Awareness

Abstract

Perceptual capacities need not be reflected as such in perceptual consciousness. Thus, a subject could possess multisensory perceptual capacities while perceptual consciousness remains sense specific. For instance, a subject could detect and differentiate novel intermodal features without corresponding, irreducibly multisensory perceptual awareness. In response, this chapter argues that perceptual awareness of an object or feature sometimes is constitutively, irreducibly multisensory. In particular, it argues that the exercise of multisensory perceptual capacities can serve to make features that are not otherwise perceptible available to conscious subjects for use in thought, reasoning, and rational action. Multisensory perception thereby fixes which features are occurrently accessible to conscious perceiving subjects. The implication is that multisensory perceptual awareness cannot fully be captured in terms of sense-specific awareness.