Brian Bruya

Attention is indispensable to our learning, performance, relationships, health, and daily life, and yet laboratory studies of attention have only scratched the surface of these lived varieties of attention. In this article, we begin with William James' theory of derived involuntary attention, which has largely been ignored in laboratory research. We then show that there is a gap in our attention vocabulary and the theory that underpins it, which depend on an incomplete voluntary/involuntary dichotomy. The negative effects of this dichotomy stretch beyond laboratory research to clinical diagnosis, influencing how we understand so-called attention deficits. To fill the gap between voluntary and involuntary, we introduce a third kind of attention—fluid attention (also called postvoluntary attention), which is goal-directed and selective, like voluntary attention, but also effortless and drawn to its source, like involuntary attention. Fluid attention is a rediscovery of James' derived involuntary attention. A distinguishing feature of fluid attention is its motivational component, which, we show, neurophysiologically also reveals a gap in the neurocognitive literature on attention. Recognizing fluid attention as fundamentally motivational allows ADHD to be redefined as a motivational rather than an attentional deficit, which we go on to show has significant implications for both special and regular education.

6 To Render Ren: Saving Authoritativeness was published in One Corner of the Square on page 61.

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Daniel Kahneman was not the first to suggest that attention and effort are closely associated, but his 1973 book Attention and Effort, which claimed that attention can be identified with effort, cemented the association as a research paradigm in the cognitive sciences. Since then, the paradigm has rarely been questioned and appears to have set the research agenda so that it is self-reinforcing. In this article, we retrace Kahneman’s argument to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The central notion of effort is not clearly defined in the book, so we proceed by constructing the most secure inferences we can from Kahneman’s argument regarding effort: it is cognitive, objective, metabolic expenditure, and it is attention. Continuing, we find from Kahneman’s argument that effort-attention must be a special case of sympathetic dominance of the autonomic nervous system that is also an increase in metabolic activity in the brain that has crossed a threshold of magnitude. We then weigh this conception of effort against evidence in Kahneman’s book and against more recent evidence, finding that it does not warrant the conclusion that effort can be equated with attention. In support of an alternative perspective, we briefly review diverse studies of behavior, physiology, and neuroscience on attention and effort, including meditation and studies of the LC-NE system, where we find evidence for the following: (1) Attention seems to be associated not with the utilization of metabolic resources per se but with the readying of metabolic resources in the form of adaptive gain modulation. This occurs under sympathetic dominance and can be experienced as effortful. (2) Attention can also occur under parasympathetic dominance, in which case it is likely to be experienced as effortless.

Advances in both the science and theory of wisdom have made it possible to create sound wisdom curricula and test them in the classroom. This article is a report of one such attempt. We developed a curriculum consistent with theories of wisdom that espouse the following five methods: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions—facilitated by the reading of narrative or didactic texts and fostering a community of inquiry. The texts used in class were the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the Analects of Confucius, and the Dhammapada (along with some early Buddhist suttas). The requirements were reading the texts, writing reflection journals, active participation in class, and a personal philosophy of life summary. In this article, we explain each of these requirements, relate our particular methods to the more general methods, and speculate about how these methods may develop specific wisdom capacities.

This article reviews the literature on theories of wisdom pedagogy and abstracts out a single theory of how to foster wisdom in formal education. The fundamental methods of wisdom education are found to be: challenge beliefs; prompt the articulation of values; encourage self-development; encourage self-reflection; and groom the moral emotions. These five methods of wisdom pedagogy rest on two facilitating methods: read narrative or didactic texts and foster a community of inquiry. This article is companion to two further articles, one on a practical wisdom curriculum and the other on a study of wisdom growth in college students.

Mechanisms of Mind-Body Interaction and Optimal Performance

A case is made here for diversifying philosophy with regard to subject matter. First, a generic model of an innate human tendency toward ethnocentrism is described. Second, the ultimate advantage of diversity in the kinds of problem solving that philosophers do is demonstrated. Third, it is shown how mutliculturalism yields this kind of diversity. Fourth, it is shown how micromotives biased by ethnocentrism in philosophy currently hinder diversification in philosophy. Finally, ways are suggested of overcoming ethnocentric forces in favor of multicultural diversity.