Can’t trust this: “[Rick] was put in front of a screen and told to guess (from several options) what object was on the screen. Rick insisted that he didn’t know what was there and that he was just guessing, yet he was guessing with over 90% accuracy.” 1/9 https://twitter.com/greggdcaruso/status/1279028631193427969

This claim is linked to https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.1999.0850?casa_token=DdQCKOSSDlcAAAAA:G3Ld6kqHshrKDf2C-ep1dZc8PczLxppS_ePXkhYTEVUUnQ11JV7OqegJdAbN7ssOWKvtXVGwL8Xseg

Charitable interpretation: they linked the wrong study. But here’s what the linked study was about. The title “Attention without awareness in blindsight” clues us in that the study was not about object identification. Rather it was about visual attention in the blind field. 3/9

What they did: “Before the start of the experiment the subject was given written instructions indicating the two possible target locations and describing the sequence of events in each trial.... 4/9

“An auditory tone was preceded by a visual cue that preceded the probable target location. The subject’s task on each trial was to report, using a button press, whether or not a visual target accompanied the presentation of the auditory tone. His RTs were measured.” 5/9

They found that cues in the blind field which probabilistically indicated target location also in the blind field were effective in directing visual attention to the target location. Nothing about object identification. Just two locations and a report of presence/absence. 6/9

Across four different experiments, cue format and location were varied. RTs were affected by cue validity. Subject’s accuracy in reporting target presence/absence was 60-72% across the various conditions. Significantly above chance, but not even close to 90%. 7/9

Why have I spent so much time on this? 1) Philosophers of consciousness need to stop propagating poorly documented myths about blindsight; the implications for consciousness of the actual science are interesting enough, hard enough, and important enough to figure out. 8/9

2) I just pitched an idea to @ConversationEDU (not about consciousness) and I hope that the above isn’t indicative of a lack of editorial rigor that would undermine philosophers’ sincere efforts to make our work accessible. 9/end