Lecture 8

Question 1

what the term ‘consciousness’ entails

Answer 1

• phenomenal consciousness or what-it-is-likeness
• conscious actions - they are under our control
• states we can report
• states of which we are aware
• access consciousness - states that make information available for later usage

Question 2

easy problems of consciousness

Answer 2

• related to well-identified cognitive abilities and functions
• can be explained scientifically

Question 3

hard problems of consciousness

Answer 3

• resists scientific methods of explanation

Question 4

how to address easy problems of consciousness

Answer 4

continuing scientific research

Question 5

how to address hard problems of consciousness

Answer 5

in 2 ways:
- pessimism - the hard problem entails that we do not have the right concepts; we are not smart enough or we need a different perspective
- optimism - the hard problem entails that we tackle the easy problems first; another would be to say that there is actually no hard problem - it is an illusion

Question 6

illusion of consciousness (illusionism)

Answer 6

does not say that consciousness does not exist but rather that it is not what it appears to be
- only seems as if there is an actual phenomenology and what we need to understand is how it comes to seem this way

Question 7

grand illusion

Answer 7

conveys the idea that our visual experience may not be what it appears to be
- it might be the case that we are wrong about the nature of seeing itself

Question 8

perceptual illusions

Answer 8

these illusions support the idea that everything is not what it seems
- they are persistent mistakes in which what is perceived is not the way we perceive it
- e.g. rubber hand illusion
- demonstates that experience should be mistaken, it could have features that are actually not there (object is not what it appears to be)

Question 9

“What is it like to see?”

Answer 9

another illusion supporting the idea that our experience is not what it seems
- after looking at a picture, you think you can reproduce it because it feels as if you have a rich mental representation of that picture in your head, however, this is not possible

Question 10

3 assumptions of the vision science

Answer 10

lead to the picture-in-the-head view of perception
- the rich array of mental/visual representations
- definition of content
- mental pictures

Question 11

picture-in-the-head view of perception

Answer 11

perception is constructing a detailed and rich representation of the object of perception

Question 12

the rich array of mental/visual representations

Answer 12

it feels as if our visual experience has no gaps, like we have perceived the whole thing at once

Question 13

definition of content

Answer 13

it answers the question ‘what do you see?”
- only the things that appear in my visual experience are part of my conscious experience

Question 14

mental pictures

Answer 14

seeing something is a process in which an array of mental pictures is constructed
- those are mental representations we could later access

Question 15

arguments supporting the Grand Illusion

Answer 15

these arguments challenge the picture-in-the-head view of perception

Question 16

the Homunculus problem

Answer 16

if we do have mental representations or pictures, who are they for?
- only delays the problem

Question 17

the theater of the mind

Answer 17

experience feels like a movie played in our heads - a stream of impressions that appear as if in the theater
- from that we could say that consciousness just becomes a place inside our heads, like a container for impressions

Question 18

gappy vision

Answer 18

we might feel as if our perception has no gaps, it’s one smooth stream but this is just an illusion - it only seems like that

Question 19

why is our perception gappy

Answer 19

• we cannot always say what the exact content of what we were seeing was
• objects rarely appear complete (person behind a desk, cat behind a fence), but we still perceive them as a whole (amodal perception - the completion of obstructed objects)
• the blind spot is an example of an actual gap in our vision, nevertheless, we still do not perceive it as such

Question 20

change blindness

Answer 20

concerns people overestimating their ability to detect change
- if the picture-in-the-head view is correct, then why are we not good at noticing changes in scenes, considering that we have the rich representation in our minds?
- we could argue that the rich information is not coming only from one of our senses

Question 21

inattentional blindness

Answer 21

we rarely see what we are looking at unless our attention is directed at it
- gorilla ball experiment

Question 22

tackling the grand problem

Answer 22

• the representational alternative (representationalism)
• the non-representational alternative

Question 23

the representational alternative (representationalism)

Answer 23

• states that there are no complete and detailed representations of the scene and there is no accumulation of information to build this picture
• visual processing involves a top-down process: rather than starting in the retina, it starts higher in the visual process, leading to a construction of a schema
• does the filling-in of details
• this alternative says that the rich picture feeling is because of the schema and the top-down processing

Question 24

the non-representaional alternative

Answer 24

• says that representations are not actually involved
• perception is a skill, a way of learning the world - it accepts the information that is already there
• the world becomes its own model with all representations being out there

Question 25

the skill theory of perception

Answer 25

states that to perceive is to do something
- perception is active and required skills
- in order to explore the world, we need to master our sensorimotor contingencies
- suggests that the rich picture feeling is because the world itself is rich and detailed