The aesthetic tradition has identified as paradigmatically sublime such objects as imposing mountains and intense storms, as well as monumental art. But the tradition also acknowledges less paradigmatic cases, including sometimes mathematical structures or abstract concepts. In this paper, we argue that there is also a case for considering phenomenal consciousness – the experiential quality of subjective awareness – as a sublime phenomenon. One appreciates this, we argue, when one is struck by (fitting) awe upon contemplating (a) the perplexing existence (...) of something like phenomenal consciousness in an otherwise completely material universe and (b) the role of consciousness in injecting meaning and value in an otherwise brutally factual reality. (shrink)

Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the (...) justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublime of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there do not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration. (shrink)

This paper proposes a classificatory framework for disjunctivism about the phenomenology of visual perceptual experience. Disjunctivism of this sort is typically divided into positive and negative disjunctivism. This distinction successfully reflects the disagreement amongst disjunctivists regarding the explanatory status of the introspective indiscriminability of veridical perception and hallucination. However, it is unsatisfactory in two respects. First, it cannot accommodate eliminativism about the phenomenology of hallucination. Second, the class of positive disjunctivism is too coarse-grained to provide an informative overview of the (...) current dialectical landscape. Given this, I propose a classificatory framework which preserves the positive-negative distinction, but which also includes the distinction between eliminativism and non-eliminativism, as well as a distinction between two subclasses of positive disjunctivism. In describing each class in detail, I specify who takes up each position in the existing literature, and demonstrate that this classificatory framework can disambiguate some existing disjunctivist views. (shrink)

This paper argues for the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experiences. Naïve realism holds that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is constituted by environmental objects that the subject perceives. Phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experience states that perceptual experience has intentionality in virtue of its phenomenology. I first argue that naïve realism is not incompatible with phenomenal intentionalism. I then argue that phenomenal intentionalists can handle two objections to it by adopting naïve realism: the first (...) objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a veridical perceptual experience is directed at a particular object rather than any other object of the same kind. The second objection is that phenomenal intentionalism cannot explain how a perceptual experience is directed at a type of external object rather than other types of objects without appealing to a resemblance relation between a perceptual experience and an external object, which is considered to be problematic. (shrink)

This paper aims to reveal the source of the dispute between naive realism and intentionalism. To accomplish this task, it examines Adam Pautz’s challenge to naive realism, according to which a naive intuition about visual phenomenology, which is the only workable case for naive realism, is problematic. It argues that naive realists can address the challenge from Pautz by rejecting his assumption that naive realists and intentionalists agree on the nominal definition of visual phenomenology. The paper then argues that the (...) reason naive realists want to preserve the naive intuition is its irresistibility rather than its reliability. Given this, it concludes that the disagreement between naive realism and intentionalism is rooted in what philosophical projects they tackle. Naive realists are engaged in the philosophical project of delineating a coherent view of the actual world in which the irresistible naive intuition can be true; the intentionalist philosophical project differs from it. (shrink)

Metacontrast is a visual illusion in which the visibility of a target stimulus is virtually lost when immediately followed by a nonoverlapping mask stimulus. For a colored target, metacontrast is color-selective, with target visibility markedly reduced when the mask and target are the same color, but only slightly reduced when the colors differ. This study investigated neural correlates of color-selective metacontrast for cone-opponent red and green stimuli in the human V1, V2, and V3 using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Neural activity (...) was suppressed when the target was rendered less visible by the same-colored mask, and the suppression was localized in the cortical region retinotopically representing the target, correlating with the perceptual topography of visibility/invisibility rather than the physical topography of the stimulus. Retinotopy-based group analysis found that activity suppression was statistically significant for V2 and V3 and that its localization to the target region was statistically significant for V2. These results suggest that retinotopic color representations in early visual areas, especially in V2, are closely linked to the visibility of color. (shrink)