Research Seminars, Colloquia and Reading Groups
CSCRC Research Seminar - Speaker Wayne Wu (Carnegie Mellon)
Access to action as attention -
Abstract:
A subject’s internal access to her mind provides crucial data for theories of mind. Thus, introspection provides basic data about consciousness, including conscious agency: the sense of effort, trying, and acting. Similarly, subjects can in some sense internally access their intentional action and on that distinctive basis can know what they are doing. Internal access to the mind is a striking psychological capacity, and in many quarters is taken to exemplify five features: (1) it involves internal attention to aspects of mind; (2) is nonperceptual; (3) distinctively first personal; (4) privileged; and (5) provides for direct access to its targets, making possible singular thought about those targets. This talk provides an account of our inner access to intentional bodily action as essentially involving cognitive attention.