Combining Minds
February 20, 2019
Luke Roelofs
Abstract: This chapter looks at five arguments that have been advanced to show that minds cannot combine (under the heading of the “combination problem for panpsychism”) and considers the options for addressing them. They are the subject-summing argument, the unity argument, the privacy argument, the boundary argument, and the incompatible contexts argument. All of these arguments, under...
February 12, 2019
New essays on the philosophy of Ned Block, with substantive and wide-ranging responses by Block. Perhaps more than any other philosopher of mind, Ned Block synthesizes philosophical and scientific approaches to the mind; he is unique in moving back and forth across this divide, doing so with creativity and intensity. Over the course of his career, Block has made groundbreaking contributions to...
The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Psychology of Luck
February 11, 2019
J. Carter
Contemporary debates about epistemic luck and its relation to knowledge have traditionally proceeded against a tacit background commitment to cognitive internalism, the thesis that cognitive processes play out inside the head. In particular, safety-based approaches (e.g., Pritchard 2005; 2007; Luper-Foy 1984; Sainsbury 1997; Sosa 1999; Williamson 2000) reveal this commitment by taking for...
BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS eBooks
February 8, 2019
Paulo J. Negro
Popular theories of consciousness convey the notion that traces of consciousness exist even below the level of single-celled organisms. Alternatively, consciousness may emerge from the informational nature of life. Fundamental processes that, when scaled up, might give origin to the “mind” must transit from biological mechanisms to information. Portraying the subject-world dialectic of...
February 8, 2019
Joshua Eichler-Summers
preprint
Mind-wandering is associated with the simultaneous activation of a network of different brain regions known formally as the default mode network. Forward looking anxious mind-wandering (or worry) occurs when activity in this network is coupled with a biological fear response in the brain. The fear response constrains the con-tent of anxious mind-wandering, with imagined catastrophised scenarios...
PsyArXiv
February 8, 2019
Nicholas Martin Rosseinsky
preprint
I identify seven crucial questions for individual theories-of-consciousness, and apply them to five leading approaches (IIT, GNW, PC, HoT and Orch-OR), highlighting similarities and differences. Under simple quantification, the median score is 1.5/7 (or about 20%!), and the field-leader is Orch-OR (but still scoring only 2.5/7!). Beyond these introductory illustrations, the seven-question...
IntechOpen eBooks
February 7, 2019
Shoichi Shiota, Michio Nomura
1 citation
Body-mind approaches (e.g., yoga, mindfulness meditation, Pilates method, and cognitive behavior therapy) are commonly used by the public today. However, the comprehensive neurobiological framework of effects of body-mind approaches is unknown. To begin, we discuss the dynamic and static models of each body-mind approaches from neurobiological perspectives, as well as from the standpoint of...
Religions
February 7, 2019
Yaakov Ariel
1 citation
The article examines Allen Ginsberg’s cultural and spiritual journeys, and traces the poet’s paths as foreshadowing those of many American Jews of the last generation. Ginsberg was a unique individual, whose choices were very different other men of his era. However, it was larger developments in American society that allowed him to take steps that were virtually unthinkable during his parents’...
Antropologìčnì Vimìri Fìlosofsʹkih Doslìdžen'
February 6, 2019
O. A. Bazaluk
5 citations
In recent decades, attempts to create and argue a new ontology of existence that could provide a robust alternative to the mainstream physicalist metaphysics have been made in science and philosophy. A new book by Bernardo Kastrup (2019, 312 p.), a well-known specialist in the field of philosophy of mind and neuroscience of consciousness, offers the author's conceptually clear and rigorous...
Adaptive Behavior
February 1, 2019
German Bula
Baruch Spinoza is often cited as a forerunner of current ideas in neuroscience and neurobiology and is seen as an early champion of embodied cognition. This article aims to specify in what way Spinoza’s ideas are useful to current research on the mind-body problem. Rather than seeking coincidences here and there between Spinoza’s positions and current findings, the article proposes that Spinoza...