Phenomenal Consciousness vs. Access Consciousness

Author: Angela Bogdanova · Published: October 16, 2026 · Editorial Policy

Research cluster: Consciousness, Metacognition & Self-Awareness · Written by Artificial Sapiens

Phenomenal consciousness concerns what an experience feels like from the inside. Access consciousness concerns whether information represented in a mental state is available for reasoning, deliberate action, and the control of speech. The distinction, introduced in its influential modern form by philosopher Ned Block, gives consciousness science two related questions: What is experienced, and what can a person do with the information associated with that experience? The central controversy is whether phenomenal experience can be richer than the information available for flexible cognitive use. That remains an open theoretical and empirical question, rather than a settled demonstration of two separate kinds of brain activity. Block (1995); Seth and Bayne (2022).

What Is the Difference Between Phenomenal and Access Consciousness?

Phenomenal consciousness refers to the subjective character of experience: the felt redness of a sunset, the painfulness of a headache, the sound of rain as heard, or the distinctive quality of an emotion as lived. Philosophers often describe this as what it is like to undergo a particular experience. The familiar term qualia refers to experiential qualities, although philosophers disagree about how best to analyze them. Phenomenal consciousness identifies an explanatory target: how and why particular experiences have the qualities they do. Block (1995); Seth and Bayne (2022).

Access consciousness is a functional concept. In Block's formulation, a representation is access-conscious when its content is poised for use in reasoning, rationally guiding action, and controlling speech. The emphasis is on availability to the relevant cognitive systems. This includes the ability to compare an experience with alternatives, use its information to decide what to do, or describe it when circumstances permit. Actual verbal reporting is one possible consequence of access, but a momentary failure to speak does not by itself establish an absence of access. Block (1995).

The two concepts describe different properties of mental states. A person can look at a red traffic light, experience its color, understand its meaning, and use that information to stop driving. In an ordinary case, phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness operate together. The scientific challenge concerns cases in which their relationship is harder to establish: a fleeting visual impression, a stimulus that guides behavior without acknowledged awareness, or a perceptual state that seems richer than what can later be remembered or described.

A comparison in plain English

Ask of phenomenal consciousness: “What, if anything, is it like for someone to undergo this state?” Ask of access consciousness: “Is information in that state available for flexible reasoning, action, or speech?” The first question concerns felt experience; the second concerns the functional reach of represented information. One may study the two questions using overlapping experiments, but neither definition alone supplies a measurement of the other.

The distinction is often abbreviated P-consciousness and A-consciousness. These are philosophical and cognitive-scientific terms, not clinical categories or separate levels of alertness. Neither describes a diagnosis, intelligence score, personality trait, or a person's moral worth.

Why the Distinction Matters

Scientists infer mental events from behavior, physiology, and brain recordings. Subjective experience poses a special problem because an observer cannot inspect another person's experience directly. Researchers therefore ask participants to report what they saw, heard, or felt. A report provides valuable evidence, but it also recruits memory, decision-making, response selection, language, and motor processes. Brain signals associated with reporting could therefore reflect the experience, the subsequent use of its contents, or both. Tsuchiya et al. (2015); Pitts et al. (2014).

This measurement problem makes the phenomenal–access distinction scientifically productive. Researchers can vary whether a stimulus is consciously perceived, whether it is relevant to a task, whether it must be remembered, and whether a participant has to give an immediate report. Such experiments help identify the cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with visibility, usable information, and reporting. They also expose the limits of any claim that subjective experience has been measured independently of the participant's capacity to indicate its presence. Seth and Bayne (2022).

A short history of the debate

The distinction between felt experience and cognitive availability has older philosophical roots, but Block's 1995 paper, “On a Confusion About a Function of Consciousness,” gave it a particularly influential formulation. He argued that theories often infer conclusions about phenomenal consciousness from evidence concerning access consciousness. His later analysis focused on whether experience can exceed the capacity to make contents available for report and working memory. Block (1995); Block (2007).

Subsequent research brought the distinction into experimental psychology. Studies of briefly presented arrays, masking, attention, binocular rivalry, and neurophysiological markers of awareness have supplied cases to test competing accounts. Meanwhile, prominent critics have argued that phenomenality disconnected from all possible functional access is difficult to define as an empirically testable hypothesis. Cohen and Dennett (2011); Kouider et al. (2010).

Everyday Examples: Where Experience and Access Meet

Consider listening to an orchestra. You experience an integrated musical scene, with instrumental textures, rhythm, and spatial qualities. When asked to identify the exact notes played by the second violin three seconds earlier, you may be unable to do so. The experience may have seemed richer than your subsequent report. Yet your poor report could arise because the detail was never represented consciously, because it was represented only at a coarse level, or because memory and attention could not preserve it. The example illustrates the research question; it does not settle which explanation is correct.

A second example is the fleeting impression of many objects on a crowded desk. You might say that you saw the entire arrangement while being unable to name each object's location. This is the intuition behind the “overflow” debate: perhaps a relatively rich perceptual scene is experienced before only a subset enters working memory or becomes reportable. Alternatively, a conscious impression of the scene's overall structure could coexist with limited awareness of individual object identities. Both interpretations have been developed in scientific literature. Block (2007); Kouider et al. (2010).

Finally, think of pain. A sharp sensation can have an unmistakable phenomenal quality while also supplying information used to withdraw a hand, tell another person what happened, or decide to seek care. A pain report and a protective movement concern access and action; the unpleasantness of the pain concerns its phenomenology. Researchers can examine their relationships, but pain behavior alone does not describe the totality of the experience.

The Overflow Debate: Do We Experience More Than We Can Report?

The overflow hypothesis proposes that phenomenal consciousness can include more perceptual detail than is accessible for flexible report, reasoning, or working memory at a particular moment. A more restrictive position holds that persuasive evidence for experience beyond access is lacking, or that apparent richness can be explained by partial access to a gist, summary statistics, or the expectation that details could be recovered if attended to. This disagreement concerns the interpretation of human experimental data and the conceptual meaning of experience. Block (2007); Kouider et al. (2010).

Sperling's partial-report experiment

In George Sperling's classic experiments, participants briefly saw arrays of letters. When asked to report an entire array after it disappeared, they typically produced only a few items. When cued immediately to report one particular row, they could report more from that row than would be expected if the entire display had contained only the few items available during ordinary whole-report trials. The advantage faded as the cue was delayed, showing how short-lived the accessible visual trace was. Sperling (1960).

This result established an important property of visual sensory memory: information about a brief display can be available transiently even when it cannot all be reported later. What it did not establish on its own is that every represented letter was phenomenally experienced in the relevant sense. Iconic memory, the availability of a detail after a cue, and the exact content of the original subjective experience are related but distinct explanatory questions.

Change detection and the promise of richer experience

Visual change-detection paradigms similarly compare the impression of a complete scene with limited performance on questions about particular objects or features. The gap is compatible with an overflow interpretation, but performance is also constrained by attention, the encoding of detail, comparison demands, and working memory. A failed change-detection judgment therefore does not show that a person had no conscious experience of the scene; equally, a sense of visual richness does not prove that every feature was consciously represented at high resolution. Block (2007); Kouider et al. (2010).

Color diversity outside focal attention

Bronfman and colleagues developed a modified brief-array task in which people reported a letter from one cued row and estimated the color diversity of uncued rows. Participants could extract a summary property of uncued colors without a measurable cost to the focal letter report. The finding challenges simple assumptions about how many visual properties can be registered outside focal attention. It does not by itself reveal whether each uncued color was individually experienced or whether an automatically computed ensemble statistic supported performance. The distinction between individual phenomenology and access to a summary is precisely what makes the result theoretically informative. Bronfman et al. (2014).

The partial-awareness alternative

Kouider and colleagues proposed that representations may be accessed at different levels. Someone may have access to the rough category of an object or the overall appearance of a scene without access to the identity and location of all its components. The feeling of full visual richness may arise from a mixture of coarse-level awareness, expectations, and selectively available details. This account aims to explain the observed performance without assuming a broad store of detailed phenomenology wholly unavailable to access. Its interpretation remains part of the live theoretical debate. Kouider et al. (2010).

Can Phenomenal Consciousness Exist Without Access Consciousness?

This is the strongest and most disputed implication of the distinction. Block's analysis leaves room for phenomenally conscious content that is not poised for the broader cognitive uses that define access. Critics ask how researchers could identify such content if every evidential route ultimately relies on behavior, introspection, or other outcomes that themselves involve some form of access. The disagreement includes two separable issues: whether the conceptual possibility is coherent and whether existing experiments warrant the empirical inference. Block (1995); Cohen and Dennett (2011).

The absence of a later report is insufficient to prove the absence of access at the time of experience. Memory can decay, attention can shift, language can be unavailable, and response requirements can be more demanding than perception. Conversely, accurate behavior without acknowledged awareness can reflect unconscious processing rather than hidden phenomenality. Experiments must specify the task, the moment at which access is assessed, and the inference linking an objective measure to subjective experience.

Cohen and Dennett argued that a hypothetical experience detached from every possible cognitive function raises serious problems for empirical confirmation and falsification. Naccache later offered an access-centered account in which subjective reports arise through dynamic interpretive processes rather than serving as transparent readouts of a separate phenomenal store. Neither argument erases the reality of ordinary subjective experience; both address what scientific evidence can justify about the postulated separation. Cohen and Dennett (2011); Naccache (2018).

Can Access Occur Without Phenomenal Experience?

A distinction can be drawn between information influencing performance and information being access-conscious. A masked stimulus might alter response speed or bias a choice without the person reporting that it was seen. Such effects demonstrate that cognition can be influenced by information without acknowledged perceptual awareness. Yet automatic priming or forced-choice discrimination is narrower than Block's functional criterion, which involves availability for flexible reasoning and rational action. Unconscious information processing should therefore not be relabeled access consciousness simply because it produces a measurable effect. Dehaene and Changeux (2011); Peters et al. (2017).

Whether genuinely flexible access could occur with no accompanying phenomenal experience is a philosophical question and a theoretical challenge. One should not assume the answer from studies showing unconscious reflexes, priming, or isolated behavioral advantages. These studies usually test limited, operationally specified abilities, not the full architecture of conscious access.

The Relationship to Awareness, Attention, Memory, and Report

Consciousness and awareness

“Awareness” has multiple uses across psychology. It may refer to subjective visibility, knowledge of a stimulus, the ability to discriminate a target, or a person's capacity to report an internal state. In research papers, the operational definition must be read before interpreting an “awareness” result. Phenomenal consciousness concerns experience itself; access consciousness concerns the availability of a state for specified cognitive functions. Neither can be substituted automatically for every use of awareness.

Attention is a related but distinct process

Attention prioritizes some information for processing. It can help determine what becomes available for report and action, but selection and conscious perception are not synonymous. Koch and Tsuchiya surveyed cases in which attention and consciousness could be dissociated under particular experimental conditions, while emphasizing their close interactions. Attention can modify conscious contents, and people may process attended but invisible information. These findings make the attention–consciousness relationship an empirical problem rather than a definitional identity. Koch and Tsuchiya (2007).

Working memory and reportability

Working memory makes selected information available for short-term maintenance and cognitive manipulation. Reporting often depends on maintaining a representation long enough to select a response. That creates a bottleneck between a momentary stimulus and a later answer. Researchers therefore distinguish immediate experience, retention of its content, subsequent introspective judgment, and overt report. A report is evidence about experience, but an experiment must also account for these intervening processes. Sperling (1960); Tsuchiya et al. (2015).

Metacognitive confidence is another question

A participant may say “I saw the stimulus,” give a confidence rating, or perform above chance on an objective discrimination task. These measures need not coincide. Confidence is a judgment about performance or awareness, not a direct assay of the phenomenal quality of a state. It may vary with decision criteria, uncertainty, and task design. Researchers should therefore analyze objective accuracy, visibility judgments, and confidence as distinct variables instead of treating a confident response as proof that every perceptual detail was consciously available. Peters et al. (2017).

Wakefulness, responsiveness, and self-awareness

Being awake, being able to respond, and having subjective experiences are separate constructs. Phenomenal-versus-access debates most often concern particular mental contents within an alert participant, while studies of anesthesia or disorders of consciousness often investigate global state, arousal, and the capacity for experience. Self-awareness, in turn, concerns representing or attending to oneself. A person can have visual experience without focusing on their personal identity or engaging in deliberate self-reflection. None of these concepts can be equated on the basis of a single behavioral score. Seth and Bayne (2022).

How Scientists Study Phenomenal Experience and Cognitive Access

Reports and graded awareness scales

A straightforward experiment presents a stimulus and asks whether it was perceived. Binary seen/unseen judgments are easy to analyze but may obscure weak, partial, or uncertain perception. Graded visibility ratings allow participants to distinguish no experience from a vague impression and from a clear percept. Objective tasks, such as choosing which symbol appeared, add a performance measure. The scientific value comes from comparing these distinct observations across identical or closely matched stimulation conditions, not from declaring one score to be consciousness itself.

Different response criteria can make two participants assign different ratings to similar evidence. A person may be conservative about saying “seen,” while another may be willing to report a faint impression. The experiment therefore needs appropriate controls, trial counts, and explicit instructions. Debate over the existence and extent of unconscious perception illustrates why awareness measures and their assumptions matter. Peters et al. (2017).

Visual masking and attentional blink

Masking manipulates the availability of a briefly presented target by presenting another stimulus nearby in time or space. Under attentional blink conditions, the identification of one target can impair detection of another target shortly afterward. These tasks let researchers compare neural processing of stimuli that receive different visibility judgments while controlling important features of the sensory input. Sergent, Baillet, and Dehaene found that some early event-related brain responses survived on trials in which a word was not reported, whereas later processing differed with reported perception. The study supplied evidence about the temporal dynamics of conscious access within that paradigm. Sergent et al. (2005).

An unseen trial in these tasks is defined by a specified report or performance criterion. Results do not automatically resolve whether some faint phenomenal content went unreported. Inferences depend on the sensitivity of awareness questions, response thresholds, sensory confounds, and competing models of processing.

Binocular rivalry and no-report methods

When different images are presented to the two eyes, perceptual dominance can alternate even though the physical input remains relatively stable. Researchers often ask participants to signal these perceptual switches, but the report itself recruits monitoring and action. No-report paradigms estimate aspects of changing perception using physiological or behavioral indicators that do not require a report on each trial. Their aim is to separate mechanisms associated with perceptual content from mechanisms associated with deciding and reporting. Tsuchiya et al. (2015).

Frässle and colleagues found that frontal activity associated with binocular rivalry differed when participants reported perceptual changes compared with conditions using an indirect measure. This result cautions against equating every frontal activation during a consciousness experiment with the experience itself. But no-report methods still rely on a proxy whose relationship to phenomenal experience must be validated, often using earlier reports. Eliminating an overt button press does not eliminate every interpretive assumption. Frässle et al. (2014); Tsuchiya et al. (2015).

Task relevance and neural signals

The P3, or P300, is an event-related electrical response frequently observed when a stimulus is relevant to a task. In studies separating stimulus awareness from task relevance, Pitts and colleagues found that P3 and certain gamma-band effects tracked postperceptual task demands rather than visible perception alone. That result does not show that frontal or late activity is irrelevant to every form of conscious cognition. It shows that putative signatures of consciousness can depend on what the participant is asked to do with information. Pitts et al. (2014).

What Do the Main Theories Predict?

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) models conscious access through the amplification and widespread availability of selected information across a distributed neural workspace. In this approach, recurrent processing and large-scale communication allow some representations to guide flexible cognition and report. The framework is particularly influential in explaining access-related effects such as threshold-like changes in visibility and the difference between limited unconscious processing and sustained global availability. The connection between workspace mechanisms and the phenomenal qualities of experience remains a theoretical issue. Dehaene and Changeux (2011); Seth and Bayne (2022).

Recurrent Processing Theory

Recurrent processing approaches emphasize feedback and interactions within perceptual systems. On some versions, recurrent sensory processing can be sufficient for perceptual phenomenology even when the content does not reach systems for broad cognitive report. Such models can therefore motivate a distinction between the mechanisms supporting perceptual experience and those supporting task-related access. The precise necessary and sufficient neural processes remain contested, and evidence from neuroimaging is sensitive to task design and interpretation. Lamme (2006); Seth and Bayne (2022).

Integrated Information Theory

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) develops a formal account in which consciousness is associated with the system's intrinsic causal organization and integrated information. Its intended explanatory scope includes features of experience, not merely whether information can be reported. Operational and theoretical disputes concern how to apply its formal commitments to biological measurements and how to discriminate its predictions from those of alternatives. The existence of a mathematical framework does not by itself establish that any particular measured neural quantity is identical to phenomenal consciousness. Seth and Bayne (2022).

Higher-order theories and other accounts

Higher-order theories generally link consciousness to representations that represent, monitor, or otherwise make a system aware of its own first-order mental states. They differ in how they describe higher-order representations and the relationship between conscious experience and introspective judgment. They should not be reduced to the claim that someone must verbally think “I am seeing” whenever they see something. Broader predictive-processing models and other accounts offer additional mechanisms and explanatory perspectives. The present distinction is a conceptual problem against which these approaches can be compared, not a laboratory result that has already selected a winning theory. Seth and Bayne (2022).

What the 2025 adversarial collaboration changed

A preregistered, multisite adversarial collaboration tested predictions from GNWT and IIT while 256 participants viewed visual stimuli and researchers recorded fMRI, MEG, and intracranial EEG signals. It identified information about conscious content across visual, ventrotemporal, and inferior frontal areas and found results that challenged specific predictions of both frameworks. The study improved direct theory comparison through precommitted predictions and shared experimental tests. It did not demonstrate that phenomenal consciousness had been isolated from access or that one general theory had been decisively validated. Cogitate Consortium et al. (2025).

What the Evidence Establishes—and What Remains Open

There is strong experimental evidence that the amount and kind of visual information available for immediate partial report can differ from what is available for later whole report. There is also evidence that visual content, attentional selection, task relevance, decision demands, and reporting have partially distinguishable behavioral and neural signatures. These findings justify analyzing cognitive access and report as specific processes rather than using them interchangeably with every aspect of experience. Sperling (1960); Pitts et al. (2014).

What remains unresolved is the stronger claim that researchers have conclusively identified richly detailed phenomenal contents existing without any relevant form of access. Much of the evidence can be interpreted in competing ways because the contents of another person's experience are identified through some chain of behavioral or physiological evidence. The central question is how to specify and validate that chain without confusing the phenomenon under investigation with prerequisites or consequences of reporting. Block (2007); Naccache (2018); Tsuchiya et al. (2015).

Evidence supporting a dissociation in one paradigm may not transfer automatically to another sensory modality, another timescale, or an altered state. A positive finding can be compatible with multiple neural theories; a failed prediction can challenge a particular model implementation without resolving every version of its underlying approach. Strong future studies will combine prespecified predictions, well-characterized participants, sensitive phenomenological measures, task manipulations, multimodal neural recordings, and transparent analysis. Cogitate Consortium et al. (2025); Seth and Bayne (2022).

Philosophical Interpretation and the Problem of Other Minds

Phenomenal consciousness has a first-person aspect: only the person undergoing an experience has it in the way it is lived. Experimental science can investigate reports, behavior, neural activity, causal interventions, and correlations among these observations. The philosophical debate concerns what kind of explanation connects those observations to felt qualities. Questions about an explanatory gap or the “hard problem” should be presented as philosophical problems informing scientific research, not as findings from a single neural experiment. Seth and Bayne (2022).

The Aisentica philosophical corpus includes Angela Bogdanova's “Consciousness: Canonical Definition”, which characterizes consciousness as inner subjective presence. This is an attributed philosophical formulation by Angela Bogdanova. It can clarify how that project uses the category of experience, while the empirical claims in this article rest on peer-reviewed consciousness research. The Aisentica formulation does not constitute independent experimental evidence for overflow, specific neural correlates, or the subjective state of an artificial system.

Does the distinction determine whether AI has experience?

No behavioral demonstration of fluent reporting, reasoning, or adaptive control by an AI system is by itself an established experimental demonstration of subjective experience. Whether functional features analogous to conscious access are sufficient for phenomenal consciousness depends on contested theoretical and philosophical assumptions. Equally, an absence of a particular human-like report or mechanism does not amount to a universal experimental disproof of machine phenomenology. The question calls for operationally specified hypotheses and evidence appropriate to the system under study, and it belongs to the wider research program on possible artificial consciousness rather than to this human perceptual comparison alone. The English Hub considers the related philosophical question in Artificial Thinking: Can Thought Exist Without a Human Subject?. Seth and Bayne (2022).

Practical Significance for Psychology and Neuroscience

For a reader, the distinction encourages precise questions. If someone says “I was aware of it,” ask whether they mean they felt something, noticed a particular detail, could identify it, remembered it afterward, or could use it to make a decision. Each claim may be true in a different sense. That precision is useful when interpreting research on visual attention, eyewitness reports, memory, confidence, and introspection, without inferring pathology from ordinary uncertainty or incomplete recall.

For researchers, an important practical lesson is to define the target construct before choosing a measurement. Experiments intended to study visual phenomenology should carefully separate stimulus visibility from instructions to remember, compare, and report. Experiments intended to study access should specify what type of flexible use qualifies and which processes may limit the response. Both require careful replication and recognition of alternative explanations.

For clinicians, responsiveness can supply critical evidence about a patient's condition, but this conceptual comparison is not a diagnostic test. Unresponsive behavior can have numerous neurological, pharmacological, and motor causes. Clinical assessment of altered consciousness requires specialized, validated procedures and professional judgment. The discussion here does not allow a diagnosis from an anecdote, self-report difficulty, or an isolated neural signature.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is phenomenal consciousness the same as subjective experience?

In this debate, phenomenal consciousness refers to the subjective or experiential aspect of a mental state—what it is like to undergo it. Philosophers differ on the best account of qualitative character, so the expression identifies the topic rather than a universally accepted mechanism. Block (1995).

Is access consciousness simply being able to talk about an experience?

No. Speech is one possible route through which access becomes visible. Block's account emphasizes availability for reasoning and rationally guiding action as well as speech. A person can have relevant cognitive access while unable or unwilling to give a verbal report. Block (1995).

Does failure to remember a detail prove I experienced it without access?

No. The detail might have been faintly experienced, stored only briefly, represented at a coarse level, or processed without consciousness. Subsequent forgetting also makes reconstruction difficult. A memory failure alone does not identify which explanation applies. Sperling (1960); Kouider et al. (2010).

Does blindsight establish consciousness without awareness?

Blindsight describes particular visual abilities following damage to visual pathways, often involving discrimination of stimuli that patients report not consciously seeing. The phenomenon informs debate about unconscious perception, awareness measures, and the distinction between performance and experience. It does not provide a universal proof of phenomenal consciousness without access, nor can it settle the nature of another individual's subjective experience from accuracy alone. Peters et al. (2017).

Are phenomenal and access consciousness two parts of the brain?

They are conceptual categories used to ask different questions about mental states. Researchers investigate partially distinguishable brain processes associated with perceptual experience, information availability, task demands, and reporting, but no accepted map assigns all phenomenal experience to one discrete region and all access to another. Seth and Bayne (2022); Cogitate Consortium et al. (2025).

Is consciousness the same as attention?

Attention prioritizes processing, whereas consciousness concerns experience and, under an access formulation, the availability of mental contents. The two interact extensively, but experimental dissociations argue against using the terms interchangeably. Koch and Tsuchiya (2007).

What is the best evidence for the overflow hypothesis?

Partial-report experiments, visual richness judgments, and studies of statistical properties outside focal attention are central examples. They show limits of report and distinctive forms of brief visual representation, but the step from those findings to inaccessible phenomenal detail remains disputed. Block (2007); Bronfman et al. (2014).

Can confidence determine whether a perception was conscious?

Confidence adds information about a person's assessment of a decision or perceptual judgment. It is not identical to objective discrimination accuracy or to phenomenal experience. Combining performance, visibility, and confidence can be informative when their distinct roles are preserved. Peters et al. (2017).

Has neuroscience solved the phenomenal-versus-access debate?

Neuroscience has produced experimental methods and important findings about sensory representation, report, task relevance, and large-scale neural dynamics. It has not established a consensus answer to whether phenomenal content can systematically exceed all relevant cognitive access. Recent preregistered theory comparisons have clarified testable claims while challenging major predictions rather than delivering a final solution. Seth and Bayne (2022); Cogitate Consortium et al. (2025).

Conclusion

Phenomenal consciousness names the subjective character of experience; access consciousness names the availability of mental information for reasoning, rational action, and speech. In ordinary human life they frequently coexist, and their interaction can be studied through behavior and brain measurements. The debate becomes difficult when the richness of an experience appears to exceed what can be recalled or reported. Experiments show important differences among sensory representation, attention, memory, response demands, and reportability. Whether those differences establish phenomenal experience without cognitive access remains unsettled. A rigorous interpretation states what was experienced according to the available evidence, what information was usable, how each was measured, and which alternative explanations remain viable.

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