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

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Wayne Wu (Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University)

Movements of the Mind

A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action

Wayne Wu (Associate Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University)

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English

Oxford University Press
24 August 2023

Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge; Philosophy: logic; Philosophy of mind

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.

By: Wayne Wu (Associate Professor Associate Professor Department of Philosophy and Neuroscience Institute Carnegie Mellon University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 242mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780192866899
ISBN 10: 0192866893
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 24 August 2023
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

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

This book puts forward a theory of action. It synthesises Wayne Wu's extensive work on action and attention going back over a decade, and also substantially extends this foundation... The result is excellent. The book is wide-ranging, systematic, very original, and crammed full of interesting ideas. It draws together scientific work with philosophical argumentation in a way that is both rigorous and unusually readable. [I have no doubt that it will be important to thinkers interested in action and attention, as well as philosophers of cognitive science more generally]. * Henry Taylor, University of Birmingham, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *