Phillips argues that Block faces a “serious internal challenge” in defending the claim that unconscious perception is of the same fundamental kind as conscious perception. This challenge is said to result from Block’s commitment to phenomenal overflow. However, in this paper, I demonstrate that Phillips’ rejection of overflow likewise renders his view on unconscious perception “internally challenged” and therefore equally problematic.

Phenomenal overflow has garnered significant attention in the field of consciousness research due to its potential to shed light on the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness, it postulates that the phenomenal consciousness of individuals may exceed their differential access consciousness, because of a phenomenon observed in certain scientific psychological experiments where subjects claim to perceive all that is presented to them but are only able to report part of it. This phenomenon has been challenged by critics who argue (...) that the apparent perceptual richness is merely an illusion. However, upon a reexamination of relevant experimental data, it is evident that the illusory interpretation is at least partially unreasonable, as it is facing similar issues to those of overflow, and the debate goes on and on. (shrink)

Is consciousness independent of the general-purpose information processes known as ‘cognitive access’? The dominantmethodology for supporting this independence hypothesis appeals to partial report experiments as evidence for perceptual consciousness in the absence of cognitive access. Using a standard model of evidential support, and reviewing recent elaborations of the partial report paradigm, this article argues that the paradigm has the wrong structure to support the independence hypothesis. Like reports in general, a subject’s partial report is evidence that she is conscious of (...) information only where that information is cognitively accessed. So partial report experiments could dissociate consciousness from cognitive access only if there were uncontroversial evidence forconsciousness which did not imply reportability. There is no such evidence. An alternative, broadly Marrian methodology for supporting the independence hypothesis is suggested, and some challenges to it outlined. This methodology does not require experimental evidence for consciousness in the absence of cognitive access. Instead it focuses on a function of perceptual consciousness when a stimulus is cognitively accessed. If the processes best suited to implement this function exclude cognitive access, the independence hypothesis will be supported. One relevant function of consciousness may be reflected in reason-based psychological explanations of a subject’s behaviour. (shrink)