Visual perception from the perspective of a representational, non-reductionistic, level-dependent account of perception and conscious awareness

Morten Overgaard, Jesper Mogensen

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article proposes a new model to interpret seemingly conflicting evidence concerning the correlation of consciousness and neural processes. Based on an analysis of research of blindsight and subliminal perception, the reorganization
of elementary functions and consciousness framework suggests that mental representations consist of functions at several different levels of analysis, including truly localized perceptual elementary functions and perceptual
algorithmic modules, which are interconnections of the elementary functions. We suggest that conscious content relates to the ‘top level’ of analysis in a ‘situational algorithmic strategy’ that reflects the general state of an individual. We
argue that conscious experience is intrinsically related to representations that are available to guide behaviour. From this perspective, we find that blindsight and subliminal perception can be explained partly by too coarse-grained methodology, and partly by top-down enhancing of representations that normally would not be relevant to action.
Original languageEnglish
JournalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume369
Issue number1641
Pages (from-to)1-12
Number of pages12
ISSN0962-8436
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2014

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