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"Distraction (Philosophy)"
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Digital Distraction, Attention Regulation, and Inequality
In the popular and academic literature on the problems of the so-called attention economy, the cost of attention grabbing, sustaining, and immersing digital medias has been addressed as if it touched all people equally. In this paper I ask whether everyone has the same resources to respond to the recent changes in their stimulus environments caused by the attention economy. I argue that there are not only differences but disparities between people in their responses to the recent, significant increase in the degree and persuasiveness of digital distraction. I point toward individual variance in an agent’s top-down and bottom-up attention regulation, and to further inequality-exacerbating variance in active participation on the internet and in regulating reward-seeking behaviors on the internet. Individual differences in these areas amount to disparities because they have been found to be connected to socioeconomic background factors. I argue that disparities in responding to digital distraction threaten fair equality of opportunity when it comes to digital distraction in the classroom and that they may lead to an unequal contribution of achievements that require complex cognition by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Journal Article
Attention, Diversion, and Distraction Technologies
This article defends the claim that diversions, which are actions that cause distraction, are a unique way to modify someone’s behavior and that they are morally salient. While the focus of this article is dedicated to understanding the moral features of attention and diversion, it is crucial to keep in mind that the moral evaluation of these concepts is most pressing within a technological society deeply intertwined with an attention economy. We are inundated with distraction technologies, which are technologies whose function partly or wholly depends on capturing the attention of its targets. Distraction technologies are widely used to capture the attention of billions of people. Once we come to treat diversions as unique moral actions, it will be clear that the most serious violations to our right to attention can be committed by those who control these technologies.
Journal Article
Augmented Reality, Augmented Epistemology, and the Real-World Web
Augmented reality (AR) technologies function to ‘augment’ normal perception by superimposing virtual objects onto an agent’s visual field. The philosophy of augmented reality is a small but growing subfield within the philosophy of technology. Existing work in this subfield includes research on the phenomenology of augmented experiences, the metaphysics of virtual objects, and different ethical issues associated with AR systems, including (but not limited to) issues of privacy, property rights, ownership, trust, and informed consent. This paper addresses some epistemological issues posed by AR systems. I focus on a near-future version of AR technology called the Real-World Web, which promises to radically transform the nature of our relationship to digital information by mixing the virtual with the physical. I argue that the Real-World Web (RWW) threatens to exacerbate three existing epistemic problems in the digital age: the problem of digital distraction, the problem of digital deception, and the problem of digital divergence. The RWW is poised to present new versions of these problems in the form of what I call the augmented attention economy, augmented skepticism, and the problem of other augmented minds. The paper draws on a range of empirical research on AR and offers a phenomenological analysis of virtual objects as perceptual affordances to help ground and guide the speculative nature of the discussion. It also considers a few policy-based and designed-based proposals to mitigate the epistemic threats posed by AR technology.
Journal Article
Theorizing Digital Distraction
This commentary contributes to philosophical reflection on the growing challenge of digital distraction and the value of attention in the digital age. It clarifies the nature of the problem in conceptual and historical terms; analyzes “freedom of attention” as an organizing ideal for moral and political theorizing; considers some constraints of political morality on coercive state action to bolster users’ attentional resources; comments on corporate moral responsibility; and touches on some reform ideas. In particular, the commentary develops a response to an anti-paternalistic line of argument rooted in Mill’s Harm Principle that would oppose state regulation on the grounds that securing attentional capacities is a matter of personal responsibility alone. The commentary engages throughout with James Williams’s recent work on the attention economy by identifying areas of agreement and difference.
Journal Article
Does a Person Have a Right to Attention? Depends on What She is Doing
It has been debated whether the so-called attention economy, in which the attention of agents is measured and sold, jeopardizes something of value. One strand of this discussion has focused on so-called attention rights, asking: should attention be legally protected, either by introducing novel rights or by extending the scope of pre-existing rights? In this paper, however, in order to further this discussion, we ask: How is attention already protected legally? In what situations does a person have the right to attention under current law?Unlike (Chomanski, Neuroethics 16:1–11, 2023), who discusses an overall right to attention, or (Puri, Rutgers Law Record 48:206–221, 2021), who discusses an overall right to attentional privacy, in this paper we focus on two types of situations in which a person’s attention is already protected by legal regulation. Sustained attention-requiring tasks can be jeopardized by distractions whereas attentiveness to certain kind of stimuli can be jeopardized by immersive stimuli. That is why distractions are regulated in situations where an agent has what we call a concentration right and immersive stimuli are regulated in situations where an agent has what we call a duty to be attentive. The further analysis of these situations provides an understanding of the legal means by which attention is already regulated, which can be helpful when thinking about how it should be regulated in the future.
Journal Article
Attraction or Distraction? Corporate Social Responsibility in Macao's Gambling Industry
This paper attempts to investigate how and why organisations in Macao's gambling industry engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It is based on an indepth investigation of Macao's gambling industry with 49 semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2011. We found that firms within the industry were emphasising pragmatic legitimacy based on both economic and non-economic contributions, in order to project positive images of the industry, while glossing over two domains of adverse externalities: problem gambling among visitors, and the pollution and despoliation of the environment. By engaging symbolically rather than substantively in CSR, the gambling firms were diverting attention away from issues of moral legitimacy, in order to be allowed to continue to pursue \"business as usual\" as a means of obtaining substantial financial returns in a social, cultural and sociopolitical context that was exerting relatively little public pressure to improve corporate social and environmental performance. We conjecture that the gambling firms were feeding on borrowed time.
Journal Article
Attention, Not Self
Attention is of fundamental importance in the philosophy of mind, in epistemology, in action theory, and in ethics. This book presents an account in which attention, not self, explains the experiential and normative situatedness of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organization of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. Attention improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another’s attention. An analysis of attention as mental action gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do.
eBook
State mindfulness mediates relation between brief mindfulness training and sustained engagement with social stressor across social anxiety levels
Objectives
One-in-five people experience anticipatory anxiety that impacts engagement in socially evaluative tasks. Metacognitive strategies have the potential to interrupt maladaptive cognitive-emotional cycles and facilitate greater engagement in such tasks. This study hypothesized that brief mindfulness training would increase participants’ likelihood of approaching a socially stressful task more than a brief distraction training by way of greater state mindfulness, and that participants would endorse relevant approach or avoidance motivations for their behavior. The study used an experimental design with random assignment to one of two metacognitive strategy conditions. University students (
n
= 140) with low-to-high social anxiety completed a 10-min mindfulness training or an active control distraction training, followed by a modified Trier Social Stress Test. Participants were instructed to practice the strategy before preparing for the speech, and were then given a choice to approach or avoid giving the speech. SPSS PROCESS was used to examine whether state mindfulness would mediate the relationship between the mindfulness condition and greater likelihood of approaching the speech. Hypotheses regarding mindfulness as a mediator and approach/avoidance motivations for approaching or avoiding the speech both received support. Extending upon cognitive-behavioral theories, social anxiety level may predispose avoidance of social-evaluative situations, though inducing increasing state mindfulness through brief mindfulness training might help mitigate avoidance and facilitate social approach when experiencing anxious affect.
Journal Article
The good, the bad and the perfect: Criticizing engagement practice
Criticism seems to be a recurring and significant characteristic of public engagement exercises – as reflected both in general political discussion and in the academic literature on public engagement with science. This article suggests that rather than being a distraction from the main business of 'technical democracy', criticism lies at the heart of public engagement and in that way should be seen not simply as an unwelcome and unanticipated by-product but rather as a key constituent. Taking inspiration from previous science and technology studies' treatments of 'bottom line' moves and also from Boltanski and Thévenot's sociology of critical capacity, this article adopts an approach to radical critique that explores its 'dynamic-yet-patterned' character. Building upon a 'translation' model, but also a framework taken from the martial arts, a reconstruction is offered of one empirical study of lay membership on scientific advisory committees. Conclusions are drawn concerning not only the analysis of critical dialogue around engagement but also the implications for democratic practice.
Journal Article