Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
Part of the Somatosphere series "The Ethnographic Case."
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.
Cosmos and History
"We Become Death" Thoughts on the Aesthetics of Distraction2019 •
Distraction is often held by the relevant literature to be an environmental factor, a nuissance at best, at worst a danger that must be suppressed and eradicated. Through our essay, we seek to outline an alternative approach to the aesthetics of distraction. We argue that deviant noise has an important role to play in philosophy, aesthetics and media studies, for it is more than mere distraction. Distracting, noisy entities, in actuality, bring to our attention the finitude of our existence, highlighting the everpresent immanence of death. We may even arrive at a kind of community with the Otherness of noise, cutting through networks of control and arriving at acceptance of impossibility. The deviant that distracts is actually an invitation for us to rethink our relation to the environment and, indeed, the at times rigid borderlines separating subjectivity from the ecology of its own finitude. Keywords chaos death distraction noise redundancy That which is uncached is usually considered unimportant. Multitudes of swarming, chaotic, uncached information are black holes that retain their subversive practices everywhere, intersecting networks, cutting them into moments of discontinuity. This circumstance, however, is liable to change. At a certain point, we read in one journal of computational theory, " continuous analysis of the auditory environment often becomes distracting rather than helpful. " [1] Analysis itself becomes a source of noise, spreading the practice of chaos throughout the system of networks. Chaos is everywhere, always primary and resonating. The powers that be perceive this, and seek to create shields that would restrict the ability of deviant operators to possess those with inborn affinities to chaotic praxis. Further on, the authors of a report detailing methods of combating distraction highlight the presence of " deviant sound " that vitiates attempts to focus attention:
New Formations
Unofficial Attention - on distraction and attentionA review of Adam Phillips book
In one of those scientific switchbacks, daydreaming now appears to be a vital function of the psyche—a cauldron of creativity and an arena for rehearsing social skills. It may even be the backbone of our consciousness. Maybe what we all need is more time to let our minds meander.
La Furia Umana Paper, n. 8.
"Preliminary Digressions on the Difference Between Attention and Distraction", La Furia Umana Paper, n. 8, Spring 2015.2015 •
Philosophy and the Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2021
Autonomy of attention2022 •
What precisely does a distraction threaten? An agent who spends an inordinate amount of time attending to her smartphonewhat precisely is she lacking? I argue that whereas agency of attention is the agent's non-automatic decision-making on what she currently pays attention to, autonomy of attention is the agent, through her second-order desires, effectively interfering with her non-automatic decision-making on what she currently pays attention to. Freedom of attention is the agent's possibility to hold or switch her focus of attention without fixating on any specific focus against her will or without distraction from chosen foci. This conceptual work provides resources to track manipulations that diminish a person's freedom of attention.
arq: Architectural Research Quarterly
In the corner of perception – spatial experience in distraction2005 •
The Philosophy of Reenchantment
Detachment and Attention2020 •
In this chapter, the author explores the prospect of a "perspectival" understanding of disenchantment and reenchantment to argue that reenchantment is best understood in terms of attention. The first part of the chapter clarifies that the experience of disenchantment is a result of our capacity for detachment; that is, it results from our ability to transcend our current point of view and to look at our beliefs, desires, and experience of the world from the outside. It is shown that this ability entails the phenomenon of disenchantment, because we realize that the world of meaning and value is not mirrored in the picture of the world that is provided by a strongly detached point of view. The second part argues-contra the scientistic tendency to regard the detached point of view of (modern) natural science as the only legitimate way of looking at the world-that ethical inquiry requires a capacity for attention rather detachment. Following Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, attention is presented as a way of perceiving the world that is both morally qualified (it seeks to perceive the world patiently, justly, and lovingly) and careful (it seeks to represent the world as it is). That is, attention involves a reenchantment of the world not in the sense that it repopulates the world with "spooky" or "queer" entities, but in the sense that it reveals what was there all along but was removed from sight under the influence of the detached point of view-in casu, value. Attention, the author concludes, is therefore vital for our ethical attempts to find out how to live and what to do.
FSM ilmî araştırmalar insan ve toplum bilimleri dergisi
Sözlerin Soyağacı (2)2013 •
2024 •
Ostium, vol. 19, no.1
Metaphor and the problem of reference: a perspective on Ricoeur's semantic model of autonomy2023 •
Environmental Communication
Governing China’s Coal Challenge: Changing Public Policy, Debate and Advocacy2018 •
Ciência Rural
Adição de complexo enzimático e da granulometria da soja integral desativada melhora desempenho de frangos de corte2010 •
2024 •
SERVIRE: Jurnal Pengabdian Kepada Masyarakat
Pandemi Covid 19 Ditinjau Dari Teologi Biblika Untuk Pengabdian Masyarakat2021 •
IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine
OMEE Becomes International Conference in 2012 : SSCS Special Chapter Subsidy Underwrites Seven-Year-Old Workshop in Lviv Sponsored by IEEE MTT/ED/AP/CPMT/SSC West Ukraine [Chapters]2013 •
Zeszyty Naukowe Centrum Badań im. Edyty Stein
Dobra perspektywa. Etyczne i religijne aspekty taktyk wizualności w malarstwie Józefa Czapskiego2015 •
2016 •
19th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Birmingham, 15-17 July
The Importance of Key Signatures for a Vivaldi Chronology2021 •