Rich Experience and Sparse Awareness: Sensing More Than We Know

By Baruch Eitam and Ariel Meir Berlinger

Consciousness is often treated as unitary phenomenon. We challenge this and propose a framework that parses it into two functionally distinct representational media. Reviewing dominant theories, as well as studies of perceptual failures, neural activity, visual search and attention - we argue that phenomenal experience arises early as a detailed, analogue, and relatively generic representation of the physical world. Awareness, a later and more idiosyncratic representation of the world, results from enriching phenomenal experience via relevance-filtered semantic knowledge. This Multi-Representational Media (MRM) account unifies perception, memory, and cognition, reconciles rich and sparse consciousness views, and reframes concepts in unconscious cognition research.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1009757105
• ISBN13: 9781009757102
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 75 Pages