Are There Unconscious Perceptual Processes?

Consciousness and Cognition 20 (2):449-63 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Blindsight and vision for action seem to be exemplars of unconscious visual processes. However, researchers have recently argued that blindsight is not really a kind of uncon- scious vision but is rather severely degraded conscious vision. Morten Overgaard and col- leagues have recently developed new methods for measuring the visibility of visual stimuli. Studies using these methods show that reported clarity of visual stimuli correlates with accuracy in both normal individuals and blindsight patients. Vision for action has also come under scrutiny. Recent findings seem to show that information processed by the dor- sal stream for online action contributes to visual awareness. Some interpret these results as showing that some dorsal stream processes are conscious visual processes (e.g., Gallese, 2007; Jacob & Jeannerod, 2003). The aim of this paper is to provide new support for the more traditional view that blindsight and vision for action are genuinely unconscious per- ceptual processes. I argue that individuals with blindsight do not have access to the kind of purely qualitative color and size information which normal individuals do. So, even though people with blindsight have a kind of cognitive consciousness, visual information process- ing in blindsight patients is not associated with a distinctly visual phenomenology. I argue further that while dorsal stream processing seems to contribute to visual awareness, only information processed by the early dorsal stream (V1, V2, and V3) is broadcast to working memory. Information processed by later parts of the dorsal stream (the parietal lobe) never reaches working memory and hence does not correlate with phenomenal awareness. I con- clude that both blindsight and vision for action are genuinely unconscious visual processes.

Similar books and articles

The dorsal stream and the visual horizon.Michael Madary - 2011 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10 (4):423-438.
Non-Visual Consciousness and Visual Images in Blindsight.Berit Brogaard - 2012 - Consciousness and Cognition 21 (1):595-596.
Pointing the way to a unified theory of action and perception.Mel Goodale - 1997 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (4):749-750.
Blindsight and philosophy.Gerald Vision - 1998 - Philosophical Psychology 11 (2):137-59.
Reference, perception, and attention.Athanasios Raftopoulos - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 144 (3):339 - 360.
Color experience in blindsight?Berit Brogaard - 2011 - Philosophical Psychology 24 (6):767 - 786.
Perceiving pictures.Bence Nanay - 2011 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10 (4):461-480.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-02-22

Downloads
754 (#18,666)

6 months
220 (#9,468)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Berit Brogaard
University of Miami

Citations of this work

Unconscious Perception Reconsidered.Ian Phillips - 2018 - Analytic Philosophy 59 (4):471-514.
Consciousness and Criterion: On Block's Case for Unconscious Seeing.Ian Phillips - 2015 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (2):419-451.
Conscious vision guides motor action—rarely.Benjamin Kozuch - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (3):443-476.
The Object View of Perception.Bill Brewer - 2017 - Topoi 36 (2):215-227.

View all 53 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

On a confusion about a function of consciousness.Ned Block - 1995 - Brain and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2):227-–247.
Availability: The cognitive basis of experience?David J. Chalmers - 1997 - In Ned Block, Owen J. Flanagan & Guven Guzeldere (eds.), The Nature of Consciousness. MIT Press. pp. 148-149.

View all 25 references / Add more references