Does Perceptual Consciousness Overflow Cognitive Access? - Insights from Studies of Autistic Perception

• Main Authors: Hsin-Ping Wu, 吳心萍
• Other Authors: Allen Y. Houng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ngmz74

碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 心智哲學研究所 === 106 === The overflow debate, which began with philosopher Ned Block’s distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, concerns the question of whether phenomenal consciousness can be dissociated from cognitive access. It has been hotly debated since 1995 and related to issues including the locations where consciousness is generated, and the richness of our conscious experience. So far, due to methodological difficulties of measuring conscious experience, there is still no conclusive evidence for either dissociation view or non-dissociation view. 　　In this paper, I aim to argue for the dissociation view by drawing insights from the studies of autistic perception, specifically focusing on autistic individuals’ superior performance in detection tasks and their artistic skills. Following a brief introduction of the overflow debate and a general survey of autistic individuals’ performance in relevant tasks, three possible explanations for the autistics’ atypicality will be examined—that is, atypical cognitive access, atypical scene-related influence, and anomalous pre-access representation. Afterward, I will propose a new framework that integrates the previous three explanations, the processing of digitalization. It is based on the levels of processing inside the brain that abstract concepts and categories from concrete details. I will show how the framework of digitalization can enrich the debate by providing insights into the nature of representations addressed by perceptual and cognitive systems. In addition, whether and how the arguments from each side of the debate can be contradicting or compatible with the autism researches and the digitalization framework will be analyzed. I will argue that the dissociation view is more consistent with the existing evidence, challenging the non-dissociation view of cognition and consciousness. Finally, the possibility of demonstrating rich consciousness, and the potential ways to refine the measurement of consciousness by adopting the framework of digitalization will be discussed.