Neuroscience is a dynamically developing discipline which currently influences the emergence of new research programs that combine high-tech neuroscience methodology with social science approaches. This article focuses on neurophenomenology and fields of first-person neuroscience that attempt to bridge the gap between first-person and third-person perspectives of research. The aim of this...
Chapter 18 examines the implications of Husserl’s model of temporal consciousness on the experience of musical rhythm. Any current moment of an experience, according to Husserl, includes three phases: retention (“holding-on” of the just-past), primal-impression (now-point), and protention (anticipation of what-is-just-about-to-come). Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness is, the author...
In the long history of tenuous relations between psychology, psychiatry and philosophy the rise of neuroscience is typically regarded as decisive turn towards biological reductionism. Roughly since the turn of the millennium, however, the story has become more complicated. The emergence of social and cultural neuroscience seemed to indicate a new trend toward interdisciplinary cooperation...
People with synaesthesia have additional perceptual experiences, which are automatically and consistently triggered by specific inducing stimuli. Synaesthesia therefore offers a unique window into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying conscious perception. A long-standing question in synaesthesia research is whether it is possible to artificially induce non-synaesthetic individuals to have...
Abstract — “Suwung” is a Javanesse term that describes an empty condition which has no form and is abstract. It implies emptiness with nuances of perfect self-control and true self-awareness with regard to divinity. Suwung, to the Sufi, is a spiritual experience called peak experience. Maslow defined peak experience as a condition when a person is feeling out of him-/herself mentally (Davis,...
Paranormal and mystical experiences challenge reductionism and ultra-reductionism-the assumption that the whole is the same as the sum of its parts. Quantum is the bedrock of matter, but mysticism is the bedrock of reality. In this respect, studies of mysticism are an unavoidable part of a scientific quest. The study of near-death experiences (NDEs) has brought the exploration of post-mortem...
Abstract A theory of the central nervous system was formulated recently, in general thermodynamical terms. According to it, the function of a central nervous system, and more generally of living autopoietic units, is to minimize “surprise”. The nervous system fulfills its task, and the animal maintains its viability, by changing their inner organization or their ecological niche so as to...
In this paper, I will critically consider Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis of the «extended mind» in order to sketch a possible phenomenological account of active externalism, by following three steps: (i) I will consider Clark and Chalmers’ hypothesis within the broader context of the so-called «physical symbol system hypothesis» theorized by Herbert A. Simon; (ii) I will connect the problem of...
In this paper, I present the enactive theory of color that implies a form of color relationism. I argue that this view constitutes a better alternative to color subjectivism and color objectivism. I liken the enactive view to Husserl’s phenomenology of perception, arguing that both deconstruct the clear duality of subject and object, which is at the basis of the other theories of color, in...
BackgroundThe integration of various domains or levels of analysis (clinical, neurobiological, genetic, etc.) has been a challenge in schizophrenia research. A promising approach is to use the core phenomenological features of the disorder as an organising principle for other levels of analysis. Minimal self-disturbance (fragility in implicit first-person perspective, presence and agency) is...
Following a brief review of current efforts to identify the neuronal correlates of conscious processing (NCCP) an attempt is made to bridge the gap between the material neuronal processes and the immaterial dimensions of subjective experience. It is argued that this “hard problem” of consciousness research cannot be solved by only considering the neuronal underpinnings of cognition. The...
Metaphysics, as discipline dealing with the most fundamental aspects of reality, studies the essence of entities, leaving to particular sciences the study of empirical, specific, changeable and unstable aspects. In this sense metaphysics is close to ontology, tackling problems as the existence of God, the being in himself, the immortality of consciousness, the origin and meaning of the...
The methodological and theoretical problems for the study of consciousness in psychology, the specifics of changes that occur with the human psyche under the influence of digital technologies are considered. The purpose of the work is to analyze the phenomenology of states of consciousness in the context of the digital future shock and to create on its basis a modern topological model of...
The article presents a phenomenological analysis of corporeality followed up by an analysis of key elements of shamanic ideolo-gy and practice by means of interpreting primary corporal and corporal-semantic situations. It is argued that the body acts as a media-tor between experience and the meaning this experience generates, and thus the body is the primary carrier of meaning as well as the...
The symbol grounding problem raises its head in the fields of the philosophy of AI, philosophy of psychology and philosophy of cognitive sciences. The solution to the symbol grounding problem must account for the genesis of mental representations in the world. It has to offer a strategy for grounding mental representations in the objective domain. Orthodox representationalist theories do not...
The neurobiological basis of near-death experiences (NDEs) is unknown, but a few studies attempted to investigate it by reproducing in laboratory settings phenomenological experiences that seem to closely resemble NDEs. So far, no study has induced NDE-like features via hypnotic modulation while simultaneously measuring changes in brain activity using high-density EEG. Five volunteers who...
The "measurement problem" of quantum mechanics, and the "hard problem" of cognitive science are the most profound open problems of the two research fields, and certainly among the deepest of all unsettled conundrums in contemporary science in general. Occasionally, scientists from both fields have suggested some sort of interconnectedness of the two problems. Here we revisit the main motives...
abstract:This essay argues for a conception of poly-intentionality based on Merleau-Ponty's analysis of sense experience in his Phenomenology of Perception. I start by reviewing the tenuous status of sensation in Husserl's early work in order to prepare for a renewed conception of intentionality inspired by Merleau-Ponty—one that is grounded in the body's sense organs. I show how sensations...
Purpose: The widest use of artificial intelligence technologies tends to uncontrolled growth. At the same time, in modern scientific thought there is no adequate understanding of the consequences of the introduction of artificial intelligence in the daily life of a person as its irremovable element. In addition, the very essence of what could be called the “thinking” of artificial intelligence...
The phenomenology of numinous or Being-experience in the later Heidegger is the focus in this third in a series of papers on a group of independent figures— also including Jung, Reich, Toynbee, Teilhard de Chardin, and Simone Weil—who beginning in the crisis years of the 1930s envisioned versions of a futural “New Age” spirituality to address a globalizing materialism and its...