David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of ‘Attention’ from his 1890 volume The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that still feels more than relevant today. What is attention and how does it function in the mind? What accounts for the different ways that we attend to things? Does attention help to shape or construct our reality? What is attention’s connection to the will? Does James anticipate predictive coding theory?
Plus we discuss the removal of the head of a renowned university for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission of higher learning.
Episode Links
Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Fired [nbc.com]
William James chapter on Attention from Principles of Psychology (1890) [yorku.ca]
Episode 283: When Elephants Podcast
Episode 282: Fearful Symmetry (Borges' "Death and the Compass")
Episode 281: Choose Your Fighter
Episode 280: Mad Masque (with Phil Ford and J.F. Martel)
Episode 279: The Greenhouses We Burned Along the Way (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 2)
Episode 278: Schrödinger's Everything (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 1)
Episode 277: The Merits of Buggery (Nagel's "Sexual Perversion")
Episode 275: The Ineffable Center (Borges' "The Aleph")
Episode 274: Can I Get a Kidney Voucher? (with Vlad Chituc)
Episode 273: Ah. Ah. (Miyazaki's "Spirited Away")
Episode 272: Neigh Means Yay
Episode 271: Concept-Con 2023
Episode 270: Take Me to the River (Blood Meridian, Pt. 3)
Episode 269: Death Hilarious (Blood Meridian, Pt. 2)
Episode 268: Blood Meridian, Part 1
Episode 267: The Thickness of Reality
Episode 266: I Want to Half-Believe
Episode 265: Kekulé (Oh Yeah!)
[BONUS] Overton Windows Episode 1: Israel and Palestine
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