Chapter
Eight
Conscious and unconscious
A summary of debates about what blindsight is and
means.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1996). Perception without aware-
ness of what is perceived, learning without awareness
of what is learned. In M. Velmans (Ed.), The science of
consciousness (pp. 23–46). London, Routledge.
Traces the history of research on dissociations of con-
sciousness from perception and learning.
Merikle, P. (2007). Preconscious processing. In
M. Velmans and S. Schneider (Eds), The Blackwell
companion to consciousness (pp. 512–524). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Uses vision as a case study for distinguishing conscious
from unconscious cognitive processing, with particular
focus on questions about measurement.
Velmans, M. (2002). How could conscious experi-
ences affect brains? Journal of Consciousness Studies,
9 (11), 3–95.
Proposes a new account of mental causation to address
this question, trying to avoid the problems of reduction-
ist (mind=brain) and non-reductionist accounts with a
dual-aspect theory. Velmans’s response to the commen-
taries introduces reflexive monism (Chapter 17).