During tasks that require continuous engagement, the mind alternates between mental states of focused attention and mind-wandering. Existing research has assessed the functional connectivity of intrinsic brain networks underlying the experience and training of these mental states using "static" approaches that assess connectivity across an entire task. To disentangle the different functional...
The assumption that psychological states and processes are computational in character pervades much of cognitive science, what many call the computational theory of mind. In addition to occupying a central place in cognitive science, the computational theory of mind has also had a second life supporting "individualism", the view that psychological states should be taxonomized so as to supervene...
This chapter recounts the evolution of the author’s benign auditory hypnopompic hallucinations over the past 12 years. They represent a memory retrieval function that can become more elaborate when meditation occurs more frequently.
Roger Jackson summarizes the state of scholarship on the writings and thought of great and historically important Mahāyāna philosopher Nāgārjuna. The chapter moves through historical issues on the philosopher and the literary and legendary sources bearing on his historical location; it turns to an exhaustive overview of writings attributed to him, with special focus on the analysis of the...
Meditation has been shown to have physical, cognitive, and psychological health benefits that can be used to promote healthy aging. However, the common and specific mechanisms of response remain elusive due to the diverse nature of mind–body practices. In this review, we aim to compare the neural circuits implicated in focused-attention meditative practices that focus on present-moment...
This study suggests the psyche is hard wired for spiritual experience, for aesthetic and ethical expression, and that transpersonal expression in literature and the arts is a universal human exploration of perhaps a fundamental ground of being.
In the following meditation I investigate how life is disclosed to human consciousness. I use phenomenology to avoid reducing life to the natural sphere has to avoid the common mistake of objectifying it, that is, of taking life as something, as a property of being. A more justified phenomenological approach that remains open to the supernatural character of life would focus rather on how life...
Humans have been aware for thousands of years that sleep comes in many forms, accompanied by different kinds of mental content. We review the first-person report literature on the frequency and type of content experienced in various stages of sleep, showing that different sleep stages are dissociable at the subjective level. We then relate these subjective differences to the growing literature...
Oxford Handbooks OnlineOctober 5, 2016Mark R. Leary, Kate J. Diebels, Katrina P. Jongman-Sereno et al.
Topics related to self and identity have been of considerable interest to social and personality psychologists because people’s self-relevant thoughts play an important role in their cognitions, motives, emotions, and behavior. Most work in the area of self and identity has focused on phenomena that involve a high degree of self-awareness, egocentrism, and egoism. Phenomena characterized by a...
The community of naturalists accepts that it is intuitively puzzling how phenomenal consciousness with its diaphanous texture could have emerged from matter and how it can now be realized in an abundance of sentient beings. Yet the prevailing consensus, with some notable exceptions, is that consciousness, like life, must have emerged diachronically from matter fi nding its way into new kinds of...