Global Workspace and Attention

Global Workspace Theory, associated most closely with Bernard Baars and later Stanislas Dehaene, proposes that consciousness is a kind of mental broadcasting. Information becomes conscious when it is made globally available to multiple specialized brain systems — perceptual, memorial, executive, motor — via a shared workspace.

The evidence is largely experimental. Contrastive studies compare conditions where the same stimulus is consciously perceived versus not, and find a signature of ignition — a late, widespread cortical activation — associated with conscious access. The 'access' framing is deliberate; global workspace theorists tend to bracket the harder question of phenomenal experience.

The theory has proved productive. It fits well with clinical observations in disorders of consciousness, aligns with attention research, and offers a plausible functional role for consciousness that pure phenomenal accounts sometimes struggle to provide.

It does not solve the hard problem. Its defenders are usually explicit about this. It offers a functional architecture, not a metaphysical account. Whether the two can ever fully meet remains an open question.