Evaluating Consciousness

Evaluating Consciousness: The Role of Valence in Perceptual Experience

At present, my primary research project pertains to the role of valence (or affect) in consciousness and perception. Philosophical orthodoxy identifies the phenomenal characters of perceptual experiences with their sensory aspects. Similarly, tradition contrasts ‘cold,’ evaluatively-neutral, perception with ‘hot,’ evaluatively-loaded, emotion and affect. By integrating philosophical methods and behavioral and brain-based evidence, I argue that the phenomenal character of perception has another aspect beyond its sensory aspect: perception–within and across sense-modalities–is intrinsically valenced, feeling good or bad (pleasant/unpleasant) to some degree. The experiential world–with its odors,

tastes, and colors–is a ‘hot’ world, abundant in both engaging and repellant aspects. Moreover, valence is not an accidental feature of our consciousness; rather, it is an essential dimension of the basic structure of phenomenal character. Our consciousness is, by its very nature, affective. I further contend that perceptual experiences do not merely represent features of the world; rather, they involve satisfaction-apt attitudes toward those features, reflecting how they ought to be from the perceiver's perspective.

Among the various goals of this project, I aim to:

  • Explicate and address foundational questions regarding the very notion of Intrinsically Valenced Perception (IVP): What is required for perception to be intrinsically valenced? If perception itself is valenced, what must be the relations between its valenced aspects and sensory aspects?
  • Establish appropriate methodologies for empirical research of IVP, and test some of them in the lab.
  • Support the existence and examine the scope of IVP, while contending that valence pervades the entire perceptual realm.
  • Uncover and explain key characteristics of IVPs–e.g., their motivational, normative, and introspective features.
  • Examine the relevance of IVP to issues in the philosophy and science of perception–e.g., cognitive-penetrability, the relations between perception and action, perceptual affordances, and decision-making.
  • Re-examine the borders between perception, affect, and cognition.
  • Develop and evaluate competing theories of IVP (Evaluativism, Imperativism, and Second-Order Desire-Theories) with the ultimate goal of advancing my own (First-Order) Attitudinal-Representational Theory (ART).
  • Explore the implications of my conception to the value and significance of consciousness.

A book length project on this topic is in progress. But some of the aforementioned issues are explored and developed in the following published papers: On the Very Idea of Valenced Perception, Journal of Philosophy (Forthcoming); The Role of Valence in Perception: An ARTistic Treatment, Philosophical Review (2021); Not Only a Messenger: Towards an Attitudinal-Representational Theory of Pain, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2019). Several additional papers are under review and available upon request: Manuscript on Consciousness and the Evaluable Life; Manuscript on The Essential Link between Consciousness and Affectivity; Empirical Manuscript arguing for Intrinsically Valenced Perception.