Interest and Attention

Abstract Chapter 1 introduced Lotze’s view of interest. Interest served as the basis for affective accounts of self- and bodily consciousness in Chapters 2 and 3. Interest plays a further important role in Lotze’s theory of attention. This chapter will highlight the distinctive character of Lotze’s interest-based approach to the mind by comparing and contrasting it with Herbart’s view, the so-called spotlight view of attention. According to Lotze, interest steers attention, and the centre of our consciousness at a time is the objects we attend to then. So we need to ask Lotze, what is attention? Can it be analysed, or is it a primitive power of the mind? How is it connected to interest? How does attention centre consciousness? The chapter examines Lotze-inspired answers to these questions.