Description
Oxford Attention Not Self 2018 Edition by Jonardon Ganeri
Jonardon Ganeri presents an account of mind in which attention, not self, explains the experiential and normative situatedness of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organisation of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. Attention improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the_x000D_nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our_x000D_narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another's attention. An analysis of attention as mental action_x000D_gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do. In ethics, a conception of persons as beings with a characteristic capacity for attention offers hope for resolution in the_x000D_conflict between individualism and impersonalism._x000D_Attention, Not Self is a contribution to a growing body of work that studies the nature of mind from a place at the crossroads of three disciplines: philosophy in the analytical and phenomenological traditions, contemporary cognitive science and empirical work in cognitive psychology, and Buddhist theoretical literature._x000D_ Table of Contents :- _x000D_
Introduction_x000D_
1: Attention and Action_x000D_
2: Consciousness_x000D_
3: Thought and World_x000D_
4: The Content of Perceptual Experience_x000D_
5: Perceptual Attention_x000D_
6: Attention and Knowledge_x000D_
7: Orienting Attention_x000D_
8: A Theory of Vision_x000D_
9: The Disunity of Mind_x000D_
10: Working Memory and Attention_x000D_
11: Varieties of Attention_x000D_
12: Narrative Attention_x000D_
13: Empathetic Attention_x000D_
14: Identifying Persons_x000D_
15: Self and Other_x000D_
16: Finitude and Flow_x000D_
Postscript: Philosophy Without Borders_x000D_