Movements of the Mind : A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action

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. Cover 1 Movements of the Mind: A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Introduction 8 0.1 A Biologist’s Perspective 8 0.2 Central Themes 10 0.3 The Book’s Parts 12 0.4 Chapter Summaries 17 0.5 Acknowledgments 18 0.6 Family 20 Claims by Section 21 PART I: THE STRUCTURE OF ACTION AND ATTENTION 24 1: The Structure of Acting 26 1.1 Introduction 26 1.2 The Selection Problem and the Structure of Acting 26 1.3 Intentions and Intentional Action 33 1.4 Control and Automaticity 35 1.5 The Necessity of Bias for Action 40 1.6 The Biology of Intention-Based Biasing 43 1.7 Intention-Based Biasing as Cognitive Integration 49 1.8 Learning to Act and Shifting Control 53 1.9 The Agent Must Be in Control in Action 56 1.10 The Agent’s Being Active 59 1.11 Taking Stock 60 Appendix 1.1 60 Notes 63 2: Attention and Attending 68 2.1 Introduction 68 2.2 Merging the Psychology and Philosophy of Attention 72 2.3 Attention and the Selection Problem 78 2.4 Attention as Guide versus Attention as Mechanism 79 2.5 Perceptual Attending as Mental Action 82 2.6 Goal-Directed Automatic Attention and Bias 84 2.7 Attentional Capture and Passive Agency 86 2.8 How Much Attention Is There in the World of Action? 87 2.9 Action Is Necessary for Attention 89 2.10 On Different Lessons from Causal Deviance 90 2.11 Agentive Control and Guidance Revisited 91 2.12 Taking Stock 93 Notes 93 PART II: INTENTION AS PRACTICAL MEMORY AND REMEMBERING 98 3: Intention as Practical Memory 100 3.1 Introduction 100 3.2 Memory in Action 102 3.3 Empirical Theories of Working Memory 105 3.4 Memory at Work 111 3.5 Vigilance 117 3.6 Steadfastness and Sustained Attention 122 3.7 Taking Stock 129 Notes 130 4: Intending as Practical Remembering 132 4.1 Introduction 132 4.2 The Continuity of Practical Memory 133 4.3 Practical Fine-Tuning 136 4.4 Fine-Tuning as Practical Memory at Work 139 4.5 The Dynamics of Thinking about Action, in Action 143 4.6 First-Personal Access to Intentional Action 151 4.7 On Keeping Time with Action 154 4.8 Taking Stock 156 Notes 157 PART III: MOVEMENTS OF THE MIND AS DEPLOYMENTS OF ATTENTION 162 5: Automatic Bias, Experts and Amateurs 164 5.1 Introduction 164 5.2 A Structure for Explaining Bias 165 5.3 Epistemic Bias Is Necessitated Bias 169 5.4 Overt Attending as Mental Bias 174 5.5 Epistemic Virtue in the Eye 176 5.6 Automatic Bias and the Distribution of Gaze as Good 180 5.7 Automatic Thinking in Fields of Thought 183 5.8 The Norms of Attention 186 5.9 Taking Stock 188 Note 190 6: Deducing, Skill and Knowledge 192 6.1 Introduction 192 6.2 Deducing with Models 193 6.3 Formally Deducing and Learning Rules 198 6.4 Taking and Sensitivity 202 6.5 Skill and Knowledge 205 6.6 Knowledgeable Control and Practical Understanding 208 6.7 Taking Stock 211 Notes 212 7: Introspecting Perceptual Experience 215 7.1 Introduction 215 7.2 The Need to Carefully Define Introspective Tasks 216 7.3 Introspecting as Mental Action 218 7.4 Reliability Conditions for Simple Introspection 222 7.5 Complex Introspection and Blur 227 7.6 Introspection and Bad Cases 232 7.7 Taking Stock 235 Notes 235 Epilogue 238 Bibliography 240 Index 262