Bruner sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of the mind. He examines the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful; he calls this side of mental activity the “narrative mode,” and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.

This article takes ‘measurement’ as a will to determine or fix space and time, which allows for a comparison of ontological models of space and time from Western and Māori traditions. The spirit of ‘measurement’ is concomitantly one of fixing meaning, which is suggested as the essence of the growth of the scientific genre of language that has taken place alongside the growth of science itself, since the European Enlightenment. ‘Measurement’ and ‘metaphor’ are posited as an original binary for classifying (...) thinking and language, updating classical educational models of thought by drawing on recent results in brain and cognitive science, and recognising that basic cognitive resources, such as logic and rationality, power all forms of thinking. The article suggests that the notion of ‘cultural worldview’ may involve different balances of left and right brain thinking, embedded in the discourses, lexicons and grammars of each language, and that Western domination of left brain thinking may be a useful viewpoint on the philosophical dead end of the West. (shrink)

In Kant’s idealism, all spatiotemporal objects depend on the human mind in a certain way. A central issue here is whether the existence of spatiotemporal things requires that these things are, at least at some point, objects of some actual experience or of a merely possible experience. In this essay, I argue (on textual and philosophical grounds) for the latter view: spatiotemporal things exist (or spatiotemporal events occur) if they are objects of a (suitably qualified) possible experience.

The development of a metaphysics of actuality is reconstructed from Plato through Bergson to capitalize on Bergson's suggestion that mind and matter can be understood as inversions of each other, or as respectively a centering and an extending of forms. This view avoids the pitfalls of reductive monism and disjunctive dualism: it is dyadic (cognizant at once of mind-matter difference and of the unity of reality), symmetrical (not apt to close off prematurely our reckoning with complexity and change, on either (...) side), and correlational (able to track relations of form, energy, and sequence between mental and material items). (shrink)

I shall argue that you can substantially refute the most persuasive variety of solipsism by taking its most plausible version seriously, and then showing that it is not rational to hold, once one understands the nature of actualist metaphysical commitments.1 In the first section, I argue that the only viable form of solipsism involves de dicto self-reference. In the second, I argue that this position involves a claim of contingent identity, for which some actual worlds are those where solipsism is (...) not the case. The argument turns on a conception of metaphysics that involves the study of the universal features of actually possible worlds (i.e., realistic necessity). _*Draft. Acknowledgements welcome, but please do not cite.*_. (shrink)

Despite their ethical intentions, ethically minded consumers rarely purchase ethical products (Auger and Devinney: 2007, Journal of Business Ethics76, 361–383). This intentions–behaviour gap is important to researchers and industry, yet poorly understood (Belk et al.: 2005, Consumption, Markets and Culture8(3), 275–289). In order to push the understanding of ethical consumption forward, we draw on what is known about the intention–behaviour gap from the social psychology and consumer behaviour literatures and apply these insights to ethical consumerism. We bring together three separate (...) insights – implementation intentions (Gollwitzer: 1999, American Psychologist54(7), 493–503), actual behavioural control (ABC) (Ajzen and Madden: 1986, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology22, 453–474; Sheeran et al.: 2003, Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 393–410) and situational context (SC) (Belk: 1975, Journal of Consumer Research2, 157–164) – to construct an integrated, holistic conceptual model of the intention–behaviour gap of ethically minded consumers. This holistic conceptual model addresses significant limitations within the ethical consumerism literature, and moves the understanding of ethical consumer behaviour forward. Further, the operationalisation of this model offers insight and strategic direction for marketing managers attempting to bridge the intention–behaviour gap of the ethically minded consumer. (shrink)

"The philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical subjects," writes John Searle, "in that all of the most famous and influential theories are false." In Mind, Searle dismantles these famous and influential theories as he presents a vividly written, comprehensive introduction to the mind. Here readers will find one of the world's most eminent thinkers shedding light on the central concern of modern philosophy. Searle begins with a look at the twelve problems of philosophy of mind--which he calls "Descartes (...) and Other Disasters"--problems which he returns to throughout the volume, as he illuminates such topics as the freedom of the will, the actual operation of mental causation, the nature and functioning of the unconscious, the analysis of perception, and the concept of the self. One of the key chapters is on the mind-body problem, which Searle analyzes brilliantly. He argues that all forms of consciousness--from feeling thirsty to wondering how to translate Mallarme--are caused by the behavior of neurons and are realized in the brain system, which is itself composed of neurons. But this does not mean that consciousness is nothing but neuronal behavior. The main point of having the concept of consciousness, Searle points out, is to capture the first person subjective features of the phenomenon and this point is lost if we redefine consciousness in third person objective terms. Described as a "dragonslayer by temperament," John Searle offers here a refreshingly direct and open discussion of philosophy, one that skewers accepted wisdom even as it offers striking new insights into the nature of consciousness and the mind. (shrink)

In Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action. This unified treatment rests on two basic claims. The first is that conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied. This entails that our minds are necessarily spread throughout our living, organismic bodies and belong to their complete neurobiological constitution. So minds like ours are necessarily alive. The (...) second claim is that essentially embodied minds are self-organizing thermodynamic systems. This entails that our mental lives consist in the possibility and actuality of moving our own living organismic bodies through space and time, by means of our conscious desires. The upshot is that we are essentially minded animals who help to create the natural world through our own agency. This doctrine--the Essential Embodiment Theory--is a truly radical idea which subverts the traditionally opposed and seemingly exhaustive categories of Dualism and Materialism, and offers a new paradigm for contemporary mainstream research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Fara and Williamson (Mind, 2005) argue that counterpart theory is unable to account for modal claims that use an actuality operator. This paper argues otherwise. Rather than provide a different counterpart translation of the actuality operator itself, the solution presented here starts out with a quantified modal logic in which the actuality operator is redundant, and then translates the sentences of this logic into claims of counterpart theory.

The mind body problem is a continuing issue in philosophy. No surveys known to us have been conducted about the actual preferences of, for example, psychology students for particular preconceptions about the mind body relation. These preconceptions may have different practical implications for decisions concerning the object and method of research, the choice of explanatory device for psychological and other research data and for the approach of professionals in practice. A questionnaire comprising ten different preconceptions about the mind body relation (...) and other items was returned by 209 German students of various disciplines and by a second sample of 233 first year psychology students. Identity theory, interactionism and complementarity were preferred most. The students clearly believed that the preference for certain preconceptions has important practical implications. There were no differences between the students of different disciplines in the choice of preferred preconceptions about the mind body relation or in the view that these preconceptions are of practical importance. (shrink)

The real distinction between mind and body -- Is conceivability a guide to possibility? -- Textbook kripkeanism and the open texture of concepts -- Coulda, woulda, shoulda -- No fool's cold : notes on illusions of possibility -- Beyond rigidification : the importance of being really actual -- How in the world? -- Mental causation -- Singling out properties -- Wide causation -- Causal relevance : mental, moral, and epistemic.

The field of mindfulness and the emerging science of heroism have a common interest in the causes and conditions of selfless altruism though up to this point there has been little cross-pollination. However, there is increasing evidence that mindfulness training delivers heroically relevant qualities such as increased attentional functioning, enhanced primary sensory awareness, greater conflict monitoring, increased cognitive control, reduced fear response, and an increase in loving kindness and self-sacrificing behaviors. Predicated on the notion of a “no self,” traditional mindfulness (...) and its focus on enlightenment and selfless service may in fact be ideally suited to the development of the elusive “trait” (predictable) versus “state” (intermittent) heroic character. Interweaving observations and questions drawn from the science of heroism, the article explores the relevant theory, practices, and scientific outcomes of mindfulness. It finds that there is evidence that heroically relevant qualities are trainable with the suite of mindfulness techniques and that an enduring experience of selflessness and service of others (the enlightened hero) may well be within the grasp of the serious practitioner. (shrink)

In La filosofia dell’arte, Giovanni Gentile assigned a prominent new role to the sentiments. This change struck some critics as a major departure from the earlier, classic accounts of actual idealism, in which Gentile argued that thought and language comprise the entirety of reality. Sentiments do not fit cleanly into a theory so narrowly concerned with thought and thinking. Their introduction, runs the objection, only compounds certain existing ambiguities in Gentile’s conception of the relation between mind and world. This article (...) describes and criticizes Gentile’s attempts to integrate feeling into actual idealism. It is argued that the appearance of feeling in his mature theory does not undermine but instead clarifies his views on the relation between thought and the act of thinking. Yet it also shows the strain under which idealist language was being put by the late 1920s. Gentile’s attempts to lay out a comprehensive and phenomenologically accurate account of how thinkers actually experience... (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

"Death is a subject which has always been high on the philosophical agenda. But strangely enough the historically and traditionally most important aspect of that subject - the so-called transcendent problem of death, i.e. the question of what actually happens to mind or consciousness after physical death - is almost taboo-laden within modern academic philosophy." "It is, however, the contention of this book that a discussion of the transcendent problem of death makes good sense even on contemporary premises, granted the (...) fulfillment of certain preconditions that should not be rejected offhand." "The main parts of this book deal with questions concerning the viability of preconditions such as mind-body dualism, a substance-theory of mind, a non-reductionist view of personal identity, the notion of 'a minimal self', the persistence of the phenomenal 'now' etc." "In this connection the author presents and evaluates a number of arguments pertaining to the view that, even though an individual mind may contain outward-directed functions that allow it to relate to physical and social surroundings, it has an ontologically peculiar self-enclosed mode of being relative to the physical world. Hereby an understanding of 'the ontology of mind' is achieved, which indicates the possibility of a revival of some old and extremely important metaphysical questions which are commonly and unjustly neglected - for instance the transcendent problem of death." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

Panpsychism is an eminently sensible view of the world and its relation to mind. If God is a metaphysician, and regardless of the actual truth or falsity of panpsychism, it is certain that he regards the theory as an honest and elegant competitor on the field of ontologies. And if God didn’t create a panpsychist world, then there’s a fair chance that he wishes he had done so, or will do next time around. The difficulties panpsychism faces, then, are not (...) metaphysical ones. They are, instead, difficulties of understanding, and of acceptance by philosophers. The main difficulty of this sort the theory faces is that its ontology – with consciousness in some sense at the heart of all that exists1 – is deemed too bizarre, frankly, too humano-centric to be taken seriously. Why should anyone think that consciousness, widely held to be the preserve only of ourselves, plus the most recently evolved organisms, infuses the basement level of all existence? Such a thought seems to many – especially, to scientifically scrupled philosophers of mind – a narcissistic (or at best hopelessly anti-realist) folly, which doesn’t even deserve its day in court. Panpsychism.. (shrink)

The counterfactual mental state of negligent criminal activity invites skepticism from those who see mental states as essential to responsibility. Here, I offer a revision of the mental state of criminal negligence, one where the mental state at issue is actual and not merely counterfactual. This revision dissolves the worry raised by the skeptic and helps to explain negligence’s comparatively reduced culpability.

The Mind in Nature has two central aims. First, that of defending a ‘basic ontology’. Second, having advanced a plausible ontological framework, to appeal to it to cast light on the status of intentionality and the nature of consciousness, paying particular attention to the question of what distinguishes conscious systems from those that are vegetative.Central to Martin's basic ontology is his acceptance of a realist conception of dispositionality. Contrary to the view of David Lewis and others, talk about a thing's (...) dispositions cannot be analysed as talk about a thing's behaviour in a set of counterfactual circumstances. The account of dispositions that emerges from Martin's discussion is one according to which a specific disposition is either actual or it is not. To be actual a disposition need not be manifesting any manifestation. Unmanifesting dispositions are not, therefore, unactualized possibilia – a description which, he observes, is more fitting of unmanifested manifestations. In advancing a realist conception of dispositionality, Martin also opposes those who maintain that dispositional properties reduce to …. (shrink)

When Fodor titled his (1983) book the _Modularity of Mind_, he overstated his position. His actual view is that the mind divides into systems some of which are modular and others of which are not. The book would have been more aptly, if less provocatively, called _The Modularity of Low-Level Peripheral Systems_. High-level perception and cognitive systems are non-modular on Fodor’s theory. In recent years, modularity has found more zealous defenders, who claim that the entire mind divides into highly specialized (...) modules. This view has been especially popular among Evolutionary Psychologists. They claim that the mind is massively modular (Cosmides and Tooby, 1994; Sperber, 1994; Pinker, 1997; see also Samuels, 1998). Like a Swiss Army Knife, the mind is an assembly of specialized tools, each of which has been designed for some particular purpose. My goal here is to raise doubts about both peripheral modularity and massive modularity. To do that, I will rely on the criteria for modularity laid out by Fodor (1983). I will argue that neither input systems, nor central systems are modular on any of these criteria. (shrink)

The moment when a person’s actual relationships fall short of desired relationships is commonly identified as the etiological moment of chronic loneliness, which can lead to physical and psychological effects like depression, worse recovery from illness and increased mortality. But, this etiology fails to explain the nature and severe impact of loneliness. Here, we use philosophical analysis and neuroscience to show that human beings develop and maintain our world-picture (our sense of what is true, important, and good) through joint attention (...) and action, motivated by friendship, in the Aristotelian sense of “other selves” who share a sense of the true and the good, and desire the good for each other as much as for themselves. The true etiological event of loneliness is the moment one’s world-picture becomes unshared. The pathogenesis is a resultant decay of our world-picture, with brain and behavior changes following as sequelae. (shrink)

The ‘Mind-Upload’ hypothesis, a radical version of the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment, asserts that a whole mind can safely be transferred from a brain to a digital device, after being exactly encoded into substrate independent informational patterns. Prima facie, MU seems the philosophical archenemy of the Embodied Mind theory, which understands embodiment as a necessary and constitutive condition for the existence of a mind and its functions. In truth, whether and why MU and EM are ultimately incompatible is unobvious. This paper, (...) which aims to answer both questions, will not simply confirm that MU and EM actually are incompatible. It will also show the true reason of their incompatibility: while EM implies that a mind’s individual identity is contingent upon the details of its physical constituents, MU presupposes that minds can be relocated from one material vessel to another. A systematic comparison between these conflicting assumptions reveals that the real shortcoming of MU is not the one usually discussed by the philosophical literature: it has nothing to do with MU’s functionalist or computationalist prerequisites, and is only secondarily related to the artificial implementability of consciousness; the real problem is that MU presupposes that minds could still be individuated and numerically identified while being reduced to immaterial formal patterns. EM seems committed to refute this assumption, but does it have sufficient resources to succeed? (shrink)

Since Descartes, the mind has been thought to be "in the head," separable from the world and even from the body it inhabits. In The Mind and its World , Gregory McCulloch considers the latest debates in philosophy and cognitive science about whether the thinking subject actually requires an environment in order to be able to think. McCulloch explores the mind/body duality from the Enlightenment to the 20th century. He examines such figures as Descartes, Frege, Locke, and Wittgenstein. His method (...) is comparative, and his insights are illuminating. By pitting Descartes against such thinkers as Wittgenstein and Frege, McCulloch produces a dynamic account of the implications of the Descartian argument about consciousness and the mind. The contrast evolves into McCulloch's original theory of externalism, the notion that the mind is not in the head, and is constituted by environmental, and linguistic object relations. The Mind and its World is a clearand compelling reading of the one of the dominant elements and debates within Western philosophy. Its synthesis of the arguments and controversies will make this book necessary reading for the general reader who is interested in the claims the Enlightenment and its aftermath have made about consciousness, our "minds", and even our brains._. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that when dealing with certain kinds of narratives, ‘like it or not’, consumers of fiction will bring the same sorts of skills (or at least a subset of them) to bear that they use when dealing with actual minds. Let us call this the ‘Same Resources Thesis’. I believe the ‘Same Resources Thesis’ is true. But this is because I defend the view that engaging in narrative practices is the normal developmental route through which children (...) acquire the capacity to make sense of what it is to act for a reason. If so, narratives are what provide crucial resources for dealing with actual minds – at least those of a certain sophisticated sort. I argue however that to the extent that we mindread at all, it is likely that we – i.e. those with the appropriate linguistically scaffolded abilities to make mental attributions – rely on our basic mind minding capacities to do so. So theory only comes into play when we mind guess, but theory of mind doesn’t come into it at all, neither when we deal with actual or fictional minds. (shrink)

Kammerer and Frankish (this issue) challenge us to expand our conception of introspection beyond neurotypical human cases. This article describes a possible 'ancillary mind' modelled on a system envisioned in Leckie's (2013) science fiction novel Ancillary Justice. The ancillary mind constitutes a borderline case between a communicating group of individuals and a single, spatially distributed mind. It occupies a grey zone with respect to personal identity and subject individuation, neither determinately one person or subject nor determinately many persons or subjects, (...) and thus some of its processes might be neither determinately introspection within a mind nor determinately communication between minds. If ancillary minds defy discrete countability, the same might be true for some actual minds on Earth. Kammerer and Frankish's research programme can be extended to include not only the study of possible forms of introspection, but also the study of possible mental activity intermediate between introspection and communication. (shrink)

Learning to live mindfully moment by moment by moment... lifelong educator and mindfulness pioneer Jerry Braza is the ideal companion on the path to more abundant living. Follow his lead as he lays the foundation for a more peaceful and productive life. Applying mindful practices to our daily lives enhances our personal relationships, happiness, health, and well-being. Are you living for this moment or the next? Practicing Mindfulness opens the way to a more engaged existence in the here and now."--Back (...) cover. (shrink)

The Centered Mind offers a new view of the nature and causal determinants of both reflective thinking and, more generally, the stream of consciousness. Peter Carruthers argues that conscious thought is always sensory-based, relying on the resources of the working-memory system. This system enables sensory images to be sustained and manipulated through attentional signals directed at midlevel sensory areas of the brain. When abstract conceptual representations are bound into these images, we consciously experience ourselves as making judgments or arriving at (...) decisions. However, our amodal propositional attitudes are never actually among the contents of this stream of conscious reflection. Our beliefs, goals, and decisions are only ever active in the background of consciousness, working behind the scenes. They are never themselves conscious.Drawing on extensive knowledge of the scientific literature on working memory and related topics, Carruthers challenges the central assumptions of many philosophers. In addition to arguing that non-sensory propositional attitudes are never conscious, he also shows that they are never under direct intentional control. Written with his usual clarity and directness, The Centered Mind will be essential reading for all philosophers and cognitive scientists interested in the nature of human thought processes. (shrink)

Utilitarians are attracted to the idea that an act is morally right iff it leads to the best outcome. But critics have pointed out that in many cases we cannot determine which of our alternatives in fact would lead to the best outcome. So we can’t use the classic principle to determine what we should do. It’s not “practical”; it’s not “action-guiding”. Some take this to be a serious objection to utilitarianism, since they think a moral theory ought to be (...) practical and action-guiding. In response, some utilitarians propose to modify utilitarianism by replacing talk of actual utility with talk of expected utility. Others propose to leave the original utilitarian principle in place, but to combine it with a decision procedure involving expected utility. What all these philosophers have in common is this: they move toward expected utility in order to defend utilitarianism against the impracticality objection. My aim in this paper is to cast doubt on this way of replying to the objection. My central claim is that if utilitarians are worried about the impracticality objection, they should not turn to expected utility utilitarianism. That theory does not provide the basis for a cogent reply to the objection. (shrink)

We often consciously will our own actions. This experience is so profound that it tempts us to believe that our actions are caused by consciousness. It could also be a trick, however – the mind’s way of estimating its own apparent authorship by drawing causal inferences about relationships between thoughts and actions. Cognitive, social, and neuropsychological studies of apparent mental causation suggest that experiences of conscious will frequently depart from actual causal processes and so might not reflect direct perceptions of (...) conscious thought causing action. (shrink)

To be mindful means to live your life engaged with the current moment - understanding where you are, what you want, the situation you're in, and how to get where you want to go. This step-by-step guide outlines how a mindful approach can help you in your everyday life to establish a more helpful, positive way of thinking and behaving.

The problem of other minds has a distinguished philosophical history stretching back more than two hundred years. Taken at face value, it is an epistemological question: it concerns how we can have knowledge of, or at least justified belief in, the existence of minds other than our own. In recent decades, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and primatologists have debated a related question: how we actually go about attributing mental states to others (regardless of whether we ever achieve knowledge or rational (...) justification in this domain). Until the mid-nineties, the latter debate – which sometimes goes under the name of the “mindreading” debate – was characterized by a fairly clear-cut opposition between two theoretical outlooks: “theory-theory” (TT) and “simulation theory” (ST). Theory-theorists typically argued that we attribute mental states to others on the basis of a “theory of mind” that is either constructed in early infancy and subsequently revised and modified (Gopnik 1996), or else is the result of maturation of innate mindreading “modules” (Baron-Cohen 1995). (shrink)

The counterpart theorist has a problem: there is no obvious way to understand talk about actuality in terms of counterparts. Fara and Williamson have charged that this obstacle cannot be overcome. Here I defend the counterpart theorist by offering systematic interpretations of a quantified modal language that includes an actuality operator. Centrally, I disentangle the counterpart relation from a related notion, a ‘representation relation’. The relation of possible things to the actual things they represent is variable, and an adequate account (...) of modal language must keep track of the way it is systematically shifted by modal operators. I apply my account to resolve several puzzles about counterparts and actuality. In technical appendices, I prove some important logical results about this ‘representational’ counterpart system and its relationship to other modal systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F/Actual Knowing:Putting Facts and Values in PlaceHolmes Rolston III (bio)Knowing needs to be actualized, an act of ours, yet also a discovery of what is actually, factually there. In place ourselves, we manage some awareness of other places. Agents in our knowing, we co-respond, and this emplaces us. But we humans have powers of dis-placement too, of taking up, whether empathetically or objectively, the situations of others, other humans, (...) sometimes others than humans. How do our facts depend on our acts? Do we humans always put in place, or sometimes find put, placed there before us, what we variously value on Earth?To put this provocatively: We need to "green" our beliefs; but every educated person knows that nothing out there is really "green." "Seeing green" is an interaction experience. Perhaps this perceptual experience is a model for the whole: all of our human concepts and percepts color up the world. This is true alike of facts and of values, discoveries and evaluations. Such knowing might be well enough placed, but it is always and only "placed." Our geographical position controls our epistemic composition. Epistemology is inevitably anthropocentric; we are always located in the center of our knowing.But what if the "green" we see is mostly chlorophyll? Photosynthesis is not something we can see at all. In place on Earth, we humans breathe oxygen and would die in minutes without it; we depend on photosynthesis at the foundation of our food chains. We know our own respiratory [End Page 137] and trophic interactions with the plants, and this not simply at the native range experiences of breathing and eating. We have figured out the oxygen/carbon-dioxide/water cycles taking place at molecular levels.Now it seems, however, that we are discovering ourselves placed where the facts are bigger than our acts, including our respiratory (and perceptual) interactions; these extend systemically and are hardly anthropocentric. Epistemologically, we have more to evaluate. "Greening" our belief, environmentally grounding it, will require knowing and appropriately respecting these vital life processes—of which we are a part, but which also are "in place" and "take place" apart from us.1. Embodied, Knowledgeable PersonsWhatever knowledge we gain has to "come through" at our native range. That seems uncontroversial, but what are the implications? Knowledge is relative to our location, our embodiment, our size, our terrestrial habitat. This situation constricts, it may be claimed, what can "come through." Mark Johnson concludes: "Our consciousness and rationality are tied to our bodily orientations and interactions in and with our environment. Our embodiment is essential to who we are, to what meaning is, and to our ability to draw rational inferences and to be creative." He urges us to "put the body back into the mind," that is, epistemologically, to become aware of how the body is there, willy-nilly (1987, xxxviii, xxxvi). Joining with George Lakoff, he claims: "Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature" (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 4).Katherine Hayles continues: "To be incorporated within a different body would be to live in a different world." She features "interactivity" and explains:Interactivity foregrounds rather than obscures the importance of embodiment. In the interaction model, the body does more than provide a biological support system for the mind. Interaction is possible only because we are embodied, and the precise conditions of our embodiment have everything to do with the nature of those interactions. The range and nature of sensory stimuli available to us, the contexts that affect how those sensory stimuli achieve meaning, the habituated movements and postures that we learn through culture and that are encoded for gender, ethnicity, and class—all affect how learning takes place and how the world comes into being for us.(1995, 56) [End Page 138]All this seems true, if one means that with reincarnation our native range experiences would be different. Wolves have keen noses and with them they experience, if you like, a different world. But the survival value of wolf noses, a situated knowledge for them, is equally true for humans, wolves, and elk, because all three... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F/Actual Knowing:Putting Facts and Values in PlaceHolmes Rolston III (bio)Knowing needs to be actualized, an act of ours, yet also a discovery of what is actually, factually there. In place ourselves, we manage some awareness of other places. Agents in our knowing, we co-respond, and this emplaces us. But we humans have powers of dis-placement too, of taking up, whether empathetically or objectively, the situations of others, other humans, (...) sometimes others than humans. How do our facts depend on our acts? Do we humans always put in place, or sometimes find put, placed there before us, what we variously value on Earth?To put this provocatively: We need to "green" our beliefs; but every educated person knows that nothing out there is really "green." "Seeing green" is an interaction experience. Perhaps this perceptual experience is a model for the whole: all of our human concepts and percepts color up the world. This is true alike of facts and of values, discoveries and evaluations. Such knowing might be well enough placed, but it is always and only "placed." Our geographical position controls our epistemic composition. Epistemology is inevitably anthropocentric; we are always located in the center of our knowing.But what if the "green" we see is mostly chlorophyll? Photosynthesis is not something we can see at all. In place on Earth, we humans breathe oxygen and would die in minutes without it; we depend on photosynthesis at the foundation of our food chains. We know our own respiratory [End Page 137] and trophic interactions with the plants, and this not simply at the native range experiences of breathing and eating. We have figured out the oxygen/carbon-dioxide/water cycles taking place at molecular levels.Now it seems, however, that we are discovering ourselves placed where the facts are bigger than our acts, including our respiratory (and perceptual) interactions; these extend systemically and are hardly anthropocentric. Epistemologically, we have more to evaluate. "Greening" our belief, environmentally grounding it, will require knowing and appropriately respecting these vital life processes—of which we are a part, but which also are "in place" and "take place" apart from us.1. Embodied, Knowledgeable PersonsWhatever knowledge we gain has to "come through" at our native range. That seems uncontroversial, but what are the implications? Knowledge is relative to our location, our embodiment, our size, our terrestrial habitat. This situation constricts, it may be claimed, what can "come through." Mark Johnson concludes: "Our consciousness and rationality are tied to our bodily orientations and interactions in and with our environment. Our embodiment is essential to who we are, to what meaning is, and to our ability to draw rational inferences and to be creative." He urges us to "put the body back into the mind," that is, epistemologically, to become aware of how the body is there, willy-nilly (1987, xxxviii, xxxvi). Joining with George Lakoff, he claims: "Reason, even in its most abstract form, makes use of, rather than transcends, our animal nature" (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 4).Katherine Hayles continues: "To be incorporated within a different body would be to live in a different world." She features "interactivity" and explains:Interactivity foregrounds rather than obscures the importance of embodiment. In the interaction model, the body does more than provide a biological support system for the mind. Interaction is possible only because we are embodied, and the precise conditions of our embodiment have everything to do with the nature of those interactions. The range and nature of sensory stimuli available to us, the contexts that affect how those sensory stimuli achieve meaning, the habituated movements and postures that we learn through culture and that are encoded for gender, ethnicity, and class—all affect how learning takes place and how the world comes into being for us.(1995, 56) [End Page 138]All this seems true, if one means that with reincarnation our native range experiences would be different. Wolves have keen noses and with them they experience, if you like, a different world. But the survival value of wolf noses, a situated knowledge for them, is equally true for humans, wolves, and elk, because all three... (shrink)

"Children live in a realm of direct experience, engaged with their senses and absorbed in events as they occur. But as adults, we've come to depend on our acquired skills of language, logic, and familiar thinking strategies to get things done and get through our days. For decades, innovative neuroscience educator Dee Joy Coulter has been treasure-hunting for fresh insights into learning that we can actually use-to transform the way we perceive, think, feel, and learn. Original Mind guides us into (...) her expansive vision for unfolding our natural brilliance. Applying the findings of scientists, artists, and cultures across the globe-and illuminated with stories and hands-on practices from her own work-readers will explore:. How to see, listen, feel, and taste again with childlike wonder. The oral tradition-reclaiming the cognitive power of storytelling and metaphor. Problem-solving and learning at the deepest levels. Empty mind -the art of rejuvenation as taught by the Buddha, composers and artists, and children across the globe. Boredom, Complexity, Ambiguity, Permeability, and Novelty-five tolerances essential to fulfillment. Surfing the edges of inner chaos-the theta-gamma states of inspired genius, and many other topics Readers both new and well-versed in brain training, meditation, and stress reduction will find here a wealth of inspiration to amplify the richness of their perceptions, intuition, creativity, emotional balance-and the untapped wonder hidden within each moment of our lives."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

This collection of essays extends the microgenetic theory of the mind/brain state to basic problems in process psychology and philosophy of mind. The author's microtemporal model of brain activity and psychological events, which was originally based on clinical studies of patients with focal brain damage, is here extended to such topics as the concept of the moment in Buddhist philosophy, conscious and unconscious thought, the nature of the self, subjective time and aesthetic perception. The author develops a highly original psychology (...) of mental process, actually a 'cognitive metaphysics', which is grounded in brain physiology and clinical psychopathology. A central theme is that the natural categories that arise in the extensibility of temporal data are continuous with conceptual structures in the human mind. (shrink)

An Insiders¿ Style Guide to Mind and Spirit ¿ Every Decade Should Be the Best Decade of Your Life by Natalie Logan is a fun and entertaining short read. Miami Florida ¿ Miami has long been a premier tourist destination, acclaimed for its physical beauty and its excellent climate. Year round, the fabled white-sand beaches and clear blue waters lapping Miami Beach have beckoned visitors to America¿s 'Riviera¿. Others are lured by Miami¿s world-class shopping and cosmopolitan dining and its international (...) culture. Mind and Spirit content:Personal Life CoachQuiet Your Inner CriticConfidence ¿ Keep Your Head High and Own Everything You Do and Do It BigBeauty and Happiness Feel Fabulous Tricks Must HavesWell Read Commit Random Acts of KindnessRe-Claim Your WeekendsManage Stress Aauvi Insiders¿ Style Guide Series ¿ There is something great about A-list living and Mind and Spirit, the ninth book of a twenty-one book series, is another step to achieving such an extraordinary life. You should be bursting with energy, and feeling you have an incredible motor inside you. There¿s still so much you want to do. You live more passionately now and savor every second. You think that¿s what happens when you grow up. (shrink)

This book presents a philosophy of science, based on panenmentalism: an original modal metaphysics, which is realist about individual pure (non-actual) possibilities and rejects the notion of possible worlds. The book systematically constructs a new and novel way of understanding and explaining scientific progress, discoveries, and creativity. It demonstrates that a metaphysics of individual pure possibilities is indispensable for explaining and understanding mathematics and natural sciences. It examines the nature of individual pure possibilities, actualities, mind-dependent and mind-independent possibilities, as well (...) as mathematical entities. It discusses in detail the singularity of each human being as a psychical possibility. It analyses striking scientific discoveries, and illustrates by means of examples of the usefulness and vitality of individual pure possibilities in the sciences. (shrink)

The mind-body problem arises because all theories about mind-brain connections are too deeply obscure to gain general acceptance. This essay suggests a clear, simple, mind-brain solution that avoids all these perennial obscurities. (1) It does so, first of all, by reworking Strawson and Stoljar’s views. They argue that while minds differ from observable brains, minds can still be what brains are physically like behind the appearances created by our outer senses. This could avoid many obscurities. But to clearly do so, (...) it must first clear up its own deep obscurity about what brains are like behind appearances, and how they create the mind’s privacy, unity and qualia – all of which observable brains lack. (2) This can ultimately be done with a clear, simple assumption: our consciousness is the physical substance that certain brain events consist of beyond appearances. For example, the distinctive electrochemistry in nociceptor ion channels wholly consists of pain. This rejects that pain is a brain property: instead it’s a brain substance that occupies space in brains, and exerts forces by which it’s indirectly detectable via EEGs. (3) This assumption is justified because treating pains as physical substances avoids the perennial obscurities in mind-body theories. For example, this ‘clear physicalism’ avoids the obscure nonphysical pain of dualism and its spinoffs. Pain is instead an electrochemical substance. It isn’t private because it’s hidden in nonphysical minds, but instead because it’s just indirectly detected in the physical world in ways that leave its real nature hidden. (4) Clear physicalism also avoids puzzling reductions of private pains into more fundamental terms of observable brain activity. Instead pain is a hidden, private substance underlying this observable activity. Also, pain is fundamental in itself, for it’s what some brain activity fundamentally consists of. This also avoids reductive idealist claims that the world just exists in the mind. They yield obscure views on why we see a world that isn’t really out there. (5) Clear physicalism also avoids obscure claims that pain is information processing which is realizable in multiple hardwares (not just in electrochemistry). Molecular neuroscience now casts doubt on multiple realization. Also, it’s puzzling how abstract information gets ‘realized’ in brains and affects brains (compare ancient quandries on how universals get embodied in matter). A related idea is that of supervenient properties in nonreductive physicalism. They involve obscure overdetermination and emergent consciousness. Clear physicalism avoids all this. Pain isn’t an abstract property obscurely related to brains – it’s simply a substance in brains. (6) Clear physicalism also avoids problems in neuroscience. Neuroscience explains the mind’s unity in problematic ways using synchrony, attention, etc.. Clear physicalism explains unity in terms of intense neuroelectrical activity reaching continually along brain circuits as a conscious whole. This fits evidence that just highly active, highly connected circuits are fully conscious. Neuroscience also has problems explaining how qualia are actually encoded by brains, and how to get from these abstract codes to actual pain, fear, etc.. Clear physicalism explains qualia electrochemically, using growing evidence that both sensory and emotional qualia correlate with very specific electrical channels in neural receptors. Multiple-realization advocates overlook this important evidence. (7) Clear physicalism thus bridges the mind-brain gulf by showing how brains can possess the mind’s qualia, unity and privacy – and how minds can possess features of brain activity like occupying space and exerting forces. This unorthodox nonreductive physicalism may be where physicalism leads to when stripped of all its reductive and nonreductive obscurities. It offers a clear, simple mind-body solution by just filling in what neuroscience is silent about, namely, what brain matter is like behind perceptions of it. (shrink)

Of course private-public terminology has a certain first-hand obviousness for us. No one does my experiencing for me; there are features of myself evident to me simply by virtue of the fact that I live through them. These features are not available in quite the same way to others. And your situation is the same. Meanwhile we all have the same sort of access to what we can see and touch and explore scientifically, i.e., the public common world. These remarks (...) must not be taken to imply that a human's privacy is identical with awareness or with immediate feelings; privacy is not exhausted in consciousness. Nevertheless the importance of the private-public distinction à propos actualities is its promise for clearing up or at least clarifying many puzzles involving consciousness: problems about perception, mind-brain connections, and even perhaps immortality. At least the distinction is promising if you begin by taking us to be indeed individual centers of an awareness which discloses some private content but also discloses real other bodily beings. That is, something like Weiss's conception of private and public or inside and outside seems to be essential if one holds that mentality has a firm non-dubious place in the natural world. (shrink)

In „Forum Philosophicum" vol. 7 a paper has been published in which J. R. Spitzer's proof for the existence of God has been analysed. The proof proceeded from the disjunction: The independent Being exists or does not exists The objective of the paper in „Forum" was to analyse the relation of dependence which was the central point to Spitzer's proof. Since in September 2001 the second part of the american Jesuit's disquisition appeared in the same periodical, it seems suitable to (...) react to this new text too. Spitzer has presented there three new arguments for the existence of God: from the past time, from the distinction between actuality and mere possibility and from a Lonerganian interpretation of the same distinction. While he named the proofs presented in the part I metaphysical, he qualified the proofs brought forward in the part H as cosmological, in view of the facts belonging to inanimate nature, such as: time, space, the velocity of light, etc. which serve him as starting-points. It is worth stressing that Spitzer's method is conducive to discussion, because he adduces concrete examples, something which makes his mind more comprehensible. Had he used some vague descriptions or general definitions, discussion would have been more difficult. So let us analyse the new proposed proofs. (shrink)

In „Forum Philosophicum" vol. 7 a paper has been published in which J. R. Spitzer's proof for the existence of God has been analysed. The proof proceeded from the disjunction: The independent Being exists or does not exists The objective of the paper in „Forum" was to analyse the relation of dependence which was the central point to Spitzer's proof. Since in September 2001 the second part of the american Jesuit's disquisition appeared in the same periodical, it seems suitable to (...) react to this new text too. Spitzer has presented there three new arguments for the existence of God: from the past time, from the distinction between actuality and mere possibility and from a Lonerganian interpretation of the same distinction. While he named the proofs presented in the part I metaphysical, he qualified the proofs brought forward in the part H as cosmological, in view of the facts belonging to inanimate nature, such as: time, space, the velocity of light, etc. which serve him as starting-points. It is worth stressing that Spitzer's method is conducive to discussion, because he adduces concrete examples, something which makes his mind more comprehensible. Had he used some vague descriptions or general definitions, discussion would have been more difficult. So let us analyse the new proposed proofs. (shrink)

Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it was -- that our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychology -- the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of Desire -- and (...) rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided.Evolutionary psychology employs a kind of reverse engineering to explain the evolved design of the mind, figuring out the adaptive problems our ancestors faced and then inferring the psychological adaptations that evolved to solve them. In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "discoveries," including "discriminative parental solicitude". Drawing on a wide range of empirical research, including his own large-scale study of child abuse, he shows that none is actually supported by the evidence.Buller argues that our minds are not adapted to the Pleistocene, but, like the immune system, are continually adapting, over both evolutionary time and individual lifetimes. We must move beyond the reigning orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology to reach an accurate understanding of how human psychology is influenced by evolution. When we do, Buller claims, we will abandon not only the quest for human nature but the very idea of human nature itself. (shrink)

Mind, it is increasingly fashionable to assert, is an intrinsically embodied and environmentally embedded phenomenon. But there is a potential tension between two strands of thought prominent in this recent literature. One of those strands depicts the body as special, and the fine details of a creature’s embodiment as a major constraint on the nature of its mind: a kind of new-wave body-centrism. The other depicts the body as just one element in a kind of equal-partners dance between brain, body (...) and world, with the nature of the mind fixed by the overall balance thus achieved: a kind of extended functionalism (now with an even broader canvas for multiple realizability than ever before). The present paper displays the tension, scouts the space of possible responses, and ends by attempting to specify what the body actually needs to be, given its complex role in these recent debates. (shrink)