ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS: NEW DIRECTIONS
CREPH Research Seminar in Phenomenology
University of Liè\;ge\, Belgium 10&ndash\;14 May 2027
The Centre de Recherches Phé\;nomé\;nologiques (CREPH) at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Liè\;ge (Belgium) is pleased to announce the next CREPH Research Seminar in Phenomenology\, devoted to attention and consciousness\, which will take place from Monday 10 May to Friday 14 May 2027.
\nThe CREPH Seminar is a week-long event held every two years\, each edition exploring a specific topic in phenomenology and philosophy of mind\, broadly understood. The program will include invited talks and contributed papers selected through a call for abstracts.
\nOver the past two decades\, the relationship between attention and phenomenal consciousness has attracted renewed philosophical interest\, giving rise to an increasingly rich and differentiated literature. Yet\, despite increasingly refined arguments and mappings of the logical space\, foundational questions remain debated. Is attention necessary\, or even both necessary and sufficient\, for phenomenal consciousness? What kind of necessity is at stake? If experience overflows attention\, what is the nature of this unattended phenomenology? Is it fully determinate and specific\, or does attention contribute to making it so?
\nAlongside these questions about the dependence relations between attention and consciousness\, a further line of inquiry concerns attention&rsquo\;s contribution to the character and organization of experience. This includes its effects on our overall experience and the precise nature of the structural role often attributed to it. It also concerns whether attention contributes uniformly across different kinds of experience or plays distinctive roles in different experiential domains such as\, for example\, emotional and cognitive phenomenology.
\nThese issues also have epistemic consequences\, particularly concerning attention&rsquo\;s contribution to the acquisition of perceptual and introspective knowledge. Debate centres on whether attention facilitates such knowledge\, whether it is indispensable to it\, and whether its effects can sometimes be disruptive - for instance\, when attending to an experience essentially modifies the very phenomenon we seek to understand. Clarifying these possibilities requires examining how attention&rsquo\;s contribution to conscious experience bears on its capacity to be knowledge-conducive.
\nThe seminar aims to explore these questions by bringing contemporary debates into dialogue with historical accounts of attention. We welcome contributions from phenomenology\, philosophy of mind\, epistemology\, as well as historical investigations addressing these themes.
\nInvited Speakers
\nNatalie Depraz (Paris Nanterre) \;
\nAnna Giustina (Valencia)
\nHanne Jacobs (Tilburg)
\nHamid Taieb (Humboldt)
\nJuliette Vazard (Zurich)
\nCall for Abstracts
\nWe welcome submissions addressing the themes of the seminar from contemporary or historical perspectives. A non-exhaustive list of possible questions includes:
\nIs attention necessary or even necessary and sufficient for phenomenal consciousness? Can consciousness occur without attention? Is there unconscious attention?
\nDoes attention act as a gatekeeper for conscious experience\, or does phenomenal consciousness overflow the limits of attention? Is the phenomenology overflowing attention fully determinate and specific or is it indeterminate or generic? \;
\nHow does attention modify the phenomenal character of experience? What implications does this have for theories of consciousness (e.g.\, representationalist views)?
\nWhat structural role\, if any\, does attention play in the organisation of the phenomenal field?
\nDoes attention play sui generis phenomenal and/or epistemic roles in particular experiential types (e.g.\, emotional phenomenology\, cognitive phenomenology\, agential phenomenology\, etc.)?
\nWhat is the epistemic import of attention with respect to perceptual and introspective knowledge acquisition? Is attention necessary to have propositional and/or doxastic justification? What role does attention play in inquiry?
\nCan the so-called phenomenal modification problem be overcome?
\nWhat is the relationship between attention and inner awareness?
\nHow have historical accounts of attention addressed these issues\, and what can they contribute to contemporary debates?
\nThose interested in presenting at the seminar are invited to submit an anonymized abstract of no more than one page \;(excluding references) in either English or French to both jacopopallagrosi@gmail.com and vmartinis@uliege.be (please include both addresses \;in the email).
\nEach speaker will have a one-hour slot\, so presentations should ideally last around 30&ndash\;40 minutes\, followed by Q&\;A. The presentation itself may also be given in either English or French.
\nSubmission deadline: 4 January 2027
Notification of acceptance: 15 January 2027
Organizers: Arnaud Dewalque\, Valentina Martinis\, Jacopo Pallagrosi.
\nScientific Committee: Christian Blanco\, Alexis Delamare\, Arnaud Dewalque\, Ethan Field\, Quentin Hosch\, Bruno Leclercq\, Francesca Maffettone\, Valentina Martinis\, Jacopo Pallagrosi\, Denis Seron.
\nContact:jacopopallagrosi@gmail.com\;vmartinis@uliege.be \;
\nPermalink:http://www.pheno.ulg.ac.be/sem/?num_id=19&\;page=1&\;lang=fr
\n ORGANIZER;CN=Jacopo Pallagrosi;CN=Arnaud Dewalque;CN=Valentina Martinis: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR