Organizer: Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia
When: Thursday, November 6, 2025, 10:00–15:10
Where: SO-201a, Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia (Sedláčkova 36–40, Pilsen)
The workshop aims to present selected topics in current discussions about attention and its role in research into conscious states. The role of attention will be clarified in the context of the relationship between conscious and unconscious and in the context of attention as a mental kind that fundamentally contributes to the skilful exercise of our freedom of thought and action. Another approach will focus on attention as a complex, embodied, and evolutionarily conserved process with adaptive function. Empirical research will also be included, presenting the neural and behavioural mechanisms involved in processing deepfake face information, which is undoubtedly a topical issue in how media representations change our minds and society.
Program
10:00 – 11:00 Azenet Lopez (LMU Munich): The limits of unconscious attention
Commentary: Michal Polák (UWB)
11:00 – 12:00 Carlos Montemayor (San Francisco State U) – Attention as epistemic agency
Commentary: Radek Schuster (UWB)
12:00 – 13:00 lunch
13:00 – 14:00 Maria Luiza Iennaco (U of São Paulo, U of Porto): Framing a biogenic and predictive perspective on attention
Commentary: Zdeňka Špiclová (UWB) and Tomáš Marvan (UWB)
14:00 – 15:00 Anna Eiserbeck (HU Berlin): Perceiving people who aren’t real: Processing and evaluation of (presumed) AI-generated pictures
15:00 – 15:10 concluding remark
This workshop is held as part of the project „Social-Cultural Determinants of Circulation of Representations: The Impact on Human Mind and Strategies of Remediation“, registration number CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008715. with financial support of the Johannes Amos Comenius Programme (P JAC), provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (MSMT) for realization of the project in the period 1/2025 – 12/2028.