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What Blindsight Can See
Butler, Jared
Butler, Jared
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Abstract
The pathological phenomenon known as blindsight, indicated by visual processing without awareness, has provided fodder for recent debate in the philosophy of mind. Inspired by blindsight, Daniel Dennett (1991) turns out a thought experiment in which he imagines the abilities of a blindsight subject progressing to the extent that the patient seems to have regained his lost consciousness. Jason Holt (2003) objects to what he mistakenly views as a direct Dennettian assault on qualia, or the qualities of experience. He attacks the essential claim in Dennett’s thought experiment that a super blindsight subject and normal perceiver would be functionally indistinguishable. By pointing out the confusion in Holt’s somewhat overzealous objection and providing two simple, additional thought experiments, this essay will show that, given what is stipulated to be imagined in the super blindsight, Mary the Neuroscientist, and "Demoiselles d’Avignon" thought experiments, there is indeed no place we can identify in the brain where consciousness happens, no special “juice” that must be added to an experience to make it conscious.
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2010
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With permission of the license/copyright holder