Home parenteral nutrition (HPN) is the ultimate treatment for patients who suffering from chronic intestinal failure (CIF). We tested the feasibility and effects of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) in patients on HPN. Because of the high dropout rate, however, we were next urged to develop and test a web-based coaching program (web-based MBCT). The aim of the present study was to...
According to illusionism, phenomenal consciousness is an introspective illusion. The illusion problem (Frankish 2016) is to explain the cause of the illusion, or why we are powerfully disposed to judge—erroneously—that we are phenomenally conscious. I propose a theory to solve the illusion problem. I argue that on the basis of three hypotheses about the mind—which I call introspective opacity,...
This paper introduces a new construct, the ‘pivotal mental state’, which is defined as a hyper-plastic state aiding rapid and deep learning that can mediate psychological transformation. We believe this new construct bears relevance to a broad range of psychological and psychiatric phenomena. We argue that pivotal mental states serve an important evolutionary function, that is, to aid...
Clark ( Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25 (3–4), 71–87, 2018 ) worries that predictive processing (PP) accounts of perception introduce a puzzling disconnect between the content of personal-level perceptual states and their underlying subpersonal representations. According to PP, in perception, the brain encodes information about the environment in conditional probability density...
Recently, a movement reviving psychedelic drugs has emerged among physicians, echoed by activists like Michael Pollan, who promoted psychedelics for treating a variety of conditions and for "the betterment of well people" in his latest book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Pollan...
Benefiel and Lee assembled this volume to advance a newer thread of conversation in the field of contemplative studies: the attempt to move beyond its privileging of Buddhism and Western science.Their own experience as scholars of Christian spirituality who attended meetings of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education and of the Contemplative Studies Unit of the American...
While the extraordinary pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mental health have received considerable attention, less attention has been placed on the well-being of educators. School system employees play a vital role in society, and teacher levels of well-being are associated with the educational outcomes of young people. We extend extant research on the prevalence and correlates of...
A multi-decade exploration into the theoretical foundations of artificial and natural general intelligence, which has been expressed in a series of books and papers and used to guide a series of practical and research-prototype software systems, is reviewed at a moderate level of detail. The review covers underlying philosophies (patternist philosophy of mind, foundational phenomenological and...
Neural complexity and brain entropy (BEN) have gained greater interest in recent years. The dynamics of neural signals and their relations with information processing continue to be investigated through different measures in a variety of noteworthy studies. The BEN of spontaneous neural activity decreases during states of reduced consciousness. This evidence has been showed in primary...
Faith healings, as reported in the faith traditions, take us into a different territory of consciousness. Placebo effects are thought to be a quantum reality and may be responsible for some of the anomalous healings. If spiritual dimensions are brought into the equation, some of the healing miracles may also have spiritual and spiritistic components. Advanced external spiritual agencies may be...