Movements of the Mind

A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action

Wayne Wu (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

272 Seiten

2023
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-286689-9 (ISBN)

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Movements of the Mind addresses the fundamental question of what it is to be an agent. Wayne Wu tackles the phenomenon of mental agency by integrating philosophical and empirical work in an accessible way that illuminates key aspects of mind, such as control, attention, intention, memory, learning, and introspection.

Movements of the Mind is about what it is to be an agent. Focusing on mental agency, it integrates multiple approaches, from philosophical analysis of the metaphysics of agency to the activity of neurons in the brain. Philosophical and empirical work are combined to generate concrete explanations of key features of the mind. The book should be relevant and accessible to philosophers and scientists interested in mind and agency.

Wu argues that actions have a core psychological structure where attention plays a necessary role in guiding the agent's response and intentions function as memory for work, a practical memory. Attention and memory are accordingly central parts of an agent's intentionally doing things. These claims are supported by synthesizing philosophical and empirical work to produce a theory of intention and attention in action. The account explains three phenomena of current philosophical interest: (a) the basis of positively and negatively biased action where attention often leads to implicit bias, (b) the dynamics of deductive reasoning as the focusing of a thinker's cognitive attention and the development of cognitive skills, and (c) the psychology of introspective access to conscious perceptual experience, making clear when introspection can intelligibly fail and when it can succeed.

The book provides a theory of agency, whether human or non-human, along with technical notions of automaticity and control, a theory of attention as selection to guide behavior, an account of intention as memory whose dynamics are revealed in empirical investigation of working memory, explications of sustained attention and vigilance, an explanation of biased behavior driven by biases on attention, normative aspects of attention as a skill, the role of learning in cognitive skill, a theory of deduction as a sharpening of attention, and a psychologically plausible model of introspection that speaks to its accuracy and reliability.

Wayne Wu is a philosopher of mind and cognitive science. He studied biology and chemistry at MIT and did doctoral work in molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow before shifting to philosophy, receiving his PhD from Berkeley in 2005. At Carnegie Mellon University, he has been associate director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and is currently associate professor in Philosophy and in the Neuroscience Institute.

Introduction
Part I
1: The Structure of Acting
Appendix 1
2: Attention and Attending
Part II
3: Intention as Practical Memory
4: Intending as Practical Remembering
Part III
5: Automatic Bias, Experts and Amateurs
6: Deducing, Skill and Knowledge
7: Introspecting Perceptual Experience
Epilogue
Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	10.07.2023
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	164 x 242 mm
Gewicht	626 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Logik
ISBN-10	0-19-286689-3 / 0192866893
ISBN-13	978-0-19-286689-9 / 9780192866899
Zustand	Neuware