The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
Uwe Meixner
AbstractThis chapter offers a version of Cartesian dualism that draws on the resources of a Husserlian account of intentionality. For example, it argues that ‘I can locate myself at the point in space from which I am looking at the world (my ‘center of perspective’)’. It relies on empirical phenomenology to show that this location that does not correspond to my body or any part of it. Phantom...
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
Bernard W. Kobes
AbstractDualist themes in Burge's philosophy of mind are gathered and articulated. Burge's anti-individualism yields an argument against token-identity theory; his reflections on mental causation have a dualist flavor; and he doubts that the relation of mental events to neural events is one of composition or constitution. This chapter argues that compositional materialism about representational...
The Waning of Materialism
March 25, 2010
Laurence BonJour
AbstractThis chapter argues that there are no compelling arguments in favor of, and very powerful, seemingly unanswerable objections to, materialism in the philosophy of mind. The arguments for materialism that appeal to (a) the ‘principle’ of causal closure and (b) the doctrine of naturalism are argued to rest entirely on undefended assumptions. The central objection that materialist views...
March 17, 2010
Narayanankutty Karuppath, Achuthan Panajikunnath
Indeterminacy, entanglement, non-locality and objective reality are the broad areas in quantum physics that have some bearing to the reality of consciousness. If consciousness has a tangible effect on matter, it should not be considered as taboo to talk about it in physics. We postulate free-will to be the characteristic feature of consciousness, the existence of which can be mathematically...
Revue Neurologique
March 11, 2010
K Mevel, B Grassiot, Gaël Chételat et al.
Introduction: A "resting state" or "default mode network" has been highlighted in functional neuroimaging studies as a set of brain regions showing synchronized activity at rest or in task-independent cognitive state. State of the art: A considerable and increasing number of studies have been conducted over the last few years so as to unravel the cognitive function(s) of this brain network....
Oxford University Press eBooks
March 10, 2010
Paull Nunez
This chapter takes a highly speculative approach in which the hard problem of consciousness is approached with questions about a category beyond ordinary information; that is, Ultra-Information, defined broadly to include ordinary information, unknown physical processes, and consciousness. Thoughts, emotions, self-awareness, memory, and the contents of the unconscious are, by definition,...
PLoS One
March 9, 2010
Dobromir G Dotov, Lin Nie, Anthony Chemero
The ideas of continental philosopher Martin Heidegger have been influential in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, despite the fact that there has been no effort to analyze these ideas empirically. The experiments reported here are designed to lend empirical support to Heidegger's phenomenology and more specifically his description of the transition between ready-to-hand and...
PLoS One
March 4, 2010
Thomas S. Ray
57 citations
correction
We currently understand the mental effects of psychedelics to be caused by agonism or partial agonism of 5-HT 2A (and possibly 5-HT 2C ) receptors, and we understand that psychedelic drugs, especially phenylalkylamines, are fairly selective for these two receptors.This manuscript is a reference work on the receptor affinity pharmacology of psychedelic drugs.New data is presented on the affinity...
NeuroQuantology
March 1, 2010
Sultan Tarlacı
27 citations
For the past 20 years and more, arguments about the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness and mind theory have been mounting. On the one side are traditional neuroscientists who believe that the way to understanding the brain is through looking at the nerve cells. On the other side are various physicists who suggest that the laws of quantum mechanics may have an influence on the dynamics...
CNS Spectrums
March 1, 2010
Stefano Pallanti
True progress in understanding how experience arises from the brain has been relatively slow when viewed from a historical perspective. Recently, several technologies to study and stimulate the brain have been applied to this field of inquiry. Such progress was made only 2,500 years after the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides first adopted a technical procedure involving the application of...