Category: NYU

When this “CFS” process is working properly, 1. Subjects are at chance in making a choice between alternative pictures that have been projected to the suppressed (non-Mondrian) eye. 2. Subjects give the lowest confidence rating on almost all trials. 3. Subjects often insist they are seeing nothing other than the Mondrian. I have used a…

Debate on Unconscious Perception IAN PHILLIPS AND NED BLOCK Part 1: Phillips To the untutored ear, the idea that perception does not require consciousness may sound as absurd as the idea that thunderstorms do not require anything to be happening in the sky (cf. Wiggins 2001: 218), or that being red does not require being…

The Anna Karenina Principle and Skepticism about Unconscious Perception NED BLOCK New York University All conscious perceptions are alike but each unconscious perception is unconscious in its own way. This “Anna Karenina” (Tolstoy, 1901, first sentence) principle concerning unconscious perception (Block, 2011) holds because conscious perception is a matter of oscillating feed-forward and feed-back signals…

What we need to think about when wethink about unconscious perception Ian Phillips St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX26HS, UK. E-mail: ian.phillips@st-annes.ox.ac.uk Theoretical discussions of unconscious perception typically focus on how consciousness should be operationally defined (Lau 2008; Seth et al. 2008; Irvine 2013). However, a compelling case of unconscious perception requires both…

Does unconscious perception really exist? Continuing the ASSC20debate MeganA.K.Peters1,*,†, Robert W. Kentridge2, Ian Phillips3 and Ned Block4 1Psychology Department, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; 2Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham DH13LE, UK; 3St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX26HS, UK; 4Department of Philosophy, New York University, New York, NY…

Competition Whatseemstomethemostpromisingapproachisbasedonthe notion of competition. I know that some will see competition as an implementation of sampling but the key difference, as I have been saying, isthat competition routinely happens without any need for a perceptual decision. One kind—not the only kind— of competition is involved in the ‘global workspace’ model of consciousness [40] (figure…

If perception is probabilistic, why does it not seem probabilistic? rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org Opinion piece Cite this article: Block N. 2018 If perception is probabilistic, why does it not seem probabilistic? Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 373: 20170341. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0341 Accepted: 5 June 2018 One contribution of 17 to a theme issue ‘Perceptual consciousness and cognitive access’. Subject…

e No-Post-perceptual Cognition Paradigm in Action There is, however, a solution to be found in a recent experiment by Brascamp and colleagues [23]. (To avoid misunderstanding, note that this experiment did not involve nystagmus). In this study, the authors reasoned that the detection of prefrontal transitions in binocular rivalry might have to do with the…

No-Report Paradigm in Binocular Rivalry The stronger frontal correlations with transitions in binocular rivalry may have been due to the fact that the cognitive processes involved in deciding what to report involve frontal activations. That ideamotivatedtheno-reportparadigm.Ifoneeyeisshownagratingmovingtotheleftandtheother eye is shown a grating moving to the right, the subject is aware of leftward motion (usually in the…

What Is Wrong with the No-Report Paradigm and How to Fix It Ned Block1,* Is consciousness based in prefrontal circuits involved in cognitive processes like thought, reasoning,andmemoryorisitbasedinsensoryareasinthebackoftheneocortex?Theno-report paradigmhasbeencrucialtothisdebatebecauseitaimstoseparatetheneuralbasisofthecognitive processes underlying post-perceptual decision andreportfromtheneural basisofconscious perception itself. However, the no-report paradigm is problematic because, even in the absence of report, subjects might engage in post-perceptual cognitive…