Partial report is the wrong paradigm

Stazicker, J. (2018) Partial report is the wrong paradigm. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 373 (1755). 20170350. ISSN 0962-8436 doi: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0350

Abstract/Summary

Is consciousness independent of the general-purpose information processes known as ‘cognitive access’? The dominantmethodology for supporting this independence hypothesis appeals to partial report experiments as evidence for perceptual consciousness in the absence of cognitive access. Using a standard model of evidential support, and reviewing recent elaborations of the partial report paradigm, this article argues that the paradigm has the wrong structure to support the independence hypothesis. Like reports in general, a subject’s partial report is evidence that she is conscious of information only where that information is cognitively accessed. So partial report experiments could dissociate consciousness from cognitive access only if there were uncontroversial evidence forconsciousness which did not imply reportability. There is no such evidence. An alternative, broadly Marrian methodology for supporting the independence hypothesis is suggested, and some challenges to it outlined. This methodology does not require experimental evidence for consciousness in the absence of cognitive access. Instead it focuses on a function of perceptual consciousness when a stimulus is cognitively accessed. If the processes best suited to implement this function exclude cognitive access, the independence hypothesis will be supported. One relevant function of consciousness may be reflected in reason-based psychological explanations of a subject’s behaviour.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/78065
Identification Number/DOI	10.1098/rstb.2017.0350
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > Philosophy
Publisher	The Royal Society
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