Phenomenal consciousness
The fact that there is “something it is like” to be in a state: seeing red, being in pain, hearing a melody. It is lived experience, seen from the inside.
Definition
In 1995 the philosopher Ned Block distinguished it from access consciousness: the capacity of information to be used for reasoning, acting or speaking. A system can process information, report it, act on it — and we can still ask whether it experiences it.
The distinction lies at the heart of debates about AI. Their behaviour belongs to access: they process, answer, correct themselves. But whether there is, behind it, an experience — someone for whom it is like something — remains entirely open. And most of our moral obligations depend on that question.
See also
Related notions
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