Attention and Mental Paint (original) (raw)
Related papers
Philosophical Issues, 2010
Much of recent philosophy of perception is oriented towards accounting for the phenomenal character of perception-what it is like to perceive-in a non-mentalistic way-that is, without appealing to mental objects or mental qualities. In opposition to such views, I claim that the phenomenal character of perception of a red round object cannot be explained by or reduced to direct awareness of the object, its redness and roundness-or representation of such objects and qualities. Qualities of perception that are not captured by what one is directly aware of or by representational content are instances of what Gilbert Harman has called "mental paint" (Block, 1990; Harman, 1990). The claim of this paper is that empirical facts about attention point in the direction of mental paint. The argument starts with the claim (later modified) that when one moves one's attention around a scene while keeping one's eyes fixed, the phenomenology of perception can change in ways that do not reflect which qualities of objects one is directly aware of or the way the world is represented to be. These changes in the phenomenology of perception cannot be accounted for in terms of awareness of or representation of the focus of attention because they manifest themselves in experience as differences in apparent contrast, apparent color saturation, apparent size, apparent speed, apparent time of occurrence and other appearances. There is a way of coping with these phenomena in terms of vague contents, but vague contents cannot save direct realism or representationism because the kind of vagueness required clashes wth the phenomenology itself.
Phainomenon, 2019
This study aims at exposing the phenomenological description of attention as presented by Husserl in his 1904-05 Göttingen-lecture Principal Parts of the Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge, in its relevance for the study of so-called “intuitive re-presentations”, that is, phantasy and image-consciousness. Starting with the exposition of the fundamental traits of the intentional theory of attention, this study discusses the definition of attention in the terms of meaning [Meinen] and interest, which allows it to become an encompassing modification of all kinds of lived experiences that does not imply an alteration of their act-character (Husserl, 2004: 73). We refer to this character of attention as “plasticity”. In what follows, the study underlines these two definitions of attention and their importance for the understanding of phantasy and image-consciousness. Both kinds of re-presentations will be described stressing the role of attention in the “structuring” of the intentiona...
Attention and Representationalism
This paper is the translation of the article "Attention et représentationnalisme", published in Dialogue (cf above). I argue for a representational understanding of phenomenal saliency, in the lights of attention research.
Perception, Attention and the Grand Illusion
2000
This paper looks at two puzzles raised by the phenomenon of inattentional blindness. First, how can we see at all if, in order to see, we must first perceptually attend to that which we see? Second, if attention is required for perception, why does it seem to us as if we are perceptually aware of the whole detailed visual field when it is quite clear that we do not attend to all that detail? We offer a general framework for thinking about perception and perceptual consciousness that addresses these questions and we propose, in addition, an informal account of the relation between attention and consciousness. On this view, perceptual awareness is a species of attention.
Philosophical Studies, 2007
Early modern empiricists thought that the nature of perceptual experience is given by citing the object presented to the mind in that experience. Hallucination and illusion suggest that this requires untenable mind-dependent objects. Current orthodoxy replaces the appeal to direct objects with the claim that perceptual experience is characterized instead by its representational content. This paper argues that the move to content is problematic, and reclaims the early modern empiricist insight as perfectly consistent, even in cases of illusion, with the realist contention that these direct objects of perception are the persisting mind-independent physical objects we all know and love.
Ways of Seeing - The Innocent Eye, Individual View and Visual Realism in Art.
Journal of Consiousness Studies, 2004
Based upon the studies to be outlined, I will argue that the innocent eye should not be thought of as a kind of raw sensory data which, through various artistic devices, can become a focus of attention. In effect, I submit, various commentators have misrepresented this concept to the extent that it has caused much confusion in debates relating to art. In short, they continue to promote the notion of a viewer-centred representation as pure, untainted visual information that can be accessed without recourse to visual knowledge (e.g., Read, 1965, pp. 76,78; Winner, 1982; Howe, 1989; Thomas and Silk, 1990; Snyder and Thomas, 1997; Humphrey, 1998; etc.). Here, I suggest, there is no pre-formed image that is presented to the later stages of the visual brain for further analysis. What may exist at these earlier levels is a set of algorithms, which are a function of the way the neural system is arranged to deal with incoming information. These algorithms are not in themselves images but rather rules implicit in the way neurones fire relative to one another so that they are able to encode incoming information efficiently and reliably (for more on this see below). Beyond this early stage of processing further analysis deals with larger chunks of information. This stage is characterised by those evolutionarily-mediated affordances integral to the visual system that have enabled rapid, efficient disambiguation of the world; more specifically, where information is sufficiently ‘labelled’ so that it can be recognised quickly and economically thereby leading to constancy for form. This I will refer to as the ‘expeditious eye’, (or usual/typical view as realised by recourse to what I term ‘firstorder neurones’) because it is a preliminary, yet essential, capacity that promotes survival in an uncertain environment.
Consciousness and the Flow of Attention
2012
Visual phenomenology is highly illusive. One attempt to operationalize or to measure it is to use ‘cognitive accessibility’ to track its degrees. However, if Ned Block is right about the overflow phenomenon, then this way of operationalizing visual phenomenology is bound to fail. This thesis does not directly challenge Block’s view; rather it motivates a notion of cognitive accessibility different from Block’s one, and argues that given this notion, degrees of visual phenomenology can be tracked by degrees of cognitive accessibility. Block points out that in the psychology literature, ‘cognitive accessibility’ is often regarded as either all or nothing. However, the notion motivated in the thesis captures the important fact that accessibility comes in degrees (consider the visual field from fovea the periphery). Different legitimate notions of accessibility might be adopted for different purposes. The notion of accessibility motivated here is weaker than Block’s ‘identification’ (2007) but is stronger than Tye’s ‘demonstration’ (2007). The moral drawn from the discussion of Block can be applied to the debate between Dretske and Tye on the speckled-hen style examples. Dretske’s view is even stronger than Block’s, but his arguments from various figures he provides do not support his conclusion since he does not have right ideas about fixation and attention. Tye’s picture is more plausible but his notion of accessibility is so weak that he reaches the excessive conclusion that accessibility overflows phenomenology. Three ramifications might be considered in the final part of the thesis. The first is the relation between this debate and the one concerning higher-order/same-order theories of consciousness. The second is about John McDowell’s early proposal about demonstrative concepts in visual experiences. The third is the relation between the interpretation of the Sperling case proposed here and McDowell new view of experiential contents, i.e., his story about how we carve out conceptual contents out of intuitional contents without falling pray to the Myth of the Given.