Interesting. I think we are all blindsighted to some degree. Sometimes I drop something, a pen, a paper clip, a nail. I know it's down there but I can't see it. Until it leaps into awareness. I've scanned the same area a dozen times without "seeing" it. Until it leaps out at me. Same scenario with stuff in the pantry. Looking for a can of tomato soup amongst all the other cans of soup or other stuff. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until there it is. Sometimes I can't find it at all and announce to the world "I can't find the ...", at which point someone shows up, finds it instantly, and delivers the ultimate put-down, " If it was a snake, it would have bitten you." As a child, my mother's favorite response to that scenario was "Look behind something." As always, Mom knows best.
This was a really interesting essay. I wonder if there's something analogous with hearing, in which a deaf or hard of hearing person actually does sense something but doesn't or can't identify it as sound?
One wrinkle I would add is whether the framing shift from "seeing" to "awareness" might incur the kind of false positive narrative or social hedging seen elsewhere. In the extreme case of split brain patients, for example, they perform a kind of when-asked narrative back-fill that could translate into noticing-now bleeding into reports of noticing-then. Or if there is a natural social hedge against "seeming unaware" that is triggered differently by self reports of unawareness than by reports of "not seeing."
More Grey in, on, and/or around your Grey on Grey.
This is very interesting, and I broadly agree with your conclusion, though it leaves me with a couple of issues I hope to follow up on as time allows. The first concerns the detection sensitivity/criterion plot, and specifically how the subjects' detection criteria were measured (this plot is from a PhD thesis by Anders Sand: https://perception.jhu.edu/files/PDFs/Misc/Phillips_Blindsight_PsychRev.pdf). The second is that I vaguely recall reading of another study involving differences in left/right visual field perception, where the stimuli the subject insisted were absent were neither weak nor vague (though, of course, we must consider it possible that the signal may have become so in pre-conscious processing.)
In any event, I tend to be skeptical of there being a sharp division between conscious and unconscious mental processes.
Blindsight (the sci-fi book) was a weird read. As I recall, the characters’ reasons for concluding that the aliens weren’t conscious were paper thin (something like “they’d have to think too quickly….”).
Interesting. I think we are all blindsighted to some degree. Sometimes I drop something, a pen, a paper clip, a nail. I know it's down there but I can't see it. Until it leaps into awareness. I've scanned the same area a dozen times without "seeing" it. Until it leaps out at me. Same scenario with stuff in the pantry. Looking for a can of tomato soup amongst all the other cans of soup or other stuff. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until there it is. Sometimes I can't find it at all and announce to the world "I can't find the ...", at which point someone shows up, finds it instantly, and delivers the ultimate put-down, " If it was a snake, it would have bitten you." As a child, my mother's favorite response to that scenario was "Look behind something." As always, Mom knows best.
I found this incredibly interesting. It's very well written and researched and you make it easily understandable.
Thank you Tommy.
This was a really interesting essay. I wonder if there's something analogous with hearing, in which a deaf or hard of hearing person actually does sense something but doesn't or can't identify it as sound?
Interesting idea! I've never come across it, but who knows, maybe there is "deaf-hearing"!
One wrinkle I would add is whether the framing shift from "seeing" to "awareness" might incur the kind of false positive narrative or social hedging seen elsewhere. In the extreme case of split brain patients, for example, they perform a kind of when-asked narrative back-fill that could translate into noticing-now bleeding into reports of noticing-then. Or if there is a natural social hedge against "seeming unaware" that is triggered differently by self reports of unawareness than by reports of "not seeing."
More Grey in, on, and/or around your Grey on Grey.
"It is odd to think of having this kind of perception with something as basic as color, since that usually jumps out at us so easily."
We expect degraded vision to be on a spectrum of less clear or bright since that's what we experience when our eyes degrade or are obscured.
But when talking about problems with the brain rather than eyes, I suppose problems should be much odder!
let's see who payed attention on pupil pathways day !! 😂
We are all a bunch of schoolkids barging around in carbon suits we can barely see out of.
https://youtu.be/A3X3Im2YoL8?si=TLak59Pj-7IeilyV
This is very interesting, and I broadly agree with your conclusion, though it leaves me with a couple of issues I hope to follow up on as time allows. The first concerns the detection sensitivity/criterion plot, and specifically how the subjects' detection criteria were measured (this plot is from a PhD thesis by Anders Sand: https://perception.jhu.edu/files/PDFs/Misc/Phillips_Blindsight_PsychRev.pdf). The second is that I vaguely recall reading of another study involving differences in left/right visual field perception, where the stimuli the subject insisted were absent were neither weak nor vague (though, of course, we must consider it possible that the signal may have become so in pre-conscious processing.)
In any event, I tend to be skeptical of there being a sharp division between conscious and unconscious mental processes.
Blindsight (the sci-fi book) was a weird read. As I recall, the characters’ reasons for concluding that the aliens weren’t conscious were paper thin (something like “they’d have to think too quickly….”).