Research has found that the vividness of conscious experience is related to brain dynamics. Despite both being anesthetics, propofol and ketamine produce different subjective states: we explore the different effects of these two anaesthetics on the structure of dynamic attractors reconstructed from electrophysiological activity recorded from cerebral cortex of two macaques. We used two methods:...
ABSTRACT Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) explains consciousness as integrated information (Φ), that is, the informational state produced by the whole system over the sum of its parts. Many philosophers are drawn to IIT, for it offers a way to explain consciousness in a systematic mathematical form. In this paper, I assess whether IIT satisfies the demands of philosophers. I argue...
In my paper, I want to focus not only on the notions of givenness and evidence in Husserl’s phenomenology, but also on phenomenological work “after” Husserl. I will elaborate on how these phenomenological key ideas can methodologically be made fruitful, especially for an investigation into religious phenomena. After giving an outline of Husserl’s notions of (self-)givenness, evidence, and...
The American psychologist and philosopher William James drew inspiration from British evolutionary theory, neurology, psychiatry, psychology and philosophy. Trained in anatomy, physiology and medicine, he developed a physiological psychology that offered acute analyses of consciousness and of the relations between mind and brain, habit and thought, cognition and emotion and other aspects of...
The paper examines both the phenomenology of the manic self as well as critical aspects of manic neurobiology, focusing, with respect to both domains, on manic temporality. We argue that the distortions of lived time in mania exceed mere acceleration and are fundamental for manic affectivity. Mania involves radical acceleration and radical asynchronicity, which result in an instantaneous...
Abstract This article presents the work of the neglected philosopher and mystic Gerda Walther (1897–1977) as a work of modernist philosophy. It offers an analysis of Walther's two most important texts, Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (1922) and Zur Phänomenologie der Mystik (1923), written during Walther's involvement in the Freiburg and Munich circles of early...
Mindfulness-based interventions have emerged as unique approaches for addressing a range of clinical and subclinical difficulties such as stress, chronic pain, anxiety, or recurrent depression. Moreover, there is strong evidence about the positive effects of yoga practice on stress management and prevention of burnout among healthcare workers. The aim of this study was to conduct a single-arm...
This study is the first to contribute to a registration-based prospective meta-analysis of ganzfeld Extrasensory Perception (ESP) studies. We sought to maximize the anticipated psi effect size by selecting participants for self-reported creativity, prior psi experience or belief, or practice of a mental discipline. We also employed an automated precognition design for simplicity and security,...
Abstract Sleep is phenomenologically rich, teeming with different kinds of conscious thought and experience. Dreaming is the most prominent example, but there is more to conscious experience in sleep than dreaming. Especially in non‐rapid eye movement sleep, conscious experience, sometimes dreamful, sometimes dreamless, also alternates with a loss of consciousness. Yet while dreaming has become...
The first decade of event-related potential (ERP) research had established that the most consistent correlates of the onset of visual consciousness are the early visual awareness negativity (VAN), a posterior negative component in the N2 time range, and the late positivity (LP), an anterior positive component in the P3 time range. Two earlier extensive reviews ten years ago had concluded that...