Abstract:It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide… Show more
“…Arguably, ideally or perfectly rational agents are not disposed to withhold belief when their unconscious visual information provides a source of noninferential justification for belief. But this interpretation makes Premise 2 implausible (Berger, 2020). The lack of cognitive deficits in blindsight does not show that blindsighted people are ideally or perfectly rational.…”
Section: Full Rationalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Berger (2020) raises two objections to AFB. First, Premise 2 is rejected because blindsighted subjects are less than fully rational.…”
Declan Smithies' The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019) is a defense of "Phenomenal Mentalism" according to which, necessarily, which propositions X has epistemic justification to believe at any given time is determined solely by X's phenomenally individuated mental states at that time. Smithies offers two kinds of arguments for Phenomenal Mentalism: the ones that appeal to particular cases such as blindsight (the "arguments from below") and the ones that appeal to general epistemic principles such as the JJ principle (the "arguments from above"). My focus is on the former. More precisely, I focus on a particular argument from below in Chapter 3, which I call "Argument from Blindsight". According to this argument, the cases of blindsight show that consciousness is necessary for perceptual justification. In response, I raise two worries about Argument from Blindsight: first, it is difficult to find a plausible interpretation of "full rationality" according to which the premises are true (Section 2) and, second, the argument oscillates between empirical and stipulative discussions of blindsight in a potentially problematic manner (Section 3).
“…Arguably, ideally or perfectly rational agents are not disposed to withhold belief when their unconscious visual information provides a source of noninferential justification for belief. But this interpretation makes Premise 2 implausible (Berger, 2020). The lack of cognitive deficits in blindsight does not show that blindsighted people are ideally or perfectly rational.…”
Section: Full Rationalitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Berger (2020) raises two objections to AFB. First, Premise 2 is rejected because blindsighted subjects are less than fully rational.…”
Declan Smithies' The Epistemic Role of Consciousness (2019) is a defense of "Phenomenal Mentalism" according to which, necessarily, which propositions X has epistemic justification to believe at any given time is determined solely by X's phenomenally individuated mental states at that time. Smithies offers two kinds of arguments for Phenomenal Mentalism: the ones that appeal to particular cases such as blindsight (the "arguments from below") and the ones that appeal to general epistemic principles such as the JJ principle (the "arguments from above"). My focus is on the former. More precisely, I focus on a particular argument from below in Chapter 3, which I call "Argument from Blindsight". According to this argument, the cases of blindsight show that consciousness is necessary for perceptual justification. In response, I raise two worries about Argument from Blindsight: first, it is difficult to find a plausible interpretation of "full rationality" according to which the premises are true (Section 2) and, second, the argument oscillates between empirical and stipulative discussions of blindsight in a potentially problematic manner (Section 3).
“…The role of consciousness for justification is nevertheless a matter of debate (Berger, 2014, 2020; Jenkin, 2020; Siegel, 2017). Without entering too deep into this issue, take the following case from Berger et al (2018):Consider the ordinary experience of sitting in a crowded place… and suddenly feeling as though you are being watched.…”
Section: Interpreting Metacognitive Indicators For Consciousness Rese...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The role of consciousness for justification is nevertheless a matter of debate (Berger, 2014(Berger, , 2020Jenkin, 2020;Siegel, 2017). Without entering too deep into this issue, take the following case from Berger et al (2018):…”
Section: Are Confidence-based Procedures Valid?mentioning
To study (un)conscious perception and test hypotheses about consciousness, researchers need procedures for determining whether subjects consciously perceive stimuli or not. This article is an introduction to a family of procedures called 'confidence-based procedures', which consist in interpreting metacognitive indicators as indicators of consciousness. I assess the validity and accuracy of these procedures, and answer a series of common objections to their use in consciousness research. I conclude that confidence-based procedures are valid for assessing consciousness, and, in most cases, accurate enough for our practical and scientific purposes.
Many theorists maintain that perceptual experience exhibits the what is often called the phenomenology of particularity: that in perceptual experience it phenomenally seems that there are particular things. Some urge that this phenomenology demands special accounts of perception on which particulars somehow constitute perceptual experience, including versions of relationalism, on which perception is a relation between perceivers and particular perceived objects, or complex forms of representationalism, on which perception exhibits demonstrative or special particular-involving types of content. I argue here that no such account required. I develop and defend a novel account of such phenomenology, grounded in the higher-order theory of consciousness. In short, this view holds that the phenomenology of particularity arises because suitable higher-order states make it appear to one that one is in perceptual relations to particulars, even if perception is not in any way constituted by particulars. I argue that this account has many advantages and avoids problems that other theories of such phenomenology face.
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