Abstract
One necessary condition on any adequate account of perception is clarity regarding whether unconscious perception exists. The issue is complicated, and the debate is growing in both philosophy and science. In this paper we consider the case for unconscious perception, offering three primary achievements. First, we offer a discussion of the underspecified notion of central coordinating agency, a notion that is critical for arguments that purportedly perceptual states are not attributable to the individual, and thus not genuinely perceptual. We develop an explication of what it is for a representational state to be available to central coordinating agency for guidance of behavior. Second, drawing on this explication, we place a more careful understanding of the attributability of a state to the individual in the context of a range of empirical work on vision-for-action, saccades, and skilled typing. The results place pressure on the skeptic about unconscious perception. Third, reflecting upon broader philosophical themes running through debates about unconscious perception, we highlight how our discussion places pressure on the view that perception is a manifest kind, rather than a natural kind. In doing so, we resist the tempting complaint that the debate about unconscious perception is merely verbal.
Highlights
By broad consensus across cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, unconscious perceptual states exist
The existence of unconscious perceptual states is widely taken to have important implications for the nature of perception (Berger and Nanay 2016; Burge 2010; Phillips 2018), for the epistemic role of consciousness in perception (Berger et al 2018; Siegel 2016; Smithies 2019), for how we understand the functions of perception (Peters et al 2017), and for how we understand the functions of consciousness (Rosenthal 2008)
In a discussion of results like Norman et al (2013), which demonstrate that attention can be directed to objects not consciously seen, Phillips claims that the attentional processing at issue is ‘akin to a stimulus-driven reflex, operating entirely outside of voluntary, agentive control’ (25) and that if subjects cannot use representations to guide responses, central coordinating agency is not implicated
Summary
By broad consensus across cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, unconscious perceptual states exist. We discuss a notion that plays a key (if somewhat subterranean) role in much of the debate far This is the notion of central coordinating agency. While Phillips’s points are well-taken in many cases, we offer a novel interpretation of a key result that, we argue, puts pressure on Phillips One way it does so is via a more subtle understanding of the architecture of central coordinating agency. We elucidate this more subtle understanding and argue that thinking of central coordinating agency in this way brings a wider range of research to bear more directly on the issue of unconscious perception We consider whether the debate about unconscious perception can be considered merely verbal
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
