Unconscious Perception Reconsidered

Phillips, Ian

doi:10.1111/phib.12135

Cited by 64 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 173 publications

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“…That is to say, we consider the current results to be further evidence against the idea that normal observers have any capacity for unconscious orientation discrimination. This idea is in line with others who have argued that objective thresholds should, a priori, be considered equivalent to subjective thresholds in forced-choice perceptual tasks ( Snodgrass & Shevrin, 2006;Phillips, 2017) . These findings further suggest that controlling for criterion bias may be a critical experimental difference between studies that report evidence for unconscious forced-choice discrimination sensitivity ( Lamy, Salti, & Bar-Haim , 2008;Hesselman et al, 2011;Salti et al, 2015) and those that report evidence against it (Peters & Lau, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…While this is theoretically tenable, we argue that it seems less parsimonious than the alternative interpretation that each suppression method simply fails to cause a dissociation between objective and subjective thresholds at all. As mentioned, this interpretation is in line with previous arguments that any direct perceptual discrimination sensitivity should coincide with some degree of perceptual consciousness ( Snodgrass & Shevrin, 2006;Phillips, 2017; but see Block in Phillips & Block, 2016 for an opposing view).…”

Section: An Important Limitation Is That It Remains An Open Question supporting

confidence: 89%

“…Whether normal observers can perform forced-choice discrimination tasks unconsciously, i.e., whether thresholds for objective performance and subjective awareness on these tasks in normal observers can dissociate, is controversial ( Phillips & Block, 2016;Peters et al, 2017;Phillips, 2017). This is an important issue to resolve, because a reliable means of demonstrating unconscious perception would be an invaluable tool for studying the neural correlates of right-tilted target grating in the other interval was masked by a binocular rivalry-based method (CFS in Experiments 1 & 3,interocular suppression (IS) in Experiment 2).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Knotts

Lau

Peters

2018

Preprint

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Peters & Lau (2015) found that when criterion bias is controlled for, there is no evidence for unconscious visual perception in normal observers, in the sense that they cannot directly discriminate a target above chance without knowing it. One criticism of that study is that the visual suppression method used, forward and backward masking (FBM), may be too blunt in the way it interferes with visual processing to allow for unconscious forced-choice discrimination. To investigate this question we compared FBM directly to continuous flash suppression (CFS) in a two-interval forced choice task. Although CFS is popular, and may be thought of as a more powerful visual suppression technique, we found no difference in the degree of perceptual impairment between the two suppression types. To the extent that CFS impairs perception, both objective discrimination and subjective awareness are impaired to similar degrees under FBM.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: An Important Limitation Is That It Remains An Open Question supporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Knotts

Lau

Peters

2018

Preprint

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“…Although the view that there is unconscious perception has been held by many perceptual psychologists for some time (e.g., Marcel, 1983), some argue that putatively unconscious perceptual states are instead either cases of degraded conscious perception or merely subpersonal (for an overview, see, e.g., Phillips, 2018). But such skepticism about the evidence for unconscious perception often depends on fairly demanding conceptions of perception.…”

Section: Undercutting Phenomenalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual consciousness plays no epistemic role

Berger

2020

Philosophical Issues

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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 evidence about the external world. In addition to motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well‐supported theory of consciousness—higher‐order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world.

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“…Against historical [122] and contemporary [123,124] skepticism by some about the existence of unconscious processing at all, more rigorous standards have been proposed for the demonstration that certain perceptual information is genuinely unconsciously processed [107,108]. For instance, to demonstrate such unconsciousness one may need to show that the relevant stimuli cannot be discriminated above chance at all, or that it can be discriminated better than chance under forced-choice settings, but it is subjectively indistinguishable from a 'blank' stimulus containing no information.…”

Section: Box 2: Unconscious Working Memory and Metacognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Misunderstood Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness

Brown¹,

H²,

LeDoux³

2019

Preprint

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Critics have often misunderstood the higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models, such as first-order local recurrency theory. The criticism that HOT overintellectualizes conscious experience is inaccurate because in reality the theory assumes minimal cognitive functions for consciousness; in this sense it is an intermediate position between GWT and early sensory views, and plausibly accounts for shortcomings of both. Further, compared to other existing theories, HOT can more readily account for complex everyday experiences, such as of emotions and episodic memories, and make HOT potentially useful as a framework for conceptualizing pathological mental states.

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Unconscious Perception Reconsidered

Abstract: 1 For this narrative, see Prinz (2010). A good overview of the contemporary consensus and its empirical basis can be found in Merikle, Smilek, and Eastwood (2001). Further recent defenses of unconscious perception include

Cited by 64 publications

References 173 publications

Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Perceptual consciousness plays no epistemic role

The Misunderstood Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness

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