or awareness entails “potentially or actually referring to and characterizing something beyond the awareness” (p. 203, emphasis added). With Lonergan and, increasingly, others, I am advancing a different understanding of consciousness because I find that the perceptualist “usual way” misses the spiritual wonder of human bimodal and quadrilevel consciousness.

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