Attentionality

Michael Tomasello's developmental research on joint attention provides the empirical foundation for what Center Study frames theoretically. Infants acquire language not by learning words and grammatical rules but by developing the capacity for joint attention — the ability to share a focus of attention with another and to know that the sharing is mutual. This capacity distinguishes humans from even the most cognitively sophisticated other primates.

Three orders. Katz distinguishes three orders of attentionality. First-order attentionality is the ability to direct attention toward something. Second-order is the understanding that others can direct their attention toward something — the ability to represent another's attention. Third-order is the understanding that others know you're directing attention — the ability to represent another's representation of your attention. Language requires third-order attentionality because the sign works only when all participants know that all others are emitting and receiving the same sign.

Attentionality and the originary scene. The originary scene is the scene of third-order attentionality: each participant perceives that all others are reaching, perceives that the others perceive them reaching, and converts the gesture into a sign that acknowledges this mutual perception. The sign is what third-order attentionality produces under conditions of mimetic crisis.

Attentionality as ethics. Katz's key move in Attentionality and Originary Ethics is to argue that attentionality is not merely a cognitive capacity but an ethical one. To attend to another — to genuinely direct your attention toward them, to make them the center of your scene — is already a moral act. The failure to attend, the withdrawal of attention, the refusal of joint attention, is already a moral failure. Ethics begins not with obligations derived from principles but with the practice of attending to others as potential centers.

Upclining. Katz develops the concept of "upclining" — the ethical practice of directing attention upward, toward those who have more to teach, rather than downward, toward those who can only receive instruction. Upclining is the educational posture that makes learning possible: it requires humility before the center (the teacher, the text, the archive) rather than the performance of already-achieved mastery.