The Brains Blog — Since 2005, a leading forum for work in the philosophy and science of mind

Evolving Enactivism: An Introduction

Thanks to John Schwenkler for inviting us to guest-blog this week about our new book Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). It is often said that two minds are better than one. Though ‘mind’ is a count noun, we don’t imagine that people really have …

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John Schwenkler January 22, 2018 January 29, 2018 books

Many thanks to Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin for blogging this week on Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content (MIT Press, 2017). To view all their posts on a single page, please click here.

Consciousness is something you do

Sebastian Watzl January 19, 2018 January 19, 2018 Attention / Consciousness / Mental Action / metaphysics of mind / Philosophy of Mind / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind / Self-consciousness

Many parents who look into the eyes of their newborn baby encounter something wonderful, and awe inspiring. There in those eyes they get a glimpse of a new perspective, a new point of view on the world. A new consciousness. The idea that consciousness is the subjective perspective we each …

How attention shapes consciousness

Sebastian Watzl January 18, 2018 January 18, 2018 Attention / Consciousness / Intentionality / Phenomenology / Philosophy of Mind / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

There is a subjective way you experience the world. This is way it is like for you to listen to Jazz, to look around curiously, or to taste dark chocolate. It is hard to know about what it is like for you to experience these things simply by observing your …

Earthworms, Google servers, and an important kind of freedom

Sebastian Watzl January 17, 2018 January 17, 2018 Attention / Cognition / evolution / Intentionality / Mental Action / metaphysics of mind / Neuroscience; Philosophy of Science / perception / Psychology / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

Yesterday, I sketched the priority structure framework: attention consists in the activity of regulating priority structures, which order the parts of the subject’s on-going mental life by their relative priority. Why would we organize our mind in this way? In other words, what is the function of attention? The answer, …

Structures of the Mind

Sebastian Watzl January 16, 2018 August 5, 2020 Action / Attention / Consciousness / metaphysics of mind / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

Yesterday, I suggested that we need a theory of attention that gives attention a central place in the mind and serves as a unified framework that integrates different approaches to attention, both in philosophy and in the empirical sciences. Today, I will sketch the priority structure framework and give some …

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John Schwenkler January 15, 2018 January 29, 2018 books

We are grateful to Sebastian Watzl for blogging this week on Structuring Mind: The Nature of Attention and How it Shapes Consciousness (Oxford, 2017). To view all his posts on a single page, please click here.