Attention

Philosophical and Psychological Essays

Edited by Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies, and and Wayne Wu

Brings together a variety of perspectives on attention in 14 essays by top philosophers and psychologists who specialize on the topic.
Explores attention through the lenses of phenomenology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind.

Attention

Philosophical and Psychological Essays

Edited by Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies, and and Wayne Wu

Description

Attention has been studied in cognitive psychology for more than half a century, but until recently it was largely neglected in philosophy. Now, however, attention has been recognized by philosophers of mind as having an important role to play in our theories of consciousness and of cognition. At the same time, several recent developments in psychology have led psychologists to foundational questions about the nature of attention and its implementation in the brain. As a result there has been a convergence of interest in fundamental questions about attention.
This volume presents the latest thinking from the philosophers and psychologists who are working at the interface between these two disciplines. Its fourteen chapters contain detailed philosophical and scientific arguments about the nature and mechanisms of attention; the relationship between attention and consciousness; the role of attention in explaining reference, rational thought, and the control of action; the fundamental metaphysical status of attention, and the details of its implementation in the brain. These contributions combine ideas from phenomenology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of mind to further our understanding of this centrally important mental phenomenon, and to bring to light the foundational questions that any satisfactory theory of attention will need to address.

Attention

Philosophical and Psychological Essays

Edited by Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies, and and Wayne Wu

1.Introduction, Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies, and Wayne Wu
2. A Systems-Neuroscience View of Attention, Christian Ruff
3. Attention and Integration, Alan Allport
4. The Metaphysics of Attention, Christopher Mole
5. Covert Spatial Attention and Saccade Planning, Katherine Armstrong
6.Attention as Selection for Action, Wayne Wu
7.Multiple Object-Tracking: A Serial Attentional Process?, Srimant Tripathy, Haluk Ogmen and Sathyasri Narasimhan
8. Attention as Structuring the Stream of Consciousness, Sebastian Watzl
9. Is Attention Necessary and Sufficient for Consciousness?, Jesse Prinz
10. Attention and Iconic Memory, Ian Phillips
11. Attention Without Awareness: A Brief Review, Robert Kentridge
12. Attention is Rational-Access Consciousness, Declan Smithies
13. Perceptual Attention and the Space of Reasons, Johannes Roessler
14. Visual Attention Fixes Demonstrative Reference By Eliminating Referential Luck, Imogen Dickie
15. Visual Attention and the Epistemic Role of Consciousness, John Campbell

Attention

Philosophical and Psychological Essays

Edited by Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies, and and Wayne Wu

Author Information

Christopher Mole teaches in the Department of Philosophy and in the Program in Cognitive Systems at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Declan Smithies teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the Ohio State University, and is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Australian National University.

Wayne Wu teaches in, and is Associate Director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University.

Contributors:

Alan Allport: University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology.
Katherine M. Armstrong: Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Neurobiology.
John Campbell: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Philosophy.
Imogen Dickie: University of Toronto, Department of Philosophy.
Robert Kentridge: Durham University, Department of Psychology.
Christopher Mole: University of British Columbia, Department of Philosophy.
Sathyasri Narasimhan: University of Bradford, School of Life Sciences.
Haluk Ogmen: University of Houston, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Ian Phillips: University College London, Department of Philosophy.
Jesse J. Prinz: CUNY Graduate Centre, Department of Philosophy.
Johannes Roessler: University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy.
Christian C. Ruff: University of Zurich, Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research.
Declan Smithies: Ohio State University, Department of Philosophy and Australian National University, Philosophy Program.
Srimant P. Tripathy: University of Bradford, School of Life Sciences and University of Houston, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Sebastian Watzl: Harvard University, Department of Philosophy.
Wayne Wu: Carnegie Mellon University, Centre for the Neural Basis of Cognition.