Section 15.1
• Priming experiments indicate that we are easily influenced by unconscious processing of visual stimuli. Are you convinced by the evidence for this?
• Why are blindsight and unilateral neglect thought to be important for studying consciousness? Do you agree?
Section 15.2
• What is the distinction Goodale and Milner make between vision for perception and vision for action? Is it important for studying consciousness?
• What can we learn about consciousness from masked priming experiments?
Section 15.3
• What is the distinction Block draws between access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness?
• What do you think is the hard problem of consciousness?
• Are thought experiments (such as the Knowledge Argument) a good strategy for investigating the nature of consciousness?
• What is the Knowledge Argument trying to show? Does it succeed?
Section 15.4
• Is there any aspect of consciousness that you think is unaccounted for by the global workspace theory?
• Some have claimed that we won’t really understand consciousness until we identify its neuronal basis (the “neural correlates of consciousness”). What do you think about this claim?
• What can we learn from the example of vitalism proposed in the text?
A visual neglect patient (video on YouTube)
Blindsight (video on YouTube)
A Phenomenal Confusion About Access and Consciousness (talk by Dennett in Turing Consciousness 2012)
The Biological Basis of Conscious Experience: Global Workspace Dynamics in the Brain (talk by Baars in Turing Consciousness 2012)
AI Cognition Won’t Work for Consciousness (talk by Block, 2017, form YouTube Talks at Google channel)
How do you explain consciousness (TED talk by Chalmers, 2014)
15.1 Information Processing without Conscious Awareness: Some Basic Data
Semantic priming: Subliminal perception or context? (paper by Bernstein et al., 1989, in Perception & Psychophysics)
Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy (paper by Dehaene et al., 2006, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Levels of processing during non-conscious perception: a critical review of visual masking (paper by Kouider and Dehaene, 2007, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B)
Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings (paper by Schoonbaert et al., 2009, in Memory & Cognition)
Do semantic priming and retrieval of stimulus-response associations depend on conscious perception? (paper by Avneon and Lamy, 2019, in Consciousness and Cognition)
Perceptual awareness and its loss in unilateral neglect and extinction (paper by Driver and Vuilleumier, 2000, in Cognition)
Spatial neglect and attention networks (paper by Corbetta and Shulman, 2011, in Annual Review of Neuroscience)
Is there a critical lesion site for unilateral spatial neglect? A meta-analysis (papy by Molenberghs, Sale, and Mattingley, 2012, in Frontiers of human neuroscience)
Space and the parietal cortex (paper by Husain and Nachev, 2007, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Blindsight and unconscious vision: what they teach us about the human visual system (paper by Ajina and Bridge, 2016, in Neuroscientist)
Blindsight Is Qualitatively Degraded Conscious Vision (paper by Phillips, 2021, in Psychological Review)
15.2 So What Is Consciousness For?
Consciousness (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Consciousness (entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The neuroscience of consciousness (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Do we have independent visual streams for perception and action? (paper by Schenk and McIntosh, 2010, in Cognitive Neuroscience)
Is visual processing in the dorsal stream accessible to consciousness? (paper by Milner, 2012, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B)
How do the two visual streams interact with each other? (paper by Milner, 2017, in Experimental Brain Research)
Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand (paper by Aglioti et al., 1995, in Current Biology)
Grasping Visual Illusions: No Evidence for a Dissociation Between Perception and Action (paper by Franz et al., 2000, in Psychological Science)
15.3 Two Types of Consciousness and the Hard Problem
Qualia: The knowledge argument (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The knowledge argument against physicalism (entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
On a confusion about a function of consciousness (paper by Block, 1995, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience (paper by Block, 2007, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
Perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access (paper by Block, 2011, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
How rich is consciousness? The partial awareness hypothesis (paper by Kouider et al., 2010, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap (paper by Levine, 1983, in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly)
Mind and Illusion (paper by Jackson, 2003, in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements)
Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (paper by Chalmers, 1995, in Journal of Consciousness Studies)
15.4 Theories of Consciousness
Two concepts of consciousness (paper by Rosenthal, 1986, in Philosophical Studies)
Empirical support for higher-order theories of conscious awareness (paper by Lau and Rosenthal, 2011, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
The conscious access hypothesis: origins and recent evidence (paper by Baars, 2002, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework (paper by Dehaene and Naccache, 2001, in Cognition)
Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing (paper by Dehaene and Changeux, 2011, in Neuron)
Toward a computational theory of conscious processing (paper by Dehaene et al., 2014, in Current Opinion in Neurobiology)
Conscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis (paper by Mashour et al., 2020, in Neuron)
Orienting of Attention (paper by Posner, 1980, in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology)
Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events (paper by Simons and Chabris, 1999, in Perception)
Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes (paper by Koch and Tsuchiya, 2007, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences)
The attentional blink: Past, present, and future of a blind spot in perceptual awareness (paper by Martens and Wyble, 2010, in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews)
The relation between consciousness and attention: An empirical study using the priming paradigm (paper by Van den Bussche et al., 2010, in Consciousness and Cognition)
The interplay of attention and consciousness in visual search, attentional blink and working memory consolidation (paper by Raffone et al., 2014, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B)
Neuronal Synchrony: A Versatile Code for the Definition of Relations? (paper by Singer, 1999, in Neuron)
Modulation of Neuronal Interactions Through Neuronal Synchronization (paper by Womelsdorf et al., 2007, in Science)
Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State (paper by Owen et al., 2006, in Science)
The neural correlates of consciousness: New experimental approaches needed? (paper by Hohwy, 2009, in Consciousness and Cognition)
Hard criteria for empirical theories of consciousness (paper by Doerig et al., 2019, in Cognitive Neuroscience)
