IUBio

intentional equivalent to blindsight


Thu Apr 14 13:25:11 EST 1994


In article <94103.093958VCBCC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>, <VCBCC at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
wrote:
> 
> Q: Is there an intentional equivalent to blindsight?
> 
>    A person who has blindsight is _legally_ blind, because s/he has no
>    conscious experience of the qualia of sight. There is evidence that
>    people who suffer from blindsight can make visual discriminations,
>    but these discriminations are non-conscious discriminations.
>    Thus there is one condition in which a person can have a phenomenal
>    mental state without consciousness.
> 
>    Is there a condition, either natural or through brain damage, in which
>    a person can have an intentional mental state but be _unable_ to have a
>    corresponding conscious experience of that mental state?
> 
> 
>  p.s. Please water down any highly technical responses.

I'm not sure I understand your question exactly, but you might check some
work by Mel Goodale and David Milner on the patient D.F. who exhibits an
ability to perform visually-guided actions with a loss of visual form
recognition.  For example, she cannot discriminate different orientations,
but she can "post a letter" in a slot of any orientation without
difficulty.  Goodale views this as evidence of a dissociation of
"perception" and "action"

Larry Symons

symonsl at qucdn.queensu.ca



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