Hi Keith,
Love the way you think about these issues.
You wrote,
"When the mind is bent towards an object of its attention... such thoughts
illustrate that the mind can be bent to such a relationship"
Other questions that seem to me important are
'Exactly how does this bending of attention occur?'
'Exactly what causes and enables the activities of changing the
focus of attention?'
As far as I can see, the answers cannot be found in the objects of
attention - that would be like saying 'cars drive themselves'.
Similarly, it seems the answers cannot be found in the activity of
attention itself (although understanding how attention is actualised in
reality is a hard enough question by itself). The bending of attention
requires activities outside the activity of attention in order for the
bending to occur (because bending or focusing is always relative to
something external: in this case, both the individual, and the different
foci of the attention process). Hence, the bending of attention (with the
focus on the activity of 'bending' or focusing) is not explained by the
concept of attention itself, or the objects (or designs) or thoughts that
are the focus of the attention .
The conceptualising of 'the ability to focus attention' requires a theory
frame that consequently by its nature questions and challenges the
assumption that there exists such a thing as 'mind' . Hence, it is also
inappropriate to try to make theory using the concept of mind about
'Exactly what causes and enables the activities of changing the focus (the
bending) of attention?'
Looking at the above questions does not directly explain 'how we became to
be abductive'. Instead, it starts to provide a basis for asking such a
question. On the other hand, looking at the above questions also helps
better explain the situations that were the purpose in asking 'how we
became abductive?'
Best wishes,
Terry
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