the ModeS of attention

Attention is a complex process that modulates perception in various ways. Phenomenological philosophy provides an array of concepts for describing the rich structures of attention, thereby avoiding reductions to singular aspects of an experien-tial spectrum. By suggesting various modes and levels of attentional experience, we intend to do some justice to its complexity, taking into account sub-personal and personal factors on the side of subjective (noetic) horizons and feature-oriented as well as context-oriented aspects on the side of objective (noematic) horizons.

Final version of paper published in Rocco Gennaro's handbook on consciousness.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2012

In this paper, I will try to show that the idea that there can be consciousness without some form of attention, and high-level top-down attention without consciousness, originates from a failure to notice the varieties of forms that top-down attention and consciousness can assume. I will present evidence that: there are various forms of attention and consciousness; not all forms of attention produce the same kind of consciousness; not all forms of consciousness are produced by the same kind of attention; there can be low-level attention (or preliminary attention), whether of an endogenous or exogenous kind, without consciousness; attention cannot be considered the same thing as consciousness.

Argues that the phenomenology of perceptual attention, phenomenal salience, is not perceptual but cognitive.

From Interest to Intentionality. The Influence of Carl Stumpf on Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of Attention, 2024

In the vast landscape of Edmund Husserl’s investigations, the theme of attention has long been neglected: the dispersal of his treatment of the topic across works from various years, the use of a diversified lexicon, and an intrinsic difficulty in identifying the attentional phenomenon itself have all contributed to the long-standing underestimation of this theme. Following a line of study that – especially after the publication of volume XXXVIII of the Husserliana (Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit) – has renewed interest in this topic, this article aims to contribute to the historical as well as theoretical reconstruction of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of attention. In particular, we will focus on the contribution of a figure who had a crucial impact on Husserl’s development and the framing of the phenomenological method itself, namely Carl Stumpf, concentrating especially on the engagement that the father of phenomenology had with him, starting from the treatment of attention through the concept of interest. This debate will be reconstructed from the examination of (1) part of the Göttingen Lectures of 1904-05, explicitly dedicated to attention; (2) a very early but theoretically significant Husserlian manuscript, “Noten zur Lehre von Aufmerksamkeit und Interesse” (1893); and (3) Stumpf’s own work, particularly Tonpsychologie, where the interpretation of attention as “Lust am Bemerken” is formulated and with which Husserl engages in a rigorous critical dialogue. On the basis of this confrontation, we will highlight from an original perspective Husserl’s significant debt to the psychology of the time, from which he not only borrowed certain themes and a general interest in the simplest levels of experience, but also the basic outlines of notions that would serve as the foundation for the development of some crucial concepts of transcendental phenomenology such as that of intentionality. Moreover, it is through the examination of attention that the profound continuity of Husserl’s reflection becomes apparent, evidenced by the extraordinarily early emergence of crucial and typical notions of his later phase (known as “genetic phenomenology”) during these formative years, even before the phenomenological method was fully developed.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

The question of the origin of consciousness has engaged scientists and philosophers for centuries. Early scholars relied on introspection, leading some to conclude that attention is necessary for consciousness, and in some cases equating attention and consciousness. Such a tight relationship between attention and consciousness has also been proposed by many modern theo-Cohen et al., 2012). The relationship between attention and consciousness has come under increasing scrutiny with the development of neuroscientific methods. In modern neuroscience, the effects of attention are often objectively defined and measured as reduced reaction time and improved performance. Similarly, conscious awareness of an object is established by a subjective report in combination with objective forced-choice performance . With these measures in place, a variety of methods has been used to manipulate attention (e.g., cueing, divided attention, etc.) and consciousness [e.g., masking, crowding, and binocular rivalry (Kim and Blake, 2005)]. These empirical studies have culminated in recent proposals that attention and consciousness are supported by different neuronal processes and they are not necessarily correlated all the time (Iwasakivan Boxtel et al., 2010).

This paper is the translation of the article "Attention et représentationnalisme", published in Dialogue (cf above). I argue for a representational understanding of phenomenal saliency, in the lights of attention research.

frontiersin.org

Equivalence of attention and consciousness is disputed and necessity of attentional effects for conscious experience has become questioned. However, the conceptual landscape and interpretations of empirical evidence as related to this issue have remained controversial. Here I present some conceptual distinctions and research strategies potentially useful for moving forward when tackling this issue. Specifically, it is argued that we should carefully differentiate between pre-conscious processes and the processes resulting in phenomenal experience, move the emphasis from studying the effects of attention on the modality-specific and feature-specific perception to studying attentional effects on panmodal universal attributes of whatever conscious experience may be the case, and acknowledge that there is a specialized mechanism for leading to conscious experience of the pre-consciously represented contents autonomous from the mechanisms of perception, attention, memory, and cognitive control.

This article re-examines Ned conceptual distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. His argument that we can have phenomenally conscious representations without being able to cognitively access them is criticized as not being supported by evidence. Instead, an alternative interpretation of the relevant empirical data is offered which leaves the link between phenomenology and accessibility intact. Moreover, it is shown that Block's claim that phenomenology and accessibility have different neural substrates is highly problematic in light of empirical evidence. Finally, his claim that there can be phenomenology without cognitive accessibility is at odds with his endorsement of the 'same-ordertheory' of consciousness.

2008

Do we need to attend to an object in order to be conscious of it, and are the objects of our attention necessarily part of our conscious experience? A tight link between attention and consciousness has often been assumed, but it has recently been questioned, on the basis of psychophysical evidence suggesting a double dissociation between top-down attention and consciousness. The present review proposes to consider these issues in the light of time-honored distinctions between exogenous and endogenous forms of attention and between primary and reflective forms of consciousness. These distinctions shed light on results from several sources

What happens, when I read a text and notice all of the sudden that my sight has skimmed through multiple sentences without me paying any attention to the text? First, my attention may have shifted from the narrative to mental images of daydreaming or I may have been immersed in an affective atmosphere. In any case, my sight has continued traversing the text without “me” being aware of its narrative. Whatever may have caused the inattentiveness, the following philosophical questions can be raised: How should we account for a such oscillation between objects encapsulating our attention and also between attention and inattentiveness? Can we describe and account for the “residue” of focal attention: the inattentive continuation of our sight which still travels and skims through the sentences? What does this common phenomena tell us about the function of attention and the structures of selfhood and how should it be analysed phenomenologically? In circumstances such as described above, is “my ego” somehow “split” between attending to the new focal object (e.g. mental images or contents of day dreaming) and inattentively following the text? Can we describe such “inattentive” phenomena with phenomenological methods? In this article, I will argue that certain types of focal changes in experiential attention, as described above, can be phenomenologically accounted for only if the concept of attention is understood, not as a binary concept, but as a degree concept. Second, I will argue that what has been conceptualised as “inattentiveness” needs to be considered in detail and specified by distinctions and that some modes of inattentiveness must be understood, not merely as a negation or lack of attention, but rather as directional activities in their own right. Firstly, I am going to briefly describe the core elements of the phenomena of the ”mind-wandering” by presenting two case studies: the experience of reading, interrupted by various disruptions, and the experience of the so-called highway hypnosis. Second, I am going to introduce the practical-experiential approach to examining human experiencing developed by Natalie Depraz, Francis Varela and Pierre Vermersch in On Becoming Aware (2003). Here I will focus especially on their analysis of attention and their interpretation of the epoche. Finally, I will use Depraz et al.’s concept of procedural approach to the phenomena of attention to demonstrate that also inattentive phenomena are experientially analysable and that inattentive directionality is part of the phenomenon of mind wandering.

K. Brown and M. Leary (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Hypo-egoic Phenomena (31-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2016

Whether consciousness involves an ego is a thorny and complicated question in phenomenology. This chapter defines pure phenomenology and the peculiar way in which the problem of the ego is framed in this approach, then discusses three different approaches to the issue. First, Husserl’s egological account of consciousness is sketched in connection with his analysis of attention. Second, Sartre’s non- egological arguments are examined in detail. There is reason to ask whether his critique successfully applies to the Husserlian conception. Third, Gurwitsch’s non- egological view is considered. It is not clear that Gurwitsch’s nonegological theory of attention can account for the distinction between activity and passivity in consciousness. The chapter then shifts to contemporary debates about the self. The notion of the minimal embodied prereflective self is presented and opposed to alternative views. The chapter highlights several rich and complex questions concerning the ego and the self raised in the phenomenological literature.

Rivista Di Filosofia, 2013

Thiriez-Arjangi, Azadeh, Dierckxsens, Geoffrey, Deckard, Michael Funk and Bruzzone, Andrés. Le mal et la symbolique: Ricœur lecteur de Freud, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2023

Thisc hapter sheds light on how attention to symbols in Ricoeur's thoughtc an be put at the service of the restorative intention of philosophy, which underlies his earlyw orks,i nsofara si ta llows for ab etter understanding of the forgotten human bond with the being of all beings. The argumentative strategyc onsists in elaborating the meaninga nd implications of as tatement found in TheSymbolism of Evil accordingtowhich the qualitative transformation of reflexive consciousness is the task of aphilosophyinstructed by symbols. The chapter examines the correlation between the wager made by Ricoeur in the conclusion of that book and his concern to includeparticipation in existenceinthe starting point of philosophical thought. Three ideas are highlighted: the ontological function of symbolic thought,the help that psychoanalytic practice gave Ricoeur in reflecting on the pedagogical and transformative process that accompanies the philosopher'se xperience of being instructed by symbols, and,f inally, the role of the concept of the second naïveté,l inked to thato fa ttention, which refers to the longed-for fruit of philosophical practice born of this transformative and restorative tension.

Scholarpedia, 2008

For the past three decades there has been a substantial amount of scientific evidence supporting the view that attention is necessary and sufficient for perceptual representations to become conscious (i.e., for there to be something that it is like to experience a representational perceptual state). This view, however, has been recently questioned on the basis of some alleged counterevidence. In this paper we survey some of the most important recent findings. In doing so, we have two primary goals. The first is descriptive: we provide a literature review for those seeking an understanding of the present debate. The second is editorial: we suggest that the evidence alleging dissociations between consciousness and attention is not decisive. Thus, this is an opinionated overview of the debate. By presenting our assessment, we hope to bring out both sides in the debate and to underscore that the issues here remain matters of intense controversy and ongoing investigation. 