View Of Consciousness Research Articles

Neurophysiological correlates of various mental perspectives.

A common view of consciousness is that our mind presents emotions, experiences, and images in an internal mental (re-)presentation space which in a state of wakefulness is triggered by the world outside. Consciousness can be defined as the observation of this inner mental space. We propose a new model, in which the state of the conscious observer is defined by the observer’s mental position and focus of attention. The mental position of the observer can either be within the mental self (intrapersonal space), in the mental outer world (extrapersonal space) or in an empathic connection, i.e., within the intrapersonal space of another person (perspective taking). The focus of attention can be directed toward the self or toward the outside world. This mental space model can help us to understand the patterns of relationships and interactions with other persons as they occur in social life. To investigate the neurophysiological correlates and discriminability of the different mental states, we conducted an EEG experiment measuring the brain activity of 16 subjects via 64 electrodes while they engaged in different mental positions (intrapersonal, extrapersonal, perspective taking) with different attentional foci (self, object). Compared to external mental locations, internal ones showed significantly increased alpha2 power, especially when the observer was focusing on an object. Alpha2 and beta2 were increased in the empathic condition compared to the extrapersonal perspective. Delta power was significantly higher when the attentional focus was directed toward an object in comparison to the participant’s own self. This exploratory study demonstrates highly significant differences between various mental locations and foci, suggesting that the proposed categories of mental location and intra- and interpersonal attentional foci are not only helpful theoretical concepts but are also physiologically relevant and therefore may relate to basic brain processing mechanisms.

Nietzsches Philosophie des Unbewussten

Nietzsches Philosophie des Unbewussten

Rainer Maria Rilke und Vilhelm Hammershøi. Zur Beziehung zwischen bildender Kunst und Dichtung zur Zeit der Jahrhundertwende

The paper examines the impression of two paintings by the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916) on Rilke, Self-Portrait from 1889 and of a Young Girl from 1892, which is a portrait of the artist's fiancee Ida Ilstedt. Rilke admired the Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847-1885). The kind of looking serves as a common point of reference both of the visual arts and of literature. When he visited Copenhagen during his stay in Sweden in 1904 Rilke was influenced by his admiration for Jens Peter Jacobsen. Rilke had gained access to the art collection of Alfred Bramsen, Hammershoi's patron. Thus he got the opportunity to see others of Hammershoi's works. Here comes the analysis of two paintings. The conscious kind of looking of the two persons was what Rilke was interested in. In Self-Portrait a concentrated and objective view; in the Portrait of Ida Ilsted an innocent and meaningless open view somewhere between inside and outside. The two portraits thus thematize the conscious view that Rilke admired at Jacobsen. The works highlight the importance of different kinds of view in later works of Rilke and in the Letters on Cezanne.

Husserl on Intentionality as an Essential Property of Consciousness

In the phenomenological tradition intentionality is considered to be an essential property of consciousness. Philosophers from this tradition (Brentano, Husserl, Sartre, etc.) generally share the following two commitments: (i) intentionality is an essential property of consciousness; and (ii) all intentional states are directed at, and are intentionally related to, objects. This view of consciousness has two pressing problems. Firstly, philosophers such as John Searle and David Rosenthal have suggested raw feelings and some forms of seemingly undirected and thus non-intentional feelings as counterexamples to the essential intentionality of conscious states. Secondly, some analytical philosophers and Husserlian scholars inspired by Frege, such as Smith and Follesdal, deny that every intentional state is related to a correlative object. This paper presents a Husserlian view concerning the essential intentionality of consciousness. It will be shown that both problems can be successfully dealt with from an essentially Husserlian and phenomenological perspective.

The marginalization of phenomenological consciousness

The marginalization of phenomenological consciousness

Estrangement, empathic failure, and the provocation of a critical cosmopolitan vision in Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood

The Nature of Blood (1997) is perhaps the most formally experimental novel Caryl Phillips has yet produced, and features an innovative combination of literary devices such as polyphony, defamiliarization, and intertextuality. In this essay, I will argue that an overlooked effect of these techniques is the provocation of a self-reflexive, historically conscious and critical view of human subjectivity that chimes with what Rebecca Walkowitz (2006: 2) calls a “critical cosmopolitan vision”. This is a way of seeing that is suspicious of the prevailing modes of interpretation and understanding that attend a given historical context, and which attempts to look beyond fixed notions of identity and belonging.

Edmund Husserl’s Transcendence of the Early Buddhist Theory of Consciousness

Edmund Husserl, the founding father of western philosophical movement known as phenomenology, formulated a theory of consciousness writing Logical Investigations (1900). The Gautama the Buddha, as far back as the 6 th century B.C., had provided an analysis of the conscious phenomena. Many scholars who trace parallels between the Buddhist view of consciousness and Husserl’s phenomenology of the structures of consciousness deal mostly with the similarities between the two, and such a comparison could also be regarded as a worthwhile contribution to the field of comparative philosophy.This paper argues that Husserl's analysis of consciousness, despite its limitations, as elaborated by Derrida, (and also by Heidegger), is more advanced than the Buddha's formulation. Husserl articulated his phenomenology of consciousness as a result of his encounter with Cartesian cogito, (or the Cartesian psychology) on the one hand and the positivistic foundation of empirical sciences on the other. Husserl’s notion of phenomenological consciousness was situated within an industrially advanced capitalist society and nurtured by scientific epistemology, despite his criticism of its underlying positivism, which set the basis for his philosophy of internal consciousness. He lived in a controversial era, the rise of National Socialism in Germany, which has to be taken seriously when assessing his philosophy of consciousness. The Buddha, in contrast, theorized his notion of consciousness within a backward, slow-moving, agricultural and feudal setting .He developed his notion of consciousness as a normative concept as a basis for achieving the spiritual objective he envisaged. While acknowledging the fact that no other philosophy that existed during the Buddha’s time had articulated such a meticulous and in depth analysis of the phenomenology of consciousness, his analysis seems to be less advanced when assessed and compared with the twentieth century phenomenology of Husserl. The present study will be carried out having used original and secondary sources of Husselian and Buddhist phenomenologies. This study will contribute significantly to future research on similar topics.

But what if the default is defaulting?

We critically consider the default view of consciousness and decision making, and we explore the implications of this view to the authors' argument. We therefore call for rigorous collection of data regarding the role of consciousness in decisions. We also propose that the section on subliminal effects significantly underestimates existing data and succinctly review relevant findings.

Brain signals do not demonstrate unconscious decision making: An interpretation based on graded conscious awareness

Neuroscientific studies have shown that brain activity correlated with a decision to move can be observed before a person reports being consciously aware of having made that decision (e.g., Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983; Soon, Brass, Heinze, & Haynes, 2008). Given that a later event (i.e., conscious awareness) cannot cause an earlier one (i.e., decision-related brain activity), such results have been interpreted as evidence that decisions are made unconsciously (e.g., Libet, 1985). We argue that this interpretation depends upon an all-or-none view of consciousness, and we offer an alternative interpretation of the early decision-related brain activity based on models in which conscious awareness of the decision to move develops gradually up to the level of a reporting criterion. Under this interpretation, the early brain activity reflects sub-criterion levels of awareness rather than complete absence of awareness and thus does not suggest that decisions are made unconsciously.

Secular Buddhism and the Quest for a Lived Ethics

Secular Buddhism and the Quest for a Lived Ethics

Pourquoi sommes-nous si inintelligibles? Hegel et la question du langage philosophique

The aim is to examine the question raised by the exceptional and remarkable difficulty of Hegel's philosophy, what Hegel himself characterises as the «unintelligibility (Unverstandlichkeit) of philosophy». The article seeks in the first place to establish that this unintelligibility is related essentially to the very nature of philosophy as conceived by Hegel, namely as the exercise of the concept or of pure thought as essentially distinct from the regime of representation proper to common consciousness. It then shows how such a distinction gives rise to two kinds of language and, more profoundly, to two different kinds of logic: a logic of understanding and a logic of reason, the latter showing itself radically destabilising for the former. Finally, it emphasizes the problem raised by a divorce of this kind, not just from the point of view of common consciousness, but also and especially for philosophy that finds itself destabilised in regard to its own requirements (transl. J. Dudley).

ДВЕ КОНЦЕПЦИЈЕ ПОЛОЖАЈА ВОЈВОДИНЕ ТОКОМ УСТАВНЕ РЕФОРМЕ 60-ИХ ГОДИНА ХХ ВЕКА

Почетком шездесетих година двадесетог века у југословенској политичкој јавно­сти учестале су дискусије око предстојеће уставне реформе. У погледу будућег поло­жаја Аутономне покрајине Војводине, сукобиле су се две концепције. Прва, коју је половином октобра 1961. године у београдској Борби, у четири наставка, објавио Ми­лош Минић под насловом Прилог дискусији о новом уставу залагала се за хомогенију структуру Републике Србије. Према Минићевим идејама, иза којих је вероватно стаја­ло тадашње републичко руководство, поред постојеће АП Војводине, односно Ауто­номне Косовско-метохијске области, предвиђено је формирање још неколико области на простору тзв. „Уже Србије“. Претходно је Минић опширно анализирао принципе политичког уређења са теоријског гледишта, историјски развој односа између репу­блике и аутономних јединица и тада актуелно питање срезова. Са друге стране, стручњаци Завода за јавну управу АП Војводине, своје мишљење о предстојећим ус­тавним променама предочили су још у пролеће (мај-јун) 1961. године, у виду неколико обимних списа. Реч се о реферату др Будимира Дамјанова и Миливоја Ковачевића под насловом Аутономна покрајина Војводина (положај и права), Информацији о неким важним питањима у вези са уставном реформом и доношењем статута Аутономне покрајине Војводине, Коментарима о прописима савезног и републичког устава који регулишу правни положај АП Војводине, те још неким елаборатима.

Sartre and Spinoza on the nature of mind

What surfaces first when one examines the philosophy of mind of Sartre and Spinoza are the differences between them. For Spinoza a human mind is a mode of the divine mind. That view is a far cry from Sartre’s view of human consciousness as a desire never achieved: the desire to be god, to be the foundation of one’s own existence. How could two philosophers, one a determinist and the other who grounds human freedom in the nature of consciousness itself, be seen as having any commonalities worth exploring? How could the noted user of the deductive method and one of the most important phenomenologists of the twentieth century share any philosophical ground at all? I will argue in this paper that despite the very real differences between their two philosophies, there are striking similarities between Sartre’s view of consciousness and Spinoza’s view of the mind. They become apparent when one examines each one’s analysis of the nature of mind and its relationship to itself, the body, and the world. Both are heir to a kind of Aristotelian naturalism. This commonality between them derives from their mutual rejection of Descartes’ substance dualism. I first explore the consequences of that rejection on how each one conceives of the relationship between the mind and its objects. Next I examine their view of the mind’s relation to itself and finally I look at how each one understood the mind’s relationship to the body and the world. The examination of their two views reveals how much they anticipate and support theories of mind defended by contemporary analytic philosophers of mind.

The Mind-Brain Problem and the Measurement Paradox of Quantum Mechanics: Should We Disentangle Them?

In recent decades, progress in the field of neurosciences has triggered an interest in understanding mind-brain relationships. Quantum Mechanics (QM) has been present in the debate from its beginnings through the well-known measurement paradox. The standard interpretation of QM considers two basic, fundamentally irreducible, processes: the deterministic evolution of the wave-function according to the Schrodinger equation, once the initial conditions have been settled; and the indeterministic wave-function collapse into one of the possible outcomes, after performing a specific measurement. So, QM would point to the limits of a purely deterministic view of nature and, in particular, of brains. Nevertheless, QM’s relevance for the brain’s physics is still to be proven. Detractors of the QM influence are confident of the role of decoherent processes at different physical scales in order to ensure a classical deterministic behavior of the brain. However, little attention is paid to the epistemic implications of invoking decoherence for the mind-brain problem. In this paper, (i) we present lasting QM models stating a specific view of human consciousness and make explicit their position regarding the relationship between the physical activity of neurons and/or networks of neurons and the phenomenal conscious experience; (ii) we review the main criticisms of the relevance of QM in the brain and, most importantly, we bring out the philosophical implications behind the usual recourse to decoherence in the transition from the quantum to the classical world, explaining why the mind-brain problem and the measurement paradox should not be disentangled.

Cooking Up Consciousness

There is no doubt that the sciences of life and mind have progressed significantly since the appearance of William James's The Principles of Psychology in 1890. Indeed, despite the eclipse of James's philosophical school after the Second World War, pragmatism seems to be the modus operandi of the cognitive sciences - at least according to Jerry Fodor, the arch-Cartesian of our time. Nevertheless, many of the pragmatist insights about the nature of mind and consciousness are still unappreciated by mainstream scientists of the mind and brain. Though there are many affinities between pragmatism and new movements in contemporary theorizing about mentation, such as the enactive, embedded, embodied, and extended theories of mind, there is much work to be done when it comes to consciousness, as our Cartesian heritage still plagues our inquiries into what many consider to be the most familiar thing of all, our conscious lives.My aim here is to sketch a pragmatist view of consciousness and the science of it. Elsewhere, I have suggested an alternative metaphor for thinking about consciousness and its relation to the body and world (Solymosi 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2013a; and Solymosi and Shook 2013a and 2013b). Instead of viewing consciousness as digestion (as Alva Noe (2008) rightly sees as the orthodox view in cognitive science, well endorsed by John Searle (2004)) and to improve upon Noe's own suggestion, that consciousness is like dancing, I propose that we are better off thinking of consciousness as cooking.To elaborate this proposal, I first introduce neuropragmatism and preface my proposal with a pragmatist view of science and reconstruction. With that framework in hand, I briefly review the current status of the science of consciousness. From there, I turn specifically to two ways of viewing consciousness and cooking. The first draws from John Dewey's observation in his recently discovered book that our idiosyncratic cultural ancestry has created - one might say cooked up - the belief that consciousness is a noun, denoting substance, whereas we would be better off to use the adverb, consciously, or the gerund, minding. The second way of viewing consciousness that I present is to go through three metaphors of digestion, dancing, and cooking, in order to show that there are good evolutionary, social, and cultural reasons to conceive of consciousness - that is, conscious activity - as being more like cooking.1. Neuropragmatism, Reconstruction, and ScienceNeurophilosophical or neuroscientifically-informed pragmatism is an explicit continuation of the inquiries started by William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. This is not to say that pragmatists since the 1950s have entirely neglected cognitive science and neuroscience. Pragmatists like Mark Johnson and Jay Schulkin have been writing for many years on what I would now consider neuropragmatist themes. Philosophers of cognitive science, such as Teed Rockwell (2005) and Anthony Chemero (2009), have offered more recent perspectives that draw on some of the insights of Dewey and James. William Casebeer (2003) has utilized Dewey's ethical theory in his work on neuroethics. And David Franks (2010) has developed the new field of neurosociology by modifying Mead's work with contemporary neuroscientific findings, especially work being done on mirror neurons. Still others have developed neuroanthropology, the main tenets of which share strong affinities with the pragmatism of Dewey and Mead (see Lende and Downey 2012).Where neuropragmatism distinguishes itself from plain-old pragmatism is that neuropragmatism provides a framework for not just thinking about the nature of mentation - the process of mental living, both cognitively and noncognitively1 - but also a framework for dealing with the problems that neuroscientific advances can either resolve or bring about. That is, neuropragmatism advances the spirit of pragmatism by incorporating the data coming from the sciences of life and mind in order to better resolve the human problems with which we are already dealing or with which we will soon likely be dealing. …

Against Egalitarianism

‘Egalitarian' views of consciousness treat my stream of consciousness and yours as on a par ontologically. A range of worries about Chalmers's philosophical system are traced to a background presupposition of egalitarianism: Chalmers is apparently committed to ‘soul pellets'; the ‘phenomenal properties' at the core of the system are obscure; a ‘vertiginous question' about my identity is raised but not adequately answered; the theory of phenomenal concepts conflicts with the ‘transparency of experience'; the epistemology of other minds verges very close to a priori physicalism; the system predicts that dualism is alluring, when it is not.

The ravenous brain: how the new science of consciousness explains our insatiable search for meaning

Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh's starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven's Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and builds on the latest research to propose a new model for how consciousness works. Bor argues that this brain-based faculty evolved as an accelerated knowledge gathering tool. Consciousness is effectively an idea factory-that choice mental space dedicated to innovation, a key component of which is the discovery of deep structures within the contents of our awareness. This model explains our brains' ravenous appetite for information-and in particular, its constant search for patterns. Why, for instance, after all our physical needs have been met, do we recreationally solve crossword or Sudoku puzzles? Such behavior may appear biologically wasteful, but, according to Bor, this search for structure can yield immense evolutionary benefits-it led our ancestors to discover fire and farming, pushed modern society to forge ahead in science and technology, and guides each one of us to understand and control the world around us. But the sheer innovative power of human consciousness carries with it the heavy cost of mental fragility. Bor discusses the medical implications of his theory of consciousness, and what it means for the origins and treatment of psychiatric ailments, including attention-deficit disorder, schizophrenia, manic depression, and autism. All mental illnesses, he argues, can be reformulated as disorders of consciousness-a perspective that opens up new avenues of treatment for alleviating mental suffering. A controversial view of consciousness, The Ravenous Brain links cognition to creativity in an ingenious solution to one of science's biggest mysteries.

What the brain's intrinsic activity can tell us about consciousness? A tri-dimensional view

Current neuroscience applies a bi-dimensional model to consciousness. Content and level of consciousness have been distinguished from each other in their underlying neuronal mechanisms. This though leaves open the role of the brain's intrinsic activity and its particular temporal and spatial structure in consciousness. I here review and investigate the spatial and temporal features of the brain's intrinsic activity in detail and postulate what I describe as spatiotemporal structure that implies a virtual (e.g., statistically based) spatiotemporal continuity. Such spatiotemporal continuity is supposed to structure and organize the neural processing of the incoming extrinsic stimuli and their potential association with consciousness. I therefore conclude that the current bi-dimensional view of consciousness focusing only on content and level may need to be complemented by a third dimension, the form, e.g., spatiotemporal structure, as provided by the intrinsic activity. In short, I here opt for tri-rather than bi-dimensional view of consciousness.

Multimodal Hip Hop Productions as Media Literacies

This study draws on ethnographic data from a year-long multimodal media production (MMP) course and the experience of an African American female adolescent who used the production of multimodal Hip Hop texts to express her creativity and growing socially conscious view of the world. The study demonstrates how students made meaning multimodally and how media production, in combination with participating in community-based research, provided powerful opportunities for youth to develop new literacies, especially critical media literacies. [Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of The Educational Forum for the following free supplemental resources: Figure 1 and Figure 2, which show pictures of Gina and her group, the lyrics to the raps, gestures used with the raps, and other pertinent information.]

About Subjectivity and Reality: Comments on the letter of Ping Sun and Ravi Prakash “Revisiting the Concepts of Subjectivity and Reality in Many-Worlds View of Consciousness and Super-Consciousness”

The issues of subjectivity and reality are difficult for analyzing them, but they are extremely interesting and are actively debated in psychology and philosophy. The emergence of quantum mechanics significantly influenced the nature of the debate on these issues. In recent decades many authors apply the Everett’s (“many-worlds”) interpretation of quantum mechanics in this context. I attempted to approach these problems by rewording of the Everett’s concept as coexistence of different “classical realities” which are separated from each other in consciousness (instead of the usual formulation that different “Everett’s worlds” coexist, with a twin of each observer in each Everett’s world). In this formulation it is natural to assume that the separation of alternative classical realities is just what we call consciousness. The direct consequence of this assumption is that turning off consciousness or its weakening stops separation and opens access to all or many alternative classical realities. New abilities arising in this state were called super-consciousness. These abilities include super-intuition (obtaining knowledge from nowhere) and control of “subjectively perceived reality”. The resulting theory was called Extended Everett Concept (EEC). NeuroQuantology | June 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 2| Page 348-349