Data Streams Versus Assessments

The interoception research seems to muck up the difference between a data stream and an assessment. Consider the arousal research: measure clitoral engorgement, ask women if they feel aroused, then conclude that women who are engorged but don't report arousal are 'failing to perceive their own arousal.' The researchers mistook a data stream for an assessment. But arousal does not depend on a single data stream, any more than pain or safety or hunger or 'you need to get another sweater' comes from a single data stream. Arousal is an assessment integrating multiple streams: sensation, context, meaning, desire, safety, interest. A woman whose clitoris is engorged but who does not assess herself as aroused is not aroused.