Unconscious perception and central coordinating agency

Abstract

One necessary condition on any adequate account of perception is clarity regarding whether unconscious perception exists. The issue is complicated, and the debate is growing in both philosophy and science. In this paper we consider the case for unconscious perception, offering three primary achievements. First, we offer a discussion of the underspecified notion of central coordinating agency, a notion that is critical for arguments that purportedly perceptual states are not attributable to the individual, and thus not genuinely perceptual. We develop an explication of what it is for a representational state to be available to central coordinating agency for guidance of behavior. Second, drawing on this explication, we place a more careful understanding of the attributability of a state to the individual in the context of a range of empirical work on vision-for-action, saccades, and skilled typing. The results place pressure on the skeptic about unconscious perception. Third, reflecting upon broader philosophical themes running through debates about unconscious perception, we highlight how our discussion places pressure on the view that perception is a manifest kind, rather than a natural kind. In doing so, we resist the tempting complaint that the debate about unconscious perception is merely verbal.

Intentional action and knowledge-centered theories of control

“…A full consideration of the philosophical import of absence of awareness cases (e.g., cases involving blindsight, or rapid reflexes, or modification of intention by sensorimotor mechanisms) would require us to sort through difficult issues regarding the applicability of the notion of control to behaviors in absence of awareness cases (e.g., cases involving blindsight, or rapid reflexes, or modification of intention by sensorimotor mechanisms), the potential relationships between know-how and conscious awareness, and between know-how and unconscious mental states. In addition, one would need to defend the very viability of unconscious action cases -an issue that has lately generated a range of sophisticated discussion (see, e.g., Shepherd 2016, Wu 2020, Shepherd and Mylopoulos 2021, Kozuch 2022). We do not think it is possible to do such work in this paper.…”

The Unconscious Mind Worry: A Mechanistic-Explanatory Strategy

“…This kind of accessibility is supposed to be weaker than conscious accessibility (Phillips 2018, 493). Still, one problem is that it remains unclear how exactly Phillips wants us to understand the notion of "central coordinating agency" as there are different possible interpretations, and, as Shepherd and Mylopoulos (2021) argue, none of these seem to support Phillips's view. Furthermore, other objections that have been put forward against the personal/sub-personal distinction seem to apply to Burge's/Phillip's account as well.…”

“…There is a further argument. As argued by Taylor (2020), mental phenomena such as perception are taken to be natural kinds (see also Shepherd and Mylopoulos [2021]). Unconscious phenomena are mental if and only if they belong to a mental natural kind.…”

Confidence in consciousness research

“…I will sometimes talk about sensory activity being 'conscious' or 'unconscious'. 'Conscious sensory activity' is sensory activity 6 Here is a weak argument to support this claim: (1) Successful performance in a visual task (indicated by d') is evidence that the participant is in a state allowing her to perform a voluntary action in accordance with some task instructions stored in memory; (2) Availability for voluntary action and integration with task instructions stored in memory indicate perception-presumably because they're evidence that the relevant representations are available for a 'central coordinating agency' (Burge, 2010;Shepherd & Mylopoulos, 2021;Quilty-Dunn, 2019). Therefore, successful performance in a visual task indicates perception.…”