Attention can ground phenomenal unity in conscious experience, not just segregation. Some philosophers worry that attention's foreground-background structure divides experience rather than unifies it. This paper argues that experiencing oneself as controlling the focus of attention can create an experienced connection between foreground and background, thereby producing a form of phenomenal unity. The argument addresses a key objection to attentional accounts of phenomenal unity.
Artificial intelligence methods used in computational psychiatry raise ethical issues including fairness, data ownership, and privacy. Beyond these, AI applications may transform how we conceive of autonomy and privacy, and computational psychiatry may change how mental disorders are categorized and classified. Since many mental disorders involve disturbed conscious experiences, successful computational psychiatry applications could improve understanding of such disorders. However, even successful applications may fail to account for all aspects of disordered conscious experiences. The authors discuss both prospects and pitfalls of these transformative effects.