Table 3.

Some adaptive roles of consciousness (mostly after Feinberg and Mallatt, 2018a).

Organizes large amounts of sensory input into a set of phenomenal properties for action choice

Its unified simulation of the sensed world directs behavior in this world

It ranks sensed stimuli by importance, by assigning affects to them, making decisions easier

Allows flexible behavior because it sets up many different behavioral choices

Allows easily adjustable behavior because it predicts the consequences of one’s actions into the immediate future (Perry and Chittka, 2019; Solms, 2019)

Deals well with new situations, to meet the changing challenges of complex environments