Based on these findings, we will then propose a brain-based framework that describes how time-consuming unconscious processes can give rise to perceptual moments that contain nonstatic temporal information.Įxperimental evidence supporting the view that perception might be discrete comes from psychophysical experiments showing that when two stimuli are presented in rapid succession, they are perceived simultaneously, as if they are occurring within a single perceptual episode, i.e., within one snapshot. Here, we will first review experimental evidence that challenges our intuitive assumption that the world is processed as a seamless stream of ongoing perception.

Today, this debate is still unresolved and puzzles philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and neuroscientists alike. Others avoid this issue by denying the sheer existence of phenomenal consciousness. Some philosophers have argued that we can perceive motion and change because our episodes of conscious experience are not momentary, but they extend over time. After all, we are aware of the redness of a red patch as directly as we are of the motion of a moving object, even though color is a “static” visual feature whereas motion requires integration over time. All these accounts aim to explain how we can be directly aware of temporally extended events like movement and change, even though our conscious experience is confined to the moment. Ĭontinuous and discrete theories are two opposing poles, and various accounts of intermediate stance have been proposed (for an overview see ). Discrete theories postulate that conscious perception is a series of distinct moments, similar to snapshots recorded by a video camera. In Western science, Karl Ernst von Baer coined the term “moment” as the border between the past and the future in the 19th century and, thus, introduced the controversial discrete theories of perception.

However, already in the third century B.C., the Abhidharma Buddhist school proposed that perception is actually a series of discrete consciousness moments. Consciousness seems to be a continuous stream of ever smoothly changing percepts, and thus it is intuitively appealing to assume that sensory information is continuously translated into conscious perception. We see his trajectory against the blue sky at each single moment in time.

Herzog 2016 into the inferno torrent