Phenomenal Presence

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Belief ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
The Third ◽  
Spatial Properties ◽  
Perceptual Presence

Many different features figure consciously in our perceptual experiences, in the sense that they make a subjective difference to those experiences. These features range from colours and shapes to volumes and backsides, from natural or artefactual kinds to reasons for perceptual belief, and from the existence and externality of objects to the relationality and wakefulness of our perceptual awareness of them. The topic of this collection of essays is the different ways in which features like these can be phenomenally present in perceptual experience. In particular, the focus is on features that are less often discussed, and the perceptual presence of which is less obvious because they are out of view or otherwise easily overlooked, features given in a non-sensory manner, and features that are categorical in the sense that they pertain to all perceptual experiences alike (such as their justificatory power, their wakefulness, or the externality of their objects). The book is divided into four parts, each dealing with a different kind of phenomenal presence. The first addresses the nature of the presence of perceptual constancies and variations, while the second investigates the determinacy and ubiquity of the presence of spatial properties in perception. The third part deals with the presence of hidden or occluded aspects of objects, while the last part of the volume discusses the presence of categorical aspects of perceptual experience. Together, the contributions provide a thorough examination of which features are phenomenally present in perception, and what it is for them to figure in experience in this way.

The Meditations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Developmental Reading ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Brain Image ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Third ◽  
Real Work ◽  
Sensible Qualities ◽  
The Brain

Despite its difference in aspiration, the Meditations preserves the basic structure of perceptual experience outlined in Descartes’s earliest works. The chapter explores Descartes’s notion of an idea and uses a developmental reading to clear up the mystery surrounding material falsity. In the third Meditation, our protagonist does not yet know enough about extension in order to be able to tell whether her idea of cold is an idea of a real feature of bodies or merely the idea of a sensation. By the time she reaches the end of her reflections, she has learned that sensible qualities are at most sensations. As in his earliest stages, Descartes believes that the real work of perceiving the geometrical qualities of bodies is done by the brain image, which he persists in calling an ‘idea,’ at least when it is the object of mental awareness.

Imaginative Presence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Kind
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Perceptual Presence

When looking at an object, we perceive only its facing surface, yet we nonetheless perceptually experience the object as a three-dimensional whole. This gives us what Alva Noë has called the problem of perceptual presence, i.e. the problem of accounting for the features of our perceptual experience that are present as absent. Although he proposes that we can best solve this problem by adopting an enactive view of perception, one according to which perceptual presence is to be explained in terms of the exercise of our sensorimotor capacities, this chapter argues that this is a mistake. Rather, we can best account for presence in absence in terms of the exercise of our imaginative capacities.

Perception and Primary Knowledge

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-69
Author(s):  
Michael Ayers
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Decisive Reason ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

A phenomenological analysis of perceptual experience, conducted with an eye on experimental psychology, addresses a series of questions. What is phenomenology? What makes perception of one’s environment as one’s environment? Does the phenomenal integration of the senses give decisive reason for ‘direct realism’? Do we perceive causal relations, or only infer them? Are we perceptually aware of acting? Are we perceptually aware of the causality of perception itself, and if so, in some cases or in all? It is argued that perceiving is not only direct cognitive contact with reality, but that the perceptual relation is itself an object of perceptual awareness. Accordingly, conscious perceptual knowledge comes with knowledge that and of how one has it. Other forms of knowledge (e.g. a priori knowledge) are analogous. A distinction is drawn between primary and secondary knowledge, such that that there could be no secondary knowledge without some primary knowledge.

scholarly journals A construção da experiência perceptiva: o que isso quer dizer?

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Gary Hatfield
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Visual Space ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Stimulus Information ◽  
Spatial Properties

Classical constructivists such as Rock and Hoffman contend that the processes of perception are intelligent and construct perceptual experience by going beyond the stimulus information or by creating a percept that deviates from the physical properties of the object. On these terms, Gibson’s theory of perception is anti-constructivist. After reviewing classical constructivism, this article maintains, first, that the phenomenology of visual space shows a deviation from physical spatial properties, by being contracted in depth, even under fullcue conditions, a fact that makes trouble for Gibson’s version of direct realism. Second, independently of the first argument, it contends that perception is pervasively constructed in the sense that stimulus information must be transformed to yield perception. Accordingly, perception is radically constructed in its very bones.

scholarly journals Three comments on Teller’s “bridge locus”

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 219-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. ANTHONY MOVSHON
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Visual Pathway ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

AbstractThe notion of a set of neurons that form a “bridge locus” serving as the immediate substrate of visual perception is examined in the light of evidence on the architecture of the visual pathway, of current thinking about perceptual representations, and of the basis of perceptual awareness. The bridge locus is likely to be part of a tangled web of representations, and this complexity raises the question of whether another scheme that relies less on geography might offer a better framework. The bridge locus bears a close relationship to the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), and like the NCC may be a concept which is no longer precise enough to provide a useful basis for reasoning about the relationship between brain activity and perceptual experience.

scholarly journals Distinguishing the neural correlates of perceptual awareness and post-perceptual processing

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Cohen ◽  
Kevin Ortego ◽  
Andrew Kyroudis ◽  
Michael Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Visual Masking ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Conscious Processing ◽  
Human Participants

AbstractTo identify the neural correlates of perceptual awareness, researchers often compare the differences in neural activation between conditions in which an observer is or is not aware of a stimulus. While intuitive, this approach often contains a critical limitation: In order to link brain activity with perceptual awareness, observers traditionally report the contents of their perceptual experience. However, relying on observers’ reports is problematic because it is difficult to know if the neural responses being measured are associated with conscious perception or with post-perceptual processes involved in the reporting task (i.e., working memory, decision-making, etc.). To address this issue, we combined a standard visual masking paradigm with a recently developed “no-report” paradigm in male/female human participants. In the visual masking paradigm, observers saw images of animals and objects that were visible or invisible depending on their proximity to masks. Meanwhile, on half of the trials, observers reported the contents of their perceptual experience (i.e., report condition), while on the other half of trials they refrained from reporting about their experiences (i.e., no-report condition). We used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine how visibility interacts with reporting by measuring the P3b event related potential (ERP), one of the proposed canonical “signatures” of conscious processing. Overall, we found a robust P3b in the report condition, but no P3b whatsoever in the no-report condition. This finding suggests that the P3b itself is not a neural signature of conscious processing and highlights the importance of carefully distinguishing the neural correlates of perceptual awareness from post-perceptual processing.Significance statementWhat are the neural signatures that differentiate conscious and unconscious processing in the brain? Perhaps the most well-established candidate signature is the P3b event-related potential (ERP), a late slow wave that appears when observers are aware of a stimulus, but disappears when a stimulus fails to reach awareness. Here, however, we found that the P3b does not track what observers are perceiving but instead tracks what observers are reporting. When observers are aware of simple visual stimuli, the P3b is nowhere to be found unless observers are reporting the contents of their experience. These results challenge the well-established notion of the P3b as a neural marker of awareness and highlight the need for new approaches to the neuroscience of consciousness.

scholarly journals Perceptual Experience and Seeing-as

2015 ◽  
pp. 123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Enrique Kalpokas
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Belief ◽  
Main Thesis

According to Rorty, Davidson and Brandom, to have an experience is to be caused by our senses to hold a perceptual belief. This article argues that the phenomenon of seeing-as cannot be explained by such a conception of perceptual experience. First, the notion of experience defended by the aforementioned authors is reconstructed. Second, the main features of what Wittgenstein called “seeing aspects” are briefly presented. Finally, several arguments are developed in order to support the main thesis of the article: seeing-as cannot be explained by the conception of experience defended by Rorty, Davidson and Brandom.

scholarly journals A Better Disjunctivist Response to the ‘New Evil Genius’ Challenge

2017 ◽  
Vol 94 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 101-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kegan J. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Perceptual Belief ◽  
Diagnostic Problem ◽  
Order Problem ◽  
First Order ◽  
The Third ◽  
Diagnostic Problems ◽  
Epistemological Disjunctivism ◽  
Trait Level

This paper aims for a more robust epistemological disjunctivism (ed) by offering on its behalf a new and better response to the ‘new evil genius’ problem. The first section articulates the ‘new evil genius challenge’ (neg challenge) to ed, specifying its two components: the ‘first-order’ and ‘diagnostic’ problems for ed. The first-order problem challenges proponents of ed to offer some understanding of the intuition behind the thought that your radically deceived duplicate is no less justified than you are for adopting her perceptual beliefs. In the second section, the author argues that blamelessness explanations are inadequate to the task and offer better explanations in their place—that of ‘trait-level virtue’ and ‘reasonability’. The diagnostic problem challenges proponents of ed to explain why it is that classical internalists disagree with them about how to interpret new evil genius considerations. The proponent of ed owes some error theory. The author engages this problem in the third section, arguing that classical internalists are misled to overlook disjunctivist interpretations of new evil genius thinking owing to a mistaken commitment to a kind of ‘vindicatory’ explanation of proper perceptual belief.

scholarly journals AVICENNA ON ANIMAL SELF-AWARENESS, COGNITION AND IDENTITY

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Ahmed Alwishah
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Study ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
The Third ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive and systematic study of Avicenna's account of animal self-awareness and cognition. In the first part, I explain how, for Avicenna, in contrast to human self-awareness, animal self-awareness is taken to be indirect, mixed-up (makhlūṭ), and an intermittent awareness. In his view, animal self-awareness is provided by the faculty of estimation (wahm); hence, in the second part, I explore the cognitive role of the faculty of estimation in animals, and how that relates to self-awareness. The faculty of estimation, according to Avicenna, serves to distinguish one's body and its parts from external objects, and plays a role in connecting the self to its perceptual activities. It follows that animal self-awareness, unlike human self-awareness, is essentially connected to the body. In the third part of the paper, I show that, while Avicenna denies animals awareness of their self-awareness, he explicitly affirms that animals can grasp their individual identity, but, unlike humans, do so incidentally, as part of their perceptual awareness.

Perception and Perceptual Belief

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-23
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Perceptual Belief ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Phenomenal Properties

This chapter shows how perception is experiential, relational, and representational: in broad terms, a phenomenally representational, discriminative, non-deviant causal relation to an object. In seeing, we have visual experience; in visual experience that is perceptual and not merely sensory, as in hallucinations, some object is visually represented as having certain properties; and genuinely seeing an object entails that it exists. This view of perception is a version of realism. It is realistic about both the objects of perception and the phenomenal properties we instantiate in perceptual experience. The view leaves open, however, the ultimate ontological status of those objects and properties. The properties, however, must be understood to have a character that enables us both to experience what, phenomenologically, it is like to see and what, externally, the things seen are like physically.

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