Knowledge Tree
blindsight
Facts (16)
Sources
The Problem of Hard and Easy Problems cambridge.org Mar 31, 2023 8 facts
claimThe dissociation between 'guess' and 'awareness' verbal reports is the best-understood method for demonstrating nonconscious perception in both normal subjects and blindsight patients, as cited by Dienes (2008), Dienes et al. (1995), and Marcel (1994).
claimBlindsight patients exhibit good performance only in the experimental context of forced-choice tasks that prompt them to guess which option is correct.
quoteThe blindsight subject cannot image the stimulus, about which he has just guessed, in relation to other stimuli, or to their spatial setting, because it is not perceived.
quoteOne way to find out what something is good for is to examine what it is like not to have it. […] there is a broad spectrum of syndromes in which there is a loss of acknowledged awareness of capacities or their contents, ranging from detection, through selective attention, semantic and associative meaning, episodic memory, to language. […] The message that emerges from the clinic is unmistakable: all of the syndromes can possess implicit processing, but none of the patients can live by implicit processing alone. It cannot be used by the patient in thinking or in imagery, and this is a severe penalty. […] The amnesic patient is severely impaired, and requires continuous custodial care. Priming is intact, but of no evident use to the amnesic victim. He cannot relate what is primed today to what was primed yesterday, or to any other item in memory, including time and place and other (but not only) contextual information; he is functionally fixed in the semantic or procedural present. […] Similarly, the blindsight patient continues to fail to identify objects and to bump into them in his blind field. If he can detect a stimulus in the blind field, he does not know what it is. There may be some occasional benefit to him if he can duck as a rapidly zooming object approaches (although typically this is not a common response in blindsight subjects).
claimBlindsight patients fail to spontaneously initiate visually guided behavior in response to stimuli in their impaired visual field when left on their own.
claimWeiskrantz's natural experiments regarding awareness deficits, such as amnesia, blindsight, prosopagnosia, and aphasia, manipulate brain activity rather than consciousness as the independent variable.
claimThe observation that blindsight patients fail to spontaneously initiate visually guided behavior supports the view that consciousness has a function in normal subjects.
referenceDocumented examples of unconscious processing include visual stimuli (Milner and Goodale, 2006), pain (Melzack and Wall, 1982), threatening events (LeDoux, 1996), blindsight (Weiskrantz, 1990), covert facial recognition (Young and Burton, 1999), and implicit memory (Schacter, 1987).
Global Versus Local Theories of Consciousness and the ... link.springer.com 2 facts
claimThe condition of patients who retain minimal visual experience after a lesion is distinct from blindsight, where patients are unable to report a feature of a scene and are not conscious of it, yet still behave as if they are processing information unconsciously.
referenceDerrien et al. published the article 'The nature of blindsight: implications for current theories of consciousness' in Neuroscience of Consciousness in 2022.
Understanding LLM Understanding skywritingspress.ca Jun 14, 2024 1 fact
claimNicholas Humphrey conducted pioneering research on 'blindsight,' which is defined as the mind's capacity to perceive without conscious visual awareness.
What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved quantamagazine.org Aug 24, 2023 1 fact
claimBlindsight is a condition where individuals with brain damage have no conscious experience of vision but retain the ability to navigate a room without bumping into obstacles, a phenomenon known to neuroscientists since the 1970s.
4.5 Consciousness – Cognitive Psychology nmoer.pressbooks.pub 1 fact
claimBlindsight is a neurological condition where individuals retain the ability to analyze and respond to visual stimuli without having conscious experiences of those stimuli. This was discussed by Lamme (2001).
Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers consc.net 1 fact
perspectiveMax Velmans objects to David Chalmers' principle of organizational invariance on the grounds that a cortical implant could potentially produce a refined version of blindsight, where there is excellent performance but no verbal reports of consciousness and thus no experience.
Attention and Consciousness in Psychology - PhilPapers philpapers.org 1 fact
claimDebates regarding the existence of unconscious attention often focus on the phenomenon of blindsight, although experiments involving normal subjects have also been used to support the existence of unconscious attention.
(PDF) Unifying Theories of Consciousness, Attention, and ... academia.edu 1 fact
claimThe author of the master thesis argues that blindsight experiments, which are often cited as evidence that attention occurs in the absence of awareness, are not as compelling as they appear and are compatible with the claim that attention is a minimally sufficient condition for consciousness.