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