Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Nivedita Gangopadhyay
The extended mind hypothesis (EM) (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Clark 2008) is an influential hypothesis in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I discuss the support waiting for EM in social cognition, particularly in some cases of embodied intersubjective interactions or action-understanding. A main claim to be defended by way of defending EM is the elimination of the boundary...
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
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
Adrian J T 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
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
August 7, 2012
Erik Rietveld
There are important structural similarities in the way that animals and humans engage in unreflective activities, including unreflective social interactions in the case of higher animals. Firstly, it is a form of unreflective embodied intelligence that is ‘motivated’ by the situation. Secondly, both humans and non-human animals are responsive to ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979); to possibilities for...
Advances in Consciousness Research
August 7, 2012
Manuela Sanna
This study is intended to follow up and illustrate the theoretical steps through which G.B. Vico defined the concept of “Consciousness” (coscienza) in the works that preceded his masterpiece, the Scienza Nuova. The theme of consciousness is elaborated by the Neapolitan philosopher in a very different way from Descartes’s proposals, since it comes out by approaching verum to facere and, later,...
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
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
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
July 11, 2012
Given that a representational system's phenomenal experience must be intrinsic to it and must therefore arise from its own temporal dynamics, consciousness is best understood — indeed, can only be understood — as being in time. Despite that, it is still acceptable for theories of consciousness to be summarily exempted from addressing the temporality of phenomenal experience. The chapters...
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Jeffrey Yoshimi
I describe and partially formalize two aspects of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy, in a way that highlights their relevance to cognitive science. First, I describe “constitutive phenomenology”, the study of structures (what I call phenomenological “models”) that constitute a person’s sense of reality. These structures develop incrementally over the course of a person’s life, and...
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Björn Merker
A brain charged with guiding its body through a complex and lively world from a position of solitary confinement inside its opaque skull faces a set of functional challenges beset with inverse and ill-posed problems at every turn. Uncertainty and ambiguity therefore encumber all cortical labors, making probability distributions the natural medium of its disambiguating inferential operations....
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Dan Lloyd
A useful theory linking dynamical systems to phenomenal experience will be a story thrice told. It will involve some description of phenomenal experience, which should be true. It will also involve some sort of dynamical model (second). But (third) the model will have to be at least plausibly implementable in human beings – that’s where the theory becomes useful. Finally, once all three stories...
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Tomer Fekete, Shimon Edelman
The proponents of machine consciousness predicate the mental life of a machine, if any, exclusively on its formal, organizational structure, rather than on its physical composition. Given that matter is organized on a range of levels in time and space, this generic stance must be further constrained by a principled choice of levels on which the posited structure is supposed to reside. Indeed,...
Advances in Consciousness Research
July 11, 2012
Stephanie Huette, Michael J. Spivey
This chapter explores the consequences of treating consciousness as a fuzzy dynamical system. A fuzzy dynamical system is one in which labeled concepts and percepts are altered as a function of context and conditions, and these changes occur continuously in time. We offer speculations on the groundwork for a consciousness state space in which the sets of trajectories over time form tube-like...
Advances in Consciousness Research
January 25, 2012
Johannes Michalak, Jan M. Burg, Thomas Heidenreich
During the past decade, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) aiming at relapse prevention in depression has been developed and empirically tested. All exercises taught during MBCT are based on the development of a heightened awareness of one’s body. The important role of the body is also stressed in a recently emerging interdisciplinary field of research termed ‘embodiment’. This research...
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
June 30, 2011
The touchstone of the evolution of mammals from primitive reptiles has been the development of an increased level of activity … The skull has been affected primarily by the great enlargement of the brain needed in an active animal …. In the evolution through reptiles to mammals, numerous changes occur in the nervous system which are related in large measure to the increased activity and...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Stan Franklin, Bernard J. Baars
Unconscious processes come in two varieties, the preconscious, whose contents may become conscious, and the never-conscious, whose contents may not. In this chapter we make use of Global Workspace Theory and its LIDA model to catalogue never-conscious and preconscious processes, and offer an explanation of the functionally of the distinction. The LIDA/GWT model suggests that the functional...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Signy Sheldon, Morris Moscovitch
A commonly held assumption is that consciousness is a defining feature that distinguishes explicit memory (with conscious awareness) from implicit memory (without conscious awareness). Although early studies support this notion, recent evidence suggests that conscious and non-conscious memory systems may share crucial underlying processes. Here, we propose that one locus of interaction between...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Antti Revonsuo, Katja Valli
Based on biological realism, that is, the philosophical assumption that consciousness is a real natural biological phenomenon in the brain, we argue that dreaming is a pure form of phenomenality, and suggest that the dreaming brain could be used as a model system for consciousness. The dreaming brain offers the most challenging model system that represents all the theoretically and...
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
Heather Ashton
The endocannabinoid system acts as a neuromodulator, interacting with other neuromodulators such as the opioids. It influences all vital body functions and sets the tone of every conscious thought and feeling. It operates largely below conscious levels but occasionally floats into consciousness where it is perceived as perfect bliss and pain-free calm.
Advances in Consciousness Research
October 28, 2010
William Sedley
Auditory consciousness takes many forms. Some of these, such as auditory perception and imagination, are familiar to nearly all people, which others, such as tinnitus or hearing voices, are rare and unfamiliar to most. This chapter proposes a simplified conceptual model of the auditory system, involving bottom-up influences from the lower auditory pathways and top-down influences from higher...
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...