The Emperor's New Phenomenology? The Empirical Case for Conscious Experience without First-Order Representations

In Adam Pautz & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Blockheads! Essays on Ned Block's Philosophy of Mind and Consciousness. MIT Press (2019)
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Abstract

We discuss cases where subjects seem to enjoy conscious experience when the relevant first-order perceptual representations are either missing or too weak to account for the experience. Though these cases are originally considered to be theoretical possibilities that may be problematical for the higher-order view of consciousness, careful considerations of actual empirical examples suggest that this strategy may backfire; these cases may cause more trouble for first-order theories instead. Specifically, these cases suggest that (I) recurrent feedback loops to V1 are most likely not the neural correlate of first-order representations for conscious experience, (II) first-order views seem to have a problem accounting for the phenomenology in these cases, and either (III) a version of the ambitious higher-order approach is superior in that it is the simplest theory that can account for all results at face value, or (IV) a view where phenomenology is jointly determined by both first-order and higher-order states. In our view (III) and (IV) are both live options and the decision between them may ultimately be an empirical question that cannot yet be decided.

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Author Profiles

Richard Brown
LaGuardia Community College (CUNY)

References found in this work

Consciousness and Mind.David M. Rosenthal - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press UK.
Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness.Joseph Levine - 2001 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access.Ned Block - 2011 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15 (12):567-575.
Attention and mental paint1.Ned Block - 2010 - Philosophical Issues 20 (1):23-63.

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