title: Attention and cognitive penetrability: The epistemic consequences of attention as a form of metacognitive regulation.
abstract: A recent approach to the cognitive penetrability of perception, i.e. the possibility that perception is shaped top-down by high-level cognitive states such as beliefs and desires, proposes to understand the phenomenon on the basis of its consequences, among which there is a challenge for the epistemic role of perceptual experience in justifying beliefs (Stokes, 2015). In this paper, I argue that some attentional phenomena qualify as cases of cognitive penetrability under this consequentialist approach. I present a popular theory of attention, the biased-competition theory, on which basis I establish that attention is a form of metacognitive regulation. I argue that attention (as metacognitive regulation) involves the right kind of cognitive-perceptual relation and leads to the same epistemic consequences as other more traditional versions of cognitive penetrability.
authors.affiliation: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Institut für Philosophie II, Office: GA 3/139, Universitätsstrasse 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany. Electronic address: francesco.marchi@rub.de.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Marchi
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D000067489:Metacognition / Q000502:physiology*; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011582:Psychological Theory
keywords: Attention; Biased-competition; Cognitive penetrability; Metacognition; Perceptual epistemology