Can nonconceptual content be stored in visual memory?

Philosophical Psychology 23 (5):639-668 (2010)
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Abstract

Dartnall claims that visual short-term memory stores nonconceptual content , in the form of compressed images. In this paper I argue against the claim that NCC can be stored in VSTM. I offer four reasons why NCC cannot be stored in visual memory and why only conceptual information can: NCC lasts for a very short time and does not reach either visual short-term memory or visual long-term memory; the content of visual states is stored in memory only if and when object-centered attention modulates visual processing and this modulation signifies the onset of the conceptualization of that content; only categorical high-level information that characterizes conceptual content and not metric and precise iconic information that characterizes NCC can be stored in visual memory for long periods; and if NCC were stored in visual memory then this would allow recognitional judgments pertaining to NCC—one could recognize the precise shade of a color that one had seen before. However NCC does not allow such recognitional judgments

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Athanassios Raftopoulos
University of Cyprus

Citations of this work

Taking non‐conceptualism back to Dharmakīrti.Amit Chaturvedi - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1):3-29.
Colour Vision and Seeing Colours.Will Davies - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (3):657-690.
Colour Vision and Seeing Colours.Will Davies - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axw026.

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References found in this work

Mind and World.John Henry McDowell - 1994 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Consciousness, Color, and Content.Michael Tye - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
The Varieties of Reference.Louise M. Antony - 1987 - Philosophical Review 96 (2):275.

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