95 papers in the library · 4,079 citations · publishing 1990-2026
Oxford University Press eBooks February 2, 2011 Nevill Drury 1 citation
Abstract If we are to understand the nature of contemporary magical practice and its relationship with the "virtual" world of the Internet, it may well be that new paradigms are required—new paradigms for research into altered states of consciousness and new paradigms for the study of magic, as well. This chapter explores magic in the digital age, commencing with Terence McKenna's "cyberdelic"...
Oxford University Press eBooks February 2, 2011 Nevill Drury
Much of the current interest in Western occultism, and contemporary paganism in particular, is directly related to the rise and importance of feminism as a contemporary social movement. Contemporary witchcraft—often referred to as Wicca—and its more eclectic variant, Goddess worship, both focus on the veneration of the sacred Feminine—the Universal Goddess—in her myriad manifestations. There...
Oxford University Press eBooks February 2, 2011 Nevill Drury
Abstract This chapter profiles three notable twentieth-century occultists—Dion Fortune, Austin Osman Spare, and Rosaleen Norton. All three can be regarded as key bridging figures linking earlier generations of magical practitioners with the contemporary neopagan movement. Dion Fortune (1890–1946) studied psychoanalysis at the University of London. Through her friend Maiya Curtis-Webb, Violet...
Oxford University Press eBooks January 6, 2011 Anna Marmodoro 10 citations
The human mind often relies on external mechanisms for carrying out its cognitive processes, for example by using a calculator. Vehicle externalism and in particular the Extended Mind theory (Clark and Chalmers 1998) explore whether such external mechanisms, under specified conditions, are more than mere instruments for the mind; the claim is that they are parts of the mind and thus extend it...
Oxford University Press eBooks December 3, 2010 Andrea Knutson
Chapter 4 examines the impact that Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and its demonstration of probabilistic thinking had on William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (Varieties) and demonstrates the central role the conversion dynamic plays in James’s work, focusing on his development of a psychology of religious experience in the Varieties and of pragmatism as a philosophy...
Oxford University Press eBooks December 1, 2010 Dan Zahavi 80 citations
This chapter first outlines a view regarding the relationship between consciousness, self-consciousness, and a minimal notion of self that is widespread in the phenomenological tradition. It then discusses some of the motivations behind this proposal, and then in the main part of the chapter critically engages with various objections that have recently been raised against this view by Albahari...
Oxford University Press eBooks December 1, 2010 Miri Albahari 49 citations
Abstract Buddhists maintain that the enlightened person is freed from the illusion of 'self' with its ideas of 'me' and 'mine'. What notion of self is at stake here? What must be the case, with regard to the self and consciousness, for nirvana to be psychologically possible? Is the picture that emerges a plausible one in the philosophy of mind? Part One outlines the notion of self under...
Oxford University Press eBooks December 1, 2010 Joel Krueger 16 citations
This chapter argues for the counter-intuitive thesis that consciousness does not require a self. Granted, a central feature of conscious states is that their mode of appearance exhibits an irreducibly first-personal nature, and this ‘how’ of consciousness is what secures its phenomenal character. It seems natural to assume that this ‘how’ points back to a ‘who’. This chapter argues, however,...
Oxford University Press eBooks December 1, 2010 Jonardon Ganeri 5 citations
Subjectivity, Selfhood and the Use of the Word 'I' JONARDON GANERI I. Asan ˙ga and Vasubandhu on Self-Consciousness and Conscious Attention to Oneself A well-known Buddhist philosophy of mind has it that conscious experience is a synthesis of five forms of activity: the processes of registering, appraising, stereotyping, readying, and consciously attending.1These philosophers say that the last...
Oxford University Press eBooks December 1, 2010 Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad 2 citations
This chapter looks at the way Advaita Vedānta both affirms a unified consciousness (which might be called a self), and rejects the intuition that ‘I’ picks out that self. Its position is situated cross-culturally through relating it to two contemporary and seemingly opposed positions. On one hand there is Zahavi's theory of a minimal self that, while being only a phenomenological core,...
Oxford University Press eBooks November 24, 2010 Ernest Hartmann 1 citation
Dreaming, daydreaming, and thinking are done by people, and people differ in all sorts of ways. Different people think differently and they dream differently as well. This is so obvious as to hardly be worth mentioning. But are there systematic differences? Can aspects of personality be related to dreaming? Early studies suggested little relation between dreaming and measures of personality....
Oxford University Press eBooks October 28, 2010 Tim Bayne
This chapter examines three disorders of consciousness that are frequently said to involve breakdowns in the unity of consciousness: anosognosia, schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder (‘mulitiplicity’). There is some truth in such claims for in each of these conditions certain aspects of the unity of consciousness are impaired: in anosognosia we see a breakdown in the normal unity...
Oxford University Press eBooks October 28, 2010 Tim Bayne
The chapter examines an account of phenomenal unity that appeals to the closure of phenomenal content under conjunction—‘closure,’ for short. The chapter begins by locating closure within the context of representational treatments of phenomenal consciousness. Four objections to closure are then examined. A first objection involves the claim that inconsistent states can be phenomenally unified....
Oxford University Press eBooks October 7, 2010 David J. Chalmers 234 citations
This chapter analyzes aspects of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. It focuses on the phenomenal character and the intentional content of perceptual states, canvassing various possible relations among them. It argues that there is a good case for a sort of representationalism, although this may not take the form that its advocates often suggest. By mapping out some of...
Oxford University Press eBooks October 7, 2010 David J. Chalmers 38 citations
This chapter addresses the question: how can we isolate the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) in the absence of a “consciousness meter,” which measures consciousness directly? The obvious answer is that we rely on verbal reports and other behavioral indicators of consciousness. Importantly, the use of these indicators tacitly relies on pre-experimental principles that connect these...
Oxford University Press eBooks August 19, 2010 J. Kevin Ο’Regan 10 citations
This chapter discusses three problematic aspects of sensory experiences: their ineffability, structure, and ‘what it's like’ to undergo the experiences. It argues that these features of sensory experiences seem to admit of no explanation in terms of brain mechanisms. However, the sensorimotor account of phenomenal consciousness provides a satisfactory account of these puzzling features of...
Oxford University Press eBooks August 19, 2010 Dana H. Ballard
Much previous work has concentrated on finding a mechanistic explanation of how it feels to be conscious and, specifically, in trying to trace that feeling to the neural substrate. This chapter argues that the question of why consciousness exists may have a ready answer when compared to its useful partner, the unconscious. Unconscious programs represent repeated and reliable interactions...
Oxford University Press eBooks June 24, 2010 Murray Shanahan 1 citation
The Global Workspace Theory of Bernard Baars proposes that an individual's cognitive architecture hosts both the conscious and the unconscious but the conscious thoughts are generally given more acknowledgment. Nevertheless, the processes in the cognitive architecture are transmitted through a series of episodes of broadcasts wherein the information contained in the global workspace are...
Oxford University Press eBooks March 10, 2010 Paull Nunez
This chapter takes a highly speculative approach in which the hard problem of consciousness is approached with questions about a category beyond ordinary information; that is, Ultra-Information, defined broadly to include ordinary information, unknown physical processes, and consciousness. Thoughts, emotions, self-awareness, memory, and the contents of the unconscious are, by definition,...
Oxford University Press eBooks January 21, 2010 Michael N. Marsh 46 citations
What certainty is there for personal survival after death? Five key authors, critically analysed in this thesis, think that OB/ND experiences offer such assurances. Most OB/ND events follow severe clinical crises profoundly embarrassing cerebral function. At the nadir of brain function, invariably resulting in unconsciousness, authors aver that the escape of soul (Sabom), mind, or free...
Oxford University Press eBooks September 10, 2009 Dan Arnold 2 citations
This chapter draws connections between the idea of svasamvitti or svasamvedana (reflexive awareness, apperception), a phenomenon very controversial in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy from the 6th through the 19th centuries, and the idea of methodological solipsism in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, made popular by Fodor in the late 20th century. It explores many...
Oxford University Press eBooks September 2, 2009 Mazviita Chirimuuta, Ian Gold 18 citations
Abstract This article examines the concept of the receptive field (RF) of visual neurons. It introduces the concept of visual RFs by discussing the classical picture of primary visual cortex (V1) physiology and discusses the psychophysics and computational vision of contrast discrimination to place the visual neurophysiology in context. It evaluates some recent data which questioned the...
Oxford University Press eBooks September 2, 2009 Charles Wallis, Wayne Wright 5 citations
Abstract This article aims to clarify the central commitment and the claimed advantages of enactivism, a theoretical approach for understanding the mind. The analysis reveals that there is no compelling reason to embrace either the enactivists' aim of completely revolutionizing vision science or their understanding of the character of that new vision science. There are also numerous serious...
Oxford University Press eBooks September 2, 2009 Olav Hammer 5 citations
Abstract The study of Western esotericism has come into its own in recent years. Because this tradition incubated a number of more recent movements—from Neopaganism to the New Age—contemporary studies of esotericism overlap studies of these related phenomena. This article articulates a concept of esotericism based on five characteristics: social formations, rituals, purported objectives,...
Oxford University Press eBooks August 28, 2009 Dale S. Wright
Chapter 5 is divided into two sections. The first section presents an overview of the Mahayana Buddhist teachings on the perfection of meditation, dhyānapāramitā. The second section inquires into various ways to conceive of contemplative practice in the contemporary, global world. It analyzes meditation at three levels of human consciousness—immediate experience, reflective experience, and...