Although Allport does argue that both attention and selection-for-action depend on "the subject's ability to act voluntarily" (Allport 1987, 414), neither Allport nor Neumann go so far as to identify attention and selection-for-action.
Wu's work fits within this tradition, while also taking the arguments of Allport and Neumann a step further. This perspective on attention fits a general trajectory in cognitive science toward more embodied and ecological approaches to the mind. They argued that attention instead emerges due to practical limitations, such as the need to couple the neural processing of a particular target to the neural processing of a particular response, given the "many-to-many" possible couplings (Allport 1987, 397). Odmar Neumann and Alan Allport introduced selection-for-action as an alternative to the idea that attention emerges from function-general limitations on neural processing (77 Neumann 1987 Allport 1987). Two conspicuous absences include historical philosophy and phenomenology, both of which I discuss briefly below.īeyond serving as a review, the book develops Wu's philosophical position that "attention is selection for action" (271). The book nonetheless falls short of serving as a complete review of research on attention - a point Wu in fact accepts (9). Readers interested in contemporary research on attention could learn a great deal from these discussions. In fact, he engages at length with an impressive amount of work in contemporary philosophy and science, mentioning 10 such researchers – Ned Block, John Campbell, Marisa Carrasco, David Chalmers, David Marr, Christopher Mole, Jesse Prinz, Declan Smithies, George Sperling, and Anne Treisman - more than 30 times each. In fact, this book can be seen as a continuation of James' project - as with James' "Attention," Wu's book provides an extensive review of current research on attention. Like many who work on attention, Wu takes William James as an anchor point, concluding, "So, James was right" (274).