The Spotlight, Starlight, and Daylight of Attention

irst, the “spotlight” of attention is how cognitive scientists tend to talk about perceptual attention. The things that are task-salient in my environment. How I select and interact with those, basically. Second, the “starlight.” If the spotlight is about doing things, the starlight is who I want to be, not just what I want to do. It’s like those goals that are valuable for their own sake, not because they’re instrumental toward some other goal. Also, over time, how we keep moving toward those, and how we keep seeing the connections between the tasks we’re doing right now, and those higher-level or longer-term goals. Third, the “daylight.” In the philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s terms, it’s wanting what you want to want—the domain of metacognition. Basically, if the “spotlight” and the “starlight” are about pursuing some goal, some end, some value, the “daylight” is about the capacities that enable us to discern and define what those goals, those ends, are to begin with.