IHPST Research Seminar Second Session - Winter 2025

You are cordially invited to attend the Winter 2025 Research Seminar Series of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, organized by Assistant Professor Karina Vold

“Artificial intelligence benchmarks and degenerating research”

Hybrid event

“Decisions, decisions, decisions: A value-based account of the attention economy”

Abstract:

This paper develops an empirically responsible account of the attention economy. Almost all existing philosophical accounts of the moral and psychological harms of the attention economy rely on vague metaphors and folk psychological theorizing about the nature of attention and control. Drawing on recent work from across the cognitive sciences, we argue that a valuationist approach provides a more empirically robust and conceptually rich account than prevailing models of the attention economy, which emphasize addiction, compulsion, and loss of control. The valuationist framework posits that decision-making, including attention allocation and self-control, is fundamentally driven by representations of value. We contend that the attention economy's impact is best understood as shaping these value representations that influence decision-making. Contrary to folk psychological notions of irresistible urges or hijacked autonomy, we argue that users maintain the capacity for choice and control. Moreover, our account can still capture the common phenomenology of feeling “pulled” towards digital distractions. The first half of the paper unpacks the valuationist framework, with a special emphasis on valuationist accounts of attention and control. The second half of the paper applies this framework to better understand the moral and psychological harms associated with the attention economy. 

Joshua August (Gus) Skorburg is an associate professor of philosophy, academic co-director of the Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (CARE-AI), and a faculty affiliate at the One Health Institute at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. From 2018 to 2022, Skorburg was an adjunct professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He received his PhD in Philosophy in 2017 from the University of Oregon. His research spans topics in applied ethics and moral psychology.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 12:30- 2:00 p.m. Rotman School of Management, 95 St, George Street, Room 1065

Seminar will be broadcast live via Zoom (register for link)

This seminar is co-hosted by the University of Toronto’s Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and will be presented in-person with an online option at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.