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Single Idea 7372
[filed under theme 15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 7. Blindsight
]
Full Idea
If a playing card is held in peripheral vision, we can see the card without being able to identify its colours or its shapes. That's normal sight, not blindsight, so we should be reluctant on those grounds to deny visual experience to blindsight subjects.
Gist of Idea
In peripheral vision we see objects without their details, so blindsight is not that special
Source
Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 11.4)
Book Ref
Dennett,Daniel C.: 'Consciousness Explained' [Penguin 1993], p.338
A Reaction
This is an important point in Dennett's war against the traditional all-or-nothing view of mental events. Nevertheless, blindsight subjects deny all mental experience, while picking up information, and peripheral vision never seems like that.
The
24 ideas
from 'Consciousness Explained'
7365
|
Dualism wallows in mystery, and to accept it is to give up
[Dennett]
|
7366
|
It is arbitrary to say which moment of brain processing is conscious
[Dennett]
|
7367
|
Perhaps the brain doesn't 'fill in' gaps in consciousness if no one is looking.
[Dennett]
|
7369
|
Brains are essentially anticipation machines
[Dennett]
|
7368
|
Originally there were no reasons, purposes or functions; since there were no interests, there were only causes
[Dennett]
|
7370
|
The brain is controlled by shifting coalitions, guided by good purposeful habits
[Dennett]
|
7371
|
All functionalism is 'homuncular', of one grain size or another
[Dennett]
|
7372
|
In peripheral vision we see objects without their details, so blindsight is not that special
[Dennett]
|
7373
|
Blindsight subjects glean very paltry information
[Dennett]
|
7374
|
Light wavelengths entering the eye are only indirectly related to object colours
[Dennett]
|
7376
|
We can't assume that dispositions will remain normal when qualia have been inverted
[Dennett]
|
7379
|
If an epiphenomenon has no physical effects, it has to be undetectable
[Dennett]
|
7380
|
Visual experience is composed of neural activity, which we find pleasing
[Dennett]
|
7383
|
The psychological self is an abstraction, not a thing in the brain
[Dennett]
|
7381
|
We tell stories about ourselves, to protect, control and define who we are
[Dennett]
|
7382
|
We spin narratives about ourselves, and the audience posits a centre of gravity for them
[Dennett]
|
7386
|
Selves are not soul-pearls, but artefacts of social processes
[Dennett]
|
7385
|
People accept blurred boundaries in many things, but insist self is All or Nothing
[Dennett]
|
7384
|
Words are fixed by being attached to similarity clusters, without mention of 'essences'
[Dennett]
|
7387
|
"Qualia" can be replaced by complex dispositional brain states
[Dennett]
|
7393
|
We can't draw a clear line between conscious and unconscious
[Dennett]
|
7391
|
We can know a lot of what it is like to be a bat, and nothing important is unknown
[Dennett]
|
7394
|
Conscious events can only be explained in terms of unconscious events
[Dennett]
|
14308
|
We can bring dispositions into existence, as in creating an identifier
[Dennett, by Mumford]
|