Abstract
There have recently been a number of attempts to put forth a philosophical account of the nature of attention. Many such theories aim at giving necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be attention. In this paper I will argue that any such theory must meet two criteria. Then I shall examine four prominent accounts of attention in some detail, and argue that all of them face problems meeting one or the other of the criteria. I propose an alternative view, which involves taking seriously a pluralistic approach to attention. If the position I advocate is correct, then much of the philosophical work currently carried out on attention is fundamentally misguided, as most of the prominent theories of attention currently available are based upon assumptions which should be rejected.
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Notes
See also De Brigard and Prinz (2010).
This quotation seems to be a very clear statement of attention essentialism. I should note that Prinz sometimes uses the word ‘available’ and sometimes the word ‘accessible’ (e.g. Prinz 2007b) but he seems to understand these as synonymous.
In Taylor (2013) I also discuss Prinz’s identification of availability to working memory with gamma synchrony.
Another possible response on Prinz’s behalf is that much recollection of memories from long term memory is a constructive process. Many memories are not explicitly encoded in long term memory but are (in some sense) constructed when memory recall is instigated. Of course, this suggestion will not by itself save Prinz’s theory (the long term memories will count as available to working memory whether or not the process of retrieving them is constructive or not) but Prinz could claim that attention is somehow involved in this process of construction when long term memories are retrieved. This is of course, an empirical claim, which will have to await further evidence, but even if it is a plausible suggestion, I do not think that it will save Prinz’s theory because notice that in order for my criticism of Prinz to go through there need only be at least one belief that is quiescent but explicitly encoded, even if not in long term memory. It would be an extremely extravagant claim that no such memories exist!
Smithies (2011) discusses this issue in relation to his own account of attention.
As they stand, the terms ‘guidance’ and ‘inform’ are vague enough to count quiescent beliefs as attended to. For this reason, a possible response from Wu may be to attempt to sharpen these terms in order to exclude the quiescent beliefs from counting as attended to. I obviously cannot hope to argue that no such response could work, but I will say that these terms are notoriously hard to get a grip on, despite their frequent use in the philosophy of action. For this reason, the task ahead of Wu is extremely large and I hold out little hope for its success. Another response from Wu would be to claim that quiescent beliefs are relevant to the formation of intention rather than the deployment of physical action. However, this would merely force the problem back a stage: suppose an intention were formed by deliberation (and that deliberation counts as a kind of mental action). Then Wu’s theory would count all the beliefs that went into the creation of this intention as attended to (because they guide the mental action of deliberation). However, clearly these need not always be attended to, at least not in all instances of deliberation. Thanks to an anonymous referee for discussion of this issue.
See Mole (2011a, pp. 57–60).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this. Wayne Wu has also suggested this to me in personal correspondence.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the walking example.
In his (2011a) Watzl puts forth the theory only as an account of conscious attention, but elsewhere (2010, 2011c) he puts it forward as a theory of attention tout court. In any case, my criticisms will apply to Watzl’s theory even if it is only read as a theory of conscious attention. Of course, it is relatively uncontroversial that attention can alter phenomenal consciousness in various ways (e.g. Carrasco et al. 2004; Sergent et al. 2012).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this.
This suggestion is not new, and is an idea that we find more in the psychological, rather than philosophical literature on attention, see e.g. Duncan (2006). This family resemblance view is sometimes mentioned in the philosophical literature, but is usually dismissed (Mole 2011b, vi–vii and Prinz 2012, pp. 90ff). Here it is important to notice that there are various uses of the word ‘attention’ in empirical psychology which are not accommodated by the attention essentialist theories here under scrutiny. A plausible example of this is ‘alerting’ or ‘arousal’, which is a variety of attention marked by increased sensitivity to external stimuli (e.g. Posner and Rothbart 2007). All of the above theories would not allow this kind of activity to count as a variety of ‘attention’. Presumably the theorists in question would be forced to claim that arousal and alerting are not ‘really’ kinds of attention, but is it plausible for them to claim that empirical psychologists have got it wrong here, simply because the use of the term in empirical psychology sometimes deviates from their own use of the term? Rather than become embroiled in these sticky issues over whether the scientific taxonomy which does count alerting as a kind of attention is superior, my own view simply allows that alerting is one variety of attention, and that there may be others. I see it as a virtue of my own view that it fits better with how the term ‘attention’ is used in empirical psychology than the views I have been critiquing.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Peter Vickers and an anonymous referee for comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Thanks also to Ned Block and Bob Kentridge for useful discussion while the paper was being written.
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Taylor, J.H. Against Unifying Accounts of Attention. Erkenn 80, 39–56 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9611-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9611-3