3PR Conference on Attention and the Virtues of Mind and Heart
“Fenestral Abstraction” by Robert Massey
This year’s annual 3PR conference, Attention and the Virtues of Mind and Heart, will take place on March 28-29, 2025 at Princeton University.
What we pay attention to matters, and we should pay attention to what matters. Attention is a power we appear to have some control over; and how we choose to direct that power affects what we cognize, value, feel, and believe. However, attention is in turn subject to influence. For instance, we are all too familiar with recent concerns about ‘attentional capture’ and the ways large companies increasingly compete to monetize our attentive capacities. It is accordingly no surprise that attention has recently resurfaced as a topic of serious interest in many different philosophical traditions and subfields. The goal of this conference is to bring these different areas into productive conversation with one another. To that end, we are excited to be bringing together philosophers working on the normativity of attention in a very wide range of different traditions and subfields, ranging from philosophy of mind to ethics, Buddhist philosophy to phenomenology and 19th-20th century British philosophy, and many more.
All are welcome. If you would like to attend, please register by emailing pppr@princeton.edu
Please see conference schedule below:
3PR conference schedule: “Attention and the virtues of mind and heart”
Organizers: Smriti Khanal (sk2141@princeton.edu) & Bas Tönissen (bt4944@princeton.edu)
Saturday 3/28
9:00-9:50
B Huebner (Georgetown University):The process of attending and the pursuit of a more ethical orientation
10:00-10:50
Tatyana Kostochka (Ashoka University): Burdened attention
10:50-11:10 Coffee break
11:10-12:00
Aaron Schultz (Michigan State University): Vasubandhu, attentional freedom, and wrongful distraction
12:10-13:00
Mark Fortney (Dalhousie University): What makes mental integrity possible? A Buddhist perspective
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-14:50
Christopher Mole (University of British Columbia): The artful attention of R.G. Collingwood
15:00-15:30:
Andrew Chignell (Princeton University): Hope, despair, and attention
15:30-15:50 Coffee break
15:50-16:40
Jessica Williams (University of South Florida): Aesthetic reflection as a social practice: the case of joint attention.
16:50-17:50
Keynote: Georgi Gardiner (Tulane University): Attentional addiction and the solipsistic therapeutic core of true limerence
Sunday 3/29
9:00-9:50
Mark Textor (King’s College London): From the unity of consciousness to the unity of attention: Lotze’s argument for the soul
10:00-10:50
Cathy Mason (Central European University): Vision, attention and motivation in Murdoch
10:50-11:10 Coffee break
11:10-12:00
Eugene Chislenko (Temple University): Attention and standing to blame
12:10-13:00
Silvia Caprioglio Panizza (University College Dublin): Attention as openness to the real
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-14:50
Jonathan Weinberg (University of Arizona/Princeton University): How Emerson’s attentive eye solves a problem for his vision of self-reliance
15:00-15:50
Sebastian Watzl (University of Oslo): Attention norms and epistemic norms
16:00-16:50
Haley Brennan (New York University): Could (and should) you pay attention?