Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:03:10.288Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Unity in the Scientific Study of Intellectual Attention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2019

Mark Fortney Open the ORCID record for Mark Fortney [Opens in a new window]
Mark Fortney*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, The University of Toronto at Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
*
Email: mark.fortney@mail.utoronto.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue that using information from a cognitive representation to guide the performance of a primary task is sufficient for intellectual attention, and that this account of attention is endorsed by scientists working in the refreshing, n-back, and retro-cue paradigms. I build on the work of Wayne Wu (2014), who developed a similarly motivated account, but for perceptual attention rather than intellectual attention. The way that I build on Wu’s account provides a principled way of responding to Watzl’s (2011a, 2017) challenge to Wu, according to which Wu’s style of account is unintuitively broad. The fact that I find unity in the practice of science puts us in a position to resist the claim that scientists studying intellectual attention are frequently failing to study the same thing.

Keywords

AttentionCognitionStimulus-Independent Thought
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , May 2020 , pp. 444 - 459
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allport, A. 1987. “Selection for Action: Some Behavioral and Neurophysiological Considerations of Attention and Action.” In Perspectives on Perception and Action, edited by Heuer, H. and Sanders, A. F., pp. 395–419. New York: Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 2011. “There Is No Such Thing as Attention.” Frontiers in Psychology 246: 1–8.Google Scholar
Astle, D., Summerfield, J., Griffin, I., and Nobre, A.. 2012. “Orienting Attention to Locations in Mental Representations.” Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics 74: 146–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Backer, K., and Alain, C.. 2013. Attention to Memory: Orienting Attention to Sound Object Representations. Psychological Research 78 (3): 439–452.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beck, J. 2012. “The Generality Constraint and the Structure of Thought.” Mind 121: 563–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, J. 2017. “Marking the Perception–Cognition Boundary: The Criterion of Stimulus-Dependence.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (2): 319–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buehler, D. 2018a. “A Dilemma for ‘Selection-for-Action.’” Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 7 (2): 139–149.Google Scholar
Buehler, D. 2018b. “Flexible Occurrent Control.” Philosophical Studies. 176(8): 2119–2137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, T. 2010. Origins of Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrasco, M. 2011. ‘‘Visual Attention: The Past 25 Years.” Vision Research 51: 1484–1525.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, Z., and Cowan, N. 2009. “How Verbal Memory Loads Consume Attention.” Memory & Cognition 37 (6): 829–836.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chun, M., Golomb, J., and Turk-Browne, N.. 2011. “A Taxonomy of External and Internal Attention.” Annual Review of Psychology 62: 73–101.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J., Forman, S., Braver, T., Casey, J., Servan-Schreiber, D., and Noll, D.. 1994. “Activation of the Prefrontal Cortex in a Nonspatial Working Memory Task with Functional MRI.” Human Brain Mapping 1: 293–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J., Perlstein, W., Braver, T., Nystrom, L., Noll, D., Jonides, J., and Smith, E.. 1997. “Temporal Dynamics of Brain Activation during a Working Memory Task.” Nature 386: 604–608.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dennett, D. 1969. Content and Consciousness. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dobbs, A., and Rule, B.. 1989. “Adult Age Differences in Working Memory.” Psychology and Aging 4: 500–503.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fortney, M. 2018. “The Centre and Periphery of Conscious Thought.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 25 (3–4): 112–136.Google Scholar
Griffin, I., and Nobre, A.. 2003. “Orienting Attention to Locations in Internal Representations.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 15: 1176–1194.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Higgins, J., and Johnson, M.. 2009. “The Consequence of Refreshing for Access to Nonselected Items in Young and Older Adults.” Memory & Cognition 37 (2): 164–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Irving, Z. 2016. Mind-Wandering is Unguided Attention: Accounting for the “Purposeful” Wanderer. Philosophical Studies 173 (2): 547–571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, W. 1890. The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jennings, C. D. 2012. “The Subject of Attention.” Synthese 189 (3): 535–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jennings, C. D., and Nanay, B.. 2016. “Action without Attention.” Analysis 76 (1): 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, M., Raye, C., Mitchell, K., Greene, J., Cunningham, W., and Sanislow, C.. 2005. “Using fMRI to Investigate a Component Process of Reflection: Prefrontal Correlates of Refreshing a Just-Activated Representation.” Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 5 (3): 339–361.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, M. R., Higgins, J., Norman, K., Sederberg, P., Smith, T., and Johnson, M. K.. 2013. “Foraging for Thought: An Inhibition of Return-Like Effect Resulting from Directing Attention within Working Memory.” Psychological Science 24 (7): 1104–1112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, M., Reeder, J., Raye, C., and Mitchell, K.. 2002. “Second Thoughts versus Second Looks: An Age-Related Deficit in Reflectively Refreshing Just-Activated Information.” Psychological Science 13 (1): 64–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lepsien, J., Griffin, I., Devlin, J., and Nobre, A.. 2005. “Directing Spatial Attention in Mental Representations: Interactions between Attentional Orienting and Working-Memory Load.” NeuroImage 26: 733–743.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Makovski, T., Sussman, R., and Jiang, Y.. 2008. “Orienting Attention in Visual Working Memory Reduces Interference from Memory Probes.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 34: 369–380.Google ScholarPubMed
Matsukura, M., Luck, S., and Vecera, S.. 2007. “Attention Effects during Visual Short-Term Memory Maintenance: Protection or Prioritization?” Perception & Psychophysics 69: 1422–1434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McElree, B. 2001. “Working Memory and Focal Attention”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 27(3): 817–835.Google ScholarPubMed
McElree, B. 2006. “Accessing Recent Events.” In The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 46, edited by Ross, B. H., pp. 155-200. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mole, C. 2011. Attention Is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mole, C. 2014. “Attention to Unseen Objects.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 21 (11–12): 41–56.Google Scholar
Montero, B. 2019. “Chess and the Conscious Mind: Why Dreyfus and McDowell Got It Wrong.” Mind and Language 34 (3): 376–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raye, C., Johnson, M., Mitchell, K., Reeder, J., and Greene, E.. 2002. “Neuroimaging a Single Thought: Dorsolateral PFC Activity Associated with Refreshing Just-Activated Information.” NeuroImage 15 (2): 447–453.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rensink, R. 2014. “Limits to the Usability of Iconic Memory.” Frontiers in Psychology 5: 971.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shand, A. 1894. “An Analysis of Attention.” Mind 3 (12): 339–473.Google Scholar
Smith, E., and Jonides, J.. 1997. “Working Memory: A View from Neuroimaging.” Cognitive Psychology 33: 5–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smithies, D. 2011. “Attention Is Rational-Access Consciousness.” In Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, edited by Mole, Christopher, Smithies, Declan, and Wu, Wayne, pp. 247–273. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, H. 2015. “Against Unifying Accounts of Attention.” Erkenntnis 80 (1): 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, H. 2017. “Attention, Psychology, and Pluralism.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4): 935–956.Google Scholar
Watzl, S. 2011a. “Attention as Structuring of the Stream of Consciousness.” In Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, edited by Mole, C., Smithies, D., and Wu, W., pp. 145-173. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Watzl, S. 2011b. “The Nature of Attention.” Philosophy Compass 6 (11): 842–853.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watzl, S. 2017. Structuring Mind: The Nature of Attention and How It Shapes Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, W. 2011a. “Confronting Many-Many Problems: Attention and Agentive Control.” Nous 45 (1): 50–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, W. 2011b. “Attention as Selection for Action.” In Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays, edited by Mole, Christopher, Smithies, Declan, and Wu, Wayne, pp. 97–116. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wu, W. 2014. Attention. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wu, W. 2018. “Structuring Mind: The Nature of Attention and How It Shapes Consciousness, by Sebastian Watzl.” Mind 128 (511): 945–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar