I'ts a bit more complicated than just awakeness, though. If you flash an image on a screen for a very short period of time, you won't ever be able to remember what it said or be able to tell someone what it said, but it can still have a slight effect on your behavior for about a second. There is information that are senses are providing to our brain that never makes it to conscious awareness.
Sometimes people have brain injuries that prevent the transfer of information from some parts of their brain to their consciousness. Someone with blindsight has an injury that prevents them from being consciously, in this sense, aware of their visual field. They can still pick up items in front of them when asked. But they can't describe what is in front of them, and if the close their eyes they can't remember where something is and still pick it up like a normal person can.
I'd highly recommend Consciousness and the Brain for an in-dpeth look at research in this area.
Right, and I think the key here is that we should be ready to see key elements we believe are necessary for conscious to be distributed across numerous systems, rather than uncovering a singular unitary thing. And so it's not a matter of "oh, this study only found XXX but it didn't find consciousness".
But it might be that the process of coming to full empirical understanding is that we take an idea that used to be black-boxed, and open it up to find numerous particular mechanisms, numerous layers. Kind of like how originally we thought there was one Vitamin B but then came to learn there were numerous subclasses that were different in important ways.
That's true, but its also true that some connections might be reasonably said to be key for sensory information to find its way into working memory so I wouldn't dismiss the title.
I'ts a bit more complicated than just awakeness, though. If you flash an image on a screen for a very short period of time, you won't ever be able to remember what it said or be able to tell someone what it said, but it can still have a slight effect on your behavior for about a second. There is information that are senses are providing to our brain that never makes it to conscious awareness.
Sometimes people have brain injuries that prevent the transfer of information from some parts of their brain to their consciousness. Someone with blindsight has an injury that prevents them from being consciously, in this sense, aware of their visual field. They can still pick up items in front of them when asked. But they can't describe what is in front of them, and if the close their eyes they can't remember where something is and still pick it up like a normal person can.
I'd highly recommend Consciousness and the Brain for an in-dpeth look at research in this area.