Indicators of perception: I. Subliminal perception, subception, unconscious perception: An analysis in terms of psychophysical indicator methodology.

Rosenthal's rendition of representationalism denies intentionalism. His higher order theory instead asserts that a perceptual state's phenomenal character is set by that state's being related to, because represented by, another, but higher order, cognitive state. The theory arises from the doubtful supposition of unconscious perception and mistakenly construes intrinsic phenomenal character extrinsically, as one state's serving as the content of another. Yet it remains mysterious how and why a higher order state might be so potent as to determine phenomenal character at all. Better to resist higher order theory’s embrace of dubious unconscious perceptual states and account for states so-called simply in terms of humdrum mnemonic malfeasance. Moreover, since the suspect theory allows higher order misrepresentation, it implies sufferance of impossible phenomenal character. Equally problematic, representationalism pitched at the higher order entails the existence of bogus phenomenal character when upstairs states represent downstairs nonperceptual states.

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Contents of Unconscious Color Perception

Review of Philosophy and Psychology ◽

10.1007/s13164-021-00552-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Błażej Skrzypulec

Keyword(s):

Phenomenal Character ◽

Color Perception ◽

Representational Content ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Unconscious Perception ◽

Theoretical Investigations ◽

Significant Support

AbstractIn the contemporary discussions concerning unconscious perception it is not uncommon to postulate that content and phenomenal character are ‘orthogonal’, i.e., there is no type of content which is essentially conscious, but instead, every representational content can be either conscious or not. Furthermore, this is not merely treated as a thesis justified by theoretical investigations, but as supported by empirical considerations concerning the actual functioning of the human cognition. In this paper, I address unconscious color perception and argue for a negative thesis—that the main experimental paradigms used in studying unconscious color perception do not provide support for the position that conscious and unconscious color representations have the same type of content. More specifically, I claim that there is no significant support for the claim that unconscious vision categorically represents surface colors.

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