Anoetic to Noetic and Autonoetic Consciousness: A Vision of Unknowing (Anoetic) and Knowing (Noetic) Consciousness in the Remembrance of Things Past and Imagined Futures

In recent years there has been a expansion of scientific work on consciousness. However, there is an increasing necessity to integrate interdisciplinary perspectives and to bring affective feelings more centrally into the overall discussion. Pursuant especially to the theorizing of Endel Tulving (2004, 2005), we look at the phenomena starting from primary-process consciousness, namely the rudimentary state of autonomic awakeness or unknowing (anoetic) consciousness, with a fundamental form of first-person self-experience which relies on affective experiential states and raw sensory-perceptual mental existences, to higher forms of knowing and self-aware consciousness. Since current scientific approaches are most concerned with the understanding of higher declarative states of consciousness, affective and perceptual anoetic forms of consciousness are vastly underestimated that may be foundational for all forms of higher knowing consciousness such as semantic and episodic memories permitting humans to experience mental time travel--namely an autonoetic form of consciousness based on thought and self-awareness.

Publication year:2009

Keywords:self, autonoetic, noetic, affective anoetic consciousness, semantic, episodic memory