Sherrington in his landmark study The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906) describes a kind of natural philosophy of perception (lecture IX). This was the first and remains the most coherent discussion of the three receptor fields exteroception, proprioception and interoception. These are in heavy use today in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, somatic psychology, and consciousness studies. The modern formulation has a heavy exteroceptive bias and misrepresents the importance of proprioception by dismissing it as positional awareness. Proprioception means self-awareness and Sherrington is the first to try to explain this deepest and innermost sensory motor system, the one that is the most self-referential. The distance receptors of sight, hearing and smell located in the leading segment of the animal body, of the head, are in a very real way the first locus of attention. But this is only from the perspective of functional survival behaviors. Philosophy like neuroscience tries to shed light on what is happening within and not just what is happening without. In a philosophical sense we can say that the self-referential core of being located not on the surface of the vertebrate organism but deepest within, is in a very real sense the primary perceptual system. The nucleus of a cell possesses its own nucleoskeleton, which is thoroughly embedded in the larger cytoskeleton of the cell and is affected by all of the movements of the organism, an information theoretic process called mechanotransduction, and which is what triggers the chemical or molecular expression of dna. Similarly the postural core of the vertebrate body includes the spine and its mechanical functioning is the basis of the richer but perhaps philosophically secondary expression by the visible and dynamic elements of the surface of the organism, exteroception. Proprioception or self-awareness as a deep internal process is philosophically primary because it forms the basis of the integrative action of the nervous system and by consequence of the more superficial actions that we engage in. What is important about this deepest inner system is that it is intrinsically homeostatic and integrative and this is the quality that gives it its primacy as a sort of innate ethical engine.
Everyone sleeps on Lonergan because, well, transcendental Thomism. but his 1957 Insight claims that the first step of any critical philosophy is ‘Pay attention!’ and every thing follows from how this works in his system.
Picking up on the "or even transcendental", do you think it would be fair to identify Kant's "sensibility" with your "attention"? Or would "attention" cross-cut through "sensibility", "affinity", and "apperception"?
It's a good question. I wrote a paper a while back on how we might think of these practices of transformation in perception within Kant's framework. I don't know if I'd make example the same case today, but I think it has to have something to do with how
"spontaneity" can be shaped within the faculty of understanding. As for attention itself, I think it must be connected to apperception. It'd be worth working out these connections in detail sometime.
Thank you. That sounds like a specific kind of the cross-cutting, which helps me understand what you're trying to do here. I'll look forward to any later work on those connections.
I’ve only made it through 1. and 2. so far, but this is wonderful!
I’ve been shopping a paper i wrote on Heidegger’s later practice of phenomenology, which focuses on its protreptic dimension. Lots of parallels with what you’re saying here.
From attention as first philosophy to concentration of attentiveness it is only one step:
"The methods we use to separate the soul-spiritual from the material-physical in us—and this experiment of 'spiritual chemistry' can be carried out only within us—are concentration and meditation. Meditation and concentration are not some kind of miraculous mental performance, but the highest level of mental processes whose lower, elementary levels we find also in our everyday life. Meditation is a devotion of the soul, raised to limitlessness, as we may experience in the most joyful religious feelings. Concentration is attentiveness, raised to limitlessness; we use it at a more basic level in ordinary life. By attentiveness in everyday life we mean not allowing our ideas and feelings to range freely over anything that catches our attention, but pulling ourselves together so that our soul focuses our interest on something specific, isolating it in our field of perception. There are no limits to how far this attentiveness can be increased, particularly by voluntarily focusing our soul on certain thoughts supplied by spiritual science. Ignoring everything else, all worries and upsets, sense impressions, will impulses, feeling, and thinking, we can center our inner forces completely on these thoughts for a certain amount of time. The content of what we are concentrating on is not as important as the inner activity and exercise of developing our attentiveness, our powers of concentration.
Focusing, concentrating the forces of the soul in this way is crucial. And regular training, often involving months, years, or even decades, depending on individual predisposition, is necessary for the soul to become strong enough to develop inner forces. Qualities otherwise merely slumbering in the soul are now called up by this boundless enhancement of attentiveness, by concentration."
I’m not sure exactly where he talks specifically about attention (though it does seem to be foundational). The book of his that blew my mind was The Master and His Emissary. A good place to start is this video: https://youtu.be/Pvr_gubcWUk
Sophists will talk about philosophy like they love her then only attend to good vibes they mistake for the good. The good draws attention until there is no choice but to pay attention, turning and drawing its perceivers’ attention to itself, unless the sophists erect blinders and walls to keep in the good vibes at the expense of the good.
For Aristotle, first philosophy is a science. Attention is, of course, necessary for that, but it is not a science. Therefore, attention is not first philosophy.
I think there is something true to say about attention. The good and the true belong to first philosophy because they being inasmuch as the will and mind attend to it.
But no, I don’t think you have shown that attention _is_ first philosophy.
Aristotle’s first philosophy is not a science in the sense that scientists today think of science—at least I don’t think it is. Why, along these lines, could attention not be a science in the sense Aristotle thinks of science?
Attention is simply, as you cited, the act of the mind—theoria. But this act would be common to any of the speculative sciences, namely, to natural science, math or first philosophy (these are laid out in Book VI of the Metaphysics, and defined in such a way that they exhaust the kinds of speculative science).
Science, as Aristotle understands it, is a habit of the mind and has some subject matter. Attention, in itself, could be the subject matter of a science. In some sense it is the highest object of natural science, for it is the highest act of the highest natural being (humans). In practical philosophy, it is also identified with happiness. But to say attention is science… well, it simply isn’t. Science exists with a demonstration. Science is where a subject and predicate are joined through a certain middle term. And attention is certainly not first philosophy. Aristotle begins his work on first philosophy with a consideration of wisdom, which is the same. Wisdom is not common to all and is only attained with great effort. To be attentive is not the same as to be wise, though perhaps the wise are best able to attend.
Again, I think you’re on to something, but when you claim attention is first philosophy, you cannot mean what Aristotle means.
Yeah, I think you’re right to distinguish science, as Aristotle defines it, from attention.
But I’m not claiming that attention is science in Aristotle’s strict technical sense, nor even that it is prôtē philosophia in the exact way Aristotle defines it. What I’m suggesting is more phenomenological and existential: that attention is what makes philosophy possible in the first place. It is the condition under which something can appear as salient, worthy of thought, and open to questioning. In that sense, my claim about attention is not a reinterpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy but a deeper look at what grounds philosophical inquiry as such.
When I say "attention is first philosophy," I do not mean that attention is a speculative science or that it replaces wisdom. I mean that attention is the precondition for recognizing anything as a philosophical problem. In this light, attention is prior not as a demonstrable truth, but as a cultivated stance—a practiced habit of receptivity, one that gives rise to the very possibility of philosophical thought.
So yes: you’re right that attention is not first philosophy as Aristotle defines it. But I’m not claiming that it is. I’m claiming it’s prior to that kind of philosophy, in the order of experience and receptivity. Which is why the claim is, ultimately, protreptic: it invites a turning toward attention as the first philosophical gesture, the condition under which any philosophy—including Aristotle’s—can begin.
And, I would add, this perspective also helps makes sense of the shifts we see between philosophers and their engagements with one another.
I’m open to suggestions about how I might further distinguish the two.
Sherrington in his landmark study The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906) describes a kind of natural philosophy of perception (lecture IX). This was the first and remains the most coherent discussion of the three receptor fields exteroception, proprioception and interoception. These are in heavy use today in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, somatic psychology, and consciousness studies. The modern formulation has a heavy exteroceptive bias and misrepresents the importance of proprioception by dismissing it as positional awareness. Proprioception means self-awareness and Sherrington is the first to try to explain this deepest and innermost sensory motor system, the one that is the most self-referential. The distance receptors of sight, hearing and smell located in the leading segment of the animal body, of the head, are in a very real way the first locus of attention. But this is only from the perspective of functional survival behaviors. Philosophy like neuroscience tries to shed light on what is happening within and not just what is happening without. In a philosophical sense we can say that the self-referential core of being located not on the surface of the vertebrate organism but deepest within, is in a very real sense the primary perceptual system. The nucleus of a cell possesses its own nucleoskeleton, which is thoroughly embedded in the larger cytoskeleton of the cell and is affected by all of the movements of the organism, an information theoretic process called mechanotransduction, and which is what triggers the chemical or molecular expression of dna. Similarly the postural core of the vertebrate body includes the spine and its mechanical functioning is the basis of the richer but perhaps philosophically secondary expression by the visible and dynamic elements of the surface of the organism, exteroception. Proprioception or self-awareness as a deep internal process is philosophically primary because it forms the basis of the integrative action of the nervous system and by consequence of the more superficial actions that we engage in. What is important about this deepest inner system is that it is intrinsically homeostatic and integrative and this is the quality that gives it its primacy as a sort of innate ethical engine.
Helpful and interesting, thank you.
Everyone sleeps on Lonergan because, well, transcendental Thomism. but his 1957 Insight claims that the first step of any critical philosophy is ‘Pay attention!’ and every thing follows from how this works in his system.
Lonergan has been on my reading list for a while now. Do you have a specific reference for this 1957 citation? Definitely would follow up on that.
https://utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/9780802034557
solid post and argument.
Picking up on the "or even transcendental", do you think it would be fair to identify Kant's "sensibility" with your "attention"? Or would "attention" cross-cut through "sensibility", "affinity", and "apperception"?
It's a good question. I wrote a paper a while back on how we might think of these practices of transformation in perception within Kant's framework. I don't know if I'd make example the same case today, but I think it has to have something to do with how
"spontaneity" can be shaped within the faculty of understanding. As for attention itself, I think it must be connected to apperception. It'd be worth working out these connections in detail sometime.
Thank you. That sounds like a specific kind of the cross-cutting, which helps me understand what you're trying to do here. I'll look forward to any later work on those connections.
I’ve only made it through 1. and 2. so far, but this is wonderful!
I’ve been shopping a paper i wrote on Heidegger’s later practice of phenomenology, which focuses on its protreptic dimension. Lots of parallels with what you’re saying here.
Looking forward to seeing you develop this more.
Nice. I'd love to read that when it's done.
From attention as first philosophy to concentration of attentiveness it is only one step:
"The methods we use to separate the soul-spiritual from the material-physical in us—and this experiment of 'spiritual chemistry' can be carried out only within us—are concentration and meditation. Meditation and concentration are not some kind of miraculous mental performance, but the highest level of mental processes whose lower, elementary levels we find also in our everyday life. Meditation is a devotion of the soul, raised to limitlessness, as we may experience in the most joyful religious feelings. Concentration is attentiveness, raised to limitlessness; we use it at a more basic level in ordinary life. By attentiveness in everyday life we mean not allowing our ideas and feelings to range freely over anything that catches our attention, but pulling ourselves together so that our soul focuses our interest on something specific, isolating it in our field of perception. There are no limits to how far this attentiveness can be increased, particularly by voluntarily focusing our soul on certain thoughts supplied by spiritual science. Ignoring everything else, all worries and upsets, sense impressions, will impulses, feeling, and thinking, we can center our inner forces completely on these thoughts for a certain amount of time. The content of what we are concentrating on is not as important as the inner activity and exercise of developing our attentiveness, our powers of concentration.
Focusing, concentrating the forces of the soul in this way is crucial. And regular training, often involving months, years, or even decades, depending on individual predisposition, is necessary for the soul to become strong enough to develop inner forces. Qualities otherwise merely slumbering in the soul are now called up by this boundless enhancement of attentiveness, by concentration."
Rudolf Steiner
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA154/English/AP1990/19140526p01.html
https://youtu.be/OEMAR8ex3HQ?si=OjCbkk5ee697PBn8&t=7352
Look forward to reading this.
This is also Iain McGilchrist’s argument. If you’re not already familiar, you should check out his work.
Yes, people are making this connection. Is there a particular place in his work where this connection is especially salient?
I’m not sure exactly where he talks specifically about attention (though it does seem to be foundational). The book of his that blew my mind was The Master and His Emissary. A good place to start is this video: https://youtu.be/Pvr_gubcWUk
Sophists will talk about philosophy like they love her then only attend to good vibes they mistake for the good. The good draws attention until there is no choice but to pay attention, turning and drawing its perceivers’ attention to itself, unless the sophists erect blinders and walls to keep in the good vibes at the expense of the good.
I realize I said “mistake” but this is probably intentional
For Aristotle, first philosophy is a science. Attention is, of course, necessary for that, but it is not a science. Therefore, attention is not first philosophy.
I think there is something true to say about attention. The good and the true belong to first philosophy because they being inasmuch as the will and mind attend to it.
But no, I don’t think you have shown that attention _is_ first philosophy.
Aristotle’s first philosophy is not a science in the sense that scientists today think of science—at least I don’t think it is. Why, along these lines, could attention not be a science in the sense Aristotle thinks of science?
Attention is simply, as you cited, the act of the mind—theoria. But this act would be common to any of the speculative sciences, namely, to natural science, math or first philosophy (these are laid out in Book VI of the Metaphysics, and defined in such a way that they exhaust the kinds of speculative science).
Science, as Aristotle understands it, is a habit of the mind and has some subject matter. Attention, in itself, could be the subject matter of a science. In some sense it is the highest object of natural science, for it is the highest act of the highest natural being (humans). In practical philosophy, it is also identified with happiness. But to say attention is science… well, it simply isn’t. Science exists with a demonstration. Science is where a subject and predicate are joined through a certain middle term. And attention is certainly not first philosophy. Aristotle begins his work on first philosophy with a consideration of wisdom, which is the same. Wisdom is not common to all and is only attained with great effort. To be attentive is not the same as to be wise, though perhaps the wise are best able to attend.
Again, I think you’re on to something, but when you claim attention is first philosophy, you cannot mean what Aristotle means.
Yeah, I think you’re right to distinguish science, as Aristotle defines it, from attention.
But I’m not claiming that attention is science in Aristotle’s strict technical sense, nor even that it is prôtē philosophia in the exact way Aristotle defines it. What I’m suggesting is more phenomenological and existential: that attention is what makes philosophy possible in the first place. It is the condition under which something can appear as salient, worthy of thought, and open to questioning. In that sense, my claim about attention is not a reinterpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy but a deeper look at what grounds philosophical inquiry as such.
When I say "attention is first philosophy," I do not mean that attention is a speculative science or that it replaces wisdom. I mean that attention is the precondition for recognizing anything as a philosophical problem. In this light, attention is prior not as a demonstrable truth, but as a cultivated stance—a practiced habit of receptivity, one that gives rise to the very possibility of philosophical thought.
So yes: you’re right that attention is not first philosophy as Aristotle defines it. But I’m not claiming that it is. I’m claiming it’s prior to that kind of philosophy, in the order of experience and receptivity. Which is why the claim is, ultimately, protreptic: it invites a turning toward attention as the first philosophical gesture, the condition under which any philosophy—including Aristotle’s—can begin.
And, I would add, this perspective also helps makes sense of the shifts we see between philosophers and their engagements with one another.
I’m open to suggestions about how I might further distinguish the two.