“UNCONSCIOUS FEELING” VS. “UNFELT CONSCIOUSNESS”: DETECTING THE DIFFERENCE (Reply to David Rosenthal-2)

f it is unfelt, “perceiving” is just detecting (and responding). We know that countless unfeeling, unconscious devices can do detecting (and responding) without feeling. Hence the question is not whether detection can occur without feeling: it’s how and why some detecting (namely, perceiving) is felt. The burden of showing that one can make something coherent and substantive out of the putative difference between felt detection and conscious detection is, I have suggested, on the one who wishes to deny that they are one and the same thing. (That’s why “perception” is a weasel-word here, smuggling in the intuition of felt qualities while at the same time denying that anyone is conscious of them.) So subliminal “perceiving,” if unfelt, is not perceiving at all, but just detecting.