Dimitry, what a wonderful presentation! I am most happy that you allowed the external as well as the internal side of attention to be spoken. I have been lurking on this web site because I found the book "whisperings" to be stimulating in regards to the questions of knowing, and the fact that this book is placing the emphasis back on modeling.  As we are not engaged in a modeling project in this thread, I find it most relevent to this web site that we discuss concepts such as 'attention'. JR, forgive me if my denominalization of 'attention' throws countless more nominalizations into the fire, but, I hope you will notice that I actually am using these noms to get at the process of attending.  I will refuse to speak mechanically only because I am finding the limits of such filters to be insidiously subtle. So within the realm of our experience, it is perception that seems most GIVEN, least willed.  Yet it is certainly not enough to simply open your eyes in order to see.  Anyone can confirm this by remembering his or her own childhood behavior at school.  Children can look at their teachers with big eyes and follow their movements, with their ears wide open (since they cannot be closed) so as to hear the teacher's voice, and yet NOT hear or see anything.  Then if the teacher asks them a question, the children have no idea what was being talked about. Every teacher is familiar with those big eyes, and teh characteristic facial expression of the dreamer. According to physics and physiology, these children must have seen and heard everything said to them: the light rays or photons reached the eyes and the airwaves reached the eardrum in the ear, where they set in motion a chain of physcial and chemical reactions.  These in turn initiated further processes in the nerve cells, and nothing prevented them from reaching the brain in just the right way to cause seeing and hearing.  What was missing? "Attention" we say, "Please pay attention, child!" All this physiology, physics and chemistry, was not sufficient for perception to take place. Attention has no physiological or physical correlative (and I am NOT a dualist, please), and teachers have no thought of physiology when they say, "You there, pay attention!" So perception is not simply given after all. I have more to say about the process of attention, but I must sleep now... Gunthar Freidinger