Structuring Mind

Zusatztext This book is a welcome contribution to a better understanding of the matter; not only because of the specific data and insights it gathers! but even more for the common assumptions it questions from the available literature. ... Watzl provides a rigorous philosophical analysis that professionals from various disciplines may find useful as well. ... the topic itself! the information available and the approach to the problem will be appreciated by researchers!clinicians and people from a general philosophical background. Informationen zum Autor Sebastian Watzl is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo. He has received his PhD in philosophy from Columbia University, after studying biology at Humboldt University Berlin, and philosophy at New York University. He has been a postdoc Harvard's Mind-Brain-Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, and is a member of the core group of Oslo's Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature. Klappentext What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? Sebastian Watzl engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences to provide a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions Zusammenfassung What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? Sebastian Watzl engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences to provide a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions

Autorentext
Sebastian Watzl is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo. He has received his PhD in philosophy from Columbia University, after studying biology at Humboldt University Berlin, and philosophy at New York University. He has been a postdoc Harvard's Mind-Brain-Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, and is a member of the core group of Oslo's Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature.

Klappentext

What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? Sebastian Watzl engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences to provide a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions

Zusammenfassung
What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective.