Directing internal attention towards ongoing thought

Fortney, Mark

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2020.103025

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The first is attention, a major topic in the contemporary philosophy of psychology and mind (Jennings, 2020; Mole, 2011; Watzl, 2017; Wu, 2014). Philosophers have debated whether there can be intellectual attention, where the mind turns inward to focus on conscious thoughts (Fortney, 2018; Irving, 2021; Martin, 1997; Phillips, 2012). However, philosophers know less about the function of intellectual attention, which we can begin to uncover by investigating the conditions under which the mind turns inward.…”

Section: What Flips Attention?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What Flips Attention?

2023

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A central feature of our waking mental experience is that our attention naturally toggles back and forth between “external” and “internal” stimuli. In the midst of an externally demanding task, attention can involuntarily shift internally with no clear reason how or why thoughts momentarily shifted inward. In the case of external attention, we are typically exploring and encoding aspects of our external world, whereas internal attention often involves searching for and retrieving potentially relevant information from our memory networks. Cognitive science has traditionally focused on understanding forms of internal and external attention separately, leaving a mystery about what sparks the seemingly automatic shifts between the two. Specifically, what shifts attentional focus from being outward‐directed to being inward‐directed? We present a candidate mechanism: Familiarity‐detection.

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Section: What Flips Attention?mentioning

confidence: 99%

What Flips Attention?

2023

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“…representations: memories, task sets, goals, judgments, beliefs, decision options, plans, mental images, and so on De Brigard, 2012;Dixon, Fox, & Christoff, 2014;Lückmann, Jacobs, & Sack, 2014). The boundaries of what exactly to characterize as internal attention are unclear, but plausible examples include selecting among competing task sets or goals Gehring, Bryck, Jonides, Albin, & Badre, 2003); scrutinizing features of a mental image held in working memory (Fan & Turk-Browne, 2013;Griffin & Nobre, 2003;Souza & Oberauer, 2016); retrieving an item from long-term memory (Chun & Johnson, 2011;De Brigard, 2012;Logan, Cox, Annis, & Lindsey, 2021); and, more speculatively, bringing into awareness ongoing thoughts and cognitive operations (Fortney, 2020). Internal attention is similar to the executive controller posited in working memory models, although the precise relationship between these constructs is debated (Amir, Ruimi, & Bernstein, 2021;Awh et al, 2006;Chun, 2011;Kiyonaga & Egner, 2013;Lewis-Peacock, Drysdale, Oberauer, & Postle, 2012;Myers, Stokes, & Nobre, 2017).…”

Section: Inattentional Blindness Towards Internal Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Invisible gorillas in the mind: Internal inattentional blindness and the prospect of introspection training

Morris¹

2021

Preprint

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Much of high-level cognition appears inaccessible to consciousness. Countless studies have revealed mental processes -- like those underlying our choices, beliefs, judgments, intuitions, etc. -- which people do not notice or report, and these findings have had a widespread influence on the theory and application of psychological science. However, the interpretation of these findings is uncertain. Making an analogy to perceptual consciousness research, I argue that much of the unconsciousness of high-level cognition is plausibly due to internal inattentional blindness: missing an otherwise consciously-accessible internal event because your attention was elsewhere. In other words, rather than being structurally unconscious, many higher mental processes might instead be "preconscious", and would become conscious if a person attended to them. I synthesize existing indirect evidence for this claim, argue that it is a foundational and largely untested assumption in many applied interventions (such as therapy and mindfulness practices), and suggest that, with careful experimentation, it could form the basis for a long-sought-after science of introspection training.

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“…For more on the nature of intellectual or internal attention, seeFortney 2019, Fortney 2020a, Fortney 2020b SeePeacocke (1976) for a version of the knowledge thesis and criticism of simpler views according to which understanding is just knowing what was said. SeeRecanati (2004 pp.…”

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confidence: 99%

Evans on intellectual attention and memory demonstratives

Fortney

2021

Philosophical Books

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Intellectual attention, like perceptual attention, is a special mode of mental engagement with the world. When we attend intellectually, rather than making use of sensory information we make use of the kind of information that shows up in occurent thought, memory, and the imagination (Chun, Golomb, & Turk-Browne, 2011). In this paper, I argue that reflecting on what it is like to comprehend memory demonstratives speaks in favour of the view that intellectual attention is required to understand memory demonstratives. Moreover, I argue that this is a line of thought endorsed by Gareth Evans in his Varieties of Reference (1982). In so doing, I improve on interpretations of Evans that have been offered by Christopher Peacocke (1984), and Christoph Hoerl & Theresa McCormack (a coauthored piece, 2005). In so doing I also improve on McDowell's (1990) criticism of Peacocke's interpretation of Evans. Like McDowell, I believe that Peacocke might overemphasize the role that "memory-images" play in Evans' account of comprehending memory demonstratives. But unlike McDowell, I provide a positive characterization of how Evans described the phenomenology of comprehending memory demonstratives.

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Directing internal attention towards ongoing thought

Cited by 3 publications

References 30 publications

What Flips Attention?

What Flips Attention?

Invisible gorillas in the mind: Internal inattentional blindness and the prospect of introspection training

Evans on intellectual attention and memory demonstratives

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