Ebook: The Sphere Of Attention: Context and Margin

The phone call came mid-afternoon in February of 1996. The program chair for the annual meeting for the Southern Society of Philosophy and Psychology wanted to make sure he had the facts right. “This is somewhat unusual…” he began. “You’re a philosophy professor who wants to present to psychologists in the psychology portion of the meeting.” “That’s right.” “Well your paper was accepted for that part of the program but the others just wanted me to check and make sure that’s where you want to be presenting.” “That’s right.” Reassured, the professor wished me luck and said good-bye. In my session at the meeting, I was the last to present. As my time approached, the medium-sized room slowly became crowded. I dreamed that these psychologists had left their other meetings early to make sure to catch my presentation on the use of metaphors in attention research. As I arose to present I noticed that the half-full room had become standing room only! Finally, after years of feeling as if I was struggling alone in promoting and defending a phenomenology of attention, I had an eager audience for my message. My persistence had paid off. I delivered my message with passion.

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The Sphere of Attention uses the latest empirical research to illustrate how attention is organized according to gestalt-phenomenological principles inside and outside the focus of attention. For the first time, this book classifies how attention shifts, and argues that self-awareness, reflection, and even morality, are best thought of as dynamic transformations in the sphere of attention. The radical thesis of this book is that attention is always the center of a sphere of attention, which consists in contextual and marginal processing. Together these three organizational dimensions – focus, context, margin – constitute the human being as a sphere of attention. In addition to assessing the most recent laboratory results from prominent psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists, The Sphere of Attention also examines the views of phenomenologists such as Gurwitsch, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. This book demonstrates that gestalt-phenomenology is a powerful new method for investigating human nature.