Championing open science, an adversarial collaboration aims to unravel the footprints of consciousness The history of science includes numerous challenging problems, including the “hard problem” (1) of consciousness: Why does an assembly of neurons—no matter how complex, such as the human brain—give rise to perceptions and feelings that are consciously experienced, such as the sweetness of...
Abstract: A feminist approach to philosophy of mind asks whether mind is gendered, raced, classed, and so on, and whether differences of gender, race, class, and other social categories are a matter of mind. This chapter outlines the scope, content, and aims of this emerging field with reference to three decisive moments in its evolution. First, the correspondence between Princess Elisabeth and...
This study examines the interconnectedness between absorption, inner speech, self, and psychopathology. Absorption involves an intense focus and immersion in mental imagery, sensory/perceptual stimuli, or vivid imagination that involves decreased self-awareness and alterations in consciousness. In psychosis, the dissolution and permeability in the demarcation between self and one's sensory...
Abstract: This paper investigates epistemological differences in the cognitive neuroscientific and phenomenological approaches to outstanding questions in psychiatry. We argue that clinical neuroscience provides scientific explanation in line with a mechanistic approach and describe several examples from computational approaches that illustrate what research on neural processing can tell us...
Unconsciousness between phenomenology and psychoanalysis developed out of the 2014 conference titled "Is there a phenomenology of unconsciousness?" As Dorothe Legrand and Dylan Trigg make clear in the introduction, this volume is not intended to be a dialogue between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, nor is it meant to be an index of their interactions, nor to compare their approaches. By and...
Consciousness has a long history as a topic of philosophical investigation.But its status as an object of scientific inquiry is a comparatively recent development.Consciousness seems to elude traditional approaches to scientific research because it is not directly accessible to third-person observational methods or objective systems of measurement.Researchers cope with this challenge in a...
Depression has been widely studied by researchers from different fields, but its causes, and mechanism of action are still not clear. A difficulty emerges from the shifting from objective diagnosis or analysis to exploration of subjective feelings and experiences that influence the individuals' expression, communication and coping in facing depression. The integration of the experiential...
Alfred Schutz with his phenomenology introduced the concept of multiple reality. For Schutz, the reality in this world is not only in the reality of social life, but also includes fantasy reality, dream reality, etc. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyze and describe how the concepts, characteristics, methods and examples of the use of the phenomenological approach in Alfred...
Abstract:This essay combines insights into the nature of language from yogic mantra meditation and phenomenology. I argue that phenomenologists can gain insights into the formative experiences that shape linguistic meaning from mantra meditators. Meanwhile, phenomenology can offer an original perspective on debates in mantra research concerning the linguisticality of mantras.
Faith healings, as reported in the faith traditions, take us into a different territory of consciousness. Placebo effects are thought to be a quantum reality and may be responsible for some of the anomalous healings. If spiritual dimensions are brought into the equation, some of the healing miracles may also have spiritual and spiritistic components. Advanced external spiritual agencies may be...
This article addresses the little-studied area of the subjective experience of meditation through the analysis of the daily meditation diary of an experienced meditator over 2 months during the covid-19 lockdown in England in early 2020. The participant, who began meditating over 40 years ago, practised an open monitoring style of meditation for 90 minutes every day followed by 30-minutes of...
In this paper, I investigate the phenomenology of awakening in Chinese Zen Buddhism. In this tradition, to awaken is to ‘see your true nature’. In particular, the two aspects of awakening are: (1) seeing that the nature of one’s self or mind is empty or void and (2) an erasing of the usual (though merely apparent) boundary between subject and object. In the early Zen tradition, there are many...
The phenomenological method (or rather, methods) has been fruitfully used to study the experience of illness in recent years. However, the role of illness is not merely that of a passive object for phenomenological scrutiny. I propose that illness, and pathology more generally, can be developed into a phenomenological method in their own right. I claim that studying cases of pathology,...
For humans, phenomenal experiences take up a central role in their daily interaction with the world. In this paper, we argue in favor of shifting phenomenal experiences into the focus of cognitive systems research and development. Instead of aiming to make artificial systems feel in the same way humans do, we focus on the possibilities of engineering capacities that are functionally equivalent...
This paper has a critical and a constructive part. The first part formulates a political demand, based on ethical considerations: Until 2050, there should be a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology, strictly banning all research that directly aims at or knowingly risks the emergence of artificial consciousness on post-biotic carrier systems. The second part lays the first conceptual...
In this short paper, we will introduce a simple model for quantifying philosophical vagueness. There is growing interest in this endeavor to quantify vague concepts of consciousness, agency, etc. We will then discuss some of the implications of this model including the conditions under which the quantification of `nifty' leads to pan-nifty-ism. Understanding this leads to an interesting insight...
The discussion of the nature of consciousness seems to have stalled, with the “hard problem of consciousness” in its center, well-defined camps of realists and eliminativists at two opposing poles, and little to none room for agreement between. Recent attempts to move this debate forward by shifting them to a meta-level have heavily relied on the notion of “intuition”, understood in a rather...
Abstract In this article, we develop a new approach to integrating philosophical phenomenology with qualitative research. The approach uses phenomenology’s concepts, namely existentials, rather than methods such as the epoché or reductions. We here introduce the approach to both philosophers and qualitative researchers, as we believe that these studies are best conducted through...
Abstract The aim of the chapter is to compare meditation in the Western Christian tradition with the Hindu tradition, particularly from the Yoga Sūtras. Its main focus is to highlight the essential differences between meditation in these two traditions. One can find various contrasts as well as unexpected convergences, such as the description of exercises involving focused concentration and the...
I show some problems with recent discussions within qualitative research that centre around the “authenticity” of phenomenological research methods. I argue that attempts to restrict the scope of the term “phenomenology” via reference to the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl are misguided, because the meaning of the term “phenomenology” is only broadly restricted by etymology. My argument...