A fresh look at the two visual streams

According to what I’ll call the ‘two visual systems account’ (TWO-SYSTEMS), visual processing is divided into two independent sub-systems, a ventral system implementing ‘vision for perception’ and a dorsal system implementing ‘vision for action’ (Milner and Goodale, 2006). TWO-SYSTEMS is widely discussed in philosophy due to the counter-intuitive role that it posits for conscious experience in the control of actions. However, recent evidence undermines the model’s core tenets: it no longer appears that the ventral and dorsal streams constitute isolated processing systems, and there is now evidence for the involvement of both streams in conscious experience and online motor control. I articulate a new ‘direct dorsal control account’ (DORSAL-CONTROL), show that it is immune to three empirical challenges facing TWO-SYSTEMS, and show that it nonetheless has similarly significant implications for the perceiving mind.