Mind and Language 34 (3):283-298 (2019)
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Abstract |
The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole’s prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process-based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play.
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Keywords | attention activity accomplishment adverbialism |
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DOI | 10.1111/mila.12211 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.
Structuring Mind. The Nature of Attention and How It Shapes Consciousness.Sebastian Watzl - 2017 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
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Citations of this work BETA
What is Attention? Adverbialist Theories.Christopher Mole & Aaron Henry - forthcoming - WIREs Cognitive Science.
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2018-01-29
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426 ( #22,698 of 2,504,831 )
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47 ( #18,558 of 2,504,831 )
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