145 research outputs found
What Is Wrong with the No-Report Paradigm and How to Fix It
Is consciousness based in prefrontal circuits involved in cognitive processes like thought, reasoning, and memory or, alternatively, is it based in sensory areas in the back of the neocortex? The no-report paradigm has been crucial to this debate because it aims to separate the neural basis of the cognitive processes underlying post-perceptual decision and report from the neural basis of conscious perception itself. However, the no-report paradigm is problematic because, even in the absence of report, subjects might engage in post-perceptual cognitive processing. Therefore, to isolate the neural basis of consciousness, a no-cognition paradigm is needed. Here, I describe a no-cognition approach to binocular rivalry and outline how this approach can help resolve debates about the neural basis of consciousness
Finessing the Bored Monkey Problem
This is a response to Ian Phillips and Jorge Morales, "The Fundamental Problem with No-Cognition Paradigms," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 202
Attention and perceptual adaptation
Commentary on Andy Clark's target article on predictive coding
Sexism, racism, ageism and the nature of consciousness
Everyone would agree that the American flag is red, white and blue. Everyone should also agree that it looks red, white and blue to people with normal color vision in appropriate circumstances. If a philosophical theory led to the conclusion that the red stripes cannot look red to both men and women, both blacks and whites, both young and old, we would be reluctant (to say the least) to accept that philosophical theory. But there is a widespread philosophical view about the nature of conscious experience that, together with some empirical facts, suggests that color experience cannot be veridical for both men and women, both blacks and whites, both young and ol
The puzzle of perceptual precision
This paper argues for a failure of correspondence between perceptual representation and what it is like to perceive. If what it is like to perceive is grounded in perceptual representation, then, using considerations of veridical representation, we can show that inattentive peripheral perception is less representationally precise than attentive foveal perception. However, there is empirical evidence to the contrary. The conclusion is that perceptual representation cannot ground what it is like to perceive
Do causal powers drain away
No one has contributed as much to our understanding of the problems of mental causation in recent years as Jaegwon Kim. We non-reductive materialists must face up to the serious difficulties he has raised for our position.1 In this note, I will discuss one issue concerning the main argument of Mind in a Physical World, the Causal Exclusion Argument. The issue is whether it is a consequence of the Causal Exclusion Argument that all macro level causation is an illusion, with all of the apparent causal powers of mental and other macro properties draining into the bottom level of physics. I will argue that such a consequence would give us reason to reject the Causal Exclusion Argument. But there is also a stronger challenge, the charge that, if there is no bottom level of physics, the Causal Exclusion Argument has the consequence that "causal powers would drain away into a bottomless pit and there wouldn’t be any causation anywhere.
States of Mind
Review of Christof Koch, "States of mind: a neuroscientist searches for the seat of consciousness.
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