Alva Noë I use an old proverb as the epigram: if you want to see something new, walk the same path every day. The proverb reminds us that there is a kind of learning, a kind of discovery, that consists not so much in gathering new information, but in a deeper, truer, better connection to what is already there. The proverb is a reminder that presence – our showing up along the path, the world’s presence – doesn’t come for free, just for the price, as it were, of opening the eyes. We need to work for it. There are so many reasons why this is so. We are creatures of habit and skill, and these enable, of course, but they also disable. If I can read, then I can see words, but I am correspondingly prevented from seeing what is there in different ways. Dewey reminds us that slack indifference, inattention and a too narrow focus on the task at hand, can sometimes get in the way of our having anything that deserves to be called an experience.
Alva Noë (Tue,) studied this question.