The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

This is a prepublication version of the final chapter from the Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. In it I re-examine the basic conditions required for a study of conscious experiences in the light of progress made in recent years in the field of consciousness studies. I argue that neither dualist nor reductionist assumptions about subjectivity versus objectivity and the privacy of experience versus the public nature of scientific observations allow an adequate understanding of how studies of consciousness (...) actually proceed. The chapter examines the sense in which the experimenter is also a subject, the sense in which all experienced phenomena are private and subjective, the different senses in which a phenomenon can nevertheless be public and observations of it objective, and the conditions for intra-subjective and intersubjective repeatability. The chapter goes on to re-examine the empirical method and how methods used in psychology differ from those used in physics. I argue that a reflexive understanding of these relationships supports a form of “critical phenomenology” that fits consciousness studies smoothly into science. (shrink)

In this chapter I re‐examine the basic conditions required for a study of conscious experiences in the light of progress made in recent years in the field of consciousness studies. I argue that neither dualist nor reductionist assumptions about subjectivity versus objectivity and the privacy of experience versus the public nature of scientific observations allow an adequate understanding of how studies of consciousness actually proceed. The chapter examines the sense in which the experimenter is also a subject, (...) the sense in which all experienced phenomena are private and subjective, the different senses in which a phenomenon can nevertheless be public and observations of it objective, and the conditions for intra‐subjective and intersubjective repeatability. The chapter goes on to re‐examine the empirical method and how methods used in psychology differ from those used in physics. I argue that a reflexive understanding of these relationships supports a form of “critical phenomenology” that fits consciousness studies smoothly into science. (shrink)

Spiritualism designates a philosophy that lays claim to the separation of mind and body and the ontological and epistemological primacy of the former. In France, it is associated with the names of Victor Cousin and René Descartes, or more precisely with what Cousin made of Descartes as the founding father of a brittle rational psychology, closed off from the positive sciences, and as a critic in respect to the empiricist legacy of the idéologues. Moreover, by considering merely the end result, (...) severed from its polemical genesis, we are prevented from understanding how the category of experience constituted a crucial question for spiritualism itself. Through returning to the origin of these discussions in the 1826 preface to Cousin’s Fragments philosophiques, this essay pursues a threefold path: to show that the public birth of Cousinian spiritualism coincides with the affirmation of applying the experimental method, issuing from Bacon, to the study of facts of consciousness; that Cousin’s later evolution follows a process of radicalization—that is, in this context, of ontologization and of reduction; and that by recovering this genesis, we can distinguish many forms of spiritualisms committed to the experimental method, both in alliance with the early Cousin and against the later Cousin. In this way, we can rediscover the interwoven philosophical links, lost in the process of institutionalization, between metaphysical demands and empiricist concerns, or between “French” philosophy and the legacy of Condillac. (shrink)

In the last two centuries, our world would have been a safer place if philosophers such as Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche had not given intellectual encouragement to the radical ideologies of Jacobins, Stalinists, and fascists. Maybe the world would have been better off, from the standpoint of sound practice, if philosophers had engaged in only modest, decent theory, as did John Stuart Mill. Yet, as Ronald Beiner contends, the point of theory is not to think safe thoughts; the point is (...) to open intellectual horizons. In Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, Beiner reflects on the dualism of theory and practice. The purpose of the theorist is not to offer sensible guidance on the conduct of social life but to test the boundaries of our vision of social order. Whereas the liberal citizen should embody the practical virtues of prudence and moderation, the theorist should be radical, probing, and immoderate. Looking back at the liberal-communitarian debate of the 1980s, Beiner recognizes that the antidote to our spiritless times lies neither in the embrace of community over individualism nor of individualism over community: both individual and community need to be submitted to radical questioning. It is by exposing ourselves to the challenge of fearless thinking encountered at the philosophical extremities that we are most likely to understand our own world at a deeper level. In this collection of essays and reviews, Ronald Beiner helps us to think critically about the thought-worlds of our foremost contemporary thinkers, including Hannah Arendt, Allan Bloom, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, J¦rgen Habermas, Will Kymlicka, Christopher Lasch, Richard Rorty, Judith Shklar, Leo Strauss, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.

& Functional brain imaging offers new opportunities for the begin with single-subject (preprocessed) scan series, and study of that most pervasive of cognitive conditions, human consider the patterns of all voxels as potential multivariate consciousness. Since consciousness is attendant to so much encodings of phenomenal information. Twenty-seven subjects of human cognitive life, its study requires secondary analysis from the four studies were analyzed with multivariate of multiple experimental datasets. Here, four preprocessed methods, revealing analogues (...) of phenomenal structures, datasets from the National fMRI Data Center are considered: particularly the structures of temporality. In a second Hazeltine et al., Neural activation during response competi- interpretive approach, artificial neural networks were used tion; Ishai et al., The representation of objects in the human to detect a more explicit prediction from phenomenology, occipital and temporal cortex; Mechelli et al., The effects of namely, that present experience contains and is inflected by presentation rate during word and pseudoword reading; and past states of awareness and anticipated events. In all of 21 Postle et al., Activity in human frontal cortex associated with subjects in this analysis, nets were successfully trained to spatial working memory and saccadic behavior. The study of extract aspects of relative past and future brain states, in consciousness also draws from multiple disciplines. In this comparison with statistically similar controls. This exploratory article, the philosophical subdiscipline of phenomenology study thus concludes that the proposed methods for provides initial characterization of phenomenal structures ‘‘neurophenomenology’’ warrant further application, includ- conceptually necessary for an analysis of consciousness. These ing the exploration of individual differences, multivariate structures include phenomenal intentionality, phenomenal differences between cognitive task conditions, and explora- superposition, and experienced temporality.. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe four broad ‘meta-methods’ employed in scientific and philosophical research of qualia. These are the theory-centred metamethod, the property-centred meta-method, the argument-centred meta-method, and the event-centred meta-method. Broadly speaking, the theory-centred meta-method is interested in the role of qualia as some theoretical entities picked out by our folk psychological theories; the property-centred meta-method is interested in some metaphysical properties of qualia that we immediately observe through introspection ; the argument-centred meta-method is interested in the role (...) of qualia in some arguments for non-physicalism; the event-centred metamethod is interested in the role of qualia as some natural events whose nature is hidden and must be uncovered empirically. We will argue that the event-centred metamethod is the most promising route to a comprehensive scientific conception of qualia because of the flexibility of ontological and methodological assumptions it can provide. We also reveal the hidden influences of the different meta-methods and in doing so show why consideration of meta-methods has value for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

This is the third of four online Companions to Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. -/- The Companion to Volume 3 introduces major phases and findings in the search for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) starting with the time it takes for these to form and the wider research program that might lead to their discovery. This includes the search for mechanisms (...) responsible for “neural binding”—how widely dispersed neural activities support integrated conscious experiences, and the search for neural markers of consciousness that can serve to distinguish conscious from preconscious and unconscious activities in the brain. We then turn to global disorders of consciousness that indirectly reveal the conditions that support consciousness by establishing what abolishes it or impairs it, and conclude this section with reviews of the major challenges in the search for NCCs that still remain. This survey then continues with research on the divided brain with cerebral commissurotomy patients, which proved to be very useful in determining the respective functions of the left and right halves of the brain. It also raised philosophical questions. Could consciousness itself be divided by this operation? And, if so, would such patients have a distinct left-brain and right-brain consciousness? Philosophical issues also combine with methodological and experimental developments in the following sections on the reintroduction of first-person methods and how to combine these with complementary, third-person methods in neurophenomenology and experiential neuroscience—two well-developed research programs for both investigating consciousness and understanding its functions. This Companion (and associated Volume) then concludes with a survey of research on free will, covering both the major findings arising from neuropsychological research and a way to understand these that is consistent with a natural understanding of volition, ethics, and legal responsibility. -/- As with the other Companions to these Volumes there are many links to background resources (marked in pink) and to the selected readings themselves (marked in blue). -/- . (shrink)

Doctoral programs at U.S. universities play a critical role in the development of human resources both in the United States and abroad. This volume reports the results of an extensive study of U.S. research-doctorate programs in five broad fields: physical sciences and mathematics, engineering, social and behavioral sciences, biological sciences, and the humanities. Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States documents changes that have taken place in the size, structure, and quality of doctoral education since the widely used 1982 editions. (...) This update provides selected information on nearly 4,000 doctoral programs in 41 subdisciplines at 274 doctorate-granting institutions. This volume also reports the results of the National Survey of Graduate Faculty, which polled a sample of faculty for their views on the scholarly quality of program faculty and the effectiveness of doctoral programs in preparing research scholars/scientists. This much-anticipated update of such an essential reference will be useful to education administrators, university faculty, and students seeking authoritative information on doctoral programs. (shrink)

Studying the neural correlates of conscious awareness depends on a reliable comparison between activations associated with awareness and unawareness. One particularly difficult confound to remove is task performance capacity, i.e. the difference in performance between the conditions of interest. While ideally task performance capacity should be matched across different conditions, this is difficult to achieve experimentally. However, differences in performance could theoretically be corrected for mathematically. One such proposal is found in a recent paper by Lamy, Salti and Bar-Haim [Lamy (...) D, Salti M, Bar-Haim Y. Neural correlates of subjective awareness and unconscious processing: an ERP study. J Cognitive Neurosci 2009,21:1435-46], who put forward a corrective method for an electroencephalography experiment. We argue that their analysis is essentially grounded in a version of High Threshold Theory, which has been shown to be inferior in general to Signal Detection Theory. We show through a series of computer simulations that their correction method only partially removes the influence of perfor- mance capacity, which can yield misleading results. We present a mathematical correction method based on Signal Detection Theory that is theoretically capable of removing performance capacity confounds. We discuss the limitations of mathemati- cally correcting for performance capacity confounds in imaging studies and its impact for theories about consciousness. (shrink)

This overview of Consciousness Studies examines the conditions that one has to satisfy to establish a scientific investigation of phenomenal consciousness. Written from the perspective experimental psychology, it follows a two-pronged approach in which traditional third-person methods for investigating the brain and physical world are complementary to first-person methods for investigating subjective experience allowing the possibility of finding “bridging laws” that relate such first- and third-person data to each other. Mindful of the relative sophistication of (...) third-person methods the chapter focuses on the problems of developing similarly sophisticated first-person methods. The problems are of three kinds: (1) Epistemological problems: How can one obtain public, objective knowledge about private, subjective experiences? (2) Methodological problems: Given that one cannot attach measuring instruments directly up to experiences, what psychological “instruments” and procedures are appropriate to their study? (3) The relation of the observer to the observed: The more closely coupled an observer is with an observed, the greater the potential influence of the act of observation on the nature of the observed (“observer effects”). Given this, how can one develop introspective and phenomenological methods where the observer is the observed? The chapter argues that the epistemological problems are more apparent than real, although this requires one to construe what is private versus public, and what is subjective or intersubjective versus what is objective in a slightly different way—with some enabling consequences for a science of consciousness. Methodological problems are real, but not fundamentally different to the problems traditionally faced in experimental psychological investigations of mental phenomena. The close-coupling of observer with the observed in first-person investigations can also be a problem, producing “observer effects” that are more acute than in most third-person investigations. The chapter suggests that one can either try to minimise such effects or to harness them, depending on the purpose of the investigation. (shrink)

Historians of psychology are aware that, at its beginning, psychology had a choice with respect to the type of science it was going to be. It could be a content type psychology using the experimental method as proposed by Wundt or a basic empirical psychology founded on acts of consciousness explicated through critical analyses and careful descriptions of psychological phenomena as proposed by Brentano. As noted by Boring, because content was palpable and acts seemed elusive, Wundt’s experimental (...) psychology prevailed. But Watson believed that, as they were themselves still difficult to detect, the content of conscious processes were not sufficiently palpable. So, he advocated using behavior as the basis for experimental psychology. Yet palpability is essential for the experimental method, not for studying consciousness. Intentionality is the essence of consciousness, but it is not palpable, though detectable. In the teens and twenties of the 19th Century some German psychologists developed a type of bipartite psychology that included both acts and content, but their work remained isolated. (shrink)

The papers in this volume reflect much of the current unease of a world that perceives itself once more at the edge of chaos. The authors present different vistas of that experience and their inherent dialectic, expressed in numerous and ceaseless conflicts between ordering and disordering processes. They can be read as comments on the ongoing processes that lead toward greater complexity.

Visual stimuli as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation can be used: to suppress the visibility of a target and to recover the visibility of a target that has been suppressed by another mask. Both types of stimulation thus provide useful methods for studying the microgenesis of object perception. We first review evidence of similarities between the processes by which a TMS mask and a visual mask can either suppress the visibility of targets or recover such suppressed visibility. However, we (...) then also point out a significant difference that has important implications for the study of the time course of unconscious and conscious visual information processing and for theoretical accounts of the processes involved. We present evidence and arguments showing: that visual masking techniques, by revealing more detailed aspects of target masking and target recovery, support a theoretical approach to visual masking and visual perception that must take into account activities in two separate neural channels or processing streams and, as a corollary, that at the current stage of methodological sophistication visual masks, by acting in more highly specifiable ways on these pathways, provide information about the microgenesis of form perception not available with TMS masks. (shrink)

The empirical exploration of the neural mechanisms of consciousness is undoubtedly going to be one of the most central lines of research in the scientific study of consciousness. Therefore, it is important for the researchers involved in these studies to have a clear idea of the phenomenon they are searching for and of the capabilities of the methods they are using to accomplish the task. The main point of my paper ‘Can functional brain imaging discover (...) class='Hi'>consciousness in the brain?’ was to explicate and clarify these issues that, although central metatheoretical problems for cognitive neuroscience, have not received much attention from either the experimental neuroscientists or the philosophers involved in the study of consciousness. (shrink)

In recent years consciousness has become a significant area of study in the cognitive sciences. The Frontiers of Consciousness is a major interdisciplinary exploration of consciousness. The book stems from the Chichele lectures held at All Souls College in Oxford, and features contributions from a 'who's who' of authorities from both philosophy and psychology. The result is a truly interdisciplinary volume, which tackles some of the biggest and most impenetrable problems in consciousness. The book includes (...) chapters considering the apparent explanatory gap between science and consciousness, our conscious experience of emotions such as fear, and of willed actions by ourselves and others. It looks at subjective differences between two ways in which visual information guides behaviour, and scientific investigation of consciousness in non-human animals. It looks at the challenges that the mind-brain relation presents for clinical practice as well as for theories of consciousness. The book draws on leading research from philosophy, experimental psychology, functional imaging of the brain, neuropsychology, neuroscience, and clinical neurology. Distinctive in its accessibility, authority, and its depth of coverage, Frontiers of Consciousness will be a groundbreaking and influential addition to the consciousness literature. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of pain depends, at least partly, on recognizing its subjectivity (thus, its first-person epistemology). This in turn requires using a first-person experiential method in addition to third-person experimental approaches to study it. This paper is an attempt to spell out what the former approach is and how it can be integrated with the latter. We start our discussion by examining some foundational issues raised by the use of introspection. We argue that such a first-person method (...) in the scientific study of pain (as in the study of any experience) is in fact indispensable by demonstrating that it has in fact been consistently used in conjunction with conventional third-person methodologies, and this for good reasons. We show that, contrary to what appears to be a widespread opinion, there is absolutely no reason to think that the use of such a first-person approach is scientifically and methodologically suspect. We distinguish between two uses of introspective methods in scientific experiments: one draws on the subjects’ introspective reports where any investigator has equal and objective access. The other is where the investigator becomes a subject of his own study and draws on the introspection of his own experiences. We give examples using and/or approximating both strategies that include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities, and brain imaging- psychophysical studies wherein sensory and affective qualities of pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. We explain what we call the experiential or phenomenological approach that has its origins in the work of Price and Barrell (1980). This approach capitalizes on the scientific prospects and benefits of using the introspection of the investigator. We distinguish between its vertical and horizontal applications. Finally, we conclude that integrating such an approach to standard third-person methodologies can only help us in having a fuller understanding of pain and of conscious experience in general. (shrink)

While acoustic analysis methods have become a commodity in voice emotion research, experiments that attempt not only to describe but to computationally manipulate expressive cues in emotional voice...

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

Context: Phenomenology and the enactive approach pose a unique challenge to dream research: during sleep one seems to be relatively disconnected from both world and body. Movement and perception, prerequisites for sensorimotor subjectivity, are restricted; the dreamer’s experience is turned inwards. In cognitive neurosciences, on the other hand, the generally accepted approach holds that dream formation is a direct result of neural activations in the absence of perception, and dreaming is often equated with “delusions.” Problem: Can enactivism and phenomenology account (...) for the variety of dream experiences? What kinds of experiential and empirical approaches are required in order to probe into dreaming subjectivity? Investigating qualities of perception, sensation, and embodiment in dreams, as well as the relationship between the dream-world and waking-world requires a step away from a delusional or altered-state framework of dream formation and a step toward an enactive integrative approach. Method: In this article, we will focus on the “depth” of dream experiences, i.e., what is possible in the dream state. Our article is divided into two parts: a theoretical framework for approaching dreaming from an enactive cognition standpoint; and discussion of the role and strategies for experimentation on dreaming. Based on phenomenology and theories of enactivism, we will argue for the primacy of subjectivity and imagination in the formation of lived experience. Results: We propose that neurophenomenology of dreaming is a nascent discipline that requires rethinking the relative role of third-, first- and second-person methodologies, and that a paradigm shift is required in order to investigate dreaming as a phenomenon on a continuum of conscious phenomena as opposed to a break from or an alteration of consciousness. Implications: Dream science, as part of the larger enterprise of consciousness and subjectivity studies, can be included in the enactive framework. This implies that dream experiences are neither passively lived nor functionally disconnected from dreamers’ world and body. We propose the basis and some concrete strategies for an empirical enactive neurophenomenology of dreaming. We conclude that investigating dream experiences can illuminate qualities of subjective perception and relation to the world, and thus challenge the traditional subject-object juxtaposition. Constructivist content: This article argues for an interdisciplinary enactive cognitive science approach to dream studies. (shrink)

Context: There is a growing recognition in consciousness science of the need for rigorous methods for obtaining accurate and detailed phenomenological reports of lived experience, i.e., descriptions of experience provided by the subject living them in the “first-person.” Problem: At the moment although introspection and debriefing interviews are sometimes used to guide the design of scientific studies of the mind, explicit description and evaluation of these methods and their results rarely appear in formal scientific discourse. Method: The (...) recent publication of an edited book of papers dedicated to the exploration of first-and second-person methods, Ten Years of Viewing from Within: The Legacy of Francisco Varela, serves as a starting point for a discussion of how these methods could be integrated into the growing discipline of consciousness science. We complement a brief review of the book with a critical analysis of the major pilot studies in Varela’s neurophenomenology, a research program that was explicitly devised to integrate disciplined experiential methods with the latest advances in neuroscience. Results: The book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in impressive recent advances in first- and second-person methods, as applied to the phenomenology of lived experience. However, our review of the neurophenomenology literature concludes that there is as yet no convincing example of these specialized techniques being used in combination with standard behavioral and neuroscientific approaches in consciousness science to produce results that could not have also been achieved by simpler methods of introspective reporting. Implications: The end of behaviorism and the acceptance of verbal reports of conscious experience have already enabled the beginning of a science of consciousness. It can only be of benefit if new first- and second-person methods become well-known across disciplines. Constructivist content: Constructivism has long been interested in the role of the observer in the constitution of our sense of reality, so these developments in the science of consciousness may open new avenues of constructivist research. More specifically, one of the ways in which the insights from first- and second-person methods are being validated is by recursively applying the methods to themselves; a practical application of an epistemological move that will be familiar to constructivists from the second-order cybernetics tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion—and Vice Versa by Thomas A. LewisAndrew ForsythWhy Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion—and Vice Versa Thomas A. Lewis OXFORD: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. 177 PP. $34.95Thomas Lewis's emphasis in Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion—and Vice Versa is chiefly the "Vice Versa" of his book's title. Philosophy of religion (untenably tied to Christianity and (...) Judaism, he claims, and unduly limited to well-worn questions of theism's rationality and the like) must learn from the field of religious studies, and most particularly from its pluralism and twenty-first-century attention to the historical and cultural construction of the category of "religion." Philosophers of religion fail today if they treat as self-evident the building blocks of their discipline.In a series of essays, Lewis diagnoses the malaise, ably sketches "promising signs" of a different paradigm, and prods the discipline to "belong more clearly in religious studies" (vii). More specifically, he treats normativity in religious studies; the place of history (and the history of "religion") in philosophy of religion; the centrality of comparison in religious ethics and philosophy of religion; and the proper—self-conscious—use of categories in the study of religion. Taken one by one, Lewis's essays are elegant and thought-provoking. "On the Role of Normativity in Religious Studies," for example, merits inclusion in any Theories and Methods syllabus, teasing out, as it does, problematic presuppositions that only theology makes normative claims, and that "faith" is juxtaposed with "reason."Taken as a whole, however, Lewis's book will trouble Christian ethicists committed to conversation with religious studies. To begin, philosophy of religion most often "matters," in Lewis's telling, when it clarifies current trajectories of scholarship in religious studies. As a result, the organizing disciplinary presuppositions of religious studies go mostly unchallenged. Second, in Lewis's telling, religious studies becomes a surprisingly narrow enterprise. While the whole sweep of "religious thought, people, movements, practices, materials, etc." (7) is the apparent purview of religious studies, the golden thread running through Lewis's various essay interventions is scholarship on "religion" as a constructed, nonnatural category. This has been a generative pursuit for two decades, but scholarly concern for "religion" risks becoming tediously in-house, despite Lewis's fine articulation of the negative public policy ramifications of simplistic alternatives. No doubt Lewis uses the category of "religion" as just one example of potential work in religious studies, but the example's ubiquity in [End Page 209] the book flows from Lewis's vision of the field: religious studies shares the same kinds of evidence as those used throughout the humanities and social sciences, and excludes work reliant on unassailable authorities (scriptures, traditions) or private forms of justification (experience). Neither tracking a particular natural phenomenon, then, nor employing its own particular methods, discourse on the use of the category of "religion" becomes ever more central.Finally, the relationship between what might be called Lewis's "broader" and "narrower" visions of philosophy of religion is left somewhat unclear. Lewis's broader position is inclusive of positions he does not hold but that are not excluded by his understanding of the boundaries of the field. His narrower position is a take on Hegel, its details outlined in the concluding essay. Hegel's thought, Lewis tells us, offers the greatest potential for "simultaneously acknowledging the historical situatedness of our own viewpoint, exposing the hidden operation of power, and providing a rational justification for our normative commitments" (159–60). While Lewis's impulse throughout Why Philosophy Matters is for wider, broader work in philosophy of religion, his narrower Hegelian vision of the field, it turns out, has no place for "extra-conceptual grounding, whether in empiricist or transcendent accounts" (156). Are only Hegelian and pragmatist accounts sufficient? Philosophers must make a case for what they think is true, of course, but there is still some irony that a work that helpfully seeks to expand philosophy of religion beyond the "parochial" (23, 28) ends by excluding so much.Andrew ForsythYale UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Understanding the nature of pain at least partly depends on recognizing its inherent first person epistemology and on using a first person experiential and third person experimental approach to study it. This approach may help to understand some of the neural mechanisms of pain and consciousness by integrating experiential–phenomenological methods with those of neuroscience. Examples that approximate this strategy include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities and brain imaging-psychophysical studies wherein sensory (...) and affective qualities of pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. The experiential paradigm of Price and Barrell offers the possibility of improved designs and methods for investigating neural mechanisms underlying pain and consciousness. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect (delayed response due to interference) elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Biomedicine: Convention on Human Rights and BiomedicineCouncil of EuropePreambleThe Member States of the Council of Europe, the other States and the European Community signatories hereto,Bearing in mind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948;Bearing in mind the (...) Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950;Bearing in mind the European Social Charter of 18 October 1961;Bearing in mind the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 16 December 1966;Bearing in mind the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data of 28 January 1981;Bearing also in mind the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989;Considering that the aim of the Council of Europe is the achievement of a greater unity between its members and that one of the methods by which that aim is to be pursued is the maintenance and further realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms;Conscious of the accelerating developments in biology and medicine;Convinced of the need to respect the human being both as an individual and as a member of the human species and recognising the importance of ensuring the dignity of the human being; [End Page 277]Conscious that the misuse of biology and medicine may lead to acts endangering human dignity;Affirming that progress in biology and medicine should be used for the benefit of present and future generations;Stressing the need for international co-operation so that all humanity may enjoy the benefits of biology and medicine;Recognising the importance of promoting a public debate on the questions posed by the application of biology and medicine and the responses to be given thereto;Wishing to remind all members of society of their rights and responsibilities;Taking account of the work of the Parliamentary Assembly in this field, including Recommendation 1160 (1991) on the preparation of a Convention on bioethics;Resolving to take such measures as are necessary to safeguard human dignity and the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual with regard to the application of biology and medicine;Have agreed as follows:Chapter IGeneral provisionsArticle 1. (Purpose and object)Parties to this Convention shall protect the dignity and identity of all human beings and guarantee everyone, without discrimination, respect for their integrity and other rights and fundamental freedoms with regard to the application of biology and medicine.Each Party shall take in its internal law the necessary measures to give effect to the provisions of this Convention.Article 2. (Primacy of the human being)The interests and welfare of the human being shall prevail over the sole interest of society or science.Article 3. (Equitable access to health care)Parties, taking into account health needs and available resources, shall take appropriate measures with a view to providing, within their jurisdiction, equitable access to health care of appropriate quality. [End Page 278]Article 4. (Professional standards)Any intervention in the health field, including research, must be carried out in accordance with relevant professional obligations and standards.Chapter IIConsentArticle 5. (General rule)An intervention in the health field may only be carried out after the person concerned has given free and informed consent to it.This person shall beforehand be given appropriate information as to the purpose and nature of the intervention as well as on its consequences and risks.The person concerned may freely withdraw consent at any time.Article 6. (Protection of persons not able to consent)1. Subject to Articles 17 and 20 below, an intervention may only be carried out on a person who does not have the capacity to consent, for his or her direct benefit.2. Where, according to law, a minor does not have the capacity to consent to an intervention, the intervention may only be carried out with the authorisation of his or her representative or an authority or a person or... (shrink)

Conditionals have been studied by philosophers for over two thousand years. This should not be surprising, given how central conditionals are to human reasoning and decision making. This chapter argues that making progress in answering the questions about conditionals which have occupied so many philosophers, past and present, may require the use of methods that go beyond those traditionally used in analytic philosophy. The reasons some might have for believing that experimental methods have no place in, or (...) are redundant for, the philosophical study of conditionals will be found wanting. The chapter provides positive reasons for holding that philosophers studying conditionals may greatly benefit from the use of such methods. These reasons will emerge from a discussion of relatively recent results concerning conditionals, most of which have been obtained by experimentally working psychologists as well as by teams consisting of both such psychologists and philosophers. (shrink)

Introduction: Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others’ emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation. Objective: This study aims to enrich knowledge of the empathic experience of pain by using an experimental phenomenological (...) method. Method: Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories. Results: Experiential access to the other person’s painful experience involves four main-themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. Temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant’s own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them. Discussion: We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory for non-interactive social experience. (shrink)

This article reports on Clean Language Interviewing (CLI), a rigorous, recently developed 'content-empty' (non-leading) approach to second-person interviewing in the science of consciousness. Also presented is a new systematic third-person method of validation that evaluates the questions and other verbal interventions by the interviewer to produce an adherence-to-method or 'cleanness' rating. A review of 19 interviews from five research studies provides a benchmark for interviewers seeking to minimize leading questions. The inter-rater reliability analysis demonstrates substantial agreement among raters with (...) an average intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.72 (95% CI). We propose that this method of validation is applicable not only to CLI but to second-person interviews more generally. (shrink)

The recently celebrated division into ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ problems of consciousness is unfortunate and misleading. Built on functionalist grounds, it carves up the subject matter by declaring that the most elusive parts need a fundamentally and intrinsically different solution. What we have, rather, are ‘difficult’ problems of conscious experience, but problems that are not difficult per se. Their difficulty is relative, among other things, to the kind of solution one is looking for and the tools used to accomplish the (...) task. I argue that the study of conscious experience in our scientific and philosophical tradition is a very difficult problem because it has been addressed with inappropriate tools: with harmful long-lasting and inadequate dogmas that have dogged science for centuries. I describe five of these dogmas, which are: the existence of an objective reality independent of human understanding; the subordination of epistemology to ontology; the restricted view of the objectivist-subjectivist dichotomy; the exclusion of the body from the study of the mind; and the idea of explaining the mind in terms of the neurophysiological processes of individual brains. I claim that conscious experience is not a transcendental, paranatural, mystic or magic phenomenon. It is tractable and approachable with scientific methods. However, one must look not only for non-reductionist views to approach it, but also for views that avoid the dogmas here described. Conscious experience is a living phenomenon and it has to be understood as such. Accordingly, our understanding of it has to make sense at several levels, from evolution to morphophysiology, from neuroanatomy to language. I put forward an approach to conscious experience which is free of the dogmas that make the study of conscious experience so difficult. This view, called ecological naturalism, is a non-functionalist and non-reductive view that provides an naturalistic account of the mind. It also puts special emphasis on irreducible supra-individual biological processes that are essential in the realization of mental phenomena and therefore conscious experience. (shrink)

Modern consciousness studies are in a healthy state, with many progressive empirical programmes in cognitive science, neuroscience and related sciences, using relatively conventional third-person research methods. However not all the problems of consciousness can be resolved in this way. These problems may be grouped into problems that require empirical advance, those that require theoretical advance, and those that require a re-examination of some of our pre-theoretical assumptions. I give examples of these, and focus on two problems—what (...) class='Hi'>consciousness is, and what consciousness does—that require all three. In this, careful attention to conscious phenomenology and finding an appropriate way to relate first-person evidence to third-person evidence appears to be central to progress. But we may also need to re-examine what we take to be “natural facts” about the world, and how we can know them. The same appears to be true for a trans-cultural understanding of consciousness that combines classical Indian phenomenological methods with the third-person methods of Western science. (shrink)

This is the second of four online Companions to Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. -/- The Companion to Volume 2 Part 1 focuses on the detailed relationship of phenomenal consciousness to mental processing described either functionally (as human information processing) or in terms of neural activity, in the ways typically explored by cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Beginning with reviews of functional (...) differences between unconscious, preconscious and conscious processing and the different senses in which mental processing can be said to be “conscious”, the readings turn to seminal work on blindsight and related phenomena, experimental evidence of perception without awareness, ways to combine “subjective” and “objective” measures of awareness, evidence for distinct neural pathways governing visual awareness and visual control of motor acts, and the complex ways in which consciousness of action relates to both voluntary and involuntary acts. The readings then focus on the intimate links between attention and consciousness, starting with the writings of William James and surveying the extensive work on this subject over the last 60 years that explores the relationships between and attended and non-attended processing, preconscious and conscious processing, and attention, primary (working, short-term) memory and consciousness. The readings go on to survey the evidence that attention contributes to the “neural binding” required for an integrated conscious experience and evidence that attention (in humans) is dissociable from consciousness, necessary for consciousness, but not sufficient for consciousness. The readings then turn to research on “inattentional blindness”, and conclude with a review of Baars’ global workspace theory, which integrates many theories and findings in this area into a coherent, global model. The Companion then summarises seminal readings on learning, memory and consciousness; the extensive research on mental imagery, long thought to epitomize private, subjective conscious experience—and consequently ruled out of science by reductive, materialist philosophies of mind; the complex relations of consciousness to sleep and dreaming; the development of consciousness in human infants; and the debates surrounding, and extensive evidence for consciousness in non-human animals, with attendant consequences for their humane treatment. -/- As with the other Companions to these Volumes there are many links to background resources (marked in pink) and to the selected readings themselves (marked in blue). (shrink)

Of all the problems facing science none are more challenging yet fascinating than those posed by consciousness. In The Science of Consciousness leading researchers examine how consciousness is being investigated in the key areas of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology and clinical psychology. Within cognitive psychology, special focus is given to the function of consciousness, and to the relation of conscious processing to nonconscious processing in perception, learning, memory and information dissemination. Neuropsychology includes examination of the neural conditions (...) for consciousness and the effects of brain damage. Finally, mind/body interactions in clinical and experimental settings are considered, including the somatic effects of imagery, biofeedback and placebo effects. Every chapter is written by an expert in the field. They each provide a clear overview of existing research along with an exciting new synthesis of consciousness studies. The The Science of Consciousness will be invaluable for students, researchers and clinicians interested in the developments and directions of this rapidly growing field. (shrink)

To make progress on the problem of consciousness, we have to confront it directly. In this paper, I first isolate the truly hard part of the problem, separating it from more tractable parts and giving an account of why it is so difficult to explain. I critique some recent work that uses reductive methods to address consciousness, and argue that such methods inevitably fail to come to grips with the hardest part of the problem. Once this (...) failure is recognized, the door to further progress is opened. In the second half of the paper, I argue that if we move to a new kind of nonreductive explanation, a naturalistic account of consciousness can be given. I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance, and a double-aspect theory of information. (shrink)

If within the borders of human life the truth is, as Vico has said, what is made, then the task of a student of human life can be and should be to find out from what human beings have made what manner of makers they are and what sorts of production their circumstance allows.

A stream of conscious experience is extremely contextual; it is impacted by sensory stimuli, drives and emotions, and the web of associations that link, directly or indirectly, the subject of experience to other elements of the individual's worldview. The contextuality of one's conscious experience both enhances and constrains the contextuality of one's behavior. Since we cannot know first-hand the conscious experience of another, it is by way of behavioral contextuality that we make judgements about whether or not, and to what (...) extent, a system is conscious. Thus we believe that a deep understanding of contextuality is vital to the study of consciousness. Methods have been developed for handling contextuality in the microworld of quantum particles. Our goal has been to investigate the extent to which these methods can be used to analyze contextuality in conscious experience. (shrink)

This study juxtaposes an imaginal inquiry into the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with a historical exegesis of the ancient religious movement generally termed Orphism, which came to be associated with it. Inviting unconscious elements into the study of myth and subsequently elaborating a theoretical analysis as well as a creative project---as this study does in the form of a screenplay adaptation---corresponds to Carl Jung's theory of the transcendent function, which states that a new level of being (...) is possible by balancing these two approaches to such material. This study unfolds the myth's latent theology by dreaming it forward in this way. ;The principal thesis---that Orpheus looks back to Eurydice with purpose and an awareness that his gaze will cause her to return to Hades---is itself an example of unconscious material emerging into consciousness. The greater part of this study is devoted to deriving meaning from the twist that this re-imagining implies for the elucidation of myth in general and for the study of this myth in particular. ;A principle question addressed is "What aspects of the latent theology found to exist in this myth can be said to constitute a founder story of Orphism?" In addition, this study proposes the figure of Orpheus as emblematic of the active masculine principle---exalted in his balancing of solar and lunar masculinity---that provides a blueprint for a dualistic cognitive model of archetypal experience. ;This model posits that the dualities found in the myth, and sometimes in life, derive their patterning from the individual's inability to experience the archetype directly. Orpheus' look back exemplifies a breaching of the veil that separates us from the archetype, allowing a momentary interpenetration of the individual's sphere of consciousness with the essence of the archetype. It is thought that integration of unconscious and conscious material follows. Finally, how these insights can be applied to the lives of men and women is addressed in this study's conclusion. (shrink)