Appearance Of Consciousness Research Articles

DYNAMICS OF VASYL STEFANYK'S CREATIVE THOUGHT: GENERAL REGULARITIES AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

The proposed article is devoted to the understanding of some issues of the psychology of artistic creativity of Vasyl Stefanyk, in particular the category of "artistic and creative process" as its central problem. Thus, the goal is to trace the dynamics of the novelist's creative thought, starting from the emergence of the idea in the spheres of "lower consciousness" and ending with its verbal embodiment. The research methodology is based on the interdisciplinary nature of the problem under discussion and involves inductive-empirical, objective-analytical and psychological studies. The principles of philological, psychobiographical and comparative-historical research methods, as well as the achievements of the latest methodology: phenomenology, literary hermeneutics and receptive aesthetics are applied. As a result of scientific research, the peculiarities of combining in Vasyl Stefanyk’s creative experience the general regularities of the procedural structure of creativity with individual and unique manifestations have been clarified. Emphasis is placed on such aspects as the psychological mechanisms of the emergence of artistic design, its appearance in consciousness in the form of a prototype, crystallization in concrete-sensory forms and verbal realization. The scientific novelty of the article is that it highlights the subjective and psychological factors of conditionality of artistic phenomena, which helps to learn them more deeply and fully.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Bhutan: Understanding Women's Responses to IPV Using the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change.

Intimate partner violence is highly prevalent in Asian region. It is largely committed by male against their female intimate partner. This is often associated with the region's unique social and cultural norms which subordinate women throughout their lives. IPV is an ongoing concern in Bhutan. The country's age-old traditions and customs are closely related to culture of silence among women experiencing IPV. This study examined women's responses to intimate partner violence (IPV) in Bhutan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore sensitising concepts such as how and when women recognised IPV and how they responded to it. Fifteen women who had sought supportive services at the institution `RENEW' (Respect, Educate, Nurture, Empower Women) as a result of IPV participated in the interview. The Trans-theoretical model of behaviour change (TTM) was used as a theoretical framework to understand women's cognitive, affective and behavioural change processes. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis was used to identify the patterns of women's responses. From the analysis, women's experiences of IPV and their responses were located within the four stages of change, including contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. Women used nine traditional processes of change among which consciousness raising and helping relationships were critical and appeared across all four stages of change. This study provides important insights of Bhutanese women's cognitive and behavioural responses to IPV. The appearance of consciousness raising and helping relationships across all the stages of change represents a potential opportunity for intervention to initiate and promote changes in women's response to IPV in the early stages.

Some Philosophical Problems of Studying Complex Systems in the Universe

Introduction. The paper deals with the philosophical problems of functioning of the most complex phenomena in the universe: creation of the universe, emergence of life and appearance of consciousness. The scientific timeliness of the research is determined by that unceasing interest to the origin of the universe and life in it. The most difficult problem is the origin of intelligence in the universe which is confirmed through the ongoing research in the SETI program. The scientific novelty of research is that the authors link three fundamental problems relates to the origins of complexity in the universe in a single intellectual cluster.Methodology and sources. The analysis is based on the issues in modern cosmology, astrobiology and anthropology treated in the context of complex systems and their radical sensitivity to the uncontrolled initial conditions. In particular, one implies the so called “fine-tuning” of the cosmological parameters necessary for the origin of life on the planet Earth. The hypothetical deviation of the numerical values of such parameters by, let say some per cents, would exclude the development of the biological systems. However the sphere of the necessary conditions for these parameters does not guarantee the fulfillment of the sufficient conditions for creation complexity and a possibility of life. Such conditions are not determined by the physical and biological context and make inevitable an appeal for their interpretation to philosophical ideas. The methodological foundation of this research is based in finding the boundaries of efficiency of the necessary conditions for emergence of complexity and attempts to provide in some cases an interpretation of the possible sufficient conditions.Results and discussion. It is shown that it is impossible to account on scientific grounds for the original conditions which launched creation of the universe, emergence of life and appearance of consciousness. Scientifically, one can formulate the necessary conditions for existence of life in the universe and hence the embodied consciousness, however it is beyond the reach of science to account for the sufficient conditions. One simple model of origin of life illustrating the dependence of its phenomenon on the uncontrolled sufficient conditions is proposed on the grounds of analogy with Bernard’s instability in complex systems. If one identifies such phenomena as existence of the universe, biological and intelligent life with the behavior in super-complex material systems, there still remains a fundamental problem in unpredictability and contingency of those “initial” conditions which predetermined the factual outcomes in evolution of these complex systems. In other words science faces a fundamental limitedness in describing the sufficient conditions (sufficient reason) for those forms of complexity in nature with which this article deals.Conclusion. A scientific description of the most complex phenomena such as the universe as a whole, biological and intelligent life demonstrate its limited scope as regards the sufficient conditions for their happening. In this sense an exhaustive understanding of these phenomena becomes fundamentally impossible, showing that science functions in the conditions of the positive uncertainty.

The ant colony as a test for scientific theories of consciousness

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable (and non-human) model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test (ACT) as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness.

Want to block earworms from conscious awareness? B(u)y gum!

Three experiments examine the role of articulatory motor planning in experiencing an involuntary musical recollection (an "earworm"). Experiment 1 shows that interfering with articulatory motor programming by chewing gum reduces both the number of voluntary and the number of involuntary-unwanted-musical thoughts. This is consistent with other findings that chewing gum interferes with voluntary processes such as recollections from verbal memory, the interpretation of ambiguous auditory images, and the scanning of familiar melodies, but is not predicted by theories of thought suppression, which assume that suppression is made more difficult by concurrent tasks or cognitive loads. Experiment 2 shows that chewing the gum affects the experience of "hearing" the music and cannot be ascribed to a general effect on thinking about a tune only in abstract terms. Experiment 3 confirms that the reduction of musical recollections by chewing gum is not the consequence of a general attentional or dual-task demand. The data support a link between articulatory motor programming and the appearance in consciousness of both voluntary and unwanted musical recollections.

Perception consciente ou perception inconsciente : quel rapport entre perception et conscience ?

PurposesThis paper discusses how the notion of perception can be defined and suggests a reappraisal of the relationship between perception and consciousness. MethodAccording to classic definition, the notion of perception cannot be separated from that of consciousness: perception is the process originating from sensory activity that provides a conscious knowledge of the external world. This definition predominates in modern literature, but it is to some extent contradicted by the usage of the phrase “unconscious perceptions” to refer to a series of clinical phenomena (hysterical manifestations, brain damage) and experimental phenomena (tachistoscopic studies). This is the contradiction we propose to examine. ResultsIt seems judicious to consider that the “unconscious perceptions” noted by science for over a century are not a group of disparate phenomena, but amount to a single phenomenon that is observable when the conditions enabling the appearance of consciousness are not fully met. It then becomes clear that this phenomenon always occurs before the moment when consciousness can potentially appear. DiscussionThe paradoxical term of “unconscious perceptions” evidences the reluctance of the literature to actually envisage a psychic phenomenon falling outside the field of consciousness, and all in all evidences a strong allegiance to Descartes’ thinking, opposed to the principle of an unconscious psychic life. For Descartes, perception – this is the very basis of the classic definition – is sensory activity in that it is able to animate consciousness. The view of Leibniz, according to which the life of the soul is not restricted to mere consciousness, provides a wider definition: perception is the sensory activity able to animate the soul. And precisely, we conclude that it always animates it at an unconscious level, prior to the establishment of consciousness. ConclusionBy admitting the inherently unconscious nature of perception, in a sense we solve our paradox: the term of “unconscious perception” becomes a pleonasm. We also conclude that consciousness is separate from the process of perception, and emerges as an extension of an unconscious psychic space forming in close contact with the body. Thus, we generally take possession of the external world twice: by perceiving it and then by becoming conscious of our perception of it.

Die Grenzen des Naturerkennens und die Theologie

In 1872 Emil Du Bois-Reymond hold his famous speech about the limits of natural science in which he declared that natural science is in principal unable to answer the questions concerning the essence of mass and energy and the appearance of consciousness. The speech implied a critique of the present-day materialism and provoked negative as well as positive reactions. Among them are also those of contemporary Protestant theologians who used it to justify religious conception of the world which cannot be defeated by materialism.

Temporal dynamics of neural activity at the moment of appearance of consciousness

Temporal dynamics of neural activity at the moment of appearance of consciousness

Forgiveness as the Working Through of Splitting

This article presents a psychoanalytic formulation of forgiveness seen as the resolution of splitting underlying manifest and vehement retributive states of mind such as resentment, vengefulness, grudge, envy, bitterness, blame, and spite. Clinical examination suggests that these states of mind that are indicative of the presence of splitting are not always in ascendancy. They wax and wane in consciousness, depending on whether or not a shame-filled state of mind is present. Their appearance in consciousness is due to the instigatory role of shame before onlookers and the powerful role of hidden shame dynamics that do not always appear as overt shame. Examples illustrate a clinical impasse posed by the workings of intense splitting, the transformation of a shame experience into a dynamic of guilt in the firing of a very successful football coach after a disappointing defeat, and the working through of splitting in a patient pari passu with his increased bearability of shame. Working through of the splitting underlying the retributive emotions involves the increased bearability of shame, often with the help of an identification with the analyst. Vistas for future investigation include the role of the working through of resentment of the analyst in the analytic process and the relation of that resentment to instigating shame dynamics.

Moral intuition: Its neural substrates and normative significance

Philosophers use the phrase “moral intuition” to describe the appearance in consciousness of moral judgments or assessments without any awareness of having gone through a conscious reasoning process that produces this assessment. This paper investigates the neural substrates of moral intuition. We propose that moral intuitions are part of a larger set of social intuitions that guide us through complex, highly uncertain and rapidly changing social interactions. Such intuitions are shaped by learning. The neural substrates for moral intuition include fronto-insular, cingulate, and orbito-frontal cortices and associated subcortical structure such as the septum, basil ganglia and amygdala. Understanding the role of these structures undercuts many philosophical doctrines concerning the status of moral intuitions, but vindicates the claim that they can sometimes play a legitimate role in moral decision-making.

Consciousness without corticocentrism: Beating an evolutionary path

Merker's approach allows the formulation of an evolutionary view of consciousness that abandons a dependence on structural homology – in this case, the presence of a cerebral cortex – in favor of functional concordance. In contrast to Merker, though, I maintain that the emergence of complex, dynamic interactions, such as those which occur between thalamus and cortex, was central to the appearance of consciousness.

On the Preconditions and Essential Elements of Consciousness

Investigation of the factors in natural history which conditioned the appearance of consciousness, that specifically human form of mental activity, necessarily presumes, in particular, a study of its functional preconditions or, in other words, of the higher forms of animal activity involving objects and of the corresponding mental processes. It is not enough to know the general psychological qualities of animals, the general principles by which their behavior is shaped, principles and properties offering evidence of a type of vital activity qualitatively different from that of man. The traits of psychology and behavior, characteristic of the preponderance of the animal world, could not have become the immediate functional foundation capable of providing the real opportunity for the onset of the shaping of new regularities of mental activity.

Reasoning in humans. II. The solution of a problem and its appearance in consciousness.

Reasoning in humans. II. The solution of a problem and its appearance in consciousness.