By J. Kevin O'Regan

This ebook proposes a unique view to give an explanation for how we as people -- opposite to present robots -- could have the effect of consciously feeling issues: for instance the pink of a sundown, the scent of a rose, the sound of a symphony, or a pain.

The ebook begins via visible conception. Our skill to determine seems to be even more mysterious than one may imagine. the attention includes many defects which should still heavily intervene with imaginative and prescient. but we now have the effect of seeing the area in wonderful panavision and technicolor. Explaining how this is the case results in a brand new suggestion approximately what seeing particularly is. Seeing isn't passively receiving info within the mind, yet particularly a fashion of interacting with the realm. The position of the mind isn't really to create visible sensation, yet to let the required interactions with the world.

This new method of seeing is prolonged within the moment a part of the e-book to surround the opposite senses: listening to, contact, style and scent. Taking sensory stories to be modes of interacting with the area explains why those reviews are assorted within the means they're. It additionally explains why suggestions or automated services within the physique, and certainly the overwhelming majority mind capabilities, aren't followed by way of any genuine feeling.

The "sensorimotor" procedure isn't easily a philosophical argument: It results in scientifically verifiable predictions and new examine instructions. between those are the phenomena of swap blindness, sensory substitution, "looked yet didn't see", in addition to effects on colour naming and colour notion and the localisation of contact at the physique.

The technique is proper to the query of what animals and infants can believe, and to figuring out what's going to be valuable for robots to turn into awake.

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Extra info for Why Red Doesn't Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the feel of consciousness

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Title. [DNLM: 1. Consciousness—physiology. 2. Psychomotor Performance. 3. Vision, Ocular. 4. Visual Perception. vii) Preface It was spring, and I was a PhD student, sitting with my supervisor in a café in Paris, idly watching the tourists walking by. As I watched the tourists, I realized that the scene in front of me looked quite stable despite the fact that the image inside my eyes was shifting as I moved them back and forth. Why did the scene seem steady even when I moved my eyes? ” It took me 30 years, but I think I’ve now figured it out.

My parents, brother, son Elias, and daughter Lori, as well as Hasna Ben Salah have given me extraordinary support, as have, in different ways and at different times, Alva Noë, Ed Cooke, David Philipona, Erik Myin, and Jacqueline Fagard. The following people read parts or all of the manuscript and provided valuable suggestions: Malika Auvray, Aline Bompas, Jim Clark, Jan Degenaar, Thi Bich Doan, Jérôme Dokic, Shaun Gallagher, Abel Gerschenfeld, Andrei Gorea, Sylvain Hanneton, Tomas Knapen, Ken Knoblauch, Sid Kouider, Charles Lenay, Tatjana Nazir, Peter Meijer, Pasha Parpia, Frédéric Pascal, Daniel Pressnitzer, Joëlle Proust, Paul Reeve, Ronan Reilly, Martin Rolfs, Eliana Sampaio, and Aaron Sloman.

Kevin O’Regan. ; cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-977522-4 1. Consciousness—Physiological aspects. 2. Visual perception. I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Consciousness—physiology. 2. Psychomotor Performance. 3. Vision, Ocular. 4. Visual Perception. vii) Preface It was spring, and I was a PhD student, sitting with my supervisor in a café in Paris, idly watching the tourists walking by. As I watched the tourists, I realized that the scene in front of me looked quite stable despite the fact that the image inside my eyes was shifting as I moved them back and forth.

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