Philosophy Program LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, Long Island City, NY, USA.
Department of Psychology and Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Department of Psychology, and State Key Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2019 Sep;23(9):754-768. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.06.009. Epub 2019 Jul 30.
The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g., first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for overintellectualizing consciousness. We show that, while higher-order states are cognitively assembled, the requirements are in fact considerably less than often presumed. In this sense, HOT may be viewed as an intermediate position between GWT and early sensory views. We also clarify that most proponents of HOT do not stipulate consciousness as equivalent to metacognition or confidence. Furthermore, compared with other existing theories, HOT can arguably account better for complex everyday experiences, such as emotions and episodic memories. This makes HOT particularly useful as a framework for conceptualizing pathological mental states.
意识的高阶理论（HOT）经常被批评者误解。在这里，我们澄清了它在几个问题上的立场，并将其与其他观点（如全局工作空间理论（GWT）和早期感觉模型（例如，一阶局部递归理论））区分开来。例如，HOT 被批评为过度理智化意识。我们表明，虽然高阶状态是认知上组合在一起的，但实际上要求比通常假定的要低得多。从这个意义上说，HOT 可以被视为 GWT 和早期感觉观点之间的中间立场。我们还澄清，大多数 HOT 的支持者并没有将意识等同于元认知或信心。此外，与其他现有理论相比，HOT 可以更好地解释复杂的日常体验，例如情绪和情景记忆。这使得 HOT 特别有用，可作为概念化病理性精神状态的框架。
