Ai & Society
March 28, 2018
Steve Torrance, Frank Schumann
50 citations
Improvisation is ubiquitous in life. It deserves, we suggest, to occupy a more central role in cognitive science. In the current paper, we take the case of jazz improvisation as a rich model domain from which to explore the nature of improvisation and expertise more generally. We explore the activity of the jazz improviser against the theoretical backdrop of Dreyfus’s account of expertise as...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
March 26, 2018
Michael Winkelman
42 citations
Psychedelic entity experiences are examined from perspectives of evolutionary psychology and neurophenomenology. Their similarities with other entity experiences illustrate the need for a general biological explanation of entity experiences. Mechanisms are proposed to involve innate modules, operators, and intelligences that underlie ordinary cognitive inferences and provide the basis for...
March 25, 2018
M. Roy
Mysticism is an important component of religion, representing its experiential dimension. The term itself is of western origin, adopted by Christianity, evolving over time and extending in meaning only in the nineteenth century to include experiences of encounters with the ultimate nature of Reality in religions. Thus, a category of mysticism has developed, which can be studied in a comparative...
Medical Hypotheses
March 23, 2018
K.p.c. Kuypers
16 citations
Our creativity is challenged daily when facing new situations asking for novel solutions. Creativity, a multicomponent construct includes flexible divergent and rigid convergent thinking. Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin can enhance creativity and affect state of mind (mood, empathy, openness). Of note, flexible thinking is disturbed in psychopathological conditions like anxiety disorders and...
Routledge eBooks
March 22, 2018
Alan Mulhern
Jung&s;s method of contacting the unconscious and working with it can be understood partially as a creative reaction to the Freudian methods which he adopted in his early practice. In the spirit of Jung&s;s creative methods for contacting the contents of the unconscious, but also in line with the use of meditational-type practices within psychotherapy, this chapter illustrates a method that can...
Oxford Scholarship Online
March 22, 2018
Uriah Kriegel
Chap. 1 concerned Brentano’s theory of consciousness, and Chap. 2 his theory of intentionality, the mark of the conscious. This chapter lays the foundations for the rest of the book by discussing the three fundamental modes of conscious intentionality in Brentano’s theory of mind. This three-way distinction is crucial, as will later be seen, to Brentano’s metaphysics and value theory.
Routledge eBooks
March 21, 2018
Paul Marcus
An "intraworldly mysticism" is also a part of engaging the Infinite, of glimpsing immortality. To experience in oneself the love and joy of communing with the Infinite, that is, a sense of infinite being, knowledge, and bliss, requires a state of mind that nurtures the transcendent urge through compassion. Whether one calls them selfish cravings, inordinate needs, or infantile narcissism,...
Ata: Journal of Psychotherapy Aotearoa New Zealand
March 21, 2018
Seán Manning
The second in a series on secularism in psychotherapy, this article reprises the idea that paranormal, religious, spiritual or visionary experience is an essential quality of the human mind, and rather than being minimised as merely neurological events or interpreted, for instance as regression, can be given a position of meaning and importance. A distinction is made between the description of...
Mindfulness
March 19, 2018
Joon Hwan Jang, Jae‐Hun Kim, Je-Yeon Yun et al.
31 citations
The majority of meditation involves focusing attention on internal events or sensations and becoming aware of emotions. The insula cortex, through a functional connection with the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions, plays a key role in integrating external sensory information with internal bodily state signals and emotional awareness. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine...
March 15, 2018
Paavo Pylkkänen
9 citations
This chapter provides a brief historical introduction to quantum theory, and shows that the theory opens up some radically new ways of thinking about the place of mind and consciousness in nature. Quantum theory is all about learning, on the basis of scientific experiments, to question the "obvious" truths about the nature of the physical world and to come up with more coherent alternatives....