What does attention do to perception?
Yoonhee Jung
Ned Block (2010; 2015) challenges representationalism on the grounds that covert attention—the allocation of attention without eye movement—can alter the phenomenal character of perceptual experience without changing its representational content.[1] He considers an experiment developed by Carrasco and her colleagues in which subjects viewed two Gabor patches presented simultaneously in the periphery while maintaining fixation of their eyes on a central point (see Figure 1). The problem Block draws from this experiment is that if the attended patch has slightly lower contrast (e.g., 22% contrast) than the unattended one (e.g., 28% contrast), attention causes the appearance of both percepts as having equal contrast.
If the appearance of perceptual qualities such as contrast can really be altered by covert attention while the physical properties of the stimulus remain unchanged, then representationalists are forced into a dilemma: either they should reject the determinacy thesis—the claim that phenomenology of experience is fully determined by its representational content—or they should claim that one of the attended or unattended experiences is non-veridical and illusory.
In the paper I submitted for SSPP, I propose that the solution for representationalists to this dilemma lies in loosening the rigid link between representational content and veridicality conditions. If we take seriously the idea that the functional role of attention is not necessarily to enhance perceptual accuracy, but rather to guide agents toward appropriate action, then the dilemma can be dissolved.
To motivate the proposal, let us first examine how attention functions at the neural level. According to the normalization model of attention, attention operates as a modulator of neural processing that shapes sensory input in order to facilitate appropriate responses (Reynolds & Heeger 2009; Carrasco 2004; Anton-Erxleben & Carrasco 2013). This modulation involves not only amplification of task-relevant stimuli but also suppression of task-irrelevant noises, influencing both early perceptual input and downstream processing. More specifically, through a process of divisive normalization, neural responses to sensory stimuli are either enhanced or suppressed depending on the attentional gain applied to input signals, which is then divided by a pooled suppressive drive. This mechanism allows attention to increase signals corresponding to task-relevant stimuli while simultaneously attenuating irrelevant ones, thereby sharpening the neuronal tuning curves. Importantly, attention does not necessarily increase the objective accuracy of perceptual representation.
What about the functional role of attention at the personal level? According to Wayne Wu (2014; 2024; 2025), attention is best understood as an agent’s mental selection of a target in order to deal with and respond to it. The key idea here is that attention is fundamentally action-guiding. Imagine an agent reaching for a glass of wine on a dinner table. Among many other objects on the table, she attends to the glass and selects it as the object to grasp. In this case, attention functions as an active mechanism that selects a target for further processing so that the agent can act upon it; without selective processing, properly coordinated action would be impossible.
The action-guiding selection account of attention aligns naturally with its neural-level function as well. Attention amplifies task-relevant signals and suppresses irrelevant ones; amplified signals correspond to information prioritized for appropriate response and further processing, while suppressed signals correspond to those filtered out as noise to be ignored. And this modulation of neural activity structures perceptual inputs and downstream processes in ways that facilitate specific bodily or mental action.
What I draw from the account of attention as selection for action is that attention plays a constitutive role in shaping perceptual qualities in accordance with what the agent intends to act upon; by modulating (both enhancing and suppressing) neural activity, it alters representational content in ways that support action aligned with the agent’s task-specific goals and intentions. Perceptual changes induced by attention, then, are shaped not only by the veridicality conditions but also by the functional role of guiding appropriate action.
Now let us return to the dilemma posed by Block. Recall that representationalists are forced into an untenable position: either reject the determinacy thesis or claim that one of the attended and unattended percepts is non-veridical. My proposal is that the dilemma dissolves once we reconceptualize representational content as functionally grounded. Drawing on Wu’s account of attention as selection for action, I argue that representational content is not exhausted solely by whether it accurately matches the world, but also by the goals or intentions that guide the agent’s behavior.
Thus, when the attended patch appears more “contrasty” than the unattended one despite the physical properties remaining constant, the phenomenal difference can be explained by the difference in representational content shaped by attention’s action-guiding role. The key point is that representational content can differ even when neither percept is illusory; for representational content is not exhausted entirely by veridicality conditions, but also by the functional role attention plays in guiding the agent toward task-relevant action. By selecting certain inputs for action-guidance, attention reshapes the perceptual representation in accordance with the agent’s goals in intentions.
References
Anton-Erxleben, K. & Carrasco, M. (2013). Attentional Enhancement of Spatial Resolution: Linking Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 14, 188–200.
Block, N. (2010). Attention and mental paint. Philosophical Issues. 20, 23–63.
Block, N. (2015). The puzzle of perceptual precision. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt. (Eds.), Open MIND: MIND Group, 1–52.
Boone, T. (2020). Range content, attention, and the precision of representation. Philosophical Psychology. 33 (8): 1141–1161.
Carrasco, M. (2004). Visual Attention: The Past 25 Years. Vision Research. 51, 1484-1525.
Carrasco, M., Ling, S., & Read, S. (2004). Attention alters appearance. Nature Neuroscience. 7, 308-313.
Reynolds, J. H., & Heeger, D. J. (2009). The normalization model of attention. Neuron, 61(2), 168-185.
Wu, W. (2014). Attention. New York: Routledge.
Wu, W. (2024). We know what attention is! Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(4), 304-318.
Wu, W. (2025). Attention as selection for action defended. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 110, 421–441.
[1] My concern in the paper is a strong form of representationalism only. I do not discuss weak representationalism, according to which phenomenal character supervenes on the representational content, since Block’s challenge via attentional effect doesn’t apply to that view (2010; 2015).
If representational content is shaped not only by the world but also by the organism’s goals, intentions, and task demands, in what sense is representation still doing the explanatory work? Why not simply describe the process as a biological reorganization supporting adaptive action?
A brief follow-up:
Imagine life not as a system that first encounters fully formed objects and then represents them, but as an autocatalytic system that continuously integrates environmental perturbations or ignores them. From this perspective, what comes first are not objects but perturbations. “Objects” emerge only through the organism’s own dynamic organization.
If that is the case, then the representational framework starts one step too late. It presupposes the very thing that still needs to be explained: the constitution of an object for the organism. Representation would then describe the outcome of this process rather than its underlying mechanism.