Chapter 4: Attention and Timing

• Blackmore's question: "Does consciousness cause attention to be directed, or is consciousness the effect of paying attention (or perhaps neither)? (p.51)
  
• James: "Everyone knows what attention is.  It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.  Focalization, concentration, or consciousness are of its essence.  It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others." (James 1890, Vol., i: 403-4)
• The "spotlight of attention" metaphor: "My experience is what I agree to attend to.  Only those items which I notice shape my mind 00 without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos." (James 1890, Vol., i: 402)
• "Attention and memory are closely related and some theories of attention treat short term memory, with its limited capacity, as the relevant resource to be competed for." (p. 53)

Attention and Consciousness

• "For all this variation [among various accounts] two main kinds of connections that are made between consciousness and attention"
1. "the idea that when something is attended to it is 'in' consciousness"
2. "the idea that consciousness can direct attention, or even that directing attention is the main function of consciousness." (53)
• James' cause/effect issue.  Which is attention?
  
• Active theory: Consciousness directs my attention to the object.
• Reactive theory: It grabs my attention.
• James' answer
• "no amount of evidence could really help decide between the two"
• "therefore he made his decision on ethical grounds -- his decision being to count himself among those who believe in a spiritual force.  That force was the genuinely causal force of personal will." (54)

Directing Attention

• Involuntary control of attention
  
• "attention is often directed involuntarily [= unconsciously?!] -- for example when we react quickly to something like a loud noise, or our name being called" (55)
• involuntary aspects of visual tracking
• keeps images of salient things in the foveal (hi-res) part of the retina
• peripheral unexpected sudden motions literally "catch our eyes"
• Related curiosities
  
• involuntary [unconscious?] nature of saccades (generally)
• "smooth pursuit": "this kind of eye movement cannot be made voluntarily" without "an actual moving target" (55)
• "Another form of involuntary visual attention occurs in perceptual 'pop-out'." (56)
  
• "These examples show that much of selective attention is controlled unconsciously.  But this does not preclude the possibility that under other circumstances we really do ... decide to pay closer attention .... (56)

The Half-Second Delay in Consciousness

• Libet's experiments
• directly stimulated the the somatosensory cortex
• with .5 seconds + stimulations patient-subjects reported various sensations (e.g., being touched on the arm)
  
• with shorter stimulations patient-subjects reported no sensations
• "Libet concluded that 'neuronal adequacy' for conscious sensation is only achieved after half a second of continuous stimulation in [the] somatosensory cortex." (58)
• Conclusion: consciousness is on a half-second delay!
• nowhere so efficacious as it seems (waxing epiphenomenal)
  
• certainly not proactive!
• "Libet's controversial suggestion was that sensory experiences are subjectively referred back in time once neuronal adequacy has been achieved." (59)

Interpreting Libet's Delay

• "Penrose (1994a) believes that the phenomena demand reference to non-locality and quantum theory." (60)
  
• "[Popper & Eccles] think that some kind of intervention by the nonphysical mind is required to explain subjective antedating." (60)
• "Libet himself points out that subjective referral in space has long been recognized and so we should not be surprised to find subjective referral in time as well.  Although it may seem odd that we experience objects as 'out there' when vision depends on our brain 'in here,' this kind of projection is not magical -- nor is subjective referral.  Given the widely dispersed activity in the cortex, we should expect a mechanism that coordinated subjective timings." (60-1)
• Related oddities
• phi phenomena (one light moves) & "color phi" (it changes color before that color lights up)
• cutaneous rabbit: "we might ask how taps two to four came to be experienced as moving up the arm when the next tap in the series had not yet happened.
• "Perhaps we need to drop the assumption that there must be a time at which consciousness happens.  Indeed we may need to question the very idea that at any moment in time something either is, or is not, "in consciousness." (63)