What is Conscious Attention?

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (1):93-120 (2010)
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Abstract

Perceptual attention is essential to both thought and agency, for there is arguably no demonstrative thought or bodily action without it. Psychologists and philosophers since William James have taken attention to be a ubiquitous and distinctive form of consciousness, one that leaves a characteristic mark on perceptual experience. As a process of selecting specific perceptual inputs, attention influences the way things perceptually appear. It may then seem that it is a specific feature of perceptual representation that constitutes what it is like to consciously attend to an object. In fact conscious attention is more complicated. In what follows, I argue that the phenomenology of conscious attention to what is perceived involves not just a way of perceptually locking on to a specific object. It necessarily involves a way of cognitively locking on to it as well.

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Wayne Wu
University of Pittsburgh

Citations of this work

The Nature of Cognitive Phenomenology.Declan Smithies - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (8):744-754.
The Pleasure of Art.Mohan Matthen - 2017 - Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (1):6-28.
Attention is Rational-Access Consciousness.Declan Smithies - 2011 - In Christopher Mole, Declan Smithies & Wayne Wu (eds.), Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 247--273.
How literature expands your imagination.Antonia Peacocke - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2):298-319.

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References found in this work

The Varieties of Reference.Gareth Evans - 1982 - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited by John Henry McDowell.
Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind.John R. Searle - 1983 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reference and Consciousness.John Campbell - 2002 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The representational character of experience.David Chalmers - 2004 - In Brian Leiter (ed.), The future for philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 153--181.

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