October 1, 2009
Ravi Prakash, S. Sarkhel, P. Rastogi et al.
Abstract The Yogic literatures are replete with examples of several unique mystical experiences in deeper states of meditation. These experiences have nevertheless remained largely untouched by the scientific community, possibly because of the extreme inexplicability of such states and the lack of sophistication in evaluating them. More amenable to scientific research, however, would seem to be...
Mind
October 1, 2009
Andy Clark
165 citations
Is consciousness all in the head, or might the minimal physical substrate for some forms of conscious experience include the goings on in the (rest of the) body and the world? Such a view might be dubbed (by analogy with Clark and Chalmers’s (1998) claims concerning ‘the extended mind’) ‘the extended conscious mind’. In this article, I review a variety of arguments for the extended conscious...
Evolution Education and Outreach
September 15, 2009
Crystal L’Hôte
5 citations
Evolutionary theory has an unexpected application in philosophy of mind, where it is used by the so-called biosemantic program—also called the teleosemantic program—to account for the representational capacities of neural states and processes in a way that conforms to an overarching scientific naturalism. Biosemantic theories account for the representational capacities of neural states and...
Oxford University Press eBooks
September 10, 2009
Dan Arnold
2 citations
This chapter draws connections between the idea of svasamvitti or svasamvedana (reflexive awareness, apperception), a phenomenon very controversial in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy from the 6th through the 19th centuries, and the idea of methodological solipsism in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, made popular by Fodor in the late 20th century. It explores many...
Oxford University Press eBooks
September 2, 2009
Charles Wallis, Wayne Wright
5 citations
Abstract This article aims to clarify the central commitment and the claimed advantages of enactivism, a theoretical approach for understanding the mind. The analysis reveals that there is no compelling reason to embrace either the enactivists' aim of completely revolutionizing vision science or their understanding of the character of that new vision science. There are also numerous serious...
The Jewish Quarterly Review
September 1, 2009
Nathaniel Berman
2 citations
Menachem Kellner. Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2006. Pp. xix. +343.Melila Hellner- Eshed. A River Issues Forth from Eden: On Language of Mystical Experience in Zohar (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers Ltd., 2005. Pp. 462.Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Ita...
Journal of Integrative Neuroscience
September 2009
Roman R. Poznanski
The continuity of the mind is suggested to mean the continuous spatiotemporal dynamics arising from the electrochemical signature of the neocortex: (i) globally through volume transmission in the gray matter as fields of neural activity, and (ii) locally through extrasynaptic signaling between fine distal dendrites of cortical neurons. If the continuity of dynamical systems across...
NeuroQuantology
September 1, 2009
Rachel P. Wurzman, James Giordano
6 citations
Generally, attempts to avoid Cartesian dualism relating brain and mind arguably lead to epiphenomenalism or strict materialism, in part because the problem is that these explanations have predominantly focused upon the efficient causal relationship between the physical and the phenomenal. Elucidating the efficient cause of consciousness is the essence of what Chalmers (1995) referred to as...
September 1, 2009
This article compares St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila with regard to their theories and practice of contemplation. Similarities and contrasts between them are studied with the discovery that the two systems throw light on each other in different ways resulting in a comprehensive synthesis which is at the summit of western mysticism.
Dialogue
September 1, 2009
Jeff Foss
ABSTRACT: Qualia, the subjectively known qualities of conscious experience, are judged by many philosophers and scientists to lie beyond the domain of scientific explanation, thus making the conscious mind partly incomprehensible to the objective physical sciences. Some, like Kripke and Chalmers, employ modal logic to argue that explanations of qualia are impossible in principle. I argue that...