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    Every conscious creature is attentive. — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
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    Home/Perception
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Every conscious creature is attentive.

    Consciousness & MindPerception
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Any mind lacking an attentional structure would lack a particular perspective on the world.
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    • 2.Having a subjective point of view is characteristic of conscious experiences.
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    • 3.A mind without attentional structure would not be the mind of a creature with a subjective point of view.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Certain conscious states—such as global affective moods, pain, or oceanic meditative absorption—involve no selective focus on any particular object.
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    • 2.William James distinguished 'focal' from 'fringe' consciousness, acknowledging that peripheral awareness lacks the directed selectivity definitive of attention.
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    • 3.If consciousness can include non-selective, field-like phenomenal states, then some conscious creatures have experiences that are not attentive in any meaningful sense.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Ned Block's distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness allows that a creature may have rich phenomenal experience without the functional selectivity attention requires.
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    • 2.Creatures with severely degraded frontal and parietal cortices—structures implicated in attentional control—retain phenomenal consciousness according to Christof Koch and Francis Crick's neural correlate research.
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    • 3.Therefore, phenomenal consciousness and attentional structure are empirically and conceptually dissociable, undermining the claim that every conscious creature is necessarily attentive.
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    Topics

    PerceptionConsciousness & Mind

    Related

    A mind without attentional structure would not be the mind of a creature with a ...Any mind lacking an attentional structure would lack a particular perspective on...Certain conscious states—such as global affective moods, pain, or oceanic medita...Creatures with severely degraded frontal and parietal cortices—structures implic...
    +5 moreShow less
    Having a subjective point of view is characteristic of conscious experiences.If consciousness can include non-selective, field-like phenomenal states, then s...Ned Block's distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousnes...Therefore, phenomenal consciousness and attentional structure are empirically an...William James distinguished 'focal' from 'fringe' consciousness, acknowledging t...

    Similar

    If such performance involves consciousness without attention, it refut...79%All instances of attention are consciousness-involving77%Most vertebrates and invertebrates are conscious.76%Most living creatures lack conscious intentions.75%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: attention
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    Watzl also claims that any mind which lacked such a structure would therefore be lacking a particular perspective on the world, and so would not be the mind of a creature with the subjective point of view that is characteristic of conscious experiences. From this he derives the claim that every conscious creature is attentive. Carolyn Jennings has suggested that certain kinds of highly engaged expert performance may be a counterexample to this (Jennings, 2015).
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit