Phenomenal Salience

Abstract

ABSTRACT Phenomenal salience is the experiential contribution of attention to how things seem; namely, the character of perceptual experience. Two aspects of phenomenal salience have been of interest to philosophers. The first is about the uniformity of the phenomenology of perceptual salience. This aspect concerns how salience organizes objects of experience. The second is about the psychological efficacy of phenomenal salience; namely, the faculty of attention's organization of one's perceptual states. These two points of interest correspond to different levels of analysis: the level of perceptual objects and the level of perceptual states. Consequently, accounts of phenomenal salience either distinguish conscious attention by a distinctive appearance or by a distinctive psychological effect, putting phenomenology and the order of perceptual objects, or the psychological function and the order of perceptual states, first. Both of these approaches take a snapshot approach to the analysis of mental life, placing priority at a level of organization (phenomenological or psychological) and analyzing differences in salience at that level by drawing synchronic or diachronic comparisons. Recently, however, philosophers have become interested in dynamic approaches, corresponding to forays into the study of inquiry in epistemology. In line with these trends in the literature, new accounts of phenomenal salience have been put forward. This article reviews the history and contemporary developments of work in phenomenal salience, and suggests new paths forward.