Blindsight and other visuomotor pathologies

pp. 25-41

in: Garry Young, Philosophical psychopathology, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

When considering the extract above, one way to interpret the King's remark — that he wished he had eyes that could see nobody on the road and at a distance too — and its seeming absurdity, is to hold that the King is treating the term "nobody" as an object or a person that he wished his eyes were able to see: that, somehow he could "pick out" this "nobody" as an object of perception. Suppose, however, that you had eyes that, in one sense, did see nobody or nothing — insofar as you were not conscious of seeing anything — but in another important sense provided information that enabled you to engage successfully with this nobody or nothing that, as far as you were consciously aware, was in front of you.