Various kinds of observations show that the ability of human beings to both consciously relive past events – episodic memory – and conceive future events, entails an active process of construction. This construction process also underpins many other important aspects of conscious human life, such as perceptions, language and conscious thinking. This article provides an explanation of what makes the constructive process possible and how it works. The process mainly relies on attentional activity, which has a discrete and periodic nature, (...) and working memory, which allows for the combination of discrete attentional operations. An explanation is also provided of how past and future events are constructed. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive theoretical framework that explains both human consciousness and meanings through the working of attention. By arguing for a first-person approach to consciousness, this book offers a critical overview of the major theories and empirical findings on consciousness and attention, and exemplifies how one of the most difficult and fundamental conscious experiences to account for, that is, time, can be analyzed by adopting the kind of semantics developed within the presented theoretical framework: Attentional Semantics.

Global development, diffusion and implementation of the human-centredness paradigm can be performed at best when supported by a study of our mental activity. By analysing our mental operations, we can understand how human needs, interests, values and creativity take form, what each consists of, how it is possible to expand, modify and generate them. The proposed model of mental activity is based on attentional movement. The new opportunities, both ethical and social, offered by such a study are presented.

Negrotti's theory of the artificial is based on the fundamental assumption that the human being cannot select more than one observation level per unit of time. Since this assumption has important consequences for the theory of knowledge — knowledge cannot be synthesised but only further differentiated — its plausibility is tested against two aspects that characterise any theory of knowledge: knowledge production and knowledge application. The way in which the human being produces and applies knowledge is analysed, and a model (...) of mind based on the transitoriness of its elements is proposed. The analysis confirms that only one observation level can be selected per unit of time. (shrink)