I believe Block argues that something like this is possible and makes the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness, though I don't recall the specifics (nor how or if he distinguishes between consciousness and awareness). He claims, I think, that one can be phenomenally conscious without having access to the phenomena; in other words, one can be conscious of the phenomena of experience without being aware of it, due to lack of access. If I recall correctly, I think he motivates such a view by appealing to certain scientific findings having to do with blindsight and other perceptual pathologies.

While not utterly ridiculous, I find this view pretty implausible; it seems to me that consciousness and awareness are too intimately connected for there to be one without the other (assuming that what we are talking about when talking about "consciousness" and "awareness" are two separate phenomena). When consciously experiencing the world, we seem to always be aware that we are doing so.

One might object in the following way: suppose you are sitting in a coffee shop and there is some drilling going on outside. The sound of the drilling eventually fades into the background noise forming the backdrop of your awareness, before falling from awareness entirely. When reminded of the ongoing construction work some time later, you notice again not only the sound of the drilling, but that you were in fact conscious of the sound all along -- you merely weren't aware of it, as your focus was taken up with other activities. The phenomena that is the sound of the drilling is there in your stream of consciousness all along without your being aware of its being so. We thus have consciousness without awareness.

I am not convinced by this example. When the drilling sound fades from our awareness, it fades from our conscious experience. When we are not aware of it, we are not conscious of it. When we are made aware of it, it is introduced (or reintroduced) to our consciousness. Whether or not consciousness and awareness are in fact distinct phenomena (and, if they are, what this distinction consists in) doesn't seem to make much a difference.

Cases of blindsight might be treated analogously. Persons with blindsight seem to react to things in their visual field that they are not aware of -- they claim to see or be aware of nothing, and are judged to be blind (in relevant parts of the visual field). In other words, they seem to be conscious of something in their visual field that they utterly unaware of. In my view, they are also not conscious of that something, either; what is likely occurring is some sort of entirely unconscious response, probably the effect of unconscious processing in some neural system that isn't compromised. It is that system that unconsciously responds to something lying outside of one's conscious awareness.

Another plausible explanation is that the possibility of their being consciousness (awareness) without awareness (consciousness) seems absurd because of the way consciousness tends to be characterized or defined, in that it seems to be often (and, perhaps, unintentionally) lumped together or identified with awareness when in fact it is not; perhaps the two are utterly distinct (though highly correlated). Because this thought just occurred to me, however, I haven't had the time to flesh it out and consider it in detail.

The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell

The Journey to the East -- Herman Hesse

Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons -- Mark Siderits