From Unconscious to Conscious Perception, Following Leibniz

Abstract

In the previous chapters I have introduced Leibniz’s principle of continuity and have already mentioned his assumption of a continuous accumulation process of unnoticeable perceptions which somehow gives rise to, or results in, noticeable and conscious perceptual states. Then the discussion of the readiness potential (Libet’s experiment) served as a first brief illustration for a neurophysiological analog of such an accumulation process. In the present chapter this accumulation process and the involved transitions between different types of perceptual states will now be examined more closely.