Our Upcoming Week-Long Philosophy Festival
Plus: a recap of our café on paying attention.
Introduction
By Adrian Ma
Our Curiosity Café last Tuesday, moderated by Alexander de Guzman and our very own Sofia Panasiuk, attended—sigh—to what many have called one of the most valuable commodities of our time: attention. (This commodity was doubly valuable on Tuesday, when, yes, we had the audacity to hold an event on the night of the U.S. presidential election.) Below, I attempt—in what amounted to a test of my own attention span—to reconstruct just a few of the many ideas we exchanged during our roughly two-hour discussion. You can also find details on our most ambitious event (or event series) yet: a week-long festival featuring expert-led philosophy workshops and culminating in a big evening social. But first:
Featured Content:
Curiosity Café Recap: Paying Attention
Upcoming Event: Our Week-Long Philosophy Festival 🎉
Community Survey
Toronto Events
Readings and Recommendations
Curiosity Café Recap: Paying Attention
By Adrian Ma
Our café on Tuesday, moderated by Alexander de Guzman and Sofia Panasiuk, began with a simple activity: Together, we watched a short video entitled “Selective Attention Test,” which opens by showing three people passing around a football and asking the viewer to count how many times it is caught. This is followed by a second clip of the same three people, accompanied by the equally modest challenge of counting how many times they jump. Both tasks seem manageable enough, but the real test concerns what the viewer doesn’t notice. During the first clip, a basketball net in the background gradually disappears; in the second, a porta potty near the right edge of the frame changes colour from blue to green. Both things happen, seemingly, in plain sight—yet viewers who are preoccupied with counting catches and jumps are unlikely to notice either change.
Attention, in other words, can be a selective, tunnel-visioned creature. But what, exactly, is attention? Much like the disappearing net or the chameleonic porta potty, the answer is less apparent than we might think. As our moderators write:
Attention does not have a unique definition. For example, some would say that attention is a capacity, namely, the ability to control limited computational resources. Others would claim instead that attention is a state of mind, a state that involves a possession of the mind by a singular object or train of thought. Still others might say that attention is a virtue, its exercise is something that is good for its own sake. This is only a small sampling of what others have said and written about attention. But what do you think?
With this challenge in mind, we asked ourselves: What does attention—or its absence—feel like? Is there a single, unified concept of attention that underlies its uses in popular expressions, such as “pay attention!” and “attention to detail”? How is attention related to or different from concepts that are often understood to be its synonyms, like “focus,” “awareness,” “concentration,” or “consciousness”? What even is attention—and why might it be described as valuable?
Here’s what some of you had to say:
Many participants commented on the relationship between attention and its perceived synonyms:
Awareness is a form of attention that is directed to one’s ambient surroundings rather than a specific object or task.
Concentration is sustained, deliberate attention; whereas mere attention can be grabbed, concentration requires a continuous and steady stream of attention on a single object. Perhaps a similar thing can be said of focus.
I can have consciousness of something without paying attention to it. A tree lying in the corner of my visual field is still in some sense present in my consciousness, even when all of my attention is devoted elsewhere.
Attention is a cognitive resource we use to process information that can be harnessed to accomplish tasks. However, attention is also a very limited resource; like a web browser, it can easily be overstretched when we keep too many “tabs” open. It also comes with opportunity costs: to pay attention to something is also to not pay attention to other things.
It is easier to pay attention to a task when it is guided by a clear aim and situated within a clearly defined context. Being in a setting that limits what our attention can be directed to—like a movie theatre, where it is bad etiquette to use your phone and where you can’t see much aside from the big glowing screen—also helps to lock in our attention.
Although paying attention often involves zeroing in on a single object, one can often pay full attention even in contexts where there are multiple things going on. For example, I can be fully immersed in the experience of playing a board game even if I am also enjoying a drink and a conversation with my friends at the same time.
How easily I can pay attention, and my willingness to do so, varies according to the stakes. My mind can afford to wander when I am doing a mindless chore at home, but not when I am driving at 100km/h on the highway.
Attention feels great. When we pay attention to something, the rest of the world seems to fade away; we are freed from considerations of the past and future and immersed fully in the here and now.
Perfectly pure attention can seem even to dissolve the reflective self. When you’re paying full attention to something, you might not even realize you’re doing so!
Attention is not confined to individual, subjective experience, but seems to flow between people. While our attention can be depleted even by a few minutes of scrolling through social media, we can often hold substantive conversations with other people (as in these cafés) for hours on end, which might suggest that attention is a resource that can be shared, exchanged and reciprocated between people in the same room. In contrast, many other things that consume our attention, like social media, merely suck up our attention without giving any of it back.
Attention is a virtue because it is productive, because it helps us achieve results.
But perhaps inattention can also be a virtue. After all, we can imagine cases in which inattention enables one to notice things other people don’t, or prevents one from being preoccupied by the wrong things.
In the second half of our conversation, we zeroed in on a question that many of you anticipated in the first: the commodification of our attention and its relationship to modern technology. As our moderators write:
Today, attention is being called “more valuable than oil”. Why is this the case? Who is competing for our attention? Why are they doing it? To what extent should we care?
This guiding question was further unpacked into a series of overlapping sub-questions. How do we spend our attention—which, in our age, appears to have acquired the status of a resource that is being endlessly solicited, bought, divided, and reallocated—and is there anything we would or ought to change about those habits? Has the quality and span of our attention changed over time? To what extent is our attention being controlled “from the outside,” and why might this be cause for concern? Is modern technology shaping our attention in ways that were not possible before? In what sense are we responsible for our attention? Does our attention shape who we are, and if so, how?
Here are a few of your responses:
Changing our environment can profoundly impact our ability to pay attention, but there are limits to how much we can control our environment. My workplace may involve constant distractions, such as emails, Slack messages, phone calls, and team meetings, but I can only do so much to opt out of these distractions without falling behind or losing my job.
Social media apps have infiltrated our lives to such an extent that they are now our first (and last) resort whenever we need something to pass the time. Their algorithm-curated feeds are designed to hijack our attention and keep us scrolling endlessly from one post to the next.
Social media algorithms and settings also control what we don’t see—like Instagram’s “Political Content Control” setting, which is turned on by default. (And who decides what counts as political, anyway?).
At the same time, aren’t we at least partly responsible for the content we are shown on our feeds? We can exercise at least some control over the algorithm’s choices; with the click of a button, we can tell the algorithm that we dislike, or want to see less of, a certain kind of post, and thereby change what the algorithm thinks (“thinks”) we want to see.
The ubiquity of distractions afforded by modern technology has shortened our attention span and made it harder to focus on one thing at a time, even in recreational contexts. How many people nowadays can watch a movie without simultaneously scrolling through their phone?
The overwhelming abundance of choice that modern technology enables means that much of our attention is now spent choosing rather than actually doing. (Which show should I watch? Which game should I play?)
The same technology that shortens and divides our attention has also extended the potential reach of our attention. Messaging apps, for example, allow us to maintain a constant presence in the lives of family and friends on the other side of the world.
We often speak of attention as something that can be owed or deserved, as when we say, “This matter deserves your full attention.” Does this not suggest that we have a moral responsibility, at least sometimes, to direct our attention to some things and not others?
We have a responsibility to maintain physical hygiene in the presence of other people, such as by washing our hands and covering our coughs and sneezes. Perhaps we also have a responsibility to maintain attentional hygiene.
There is no intention without attention, and both are key ingredients in creation. It is human nature to create—to create art, relationships, knowledge, and other goods—and we have a responsibility to create more of what the world needs. Without attention (and thus, intention) we would be unable to fulfill this duty.
Maybe attention is a purely physiological phenomenon, and that’s all there is to it. All this talk about responsibility might be going too far!
I hope this recap managed to hold your attention. But even if it didn’t, our upcoming week-long philosophy festival sure will—you can find more information on our biggest event yet below. Thanks for reading.
Community Survey
For those who’ve attended our Curiosity Cafés, please consider taking our brief community survey. We are conducting this survey to gather feedback on our events, and it should only take a few minutes to complete. Your responses are completely anonymous and will be invaluable in helping us improve our offerings. Thank you in advance!
Upcoming Events
Instead of our regular café next week, we’re having a Philosophy Festival! Join us between November 19th and 23rd for a series of expert-led workshops, culminating in a final social, workshop, and celebration of our first anniversary ♥️
BONUS TASK: We’ve been a community for one whole year and we’re feeling sappy about it 💕 Submit a reflection on your experiences with us throughout this year for a chance to be featured at our social.
Philosophy Festival 🎉
If you love philosophy or simply just talking (or listening) with others about ideas big and small, you will love the events during our week-long philosophy festival. Throughout the festival week (November 19th-23rd), we will be holding evening workshops on a range of different topics, including those that cut to the heart of what public philosophy is about—dialogue.
Dialogue is a powerful tool for understanding the world. When we engage in dialogue, our interlocutors can offer us important clarifications, objections, or simply different perspectives that can expand or enrich our own. Indeed, we believe that through conversation with others, we can live more intentional, connected, and meaningful lives. Without further ado, here are all of the exciting events we have planned for you:
Tuesday, November 19th, 7:30-9:00 PM [FREE ONLINE SEMINAR]
On Philosophical Disagreement with Overthink Podcast’s David M. Peña-Guzmán and Ellie Anderson
Short Seminar Description: Philosophers love to disagree. Through conversations, letters, books, articles, and more, they disagree among themselves and with non-philosophers. What does this tell us about the power of disagreement? In this presentation, Overthink podcast co-hosts Ellie Anderson and David M. Peña-Guzmán explore various approaches to disagreement in philosophical discourse.
Wednesday, November 20th, 7:00-9:00 PM [WORKSHOP @ The Madison Avenue Pub]
Virtuosity with Christopher Mastropietro and Taylor Barratt
Short Seminar Description: What is the meaning of virtue? Courage, patience, justice, forgiveness... We aspire to them without knowing what they are, how to define them, and how to cultivate them. This session will explore virtue through “dialogos.” This practice, inspired by Plato’s dialogues, is a cooperative exercise in Socratic midwifery; not debate or conversation, but group improvisation—a game of creativity, contemplation, and recollection.
Thursday, November 21st, 7:00-9:00 PM [WORKSHOP @ Alternity]
The Phenomenological Method with David Suarez
Short Workshop Description: “Phenomenology” is a way of doing philosophy which calls for a return to phenomena, the “things themselves” as they show up for us in experience. In this session, David Suarez will give a brief introduction to the phenomenological method by way of a guided tour through a few examples illustrating how phenomenologists study experience. We will discuss what phenomenologists have to say about visual perception, embodiment, freedom, and value—and how 20th century French existentialism is rooted in phenomenology.
Friday, November 22nd, 7:00-9:00 PM [WORKSHOP @ Ontario Institute for Studies of Education]
The Meaning of Race/Culture with William Paris (in collaboration with Philosophers for Humanity, 20% of ticket proceeds go to WoodGreen Community Services)
Short Workshop Description: We often speak of race and culture being real, but what are they really? Is race an artifact of social construction or a biological reality? Is culture simply a set of shared practices or is it a form of identity? Can race shape culture and vice versa? William Paris will explore the different interpretations and potential links between these two important, yet difficult to pin down concepts. By looking at works of some prominent philosophers as well as some real-world examples it will be possible to see that race and culture remain relevant as ever to social life and its problems.
Saturday, November 23rd, 7-10 PM [SOCIAL + WORKSHOP @ Cecil Community Centre]
Philosophy Festival Social and Closing Workshop
We invite you to join our Being and Becoming community in celebrating public philosophy, curiosity, and a year of conversations about ideas big and small! Our event will begin with a structured workshop about collaborative philosophical exploration and end with opportunities for conversation, refreshments, drinks, and more. As with our last big social, we will have lots of fun conversation starters inspired by our previous cafés to foster new connections and conversations among our guests. This is the perfect event to meet other curious minds and engage in the kinds of conversations that are lacking in today’s hyper-digital, and, too often, fragmented world.
Workshop Description: In this three-part, discussion-based workshop, attendees will explore the fundamentals of collaborative dialogue through a series of progressively more collaborative activities. In the course of doing so, we will investigate the relationship between our intrapersonal and interpersonal lives, reflecting on the ways in which they combine to make productive collaborative dialogue both an individual and a shared responsibility.
Reminder: If you’d like to submit a reflection on your experiences with Being and Becoming for a chance to be featured at our Saturday social, please follow the link below!
Each of our events will be hosted in a different venue in downtown Toronto. For accessibility information on each venue, check out the individual event pages on Eventbrite (links above). If the cost of any event presents a barrier to your participation, please reach out to us at info@beingnbecoming.org. We are giving away a limited number of free tickets as long as quantities last, no questions asked.
We are excited to welcome you to a week filled with exciting workshops, productive dialogue and collaboration. Join us in taking full advantage of the time we have together to explore life’s big questions.
Toronto Events
Chris’s Toronto Event Calendar
If you want more opportunities to connect, inquire and mingle with like-minded people, check out Chris’s calendar on Notion. Chris curates this calendar with events happening in Toronto. Events include thought-provoking lectures, group discussions, and workshops.
makeworld’s Calendar of Toronto Events
makeworld’s curated list of recurrent events in Toronto, which include tech meetups, lectures, unconventional comedy shows, and discussion-based events (like ours!).
More than your regular Substack. Run by Misha Glouberman and friends, the Toronto Event Generator supports events through microgrants, finding venues, and promotion, and by creating listings of events they like.
Featured Quote
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
- Simone Weil
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