NEWS
- Check out www.attentionethics.com! First textbook style teaching resource on the ethics of attention, social media, and digital distraction.
- Attention workers of the world unite! Op-Ed in Klassekampen with Katharine Browne and Line Horgen Thorstad
- Talk on 'What is wrong with how attention is commodified?' (with K. Browne) presented at workshop on 'AI and the Future of Protest Politics', finishing this one up before the end of the year!
- Sent off new version of paper on rational norms for attention. Wishing this baby luck!
About me
I am a philosopher. My work focuses on the philosophy of mind, and my specialties are philosophical issues about attention.
Here is what I do in simple words:
I study attention. What is attention? What does attention feel like? Attention is the way the mind focuses. I look at attention as an organization of the mind. With attention, we bring order to our minds. With that order, we can use our mind better when we do things. And we feel that it is OUR mind because we have ordered it. I also study whether some forms of attention are good and other forms are bad. I think that attention is important for good actions and for what we believe. And sometimes attention is just good or bad itself. Finally, I am interested in social attention. Sharing attention, I believe, is important for living well together. Attention is also sometimes bought and sold. I study whether this is a problem.
My research engages central philosophical topics about the nature of the mind, perception, consciousness, freedom and action, individual and society, rationality and ethics (see here for a topical overview of my work). My approach involves philosophical reflection in close dialogue with other disciplines including biology, neuroscience, psychology, economics and other social sciences, and literary studies. Currently, the main focus of my work is connecting questions of how attention works with questions of what deserves our attention, and what good and bad forms of attention are. I lead the ERC Consolidator Grant funded project called ‘GOODATTENTION’, and also manage the project Salient Solutions. Responding ethically to the attention crisis funded by the Norwegian Research Council. In addition, I co-lead an interdisciplinary Convergence Environment at UiO:Life Science on Consciousness, and I am involved in research on Artificial Intelligence.
After an MA in biology at Humboldt University Berlin (focusing on honey bee navigation and computational neuroscience), I received an MA in philosophy from New York University and a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University. I came to Oslo after a postdoc at the interdisciplinary Mind-Brain-Behavior program at Harvard University. I have been visiting professor at LMU Munich, and Umeå University. I have received a Young Talented Researchers Grant from the Norwegian Research Council, won the Sister Dals Resesarch Prize, and I was a core-group member of the Norwegian Centre of Excellence CSMN. Before starting the work on my current grants, I was co-founder and head of the Center for Philosophy and the Sciences (CPS).
Pronouns: He/Him
CV
[Open PDF]