if I type “I see a red marker” because I see a red marker, why hypothesize that the physical light, received by my eyes and sending signals to my brain, was magically transformed into pure mentality, enabling it to interact with ineffable consciousness
There’s a fascinating psychological phenomena called “blindsight” where the conscious mind doesn’t register vision—the person is genuinely convinced they are blind, and they cannot verbally describe anything. However, their automatic reflexes will still navigate the world just fine. If you ask them to put a letter in a slot, they can do it without a problem. It’s a very specific sort of neurological damage, and there’s been a few studies on it.
I’m not sure if it quite captures the essence of qualia, but “conscious experience” IS very clearly different from the experience which our automatic reflexes rely on to navigate the world!
I’ve only heard of that particular test once. They shined a light on the wall and forced them to guess where. All I’ve heard is that they do “better than should be possible for someone who is truly blind”, so I’m assuming worse than average but definitely still processing the information to some degree.
Given that it’s a neurological condition, I’d expect it to be impossible to have it in just one eye/brain side, since the damage is occurring well after the signal from both eyes is put together.
There’s a fascinating psychological phenomena called “blindsight” where the conscious mind doesn’t register vision—the person is genuinely convinced they are blind, and they cannot verbally describe anything. However, their automatic reflexes will still navigate the world just fine. If you ask them to put a letter in a slot, they can do it without a problem. It’s a very specific sort of neurological damage, and there’s been a few studies on it.
I’m not sure if it quite captures the essence of qualia, but “conscious experience” IS very clearly different from the experience which our automatic reflexes rely on to navigate the world!
What if you force them to verbally guess about what’s in front of them, can they do better than chance guessing colors, faces, etc.?
Can people get it in just one eye/brain side?
I’ve only heard of that particular test once. They shined a light on the wall and forced them to guess where. All I’ve heard is that they do “better than should be possible for someone who is truly blind”, so I’m assuming worse than average but definitely still processing the information to some degree.
Given that it’s a neurological condition, I’d expect it to be impossible to have it in just one eye/brain side, since the damage is occurring well after the signal from both eyes is put together.
EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight is a decent overview of the phenomena. Apparently it can indeed affect just part of your vision, so I was wrong on that!