Table 1.

Qualitative differences between prereflective and reflective consciousness, and their interaction.

	General characteristics	Role of plasticity	Time-scale of operation	“What-it-is-like”	Inherits features primarily from
PR	Innate, automatic, embodied, habitual, resistant to perturbations, “online”	Rapid synaptic turn-over, functional adaptation, major development 0–4 years	Short (milliseconds)	Autopilot, flow, seamless, external absorption, effortless, intuitive, extended through tools and the body	Phylogeny
R	Partially learned, socially embedded, can be arrested, sensitive to intersubjectivity, “offline”	Learned Behavior; individual differences, alteration of macroscopic connectome. Major development 4–20 years, throughout life	Long (seconds, minutes, even days and years)	Narrotological, reflective, action-controlling, detached, interiority, folk psychological, calculative, deliberate	Ontogeny
PR × R	Intersubjective interaction, individual differences in perception and cognition. Neither “offline” nor “online.” Structures PR and R (“pre-noetic”)	Influence of local field potentials on global connectivity, rest-stimulus interaction. Develops from birth on	Variable; integration of experience with self-narrative, influence of culture on perception	Smooth expertise without zoning out, integration between online and offline cognition	Both