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The dorsal stream and the visual horizon

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Abstract

Today many philosophers of mind accept that the two cortical streams of visual processing in humans can be distinguished in terms of conscious experience. The ventral stream is thought to produce representations that may become conscious, and the dorsal stream is thought to handle unconscious vision for action. Despite a vast literature on the topic of the two streams, there is currently no account of the way in which the relevant empirical evidence could fit with basic Husserlian phenomenology of vision. Here I offer such an account. In this article, I show how the empirical evidence ought to be understood in a way that is informed by phenomenology. The differences in the two streams are better described as differences in spatial and temporal processing. Rather than simply “unconscious,” the dorsal stream can be better described as making a special contribution to what Husserl identified as the visual horizon.

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Notes

  1. For some examples of Milner and Goodale's main hypothesis influencing discussions of visual consciousness, see Crick and Koch (1998: 98) and Chalmers (2000: 21). Also note that some of Andy Clark's work on this topic supposes that Milner and Goodale are correct in emphasizing the dichotomy between conscious vision for perception versus unconscious vision for action. In his influential article from 2001, for example, both the assumption of Experience Based Control (EBC) and the hypothesis of Experience Based Selection (EBS) are formulated without mention of the temporal and spatial scales at play in conscious experience.

  2. For some recent philosophical work that challenges the dichotomy, see Noë (2004), Schellenberg (2008), and Briscoe (2009). Of course, the Gibsonian ecological tradition in psychology could also motivate criticism of the dichotomy.

  3. For a more detailed presentation of this theme, see Madary (forthcoming).

  4. My comments here are about the physiological nature of the inputs to the two streams, and I am not going to enter the somewhat large debate over egocentric versus allocentric coding in the two streams. For a treatment of this issue from a philosophical perspective, see Briscoe (2009).

  5. In what follows, I will assume familiarity with basic anatomy and physiology of the visual system. For an introduction to this topic, see Palmer (1999) or Goldstein (2002).

  6. There is also a third koniocellular pathway that is not as well understood as the other two major pathways. Also, the koniocellular pathway includes far less cells than the other two (Kveraga et al. 2007; Callaway 2005).

  7. For a review of the challenges to their proposal, see Milner and Goodale (1995: 34–36). Some important articles on this topic include Schiller and Logothetis (1990), Merigan and Maunsell (1993), and more recently Nassi and Calloway (2006, 2009).

  8. For an alternative view based on macaque retina, see Silveira and Perry (1991).

  9. Jacob and Jeannerod also discuss patient S.B. (2003: 88–89).

  10. I am not suggesting here that visual anticipation is exclusively enabled by the dorsal stream. Thanks to Nivedita Gangopadhyay for this point.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the helpful comments I received when presenting this material at the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen in May 2010. My research for this article was supported by a collaborative research project on Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context (CONTACT), which was coordinated by the European Science Foundation (ESF).

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  1. Johannes Gutenberg—Universität Mainz, FB05 Philosophie und Philologie, Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, 55099, Mainz, Germany

    Michael Madary

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Madary, M. The dorsal stream and the visual horizon. Phenom Cogn Sci 10, 423–438 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9214-2

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