Perceptual awareness or phenomenal consciousness?A dilemma

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher F. Masciari ◽  
Peter Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Perceptual Awareness

Phenomenal Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Levine
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Making Sense

This paper presents a sketch of a theory of phenomenal consciousness, one that builds on the notion of a “way of appearing,” and draws out various consequences and problems for the view. I unabashedly endorse a version of the Cartesian Theater, while assessing the prospects for making such a view work. As I treat phenomenal consciousness as a relation between a subject and what it is she is conscious of, I face a difficulty in making sense of hallucination, since the object of awareness is missing. I distinguish my position from direct realists who endorse disjunctivism, and end on a somewhat speculative note.

Attention, Adumbration, and a Neglected Mark of the Mental

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Textor
Keyword(s):  
Peculiar Feature ◽  
Perceptual Awareness

Brentano never investigated whether the ‘peculiar feature’ of inner perception—that it can never become inner observation—that distinguishes our awareness of the mental from other forms of perceptual awareness could serve as the mark of the mental. However, his students Stumpf and Husserl developed marks of the mental that are inspired by this idea. The chapter clarifies Husserl’s Thesis that mental phenomena have no appearances, argues that it is superior to Brentano’s Thesis, and defends it against objections from Reinach and Husserl himself. Husserl himself threw out the baby with the bathwater when he later rejected Husserl’s Thesis. A precisified form of this idea can still unify our intuitions about the mental.

scholarly journals Can Autonomous Agents Without Phenomenal Consciousness Be Morally Responsible?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
László Bernáth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Popular View

AbstractIt is an increasingly popular view among philosophers that moral responsibility can, in principle, be attributed to unconscious autonomous agents. This trend is already remarkable in itself, but it is even more interesting that most proponents of this view provide more or less the same argument to support their position. I argue that as it stands, the Extension Argument, as I call it, is not sufficient to establish the thesis that unconscious autonomous agents can be morally responsible. I attempt to show that the Extension Argument should overcome especially strong ethical considerations; moreover, its epistemological grounds are not too solid, partly because the justifications of its premises are in conflict.

scholarly journals Absence of Face-specific Cortical Activity in the Complete Absence of Awareness: Converging Evidence from Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Event-related Potentials

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 396-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valia Rodríguez ◽  
Russell Thompson ◽  
Mark Stokes ◽  
Matthew Brett ◽  
Indira Alvarez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Face Detection ◽  
Brain Area ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Backward Masking ◽  
Imaging Data ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Related Activity ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Frontal Operculum ◽  
Detailed Assessment

In this study, we explored the neural correlates of perceptual awareness during a masked face detection task. To assess awareness more precisely than in previous studies, participants employed a 4-point scale to rate subjective visibility. An event-related fMRI and a high-density ERP study were carried out. Imaging data showed that conscious face detection was linked to activation of fusiform and occipital face areas. Frontal and parietal regions, including the pre-SMA, inferior frontal sulcus, anterior insula/frontal operculum, and intraparietal sulcus, also responded strongly when faces were consciously perceived. In contrast, no brain area showed face-selective activity when participants reported no impression of a face. ERP results showed that conscious face detection was associated with enhanced N170 and also with the presence of a second negativity around 300 msec and a slow positivity around 415 msec. Again, face-related activity was absent when faces were not consciously perceived. We suggest that, under conditions of backward masking, ventral stream and fronto-parietal regions show similar, strong links of face-related activity to conscious perception and stress the importance of a detailed assessment of awareness to examine activity related to unseen stimulus events.

scholarly journals Extending the extended consciousness debate: perception, imagination, and the common kind assumption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Deery
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Mental Event ◽  
The World ◽  
Predictive Approach ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

AbstractFor some, the states and processes involved in the realisation of phenomenal consciousness are not confined to within the organismic boundaries of the experiencing subject. Instead, the sub-personal basis of perceptual experience can, and does, extend beyond the brain and body to implicate environmental elements through one’s interaction with the world. These claims are met by proponents of predictive processing, who propose that perception and imagination should be understood as a product of the same internal mechanisms. On this view, as visually imagining is not considered to be world-involving, it is assumed that world-involvement must not be essential for perception, and thus internalism about the sub-personal basis is true. However, the argument for internalism from the unity of perception and imagination relies for its strength on a questionable conception of the relationship between the two experiential states. I argue that proponents of the predictive approach are guilty of harbouring an implicit commitment to the common kind assumption which does not follow trivially from their framework. That is, the assumption that perception and imagination are of the same fundamental kind of mental event. I will argue that there are plausible alternative ways of conceiving of this relationship without drawing internalist metaphysical conclusions from their psychological theory. Thus, the internalist owes the debate clarification of this relationship and further argumentation to secure their position.

More empirical cases to break the accord of phenomenal and access-consciousness

1995 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talis Bachmann
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness

AbstractAdditional experiments show that P-consciousness and A consciousness can be empirically dissociated for the theoretically so phisticated observer. Phenomenal consciousness can have several degrees that are indirectly measurable.

scholarly journals The Role of Attention in Motion Extrapolation: Are Moving Objects ‘Corrected’ or Flashed Objects Attentionally Delayed?

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p3066 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 675-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beena Khurana ◽  
Katsumi Watanabe ◽  
Romi Nijhawan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Moving Objects ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Circular Path ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Multiple Events ◽  
Attentional Deployment ◽  
Lag Effect ◽  
Elementary Psychology

Objects flashed in alignment with moving objects appear to lag behind [Nijhawan, 1994 Nature (London) 370 256–257], Could this ‘flash-lag’ effect be due to attentional delays in bringing flashed items to perceptual awareness [Titchener, 1908/1973 Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention first published 1908 (New York: Macmillan); reprinted 1973 (New York: Arno Press)]? We overtly manipulated attentional allocation in three experiments to address the following questions: Is the flash-lag effect affected when attention is (a) focused on a single event in the presence of multiple events, (b) distributed over multiple events, and (c) diverted from the flashed object? To address the first two questions, five rings, moving along a circular path, were presented while observers attentively tracked one or multiple rings under four conditions: the ring in which the disk was flashed was (i) known or (ii) unknown (randomly selected from the set of five); location of the flashed disk was (i) known or (ii) unknown (randomly selected from ten locations), The third question was investigated by using two moving objects in a cost – benefit cueing paradigm, An arrow cued, with 70% or 80% validity, the position of the flashed object, Observers performed two tasks: (a) reacted as quickly as possible to flash onset; (b) reported the flash-lag effect, We obtained a significant and unaltered flash-lag effect under all the attentional conditions we employed, Furthermore, though reaction times were significantly shorter for validly cued flashes, the flash-lag effect remained uninfluenced by cue validity, indicating that quicker responses to validly cued locations may be due to the shortening of post-perceptual delays in motor responses rather than the perceptual facilitation, We conclude that the computations that give rise to the flash-lag effect are independent of attentional deployment.

The Health Ideation Pictures (HIP): Reliability and Internal Consistency

1970 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Gochman
Keyword(s):  
Health Behavior ◽  
Internal Consistency ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Cub Scouts

A series of 11 pictures was developed to provide a method of measuring health ideation and adaptive health behavior. Responses were obtained from 31 Cub Scouts aged 8 to 10 yr. Coding procedures established for 3 dimensions, general perceptual awareness, health ideation and adaptive health behavior, proved to be highly reliable, and the pictures were found to provide internally consistent measures within each dimension.

Don't tell anyone: the importance of no-report paradigms in neuroscience of consciousness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Del Vecchio
Keyword(s):  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Conscious Processing

The neural correlates of perceptual awareness are usually investigated by comparing experimental conditions in which subjects are aware or not aware of the delivered stimulus. This, however implies that subjects report their experience, possibly biasing the neural responses with the post-perceptual processes involved. This Neuro Forum article reviews evidence from an electroencephalography (EEG) study by Cohen and colleagues (Cohen M. et al. Journal of Neuroscience 40 (25) 4925-4935) addressing the importance of no-report paradigms in the neuroscience of consciousness. In particular, authors shows of P3b, one of the proposed canonical "signatures" of the conscious processing, is strongly elicited only when subjects have to report their experience, proposing a reconsideration in the approach to the neuroscience of consciousness.

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