A Defense Of The Phenomenal Overflow

During the past two decades or so,Block has argued forcefully that researchers in philosophy and psychology have applied consciousness and its synonyms to different mental states.Much of the work that has been done so far has focused on the distinction between what he calls phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness.A mental state is phenomenal consciousness if it has features that resemble qualia.If the content of a mental state is in charge of rational control of action and speech,then it is access consciousness or cognitive accessible.Theorists who support these two distinctions argue that these distinctions can occur not only conceptually but also empirically.Empirical confirmation revolves around whether phenomenal overflow exists,as the Sperling experiment is thought to provide strong evidence.Phenomenal overflow means that our large-capacity phenomenal consciousness overflows our limitedcapacity access consciousness.In psychological experiments based on Sperling’s paradigm,subjects can always claim to have the experience of seeing the entire content but can only report a portion of it after being subjected to a visual stimulus.Overflow theorists who support the existence of phenomenal overflow argue that the content of iconic memory or perception that represents phenomenal consciousness overflows the reportable access consciousness.However,this argument has been challenged.The challenge focuses on the five premises that overflow theorist presuppose in their arguments.Although four of these premises have been supported by much empirical evidence,there is still one premise that has sparked intense debate.The argument is about whether the experimental subjects’ consciousness about the content of iconic memory is consistent with the perceptual content.Overflow theorists are positive about this contention because this view can provide a very plausible explanation for the subject’s performance in the experiment.However,no-overflow theorists,who deny the existence of overflow,argue that the subjects do not have consciousness about the perceptual content.The no-overflow theorist’s view is that the subject’s performance simply indicates that they experienced an illusion.One typical claim is that this illusion is a generic illusion.Subjects have only a gist-like consciousness of the perceptual content and need attention if they want to have a full consciousness of the specific perceptual content;another is that they have only a fragmentary consciousness of the perceptual content,which is similar to the full perceptual content but is indeed fragmentary.They experienced a fragment illusion.Both of these illusions provide explanations for the performance of the subjects in the experiment.Thus,overflow theorists and no-overflow theorists argue around the explanation is called illusion.This paper argues against the no-overflow theorists by criticizing and refuting the explanation,and thus defending the claim of the overflow theorists.I do so in two main ways.First,using the color diversity experiment invoked by the overflow theorist as a starting point for criticizing the no-overflow theorist’s explanation.I defend the overflow theorist’s explanation in the context of the no-overflow theorist’s criticism of color diversity.Finally,it is argued that we currently have more reason to think that the experimental subjects actually already have consciousness about the full perceptual content.Secondly,I will challenge the fragment illusion by citing recent neuroscientific findings,combined with neuroscientific findings on visual perceptual areas and wordform storage areas,to provide a more scientific reinterpretation of the experimental data on which the fragment illusion is based.Ultimately,conclusions are drawn by criticizing and questioning these two illusions separately.Based on the data available so far,it remains reasonable to conclude that the explanation of no-overflow theorists is not reliable,or at least that the evidence used to refute the existence of phenomenal overflow is inadequate.