The Nature of Perceptual Experience

With what modes of mentality can we build a visceral, subjective sense of being in some specific mass-political society? Theorists and political cultivators standardly call upon the imagination – the kind prompted by symbols and rituals, for example. Could perception ever play such a role? I argue that it can, but that perceptions of mass-political publics come with costs of cruelty and illusion that neither democratic theorists nor participants should be willing to pay. The clearest examples of such perceptions are (...) found in fascist political culture. My discussion aims to illuminate what it is about publics, perception, and democracy that makes this so. -/- . (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that perceptual phenomenology depends on perceptual content. The aim of this paper is to make explicit an ambiguity in usual formulations of intentionalism, and to argue in favor of one way to disambiguate it. It concerns whether perceptual phenomenology depends on the content of one and only one representation (often construed as being identical to a certain perceptual experience), or instead depends on a collection of many different representations throughout the perceptual system. We argue in favor (...) of the latter option. Intentionalism so conceived can make better sense of contemporary neuroscience of perception, and is better equipped to confront several influential objections to traditional intentionalism. (shrink)

The notion of hyle seems problematic for a phenomenological foundation of experience. For this very reason, its completed invalidity was generally postulated. At the same time, there are many reflections in Husserlian writings that help us understand it better. This paper attempts to show how hyletic experience, by existing in the lived body, triggers in parallel rhythmic, vibrating, and sonorous experiences as bodily experiences. Sounds are experienced by the body before any reflections or conscious experiences of them. In this way, (...) the aporetical instance of hyletic data founds a proposal of resolution in the fundamental corporeal experience of sound. (shrink)

The basis of perception is the processing and categorization of perceptual stimuli from the environment. Much progress has been made in the science of perceptual categorization. Yet there is still no consensus on how the brain generates sensory individuals, from sensory input and perceptual categories in memory. This chapter argues that perceptual categorization is highly variable across perceivers due to their use of different perceptual strategies for solving perceptual problems they encounter, and that the perceptual system structurally adjusts to the (...) strategies that are most successful. Despite this variability, the different sensory individuals that result when different perceivers rely on different strategies nonetheless correspond to actual external world objects/features. This view is called 'perceptual pluralism'. (shrink)

Since the transparency approach to introspection need not posit a dedicated mechanism specialized for detecting one’s own mental states, its economy is often viewed as a major advantage by both proponents and opponents. But sometimes economy comes at the cost of relying on controversial views of the natures of mental states. Perceptual experience is a case in point. For example, Alex Byrne’s account relies on the view that experience constitutively involves belief, and Matthew Boyle’s account relies on the view that (...) experience constitutively involves a form of implicit consciousness of experience. In this paper, I develop a transparency account of our access to our experiences that retains the benefit of economy while avoiding the cost of relying on controversial views of the nature of experience. I start by discussing Byrne’s and Boyle’s accounts. I focus on the problems that lead them to hold the controversial views they do, and raise some challenges to their solutions. I then develop my own account. I argue that when you attend to an object, your experience gives you justification to believe that you see the object (under some descriptions). I close by highlighting some advantages of my account. I argue that it (1) can solve the problems facing Byrne and Boyle without relying on controversial views of the nature of experience; (2) respects the idea that there is something special about our access to our minds; and (3) can be generalized to other cases of introspection. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to offer a new view of the key relation between the content and the conscious character of visual experience. The author aims to support the following claims. First, the author rejects the qualia realist claim that conscious character is an intrinsic, nonrepresentational property of visual experience, for example, a pattern of activation of neurons. However, the author also rejects the rival widespread representationalist claim that the conscious character of visual experience is identical to, or (...) supervenes on, any specific property represented by visual experience. The positive proposal is the following. Conscious character is identical to those patterns of activation of neurons that are referentially or representationally alive. Conscious redness, for example, is a pattern of activations of neurons that is normally created only when brains of physical duplicates come in visual contact with some distal property. This pattern of activation is recruited by natural selection to represent that property. This is called meaning representationalism. (shrink)

This article presents a dual purpose: to carefully consider objections against the existentialist conception of the content of visual experience and to develop and defend a version of it that avoids such objections, specifically addressing the so-called "problem of particularity." The main thesis is that the existential content of visual experience should be understood as relativized, being incomplete content (rather than classical, complete propositions), modeled as a function of the sextuple of the object, agent, time, place, causal relation, and world (...) to absolute values. (shrink)

This volume takes cue from the idea that the thought of no philosopher can be understood without considering it as the result of a constant, lively dialogue with other thinkers, both in its internal evolution as well as in its reception, re-use, and assumption as a starting point in addressing past and present philosophical problems. In doing so, it focuses on a feature that is crucially emerging in the historiography of early modern philosophy and science, namely the complexity in the (...) production of knowledge. The book explores the applicability of this approach to a long-considered armchair philosopher, namely René Descartes, who is now more and more understood as a full-blown scientist, networker, and intellectual éminence grise rather than as the mere philosopher of the cogito, as well as the originator of different ‘Cartesianisms’ which encompassed many ideas and approaches for long captured by dichotomic historiographical categories as rationalism and empiricism, or speculative and experimental philosophy. The essays gathered in the volume aim to address the ways in which Descartes’s philosophy evolved and was progressively understood by scientists, philosophers, and intellectuals from different contexts and eras, either by considering direct interlocutors of Descartes such as Isaac Beeckman and Elisabeth of Bohemia, early modern thinkers who developed upon his ideas and on particular topics as Nicolas Malebranche or Thomas Willis, those who adapted his overall methodology in developing new systems of knowledge as Johannes Clauberg and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, and contemporary thinkers from continental and analytic traditions like Emanuele Severino and Peter Strawson. (shrink)

[Open Access.] Perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology: we seem to encounter real situations in the course of visual experiences, for instance. The current paper articulates and defends the claim that the contents of at least some perceptual experiences are inherently presentational. On this view, perceptual contents are not always forceless in the way that, say, the propositional content that 2 + 2 = 4 is generally taken to be, as a content that may be asserted or denied or merely supposed; (...) rather, there are perceptual contents such that any mental state or episode which has the relevant content must be one in which things seem to the given subject to be a certain way. Intuitive motivation for the view is presented and an explanatory line of argument in support of it is developed: it is argued that the recognition of inherently presentational perceptual contents allows us to explain certain representational limitations to which ordinary visualizations and other forms of perceptual mental imagery are subject. Some potential objections to the position are explored, leading to further elaboration of it. (shrink)

In recent work, Scott Soames (2010, 2013, 2015, 2019) and Peter Hanks (2011, 2013, 2015) have developed a theory of propositions on which these are constituted by complexes of intellectual acts. In this article, I adapt this type of theory to provide an account of perceptual content. After introducing terminology in section 1, I detail the approach proffered by Soames and Hanks in section 2, focusing on Hanks’s version. In section 3, I introduce a problem that these theories face, namely, (...) how to account for the unity among the relevant intellectual acts. Section 4 provides an answer to this problem of unity, while section 5 explicates the relation to Soames and Hanks. In section 6, I extend the model to a theory of the unity of experiential consciousness. Finally, in section 7, I apply the preceding considerations to debates about the nature of perceptual representation. The upshot will be that experiential unity is not simply a phenomenal feature of consciousness, but central to an account of the role perceptual representation plays in perceptual cognition. (shrink)

The argument from appearance for the content view or intentionalism attracts a lot of attention recently. In my paper, I follow Charles Travis to argue against the key premise that representational content can be ‘read off’ from a certain way that a thing looks to a subject. My arguments are built upon Travis’s original objection and a reinterpretation of Rodrick Chisholm’s comparative and noncomparative uses of appearance words. Byrne, Schellenberg and others interpret Travis’ ‘visual looks’ as Chisholm’s comparative use, and (...) appeal to the noncomparative use as an alternative to avoid Travis’s objection. I demonstrate that they misunderstand both Chisholm and Travis. Both the comparative use and the noncomparative use are semantic notions, while ‘visual looks’ is a metaphysical one. Although Chisholm’s appearance objectivism –– that appearance expressions attribute appearances to ordinary objects –– is close to ‘visual looks’, appearance objectivism is not exceptional to the noncomparative use as Byrne interprets. In the end, I also show that Byrnean’s conception of distinctive visual gestalt cannot exclude contrary representational contents, because a distinctive visual gestalt can be shared by different kinds of things. Besides, Byrne and others do not explain why a distinctive visual gestalt should be presented as ‘being instantiated’. Therefore, I conclude that representational content cannot be read off from a certain way that a thing looks to a subject; the argument from appearance thus fails. (shrink)

Proponents of cognitive penetration often argue for the thesis on the basis of combined intuitions about categorical perception and perceptual learning. The claim is that beliefs penetrate perceptions in the course of learning to perceive categories. I argue that this "diachronic" penetration thesis is false. In order to substantiate a robust notion of penetration, the beliefs that enable learning must describe the particular ability that subjects learn. However, they cannot do so, since in order to help with learning they must (...) instruct learners to employ previously existing abilities. I argue that a better approach recognizes that we can have sophisticated causal precursors to perceptual learning, but that the learning process itself must operate outside of cognitive influence. (shrink)

How many factors, i.e. departures from normality, are necessary to explain a delusion? Maher’s classic one-factor theory argues that the only factor is the patient’s anomalous experience, and a delusion arises as a normal explanation of this experience. The more recent two-factor theory, on the other hand, contends that a second factor is also needed, with reasoning abnormality being a potential candidate, and a delusion arises as an abnormal explanation of the anomalous experience. In the past few years, although there (...) has been an increasing number of scholars offering a variety of arguments in defence of Maher’s one-factor theory, these arguments have not been adequately addressed by two-factor theorists. This paper aims to address this gap by critically examining the arguments on three crucial issues: the intelligibility of delusions, the dissociation between anomalous experiences and delusions, and the empirical evidence of a second factor. I will argue that the Maherian notion of anomalous experience is not sufficient for explaining delusions and the two-factor theory is on the right track in its search for the missing factor in the aetiology of delusions. (shrink)

Extended reality devices provide users with unprecedented immersive and hybrid perceptual experiences, and users will act their bodies according to the information perceived. This shows that visual perception plays a crucial role in the formation and shaping of self-perception and spatial position. Users have a strong perceptual experience of their physical presence and self-perception in the real world as a result of their avatar perspective based on visual perception in a virtual hybrid environment, as is issued by Chalmers in his (...) "Mirror Argument". However, users can still clearly differentiate their self and spatial experience between virtual and reality. To refute Chalmers' argument regarding perceptual experience in virtual reality, this article proposes a thought experiment called "Mary's Room in the Virtual Reality World" based on the experimental evidence of neuroscience. Finally, a possible future solution to this dilemma is presented. (shrink)

Several important philosophical problems (including the problems of perception, free will, and scepticism) arise from antinomies that are developed through philosophical paradoxes. The critical strand of ordinary language philosophy (OLP), as practiced by J.L. Austin, provides an approach to such ‘antinomic problems’ that proceeds from an examination of ‘ordinary language’ (how people ordinarily talk about the phenomenon of interest) and ‘common sense’ (what they commonly think about it), and deploys findings to show that the problems at issue are artefacts of (...) fallacious reasoning. The approach is capable, and in need of, empirical development. Proceeding from a case-study on Austin’s paradigmatic treatment of the problem of perception, this paper identifies the key empirical assumptions informing the approach, assesses them in the light of empirical findings about default inferences, contextualisation failures, and belief fragmentation, and explores how these findings can be deployed to address the problem of perception. This facilitates a novel resolution of the problem of perception. Proceeding from this paradigm, the paper proposes ‘experimental critical OLP’ as a new research program in experimental philosophy that avoids apparent non-sequiturs of OLP, extends and transforms experimental philosophy’s ‘sources program’, and provides a promising new strategy for deploying empirical findings about how people ordinarily talk and think about phenomena, to address longstanding philosophical problems. (shrink)

The kind of empathy that is communicated through expressions like “I feel your pain” or “I share your sadness” is important, but peculiar. For it seems to require something perplexing and elusive: sharing another’s experience. It’s not clear how this is possible. We each experience the world from our own point of view, which no one else occupies. It’s also unclear exactly why it is so important that we share others' pains. If you are in pain, then why should it (...) matter, and be a good thing, that I am also in the same pain? Our goal in this paper is to address these questions. Specifically, our goal is to clarify how empathy, in the regimented sense of sharing another’s pain, is possible and why it is important. Central to our account is the concept of being acquainted with—that is, directly aware of—pain. When I feel my own pain, and am acquainted with it, I want the pain to stop, and I’m moved—sometimes compelled—to stop it. My acquaintance with the pain is what reveals that it is no good, to be gotten rid of, and to be avoided in the future. Acquaintance also appears to be implicated in our understanding of, and motivation to relieve, others’ pains. When I say “I feel your pain” I express an awareness of your pain, a direct appreciation of its noxious qualities, and, as with my own pain, an understanding of why it ought to be eased. Explaining how empathy is both possible and important therefore involves clarifying the nature of acquaintance: its limits, epistemic role, and motivational significance. What our analysis reveals is that agents have both epistemic and moral reasons to share other people’s pain because pain-sharing is the source of a species of character-building knowledge that we have no other way of accessing except through direct acquaintance with pain. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The difference between perception and cognition seems introspectively obvious in many cases. Perceiving and thinking have also been assigned quite different roles, in epistemology, in theories of reference and of mental content, in philosophy of psychology, and elsewhere. Yet what is the nature of the distinction? In what way, or ways, do perception and cognition differ? The paper reviews recent work on these questions. Four main respects in which perception and cognition have been held to differ are discussed. First, (...) their phenomenal character, such as the often-remarked vivacity or immediacy of perception. Second, the way in which they represent the world, e.g. the non-propositional nature of the contents, or non-discursive character of the vehicles, that have been held to characterise perceptual representation. Third, their place in cognitive architecture, i.e., roughly, in the information-flow of the mind, such as their alleged (non-)modularity. Fourth, their mind-world relations, e.g. the way in which perceptions seem to be tightly causally linked with distal or proximal stimuli. Against this background, we distinguish some main options for an account of the perception/cognition distinction, in particular concerning whether there is one, several, or no interesting and principled distinction(s) to be drawn here. (shrink)

This paper identifies three positions on the relationship between language and experience, the third of which I was not acquainted with before from my reading. It seems absurd.

Perception can’t have disjunctive content. Whereas you can think that a box is blue or red, you can’t see a box as being blue or red. Based on this fact, I develop a new problem for the ambitious predictive processing theory, on which the brain is a machine for minimizing prediction error, which approximately implements Bayesian inference. I describe a simple case of updating a disjunctive belief given perceptual experience of one of the disjuncts, in which Bayesian inference and predictive (...) coding pull in opposite directions, with the former implying that one’s confidence in the belief should increase, and the latter implying that it should decrease. Thus, predictive coding fails to approximately implement Bayesian inference across the interface between belief and perception. (shrink)

A central claim in contemporary philosophy of mind is that the phenomenal character of experience is entirely determined by its content. This paper considers an alternative called Mode Intentionalism. According to this view, phenomenal character outruns content because the intentional mode contributes to the phenomenal character of the experience. I assess a phenomenal contrast argument in support of this view, arguing that the cases appealed to allow for interpretations which do not require positing intentional modes as phenomenologically manifest aspects of (...) experience. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the objections of Adolf Reinach to Kant’s transcendental apriorism, shedding light on (1) the speculative distance separating their conceptions of philosophy (namely Reinach’s phenomenology and Kant’s transcendental critique), and (2) the consequential misunderstanding which is at the core of Reinach’s confrontation with Kant. In particular, attention is paid to the issue of the transcendental constitution of objectness, i.e. the question of the givenness of an object with respect to certain functions proper to the subject. In order to (...) illustrate how such a concept is completely absent in Reinach, I will compare his position with those of Husserl, in their relations with Kant’s interpretation of Hume’s philosophy. (shrink)

Some have defended a Fregean view of perceptual content. On this view, the constituents of perceptual contents are Fregean modes of presentation (MOPs). In this paper, I propose that perceptual MOPs are best understood in terms of object files. Object files are episodic representations that store perceptual information about objects. This information is updated when sensory conditions change. On the proposed view, when a subject perceptually represents some object a under two distinct MOPs, then the subject initiates two object files (...) that both refer to a. My defense of this view appeals to its satisfaction of four constraints that I argue theories of perceptual MOPs should satisfy. Furthermore, I show that some existent accounts of perceptual MOPs fail to satisfy them. The defended constraints also indicate what is unique about perceptual, as opposed to linguistic or cognitive, MOPs. (shrink)

Seeing-in is the experience of seeing something in a picture. This experience is single and unified. It is not like the disjoint experience of perceiving one thing while simultaneously visualizing another. This is so despite the fact that, like the latter experience, seeing-in is twofold. It involves being visually aware of two distinct objects at the same time – an array of ink-marks, on the one hand, and the depicted scene, on the other. Plausibly, it also involves being aware of (...) them in two distinct ways: while we perceive the ink-marks before us, the manner of our visual awareness of the depicted object is not perceptual. In this paper, I offer a novel way of reconciling these two features of seeing-in. I argue that the modes of visual awareness operative in seeing-in have to be understood on the model of converse relations, like lighter and heavier, in the sense that the same state arises from the obtaining of each. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that most or all perceptual experiences are infused with imaginative contributions. While the idea is not new, it has few supporters. I begin by developing a framework for the underlying debate. Central to that framework is the claim that a perceptual experience is infused with imagination if and only if there are self-generated contributions to that experience that have ampliative effect on its phenomenal and directed elements. Self-generated ingredients to experience are produced by the subject as (...) opposed to being received from the world. Some form of stored content is an obvious starting point. Ampliative effects are aspects of perceptual experience that outstrip the content the senses get from the world. This conceptual framework is applied to three case studies: object-sameness and object-kind recognition (section 2), memory colour (section 3), and perceptual constancy and amodal completion (section 4). If the three cases and my overall analysis are accepted (a substantive if), then we have a forceful inductive argument for perception being infused with imagination. (shrink)

The thesis that smells are objective and independent of perceivers may seem to be in tension with the phenomenon of perceptual variation. In this paper, I argue that there are principled reasons to think that perceptual variation is not a threat to objectivism about smells and is indeed integral to our perceptual relation to the objective world. I first distinguish various kinds of perceptual variation, and argue that the most challenging cases for the objectivist are those where an odourant smells (...) different in different conditions or to different perceivers but the odourant does not change, and there is neither misperception nor a simple failure to perceive a smell. I then argue that there is an independently plausible conception of olfactory experience on which even these challenging cases do not pose a threat to objectivism about smells. Following Kalderon’s work in the domain of colour perception, I argue that olfactory perception provides us with a partial perspective on the smells around us, where this perspective is constrained by the conditions of perception as well as by features of the perceiver. Within this framework, we can allow that perceivers with different sensitivities, or the same perceiver in different conditions, genuinely perceive the same objective smell even though this smell appears different to them. In turn, smells are best understood as qualitatively complex entities, different aspects of which can become perceptually available in different conditions and to different perceivers. (shrink)

The term attention has been used to mean so many different things that some have despaired of it being useful at all. This paper is devoted to bringing a modicum of order to the chaos through the time-honored device of categorization. The chief purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive descriptive taxonomy of the nuanced ways the term attention may be employed. It is presented in table form, followed by elucidations and illustrations of each of its items. But (...) first, I offer reasons why a taxonomy of attention is needed and explore some of its possible benefits. After presenting the taxonomy, I sketch by way of example how it might be applied to two interesting questions: is the umbrella term attention still useful?; and, what is it that ties the subdefinitions of attention together yet distinguishes them from other kinds of cognition? (shrink)

The introduction argues that nothing could be more natural than the phenomenological treatment of language; after all, its breakthrough in method consists in a renewed appreciation for the power of speech to unlock the truth of things. Interest in the phenomenology of language has increased in the last two decades due to the publication of new phenomenological texts and due to dialogue with other disciplines and approaches. At the same time, the phenomenological contribution cannot be fully appreciated apart from its (...) transcendental method. Only in light of its unique approach do the properly phenomenological themes come to the fore; among these are presence and absence, the pre-predicative, and embodied intersubjectivity. Phenomenology’s analysis of language is a vital one within the philosophy of language; it shows that language belongs to experience, and it shows how language arises from and gives voice to joint experience. (shrink)

What is the source of aesthetic knowledge? Empirical knowledge, it is generally held, bottoms out in perception. Such knowledge can be transmitted to others through testimony, preserved by memory, and amplified via inference. But perception is where the rubber hits the road. What about aesthetic knowledge? Does it too bottom out in perception? Most say “yes”. But this is wrong. When it comes to aesthetic knowledge, it is appreciation, not perception, where the rubber hits the road. The ultimate source of (...) aesthetic knowledge is feeling. In this essay, we articulate and defend the very idea of affective knowledge and reveal aesthetic knowledge to be a species of the genus. We then show how the view resolves a thorny problem that has bedeviled aesthetic epistemologists: how to reconcile the seemingly direct character of aesthetic knowledge with the possibility of acquiring such knowledge from criticism. One learns from criticism, we argue, when it guides one’s engagement with an object so that one can appreciate it in virtue of those of its features that render it worthy of appreciation. (shrink)

- First book to describe what pain means in vulnerable or special groups of people - Clinical applications described in each chapter - Provides insight into the nature of pain experience across the lifespan -/- This book, the third and final volume in the Meaning of Pain series, describes what pain means to people with pain in “vulnerable” groups, and how meaning changes pain – and them – over time. -/- Immediate pain warns of harm or injury to the person (...) with pain. If pain persists over time, more complex meanings can become interwoven with this primitive meaning of threat. These cognitive meanings include thoughts and anxiety about the adverse consequences of pain. Such meanings can nourish existential sufferings, which are more about the person than the pain, such as loss, loneliness, or despair. -/- Although chronic pain can affect anyone, there are some groups of people for whom particular clinical support and understanding is urgently needed. This applies to “vulnerable” or “special” groups of people, and to the question of what pain means to them. These groups include children, women, older adults, veterans, addicts, people with mental health problems, homeless people, or people in rural or indigenous communities. Several chapters in the book focus on the lived experience of pain in vulnerable adults, including black older adults in the US, rural Nigerians, US veterans, and adults with acquired brain injury. The question of what pain experience could mean in the defenceless fetus, neonate, pre-term baby, and child, is examined in depth across three contributions. -/- This book series aspires to create a vocabulary on the “meanings of pain” and a clinical framework with which to use it. It is hoped that the series stimulates self-reflection about the role of meaning in optimal pain management. -/- Meanings of Pain is intended for people with pain, family members or caregivers of people with pain, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. Volume I was published in 2016; Volume II in 2019. (shrink)

According to unconscious perception hypothesis (UP), mental states of the same fundamental kind as ordinary conscious seeing can occur unconsciously. The proponents of UP often support it with empirical evidence for a more specific hypothesis, according to which colours can be seen unconsciously (UPC). However, UPC is a general claim that admits of many interpretations. The main aim of this paper is to determine which of them is the most plausible. To this end, I investigate how adopting various conceptions of (...) colour and perceptual phenomenal character affects UPC’s resilience to objections. This brings me to the conclusion that the most plausible reading of UPC is the one according to which the phenomenal character of colour perception (i) is constituted by colours qua primitive mind-independent qualities of the environment and (ii) is not essentially tied to consciousness. My conclusion not only identifies the most plausible interpretation of UPC, but also highlights and supports an unorthodox version of the relational theory of perception, which is a perfectly viable yet so far overlooked stance in the debate about unconscious perception. (shrink)

I suoni e le immagini sembrano appartenere a due forme dell’esperienza profondamente distinte. Due registri sensoriali antitetici cui corrispondono due fenomeni accostabili, ma mai completamente unibili. Eppure si ricorre spesso all’espressione immagine sonora, che cosa si intende precisamente? Esiste un punto in cui i suoni e le immagini si appartengono reciprocamente? Può un’immagine risuonare e un suono essere anche un’immagine? Il testo cerca di rispondere a questi quesiti scavando e intarsiando una concettualizzazione dell’immagine sonora attraverso un dialogo con la semiotica, (...) la fenomenologia e la filosofia dell’arte. Arricchendosi di una riflessione sul rapporto con il pensiero, l’indagine sull’immagine sonora si declina in tre momenti distinti: il suono con un fondamento d’immagine in cui l’elemento fondante è dato dalla presenza dell’immagine nel suono; il suono e l’immagine che si equivalgono orizzontalmente fondendosi l’uno con l’altra; l’immagine con un fondamento sonoro, in cui si rintracciano presenze sonore nell’immagine visiva. (shrink)

This article discusses several key issues concerning the study of attention and its relation to visual perception, with an emphasis on behavioral and experiential aspects. It begins with an overview of several classical works carried out in the latter half of the 20th century, such as the development of early filter and spotlight models of attention. This is followed by a survey of subsequent research that extended or modified these results in significant ways. It covers current work on various forms (...) of induced blindness and on the capabilities of nonattentional processes. It also includes proposals about how a "just-in-time" allocation of attention can create the impression that we see our surroundings in coherent detail everywhere, as well as how the failure of such allocation can result in various perceptual deficits. The final section examines issues that have received little consideration to date, but may be important for new lines of research in the near future. These include the prospects for a better characterization of attention, the possibility of more systematic explanations, factors that may significantly modulate attentional operation, and the possibility of several kinds of visual attention and visual experience. (shrink)

It is suggested that the relationship between visual attention and conscious visual experience can be simplified by distinguishing different aspects of both visual attention and visual experience. A set of principles is first proposed for any possible taxonomy of the processes involved in visual attention. A particular taxonomy is then put forward that describes five such processes, each with a distinct function and characteristic mode of operation. Based on these, three separate kinds—or possibly grades—of conscious visual experience can be distinguished, (...) each associated with a particular combination of attentional processes. (shrink)

In his remarkable book, Visual Phenomenology, Michael Madary argues for the claim that “visual perception is an ongoing process of anticipation and fulfillment” (Madary 2017, p. 3), by drawing upon lines of evidence from Husserlian phenomenology, philosophy of perception, and the cognitive sciences. While he considers Edmund Husserl as a major influence upon his ideas, he does not aim to adhere to Husserl’s views in every regard, but instead to develop Husserl-inspired views of his own, muster support for them, and (...) bring them to bear on various issues (Ibid., pp. 4, 181). His book is therefore likely to be of interest not only to scholars of Husserlian phenomenology, but also to non-Husserlian philosophers of perception, as well as to cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Accounting for qualia in the natural world is a difficult business, and it is worth understanding why. A close examination of several theories of mind—Behaviorism, Identity Theory, Functionalism, and Integrated Information Theory—will be discussed, revealing shortcomings for these theories in explaining the contents of conscious experience: qualia. It will be argued that in order to overcome the main difficulty of these theories the senses should be interpreted as physical detectors. A new theory, Grounded Functionalism, will be proposed, which retains multiple (...) realizability while allowing for a scientifically based approach toward accounting for qualia in the natural world. (shrink)

The thresholds of human observers detecting line targets improve significantly when the targets are presented in a spatial context of collinear inducing stimuli. This phenomenon is referred to as spatial facilitation, and may reflect the output of long-range interactions between cortical feature detectors. Spatial facilitation has thus far been observed with luminance-defined, achromatic stimuli on achromatic backgrounds. This study compares spatial facilitation with line targets and collinear, edge-like inducers defined by luminance contrast to spatial facilitation with targets and inducers defined (...) by color contrast. The results of a first experiment show that achromatic inducers facilitate the detection of achromatic targets on gray and colored backgrounds, but tend to suppress the detection of chromatic targets. Chromatic inducers facilitate the detection of chromatic targets on gray and colored backgrounds, but tend to suppress the detection of achromatic targets. Chromatic spatial facilitation appears to be strongest when inducers and background are isoluminant. The results of a second experiment show that spatial facilitation with chromatic targets and inducers requires a longer exposure duration of the inducers than spatial facilitation with achromatic targets and inducers, which is already fully effective at an inducer exposure of 30 ms only. The findings point towards two separate mechanisms for spatial facilitation with collinear form stimuli: one that operates in the domain of luminance, and one that operates in the domain of color contrast. These results are consistent with neural models of boundary and surface formation which suggest that achromatic and chromatic visual cues are represented on different cortical surface representations that are capable of selectively attracting attention. Multiple copies of these achromatic and chromatic surface representations exist corresponding to different ranges of perceived depth from an observer, and each can attract attention to itself. Color and contrast differences between inducing and test stimuli, and transient responses to inducing stimuli, can cause attention to shift across these surface representations in ways that sometimes enhance and sometimes interfere with target detection. (shrink)

Perceptual neuroscience has identified mechanisms of perceptual grouping which account for the ways in which visual sensitivity to ordered structure and regularities expresses itself, in behavior and in the brain. The need to actively construct order, notably representations of objects in depth, is mandated as soon as visual signals reach the retina, given the occlusion of retinal signals by retinal veins and other retinal elements or blur. Multiple stages of neural processing transform fragmented signals into visual key representations of 3D (...) scenes that can be used to control effective behaviors. Since our survival depends on our ability to pick up order in the physical world, and since we conceive the physical world as an ordered one, our perception must somehow be sensitive to order. The articles from this collection illustrate how texture dissimilarity, boundary completion, surface filling-in, and figure-ground segregation generate perceptual order. (shrink)

This article introduces an experimental paradigm to selectively probe the multiple levels of visual processing that influence the formation of object contours, perceptual boundaries, and illusory contours. The experiments test the assumption that, to integrate contour information across space and contrast sign, a spatially short-range filtering process that is sensitive to contrast polarity inputs to a spatially long-range grouping process that pools signals from opposite contrast polarities. The stimuli consisted of thin subthreshold lines, flashed upon gaps between collinear inducers which (...) potentially enable the formation of illusory contours. The subthreshold lines were composed of one or more segments with opposite contrast polarities. The polarity nearest to the inducers was varied to differentially excite the short-range filtering process. The experimental results are consistent with neurophysiological evidence for cortical mechanisms of contour processing and with the Boundary Contour System model, which identifies the short-range filtering process with cortical simple cells, and the long-range grouping process with cortical bipole cells. (shrink)

The perception of brightness differences in Ehrenstein figures and of illusory contours in phase-shifted line gratings was investigated as a function of the contrast polarity of the inducing elements. We presented either continuous lines or line-like arrangements composed of aligned dashes or dots whose spacing was varied. A yes/no procedure was used in which naive observers had to decide whether or not they perceived a brightness difference in a given Ehrenstein figure or an illusory contour in a phase-shifted line grating. (...) The results show that brightness differences are perceived to some extent in Ehrenstein figures with inducers of opposite polarity of contrast; however, the percentage of yes response was systematically lower and response times were longer than for figures with inducers of the same polarity. Phase-shifted line gratings with lines of opposite polarity of contrast yielded stronger illusory contours and shorter response times than those with lines of the same polarity. When the sign of contrast was not the same within a given line of induction, neither differences in brightness nor illusory contours were perceived. The results suggest that the mechanisms that lead to apparent differences in brightness are more sensitive to input of the same contrast polarity, the mechanisms generating illusory contours more sensitive to input of opposite polarity. The data are discussed in the light of a multistage approach to illusory form perception and some implications for cortical models of illusory contour integration are discussed. (shrink)

In the philosophy of perception, representationalism is the view that all phenomenological differences among mental states are representational differences, in other words, differences in content. In this paper I defend an alternative view which I call external sortalism, inspired by traditional adverbialism, and according to which experiences are not essentially representational. The central idea is that the external world serves as a model for sorting, conceptualizing, and reasoning surrogatively about perceptual experience. On external sortalism, contents are construed as a kind (...) of gloss on experiences themselves. We can retain what is attractive about representationalism, namely, that perceptual experiences can be evaluated for accuracy, without problematic commitment to the idea that they bear a substantive, representational relation to external objects and properties and that this relation determines the phenomenal character of experience. (shrink)

Brain activity determines which relations between objects in the environment are perceived as differences and similarities in colour, smell, sound, etc. According to selectionism, brain activity does not create those relations; it only selects which of them are perceptually available to the subject on a given occasion. In effect, selectionism entails that perceptual experience is diaphanous, i.e. that sameness and difference in the phenomenal character of experience is exhausted by sameness and difference in the perceived items. It has been argued (...) that diaphaneity is undermined by phenomenological considerations and empirical evidence. This paper considers five prominent arguments of this sort and shows that none of them succeeds. (shrink)

The philosophical investigation of perceptual illusions can generate fruitful insights in the study of subjective time consciousness. However, the way illusions are interpreted is often controversial. Recently, proponents of the so-called dynamic snapshot theory have appealed to the Waterfall Illusion, a kind of motion aftereffect, to support a particular view of temporal consciousness according to which experience is structured as a series of instantaneous snapshots with dynamic qualities. This dynamism is meant to account for familiar features of the phenomenology of (...) time, such as succession, continuity, and change. Previous theories have typically appealed to a subjective present occupying an interval of time; that is, a “specious present.” I argue, through analysis of motion aftereffect illusions and the rare condition of akinetopsia, i.e. motion-blindness, that the Waterfall Illusion fails to support the dynamic snapshot theory as intended. Furthermore, I suggest that future theories of subjective time should see temporal phenomenology as the result of non-localised processes closely tied to the mechanism underlying consciousness generally. (shrink)

En el trabajo se exponen algunas ideas generales acerca de la interrelación entre valoración y conocimiento, así como el análisis de determinadas formas concretas en que se realiza la acción del factor valorativo sobre la ciencia y su desarrollo. Se fundamenta la tesis de que todo conocimiento, cualquiera que sea la forma en que este se presente, posee un contenido valorativo, cuya dosis depende del carácter de la relación que guarda su objeto con los intereses, necesidades y fines del sujeto (...) cognoscente. La presencia de este componente valorativo en el conocimiento no conduce necesariamente a una reproducción desfigurada de la realidad, como muchas veces se afirma; ella ciertamente puede obstaculizar dicho conocimiento, pero puede también estimularlo. Se expresa que el papel de los factores valorativos en el proceso cognoscitivo tampoco debe sobreestimarse en menosprecio de la importancia de su contenido objetivo. Por último, se muestra que es precisamente a través del sujeto del conocimiento que se realiza el condicionamiento valorativo de la ciencia y su desarrollo. (shrink)

Marie Oldfield, Pro Bono Economics & Refugee Council. Over half the total applications for asylum the UK receives each year are initially rejected, yet nearly a third of these initial rejections are subsequently overturned on appeal. This process that fails to get decisions right first time imposes significant costs, not just on the applicants themselves, but also more widely on UK taxpayers. Asylum seekers are not entitled to welfare benefits nor employment except in some limited cases, and are often placed (...) in unsuitable conditions with lack of appropriate support to prepare their case for asylum. These unfortunate circumstances mean that they are unable to gather and present all the required evidence first time, even when the case for asylum is legitimate. As a result, the application is rejected and thus begins a cycle of appeals that might eventually lead to a successful outcome for the asylum seeker but will, in the process, burden the taxpayer with unnecessary administrative cost and cause the asylum seeker needless distress and prevent them from accessing suitable economic opportunities. • Our study estimates that there are approximately 4,000 initial rejections that are successfully appealed each year and, with each appeal incurring direct administrative costs of around £1,000, the price tag of incorrect initial decisions adds up to a hefty £4 million per year in unnecessary administrative costs alone. • There are other costs, too, that negatively impact asylum seekers and taxpayers, albeit in a more indirect manner. The longer the appeals process is dragged out, the more delay there is to successful asylum seekers entering the labour market which means lost economic activity and forgone tax revenue for the Exchequer. Long periods of unemployment also result in skills attrition and lower the probability of the asylum seeker successfully entering the labour market in the future. • A lengthy appeals process heightens stress and worsens mental health in asylum seekers, a group arguably already more vulnerable on this front. Unnecessary human suffering aside, there is also a monetary cost borne by the taxpayer should NHS mental health services become involved. Thus, there is a pressing and viable case for providing asylum seekers a stable environment in which to complete their applications for asylum. This would increase the likelihood of reaching correct decisions in the first instance, avoid unnecessary administrative costs of an arduous appeals process, enable successful asylum seekers to access the labour market and contribute to the Exchequer, and avoid placing extra demands on already strained NHS mental health services. (shrink)

Presented at Philosophy Across Disciplines Conference 2021, Newcastle University. -/- As noted by philosopher Robert Pasnau, “our standard view of sound is incoherent” at best. A quick perusal of how we discuss and represent sound in our day-to-day language readily highlights a number of inconsistencies. Sound might be described roughly as emanating from the location of its material source (the ‘crack of the snare drum over there’ distal theory), as a disruption somewhere in the space in-between the sounding object and (...) the listener (the ‘longitudinal compression waves in the air’ medial theory), located with the hearer (the ‘inner sensations’ proximal theory), or perhaps as devoid of spatial characteristics at all (aspatial theory). Beyond these topographic ruminations on the location of sounds, even deeper disagreements arise around just what sorts of things sounds are. A broad array of theories treat sounds as events, as object-like particulars that travel through space, as properties of their sounding objects, etc.—with many subtle ontological variations springing up along the way. The philosophical plot further thickens as we expand from defining the ontology and spatial position of simple primary sounds through to the phenomenon of echoes, with certain theories arguably faring better than others. We’ll focus here on Casey O’Callaghan’s formulation of sounds as disturbance events which bind primary sounds and their echoes together as one. In short, the claim that echoes are identical to their associated primary sound and are not distinct sounds in their own right. Described as the ‘Primary Sound Account of Echoes’ (‘PSAE’) in Gregory Fowler’s “Against the Primary Sound Account of Echoes,” the intricacies of this particular aspect of O’Callaghan’s theory of a primary sound’s connection to its echo bears greatly upon the workability of distal theories of sound in general. What I seek to achieve in this presentation is to illustrate how O’Callaghan’s PSAE fails when subjected to increased scrutiny across a broader range of echo scenarios, which in turn presents a significant issue for proponents of distal theories of sound. (shrink)

Higher animals need to identify and track material objects because they depend on interactions with them for nutrition, reproduction, and social interaction. This paper investigates the perception of material objects. It argues, first, that material objects are tagged, in all five external senses, as bearers of the features detected by them. This happens through a perceptual process, here entitled Generalized Completion, which creates the appearance of objects that have properties that transcend the activation of sensory receptors. The paper shows, secondly, (...) that material objects are privileged subjects for perceived motion and interaction. That is, they are perceived as subjects for these properties while their parts seem to be subjects only derivatively. Material objects are the only perceptual subjects that are both multisensory and privileged. (shrink)

According to the evaluativist theory of bodily pain, the overall phenomenology of a painful experience is explained by attributing to it two types of representational content—an indicative content that represents bodily damage or disturbance, and an evaluative content that represents that condition as bad for the subject. This paper considers whether evaluativism can offer a suitable explanation of aversive auditory phenomenology—the experience of awful noises—and argues that it can only do so by conceding that auditory evaluative content would be guilty (...) of widespread error. Defending such an error-theory, moreover, comes with several explanatory costs. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is Thomas Reid's anti-skepticism: our knowledge of the external world is justified. The justificatory process, in his view, starts with and relies upon one of the main faculties of the human mind: perception. Reid's theory of perception has been thoroughly studied, but there are some missing links in the explanatory chain offered by the secondary literature. In particular, I will argue that we do not have a complete picture of the mechanism of perception of (...) bodies. The present paper, relying, in part, on a particular theory in psychology – the feature integration theory of attention – will make a contribution in this regard. (shrink)