Attention and Intentionalism

Abstract

Many alleged counter-examples to intentionalism, the thesis that the phenomenology of perceptual experiences of a given sense modality supervenes on the contents of experiences of that modality, can be avoided by adopting a liberal view of the sorts of properties that can be represented in perceptual experience. I argue that there is a class of counter-examples to intentionalism, based on shifts in attention, which avoids this response. A necessary connection between the contents and phenomenal characters of perceptual experiences can be preserved by distinguishing perceptual phenomenology from the phenomenology of attention; but even if this distinction is viable, these cases put pressure on the thesis that phenomenal character can, in general, be explained in terms of mental representation.The core of intentionalism in the philosophy of perception is the thesis that there is the following necessary connection between the content and the phenomenal character (phenomenology) of perceptual experience:Minimal intentionalism. Necessarily, if two perceptual experiences of the same sense modality differ in phenomenology, then they differ in content. 1

Attention, Seeing, and Change Blindness

“…I am not aware of any. All the cases adduced in the literature (Chalmers 2004, Nickel 2004, Speaks 2010, Wu forthcoming) seem to me to involve a subtle change in the content of the experience (Tye forthcoming). Still if there are any such cases, what remains to underwrite the claim that the experience is focused on one item rather than another is the role the experience plays in improving speed and accuracy of discrimination with respect to possible changes in the item.…”

Perceptual content is indexed to attention

“…Pure representationalists are committed to the claim that there can be no change in phenomenal content without a change in representational content. 2 The trouble is that shifting attention sometimes seems to bring about a change in phenomenal content without a change in representational content (Chalmers 2004;Nickel 2007;Speaks 2010;Block 2010;Wu 2011;Ganson and Bronner 2013). So, the effect of attention on perception seems to force us either to reject representationalism altogether, or to adopt an impure variant, on which phenomenal facts supervene on more than just facts about content.…”

The Philosophical Significance of Attention

“…A first argument considers simple cases where attention makes a clear phenomenal difference, but where an accompanying difference in representational content seems absent. For example, Chalmers (2004) suggests that “one might look at two red pinpoint lights against a black background, and shift attention from one to the other.” Similarly, one might consider scenarios where one focuses attention on one or another part of a simple grid of white squares (Nickel 2007) or on one intersection or another in a set of intersecting lines (Speaks 2010).…”