Structuring Mind
Subtitle: The Nature of Attention and How It Shapes Consciousness
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780199658428
Subjects: Consciousness; Attention
Description: 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. It is not another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. It 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.