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Mechanistic disunity as attention in crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2025

Wayne Wu Open the ORCID record for Wayne Wu [Opens in a new window]
Wayne Wu*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA waynewu@pitt.edu
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

While I agree with Rosenholtz that attention as mechanism should often be “banned”—this conception is confused and often explanatorily useless—I suggest that the real crisis is the proliferation of different, too often underspecified, mechanisms as attention. Attention is not an explainer. It is what we are trying to explain. Confusion on this point leads to unnecessary theoretical disunity.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 48 , 2025 , e160
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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