The greatest tragicomedy in the human enterprise, esp. in psychology, is the challenges in defining the philosophies of mind and consciousness. Euro-American philosophies assume that the philosophy of mind is the philosophy of consciousness. Vedānta, which is perhaps the only authentic philosophy of consciousness and not a philosophy of mind assumes that mind is a particular process through...
This paper explores dimensions of culture and practice that shape the cognitive pathways leading to different beliefs about God(s)’ mind(s). Varying socio-ecological sources of insecurity are linked to types and modes of cognitive processing, which in turn promote different constellations of beliefs about supernatural agents dubbed the heuristic and non-heuristic models of God(s)’ mind(s). The...
The theory of autopoiesis has been influential in many areas of theoretical biology, especially in the fields of artificial life and origins of life. However, it has not managed to productively connect with mainstream biology, partly for theoretical reasons, but arguably mainly because deriving specific working hypotheses has been challenging. The theory has recently undergone significant...
This article outlines an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective on the fundamental components that comprise mental health and promote well-being. The central aim of this paper is to answer essential but often overlooked questions related to the field of mental health, such as: What is the mind? What is the basis of well-being? What is the self and how does it develop? We will offer...
Abstract: Recent debates on phenomenal consciousness have shown renewed interest for the idea that experience generally includes an experience of the self—a self-experience—whatever else it may present the self with. When a subject has an ordinary experience (as of a bouncing red ball, for example), the thought goes, she is not just phenomenally aware of the world as being presented in a...
Maternal stress is one modifiable variable that could influence mother-infant signaling and negatively affect breastfeeding and infant growth. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that relaxation therapy would reduce maternal stress and improve infant growth, behavior, and breastfeeding outcomes after late preterm (LP) and early-term (ET) delivery. A single-blind randomized controlled trial...
Mind wandering, also known as task-unrelated thought, refers to the drift of attention from a focal task or train of thought. Because self-caught measures of mind wandering require participants to spontaneously indicate when they notice their attention drift, self-caught methodologies provide a way to measure mind wandering with meta-awareness. Given the proposed role of meta-awareness in...
Medical well-regarded policy recommendations for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) are almost exclusively relied on behavioural examination and evaluation of higher-order cognition, and largely disregard the patients’ self. This is so because practically establishing the presence of self-awareness or Selfhood is even more challenging than evaluating the presence of consciousness....
Prior research suggests brief mindfulness (breath counting) interventions may be effective at attenuating stress-induced alcohol-related cravings. However, it remains unclear whether this reduction in craving is due to increased state mindfulness or mere distraction. To test this, the present study examined whether brief breath counting would attenuate a stress-induced increase in the relative...
Abstract:Dance serves an important role in many religious movements, as it facilitates a particularly engaging bodily awareness through one's mind, senses and emotions, allowing them to consciously achieve a higher state of consciousness, interpreted as religious experience. Adopting a diachronic perspective, this study aims to foster a better understanding of the experiential, sensual and...