I shall introduce a complex, apparently unique, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding consciousness, especially ancient forms of mathematical consciousness, based on joint work with Jackie Chappell (Birmingham Biosciences) on the Meta-Configured Genome (MCG) theory. All known forms of consciousness (apart from recent very simple AI forms) are products of biological evolution, in some...
Abstract: This article locates Simone de Beauvoir in the stream of consciousness, metaphysical novel, and Bildungsroman writing traditions. Its focus is the two opening chapters from the 1938 draft of Beauvoir's first novel, She Came to Stay —first published in French in 1943 as L’Invitée —and deleted at the insistence of her publishers. Although Beauvoir's own philosophical fictions are, in...
Background: Research has established End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs) as prevalent, meaningful valid experiences that may help patients cope with illness and approaching death. However, no inductive qualitative analysis has explored the phenomenology of ELDVs from the perspective of hospice homecare patients. Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the content of ELDVs by...
This article examines the phenomenon of spontaneity of consciousness from the perspective of Dzogchen philosophy – one of the doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism. It views spontaneity as the initial and intrinsic, but at the same time latent quality of human consciousness. Liberation in Dzogchen, first and foremost, is related to person’s achievement of spontaneous state. It becomes possible through...
This story is about the twentieth-century ethnobotanist, Richard Evans Schultes (1915-2001), and his research on hallucinogenic plants. Ethnobotany can contribute directly to science and technology studies in that the discipline makes cultural ways of knowing its scientific subject. Ethnobotanists must learn about plants through people, and are not able to conceal their interactions with...
This research has as its theme the idealistic monistic philosophy of Amit Goswami that postulates Quantum Consciousness as a unifying principle and mediator of all reality in its manifold, manifested or potential. It is intended to answer the question about the possibility of a quantum ethics from the thought of Amit Goswami. For that, the epistemological relationship between "quantum...
The psychosis spectrum comprises heterogeneous disorders characterized by both world-related and self-related symptoms. How these symptoms may arise with similar features in spite of the different aetiologies is yet an unsolved question. In behavior narrative review, we compare three conditions characterized by psychotic experiences (schizophrenia, substance-use disorder and...
The change in the body awareness of people depending on the dynamic processing of the multisensory signals from the body has been revealed the bodily self-consciousness approach. Recent studies have proposed that the processing and integration of multisensory signals (i.e. vestibular, somatosensory) are fundamental requirement for bodily self-consciousness. Perception of body-parts and global...
Some dynamics associated with consciousness are shared by other complex macroscopic living systems. For example, autocatalysis, an active agency in ecosystems, imparts to them a centripetality, the ability to attract resources that identifies the system as an agency apart from its surroundings. It is likely that autocatalysis in the central nervous system likewise gives rise to the phenomenon...
In recent years, promising mathematical models have been proposed that aim to describe conscious experience and its relation to the physical domain. Whereas the axioms and metaphysical ideas of these theories have been carefully motivated, their mathematical formalism has not. In this article, we aim to remedy this situation. We give an account of what warrants mathematical representation of...