Phenomenal awareness can emerge without attention

In a recent debate, the views that top-down attention is necessary for consciousness (Cohen et al., 2012a,b) and that consciousness is independent of top-down attention (Tsuchiya et al., 2012) have clashed. Here, we list the overlooked or ignored arguments that should be considered before deciding that consciousness is inevitably the result of attention. The issue of relation of bottom-up attention and consciousness seems to have two possible solutions according to the evidence available at present. First, based on the current evidence it may be agreed upon that conscious experience cannot be dissociated from bottom-up exogenous attention (Tsuchiya et al., 2012). Second, it is possible that there is phenomenal consciousness emerging without bottom-up attention, but empirical evidence for this is either lacking or too much controversial at present. Here, we consider some instances where simple conscious experience, i.e., phenomenal awareness emerges without top-down attentional deployment: