4
Priority Structures
How Attention Organizes the Mind
1
Priorities and mental structure
Attention is an activity. But which activity? This chapter provides the answer.
Attending is the activity of creating, maintaining and changing a certain structure of
the mind. In short: it consists in regulating priority structures.
Think of your current mental life as being like a newspaper.1 Just as the newspaper
contains various stories and reports, your mental life contains various mental states,
events and processes. You see certain things, hear certain things, have certain
feelings, thoughts and emotions. Attention, on the view being developed, is not
another such element in the paper. It concerns the placement of the stories. Is
something a headline or a front-page article? Or is it a story in the fine print, pushed
to the back pages? Just like the newspaper is structured into front and back, so your
mind is structured into what is of top priority and what is deprioritized. Priority
structure is an organization of the mind. It contains states, events and processes
perceptions, thoughts, and emotions as parts. Priority structure is about how a mental
life is formed from its parts.
I will thus defend and develop the following account of the nature of the mental
activity of attending.
The Priority Structure View
structures.
Attending
consists
in
regulating
priority
To understand more precisely what the priority structure view says, consider that the
last chapter has argued that attention is an internally structured activity. The priority
structure view is a view about the constitutive resultant states of that activity. Priority
structures are internal constituents of attending. They are not the results of attending
1
I owe this metaphor to Susanna Siegel.
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Priority Structures
to something; they are a part of what it is to attend to something (just like leg
movement is an element of walking and absorption is an element of digestion). You
can’t have priorities, unless you are prioritizing. And you can’t prioritize, unless you
have priorities. State and activity are interdependent. Attending consists in regulating
priority structures (i.e. the shape of these priority structures evolves due to
psychological salience and executive control).2 The activity of attending thus is a
structure of the mind in two senses. The first was the subject of the previous chapter:
attending has an internal form consisting of guiding states guiding resultant states.
But attention is a structure also in a second sense: its resultant states are themselves
complex mental priority structures.
The idea that attending consists in organizing a subject’s mind in terms of priorities is
easy to get an intuitive grip on.3
Suppose that you are organizing your life around a personally important project, be it
the writing of a book, making your love life work, or caring for your children. In a
situation like this you will view everything in terms of its relation to that project.
Everything in your life now either points to that project, or – by contrast – has only
minimal significance for you. Significance or insignificance for you will be measured
in terms of significance or insignificance with respect to that project.
In such a case this project occupies your attention. For a project to occupy your
attention just is to organize one’s life around it: it is a certain form of mental
management. It is to prioritize to some things over others, to view what is not of
highest priority in its relation to what is important, or to deprioritize it completely.
According to the priority structure view every form of attention consists in organizing
some aspects of one’s mental life. Perceptual attention, for example, organizes the
subject’s perceptual states, attention to one’s bodily sensations organizes the field of
sensations, and intellectual attention organizes one’s trains of thought.
The priority structure view is also consistent with what empirical psychology and
neuroscience aims to study when it studies attention:
John Serences and Sabine Kastner, in a recent review, for example, write:
The ability to prioritize relevant stimuli is generally referred to as
selective attention, where the prefix selective is intentionally used to
2
The view that attention is a subject level form of prioritizing is also developed by Carolyn Dicey-Jennings (2012). I have
learned much from her work on attention. Especially the notion of subject-level prioritizing has been much influenced by DiceyJenning’s work. I also owe it to her work that the best way to think of the way attention organizes the mind is in terms of the
notion of priority. The way I develop the view, though, is largely independent of Dicey-Jenning’s.
3
Not in the least, because dictionary definitions of “priority” often make reference to attention: According to the Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English “Priority” is “1. the thing that you think is most important and that needs attention before
anything else” and “2. the right to be given attention first and before other people or things.”
(http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/priority_1) According to Miriam Webster “priority” (among other things) is defined as
“something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/priority).
Why the priority structure view?
69
distinguish the term from changes in general arousal or states of
consciousness.4
Attention thus in its empirical study is often taken to be relative prioritization, and
sub-subject attentional processing understood as what prioritizes aspects of
information processing. In the course of this chapter I will argue for a subject level
version of the priority structure view and show how it can be made precise.
Here is how I will proceed. First, I will provide more motivation for the priority
structure view. Second, I will tell you what priority structures are. They consist in a
certain organization of mental states by a priority ordering. Third, I will show how
exactly those priority structures are related to attention. By using the notion of a
priority structure we can define what it is to be an object of the subject’s attention,
what different manners of attention consist in, and what it is for a pain or playing
basketball to occupy the subject’s attention.
Certain questions about priority structures are postponed until the next chapter. There
I will say more about how to interpret priority structures: what is the nature of the
priority ordering, and what is the nature of what is priority ordered? And I will
consider the functional role of priority structures: why do organisms have priority
structures? I will argue that priority structures play an important role for complex
agency (identified through what I will call behavioral decoupling).
2
Why the priority structure view?
According to the priority structure view attention organizes a subject’s mental life so
that some of its aspects are prioritized relative to others. What motivates the priority
structure view?
Firstly, the view has unificatory power. As this chapter will show, the priority
structure view can explain both why there are so many different varieties of attention,
and what they have in common. As we have seen, attention comes in many forms
(intellectual attention, perceptual attention, emotional attention, overt attention, covert
attention, attentive basketball playing, …). According to the priority structure view
this is because many different priority structures can be build from the same
components. If a thought is prioritized we have intellectual attention, if it is a seeing
we have visual attention, and if it is the various states and processes involved in
basketball playing then playing basketball occupies our subject’s attention. The
varieties of attention simply correspond to different priority structures, all organized
after the same principles.5
4
Serences and Kastner 2014.
By contrast, if one tried to explain what it is to visually attend to some object, for example, by appeal to the amount of detail
about that object that is visually represented (see Stazicker 2011), it would be hard to see what this phenomenon has in common
with attending to something by thinking about someone or being angry at her (where no details need to be represented).
5
70
Priority Structures
Secondly, and relatedly, there is a feature of attention that is both easily overlooked,
and arguably central to the explanation of why it has been difficult to develop a
theory of attention. This feature is the dependent character of attention. Consider that
a subject can think about an object without, for example, seeing the object. And she
can see the object without hearing it. And so on. But a subject cannot just focus her
attention on some object. In order to focus her attention on some material object, for
example, the subject must either perceive that object, have thoughts about that object,
feel emotions directed at that object, etc. Attention, as William James puts it, “creates
no idea”.6 The following dependency claim thus is highly plausibly:
Dependency Necessarily, if subject s attends to o, then there is some intentional
mental state M that is intentionally directed at o such that s is in M and M is
distinct from attending to o.
In that sense, attention depends on other aspects of mentality. At the same time,
seeing some object and visually attending to it, as we have seen in Chapter 2, are not
identical. Seeing an object is a passive state, while visually attending to that object is
a (potentially intentional) activity. The fact that the subject attends to certain objects
therefore cannot just the fact that she is in that other mental state M that is directed at
or about that object. Dependency cries out for explanation (we should accept the
necessity involved in dependency as brute).
In general, if it is impossible to have property F without having property G, then there
are two plausible explanations.7 First, having F is a way or manner of having G. For
example, it is impossible for anything to be crimson without it being red, because
being crimson is a way of being red (in this case, the relationship is one of
determination and determinable). So, if attending to something were a way of seeing
that thing or thinking about that thing, then that would explain dependency. But
visually attending to something cannot be a way of seeing that thing because seeing is
a passive state and attending is an activity. A specific way for a state to obtain is
always also a state. The second plausible explanation for why it is impossible to have
F without having G is that having G is a part of having F. If it is impossible to play
Autumn Leaves on the saxophone without moving your fingers, then that is because
moving your fingers is part of what it is to play that song. On this second model, the
explanation of dependency thus would consist in the fact that the mental states on
which attention depends are parts of what it is to attend to something. And this is
exactly the explanation provided by the priority structure view: dependency results
from the fact in order for there to be attention there must always be a mental life that
is getting structured. No structure without something that is structured (the mental
states on which attention depends are parts of the priority structures that constitute
attention).8
6
James 1890 [1981], p. 450. Quoted also in Strawson 2003, p. 232.
We are unproblematically presupposing that the relevant facts are contingent.
8
By contrast, it is unclear how, for example, the selection for action view recently proposed by Wayne Wu (2014) can explain
dependency: why should a subject not be able to just select a material object as the target for action? See the next chapter, p. 121
ff for more discussion.
7
Priority structures: the basics
71
Thirdly, the priority structure the view has a natural explanation of the fact that
attention is often distributed. A subject can focus her attention on something more or
less. Something can receive more or less priority. Cases where attention is narrowly
directed at a specific object, property, or location in space are treated as a special
case, a specific distribution of attention. Narrow focus corresponds to what I will call
spiky priority structures where there is a single priority and everything else gets
equally deprioritized. Diffuse attention, by contrast, is characterized by less spiky
priority structures.
Finally, as I will argue in detail in the second half of the next chapter (p. 106 ff), the
priority structure view provides the best account of the functional role of attention. As
I will there argue, that role consists in organizing the mind so as to allow for flexible
action. This function, I argue, is best articulated by the priority structure view.
3
Priority structures: the basics
So, what are priority structures?
Let us begin with an overview. In order to pick out a certain structure we need to do
two things.9 Pick out the elements of the structure, and pick out the structuring
relation that connects these elements. For example, consider a stack of books. The
stack of books is a structure made of books, which are related to each other by being
put on top of one another. So, we can identify a stacking structure as follows.
Type of Structure:
Stack of books
Structure Elements: books
Structuring relation: being on top of
Consider also our newspaper. Here the elements of the structure are the various
articles, reports and stories. The structuring relation (to simplify) consists in
placement, which story is better placed than which other one. So we have the
newspaper structure.
Type of Structure:
Newspaper
•
Structure Elements:
articles, reports, stories
•
Structuring relation:
relative placement
Priority structures can also be described by identifying the elements of the structure
and the relevant structuring relation. We need to fill out the following form:
Type of Structure: Priority Structure
9
See Koslicki (2008) for an illuminating discussion of the general notion of structure. Her account has strongly influenced how I
have come to develop the priority structure view.
72
•
•
Priority Structures
Structure Elements:
Structuring relation:
___
___
Let us start with a simple example. Suppose that our subject is listening to a Jazz
band. Her attention is focused on the sound of the saxophone. She also hears the
drums and the piano.10 But those are not what she is attending to.
Consider the elements of our subject’s priority structure. What is prioritized over
what?
One natural answer might be: the sound of the saxophone gets prioritized over the
sound of the drums and the sound of the piano. On this way of thinking the elements
of the priority structure would be certain events in the subject’s environment. This
type of answer is also natural in the case of visual attention. When our subject is
visually attending to a red spot on the wall, one may say that the spot is prioritized
over the wall. A certain object in her environment is prioritized over other objects.
But in other cases, this worldly elements view is not so natural. Consider the subject
who prioritizes some projects over others. In this case, what is prioritized is one of the
subject’s activities, not a worldly element. Or consider the subject whose attention is
occupied by a lingering headache. It is hard to think of any worldly element that is
getting prioritized. Further, even in the perceptual cases, the worldly elements view
has disadvantages. Something in the subject’s priorities changes when she goes from
visually attending to the spot to tactily attending to it (by feeling it). But on the
worldly elements view this difference cannot be captured. We also cannot capture the
difference between attending to the sound by listening to it, and attending to it by
thinking about it. The worldly elements view thus suffers from lack of generality and
lack of fineness of grain.
These considerations favor a psychological elements view. The structure elements of
priority structures are parts of the subject’s mental life and not part of the world
around her. What is prioritized is the subject’s hearing of the saxophone, or her seeing
of the red spot. Now we can capture the difference between listening to the sound and
thinking about it. In the first case a hearing gets prioritized, in the second a thought.
Similarly, for a difference between prioritizing a seeing and prioritizing a touching of
the red spot. The psychological elements view has an easy time capturing the
headaches and projects as well. A headache is a mental state that may receive priority
(even if nothing in particular is the object of the subject’s attention). And a project,
like bringing up one’s children or writing a book, is a subject’s activity that can be
her priority. For these reasons I will, in what follows, assume the psychological
elements view. We will see that it can easily capture what makes the worldly
elements view attractive, i.e. that our attention normally is directed at objects and
events in the world around us.11 On the psychological elements view external items
such as material objects, sounds and thing in the subject’s visual field thus are
10
For now I will play fast and loose with the exact objects of our subject’s attention (sounds vs. instruments etc.). This issue
will, hopefully, be clarified in Sec. 5 below.
11
See Sec. 5 below.
Priority structures: the basics
73
prioritized only qua items that the subject is hearing or seeing. As long as we
remember this interpretation to speak of worldly objects of priority is innocent and
convenient (and I will sometimes speak like that).
Since there is, as we have already seen, much variety in the parts of a subject’s
psychological life that can enter into her priority structures, I will just call them
psychological parts. Are there any restrictions on which aspects of a subject’s current
mental life can become elements of a priority structure? The priority structure view is
compatible with a variety of restrictions. Someone attracted to the view that all forms
of attention are forms of attending to something, for example, may impose that all
psychological parts are intentional states.12 Someone attracted to the idea that
attention always involves being presented with something and never a striving
toward, desiring or intending of something, may impose that all psychological parts
have a world-to-mind direction of fit. I do not think that such restrictions are
plausible. A subject’s attention might be occupied by a – arguably non-intentional –
headache or by a longing for rest or an urge to have a cigarette.13 Yet, I do believe
that there is one important restriction on the kinds of states that are the elements of
priority structures. Only categorical or occurrent mental states, events or processes
can be such elements. We have as possible psychological parts: perceptual states
(seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, etc.), experiences and their parts, emotions,
thoughts, urges, bodily sensations, aspects of moods, etc. But we don’t have
dispositional beliefs and desires. If one accepted a dispositional account of belief, and
distinguishes beliefs from their manifestations, e.g. occurrent thoughts, then beliefs
are never psychological parts of priority structures. Occurrent thoughts, by contrast,
are parts of priority structures. Priority structures thus partition what is currently
going on with the subject. They don’t partition, as it were, her setup, the way she is
disposed to act, think, perceive and feel.
So, we have filled out the first part of the form. The structure elements of priority
structures are psychological parts.
What then is the second component of priority structures, the structuring relation?
So far, I have spoken of one psychological part being prioritized over another
psychological part. The subject’s hearing the saxophone is prioritized over her
hearing the piano and her hearing the drums. This notion, prioritizing some thing over
another, does not allow for ties in priority. But it seems that there often are such ties.
What gets more priority, the drums or the piano? Spending time with your children or
writing the book? In some cases, it seems that at a certain time some mental states or
activities may be of (roughly) equal priority. Priority structures in this sense seem
different from stacks of books where it isn’t possible to have two distinct books at the
same level (arguably newspaper placements structures are more like priority
structures here: maybe being on the fifth and the sixth page are equally good
placements). The prioritizing-over relation cannot capture such ties, since it is
12
13
See Secs. 5 and 6 below for more discussion.
See Sec. 6 for how the priority structure view treats such cases.
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Priority Structures
asymmetric (like being on top of). In this respect prioritizing one thing over another is
like strictly preferring ice cream over broccoli (you can’t at the same time also strictly
prefer broccoli over ice cream).
We should thus move to a slightly different relation. To allow for ties, we should take
as our basic structuring relation a relation that resembles what, in decision theory and
economics, is often called weak preference:14 a subject weakly prefers ice cream to
broccoli, if she likes ice cream as least as much as broccoli (maybe she likes it more,
maybe just the same). It is easy to transfer this idea to priority structures. If there is a
tie between hearing the piano and hearing the drums, then each has at least as much
priority as the other. By contrast, while hearing the saxophone also has at least as
much priority as the hearing the piano, hearing the piano does not have at least as
much priority as hearing the saxophone. I will call the relation that allows for ties
weak priority. Hearing the piano is weakly prioritized to hearing the drums, if either
the subject gives the piano and drums equal priority or if the piano is prioritized over
the drums.
What exactly is weak priority? Through our folk-psychological matrix we understand
much about it. Part of that grip, as I will argue in Chapters 8 and 9, consists in the fact
that we are acquainted with the reflection of priority in our conscious experience, as a
kind of prominence or centrality in consciousness (though I suggest that we need not
identify priority with that phenomenal reflection). In the next chapter, I will consider
the interpretation of weak priority more. In the end, I defend a form of primitivism
about the structuring relation of priority structures. There is no reductive
identification of that relation, though each of its instances is reductively explained.
That weak priority is a good primitive will have to be partially shown by the use to
which we can put it. My goal for the rest of this chapter will be to show that given
that we have the one primitive notion of weak priority, we can provide accounts of
what it is to focus attention on something, what it is to distribute one’s attention, what
it is for some activity to occupy one’s attention, what different ways of attending to
something are, as well as much more.
Now we have – at least preliminarily – filled out also the second part of the form for
priority structures. The structuring relation of priority structures is weak priority.
Overall, then, priority structures can be identified as follows.
Type of Structure: Priority Structure
•
Structure Elements:
•
Structuring relation:
psychological parts (mental states, events or processes,
or parts of those)
weak priority (… has at least as much priority as …)
Priority structures contain as their structure elements only parts of a subject’s actual
current mental life. The priority structures order what is currently in the subject’s
mind. But what about what isn’t in the subject’s mind but could have been? What she
14
See Hansson and Grüne-Yanoff 2012.
Priority structures: the basics
75
could have seen, but didn’t see. Thoughts she could have had, but did not have.
Compare the newspaper structure. Part of the placement structure, and an important
one at that, surely concerns which stories are placed in the newspaper at all.
Similarly, one important aspect of a subject’s attentional priority state concerns not
just the priority ordering within a priority system, but also what is and what is not
included. Think of our Jazz loving subject. While she was listening to the band, she
did not hear at all what her friend sitting next to her told her (let’s assume that she
really did not hear it). Hearing her friend is just not part of her (auditory) priority
system. Part of maintaining her current priority structure consists in keeping out
hearing those other things.
But we do not need to add anything to capture the exclusionary aspect of attention.
Each priority structure already contains the information about what is and what is not
included in the subject’s current mental life. For the moment neglect the structuring
relation, and just think of a priority structure as a set of psychological parts. We can
think of that set as a partioning of the space of potential psychological parts or mental
states, into those that the subject actually has and those that she does not have (just
like the set of all of a subject’s beliefs, i.e. every proposition she believes, partitions
the space of possible beliefs into those the subject has and those she doesn’t have, i.e.
propositions believed and those not believed). Two priority structures can differ
simply in that one contains an element that the other does not contain (just like two
stacks of books may differ in that one contains a certain book that the other does not
contain). So, by being given a certain priority structure, we already know what is
excluded from it. To view attention in terms of priority structures is to say more than
that attention keeps certain things on and certain things off the subject’s mind. There
is prioritization also within what is on her mind.
There is then a limited analogy between priority structures and degrees of belief or
credences. According to some theorists, a subject’s total belief state is not fully
captured by which propositions she believes and which she doesn’t believe. Among
those she does believe, she believes some more and some less. We can think of these
degrees of belief as ordering the subject’s belief states (s believes that p, s believes
that q, etc.) with a probability function that maps them unto a real number in the
interval [0, 1]. Priority structures also order mental states. And so there is more to a
subject’s priority structure state than what is and what is not included. Yet, there are
limits to this analogy: first, given that priority structures can contain different types of
psychological parts (thoughts, hearing, seeing, headaches, …), a description of a
priority structures in terms of its worldly elements is not equivalent to a description in
terms of psychological parts. In this respect priority structures are unlike credence
structures, where the only type of mental state is belief and hence a description in
terms of a structure of belief states and a structure of propositions is equivalent.
Second, credence structures are structures of (mostly) dispositional states. Priority
structures, by contrast, are structures of categorical, non-dispositional states. For that
reason, priority structures are much smaller than credence structures. Arguably, there
is hardly any proposition ordinary subjects have no (non-zero) credence towards. But
there are many potential mental states, events and processes that are not within an
ordinary subject’s priority structures. Third, while credence structures order beliefs on
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Priority Structures
an interval scale (hence we can assign degrees), (most) priority structures, arguably,
are much weaker: the weak priority relation only gives us a weak partial ordering, and
no interval scale.
4
Priority systems
After having identified the basic components of priority structures – psychological
parts and the weak priority relation – we can build structures out of them, and we can
define various terms that are helpful for describing those structures. As we will see in
the next sections, part of the usefulness of these definitions and the characterization of
these structures consists in the fact that they will make it easy to describe the various
ways a subject’s attention may be deployed.
In order to efficiently describe the various structures we are interested in, let us use
some shorthand notation. Let us use variables x1 … xN to pick out psychological parts.
And I will write the weak priority relations as follows.
Weak Priority
x1 ≥ x2 =Def x1 has at least as much priority as x2
Note that this is, of course, not a reductive definition. The term “priority” appears on
the right hand side. Someone who does not understand what relative priority is thus
will not understand the definition. I introduce the relation ‘≥’ like one might introduce
‘p&q’ by saying that ‘p&q’ holds just if ‘p’ holds and ‘q’ holds. No one will
understand this unless they already understand what ‘and’ means. ‘… ≥ …’ is nothing
but a short way of writing ‘ …. has at least as much priority as …’
With the help of weak priority, it is now easy to define a notion of equal priority, as
follows.
Equal Priority
x1 is of equal priority as x2 =Def x1 ≥ x2 & x2 ≥ x1
i.e. the two psychological parts are both of at least as much priority as the
other. (I will use ‘x1 ~x2’ as a shorthand for ‘x1 is of equal priority as x2’).
Of course, every psychological part is of equal priority as it self. But, as we have
seen, it is also plausible that sometimes two distinct psychological parts are of equal
priority. When our subject is listening to the Jazz piece, hearing the piano and hearing
the drums, for example, might be of equal priority.
We can also define what it is for some psychological part to be strictly prioritized
over another part.
Strict Priority
x1 is (strictly) prioritized over x2 =Def x1 ≥ x2 & not (x2 ≥ x1)
i.e. one psychological part is of at least as much priority as the other, while
the second is not of as least as much priority. (I will use ‘x1 > x2’ as a
shorthand for ‘x1 is (strictly) prioritized over x2’).
Priority systems
77
The notion of strict priority, in contrast to weak priority, is anti-reflexive (no
psychological part is strictly prioritized over itself). Strict priority corresponds to
being prioritized over, and is the closest analogue to one book being placed on top of
another.
With the help of these notions we can now define complex priority structures, as well
as various positions in those structures.
First, we need way of saying that some collection of psychological states form a
single priority structure, rather than several distinct such structures.
Think of when some books form a single stack. In order to be a single stack they must
all be connected by the relevant structuring relation (i.e. the top book and the bottom
book are connected by various books being placed on top of each other; a book in a
different stack, by contrast, has no on-top-of connection to any book in the first
stack). Similarly, a single priority structure would then be a collection of
psychological parts all connected to each other by priority relations. Intuitively two
psychological parts are priority connected just if it is possible to walk on a path of
priority relations from one part to the other without caring about direction (and where
not moving counts as a limit case of walking). This intuitive idea can be made precise
by using the technical notion of the equivalence closure of weak priority (that is: the
reflexive, symmetric, and transitive closure of weak priority).15 Using this
terminology we can thus define connection as follows.
Priority Connection Some psychological parts xx are priority connected =Def all xx
are related by the equivalence closure of ≥.
If some psychological parts are priority connected, then they form a kind of system or
structure. None of the parts are loose, all of them are connected by priority relations.
We can call it a priority system.
Priority System
Some psychological parts xx form a priority system =Def all xx
are priority connected.
We can call all the psychological parts that form a priority system the psychological
parts of that priority system (note that a priority system may, for example, branch so
that there are some psychological parts x1 and x2 of the system where neither is
weakly prioritized relative to the other. Stacks of books can be like that too: one book
on the bottom, two in the next layer. Through the bottom book, the top books are
connected, but neither is on top of the other).
Within a priority system there are positions. These positions are in fact filled by
particular psychological parts, but could be filled by different ones. Suppose, for
example, that there are three psychological parts x1, x2 and x3. Suppose that x1 ≥ x2 , x2
≥ x3 and x1 ≥ x3. Intuitively, to use the analogy of the stack of books again, in this
15
The (reflexive, symmetric, and transitive) closure of a relation R on set X is the minimal reflexive, symmetric, and transitive
relation R′ on X that contains R.
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Priority Structures
priority system x1 is on top of the stack (it has highest priority), x2 is in the middle of
the stack (medium priority) and x3 is on bottom of the stack (with lowest priority).
The position of x1 in this specific priority system is the top location. That position (in
this particular priority system) is uniquely picked out by replacing (in the usual
Ramsey-sentence method) all names for the psychological parts with variables like
this: The-z∃x,y (z ≥ y & z ≥ x & x ≥ y)). Such a description can be given for any of the
other psychological parts as well. The position of a psychological part in a priority
system is thus given by its relations to all the other psychological parts in that system.
Positions in this sense need not be unique; whether they are depends on the structure
of the priority system.
Some positions in a priority system are especially interesting. Consider, for example,
the top position, which we can define as follows.
Top Priority A psychological part x1 is of top priority in an priority system S =Def
not-∃x (x is a psychological part of S & x ≠ x1 & x > x1)
i.e. no other psychological part of the priority system is of more priority than
x1
Below, we will see that the notion of a top priority will let us define what it is for
something to be the object or focus of a subject’s attention. Yet, note that while top
priorities are, in this way, interesting since they mark out a distinguished top location
in a priority structure, nothing about priority structures guaranties that there always is
a single unique top priority.16 One simple possibility for a priority system without a
unique top priority is one where priorities are split between two psychological parts in
the following way (like the two top layer books mentioned above).
Split Priorities
Priorities are split between psychological part x1 and
psychological part x2 in priority system S =Def not (x1 > x2 or x2 > x1) & ∀x(
(x ≠ x1 & x ≠ x2) → (x1 > x and x2 > x))
i.e. neither psychological part of the priority system is strictly prioritized
over the other, but both are strictly prioritized over all other parts of the
priority system.
Split priorities, as we will see, provide us with a way of talking about divided
attention.17 In the case of split priorities the priority system is still structured
asymmetrically. If priorities are split between two psychological parts then those
psychological parts are of higher priority than all other psychological parts (some
books are on the bottom, some on top). But some priority structures may be, as it
were, completely flat: everything is of equal priority, or – in other words – priorities
are distributed in the following way.
16
Technically, for that to be the case the relevant priority system would need to be bounded from above with respect to weak
priority.
17
E.g. Müller et al. 2003, or Kawahara and Yamada 2006. Sustained division of attention, though, might require training (Jans,
Peters and De Weerd 2010).
Priority systems
79
Distributed Priorities
A priority system S has (equally) distributed priorities
=Def ∀x,y ((x is psychological part of S & y is a psychological part of S) → x
~ y)
i.e. every psychological part of the priority system is of equal priority.
Some forms of diffused visual attention, for example, may be characterized by the
fact that priorities are distributed across all parts of the subject’s visual experience.18
Someone who thinks that attention only ever ‘selects’ potential subject level
psychological parts and actualizes them in a subject’s mind would think that all
priority systems have distributed priorities. This is one way in which the priority
structure view can consider as a special case the view that attention is always an all or
nothing affair.
Another interesting type of priority system, as I mentioned above, are spiky priority
systems where one element is strictly prioritized over all others, and all other elements
are of equal priority (though easy to construct, I spare the reader another formal
definition). To think that all priority systems are spiky would be another way of
thinking of attention as all or nothing.
I hope that by now the reader sees that priority systems can take many different
forms. Some of them will have top priorities in them, some of them will have split
priorities, in some priorities will be distributed. For large priority systems, i.e. those
that have many psychological parts, the systems might take many more complex
forms. For these cases arbitrary “attentional landscapes”19 can be constructed using
the notion of weak priority as our primitive.
If a priority system becomes large enough and if it has a simple enough structure
(both, I take it, are quite vague) then we take priorities to come in rough degrees
(starting from the ordering that is provided by weak priority). In the simplest case, the
highest priority corresponds to the top priority in an attention system, somewhat
lower priorities to intermediary positions, and lowest priorities to the lowest position.
In some cases, we may be able to say how much more priority one psychological part
has than another: if there are many intermediary positions between them then it is
much higher in priority. What we will usually not be able to do is to put priorities on
anything like an exact interval scale so that the degree of difference between two
priorities is precisely defined (though see this footnote for a condition under which
that would be possible in certain perceptual priority systems).20
18
See Treisman 2006.
Datta and DeYoe 2009, p. 1044.
20
One might be able to draw on the von Neumann-Morgenstern representation theorem to show that in some priority systems
priorities can be measured on an interval scale (see Briggs 2014 for a recent review) (there may be other routes as well). For this,
we need analogues of their four axioms from which von Neumann and Morgenstern prove the representation theorem. First, we
need (1) completeness. For all psychological parts in the priority system x1 and x2 either x1 ≥ x2 or x2 ≥ x1. As I mentioned, it is
not clear that we have this in all cases. But arguably it is satisfied in some cases. Second, we need (2) transitivity. Again,
arguably some priority systems are transitive. Third, we need (3) something that corresponds to their Independence Axiom. And
fourth, we need (4) something that corresponds to their continuity axiom. The big question for (4) is whether there is anything in,
for example, perception that corresponds to the probabilities that are needed to even state (4). One possibility is to draw on
Bayesian models of perception, where perceptual representations will normally come with a certain probability (see Rescorla
19
80
Priority Structures
5
Attending to something
Attending, according to the priority structure view, consists in regulating priority
structures. As we have seen, priority structures can take many different shapes.
Accordingly, there are many different forms of attention.
What, then, is it to attend to something, i.e. focus, direct or pay attention to some
object or item?
What the subject is attending to normally is not an aspect of her mental life. It is
something in her environment. She might for example attend to the sound of the
saxophone, an object that she sees, or a particular color. What is of top priority, or
what priorities are split between, by contrast, are psychological parts. These are
aspects of the subject’s mental life. For example, an occurrent stinging pain might be
of top priority at some moment.
In order to move from the description of priority systems to what it is to attend to
something, we need the idea that some parts of the subject’s mental life are
intentionally directed at something. A subject may, for example, see a certain object,
hear a certain sound, feel the surface she touches, or think about her next vacation
(arguably pains are like that as well: when a subject experiences a pain in her left foot
she will be in a mental state that is intentionally directed at that bodily location).
Seeing, hearing, and the like are intentional states.
In what follows, I will take for granted this notion of intentionality. Some hold that
there is a naturalistic and reductionist account of intentionality. According to such
theories intentional directedness may be fully explained in terms of causal
dependencies, biological function or functional role.21 Others hold that at least some
forms of intentional directedness escape a simple naturalistic reduction, though they
depend on the complex ways an individual interacts with its environment.22 And
some hold that at least some forms of intentionality are primitive or explained in
terms of a certain phenomenal character.23 None of this matters for present
purposes.24
2013 for a philosophical introduction). And arguably there is also something like perceptual confidence for conscious perceptual
experience (see Morrison forthcoming). The question then will be whether these probabilities interact with priorities in the way
required by (4). Priorities must interact with probabilities in just the way preferences arguably do interact with probabilities.
Letting p be the probability assigned to a certain perceptual state (how perceptually confident you are that there is, say, an apple
in front of you), we need that if x1 ≥ x2 ≥ x3 then there exists a p such that x2 ~ px1 + (1-p)x3. As for (3), we need priorties to be
independent of adding another psychological part into the relevant attention system so that relative priorties remain the same, i.e.
if x1 ≥ x2 then px1 + (1-p)x3 ≥ px2 + (1-p)x3. Before even getting to whether (3) and (4) hold, there is a big issue here whether we
can find a plausible interpretation of this interaction between perceptual probabilities and priorties. I leave this for future
discussions.
21
See Shea 2013 for a recent review.
22
Burge 2010.
23
See Kriegel and Horgan 2013 for a recent overview.
24
There are also, of course, famous debates concerning whether the intentional properties of a subject’s mental states supervene
on the subject’s intrinsic properties or whether they in part depend on how the subject interacts or interacted with her
environment. These debates about internalism and externalism about intentionality won’t matter either.
Attending to something
81
Once we have a psychological part that is intentionally directed at some (external)
object, property or event, we can easily define what it is for a subject to attend to
something, which we might call the object of the subject’s attention.
Object of Attention What it is for o to be s’s object of attention at some time t (i.e.
what it is for s to attend to o at t) is for s to regulate a priority system S such
that a psychological part that is intentionally directed at o is of top priority in
S at t.
On this view, then, something is the (intentional) object of the subject’s attention at
some time, because it is the intentional object of a constitutive part of her attention. A
subject, for example, is attending to a sound because she is hearing that sound, and
that hearing is of top priority.
Sometimes, a subject may attend to several things at once. This can happen if, for
example, she has a split priority system. Our definition also allows that she is
attending to several things at once, because she has several distinct priority systems
(maybe she is visually attending to a red spot – her visual priority system has a seeing
of the spot at top priority; at the same time she is auditorily attending to the sound of
the saxophone – her auditory priority system has a hearing of that sound at top
priority). Arguably, one and the same object could also – at the same time – be the
object of a subject’s attention in two different ways (and, in a sense, twice over):
suppose you have your fingers on a vibrating object (like a mobile phone). You may
attend to the vibrations tactily and also attend to them visually. In a case like this the
subject’s tactile priority system has a touching of the vibration at top priority, and the
subject’s visual priority system has a seeing of the vibration at top priority.
What is the nature of the objects of our attention? That depends on what our mental
states are intentionally directed at. Suppose that what we hear when we hear a sound
are vibration events in the sounding object. In this case, those vibration events are the
objects of our Jazz lover’s attention. Suppose, by contrast, that what we hear are
auditory sense data, mind-dependent objects. In that case, Jazz lovers focus their
attention on sense data. According to the theory of attention presented here, what we
attend to is not decided by considerations about attention. Since attention is a
structure, what we attend to depends on the elements of that structure.
What if there is in fact no red spot on the wall Aliyah is observing? It is a perfectly
ordinary white spot, illuminated by the red light of a laser beamer. What is the object
of Aliyah’s attention? It is the white spot. That is what she sees, though it looks –
illusorily – red. It is seeing the spot that is prioritized. Of course, Aliyah could also
attend to the color of the apparently red spot. Then it is seeing redness (the property)
that is prioritized. What if Aliyah is hallucinating a dagger suspended in mid air?
What is she attending to now? That depends on our view about the (intentional)
objects of hallucination. Maybe her hallucinatory experience consists in awareness of
an uninstantiated cluster of properties.25 If so, that is what she is in fact focusing her
25
Johnston 2004.
82
Priority Structures
attention on (though she mistakenly thinks that it is a dagger). Maybe her
hallucinatory experience has an empty referent and hence no intentional object.26 In
that case, Aliyah is not attending to anything at all. She is still attending, since a
psychological part that “aims” at having an intentional object is of top priority. But, in
this case, her attending does not amount to attending to anything. The priority
structure view thus entails that it is unlikely that we learn anything new about
intentionality by considering attention, since insofar as attention is intentionally
directed at something it simply picks up on the intentional directedness of the
elements that constitute its priority structures.
As I have already touched on, the present account of objects of attention implies that
sometimes a subject’s attention may be engaged even though she is not attending to
something. This will happen either if nothing in the relevant attention system is of top
priority, or if what is of top priority is not intentionally directed at anything.
The second case can happen, if there are mental states without intentional objects. We
have already encountered hallucination as a potential example. Other examples, may
be states that are not intentional at all. Suppose, for example, that you are nauseous.
Maybe your nausea isn’t intentionally directed at anything. It may still occupy your
attention and be of top priority. I take it that this is a plausible result for anyone who
thinks that there are non-intentional mental states (maybe nausea is intentionally
directed at something like your stomach. Someone who thinks so should thus think
that if nausea occupies your attention you will attend to your stomach).
The first scenario, where your attention is engaged even though you are not attending
to anything because nothing is of top priority, will happen when, for example, your
priorities are distributed. In this case nothing in particular will be the object of your
attention. Your attention will be distributed to the various objects the psychological
parts of the relevant attention system are intentionally directed at. We can define how
attention may be equally distributed to various objects, properties or events in the
subject’s environment by using the notion of distributed priorities.
Distributed Attention
What is it for a subject s’s attention to be equally
distributed among some xxs is for s to regulate a priority system S composed
of psychological parts that are intentionally directed at those xxs such that S
has (equally) distributed priorities.
In many cases (arguably most), a subject will neither completely distribute her
attention, nor will there be objects of her attention. When dealing with our
environment, for example, the many objects we are interacting with might all be
somewhat focused, while the regions around them are somewhat less attended than
they are. Indeed, there might be regions within an object that is at one of the foci of
attention that are not attended (like a specific branch on the tree you are watching).27
In some cases a subject may also attend to the gist of a full visual scene,28 or a “large”
26
See Schellenberg, forthcoming.
An interesting discussion of these issues can be found in Siewert 2013.
28
See Treisman 2006.
27
Ways of attending
83
object such as the night sky.29 In a case like this the subject’s attention need not be
distributed over the whole scene or the whole sky: she will attend to the whole, but
not to its parts. This will happen if the psychological parts that are intentionally
directed at the parts of the object are less prioritized than the psychological part that is
intentionally directed at the whole object.
In many situations the subject’s attention will thus be engaged and she will have
clearly defined (and often rapidly changing) priority structures, and yet she is not
attending to anything. As Christopher Mole has emphasized, this seems exactly
right.30 A dancer’s attention is highly engaged, just a basketball player’s or a reader’s
attention, yet it would be difficult to say just what he is attending to. The music? His
movements? None seems exactly right. When an activity like dancing, playing
basketball or reading occupies the subject’s attention there will often be no object of
her attention.31
6
Ways of attending
When we discussed the relationship between attention and the perceptual activities,
like looking at something or listening to something, I have already sketched the idea
that we can think of these as different ways of attending to something (species of the
activity of attending). We can also distinguish ways of attending in other regards. We
may be perceptually attending to something (visually, auditorily, tactilely, or
proprioceptively), or we may be intellectually attending to something such as when
we think about something. Arguably there are also emotional ways of attending to
something such as when you feel angry about something or at someone. We can now
make this precise in terms of priority structures.
Ways of attending to something can be distinguished by what is of top (or high)
priority. When you are, for example, visually attending to a certain object then a
visual state of seeing that object will be of top priority in a priority system. So we
have.
Visually attending What it is for s to visually attend to o is for s to regulate a
priority system S such that a visual state intentionally directed at o is of top
priority in S.
A specific way of visually attending to something is overt visual attention. As we
have seen in the introduction, overt visual attention consists in attending to
something, not out of the corner of your eye, but by moving your eyes in the relevant
direction. More precisely, we can define over visual attention as follows.
29
See Prettyman 2014 for this example and an interesting discussion of varieties of diffuse attention.
Mole 2011, p. 189.
31
I will say more about what it is to have one’s attention occupied by something in Sec. 7 below.
30
84
Priority Structures
Overtly visually attending What it is for s to overtly visually attend to o is for s to
regulate a priority system S such that a state of foveating on o is of top priority
in S.
Where foveating on o is a state where one’s eyes are pointed so that o is visually
represented at the fovea (roughly: the part of the eye with the highest visual
resolution).
Similar definitions can be given for the other perceptual forms of attention. Generally,
ways of attending can thus be as finely individuated as we individuate ways of being
intentionally directed at some object.
Now consider intellectual attention. When a subject is intellectually attending to
something, then a state of thinking about that thing will be of top priority in a priority
system. So we have.
Intellectually attending
What it is for s to intellectually attend to o is for s to
regulate a priority system S such that the activity of thinking about o is of top
priority in S.
And for the case of attending to something in an emotion of anger we would have.
Angrily attending What it is for s to angrily attend to o is for s to regulate a
priority system S such that a state of being angry at (or about) o is of top
priority in S. 32
On the structuralist picture it is thus easy to see how there could be different ways of
attending, what distinguishes them and what they have in common. What they have in
common is that they are constituted by priority structures. What distinguishes them is
which priority structure the subject’s priority systems have, in particular what is of
top priority in such a system.
A subject’s priority structures at some time capture a momentary snapshot of the way
she is attending. Consider again the subject who is attending to her troubling finances
for an afternoon. During that afternoon her priority structures change. But they have
some commonalities. States that are in some way about her financial difficulties keep
being on top of her priority structures. For that reason, those finances remain to object
of her attention.
7
Occupants of attention
In Chapter 2 I have suggested that what it is for an activity to occupy the subject’s
attention is for that activity to draw on the subject’s capacity for attending. So, when
my attention is occupied by playing basketball then playing basketball draws on my
32
Being angry at someone, and being angry about something, of course, are not the same thing. So there can be least two distinct
ways of angrily attending to something depending on whether being angry at, for example, your colleague is of top priority or
whether being angry about his insult or wrongdoing is of top priority.
Occupants of attention
85
capacity for attention in something like the way it draws on my capacity for running
or throwing.
We can now make this more precise. When an activity or mental state occupies the
subject’s attention then it will draw on her capacity to prioritize. In the simplest case,
this will simply mean that the relevant state is of top priority in a priority system. If
our subject is occupied by pain or nausea, then that pain or that feeling is on top of
her priority list (indeed, as we will see in chapter 6, pains have a tendency to put
themselves high up on that list). This account also plausible for the case of other
bodily sensations. In these cases the experience of the relevant sensation is what
occupies the subjects attention. Insofar as these experiences have an intentional object
these objects will at the same time be the objects of the subject’s attention. In the
simple case we thus have.
Simply Occupied Attention (full) What it is for a subject s’s attention to be simply
occupied by M is for M to be of top priority in a priority system of s.
In many cases a subject’s attention will not be fully occupied by anything. Many
different sensations, for example, might occupy the subject’s attention to a similar
degree. In this case, the relevant sensations are located somewhere relatively high up
in a priority system. The degree to which they occupy the subject’s attention will be
roughly measured by how high up in the priority system they are.
Simply Occupied Attention (degreed)
The degree to which mental state
M simply occupies a subject s’s attention is determined by how high up in a
priority system of s M is.
What occupies a subject’s attention then are aspects of her mental life. By contrast,
the objects of her attention are normally not aspects of her mental life. When a
subject’s attention is occupied by a certain mental state like a bodily sensation, a
thought, or an emotion, that mental state thus is (at least normally) not the object of
the subject’s attention. For mental state M1 to be the object of the subject’s attention,
as we have seen, would be for there to be another mental state M2 that is intentionally
directed at M1 to be of top priority.
On the account I have provided, there is a clear difference between attending to, say,
a felt emotion and for that emotion to occupy the subject’s attention. One way to
attend to a pang of anger, for example, would be to think about that felt anger (and for
that thought to be of top priority). But when the thought about the anger is of top
priority, then normally the anger is not also of top priority, and so her anger does not
occupy the subject’s attention. In many cases, indeed, an emotion or bodily sensation
that occupies the subject’s attention will also be highly psychologically salient and
thus draw her attention away from, for example, thinking about that emotion or
bodily sensation.33 Often, then, it will be psychologically impossible for a subject to
33
See Chapter 6 for more on psychological salience.
86
Priority Structures
both have a strong emotion that occupies her attention and also attend to it.34 Though,
in some cases, of course, the subject’s attention is split so that her anger is both the
object of her attention and also occupies her attention.
The notion of occupied attention mentioned so far is most suited for cases where the
subject’s attention is occupied by a bodily sensation, a particular thought, an urge,
craving, or strong emotion. In cases where a complex activity like dancing, playing
basketball or reading occupies the subject’s attention, the account of simply occupied
attention seems at least insufficient and maybe implausible. If a subject’s attention
were simply occupied by playing basketball, then playing basketball would be of top
priority in the subject’s priority system. Given that playing basketball is a bodily
activity, this would imply that priority structures are extended mental states (i.e. they
are realized partly by processes outside the subject’s brain). This may seem
implausible to some theorists (though others may find it congenial). Whether or not
one finds fault with extended priority structures, it seems to me that the account of
simply occupied attention is too simplistic for complex cases such as these (it is also
too simplistic for cases of complex mental activities, like planning one’s future life).
The simple account of occupied attention, though, can be extended. Complex
activities like dancing, playing basketball, or planning one’s future are highly
structured processes in the sense developed in Sec. 4 of Chapter 3. They have many
states and events as constituent parts and have a complex internal form. What
occupies the subject’s attention, further, often are activities and as such they are
partially constituted by subject level guiding states. In many cases, indeed, the
activity that occupies the subject’s attention will be performed intentionally and the
subject thus will have a complex hierarchy of plans, goals, execution strategies, and
motor intentions. Whether or not the relevant activities are themselves embodied they
will thus be partially constituted by a complex web of mental states and events. These
are that activity’s constitutive states and events (in the sense developed in Chapter 3).
Many of the constitutive states and events of, say, reading will be guiding states (e.g.
a subject’s intention to read), but some of them might be resultant states as well
(visual reading for example is partially constituted by seeing something; Braille
reading by feeling something). A structured activity then complexly occupies the
subject’s attention when the following two conditions are fulfilled.
Complexly Occupied Attention The degree to which an internally structured activity
A complexly occupies a subject s’s attention is determined
34
(1)
by how high up in a priority system of s the constitutive states
and events of A are.
(2)
by how much the constitutive guiding states of A constrain the
temporal evolution of s’s priority structures.
There is one complication: if some mental state is intentionally directed at itself, then for it to occupy the subject’s attention
would also be for it to be the object of the subjects attention. Some have argued that conscious mental states are selfrepresentational in this way (see Kriegel 2009).
Occupants of attention
87
Clauses (1) and (2) roughly correspond to the two elements of structured activities,
i.e. their constitutive states and events, and their internal form. I take it that the
interpretation of (1) is relatively straightforward. While our subject is playing
basketball, the subject’s basketball relevant goals, execution strategies, relevant visual
and tactile experiences, etc. remain high up in her priority structures. For the
interpretation of (2) consider that in order for playing basketball to occupy the
subject’s attention it is not enough to look at the subject’s priority structures moment
by moment. How the priority structures change must also be constrained by the states
that guide the activity of playing basketball. Suppose the subject starts by planning a
certain defense strategy. That plan will be high up in her priority systems. Now as she
executes that plan her priority structures must evolve in accordance with her plan (as
well as newly incoming information). Playing basketball would not occupy the
subject’s attention if that plan had no effect on what will come to have high priority
as the plan is executed. The constitutive guiding states of playing basketball thus must
constrain how her priority structures evolve over time.
Just like in the case of mental states that simply occupy the subject’s attention, when
structured activities complexly occupy her attention there will be only rough measures
of how much of her attention is so occupied. The relevant vagueness of what it is to
have one’s attention occupied is captured by a corresponding vagueness in how high
up in the subject’s priority structures the relevant states and events are and by how
much the relevant guiding states constrain the temporal evolution of the subject’s
priority structures.
Note also that just like in the case of simply occupied attention, there is a difference
between an activity that complexly occupies the subject’s attention and an activity to
which the subject attends, corresponding to a distinction drawn by Alan White
between agent attention and spectator attention.35 A subject attends to an activity if a
mental state that is intentionally directed at that activity is of top priority. The subject
may for example think about or look at her own basketball ball playing. But thinking
about basketball or looking at one’s own play are normally not constitutive states of
playing basketball. It is not part of what it is to play basketball that one thinks about it
(in contrast, for example, to the various goals one must have). Because of that, when
playing basketball is the object of a subject’s attention it will normally not also
occupy her attention, and indeed the former will tend to interfere with the latter
(since, as a matter of our psychological makeup, if a thought about basketball is of
top priority then the constitutive states of playing basketball are normally not also of
top priority). Attending to one’s basketball playing thus will often distract from the
actual playing.
35
White 1964.
88
Priority Structures
8
Constitutive priority structures
At the end of this chapter, let us consider that some mental states, activities or
conditions are plausibly constituted by certain priority structures (synchronically, or
at a time) as well as by how these priority structures tend to evolve over time
(diachronically).
We have already seen simple cases. Looking at something is a mental activity where
a seeing of that thing is of top priority (in the case of listening to something it is a
hearing). In the last chapter I have also discussed watching something where a seeing
must be of top priority and a goal of knowing what that thing is doing must constrain
the temporal evolution of the relevant priority structure (the goal must be causally
involved in keeping the subject’s priority structure centered on that seeing).
Arguably there are many other mental states or activities that are partially constituted
by priority structures and constraints on their temporal evolution. As a start consider
inspecting something, searching for something (though maybe there can be
inattentive searches), observing something, etc. For more interesting cases, one might
look toward desires, certain emotions, certain moods, and other mental conditions
(such as emotional disorders or addiction). I won’t defend any of these views, but
intend simply to give some examples to provide the reader with an idea for how
priority structures might partially constitute certain mental states.
Consider, for example, T.M. Scanlon’s “desires in the directed attention” sense. On
this view, occurrent desires are characterized as follows.
For an organism to desire p is for the thought of p to keep occurring to
the organism in a favorable light, so that its attention is directed
insistently toward considerations that present themselves as counting
in favor of p.36
On this view desires are partially constituted by a strong tendency to have certain
priority structures. In those priority structures mental states that intentionally directed
at certain considerations will be of top (or high) priority (arguably these mental states
must also be psychologically salient, thus instructing the subject to put and keep them
at top priority. See Chapter 6).
For the case of emotion consider the following claim in a recent book by Michael
Brady.37
[F]ocusing of attention onto some object or event is, plausibly,
constitutive of emotional experience. For it seems impossible to think
of someone as being afraid of the upcoming exam without the
36
Schroeder 2014. See Scanlon 1998.
Brady 2013, p. 181f. See also the many studies on the connections between the emotions and attention cited in Brady’s book.
See also Goldie 2002; and Bach 1994 especially for the – arguably constitutive – connection between emotional disorders and
certain priority structures.
37
Constitutive priority structures
89
upcoming exam being the target of her attention. Similarly, it seems
impossible to think of someone as being angry about the Principal’s
pay rise without the Principal’s pay rise being the object or event that
he attends to when angry. Let us therefore call the intentional target of
emotion—that which the emotion is about—the object of constitutive
attentional focus.
To say that some emotion involves, as a constituent, attention to some
object or event does not entail, of course, that the subject’s attention is
solely focused on that object. My guilt at my bad behaviour might
make me attend not only to what I did, but to ways in which I can
make reparations; my disappointment at the team’s defeat might lead
me to pay attention not only to the loss, but to the possibility of
alleviating my feelings with a trip to the pub….
According to Brady certain priority structures thus are constitutive of particular
emotions (and consequently, he argues that which emotions we should feel – or that a
virtuous agent would feel – is largely determined by what should be the objects of our
attention; or generally how our priority structures should look like).
In addition to desires and emotions, mental conditions that may be partially
constituted by certain priority structures include moods,38 mood disorders such as
depression, or mania, as well as addiction. In many of these cases, there are large
amounts of research about the empirical connections between the relevant mental
states and attention. With the help of priority structures philosophers who are
interested in what constitutes these states or conditions, as well as on their normative
significance, have a further tool at their disposal.
38
E.g. Solomon 1993.