Dr. Steven Lehar,
The Schepens Eye Research Institute
Peli Lab
20 Staniford St.
Boston, MA 02114-2500
Dear Dr. Lehar,
Thank you for sending your manuscript, "The Function of Conscious Experience: An Analogical Paradigm of Perception and Behavior." to Consciousness & Cognition. We have received two thoughtful reviews. The reviewers take your hypothesis quite seriously, as do I. However, there is a large literature that is not discussed in your paper, and there are standard philosophical positions that are not mentioned. I notice incidentally that you do not mention the important paper by Rodolfo Llinas and Pare of some years ago.
Finally, it seems to me that this attractive hypothesis makes a claim about the veridicality of conscious perceptual experience, but does not tell us anything about consciousness per se. Thus even if your hypothesis is true, I'm not sure that it tells us about the function of consciousness, as the title claims. Indeed, it would raise some questions about functionality.
Under the circumstances we cannot publish the paper. Should you wish to write a revision that deals with these problems, we would be happy to consider it for this journal. If you decide to do that, the references cited by the reviewers should be thoroughly discussed.
Sincerely,
Bernard J. Baars, PhD Co-Editor Consciousness & Cognition