The Philosophical Significance of Attention

Abstract

What is the philosophical significance of attention? The present article provides an overview of recent debates surrounding the connections between attention and other topics of philosophical interest. In particular, it discusses the interplay between attention and consciousness, attention and agency, and attention and reference. The article outlines the questions and contemporary positions concerning how attention shapes the phenomenal character of experience, whether it is necessary or sufficient for consciousness, and whether it plays a special role in the best philosophical theories of action or conceptual reference. Various interdependencies between the answers to these questions are indicated, as well as how these answers might depend on the metaphysics of attention. Together with its companion piece (‘The Nature of Attention') this article serves as an introduction to the philosophy of attention.

The Nature of Attention

“…Third, one might discuss whether the ‘taking possession by the mind’ involved in attention can in fact be as passive as James’ phrase suggests, or whether, by contrast, attending to something, unlike, say, belief or perception, is essentially an activity you may be engaged in and not a passive happening (see Reid 1872/2000; and discussion in Watzl 2010, this volume).…”

“…Another view, thus, would be that ordinary discourse expresses a crude and confused conception of the same thing whose nature the science of attention investigates. ‘Attention’ might work roughly like a natural kind term: its reference is not completely fixed by folk usage or by what we are acquainted with in conscious experience but in part by deference to the experts in the relevant fields (see De Brigard and Prinz 2010b; Watzl 2010; Prinz 2011).…”

“…Belief, for example, might be a natural kind of mental state, even though beliefs can be multiple realized in a variety of distinct substrates. Similarly, attention might be personal level natural kind (Watzl 2010). According to an anti‐reductionist any fundamental theory of attention will essentially involve personal level descriptions (which, of course, need to be compatible with, to explain, and to put constraints on what is going on at the sub‐personal level, see Davies 2005 for an overview of the personal vs. sub‐personal distinction).…”

“…(v) Perceptual vs. executive (or central) attention, where the first, roughly, consists in prioritizing certain perceptual inputs, whereas the second, roughly, is a central processing capacity (see Pashler 1998 for a review). (vi) The process of attending to something vs. the event of shifting attention from one thing to another vs. the state the process results in (see Watzl 2010; Wu 2011a).…”

“…Finally, there seem to be many (biased) competition mechanisms in the brain. While some are closely associate with attention, many others operate even in the absence of attention (see Watzl 2010).…”