Salience is both central to human life and relatively underexplored as a philosophical topic. Whether it bothers you that the picture on your wall is wonky, whose advice you should take, whether you notice the homeless person at your feet as you squeeze your way down Oxford Street: these are all a function of salience. Salience is clearly of significance for a broad range of philosophical problems but rarely, if ever, has salience itself been the theme. This volume makes it so in an attempt to learn more about the place of salience in philosophy.
All 13 chapters have been specially commissioned for this volume, and are written by an international team of leading philosophers.
Salience: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, epistemology, and ethics. It will also be of interest to those in related subjects such as psychology, politics, and law.
Introduction: Salience and Philosophy Sophie Archer
1. Life Through a Lens: Aesthetic Virtue and Salience vs Kantian Disinterest Dan Cavedon-Taylor
2. Attention, Salience, and the Phenomenology of Visual Experience Hemdat Lerman
3. Beyond ‘Salience’ and ‘Affordance’: Understanding Anomalous Experiences of Significant Possibilities Matthew Ratcliffe and Matthew Broome
4. On Salience-Based Theories of Demonstratives Ethan Nowak and Eliot Michaelson
5. The Ethics of Attention: An Argument and a Framework Sebastian Watzl
6. Salience and What Matters Sophie Archer
7. Salience, Choice, and Vunerability Sophie-Grace Chappell
8. The Moral Psychology of Salience Christopher Mole
9. The Unquiet Life: Salience and Moral Responsibility Sabina Lovibond
10. On Salience and Sneakiness Mary Kate McGowan
11. Harmful Salience Perspectives Ella Whiteley
12. Salient Alternatives and Epistemic Injustice in Folk Epistemology Mikkel Gerken
13. Salience Principles for Democracy Susanna Siegel.
Index
Biography
Sophie Archer is Lecturer in Philosophy at Cardiff University, UK. Her primary research interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and epistemology. She is currently working on a book about belief, provisionally entitled Janus-Faced Belief.
'Sophie Archer assembles an impressive group of philosophers who show how the phenomenon of salience is philosophically salient. Of particular interest is the exploration of how salience connects to norms of attention in ethics and epistemology. These essays make a strong case for an important line of philosophical inquiry and will repay close reading by philosophers of mind, ethics, politics and epistemology.' - Wayne Wu, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
