In this paper, I describe how artifacts and autobiographical memory are integrated into new systemic wholes, allowing us to remember our personal past in a more reliable and detailed manner. After discussing some empirical work on lifelogging technology, I elaborate on the dimension of autobiographical dependency, which is the degree to which we depend on an object to be able to remember a...
Summary Bodily self-consciousness, the state of mind that allows humans to be aware of their own body, forms the backdrop for almost every human experience, yet its underpinnings remain elusive. Here we combine an ingestible, minimally invasive capsule with surface electrogastrography to probe if gut physiology correlates with bodily self-consciousness in a sample of healthy men during a...
In this paper we introduce the concept of Quantum Yoga, an integrative approach of various practices towards the maintenance, healing and optimization of human physiology to prevent and heal disease, as well as to promote positive wellbeing. Keywords: Yoga, Health, Meditation, Concentration, Consciousness, Integrative Medicine, Preventive Medicine.
Objectives The present study aimed to determine the degree of stress relief and increase in mindfulness attributes experienced by 18 participants in an 8-week Mindful Practice for Teachers (MPT) program. Methods The mixed-methods study design included participant reflections collected throughout the study and self-report measures: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Positive Mindset Index (PMI), and...
In order to develop a true biological science of consciousness, we have to remove humans from the center of reference and develop a bottom-up comparative study of animal minds, as Donald Griffin intended with his call for a “cognitive ethology.” In this article, I make use of the pathological complexity thesis (Veit 2022a, b, c) to show that we can firmly ground a comparative study of animal...
medRxivAugust 28, 2022Dr. Rakesh Sarwal, R. Dhamija, K. Jain et al.
preprint
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unparalleled challenges for health systems worldwide, the impact of which has also been borne by the Healthcare Professionals (HCPs). Numerous studies have revealed the positive effects of Pranayama and Meditation on mental health. The effect of Pranayama in improving mental health of frontline HCP exposed to Covid-19 patients has not been studied....
The goal of this article is to break down the dimensions of consciousness, attempt to reverse engineer their evolutionary function, and make sense of the origins of consciousness by breaking off those dimensions that are more likely to have arisen later. A Darwinian approach will allow us to revise the philosopher’s concept of consciousness away from a single “thing,” an all-or-nothing quality,...
In his technophilosophical investigation Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy, David J. Chalmers discusses the historical skepticism about the human capacity to recognize material reality.Already in the centuries before our era, Chinese, Indian, and Greek thinkers independently raised whether humans could distinguish between what was real and what was an illusion.Chalmers...
Abstract We approach the question ‘What is consciousness?’ in a new way, not as Descartes’ ‘systematic doubt’, but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one’s way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might be beneficial or avoiding those that might be harmful. ‘Possible uses of X to accomplish Y’ are ‘affordances’. The number of uses of X is indefinite...
The tremendous advances of research into artificial intelligence as well as neuroscience made over the last two to three decades have given further support to a renewed interest into philosophical discussions of the mind-body problem. Especially the last decade has seen a revival of panpsychist and idealist considerations, often focused on solving philosophical puzzles like the so-called hard...