ABSTRACT
Is attention necessary for perception? Can we perceive only what we attend to? If we think of perception as occurring in two modes—namely, as conscious or unconscious—then our opening question divides into two. (1) Is attention to some target necessary for conscious perception of it? (2) Is attention to some target necessary for unconscious perception of it? As it turns out, (1) has garnered most (all?) of the attention and will be the main target of our discussion. The question of attention as necessary for unconscious perception has, to my knowledge, been neglected, but we shall briefly consider it as well. In this essay, I begin by clarifying attention and consciousness, then argue that the more discussed issue of attention as gatekeeper should be set aside. The central question should not be whether attention allows you to be conscious of some X but rather, given that you are conscious of X, how does attending to it modulate your awareness of it? I then make some remarks about attention as necessary for unconscious perception. The upshot is that the central questions remain open, despite the opinion of many theoreticians that (1) clearly receives a positive answer.
