BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
October 25, 2014
Anette Kjellgren, Jessica Westman
BackgroundSensory isolation in a flotation tank is a method known for inducing deep relaxation and subsequent positive health effects for patients suffering from e.g. stress or muscle tensions pains. Very few studies have investigated this method as a preventive health-care intervention. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects in healthy participants after receiving a series of...
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 7, 2014
Stuart Kauffman
preprint
I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our consideration. What I shall say assumes quantum measurement is real, and that Bohm's interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is not true. The Stalemate: In our...
Philosophical Psychology
October 3, 2014
Joshua Shepherd
33 citations
In this paper, I offer evidence that folk views of free will and moral responsibility accord a central place to consciousness. In sections 2 and 3, I contrast action production via conscious states and processes with action in concordance with an agent's long-standing and endorsed motivations, values, and character traits. Results indicate that conscious action production is considered much...
Consciousness and Cognition
October 2014
Jolien C. Francken, Marc Slors
Commonsense cognitive concepts (CCCs) are the concepts used in daily life to explain, predict and interpret behaviour. CCCs are also used to convey neuroscientific results, not only to wider audiences but also to the scientific inner circle. We show that translations from CCCs to brain activity, and from brain data to CCCs are made in implicit, loose and unsystematic ways. This results in hard...
Philosophical Issues
October 1, 2014
Sven Bernecker
Given how epistemologists conceive of understanding, to what degree do we understand the hypothesis of extended mind? If the extended mind debate is a substantive dispute, then we have only superficial understanding of the extended mind hypothesis. And if we have deep understanding of the extended mind hypothesis, then the debate over this hypothesis is nothing but a verbal dispute.
Philosophical Issues
October 1, 2014
Benjamin Jarvis
Abstract: According to proponents of radically extended cognition, some cognition is located outside the boundaries of biological organisms. In this paper, I offer a new argument for a modest version of this view according to which some cognitiveprocessesare radically extended. I do so by showing that features of a subject's environment—in particular, the pen and paper that a subject uses to...
Social Work
October 1, 2014
Vanessa H Chafos, Peter Economou
Numerous studies have showed an improvement in symptoms characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD) when mindfulness-based interventions were integrated into the daily lives of individuals with BPD. Although these studies have examined the etiology and diagnostic prognosis of BPD, and have discussed the use of mindfulness-based treatments, few researchers have attempted to interpret...
NeuroQuantology
September 24, 2014
Jie Huang, Ravi Prakash, Michele Caponigro
1 citation
A much repeated theme in spiritual experiences is that the subject often feels that he can experience multiple states at the same time or he can experience multiple states of time. This theme of simultaneous multiple states of awareness are a unique subject the scientific understanding of which remains almost nil. The most common simultaneously existing states of awareness recorded in the...
Frontiers in Psychology
September 16, 2014
Louise eBarrett, Thomas ePollet, Gert eStulp
Does evolutionary theorizing have a role in psychology? This is a more contentious issue than one might imagine, given that as evolved creatures, the answer must surely be yes. The contested nature of evolutionary psychology lies not in our status as evolved beings, but in the extent to which evolutionary ideas add value to studies of human behaviour, and the rigour with which these ideas are...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
September 9, 2014
Leandro Gaitán, J. Castresana
In his book De l'habitude (Of Habit), 1838, the philosopher and archeologist Felix Ravaisson deals with the study of habit by using a broad spectrum of sources ranging from Aristotle to Butler, Leibniz, Hume, Main de Biran and Schelling, among others. The combination of these authors together with the originality of Ravaisson's own results produces a work which, though brief, has inspired some...