Attention and Preception

A topic in theories of Consciousness that has been relatively neglected is Attention. For example, according to Peirce's appreciative but brief analysis, Attention is an act of Abstraction that is supportive of memorization and of recall processes. What is typical of this treatment is that it construes Attention as functioning primarily in a cognitive context, specifically in outer perception. But, what even the founder of Pragmatism misses is how cognition is a mode of behavior. For, when one is 'paying attention' to e. g. what someone is saying, the immediate object of Attention is not, as traditional theories of Consciousness have it, uttered words, but the process of listening to the uttering of words. More generally, on the previously discussed Evolvemental analysis of Individual Experience, it is what one is doing that is always the immediate object of Consciousness, and, hence, of Attention, and listening to someone speak is as much one such object as is playing a musical instrument or pitching a baseball. Furthermore, Attention is always Preceptive, and Preception is always Attentive. That is, at least implicit in every act of Attention is the guidance of some precept--'listen to what he is saying', 'keep your fingers relaxed', 'push off your legs', for the above examples, respectively. Conversely, Preception cannot guide behavior without Attention mediating between words and movements. so, while the 'fixation of Belief' that Peirce studies aims ultimately at the ingraining of a habit, if he had further examined how Belief guides bodily movements, he might have noticed how Attention helps fixate them.