Anchoring visual subjective experience in a neural model: the coarse vividness hypothesis

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Visual Perception
• Philosophy of Mind

Background:

• Subjective experience in perception and cognition is challenging to define theoretically and experimentally.
• A key debate in consciousness research questions if perceptual experience is independent of cognitive abilities or a cognitive illusion.
• Existing research on visual object and scene recognition offers insights into the nature of subjective experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a new framework for understanding initial visual subjective experience.
• To characterize subjective experience by its core properties: coarseness and vividness.
• To reconcile findings on attention, consciousness, and subjective reports with a biological basis for experience.

Main Methods:

• Revisiting established properties of the visual system, particularly in object and scene recognition.
• Proposing a two-stage model of visual processing: 'vision at a glance' (feed-forward) and 'vision with scrutiny' (feed-back).
• Analyzing the implications of the proposed model for understanding consciousness and attention.

Main Results:

• Initial visual subjective experience is proposed to be coarse, integrated, and meaningful, but lacking fine detail.
• This coarse experience likely arises in high-level visual areas via a fast feed-forward process ('vision at a glance').
• Detailed information for behavior is acquired through a secondary, optional feed-back process ('vision with scrutiny').

Conclusions:

• The 'coarse vividness hypothesis' suggests initial subjective experience is genuine, characterized by coarseness and vividness.
• This framework explains dissociations between attention and consciousness and mismatches in subjective reports.
• It advocates for probing coarse subjective experience rather than fine details to avoid misinterpreting it as an illusion.