A number of studies have investigated how immersion in a virtual reality environment can affect participants’ implicit biases. These studies presume associationism about implicit bias. Recently philosophers have argued that associationism is inadequate and have made a case for understanding implicit biases propositionally. However, no propositionalist has considered the empirical work on virtual reality and how to integrate it into their theories. I examine this work against a propositionalist background, in particular, looking at the belief and patchy endorsement models. I (...) argue that the results therein can only be accommodated by a model which recognizes structural heterogeneity, that is, one which allows for implicit biases being both associatively and non-associatively structured. My preferred view – that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings – allows for this, as well as for heterogeneity at the level of content (propositional and imagistic), a feature which also earn its explanatory keep in this context. I conclude that empirical work on virtual reality and implicit bias gives us a reason to prefer a pluralist model of bias, and that my unconscious imagination model, in its recognizing wide-ranging heterogeneity, is uniquely placed to accommodate the results of work on virtual reality and bias mitigation. (shrink)

The intuitive view that memories are characterized by a feeling of pastness, perceptions by a feeling of presence, while imagination lacks either faces challenges from two sides. Some researchers complain that the “feeling of pastness” is either unclear, irrelevant or isn’t a real feature. Others point out that there are cases of memory without the feeling of pastness, perception without presence, and other cross-cutting cases. Here we argue that the feeling of pastness is indeed a real, useful feature, and although (...) this feeling does not define memory ontologically, it is a characteristic marker which helps us easily categorise a mental state first-personally. We outline several cognitive features that underlie this experience, including the feeling of past accessibility, ergonomic significance, immersion, objectivity and mental strength. Our account is distinctly phenomenal, rather than doxastic, although our web of beliefs may contribute to this experience. (shrink)

Over the last decade or so, several researchers have considered the predictive processing framework (PPF) to be a useful perspective from which to shed some much-needed light on the mechanisms behind psychosis. Most approaches to psychosis within PPF come down to the idea of the “atypical” brain generating inaccurate hypotheses that the “typical” brain does not generate, either due to a systematic top-down processing bias or more general precision weighting breakdown. Strong at explaining common individual symptoms of psychosis, such approaches (...) face some issues when we look at a more general clinical picture. In this paper, we propose an update on the current accounts of psychosis based on the realization that a neurotypical brain constantly generates non-actual, de-coupled, counterfactual hypotheses as part of healthy cognition. We suggest that what is going on in psychosis, at least in some cases, is not so much a generation of erroneous hypotheses, but rather an inability to correctly use the counterfactual ones. This updated view casts “accurate” cognition as more fragile and delicate, but also closes the gap between psychosis and typical cognition. (shrink)

In defence of naïve realism, Fish has advocated an eliminativist view of hallucination, according to which hallucinations lack visual phenomenology. Logue, and Dokic and Martin, respectively, have developed the eliminativist view in different manners. Logue claims that hallucination is a non-phenomenal, perceptual representational state. Dokic and Martin maintain that hallucinations consist in the confusion of monitoring mechanisms, which generates an affective feeling in the hallucinating subject. This paper aims to critically examine these views of hallucination. By doing so, I shall (...) point out what theoretical requirements are imposed on naïve realists who characterize hallucinations as non-visual-sensory phenomena. (shrink)

[Open Access.] Perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology: we seem to encounter real situations in the course of visual experiences, for instance. The current paper articulates and defends the claim that the contents of at least some perceptual experiences are inherently presentational. On this view, perceptual contents are not always forceless in the way that, say, the propositional content that 2 + 2 = 4 is generally taken to be, as a content that may be asserted or denied or merely supposed; (...) rather, there are perceptual contents such that any mental state or episode which has the relevant content must be one in which things seem to the given subject to be a certain way. Intuitive motivation for the view is presented and an explanatory line of argument in support of it is developed: it is argued that the recognition of inherently presentational perceptual contents allows us to explain certain representational limitations to which ordinary visualizations and other forms of perceptual mental imagery are subject. Some potential objections to the position are explored, leading to further elaboration of it. (shrink)

Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non‐inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light (...) of its rational etiology. (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists try to understand, from different perspectives, the nature of the experience of reality. Given this shared, interdisciplinary interest, it would be beneficial to have a coherent story about the experience of reality, in which there is reciprocal contribution from both philosophy and cognitive science. This paper wants to pave the way for this shared enterprise on the investigation of the experience of reality. I first distinguish between two indicators of reality. (1) The experience of availability to (...) motor interaction. (2) The experience of mind-independence. I then show how invoking an analysis of the results from vision science, concerning the visual mechanisms of stereopsis, which is related to the visual impression of a solid, three-dimensional world available to motor interaction, successfully provides a coherent description of the first indicator. Furthermore, I suggest that the analysis of the evidence about the first indicator is very informative in preparing the ground for the investigation of the second indicator. This is shown by discussing experimental evidence directly related to stereopsis, as well as some perceptual phenomena that are usually described by invoking the story from vision science about stereopsis. Thus, the epistemological analysis of the results from vision science on stereopsis, offered in this paper, is beneficial in a twofold manner, for the interdisciplinary enterprise aimed at understanding the experience of reality. It is explicitly beneficial in the description of the first indicator, and implicitly beneficial to understand the second indicator. Finally, it also suggests future research about their relation. (shrink)

If I see, hear, or touch a sparrow, the sparrow seems real to me. Unlike Bigfoot or Santa Claus, it seems to exist; I will therefore judge that it does indeed exist. The “sense of existence” refers to the kind of awareness that typically grounds such ordinary judgments of existence or “reality.” The sense of existence has been invoked by Humeans, Kantians, Ideologists, and the phenomenological tradition to make substantial philosophical claims. However, it is extremely controversial; its very existence has (...) been called into question. This paper aims to clarify the nature and reality of the sense of existence by studying a psychiatric condition in which the sense appears to be disrupted: depersonalization disorder (DPD). (shrink)

A common sense view is illustrated by Doubting Thomas, and surfaces in many philosophical and psychological writings : Touching is better than seeing. But can we make sense of this privilege? We rule out that it could mean that touch is more informative than vision, more ‘objective’ or more directly in contact with reality. Instead, we propose that touch offers not a perceptual, but a metacognitive advantage: touch is not more objective than vision but rather provides comparatively higher subjective certainty.