What Is Conscious Vision Good For? Debunking the Devil from the Details

Cognitive psychology and neuroscience research on consciousness typically focuses on the boundary between unconscious and conscious vision, which ironically reveals more about what conscious experience is not than what it is, akin to learning about an object only from its shadow. During the 2020 workshop "Perspectives on Consciousness" in Israel, participants encountered diverse approaches, including phenomenology-centered work, bold theoretical proposals, and non-scientific methods for understanding subjective experience. Initially, the term "consciousness" seemed hollow and differently defined across disciplines, but discussions revealed how these approaches can complement each other. The author contends that descriptive study of subjective experience can illuminate what distinguishes unconscious processing from conscious experience, and that cross-disciplinary communication is hindered by researchers using identical words for different concepts.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The experimental approach adopted by cognitive psy chol ogy researchers (and to some extent also, by most cognitive neuroscience researchers) when investigating consciousness is to target the transition between unconscious and conscious vision.As a consequence, and somewhat ironically, the study of conscious experience is de facto mostly the study of what conscious experience is not.In this sense, what we learn about subjective experience from investigating unconscious pro cesses is akin to what we learn about an object from its shadow: the feel and taste of experiencing a color, a feeling, or a memory are left aside.In addition, these approaches adopt scientific rigor as their main guiding thread and yield research that treads very carefully, in minute steps, often going back and forth, toward solid answers.During the workshop "Perspectives on Consciousness" held in Israel in 2020, I encountered strikingly dif fer ent approaches, many placing phenomenology at the center of their endeavors, others suggesting bold and sweeping theories without relying on experimental data, and yet others choosing not to take the scientific path in deepening their understanding of subjective experience.At first it felt that all we had in common was a hollow word, "consciousness," and that each of us fills with a totally dif fer ent meaning.Yet, as the workshop progressed and group as well as one-on-one discussions intensified, the connection between the dif fer ent approaches and how they can fertilize each another started to emerge.For one thing, it became clear to me during the workshop, that in the same way as studying unconscious pro cessing can provide impor tant insights on the functions, if any, of consciousness, a descriptive approach to the subjective conscious experience and its dif fer ent facets can also shed light on what distinguishes unconscious pro cessing from conscious experience.In addition, the interactions that were made pos si ble by the workshop led us to realize that researchers in dif fer ent disciplines often use the same words to refer to entirely dif fer ent concepts, a state of affairs that engenders confusion, misunderstanding, and even distrust.The open and receptive atmosphere that prevailed during the workshop encouraged us to communicate long enough to get to the bottom of misconceptions, and to acknowledge