About the event
Title: "What is social attention?"
Abstract: In this talk I will explore the possibility of an irreducibly social attention. To do so I start with existing work on attention at the individual level, arguing that it indicates the existence of an irreducible subject of attention, or self. I then provide a mechanistic characterization of this account, which can be extended to other domains. Finally, I apply the mechanistic account to the social level, to see what sorts of tests might provide an answer to the question of whether we really “notice and ignore things not only as individuals but also as collectives” (Zerubavel 2015). While I don’t in this talk answer the question of whether there is an irreducibly social attention, I lay the path for future empirical work on the topic.
If you would like to attend this event virtually by Zoom, please contact Drew Johnson at Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas.