Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although mind-wandering occupies up to half of our waking thoughts, it is seldom discussed within philosophy. My dissertation proposes a new theory of mind-wandering as unguided attention, then uses mind-wandering to illuminate three general philosophical topics: mental action/activity, attention, and thinking. Chapter one identifies two core tasks for the philosophy of mind-wandering, which current theories cannot accomplish. First, we must resolve a puzzle: mind-wandering seems essentially passive, yet it is under the influence of our goals in a way that seems active. Second, we must distinguish mind-wandering from two antithetical forms of cognition: rumination (e.g. fixation on one’s distress) and absorption (e.g. engrossment in a line of reasoning). Chapter two proposes that mind-wandering is unguided attention. Roughly speaking, an individual’s attention is guided when she would feel pulled back, were she distracted. In contrast, a wandering attention drifts from topic to topic unchecked. I argue that mind-wandering is active in one way––it can be motivated––but passive in another––it is never guided. Furthermore, mind-wandering differs from rumination and absorption because the latter two are guided. Chapter three addresses a methodological problem about how to individuate mind-wandering. I argue that we needn’t individuate mind-wandering, because it is atelic. Because I distinguish telic from atelic attention, I elucidate core cases of attention and undermine Koralus’ recent theory of attention. Chapter four argues that mind-wandering is a rare choice point between agency-based and consciousness-based theories of attention, which should classify mind-wandering as attentive and as inattentive, respectively. I contend that each view contains part of the truth. Drawing on White (1964), I distinguish between spectator attention (focused consciousness), which becomes agent or patient attention when it is guided. Mind-wandering is a choice point because it is pure spectator attention. My final chapter argues that mind-wandering does not fit cleanly into dual process theory, since it is neither unconscious and automatic (Type 1) nor conscious and analytic (Type 2). To accommodate mind-wandering, we must enrich dual process theory in a novel way: we must distinguish Type 2 processes that are guided (e.g. reasoning, planning) from those that are unguided (e.g. mind-wandering, brainstorming).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.039 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".