Contents of Unconscious Color Perception

Abstract

In the contemporary discussions concerning unconscious perception it is not uncommon to postulate that content and phenomenal character are ‘orthogonal’, i.e., there is no type of content which is essentially conscious, but instead, every representational content can be either conscious or not. Furthermore, this is not merely treated as a thesis justified by theoretical investigations, but as supported by empirical considerations concerning the actual functioning of the human cognition. In this paper, I address unconscious color perception and argue for a negative thesis—that the main experimental paradigms used in studying unconscious color perception do not provide support for the position that conscious and unconscious color representations have the same type of content. More specifically, I claim that there is no significant support for the claim that unconscious vision categorically represents surface colors.

Blindsight is unconscious perception

“…Moreover, the residual awareness in blindsight seems to correlate with accuracy, suggesting that blindsight is in fact a form of conscious perception, albeit a degraded form (Overgaard et al 2008;cf. Phillips 2021;Skrzypulec 2022).…”

“…The question of whether blindsight is a form of unconscious perception continues to spark fierce debate in philosophy and psychology (see, e.g., Morland et al 1999;Overgaard et al 2008;Brogaard 2011aBrogaard , 2011bPeters and Lau 2015;Peters et al 2016Peters et al , 2017Berger and Mylopoulos 2019;Phillips 2021;Michel and Lau 2021;Skrzypulec 2022;Michel 2023). Unlike pure sensory processing, perception is the result of a categorization of a sensory signal.…”

“…One side of the debate holds that while the visual information categorized in blindsight is not access-conscious (in Ned Block's 1995 sense), it is nonetheless a form of perception, albeit a form of unconscious perception that does not afford direct access to the categorized information (Brogaard 2011a; b; Michel and Lau 2021;Michel 2023). The opposition, by contrast, holds that blindsight is just a form of degraded conscious perception that makes the categorized information harder to access because it is degraded (Overgaard et al 2008;Phillips 2021;Skrzypulec 2022).…”