Enacted theories of visual awareness: A neuromodelling analysis

Abstract

In recent years, issues of inattention blindness and change blindness have thrown doubt on theories of vision that assume that the visual signal is inwardly represented for further recognition and processing. The aim of this paper is to review so called enacted theories of vision and argue that they are too severe in terms of removing inner representations from the argument and removing the possibility of mental imagery. This is followed by an exposition of an axiomatic approach we have developed to explain issues of visual consciousness and show how this, while respecting enacted theories provides a new model of visual awareness which not only attempts to characterise the natural version, but may inspire the design of machinery. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.