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Direct assessment of qualia in a blindsight participant

2007; Elsevier BV; Volume: 17; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.concog.2007.10.001

1090-2376

Navindra Persaud, Hakwan Lau,

Visual Attention and Saliency Detection

Experimenters generally infer whether participants have visual experiences based on metacognitive responses. We showed a well-studied blindsight participant, GY, several definitions of the term "qualia" and then questioned him about whether he felt or he experienced qualia in his normal and blind fields. We found, contrary to others who have used different methods for measuring qualia, that GY does not have qualia for stationary stimuli in his blind field. This novel method for directly assessing qualia embraces the idea that experiences should be related by the experiencer, not the experimenter.