The Brains Blog

How attention shapes consciousness

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.

Who needs a theory of attention?

Sebastian Watzl January 15, 2018 January 15, 2018 Action / Attention / Consciousness / metaphysics of mind / Philosophy of Mind / Psychology / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

Let me tell you about my friend Jayden: these days, Jayden gives a lot of her attention to community work. Jayden has always paid attention to what matters morally over anything else. Her attention somehow just tends to be drawn to the suffering of others. Her own achievements, by contrast, …

The Philosophy of Philip Kitcher

Mark Couch December 14, 2017 December 14, 2017 books / Philosophy of Science

I am writing to inform readers of Brains about a recent volume titled The Philosophy of Philip Kitcher. Kitcher’s work has been influential in many areas of philosophy. This volume surveys a range of Kitcher’s work, by a well-known group of contributors. Subjects covered include philosophy of science, philosophy of …

Is Well-being a Number?

Anna Alexandrova December 11, 2017 December 11, 2017 Anna Alexandrova: A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being / Ethics / Philosophy of Science

Suppose you agreed with me that the science of well-being should strive to be value-apt, that mid-level theories is the way to provide value-aptness, and that all of this is compatible with scientific objectivity. Even so, you could still remain a skeptic about the very possibility of such a science. …