The Nature of Attention

Abstract

What is attention? Attention is often seen as a subject matter for the hard sciences of cognitive and brain processes, and is understood in terms of sub‐personal mechanisms and processes. Correspondingly, there still is a stark contrast between the central role attention plays for the empirical investigation of the mind in psychology and the neurosciences, and its relative neglect in philosophy. Yet, over the past years, several philosophers have challenged the standard conception. A number of questions concerning the nature of attention arise. This article provides an introduction to contemporary debates concerning these questions. In particular, it discusses the question of how the pre‐theoretic conception of attention might be reconciled with a scientific conception, arguments that provide support for an anti‐reductionist theory of attention, and sketches several recent anti‐reductionist theories and their inter‐relations.

The Role of Attention in Conscious Recollection

“…Semantic consensus is not found in scientific circles either. On the one hand, there is disagreement as to whether “attention” refers to a personal or a sub-personal phenomenon (Watzl, 2011 ). Specifically, there is disagreement as to whether attention refers to a process one should expect to find a neural correlate for; or whether it refers to something the person does in virtue of having a brain, but for which it would be a category-mistake to try to find a neural correlate (Mole, 2010 ; Wu, 2011 ).…”

“…As such, it would be a mistake to try to find the neural correlate of attention per se , independently of other cognitive processes. In contrast, one could see attention as a unified cognitive process with either an identifiable sub-personal neural correlate (Prinz, 2011 ), or a set of personal-level phenomena such as behaviors (Wu, 2011 ) or subjective mental contents (Smithies, 2011 ; Watzl, 2011 ). Those who consider attention reducible to a neural process face the daunting task of identifying a single brain mechanism responsible for all forms of attentive behavior.…”

“…Critics of this approach claim that extant empirical evidence strongly suggests that there may not be a single neural mechanism responsible for all forms of attention (Wu, 2011 ). The lack of a common neural denominator for all forms of attention would make it tempting to advocate either for anti-reductionism – so that we are to find the essence of attention at the personal rather than the sub-personal neuronal level (Mole, 2010 ; Watzl, 2011 ) – or for eliminativism, ridding scientific psychology of the term “attention” (Allport, 1993 ; Anderson, 2011 ). But there is another alternative.…”

Attention Is Amplification, Not Selection

“…These observations led many to seriously question whether there is any common core function underlying the effects and manifestations of attention, and whether different attentional phenomena can be seen as the product of a unitary mechanism. 1 This gives rise to the disunity problem (Watzl [2011b]) that claims that since attention at the neural level is highly disjunctive, finding a unified characterization at this level of enquiry is particularly unlikely (Wu [2014]; Taylor [2015]; Watzl [2017]).…”

Attention and Conscious Perception in the Hypothesis Testing Brain

“…Attention is difficult to study because it is multifaceted and intertwined with conscious perception. Thus, attention can be endogenous (more indirect, top-down, or motivationally driven) or exogenous (bottom-up, attention grabbing); it can be focal or global; it can be directed at objects, properties, or spatial or temporal regions, and so on (Watzl, 2011a , b ). Attentional change often seems accompanied by a change in conscious perception such that what grabs attention is a new stimulus, and such that whatever is attended to also populates consciousness.…”