In a recent article, [Sergent, C. & Dehaene, S. . Is consciousness a gradual phenomenon? Evidence for an all-or-none bifurcation during the attentional blink, Psychological Science, 15, 720–729] claim to give experimental support to the thesis that there is a clear transition between conscious and unconscious perception. This idea is opposed to theoretical arguments that we should think of conscious perception as a continuum of clarity, with e.g., fringe conscious states [Mangan, B. . Sensation’s ghost—the non-sensory “fringe” of consciousness, Psyche, (...) 7, 18]. In the experimental study described in this article, we find support for this opposite notion that we should have a parsimonious account of conscious perception. Our reported finding relates to the hypothesis that there is more than one perceptual threshold [Merikle, P.M., Smilek, D. & Eastwood, J.D. . Perception without awareness: perspectives from cognitive psychology, Cognition, 79, 115–134], but goes further to argue that there are different “levels” of conscious perception. (shrink)

In Jacobsen, M.H. (ed.): Sociologies of the Unnoticed. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008.

Subliminal perception (SP) is today considered a well-supported theory stating that perception can occur without conscious awareness and have a significant impact on later behaviour and thought. In this article, we first present and discuss different approaches to the study of SP. In doing this, we claim that most approaches are based on a dichotomic measure of awareness. Drawing upon recent advances and discussions in the study of introspection and phenomenological psychology, we argue for both the possibility and necessity of (...) using an elaborated measure of subjective states. In the second part of the article, we present findings where these considerations are implemented in an empirical study. The results and implications are discussed in detail, both with reference to SP, and in relation to the more general problem of using elaborate introspective reports as data in relation to studies of cognition. (shrink)

The problem of other minds has a distinguished philosophical history stretching back more than two hundred years. Taken at face value, it is an epistemological question: it concerns how we can have knowledge of, or at least justified belief in, the existence of minds other than our own. In recent decades, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and primatologists have debated a related question: how we actually go about attributing mental states to others (regardless of whether we ever achieve knowledge or rational (...) justification in this domain). Until the mid-nineties, the latter debate – which sometimes goes under the name of the “mindreading” debate – was characterized by a fairly clear-cut opposition between two theoretical outlooks: “theory-theory” (TT) and “simulation theory” (ST). Theory-theorists typically argued that we attribute mental states to others on the basis of a “theory of mind” that is either constructed in early infancy and subsequently revised and modified (Gopnik 1996), or else is the result of maturation of innate mindreading “modules” (Baron-Cohen 1995). (shrink)

In this paper we argue that awareness comes in degrees, and we propose a novel multi-factor account that spans both subjective experiences and perceptual representations. At the subjective level, we argue that conscious experiences can be degraded by being fragmented, less salient, too generic, or flash-like. At the representational level, we identify corresponding features of perceptual representations—their availability for working memory, intensity, precision, and stability—and argue that the mechanisms that affect these features are what ultimately modulate the degree of awareness. (...) We conclude the paper by demonstrating why the original interpretations of certain empirical findings that apparently pose problems for our account are, in fact, flawed. (shrink)

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale , through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings , through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering , in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of (...) the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine which scale best correlates with performance, and whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies. (shrink)

A compelling new approach to the problem that has haunted twentieth century philosophy in both its analytical and continental shapes. No other book addresses as thoroughly the parallels between Wittgenstein and leading Continental philosophers such as Levinas, Husserl, and Heidegger.

What is philosophy? How should we do it? Why should we bother to? These are the kinds of questions addressed by metaphilosophy - the philosophical study of the nature of philosophy itself. Students of philosophy today are faced with a confusing and daunting array of philosophical methods, approaches and styles and also deep divisions such as the notorious rift between analytic and Continental philosophy. This book takes readers through a full range of approaches - analytic versus Continental, scientistic versus humanistic, (...) 'pure' versus applied - enabling them to locate and understand these different ways of doing philosophy. Clearly and accessibly written, it will stimulate reflection on philosophical practice and will be invaluable for students of philosophy and other philosophically inclined readers. (shrink)

A compelling new approach to the problem that has haunted twentieth century philosophy in both its analytical and continental shapes. No other book addresses as thoroughly the parallels between Wittgenstein and leading Continental philosophers such as Levinas, Husserl, and Heidegger.

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

The volume provides clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The book gives equal weight to analytical and continental approaches, and pays attention to approaches that are often overlooked.

It is a study of the phenomenological philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger. Through a critical discussion including practically all previously published English and German literature on the subject, the aim is to present a thorough and evenhanded account of the relation between the two. The book provides a detailed presentation of their respective projects and methods, and examines several of their key phenomenological analyses, centering on the phenomenon of being-in-the-world. It offers new perspectives on Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology, e.g. concerning (...) the importance of Husserl's phenomenology of the body, the relationship between the Husserlian concept of "constitution" and Heidegger's notion of "transcendence", as well as in its argument that "being" designates the central phenomenon for both phenomenologists. Though the study sacrifices nothing in terms of argumentative rigor or interpretative detail, it is written in such a way as to be accessible and rewarding to non-specialists and specialists alike. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology offers clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The chapters in this volume approach the question of how to do philosophy from a wide range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, deconstruction, experimental philosophy, hermeneutics, Kantianism, methodological naturalism, phenomenology, and pragmatism. They explore general conceptions of philosophy, centred on the question of what the point of philosophising might be; the method of conceptual analysis and its recent naturalistic (...) critics and competitors; perspectives from continental philosophy; and also a variety of methodological views that belong neither to the mainstream of analytic philosophy, nor to continental philosophy as commonly conceived. Together they will enable readers to grasp an unusually wide range of approaches to methodological debates in philosophy. (shrink)

A number of recent publications have argued that a scientific approach to consciousness needs a rigorous approach to first-person data collection. As mainstream experimental psychology has long abandoned such introspective or phenomenological method, there is at present no generally agreed upon method for first-person data collection in experimental consciousness studies. There are, however, a number of recent articles that all claim to provide a unique contribution to such a methodology. This article reviews these suggestions and extracts their core features. It (...) is argued that the suggested methods are generally overlapping and compatible, and a number of concrete methods that easily are applied to experimental studies are put forward. (shrink)

Blindsight is classically defined as residual visual capacity, e.g., to detect and identify visual stimuli, in the total absence of perceptual awareness following lesions to V1. However, whereas most experiments have investigated what blindsight patients can and cannot do, the literature contains several, often contradictory, remarks about remaining visual experience. This review examines closer these remarks as well as experiments that directly approach the nature of possibly spared visual experiences in blindsight.

Phenomenology was one of the twentieth century’s major philosophical movements and continues to be a vibrant and widely studied subject today. The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and themes in this exciting subject, and essential reading for any student or scholar of phenomenology. Comprising over fifty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into five clear parts: main figures in the phenomenological movement, from Brentano to (...) Derrida main topics in phenomenology phenomenological contributions to philosophy phenomenological intersections historical postscript. Close attention is paid to the core topics in phenomenology such as intentionality, perception, subjectivity, the self, the body, being and phenomenological method. An important feature of the Companion is its examination of how phenomenology has contributed to central disciplines in philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy of religion as well as disciplines beyond philosophy such as race, cognitive science, psychiatry, literary criticism and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

'Behavioral Methods in Consciousness Research' is the first book of its kind, providing an overview of methods and approaches for studying consciousness. The chapters are written by leading researchers and experts who describe the methods they actually use in their own studies, along with their pitfalls, problems, and difficulties.

Phenomenology was one of the twentieth century’s major philosophical movements and continues to be a vibrant and widely studied subject today. _The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology_ is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and themes in this exciting subject, and essential reading for any student or scholar of phenomenology. Comprising over fifty chapters by a team of international contributors, the _Companion_ is divided into five clear parts: main figures in the phenomenological movement, from Brentano to (...) Derrida main topics in phenomenology phenomenological contributions to philosophy phenomenological intersections historical postscript. Close attention is paid to the core topics in phenomenology such as intentionality, perception, subjectivity, the self, the body, being and phenomenological method. An important feature of the _Companion_ is its examination of how phenomenology has contributed to central disciplines in philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy of religion as well as disciplines beyond philosophy such as race, cognitive science, psychiatry, literary criticism and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

We describe a patient LS, profoundly deaf in both ears from birth, with underdeveloped superior temporal gyri. Without hearing aids, LS displays no ability to detect sounds below a fixed threshold of 60 dBs, which classifies him as clinically deaf. Under these no-hearing-aid conditions, when presented with a forced-choice paradigm in which he is asked to consciously respond, he is unable to make above-chance judgments about the presence or location of sounds. However, he is able to make above-chance judgments about (...) the content of sounds presented to him under forced-choice conditions. We demonstrated that LS has faint sensations from auditory stimuli, but questionable awareness of auditory content. LS thus has a form of type-2 deaf hearing with respect to auditory content. As in the case of a subject with acquired deafness and deaf hearing reported on a previous occasion, LS’s condition of deaf hearing is akin in some respects to type-2 blindsight. As for the case of type 2 blindsight the case indicates that a form of conscious hearing can arise in the absence of a fully developed auditory cortex. (shrink)

As is the case with other concepts about mental affairs, the concept of introspection has many different interpretations. Some seem to consider introspecting a perceptive act and others see it as a thinking activity . For the present purpose, we will claim it as a common understanding in all such theories that introspection presupposes consciousness . States of consciousness, broadly discussed in the philosophical and empirical literature as first order states of consciousness, are states in which a subject is aware (...) of some or other object, thought, or feeling. Introspective states, however, are states in which a subject directs his or her attention towards their own conscious state. According to this understanding which we claim is a widespread one introspection can exist only in conscious subjects, and, furthermore, it is by way of introspection that a subject can learn about having this or that experience. To avoid misunderstandings, we wish to underline that the claim is not that experiencing as such is dependent upon such acts of introspection. On the contrary, we believe that a subject can have all kinds of intero- and exteroceptive experiences, directing attention towards the represented object . It is only when the subject directs attention not towards the object as such but towards the very state of being conscious of the object that he or she is introspective. (shrink)

Proponents of the so-called “interactive turn in social cognition research” maintain that mainstream research on social cognition has been fundamentally flawed by its neglect of social interaction, and that a new paradigm is needed in order to redress this shortcoming. We argue that proponents of the interactive turn (“interactionists”) have failed to properly substantiate their criticisms of existing research on social cognition. Although it is sometimes unclear precisely what these criticisms of existing theories are supposed to target, we sketch two (...) possibilities: interactionists can either accept the primary explanandum addressed by mainstream social cognition research—namely mindreading—and claim that interactionism contributes some hitherto neglected but necessary component of a successful explanans, or they can argue that mainstream research has focused on a misconceived explanandum. We argue that interactionist claims of both sorts are problematic. (shrink)

In this short text, a distinguished philosopher turns his attention to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems of all: How it is that we are able to sort and classify different things as being of the same natural class? Professor Armstrong carefully sets out six major theories—ancient, modern, and contemporary—and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recognizing that there are no final victories or defeats in metaphysics, Armstrong nonetheless defends a traditional account of universals as the (...) most satisfactory theory we have.This study is written for advanced students, but as Armstrong goes considerably beyond his earlier work on this topic, it will interest professional scholars as well. Carefully plotted and clearly written, Universals is both a paradigm of exposition and a case study on the value of careful analysis of fundamental issues in philosophy. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

Phenomenology was one of the twentieth century’s major philosophical movements and continues to be a vibrant and widely studied subject today. _The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology_ is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and themes in this exciting subject, and essential reading for any student or scholar of phenomenology. Comprising over fifty chapters by a team of international contributors, the _Companion_ is divided into five clear parts: main figures in the phenomenological movement, from Brentano to (...) Derrida main topics in phenomenology phenomenological contributions to philosophy phenomenological intersections historical postscript. Close attention is paid to the core topics in phenomenology such as intentionality, perception, subjectivity, the self, the body, being and phenomenological method. An important feature of the _Companion_ is its examination of how phenomenology has contributed to central disciplines in philosophy such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, aesthetics and philosophy of religion as well as disciplines beyond philosophy such as race, cognitive science, psychiatry, literary criticism and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:In a recent issue of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Matt Bower argues forcefully against A. D. Smith's interpretation of Husserl as a disjunctivist. But I argue in this discussion note that the disjunctive reading of Husserl remains plausible. For it seems Husserl was committed to the idea that perceptions essentially have singular contents, while hallucinations do not.

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

The relation between first and higher order mental states is currently unknown. In particular, the relation between conscious experience and introspection is difficult as the same methods are used to investigate them. In order to make progress in the scientific understanding of consciousness, introspection or both, it is fundamental to understand whether their relation is serial or reciprocal. Although the amount of empirical evidence directly addressing this question is sparse, the little that exists suggests a more complex situation that must (...) be taken into account in order to characterise the relationship between first and higher order mental states. We propose a testable integrative model in an attempt to explain the existing data and to make new empirical predictions. (shrink)

This chapter develops a perceptual solution to the epistemological problem of other minds, relying on central ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The Merleau-Pontian account is contrasted with another attempted perceptual solution to the other minds problem, and it is argued that only the former meets the phenomenologists' desideratum of providing an alternative to inferential solutions. The chapter also provides responses to various objections to the perceptual solution, including a pair of objections recently put forward by Alec Hyslop.

Claude Romano and Andrea Staiti have recently discussed Husserl’s account of perception in relation to debates in current analytic philosophy between so-called “conjunctivists” and “disjunctivists”. Romano and Staiti offer strikingly different accounts of the nature of illusion and hallucination, and opposing readings of Husserl. Romano thinks hallucinations and illusions are fleeting, fragile phenomena, while Staiti claims they are inherently retrospective phenomena. Romano reads Husserl as being committed to a form of conjunctivism that Romano rejects in favour of a version of (...) disjunctivism. Staiti, by contrast, claims that, from a Husserlian viewpoint, conjunctivism and disjunctivism are equally untenable. I suggest that both Romano and Staiti offer implausible accounts of illusions and hallucinations, and deliver premature verdicts on Husserl in relation to the analytic debates on perception. (shrink)