There is (as I shall show in what follows) another, third kind, which we shall call intuitive knowledge
There’s such a blizzard of sensory information out there, the brain would be overwhelmed if it weren’t for a spotlight process of selective attention that allows us to focus. This means that once we’re tuned into certain aspects of the environment, we’re left blind to events outside of our selective attention - a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness.”
Central to this line of reasoning is the idea of attention as a finite resource. It’s because our processing powers are depleted by the focus of our attention that we’re left blind to that which we ignore. However, a new study challenges the finite resource element of this story. Baruch Eitam and his colleagues say that irrelevance is enough to render information invisible even if we have plenty of resources available for processing that information. It brings a new spin to our understanding of inattentional blindness that’s not just about attentional load but also about salience and motivation.
art { Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1968 }
