The multiple-modality point is interesting. If reality monitoring can be built from lateral line sensing, electroreception, or chemoreception just as well as from vision, that suggests the capacity being tracked isn't really about any particular sensory channel at all, it's something more general that different channels happen to implement. That fits with treating conscious modeling as a graded, continuous capacity that shows up wherever a system needs to distinguish self-generated activity from the world rather than a threshold event.
I agree that the multi‑modality point is the right direction. Once you treat reality monitoring as a general capacity, the key mechanism becomes how a system maintains coherence while distinguishing self‑generated activity from the world. That’s a pattern‑level process, not a sensory‑specific one — identity as the system’s way of measuring mismatch over time.
“Reality monitoring” sounds like a comparison process, but comparison itself has an evolutionary geometry: a system has to maintain a pattern within its degrees of freedom to make any distinction at all. Consciousness may be slow or fast depending on modality, but the deeper question is how the organism preserves coherence while tracking mismatch. Vision is one case, but the mechanism seems more general — identity as the system’s way of measuring deformation over time.
"Many decisions made by animals occur at slower speeds: e.g. moving between foraging patches, finding shelter, interacting with conspecifics. These behaviours could be guided by visual input without the need for a rapid response. It is therefore unclear why visual consciousness needs to explain something beyond traditional action selection of this type."
The multiple-modality point is interesting. If reality monitoring can be built from lateral line sensing, electroreception, or chemoreception just as well as from vision, that suggests the capacity being tracked isn't really about any particular sensory channel at all, it's something more general that different channels happen to implement. That fits with treating conscious modeling as a graded, continuous capacity that shows up wherever a system needs to distinguish self-generated activity from the world rather than a threshold event.
I agree that the multi‑modality point is the right direction. Once you treat reality monitoring as a general capacity, the key mechanism becomes how a system maintains coherence while distinguishing self‑generated activity from the world. That’s a pattern‑level process, not a sensory‑specific one — identity as the system’s way of measuring mismatch over time.
“Reality monitoring” sounds like a comparison process, but comparison itself has an evolutionary geometry: a system has to maintain a pattern within its degrees of freedom to make any distinction at all. Consciousness may be slow or fast depending on modality, but the deeper question is how the organism preserves coherence while tracking mismatch. Vision is one case, but the mechanism seems more general — identity as the system’s way of measuring deformation over time.
I agree with this paragraph;
"Many decisions made by animals occur at slower speeds: e.g. moving between foraging patches, finding shelter, interacting with conspecifics. These behaviours could be guided by visual input without the need for a rapid response. It is therefore unclear why visual consciousness needs to explain something beyond traditional action selection of this type."
Good commentary!