 Consider the following situation: one is engrossed in an activity like reading or a game, and so fails to notice a background noise, like a refrigerator’s hum. Only when the hum “suddenly” stops do we realize that it had been “in our consciousness” all along, yet without being an “object of consciousness”.  Hence, if to perceive is to attend, then sense perception depends on an apperceiving mass (Stout 1888b: 486). It is only when the dimmed representation begins to fuse with the vivacious grouping at the center of awareness that the former 