Abstract: The physiological and psychological underpinnings of near-death experiences (NDEs) are not yet understood. In this article, we show that for "critical" NDEs reported after cardiac arrest, two different neurophysiological models have been proposed that, in the literature so far, have not been adequately distinguished from each other. In the real-time model, it is postulated that during...
Description As a psychiatrist in training, I often have the privilege to connect with the unique thoughts and visions patients may be experiencing. The descriptions shared by one patient during my early psychiatry inpatient rotations stuck with me and eventually inspired me to pursue a residency in the field. While interviewing, she expressed a deep spirituality and often finding solace in the...
Patients in a Minimally Conscious State (MCS) constitute a subgroup of awareness impaired patients who show minimal signs of awareness as opposed to patients in a Vegetative State who do not exhibit any such signs. While the empirical literature is rich in studies investigating either overt or covert signs of awareness in such patients the question of self-awareness has only scarcely been...
For several decades, a diverse set of approaches to embedded, embodied, extended, enactive and affective cognition has been challenging the cognitivist orthodoxy. Recently, the prospect of a combination of ecological psychology and enactivism has emerged as a promising candidate for a single unified framework that could rival the established cognitivist paradigm as "a working metatheory for the...
In this paper I seek to unify enactive and ecological approaches to cognitive science by emphasizing the fact that both approaches view cognitive processes as being inherently temporally extended. My hypothesis is that characterizing the temporal scales in which perception of affordances occur, they can serve different purposes of explanation within the theories. Specifically, the paper brings...
Ecological Psychology and Enactivism both challenge representationist cognitive science, but the two approaches have only begun to engage in dialogue. Further conceptual clarification is required in which differences are as important as common ground. This paper enters the dialogue by focusing on important differences. After a brief account of the parallel histories of Ecological Psychology and...
Two important issues of recent discussion in the philosophy of biology and of the cognitive sciences have been the ontological status of living, cognitive agents and whether cognition and action have a normative character per se. In this paper I will explore the following conditional in relation with both the notion of affordance and the idea of the living as self-creation: if we recognize the...
The enactive and ecological approaches to embodied cognitive science are on a collision course. While both draw inspiration from similar views in psychology and phenomenology, the two approaches initially held seemingly contradictory views and points of focus. Early enactivists saw value in the ecological approach but insisted that the two schools remain distinct. While ecological psychology...
. Aim. To carry out a comparative analysis of the rationalistic, phenomenological and mystical methods of knowledge practiced by Russian religious philosophy in their synthesis. Methodology. The study is based on the fundamental principles of historical and philosophical research: the principle of historicism, which makes it possible to obtain a truly scientific assessment of the phenomena...
Background: I’m a philosopher at the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) working on the intersection of neuroscience and phenomenology. As part of this research and to develop my practice, I recently did a 7-day vipassana meditation retreat. The following are some perspectives, models, and hypotheses I had on how some of the ‘Western’ ideas we’re working with at QRI could connect to ‘Eastern’...