Nonlinear biomedical physics
June 3, 2010
Arvid Lundervold
During the last years, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain has been introduced as a new tool to measure consciousness, both in a clinical setting and in a basic neurocognitive research. Moreover, advanced mathematical methods and theories have arrived the field of fMRI (e.g. computational neuroimaging), and functional and structural brain connectivity can now be assessed...
CrossCurrents
June 1, 2010
Bruce M. Sullivan, Bill Wiist, Heidi A. Wayment
1 citation
The Buddhist Health Study: Meditation on Love and Compassion as Features of Religious Practice Bruce M. Sullivan, Bill Wiist, and Heidi Wayment Love and compassion are most important, most precious, most powerful, and most sacred. Practicing them is useful not only in terms of true religion but also in worldly life for both mental and physical health. They are the basic elements supporting our...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
June 2010
Joshua A Hicks, David C Cicero, Jason Trent et al.
Subjective rationality, or the feeling of meaning, was identified by William James (1893) as a central aspect of the non-sensory fringe of consciousness. Three studies examined the interaction of positive affect (PA) and individual differences in intuitive information processing in predicting feelings of meaning for various stimuli and life events. In Study 1 (N = 352), PA and intuition...
International Journal of Machine Consciousness
June 1, 2010
Aaron Sloman
30 citations
This paper extends three decades of work arguing that researchers who discuss consciousness should not restrict themselves only to (adult) human minds, but should study (and attempt to model) many kinds of minds, natural and artificial, thereby contributing to our understanding of the space containing all of them. We need to study what they do or can do, how they can do it, and how the natural...
International Journal of Machine Consciousness
June 1, 2010
Elizabeth Irvine
Sloman suggests that although many try to model consciousness as a unitary and abstract entity, the project is an incoherent one. This claim will be supported, but it will also be argued that current movements in consciousness research are broadly consistent with Sloman's "alternative" suggestions of how best to make progress in this area.
Cambridge University Press eBooks
June 1, 2010
M. G. F. Martin, Anthony O’Hear
27 citations
Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear...
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
June 1, 2010
Kette Thomas
10 citations
In her article "Haitian Zombie, Myth, and Modern Identity" Kette Thomas analyzes texts by Zora Neale Hurston, Alfred Metraux, and Wade Davis. In these narratives we are re-introduced to the zombie not as a metaphor for lost consciousness, but, rather, as a common system that replaces personal subjectivity with an influence alien to our natural development. The discourse on subjectivity has...
Ethnography
June 1, 2010
Michal Pagis
118 citations
The ‘problem of other minds’ is central to sociological theory and of immediate importance to contemporary research on subjectivity and interiority. How do we cultivate and maintain an intersubjective space during silent, private, experiences? Drawing on Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology, this study challenges the common view which regards silence as an obstacle to social relations. The data...
Journal of Integrative Neuroscience
June 1, 2010
Perceptual qualia and local network behavior in the cerebral cortex.
Activitas Nervosa Superior
June 1, 2010
Copthorne Macdonald
1 citation
Abstract The author postulates a universe in which mentality is as fundamental as physicality, explores the implications of that, and presents hypotheses concerning the evolution and functioning of human cognitive systems in such an environment. Of the several interpretations of reality which consider the physical and the mental to be equally real and equally fundamental, two compatible...