This is an autoethnography that provides a thick description, analysis and reflection of my personal Multiple Sclerosis healing journey, supported by a transpersonal modality based on an ancient shamanic wisdom.This research explores Ayahuasca as a transpersonal therapy, which is facilitated by a spiritual plant that has been used for centuries by Indigenous Peoples in the Amazonian region for...
A comprehensive understanding of the phenomenology of auditory hallucinations (AHs) is essential for developing accurate models of their causes. Yet, only 1 detailed study of the phenomenology of AHs with a sample size of N ≥ 100 has been published. The potential for overreliance on these findings, coupled with a lack of phenomenological research into many aspects of AHs relevant to...
This article presents a report on the 2nd meeting of the International Consortium on Hallucination Research, held on September 12th and 13th 2013 at Durham University, UK. Twelve working groups involving specialists in each area presented their findings and sought to summarize the available knowledge, inconsistencies in the field, and ways to progress. The 12 working groups reported on the...
The Hand, an Organ of the Mind, edited by Zdravko Radman, consists of seventeen essays by an impressive array of philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists, as well as a foreword by Jesse Prinz and a postscript by haptic artist Rosalyn Driscoll.62 As the title suggests, this collection concerns the role of the hand in cognition and consciousness, and aims to occupy a novel middle...
There is a material dimension of subjectivity that constitutes a conscious feature profoundly different from the representational feature. The former corresponds in many respects to what for the contemporary philosopher of mind is the qualitative mind or authentic consciousness (qualia). In the Husserlian phenomenology, non-intentional consciousness is also characterized by its inevitable...
Paul Churchland (born on 21 October 1942 in Vancouver, Canada) and Patricia Smith Churchland (born on 16 July 1943 in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada) are Canadian-American philosophers whose work has focused on integrating the disciplines of philosophy of mind and neuroscience in a new approach that has been called neurophilosophy . They are also central figures in the philosophical stance...
Max Velmans, born 27 May 1942, is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 1994, he cofounded the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society and made several publications in the area of consciousness studies, which culminated in a book titled Understanding Consciousness . In this book – which thus far has had two...
John Kevin O’Regan (born on 24 May 1948) is an American neuroscientist who has lived and worked in Paris since 1971. He studied theoretical physics at Sussex and Cambridge Universities and in 1975 gained a PhD from Cambridge University for his research on eye movements during reading tasks. His interest in the study of the perceived stability in the visual process has led him to the discoveries...
Benjamin Libet (Chicago, Illinois, 12 April 1916–Davis, California, 23 July 2007) was a scientist who conducted pioneering studies on consciousness and free will. He studied physiology, and between 1945 and 1948, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. During his academic career, he was a lecturer at the Albany Medical College, New York; research fellow in...
The role of consciousness in learning has been debated for nearly 50 years. Recent studies suggest that conscious awareness is needed to bridge the gap when learning about two events that are separated in time, as is true for trace fear conditioning. This has been repeatedly shown and seems to apply to other forms of classical conditioning as well. In contrast to these findings, we show that...