Conscious vision guides motor action—rarely

Abstract

According to Milner and Goodale's dual visual systems (DVS) theory, a division obtains between visual consciousness and motor action, in that the visual system producing conscious vision (the ventral stream) is distinct from the one guiding action (the dorsal stream). That there would be this division is often taken (by Andy Clark and others) to undermine the folk view on how consciousness and action relate. However, even if this division obtains, this leaves open the possibility that conscious ventral information is often transmitted to the unconscious dorsal stream and then used to guide action, a possibility seeming to preserve a significant role for consciousness in action. This article assesses this possibility. In course of doing so, we will review those arguments recently having been made against the DVS view on how visual consciousness and action relate (ones due to, e.g., Briscoe and Schwenkler, or Schenk and McIntosh). What we will find is that, if we properly analyze the data upon which these arguments are based, we are still left with the impression that the DVS view is largely correct; i.e., it is only rarely that visual experience guides action.

A new low: Reassessing (and revising) the local recurrency theory of consciousness

“…In a study by Sahraie et al (1997), fMRI was used to measure neural activity in a subject with blindsight (GY) while motion stimuli were presented to either his sighted or blind hemifield. Notably, conscious trials brought increased dlPFC activity, this being true whether the Additional reason to think that this study does not count against LR comes from compelling arguments 19 that neglect is merely a disorder of attention, and not of consciousness (Lamme 2006;Block 2007;Jacob & de Vignemont 2010;Kozuch 2014Kozuch , 2015Kozuch , 2022. This idea has recently fallen into disfavor due to some experiments showing the P3b component to 20 correlate with consciousness only when the consciously experienced stimuli are task-relevant (Cohen et al 2020; for discussion, see Michel 2022).…”

“…Some reason to think this comes from how V1 is more sparsely connected to Additionally, V1 lacks direct connections with IT (Felleman & Van Essen 1991). 11 In the case of V3, damage here does not seem to cause deficits of visual consciousness (Pollen 1999), 12 and in the case of V3A, it is part of the dorsal visual processing stream, something for which we have some reason to think that it operates without consciousness (Kozuch 2015(Kozuch , 2022. In Block's 2019 article, he seems to be considering the possibility of both options.…”

Intentional action and knowledge-centered theories of control

“…A full consideration of the philosophical import of absence of awareness cases (e.g., cases involving blindsight, or rapid reflexes, or modification of intention by sensorimotor mechanisms) would require us to sort through difficult issues regarding the applicability of the notion of control to behaviors in absence of awareness cases (e.g., cases involving blindsight, or rapid reflexes, or modification of intention by sensorimotor mechanisms), the potential relationships between know-how and conscious awareness, and between know-how and unconscious mental states. In addition, one would need to defend the very viability of unconscious action cases -an issue that has lately generated a range of sophisticated discussion (see, e.g., Shepherd 2016, Wu 2020, Shepherd and Mylopoulos 2021, Kozuch 2022). We do not think it is possible to do such work in this paper.…”

A Legion of Lesions: The Neuroscientific Rout of Higher-Order Thought Theory

“…However, since FEF is part of an attentional network (Bartolomeo et al, 2007), the patients' inability to notice left-located items can be entirely explained by the attentional deficits that the FEF damage causes (Brogaard, 2011a(Brogaard, , 2011bJacob & de Vignemont, 2010; see esp. Kozuch, 2014Kozuch, , 2022, there again being no need to hypothesize a lack of consciousness. Something supporting this interpretation is the fact that bilateral damage does not produce an inability to notice items in both visual fields (Cazzoli et al, 2012;Pierrot-Deseilligny et al, 1986), where this is what should probably be expected if unilateral damage actually produced a lack of consciousness of the contralesional visual field (Kozuch 2022).…”

“…Kozuch, 2014Kozuch, , 2022, there again being no need to hypothesize a lack of consciousness. Something supporting this interpretation is the fact that bilateral damage does not produce an inability to notice items in both visual fields (Cazzoli et al, 2012;Pierrot-Deseilligny et al, 1986), where this is what should probably be expected if unilateral damage actually produced a lack of consciousness of the contralesional visual field (Kozuch 2022). 25 Now we review data concerning lesions to potential integral areas outside of the PFC, these being the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ), and insula.…”