Differences in "what It's Like" to Have Perceptual, Bodily, Emotional and Mental Experiences Are Related to Voluntary Control over Information and Body Movements

This article accounts for two of the most fundamental aspects of “what it’s like” to have an experience, thereby showing a path towards solving the “meta”-”hard problem” of phenomenal consciousness. One fundamental aspect of “what it’s like” to have an experience is that experiences have qualities rather than no qualities. Among the qualities, the most fundamental are the fact that experiences are classifiable as being of an “external” (perceptual), an “internal” (interoceptive, bodily or emotional) or of a “mental” kind. A second fundamental aspect of “what it’s like” seems to be that experiences impose themselves upon us: they seem “present” to us -- they feel like something rather than feeling like nothing. Both these aspects of “what it’s like” can be accounted for in terms of the degree to which we can voluntarily control what we are doing when we engage in an experience. The external/internal/mental dimension is determined by how our voluntary bodily actions can influence sensorimotor flow of information. The imposingness of experiences and their “spatio-temporal presence” is determined by how our voluntary actions are impeded or assisted by innate, attention-grabbing mechanisms.