Research

Monograph

Watzl S. (2017). Structuring Mind. Oxford University Press

Academic Articles

Textbooks

Edited Volumes

Articles currently under review or in progress

  • Is Depression an Epidemic? (w/ V. Lange as main author), Minor Revisions at Perspectives o Psychological Science

  • Paper on agency and depression (w/ V. Lange as main author), currently under review

  • Short paper on Attentional Practices, currently under review.

  • The Rationality of Salience, full draft available

  • Attention and Inquiry, full draft available

  • Attentional Domination, full draft available

  • Attention and Rational Choice, in progress

  • What is wrong with distraction?, in progress

  • The Logic of attention (w/ G. Belardinelli and T. Bolander), in progress

  • Attention as a Political Tool, in progress

Current Book Projects

Good Attention. The Normative Depth at the Surfaces of our Minds.

This book is about the function, role,and significance of attention norms. I argue that they are central to agency and rational decision-making, to communication, inquiry, and epistemic practices, and to morally appropriate conduct and just political systems. A social life without attention norms, I show, is hardly possible. Yet precisely because they are so deeply built into the structure of collective human lives, attention norms are easily overlooked. My aim here is to bring their role into clear view. Attention norms emerge as in many ways more fundamental than epistemic norms, and even moral norms. (book proposal finished)

Power and Distraction.

In a world of distractions, the crisis of attention emerges as one of the most pressing ethical and political challenges of our time. The problem is often linked to smartphones, social media, and AI. But what exactly is the problem? The problem of attention at its heart is about power and justice with regard to a collective resource. Who has control over our attentional landscape? The book develops this analysis in chapters on the attention economy, on the political manipulation of attention, on the role of technology and AI, and on mental health issues such as ADHD and depression. (Book project in early stages, intended for a wide audience)

Publications for a Broader Audience

Book Reviews and Comments

Topics

Attention

My work investigates the nature of attention, the relationship between attention and consciousness, and the role of attention for agency and in the architecture of the mind. I have developed a unified framework that deals with those questions. The framework treats attention as constituted by fundamental and irreducible structures of our minds, priority structures.  These priority structures have activated (occurrent) subject-level mental states as their parts and order them by their relative priority to the subject. Their function is to organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of what is currently in our minds. Attention is the activity of regulating those structures (attention capture is a change in the activity).

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Consciousness

What kind of thing is consciousness? What is its structure? I've argued for a metaphysics of consciousness that treats consciousness as an agent's activity. I argue that this view explains the unity of consciousness, it shows how the self is involved in consciousness, explains how we are aware of our own conscious states, and allows us to keep attractive (but not the unattractive) elements of an intentionalist view of consciousness.

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Action

What exactly is it to do something? When are we active and when passive? I’ve argued that a process notion of activity as prior to an event notion of action. Activities are processes with a certain internal structure - where the temporal evolution of some states and events guides the temporal evolution of others. I have argued that certain kinds of activity are guided directly by perceptual states, and that self-control can be explained without a divided mind or special motivational resources.

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Epistemology, Ethics, and Political Philosophy

What is good attention? Much public discussion about social media, public health, and political debates is focused on versions of this question. What deserves our attention and how we should regulate attention in the face of distraction occupies the debate. My research engages in a philosophical investigation of attention norms and develops a framework for thinking about them. While entire fields of philosophy investigate the normative assessment of other aspects of the mind, the normative structure of attention remains largely unstudied. In several integrated and multidimensional research projects I investigate the political, ethical, prudential, and epistemic evaluation of attention. This takes my research into epistemology, ethics, decision theory, and political philosophy.

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Other Topics

Intentionality and Propositionality

Is intentionality the mark of the mental? Or does the mind have non-intentional features? And are all intentional states propositional attitudes? I've argued against the the view that there is mental paint - phenomenal qualities that flout free from the intentional character of consciousness. And I also have expressed sympathy with the view that on a reasonable understanding of 'state', all mental states are intentional states.  Yet, there is structure in the mind that is not exhausted by the attitude/intentional content (or object) structure. In one of my papers I argue that this shows that the mind is not a collection of propositional attitudes.

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Culture and Biology

For several years, I was teaching a lecture in the philosophy of the social sciences. This resulted in a paper about culture and biology, and nature and nurture. I argue that what makes those dichotomies seem interesting is a deeply seated psychological tendency (psychological essentialism) to confuse 'genetic', 'natural' or 'biological' with being the result of intrinsic essences. But this way of thinking about humans and human kinds is, indeed, deeply confused. So, while those who argue for an important role of 'biology' in the explanation of human differences often see 'the science' on their side, they are mostly mistaken: defenders of 'biology' in public debates mostly have the biological sciences against them. What is often called 'biology' is a myth created by an intuitive tendency that grotesquely distorts real biological research.

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