Since these three chapters form the heart of the book, I will focus on them in my discussion below.Д«efore I get there, here is what comes in the rest of the book. Attentiveness therefore gets characterized negatively: it consists in the absenceВ of irrelevant (but potentially useful) cognitive processing. According to Mole's account, a task is performed attentively just in case the cognitive resources the agent could bring to bear in the performance of that task are not occupied with something that does not in fact serve it. What happen attentively, for Mole, are tasks: roughly things the subject is doing. Chapter 4 spells out Mole's account of the relevant adverbial phenomenon. The fundamental notion of attention, according to the adverbial view, is of such-and-such happening attentively.

Chapter 3, then, argues that according to this distinction attention should be seen as an adverbial phenomenon, in contrast to the standard assumption that treats it as a process-first phenomenon. Combustion, for example, is the process of burning, while haste is a manner of doing something. The distinction, roughly, is between processes and the manner in which something is going on. Chapter 2 articulates a distinction between what he calls process-first phenomena and adverbial phenomena. Mole's goal in Chapters 2-4, then, is to reconsider the type of metaphysics appropriate for attention. Yet an alternative to the standard conception has not yet been developed in detail. Mole believes that Bradley was onto something. Bradley, in particular, called into doubt the very viability of a process-centered metaphysics for attention. Yet, Mole argues, James' view was not without opponents. Standard cognitive psychology, Mole suggests, has followed William James in his view that attention consists in a set of cognitive, neuronal, or embodied processes. It brings out a question about attention that puts the contemporary debate into a wider context. His discussion here is fascinating and well focused. In chapter 1, Mole starts with the history of the study of attention. Mole's short book is divided into seven chapters. But I have learned a lot from engaging with Mole's argumentation: it has helped me to think more clearly about attention both at those points where I agree with Mole and at those where our opinions diverge. I am not - in the end - convinced that the metaphysical re-orientation Mole argues for is really needed. Mole's book does an excellent job in drawing interest to the philosophical puzzles about attention and offers a new and distinctive perspective. A fundamental metaphysical issue concerning the kind of thing attention is needs to be addressed in order to arrive at a unified theory. Mole's book offers an extended and engaging argument for why it is a mistake to leave the topic of attention to psychologists and neuroscientists alone. In retrospect, it is surprising that philosophers have neglected attention while working on a variety of other phenomena with which it seems closely connected, ranging from belief, memory, and consciousness to intentional action. Its appearance marks a renewed interest in the topic of attention by philosophers. Already for this braveness it should be celebrated. Christopher Mole's book is the first philosophical monograph on the nature of attention in more than 40 years.

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