Mark Fortney
Assistant Professor
Email: mark.fortney@dal.ca
Research Topics:
- Technology Ethics
- Buddhist Philosophy
- Philosophy of Mind
Education:
PhD in Philosophy (2017) University of Toronto
BA in Cognitive Science (2010) Carleton University
Recent Presentations:
“Generative AI, De-skilling, and Our Right to Mental Integrity”.
Canadian Philosophical Association – 2026 – Dalhousie University
“What Makes Mental Integrity Possible? A Buddhist Perspective”.
Conference on Attention and the Virtues of Mind and Heart – 2026 – Princeton University.
Journal Articles:
2025. “Beyond the attention economy, towards an ecology of attending. A manifesto”. AI & Society. (With lead authors Tom Hannes and Gunther Bombaerts, as well as many other co-authors).
2025. "The Attention Economy and the Right to Attention: Some Lessons from Theravāda and Mahāyāna Thought". Journal of Buddhist Ethics 32: 74-96.
2024. “Loving attention: Buddhaghosa, Katsuki Sekida, and Iris Murdoch on meditation and moral development”. Philosophy East and West 74(2): 212-232.
2022. “Evans on intellectual attention and memory demonstratives”. Analytic Philosophy, 63: 118-130.
2021. “Buddhaghosa, James, and Thompson on conscious flow”. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 7(4), 569-581.
2020. “Directing internal attention towards ongoing thought”. Consciousness and Cognition, 85.
2020. “Unity in the scientific study of intellectual attention”. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 50(4): 444-459.
2020. “Universal hinges and the bounds of sense”. Philosophia, 48: 967-979.
2019. “Conceptualizing intellectual attention”. Theory & Psychology, 29(6): 775-788.
2018. “The centre and periphery of conscious thought”. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(3-4):112-136.
2022. “Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch on Insight and Attention”. Blog of the American Philosophical Association.