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Explaining seeing? Disentangling qualia from perceptual organization

Agustin Ibanez, Tristan A Bekinschtein

Cognitive Neuroscience August 18, 2010 DOI: 10.1080/17588928.2010.497581 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Citations 2
Key points Argues that qualia are not required to explain visual integration processes, which can be accounted for by reentrant neural processing without attention or cognitive control.

Abstract

Abstract Visual perception and integration seem to play an essential role in our conscious phenomenology. Relatively local neural processing of reentrant nature may explain several visual integration processes (feature binding or figure-ground segregation, object recognition, inference, competition), even without attention or cognitive control. Based on the above statements, should the neural signatures of visual integration (via reentrant process) be non-reportable phenomenological qualia? We argue that qualia are not required to understand this perceptual organization.