Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2022 Nov 15;44(4):63. doi: 10.1007/s40656-022-00538-3.
The term attention has been used to mean so many different things that some have despaired of it being useful at all. This paper is devoted to bringing a modicum of order to the chaos through the time-honored device of categorization. The chief purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive descriptive taxonomy of the nuanced ways the term attention may be employed. It is presented in table form, followed by elucidations and illustrations of each of its items. But first, I offer reasons why a taxonomy of attention is needed and explore some of its possible benefits. After presenting the taxonomy, I sketch by way of example how it might be applied to two interesting questions: is the umbrella term attention still useful?; and, what is it that ties the subdefinitions of attention together yet distinguishes them from other kinds of cognition?
这个术语已经被用来表示如此多不同的含义,以至于有些人已经对它完全失去了信心。本文旨在通过分类这一由来已久的方法,为这种混乱带来些许秩序。本文的主要目的是引入一个全面的描述性分类法,对注意力这个术语可能被使用的微妙方式进行分类。它以表格的形式呈现,后面是对每个项目的解释和说明。但首先,我将提供为什么需要一个注意力分类法的原因,并探讨它的一些可能的好处。在提出分类法之后,我将通过一个示例来简要说明如何将其应用于两个有趣的问题:伞状术语“注意力”是否仍然有用?以及,是什么将注意力的子定义联系在一起,又将它们与其他认知形式区分开来?