The phenomenology of embodied attention
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The phenomenology of embodied attention Diego D’Angelo 1
# Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract This paper aims to conceptualize the phenomenology of attentional experience as ‘embodied attention.’ Current psychological research, in describing attentional experiences, tends to apply the so-called spotlight metaphor, according to which attention is characterized as the illumination of certain surrounding objects or events. In this framework, attention is not seen as involving our bodily attitudes or modifying the way we experience those objects and events. It is primarily conceived as a purely mental and volitional activity of the cognizing subject. Against this view, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that attention is a creative activity deeply linked with bodily movements. This paper clarifies and systematizes this view and brings it into dialogue with current empirical findings as well as with current theoretical research on embodied cognition. By doing this, I spell out three main claims about embodied attention: the transcendentalism of embodiment for attention, the bodily subjectivity of attention, and the creativity of embodied attention. Keywords Phenomenology . Embodiment . Enactivism . Attention . Merleau-Ponty
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the study of attention, particularly in empirical, human, and educational sciences (Tsuchiya and van Boxtel 2013; Carrasco 2011). A survey of the main works published in this field in the last twenty years shows that a general and systematic conceptual framework for investigating attention is still required (for this claim in psychological research, see Styles 2006, in neurosciences Posner 2011). In this article, I aim to provide such a theoretical framework for some of the aspects of our lived experience usually addressed by the concept of attention. ‘Attention’ is an umbrella-term encompassing many different mechanisms and phenomena. In what follows, I will focus on a particular class of attentional experiences, namely perceptual
* Diego D’Angelo [email protected]
1
Institut für Philosophie, Universität Würzburg, Residenzplatz 2, D-97070 Würzburg, Germany
D. D’Angelo
attentional experiences, rather than others such as moral or ethical attention to the needs of another person. More precisely, referring to the classification recently proposed by Watzl (2011a, b), I will concentrate my analysis on the question of how attention shapes the phenomenological character of experience, in contrast to its role in consciousness or theory of action. I wish to show – and this is my main claim – that perceptual attentional experiences are necessarily embodied. In our everyday experience, we tend to think of attention as a kind of spotlight – that is, as a flash of light illuminating particular things around us. However, current neuroscientific and psychological research, as well as philosophical reflection, has shown the metaphor of the spotlight to have some crucial flaws. In particular, recent work in empirical (psychological and neuros
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