Blindsight regroups the different manifestations of preserved discriminatory visual capacities following the damage to the primary visual cortex. Blindsight types differentially impact objective and subjective perception, patients can report having no visual awareness whilst their behaviour suggests visual processing still occurs at some cortical level. This phenomenon hence presents a unique opportunity to study consciousness and perceptual consciousness, and for this reason, it has had an historical importance for the development of this field of research. From these studies, two main opposing models of the underlying mechanisms have been established: (a) blindsight is perception without consciousness or (b) blindsight is in fact degraded vision, two views that mirror more general theoretical options about whether unconscious cognition truly exists or whether it is only a degraded form of conscious processing. In this article, we want to re-examine this debate in the light of recent advances in the characterization of blindsight and associated phenomena. We first provide an in-depth definition of blindsight and its subtypes, mainly blindsight type I, blindsight type II and the more recently described blindsense. We emphasize the necessity of sensitive and robust methodology to uncover the dissociations between perception and awareness that can be observed in brain-damaged patients with visual field defects at different cognitive levels. We discuss these different profiles of dissociation in the light of both contending models. We propose that the different types of dissociations reveal a pattern of relationship between perception, awareness and metacognition that is actually richer than what is proposed by either of the existing models. Finally, we consider this in the framework of current theories of consciousness and touch on the implications the findings of blindsight have on these.

中文翻译：

---

盲视的本质：对当前意识理论的影响

在初级视觉皮层受损后，盲视重新组合了保留的辨别性视觉能力的不同表现。盲视类型对客观和主观感知有不同的影响，患者可以报告没有视觉意识，而他们的行为表明视觉处理仍然发生在某些皮层水平。因此，这一现象为研究意识和知觉意识提供了一个独特的机会，因此，它对这一研究领域的发展具有历史意义。从这些研究中，已经建立了两种主要相反的潜在机制模型：（a）盲视是没有意识的感知或（b）盲视实际上是视力退化，两种观点反映了关于无意识认知是否真的存在或者它是否只是有意识处理的一种退化形式的更一般的理论选择。在本文中，我们想根据盲视和相关现象表征的最新进展重新审视这场辩论。我们首先提供盲视及其亚型的深入定义，主要是盲视 I 型、盲视 II 型和最近描述的盲视。我们强调敏感和稳健的方法论的必要性，以揭示感知和意识之间的分离，这种分离可以在具有不同认知水平的视野缺陷的脑损伤患者中观察到。我们根据两种竞争模型讨论这些不同的解离概况。我们认为，不同类型的分离揭示了感知、意识和元认知之间的关系模式，这种模式实际上比现有模型中提出的更丰富。最后，我们在当前意识理论的框架内考虑这一点，并触及盲视的发现对这些理论的影响。