Seeing Circles: Inattentive Response-Coupling

Abstract

What is attention? On one influential position, attention constitutively is the selection of some stimulus for coupling with a response. Wayne Wu has proposed a master argument for this position that relies on the claim that cognitive science commits to an empirical sufficient condition (ESC), according to which, if a subject S perceptually selects (or response-couples) X to guide performance of some experimental task T, she therein attends to X. In this paper I show that this claim about cognitive science is false. Cognitive science allows for inattentive selection-for-task, or inattentive response-coupling. This means that Wu’s account is without independent support.