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Building perception block by block: a response to Fekete et al.

Adrien Doerig, Frank Scharnowski, Michael H Herzog

Neuroscience of Consciousness 2019 DOI: 10.1093/nc/niy012 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Keywords Consciousness Discrete perception
Key points Argues that their two-stage model of consciousness, where unconscious processing integrates information before a discrete conscious percept, withstands criticism from Fekete et al.

Abstract

Is consciousness a continuous stream, or do percepts occur only at certain moments of time? This age-old question is still under debate. Both positions face difficult problems, which we proposed to overcome with a 2-stage model, where unconscious processing continuously integrates information before a discrete, conscious percept occurs. Recently, Fekete et al. criticized our model. Here, we show that, contrary to their proposal, simple sliding windows cannot explain apparent motion and related phenomena within a continuous framework, and that their supervenience argument only holds true for qualia realists, a philosophical position we do not adopt.