first-person experience attending to a thing
Attention involves the processing and organization of perceptual information, actively directing our cognitive resources toward our own mind (particular phenomena), without the capacity like this, no aspect of our experiences could become an object of self-reflective understanding
“Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are its essence” — William James, 1890
counter to our ordinary understanding of attention as a single, isolated focus upon some phenomenon there is evidence of multiple kinds of attention within the human mind, with distinctly different modes of operation, arguably, there are even attention processes that we are not aware of, operating in the background construction of our experiences and thoughts