Understanding the Distinction of Genius and Attention

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The distinction made in the conversation is that genius is not just about natural faculty of attention, but rather the will to continue having a thought and come back to it. Genius is the disposition to produce works that require sustained attention, driven by a person's interests and wide variety of categories. Once a person has acquired a whole bunch of concepts and can relate a bunch of things to each other, they are able to link together concepts in a way that can sustain attention.

David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of ‘Attention’ from his 1890 volume The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that still feels more than relevant today. What is attention and how does it function in the mind? What accounts for the different ways that we attend to things? Does attention help to shape or construct our reality? What is attention’s connection to the will? Does James anticipate predictive coding theory?

Plus we discuss the removal of the head of a renowned university for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission of higher learning.

Episode Links

Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Fired [nbc.com]

William James chapter on Attention from Principles of Psychology (1890) [yorku.ca]