With all due respect for my collegues in the study of religions and begging forgiveness from my Indian friends, I suppose we could include it under the last three: control of vital energy, awareness, and concentration.

With all due respect for my collegues in the study of religions and begging forgiveness from my Indian friends, I suppose we could include it under the last three: control of vital energy, awareness, and concentration.

Jeff–yes, I used to do yoga, and hope to get back into it! Given my height, I can usually do about half of what’s asked in the midlevel course….sending me back to basics. I’m just stressed out by the prospect of a shoulder stand!

You’re one brave soul: I would never exercise in a room with more than myself in it, let alone members of the fairer sex. Perhaps Frank can post a picture of what you’re wearing while doing Pilates!

You’re one brave soul: I would never exercise in a room with more than myself in it, let alone members of the fairer sex. Perhaps Frank can post a picture of what you’re wearing while doing Pilates!

What works now is a one-hour Pilates class. Not only do you get to be humiliated (in a classic male-ego sort of way) by all of the middle-aged women who can do things you can’t, but you really are freed up from anything other than the dulcet tones of the instructor, in our case here at the Reily Center at Tulane, Louis, imploring you to do things like “activate your core, lengthening your spine, squeeze your buttocks, lift your tailbone, and slowly inch your vertebrae from the floor, one by one.”

I too ‘need a well-near constant aural background to get much done during the day,’ as we have very little setback and thus are not far from the street, so I keep the TV on in the background ‘loud enough to drown out the random noise that constantly assaults one in urban areas,’ although not a few car stereos go by with bass beats that rattle the windows and my mind. Although I cannot in any way ‘multi-task,’ as that means I do several jobs poorly rather than one job well. Still, as Herbert Fingarette explained in an appendix to his delightful little book on Self-Deception (2000 ed.), ‘when I am writing as I normally do, I *take account* of the complex and varying physical and orthographical requirements for putting my thoughts on paper, but *I do not focus my attention* on these things. Nevertheless it is fair to say I do all this purposely, intelligently and adaptively. But all the while my attention is focused on my thoughts at the moment and the task of choosing words to express them adequately. Once I have the words in mind, and have elected to write them down, the writing itself is “automatic.” The crux of the matter, if we generalize, is that we can take account of something without necessarily focusing our attention on it. That is, we can recognize it, and respond to it without directing our attention to what we are doing, and our response can be intelligently adaptive rather than merely a reflex or habit automatism. [....]

The nature of this mental capacity bears further elaboration in order to make explicit how complex and sophisticated is the exercise of it. While I am writing, there the noises of passing cars, the neighbour’s lawnmower, the kitchen refrigerator, all coming to my ears. They are irrelevant to my writing, indeed, would disrupt it were I to focus my attention on them. The fact is, I am simply unconscious of the noises. How can this be? The noises certainly register in my ears. It has to be that I take account of them, recognize their irrelevance to my project at the moment, and therefore do not turn my attention to the noises–nor do I even focus attention on the process of adopting and pursuing this aim.

Later, I do hear my wife’s car as it comes down our driveway, and I am conscious that she has arrived home. I want to greet her when she comes in, and in this case I also want to deliver several messages left for her. So now I direct my attention primarily to her and away from the writing. How does this change come about?

In order to accomplish it I must have been taking account of the car noises. I must have distinguished and recognized the distinctive noise of my wife’s car coming into the driveway. Taking account of the special significance of this noise, I have reason to shift my attention. I do all this without having turned my attention to what I am doing. All that leads up to this shift is done in the “back of my mind.” Yet when one appreciates the intelligent selectivity with which her car’s noise is picked out from all the others I have been hearing and have appropriately responded to, it becomes evident that I play an active role here. I actively direct and redirect my attention for what to me are good and sufficient reasons. [....]

The point is that I was doing something intelligently adaptive. I meant to do it; it was not inadvertent. I had a purpose, and a reason for having that purpose. It was an effective exercise of my wish not to be annoyed by the noises, not to let them come to my attention unless some noise was identified that was relevant to my current interests. It has all the characteristics of what we call intentional behaviour, except that it is not “conscious,” that is, it was something I was doing without directing my attention to it. [Fingarette concedes that 'all these thing are so familiar and obvious as to seem hardly to justify the lengths to which I have gone to call them to the reader's attention.' And 'Yet I have still barely scratched the surface.'] [....]

First, and psychologically most fundamental, is our mind’s capacity to take account effectively, within the moment, of an almost incredibly large range of data without having to focus attention on the process. True, the boundaries of the field of attention do not seem to be sharp. At one extreme we are acutely, vividly aware of some small segment of our total situation. At the other extreme, furthest distant from the focal centre of attention, we still effectively take account of things but we are totally “unaware” of our taking account of them. There seems to be more or less a continuum between these two extremes.

A second important feature of the mind at work is that while we can generally recall what took place at the centre of our attention, we generally find it increasingly difficult or even impossible to recall things that were at the periphery of our attention or outside our field of attention entirely.

Third, it is clear that to focus our attention is by its very nature to impose a special clarity and intensity on a very narrow segment of the total field of what we are taking account of. [....]

Finally, we actively and selectively direct our attention on the basis of reasons provided by our appraisal of our situation. We continue taking account of our situation –perceiving, appraising, responding–even though this very largely take place outside the field of our attention.’

So, it seems, in the above sense, we’re all multi-taskers of a sort!

Incidentally, for those who simply see the clever reference to multi-tasking in Shiva’s possession of a few extra limbs, permit me to note that this is one of the more popular representations of Shiva (part of the Hindu tri-murti [three forms] of God) as Nataraja, King of the Dance, and represents him as a deity with creative, destructive and emancipatory powers (in the sense of liberation from karma and hence samsara).

I too ‘need a well-near constant aural background to get much done during the day,’ as we have very little setback and thus are not far from the street, so I keep the TV on in the background ‘loud enough to drown out the random noise that constantly assaults one in urban areas,’ although not a few car stereos go by with bass beats that rattle the windows and my mind. Although I cannot in any way ‘multi-task,’ as that means I do several jobs poorly rather than one job well. Still, as Herbert Fingarette explained in an appendix to his delightful little book on Self-Deception (2000 ed.), ‘when I am writing as I normally do, I *take account* of the complex and varying physical and orthographical requirements for putting my thoughts on paper, but *I do not focus my attention* on these things. Nevertheless it is fair to say I do all this purposely, intelligently and adaptively. But all the while my attention is focused on my thoughts at the moment and the task of choosing words to express them adequately. Once I have the words in mind, and have elected to write them down, the writing itself is “automatic.” The crux of the matter, if we generalize, is that we can take account of something without necessarily focusing our attention on it. That is, we can recognize it, and respond to it without directing our attention to what we are doing, and our response can be intelligently adaptive rather than merely a reflex or habit automatism. [....]

The nature of this mental capacity bears further elaboration in order to make explicit how complex and sophisticated is the exercise of it. While I am writing, there the noises of passing cars, the neighbour’s lawnmower, the kitchen refrigerator, all coming to my ears. They are irrelevant to my writing, indeed, would disrupt it were I to focus my attention on them. The fact is, I am simply unconscious of the noises. How can this be? The noises certainly register in my ears. It has to be that I take account of them, recognize their irrelevance to my project at the moment, and therefore do not turn my attention to the noises–nor do I even focus attention on the process of adopting and pursuing this aim.

Later, I do hear my wife’s car as it comes down our driveway, and I am conscious that she has arrived home. I want to greet her when she comes in, and in this case I also want to deliver several messages left for her. So now I direct my attention primarily to her and away from the writing. How does this change come about?

In order to accomplish it I must have been taking account of the car noises. I must have distinguished and recognized the distinctive noise of my wife’s car coming into the driveway. Taking account of the special significance of this noise, I have reason to shift my attention. I do all this without having turned my attention to what I am doing. All that leads up to this shift is done in the “back of my mind.” Yet when one appreciates the intelligent selectivity with which her car’s noise is picked out from all the others I have been hearing and have appropriately responded to, it becomes evident that I play an active role here. I actively direct and redirect my attention for what to me are good and sufficient reasons. [....]

The point is that I was doing something intelligently adaptive. I meant to do it; it was not inadvertent. I had a purpose, and a reason for having that purpose. It was an effective exercise of my wish not to be annoyed by the noises, not to let them come to my attention unless some noise was identified that was relevant to my current interests. It has all the characteristics of what we call intentional behaviour, except that it is not “conscious,” that is, it was something I was doing without directing my attention to it. [Fingarette concedes that 'all these thing are so familiar and obvious as to seem hardly to justify the lengths to which I have gone to call them to the reader's attention.' And 'Yet I have still barely scratched the surface.'] [....]

First, and psychologically most fundamental, is our mind’s capacity to take account effectively, within the moment, of an almost incredibly large range of data without having to focus attention on the process. True, the boundaries of the field of attention do not seem to be sharp. At one extreme we are acutely, vividly aware of some small segment of our total situation. At the other extreme, furthest distant from the focal centre of attention, we still effectively take account of things but we are totally “unaware” of our taking account of them. There seems to be more or less a continuum between these two extremes.

A second important feature of the mind at work is that while we can generally recall what took place at the centre of our attention, we generally find it increasingly difficult or even impossible to recall things that were at the periphery of our attention or outside our field of attention entirely.

Third, it is clear that to focus our attention is by its very nature to impose a special clarity and intensity on a very narrow segment of the total field of what we are taking account of. [....]

Finally, we actively and selectively direct our attention on the basis of reasons provided by our appraisal of our situation. We continue taking account of our situation –perceiving, appraising, responding–even though this very largely take place outside the field of our attention.’

So, it seems, in the above sense, we’re all multi-taskers of a sort!

Incidentally, for those who simply see the clever reference to multi-tasking in Shiva’s possession of a few extra limbs, permit me to note that this is one of the more popular representations of Shiva (part of the Hindu tri-murti [three forms] of God) as Nataraja, King of the Dance, and represents him as a deity with creative, destructive and emancipatory powers (in the sense of liberation from karma and hence samsara).

Speaking of which, 27% of the children of WalMart employees receive Medicaid. This serves as a hidden corporate subsidy of billions of dollars per year. And their crappy health insurance plan comes with a $3,000 deductible, which is probably more than almost any WalMart hourly employee makes in a month.