Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Berit Brogaard
20 citations
The most central metaphysical question about phenomenal consciousness is that of what constitutes phenomenal consciousness, whereas the most central epistemic question about consciousness is that of whether science can eventually provide an explanation of the phenomenon. Many philosophers have argued that science doesn’t have the means to answer the question of what consciousness is (the...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
14 citations
Philosophers of mind have been arguing for decades about the nature of phenomenal consciousness and the relation between brain and mind. More recently, neuroscientists and philosophers of science have entered the discussion. Which neural activities in the brain constitute phenomenal consciousness, and how could science distinguish the neural correlates of consciousness from its neural...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Jeroen J A Van Boxtel, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
11 citations
In this chapter, we discuss possible confounds that need to be carefully controlled for when the neural constitution of phenomenal conscious perception is studied. First, we discuss previous psychological or neural studies that clearly dissociated confounding factors (in particular, attention, report and memory) from phenomenal consciousness. We discuss several important phenomena and...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Zoe Drayson
3 citations
The scientific study of consciousness is constantly making new discoveries, but one particular aspect of consciousness remains problematic to explain. This is the fact that conscious experiences present themselves to us in a first-person way: there is something it feels like to be the subject of a conscious experience. This ‘phenomenal’ aspect of consciousness seems to be subjective, private,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Jonathan P. Opie, Gerard J. O’brien
2 citations
Philosophers have largely abandoned the claim that the special sciences will ultimately reduce to microphysics in favour of the view that the special sciences trade in functional explanations. However, a careful examination of scientific practice reveals that the explanatory strategy of the special sciences is neither reductionist nor functionalist, but mechanistic. Mechanistic explanations...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Derk Pereboom
In this article I set out in concise form the physicalist account of the mental I develop in Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism (Pereboom, 2011). I first set out a response to the knowledge and conceivability arguments against physicalism, one that features the open possibility that introspection represents phenomenal states as having qualitative features they actually lack. I then...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Jaan Aru, Talis Bachmann, Wolf Singer et al.
It has been proposed that one key step for solving the mystery of consciousness is to locate the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). The experimental paradigms for revealing the NCC have commonly applied the contrast between conditions with and without conscious perception. However, such contrast does not exclusively reveal the neural processes directly related to conscious experience of...
Advances in Consciousness Research
June 17, 2015
Tom A. de Graaf, Alexander T. Sack
What sorts of brain processes covary with consciousness? We argue that empirical neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) include neural substrates (actual conscious experience representation in the brain), neural prerequisites and neural consequences of a conscious experience. In a conventional correlative paradigm, these three NCCs are principally indistinguishable. However a multi-pronged...
Advances in Consciousness Research
December 16, 2013
169 citations
The Series provides a forum for scholars from different scientific disciplines and fields of knowledge who study consciousness in its multifaceted aspects. Thus the Series includes (but is not limited to) the various areas of cognitive science, including cognitive psychology, brain science, philosophy and linguistics. The orientation of the Series is toward developing new interdisciplinary and...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Roberto Palaia
3 citations
A semantic shift of the word consciousness (conscientia, conscience, Gewissen, Bewusstsein, coscienza) occurred in 17th- and 18th-century European languages. While in pre-modern times the term consciousness had been related to theology and ethics, in early modern thought, a new meaning was added to the term, somehow different from the original one. Early modern philosophers and scientists used...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Monica Riccio
The paper deals with the transformation of sensation concept throughout modern thinking. A particularr focus is laid on the transition of sensation from the external – the body and his surface – into the inside – the depth and darkness of human consciousness. If “nothing but a body can touch and be touched” (Lucretius, De rerum natura, I, 304), it is namely in the passivity, in the stance of...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Adrian Alsmith
This paper aims to examine the reasons for endorsing the idea of pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness. The guiding question will be: why should one think that any description of consciousness that posits PBS is correct? The aim of this discussion is to show how hard this question is to answer and the kinds of considerations that one should bring to bear in attempting to answer it. Keywords:...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Antonio Lamarra
The idea of consciousness, as subjective awareness of the self and of its mental contents, appeared in European culture only in the late 17th century as resulting from a relatively rapid process of conceptual development, which had started in the framework of the post-Cartesian culture. It was rooted in the ancient idea of moral conscience insofar it requested as a condition the existence of a...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Dave Ward, Mog Stapleton
We present a specific elaboration and partial defense of the claims that cognition is enactive, embodied, embedded, affective and (potentially) extended. According to the view we will defend, the enactivist claim that perception and cognition essentially depend upon the cognizer’s interactions with their environment is fundamental. If a particular instance of this kind of dependence obtains, we...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Consciousness in Interaction is an interdisciplinary collection with contributions from philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and historians of philosophy. It revolves around the idea that consciousness emerges from, and impacts on, our skilled interactions with the natural and social context. Section one discusses how phenomenal consciousness and subjective selfhood are grounded...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Geri Cerchiai
Face to Descartes’ rationalism, in the book entitled De antiquissima Italorum sapientia Vico tries to examine non reflexive aspects of thought. According to Vico, the clear and distinct idea cannot originate the cogito as a criterion of truth; moreover, the clear and distinct idea exchanges the intelligere of God with the human cogitare; third, the method of doubt doesn’t consider the link, in...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Bryony Pierce
The mind-body problem – how conscious experience can arise from a physical system – is commonly taken to be the problem of how phenomenal properties could come to accompany psychological or behavioural functions, which, being functional and attainable by non-conscious entities in virtue of their physical features, are not viewed as part of the ‘hard problem’. This implies that there is a...
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Rick Dale, Deborah P. Tollefsen, Christopher T. Kello
2 citations
We review theories and empirical research on underlying mechanisms of selfhood, awareness, and conscious experience. The mechanisms that have been identified for these phenomena are many and multifarious, lying at many levels of space and time, and complexity and abstractness. Proposals have included the global workspace for conscious information, action and its centrality to self awareness,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 31, 2011
Arthur Melnick
The predominant positive view among philosophers and scientists alike is that consciousness is something realized in brain activity. This view, however, largely fails to capture what consciousness is like according to how it shows itself to conscious beings. What this work proposes instead is that consciousness is a phenomenon that exists in and throughout the body. Apart from whether or not it...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Dean Radin
Does telepathy – a purported means of communication unmediated by the ordinary senses – exist? Experimental evidence, meta-analyses and debates suggesting an affirmative answer can be found in a growing number of mainstream journals, and a physical basis for telepathy appears to be increasingly plausible based upon considerations of quantum holism and advancements in quantum information...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Bangalore N Gangadhar, Naren P. Rao
Consciousness can be altered willfully. There are different methods to induce altered state of consciousness including psychological means. While some such induced states are pathological many others are not. Indian and other eastern concepts emphasize one can induce "higher states of consciousness" oneself. Physiological changes are observed in these altered states of consciousness that point...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Gustav Kuhn
Magicians have developed powerful techniques to manipulate our perception and awareness. Many of these techniques share similarities with phenomena typically investigated by psychologists and neuroscientists. Here a novel approach to the study of consciousness is proposed which utilizes the magician’s expertise to complement more traditional experimental laboratory based research. It is argued...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Dominic H. Ffytche
Neurobiological accounts of consciousness typically partition brain activity into two components: one correlated with conscious experience (the neural correlate of consciousness) and the other not. Here I use evidence derived from visual hallucinations in the context of eye disease – the Charles Bonnet Syndrome – to examine the nature of what might be termed the visual unconscious. Forcing us...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Elaine K. Perry, Valerie Laws
Among agents which alter the boundary between conscious and non conscious cognition, the ritualistic use of plant species (often in a spiritual context, hence ‘plants of the gods’) provides an example of long-standing empirical knowledge subsequently verified by scientific (chemical, pharmacological and psychological) evidence. Based on such an impressive record of acquired knowledge,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Timothy J. Crow
Hearing “voices”, the experience of thoughts as not one’s own, and incoherent speech are symptoms of mental illness (usually termed “schizophrenia”). Here I argue that (1) the “torque” is the feature that defines the human brain as four chambered by comparison with the two chambers of the generalized mammalian brain, (2) by separating “thought” from speech production in the frontal lobes, and...