Consciousness Science

In this paper, we revisit the debate surrounding the Unfolding Argument (UA)
against causal structure theories of consciousness (as well as the hard-criteria research program it prescribes), using it as a platform for discussing theoretical and methodological issues in consciousness research. Causal structure theories assert that consciousness depends on a particular causal structure of the brain. Our claim is that some of the assumptions fueling the UA are not warranted, and therefore we should reject the methodology for consciousness science that the UA prescribes. First, we briefly survey the most popular philosophical positions in consciousness science, namely physicalism and functionalism. We discuss the relations between these positions and the behaviorist methodology that the UA assumptions express, despite the contrary claim of its proponents. Second, we argue that the same reasoning that the UA applies against causal structure theories can be applied to functionalist approaches, thus proving too much and deeming as unscientific a whole range of (non-causal structure) theories. Since this is overly restrictive and fits poorly with common practice in cognitive neuroscience, we suggest that the reasoning of the UA must be flawed. Third, we assess its philosophical assumptions, which express a restrictive methodology, and conclude that there are reasons to reject them. Finally, we propose a more inclusive methodology for consciousness science, that includes neural, behavioral, and phenomenological evidence (provided by the first-person perspective) without which consciousness science could not even start. Then, we extend this discussion to the scope of consciousness science, and conclude that theories of consciousness should be tested and evaluated on humans, and not on systems considerably different from us. Rather than restricting the methodology of consciousness science, we should, at this point, restrict the range of systems upon which it is supposed to be built.

In the bright spot of the Theater: ... Katharine A. McGovern & Bernard J. Baars ... (Professor McGovern teaches at the Doctor of Psychology Program, California Institute for Integral Studies, www.ciis.edu) ... • The traditional contents of consciousness can be found in Aristotle, ...

伴随哲学中的自然主义转向，他心问题迎来复兴。其中，一个奠基性的观念在于重塑了知觉在我们通达他心中扮演的角色，并开始与笛卡尔时代以来占据心灵哲学与认知科学实验室的推理主义分庭抗礼。知觉作为一种自主体独有的即时性、动态性心理活动，具有深刻的生物演化根基，但上述特征在对他心问题的经典分析中受到忽视。本文尝试整合种系发生学层面上的生命性感知机制与个体发生学层面上的活力形态理论，为他心直接感知理论提供认识论辩护。在此基础上，我们引入新兴的第二人称神经科学，论证了一种通达他心的方法论进路——神经过程哲学。

The effects of perceptual load on the level of adaptation to task-irrelevant and invisible oriented gratings were examined. Participants performed a task at fixation under conditions of low (detecting color targets) or high (detecting conjunctions of color and shape) perceptual load. Simultaneously, a task-irrelevant-oriented grating was presented monocularly in a more peripheral location but was suppressed from awareness by flashing a dynamic mask stimulus at the same retinal location in the other eye. Orientation-specific adaptation to the invisible irrelevant grating was found at low perceptual load but was eliminated with high perceptual load. These results demonstrate that early unconscious processing of orientation depends on the allocation of limited attentional capacity, and conversely that the allocation of attentional capacity under low (versus high) load is insufficient to bring orientation representations to awareness.

This study attempts to isolate the underlying processing resources of visual attention from the 'cognitive supervision'-working memory, decision processes, but especially awareness-that typically accompanies their allocation. To decouple them, we used the motion aftereffect (MAE) as a passive assay of resource allocation. In our main condition, observers were presented with an adapting field, but did not attend to it. Instead their effort was directed to an engrossing auditory two-back memory task. Consequently, observers had no consistent awareness of the adaptor, nor were able to make accurate judgements about its luminance, but nonetheless had MAE's no smaller than those induced when the adaptor was 'fully attended'. Similarly to when objector feature-based attention spreads unwittingly, attention was allocated automatically to the adaptor, without requiring nor engaging executive control or awareness.

Deepak Chopra is a prolific writer working, generally speaking, from a Hindu / Vedantic perspective. Leonard Mlodinow is a scientist. The book is a debate between the experience of consciousness and scientific observation and evidence. Interestingly Mlodinow acknowledges the limitations of science and does allow for some sort of Transcendence or reality hidden from the purview of science. The protagonists pull no punches and have telling forms of speech. They remain at odds, unsurprisingly. The unseen judge in the debate is the reader.

A fundamental task of visual perception is to group visual features-sometimes spatially separated and partially occluded-into coherent, unified representations of objects. Perceptual grouping can vastly simplify the description of a visual scene and is critical for our visual system to understand the three-dimensional visual world. Numerous neuro

We investigated the effect of adaptation on orientation discrimination using two experienced observers, then replicated the main effects using a total of 50 naïve subjects. Orientation discrimination around vertical improved after adaptation to either horizontal or vertical gratings, but was impaired by adaptation at 7.5 or 15°from vertical. Improvement was greatest when adapter and test were orthogonal. We show that the results can be understood in terms of a functional model of adaptation in cortical vision.

Rendering the usually visible 'invisible' has long been a popular experimental manipulation. With one notable exception, 'continuous flash suppression' [Tsuchiya, N., & Koch, C. (2005). Continuous flash suppression reduces negative afterimages. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1096-1101], existing methods of achieving this goal suffer from being either unable to suppress stimuli from awareness for prolonged periods, from being unable to reliably suppress stimuli at specific epochs, or from a combination of both of these limitations. Here we report a new method, binocular switch suppression (BSS), which overcomes these restrictions. We establish that BSS is novel as it taps a different causal mechanism to the only similar pre-existing method. We also establish that BSS is superior to pre-existing methods both in terms of the depth and duration of perceptual suppression achieved. BSS should therefore prove to be a useful tool for the large number of researchers interested in exploring the neural correlates and functional consequences of conscious visual awareness.

We investigated the effects of attention on dominance durations during binocular rivalry. In a series of three experiments, observers performed several tasks while viewing rival stimuli to ensure and control deployment of attention. We found that endogenous attention can prolong dominance durations of attended stimulus. We developed a novel single-task procedure where observer's responses in an attentional task were used to objectively estimate dominance durations of the attended stimulus. Using this procedure, we showed that paying attention to the stimulus features involved in rivalry is necessary for prolonging dominance durationsVmere engagement of attention during rivalry was insufficient. Finally, we were able to simulate the effects of endogenous attention by doubling the contrast of the attended stimulus while it was dominant. Attention may increase the apparent contrast of the attended stimulus, thereby prolonging its dominance duration. Overall, our results indicate that dominance durations in rivalry can be prolonged when observers are performing an attentionally demanding task on the rival stimulus.

Symptoms of schizophrenia have been explained as a failure to appropriately apply past environmental regularities to the interpretation of incoming sensory information, thus leading to abnormal perceptions and beliefs. Here we use the visual system as a test bed for investigating how prior experience shapes perception in individuals with schizophrenia. Specifically, we use visual aftereffects, illusory percepts resulting from prior exposure to visual input, to measure the influence of prior events on current processing. At a neural level, visual aftereffects arise due to attenuation in the responses of neurons that code the features of the prior stimulus (neuronal adaptation) and subsequent disinhibition of neurons signaling activity at the opposite end of the feature dimension. In the current study, we measured tilt aftereffects and negative afterimages, two types of aftereffects that reflect, respectively, adaptation of cortical orientation-coding neurons and adaptation of subcort...

Symptoms of schizophrenia have been explained as a failure to appropriately apply past environmental regularities to the interpretation of incoming sensory information, thus leading to abnormal perceptions and beliefs. Here we use the visual system as a test bed for investigating how prior experience shapes perception in individuals with schizophrenia. Specifically, we use visual aftereffects, illusory percepts resulting from prior exposure to visual input, to measure the influence of prior events on current processing. At a neural level, visual aftereffects arise due to attenuation in the responses of neurons that code the features of the prior stimulus (neuronal adaptation) and subsequent disinhibition of neurons signaling activity at the opposite end of the feature dimension. In the current study, we measured tilt aftereffects and negative afterimages, two types of aftereffects that reflect, respectively, adaptation of cortical orientation-coding neurons and adaptation of subcort...

*I am still researching this topic to improve this paper before I submit it anywhere for publication.*

Consciousness is often studied as though it were equivalent to a certain kind of physiological, cognitive or behavioural state, such as where coma scales are used to determine consciousness level in assessing patients with disorders of consciousness. I refer to consciousness in this sense as "symptomatic consicousness." Phenomenal consciousness, characterised by subjective experience, is often considered to be related to symptomatic consciousness and can only be studied via symptomatic consciousness. We could reasonably hypothesise that the two are closely linked. However, an opposing null hypothesis, stating that phenomenal consciousness does not correspond to the above kinds of state, cannot have empirical evidence in its favour. This shows the matter is not determined straightforwardly by empirical evidence, threatening to undermine our knowledge regarding phenomenal consciousness. The only means we have of dismissing this null hypothesis is to use theoretical justification, of which foundational claims of information integration theory are an example.

I draw attention to an ambiguity of the expression 'phenomenal consciousness' that is an avoidable yet persistent source of conceptual confusion among consciousness scientists. The ambiguity is between what I call phenomenality and what I call conscious states, where the former denotes an abstract property and the latter denotes a phenomenon or class of its instances. Since sentences featuring these two terms have different semantic properties, it is possible to equivocate over the term 'consciousness'. It is also possible to fail to distinguish between statements that are true about conscious states in virtue of their phenomenality, and statements that are true in virtue of other properties of conscious states. I review empirically informed arguments by scientists Bernard Balleine and Anthony Dickinson, Stevan Harnad, and Jeffrey Alan Gray, arguing that each of them makes errors based on the ambiguity. I conclude with some tentative suggestions for avoiding further confusion about the ambiguity.

In their recent article, the unfolding argument, Doerig et al argue that a theory of consciousness cannot be based in the characterization of the physical structure of the brain. They argue that such theories must be “either false or outside the realm of science”. Instead, they prefer theories of consciousness based only on “input-output” descriptions. By their implicit treatment of phenomenal structure as impossible to study, the authors seem to be advocating for a new mode of extreme methodological behaviorism. We take issue with their view, and describe an alternate approach to consciousness science. We clarify some ambiguities in Doerig et al’s argument, critiquing three of their four premises, leading to different conclusions. We then explain what makes causal structure theories of consciousness empirical and falsifiable. Specifically, we propose that consciousness science must work on ways to consider phenomenal structure - i.e. to derive the structure of experience from reports, and to search for isomorphism between physical and phenomenal structures. In essence, we argue that to really take consciousness seriously as an object of study, it is unavoidable that both phenomenal structure and the causal structure of a system must be central to any theory of consciousness.

In the bright spot of the Theater: ... Katharine A. McGovern & Bernard J. Baars ... (Professor McGovern teaches at the Doctor of Psychology Program, California Institute for Integral Studies, www.ciis.edu) ... • The traditional contents of consciousness can be found in Aristotle, ...

Visual performance of human observers depends not only on the optics of the eye and early sensory encoding but also
on subsequent cortical processing and representations. In two experiments, we demonstrated that motion adaptation
can enhance as well as impair visual acuity. Observers who experienced an expanding motion aftereffect exhibited
improved letter recognition, whereas observers who experienced a contracting motion aftereffect showed impaired
letter recognition. We conclude that illusory enlargement and shrinkage of a visual stimulus can modulate visual acuity.

Physicalism is the ontological position which asserts that reality consists only of what can be observed by means of the outer senses or can be shown to exist by the investigations of physicists. If physical reality does not comprise the whole of what is real then it is possible to accept the truths of physics while asserting the falsity of physicalism.  This article claims that physicalism is false because it is possible to directly observe a non-physical reality by the use of DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine). It is not necessary to prove by argument the existence of an objective, non-physical reality because there is one which can be observed directly by anyone.

Illusions that produce perceptual suppression despite constant retinal input are used to manipulate visual consciousness. Here we report on a powerful variant of existing techniques, continuous flash suppression. Distinct images flashed successively at ~10 Hz into one eye reliably suppress an image presented to the other eye. The duration of perceptual suppression is at least ten times greater than that produced by binocular rivalry. Using this tool we show that the strength of the negative afterimage of an adaptor was reduced by half when it was perceptually suppressed by input from the other eye. The more completely the adaptor was suppressed, the more strongly the afterimage intensity was reduced. Paradoxically, trial-to-trial visibility of the adaptor did not correlate with the degree of reduction. Our results imply that formation of afterimages involves neuronal structures that access input from both eyes but that do not correspond directly to the neuronal correlates of perceptual awareness. The question of the neuronal correlates of conscious perception has seen renewed interest over the last decade 1. One powerful tool in this area is illusions that give rise to effects that are measurable, yet are not, or are only occasionally, consciously seen 2–5. In backward masking 6 , inattentional blindness 7 , motion-induced blindness 8 , binocular rivalry 9–16 and flash suppression 11,17–19 , an image is presented to one or both eyes of the observer yet is not seen. Binocular rivalry is a popular method to determine if a visual aftereffect occurs before or after the neuronal site for the suppression of rivalry 2,20–23. In binocular rivalry, two different images are shown to the two eyes, and the subject's percept alternates between one and the other image 24. The strength of the aftereffect when the adaptor is presented to one eye and is plainly visible throughout the adaptation period is compared with the aftereffect when the adaptor is suppressed by the input to the other eye. However, the duration and timing of perceptual suppression are difficult to control because of the stochastic nature of rivalry. Flash suppression 11,17–19 provides better control over the timing of suppression , but at the price of shorter periods of suppression, too brief to produce strong aftereffects. Furthermore, flash suppression requires a pre-adapting period, preventing complete unawareness of the adaptor. Here we combine aspects of both binocular rivalry and flash suppression into a potent procedure we term continuous flash suppression (CFS). We continuously flash different images rapidly into one eye while the input to the corresponding location in the other eye remains the same (see demonstration at http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~naotsu/ CFSdemo.html). Most observers do not see the image in one eye even though it is present for a long time, sometimes for several minutes. We used CFS to examine the neuronal site for negative afterimages. These are vivid percepts that demonstrate the tenuous link between physical stimuli and their associated subjective percepts. A variety of evidence supports their origin among neurons in the retina 25–31 or lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) 32. In particular, negative afterimages do not transfer across eyes, nor is their strength reduced by suppression of the inducing image by pressure blinding 20,33 (but see ref. 29). Neither binocular rivalry 20 nor motion-induced blindness (MIB) 5 reduces either the duration or the strength of afterimages. All of these observations suggest that afterimages are retinal phenomena. However, both binocular rivalry and MIB suppress the adaptor only intermittently. By using CFS, we asked what happens when the adapting stimulus is completely suppressed from awareness. We found that when an adaptor was reliably suppressed by CFS, the intensity of the negative afterimage of the adaptor was reduced by half. Our results imply that formation of afterimages involves neuronal structures that access input from both eyes but that do not correspond directly to the neuronal correlates of perceptual awareness. RESULTS Prolonged invisibility by continuous flash suppression We first compared the initial duration of stimulus suppression in CFS and binocular rivalry without pre-exposure to the suppressed image. While a constant, gray image was presented to one eye, CFS stimuli composed of different Mondrians were presented at the corresponding location in the other eye (Fig. 1). Each Mondrian was replaced by a different pattern every 100 ms. Seventeen naive subjects pressed a button as soon as any part of the gray figure became visible. The mean initial suppression time in 16 trials was 4.3 s for binocular rivalry and 56.0 s for CFS (13 times longer than for binocular rivalry; paired t-test, t-score ¼ 4.81, d.f. ¼ 16, P o 0.001). In 40 out of 272 CFS trials, no part of the gray image was seen at all for the full 3-min trial. As we treated those

Illusions that produce perceptual suppression despite constant retinal input are used to manipulate visual consciousness. Here we report on a powerful variant of existing techniques, continuous flash suppression. Distinct images flashed successively at ~10 Hz into one eye reliably suppress an image presented to the other eye. The duration of perceptual suppression is at least ten times greater than that produced by binocular rivalry. Using this tool we show that the strength of the negative afterimage of an adaptor was reduced by half when it was perceptually suppressed by input from the other eye. The more completely the adaptor was suppressed, the more strongly the afterimage intensity was reduced. Paradoxically, trial-to-trial visibility of the adaptor did not correlate with the degree of reduction. Our results imply that formation of afterimages involves neuronal structures that access input from both eyes but that do not correspond directly to the neuronal correlates of perceptual awareness. The question of the neuronal correlates of conscious perception has seen renewed interest over the last decade 1. One powerful tool in this area is illusions that give rise to effects that are measurable, yet are not, or are only occasionally, consciously seen 2–5. In backward masking 6 , inattentional blindness 7 , motion-induced blindness 8 , binocular rivalry 9–16 and flash suppression 11,17–19 , an image is presented to one or both eyes of the observer yet is not seen. Binocular rivalry is a popular method to determine if a visual aftereffect occurs before or after the neuronal site for the suppression of rivalry 2,20–23. In binocular rivalry, two different images are shown to the two eyes, and the subject's percept alternates between one and the other image 24. The strength of the aftereffect when the adaptor is presented to one eye and is plainly visible throughout the adaptation period is compared with the aftereffect when the adaptor is suppressed by the input to the other eye. However, the duration and timing of perceptual suppression are difficult to control because of the stochastic nature of rivalry. Flash suppression 11,17–19 provides better control over the timing of suppression , but at the price of shorter periods of suppression, too brief to produce strong aftereffects. Furthermore, flash suppression requires a pre-adapting period, preventing complete unawareness of the adaptor. Here we combine aspects of both binocular rivalry and flash suppression into a potent procedure we term continuous flash suppression (CFS). We continuously flash different images rapidly into one eye while the input to the corresponding location in the other eye remains the same (see demonstration at http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~naotsu/ CFSdemo.html). Most observers do not see the image in one eye even though it is present for a long time, sometimes for several minutes. We used CFS to examine the neuronal site for negative afterimages. These are vivid percepts that demonstrate the tenuous link between physical stimuli and their associated subjective percepts. A variety of evidence supports their origin among neurons in the retina 25–31 or lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) 32. In particular, negative afterimages do not transfer across eyes, nor is their strength reduced by suppression of the inducing image by pressure blinding 20,33 (but see ref. 29). Neither binocular rivalry 20 nor motion-induced blindness (MIB) 5 reduces either the duration or the strength of afterimages. All of these observations suggest that afterimages are retinal phenomena. However, both binocular rivalry and MIB suppress the adaptor only intermittently. By using CFS, we asked what happens when the adapting stimulus is completely suppressed from awareness. We found that when an adaptor was reliably suppressed by CFS, the intensity of the negative afterimage of the adaptor was reduced by half. Our results imply that formation of afterimages involves neuronal structures that access input from both eyes but that do not correspond directly to the neuronal correlates of perceptual awareness. RESULTS Prolonged invisibility by continuous flash suppression We first compared the initial duration of stimulus suppression in CFS and binocular rivalry without pre-exposure to the suppressed image. While a constant, gray image was presented to one eye, CFS stimuli composed of different Mondrians were presented at the corresponding location in the other eye (Fig. 1). Each Mondrian was replaced by a different pattern every 100 ms. Seventeen naive subjects pressed a button as soon as any part of the gray figure became visible. The mean initial suppression time in 16 trials was 4.3 s for binocular rivalry and 56.0 s for CFS (13 times longer than for binocular rivalry; paired t-test, t-score ¼ 4.81, d.f. ¼ 16, P o 0.001). In 40 out of 272 CFS trials, no part of the gray image was seen at all for the full 3-min trial. As we treated those

Naturalistic panpsychism is to be conceived as one possible metaphysical foundation of future consciousness science. It claims that the nature has its own mind; and mind is the fundamentality of actual entities of nature. Here the panpsychism is defined as “naturalistic”, implies that the mental capacity of macroscopic individuals must be construed consistently and completely by microscopic actual entities and their dynamical relations ontologically, without resorting to supernatural elements. For panpsychists, although every fundamental actual unit has a mind, however, not each actual object being composited by the former can be asserted in the same way. To be precise, it is the actual objects (compounds) being composited by these actual entities “in proper way” can be regarded as having a mind, even consciousness reasonably; in contrast, the other type of objects (aggregates) which being composited merely in aggregational way at any levels, cannot be judged indiscriminately to have a mind. The overall approach of naturalistic panpsychism is to identify more restricted composition principles of mereology which are applicable for the metaphysical system, from the actual entities (as parts) within the system to the consciousness phenomenon (as whole) in a bottom-up way. As the combination problem, which be referred to as the most difficult problem of panpsychism, now we turn the composition problem of objects into the composition problem of subjects of panpsychism. In the end, via the analysis of composition principles of mereology, we reach a conclusion which is not strong enough – at least one category of compounds from certain level must show specific “abundances” of mind, by means of the realization of a certain sufficient condition. Apart from the synchronic approach to metaphysics of consciousness, we discuss one solution of combination problem from Whitehead’s panpsychism in the fifth section from diachronic approach: the “transmutation” of consciousness as high-level subjective form.

The relationship between attention and awareness and the processing of visual information outside of attention and awareness remain controversial issues. We employed the motion aftereffect (MAE) illusion and continuous flash suppression (CFS) to study the behavioral effects of unseen and unattended visual motion. The main finding was that either withdrawal of attention or the lack of visual awareness on the adaptors did not eliminate the formation of translational MAEs, spiral MAEs, or the interocular transfer of the MAE. However, no spiral MAE was generated when attention was diverted from the unseen spiral adaptors. Interestingly, all MAEs that arose in the absence of awareness or in the absence of attention were reduced in size. The pattern of results is consistent with suggestions that the magnitude of visual motion adaptation depends on both attention and awareness.

Rendering the usually visible 'invisible' has long been a popular experimental manipulation. With one notable exception, 'continuous flash suppression . Continuous flash suppression reduces negative afterimages. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1096-1101], existing methods of achieving this goal suffer from being either unable to suppress stimuli from awareness for prolonged periods, from being unable to reliably suppress stimuli at specific epochs, or from a combination of both of these limitations. Here we report a new method, binocular switch suppression (BSS), which overcomes these restrictions. We establish that BSS is novel as it taps a different causal mechanism to the only similar pre-existing method. We also establish that BSS is superior to pre-existing methods both in terms of the depth and duration of perceptual suppression achieved. BSS should therefore prove to be a useful tool for the large number of researchers interested in exploring the neural correlates and functional consequences of conscious visual awareness.

In searching for the target-afterimage patch among spatially separate alternatives of color-afterimages the target fades from awareness before its competitors . Covert spatial attention in search for the location of a color-afterimage patch speeds up its decay from awareness: Introducing a method useful for the study of neural correlates of visual awareness. Vision Research 50, 1048-1053). In an analogous study presented here we show that a similar effect is obtained when a target spatial location specified according to the direction of motion aftereffect within it is searched by covert topdown attention. The adverse effect of selective attention on the duration of awareness of sensory qualiae known earlier to be present for color and periodic spatial contrast is extended also to sensory channels carrying motion information.

Motion can bias the perceived location of a stationary stimulus , but whether this occurs at a high level of representation or at early, retinotopic stages of visual processing remains an open question. As coding of orientation emerges early in visual processing, we tested whether motion could influence the spatial location at which orientation adaptation is seen. Specifically, we examined whether the tilt aftereffect (TAE) depends on the perceived or the retinal location of the adapting stimulus, or both. We used the flash-drag effect (FDE) to produce a shift in the perceived position of the adaptor away from its retinal location. Subjects viewed a patterned disk that oscillated clockwise and counterclockwise while adapting to a small disk containing a tilted linear grating that was flashed briefly at the moment of the rotation reversals. The FDE biased the perceived location of the grating in the direction of the disk's motion immediately following the flash, allowing dissociation between the retinal and perceived location of the adaptor. Brief test gratings were subsequently presented at one of three locations-the retinal location of the adaptor, its perceived location, or an equidistant control location (antiperceived location). Measurements of the TAE at each location demonstrated that the TAE was strongest at the retinal location, and was larger at the perceived compared to the antiperceived location. This indicates a skew in the spatial tuning of the TAE consistent with the FDE. Together, our findings suggest that motion can bias the location of low-level adaptation.

Conscious experiences
While conscious (cs) experience has been discussed throughout history, the late 19th century saw a rise in physicalistic reductionism, which, in its more extreme forms, declared "consciousness" and kindred terms to be unscientific. In the 1920’s B.F. Skinner defined the goal of "radical behaviorism" as the complete elimination of mentalistic concepts from psychology --- about two-thirds of English content words. Skinner's influence dominated well into the 1970s, and during that time it was extremely difficult for scientists to openly study cs cognition, voluntary control, personal identity, and similar questions.
By the 1980s philosophers and scientists started to return to consciousness. Philosophers like Daniel Dennett and scientists like Francis Crick strongly supported a return to scientific research.
Since the 1980s a large literature has grown, with thousands of findings about visual awareness, coma and wakefulness, direct brain recording of binocular rivalry, and much more. The PubMed database shows almost 20,000 articles for the keywords "conscious brain."
Many scientific studies use experimental comparisons between similar cs and uncs events. This “contrastive analysis” approach has been very fruitful. Dozens of techniques now permit cs-uncs comparisons. Any method that permits such comparisons can enlarge our understanding. The resulting empirical harvest has been very large.

Motion can bias the perceived location of a stationary stimulus , but whether this occurs at a high level of representation or at early, retinotopic stages of visual processing remains an open question. As coding of orientation emerges early in visual processing, we tested whether motion could influence the spatial location at which orientation adaptation is seen. Specifically, we examined whether the tilt aftereffect (TAE) depends on the perceived or the retinal location of the adapting stimulus, or both. We used the flash-drag effect (FDE) to produce a shift in the perceived position of the adaptor away from its retinal location. Subjects viewed a patterned disk that oscillated clockwise and counterclockwise while adapting to a small disk containing a tilted linear grating that was flashed briefly at the moment of the rotation reversals. The FDE biased the perceived location of the grating in the direction of the disk's motion immediately following the flash, allowing dissociation between the retinal and perceived location of the adaptor. Brief test gratings were subsequently presented at one of three locations-the retinal location of the adaptor, its perceived location, or an equidistant control location (antiperceived location). Measurements of the TAE at each location demonstrated that the TAE was strongest at the retinal location, and was larger at the perceived compared to the antiperceived location. This indicates a skew in the spatial tuning of the TAE consistent with the FDE. Together, our findings suggest that motion can bias the location of low-level adaptation.

This study attempts to isolate the underlying processing resources of visual attention from the 'cognitive supervision'-working memory, decision processes, but especially awareness-that typically accompanies their allocation. To decouple them, we used the motion aftereffect (MAE) as a passive assay of resource allocation. In our main condition, observers were presented with an adapting field, but did not attend to it. Instead their effort was directed to an engrossing auditory two-back memory task. Consequently, observers had no consistent awareness of the adaptor, nor were able to make accurate judgements about its luminance, but nonetheless had MAE's no smaller than those induced when the adaptor was 'fully attended'. Similarly to when object-or feature-based attention spreads unwittingly, attention was allocated automatically to the adaptor, without requiring nor engaging executive control or awareness.

I review three answers to the question: How can phenomenology contribute to the experimental cognitive neurosciences? The first approach, neurophenomenology, employs phenomenological method and training, and uses first-person reports not just as more data for analysis, but to generate descriptive categories that are intersubjectively and scientifically validated, and are then used to interpret results that correlate with objective measurements of behaviour and brain activity. A second approach, indirect phenomenology, is shown to be problematic in a number of ways. Indirect phenomenology is generally put to work after the experiment, in critical or creative interpretations of the scientific evidence. Ultimately, however, proposals for the indirect use of phenomenology lead back to methodological questions about the direct use of phenomenology in experimental design. The third approach, ‘front-loaded’
phenomenology, suggests that the results of phenomenological investigations can be used in the design of empirical ones. Concepts or clarifications that have been worked out phenomenologically may operate as a partial framework for
experimentation.

The relationship between attention and awareness and the processing of visual information outside of attention and awareness remain controversial issues. We employed the motion aftereffect (MAE) illusion and continuous flash suppression (CFS) to study the behavioral effects of unseen and unattended visual motion. The main finding was that either withdrawal of attention or the lack of visual awareness on the adaptors did not eliminate the formation of translational MAEs, spiral MAEs, or the interocular transfer of the MAE. However, no spiral MAE was generated when attention was diverted from the unseen spiral adaptors. Interestingly, all MAEs that arose in the absence of awareness or in the absence of attention were reduced in size. The pattern of results is consistent with suggestions that the magnitude of visual motion adaptation depends on both attention and awareness.

本文前半部分解释自然主义是什么、不是什么，尝试澄清一些对自然主义的误解，阐明支持自然主义的理由，并回应一些对自然主义的疑虑。这主要是综述在英语哲学界人们熟知的一些东西，但本文也有所发挥，特别是在阐释自然主义可接受的直觉方法上，以及在自然主义是“无我”的世界观这一点。另外，针对国内读者对自然主义的特有疑虑，本文有所侧重，尤其是力图论证，与一些误解相反，自然主义蕴涵着积极的道德观、价值观与生存观。本文的后半部分讨论当前英语哲学界中自然主义内部关于物理主义与属性二元论的争论，尤其是两个主要的反物理主义论证，即知识论证与模态论证。本文将尝试从物理主义是“无我”的世界观这一点出发，改进一种现有的对知识论证的回应，并利用笔者曾提出的一种对形而上学模态性的自然主义解释，来回应模态论证。

Abstract Perceptual load theory offers a resolution to the long-standing early vs. late selection debate over whether task-irrelevant stimuli are perceived, suggesting that irrelevant perception depends upon the perceptual load of task-relevant processing. However, previous evidence for this theory has relied on RTs and neuroimaging. Here we tested the effects of load on conscious perception using the ''inattentional blindness''paradigm.

Abstract: I review three answers to the question: How can phenomenology contribute to the experimental cognitive neurosciences? The first approach, neurophenomenology, employs phenomenological method and training, and uses first-person reports not just as more data for analysis, but to generate descriptive categories that are intersubjectively and scientifically validated, and are then used to interpret results that correlate with objective measurements of behaviour and brain activity.

Embodied Cognition is growing up, and How the Body Shapes the Mind is both a sign of, and substantive contributor to this ongoing development. Born in or about 1991, EC is only now emerging from a tumultuous but exciting childhood marked in particular by the size and breadth of the extended family hoping to have some impact on its early education and upbringing.

The brain's ability to handle sensory information is influenced by both selective attention and consciousness. There is no consensus on the exact relationship between these two processes and whether they are distinct. So far, no experiment has simultaneously manipulated both. We carried out a full factorial 2 × 2 study of the simultaneous influences of attention and consciousness (as assayed by visibility) on perception, correcting for possible concurrent changes in attention and consciousness. We investigated the duration of afterimages for all four combinations of high versus low attention and visible versus invisible. We show that selective attention and visual consciousness have opposite effects: paying attention to the grating decreases the duration of its afterimage, whereas consciously seeing the grating increases the afterimage duration. These findings provide clear evidence for distinctive influences of selective attention and consciousness on visual perception. awareness | continuous flash suppression | Troxler fading | dual-task | visibility S ince the latter part of the past century, interest in the influences of selective attention and consciousness on perception has steadily increased. This discussion has raised the question of the relationship between attention and consciousness. By attention, we refer to selective perceptual attention and not vigilance or arousal; by consciousness, we refer to the content of consciousness (sometimes also referred to as awareness), and not to states of consciousness (e.g., wakefulness, dreamless sleep, or coma). Though some claim that both processes are inextricably connected (1-4), others suggest a certain level of independence . Psychophysical studies show that observers can pay attention to an invisible stimulus , and that a stimulus can be clearly seen in the (near) absence of attention (4, 17). Though these data could be explained by arguing that these two processes covary and therefore any increase (respectively decrease) in one is associated with a similar but smaller increase (respectively decrease) in the other, this argument fails if attention and consciousness were to have opposing perceptual effects on the same stimulus. Finding such opponency would considerably strengthen the hypothesis that these processes are distinct (5).

Increasing perceptual load reduces the processing of visual stimuli outside the focus of attention, but the mechanism underlying these effects remains unclear. Here we tested an account attributing the effects of perceptual load to modulations of visual cortex excitability. In contrast to stimulus competition accounts, which propose that load should affect simultaneous, but not sequential, stimulus presentations, the visual excitability account makes the novel prediction that load should affect detection sensitivity for both simultaneous and sequential presentations. Participants fixated a stimulus stream, responding to targets defined by either a color (low load) or color and orientation conjunctions (high load). Additionally, detection sensitivity was measured for a peripheral critical stimulus (CS) presented occasionally. Increasing load at fixation reduced sensitivity to the peripheral CSs; this effect was similar regardless of whether CSs were presented simultaneously with central stimuli or during the (otherwise empty) interval between them. Controls ruled out explanations of the results in terms of strategic task prioritization. These findings support a cortical excitability account for perceptual load, challenging stimulus competition accounts.
tition accounts.

I review a number of approaches that attempt to deal with the gap that seems to exist between first-person and third-person accounts of consciousness, and some of the conceptual, epistemological, and methodological issues that surround this distinction. I argue, with reference to Carnap and Schrödinger, that one cannot simply reduce data from the first-person perspective to third-person data, without remainder, especially when the very subject matter of the science includes the first-person perspective.