Visual attention and representational content

Bibliographic Data

ID10690414
AuthorsKim Soland (0000-0002-2333-9643, University of Kansas, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-01-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pq/pqae152
OpenAlexW4406289438
LanguageIT
Citations received1
References cited28

Attention makes a phenomenal difference to visual experience, but the nature of this difference is controversial. There are three possibilities. The first is that the phenomenology of visual attention has deflationary content, which is to say that attention makes a phenomenal difference only by modulating the appearance of an attended object's visible features. Secondly, it has novel content—attention contributes unique representational content to visual experience. Thirdly, it has no content—the phenomenal contribution of attention to visual experience is not representational at all. I argue that problems for deflationary content and no content accounts motivate a novel content account of visual attentional phenomenology. I develop a novel content account which avoids challenges that have hitherto been presumed devastating for such views. The resulting theory vindicates representationalism about visual experience and is poised to do the same for experiences in other perceptual modalities

Cognitive psychology · Content (measure theory) · Direct and indirect realism · Epistemology · Inattentional blindness · Linguistics · Modalities · Object (grammar) · Perception · Phenomenology (philosophy) · Social science · Sociology · Visual attention · Visual perception · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Visual perception and processing mechanisms