Abstract
A common objection to representationalism is that a representationalist view of phenomenal character cannot accommodate the effects that shifts in covert attention have on visual phenomenology: covert attention can make items more visually prominent than they would otherwise be without altering the content of visual experience. Recent empirical work on attention casts doubt on previous attempts to advance this type of objection to representationalism and it also points the way to an alternative development of the objection.
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Notes
We are assuming that human visual experiences have accuracy conditions (representational contents). For a recent defense of this way of thinking about the output of the human visual system, see Burge (2010).
Wu is targeting the stronger, reductive claim that experiences are phenomenally similar or different in virtue of their similarity or difference in representational content—not the weaker supervenience claim.
Prinzmetal et al. (2009) distinguish PRIORITIZATION and STIMULATION, but do not discuss STANDARDS. Prinzmetal and Landau (2010) argue that there is experimental data which favors STIMULATION over the serial version of PRIORITIZATION. They do not discuss the parallel version of PRIORITIZATION, and they fail to realize that the data discussed actually count against STIMULATION as much as the serial version of PRIORITIZATION. For their data and argument, see Prinzmetal and Landau (2010, pp. 52–55). According to their accumulator model (STIMULATION), the cue is taken as evidence for a target at the cued location. Otherwise, evidence accumulates at the same rate for the attended and non-attended locations, and the threshold is the same for each location. It follows that, for the two-target trials, the non-cued location should never win the race to threshold, yet the target at the non-cued location is reported 20% of the time. In order for their accumulator model to work, we need an additional stipulation: when the non-cued location wins, it does not simply “win the race to threshold.” Instead, the cued location reaches threshold first but (somehow) this event fails to produce a response; meanwhile, the non-cued location continues to accumulate evidence and reaches threshold at a later time, producing a response. With this additional stipulation, however, the experimental evidence no longer counts against the serial version of PRIORITIZATION. We could say that subjects tend to begin by assessing the evidence for the cued location. On occasion the evidence passes threshold without triggering a response. In these cases the subjects assess the evidence at the non-cued location and respond to the target there. The serial version of PRIORITIZATION is now consistent with the timing of subjects’ responses. It may seem implausible that evidence would pass threshold and yet not trigger a response. Note, though, that, if we disallow this possibility, the experimental evidence is inconsistent with STIMULATION as well as with the serial version of PRIORITIZATION. On the other hand, if we embrace this possibility, the experimental evidence is consistent with both of these models.
The idea that feature-based attention does not affect the accuracy of perceptual judgments has been challenged by more recent research, as reviewed in Carrasco (2011). Our challenge to representationalism rests, however, on the results of Prinzmetal and colleagues rather than those of Moore and Egeth. Moore and Egeth (1998) is still noteworthy for two reasons. First, it provides a model for the prioritization-based account we offer for the results of Prinzmetal et al. Second, it suggests the possibility that, under certain circumstances, feature-based attention affects the phenomenology but not the content of visual experience, a possibility that warrants further investigation.
It can be difficult to identify the assertoric character of experience. A brief comment on the nature of itches may help. It is somewhat doubtful that itches merely report or inform. After all, we have a hard time understanding how itches might be accurate or inaccurate. It seems more plausible to suppose that itches command scratching here now (Hall 2008; Klein 2007; Tumulty 2009). On the face of it, what is commanded by the itch, the content of the itch, is something that can be common to a tactile perception. We can also perceive that there is scratching here now, as when the command is satisfied. Attending to the felt difference between an itch and a correlate tactual perception of scratching is useful for picking out the assertoric character of the latter: we are evidently attending to something other than truth-evaluable content, which is roughly the same for both states.
This term is due to Bill Lycan, who writes: “Now, I am myself a quasi-representationalist at best…because I have no official reason to deny that part of phenomenal character, even within a single sense modality, is constituted by functional rather than representational properties” (Lycan 1996, pp. 134–135)
Cf. Smithies (2011).
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Neil Mehta and an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments. Thanks also to Benj Hellie for useful comments on an antecedent to this paper.
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Ganson, T., Bronner, B. Visual prominence and representationalism. Philos Stud 164, 405–418 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9853-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9853-3