The ability to be creative is often considered a unique characteristic of conscious beings and many efforts have been directed at demonstrating a relationship between creativity and the personality construct of psychoticism. The present study sought to investigate this link explicitly by focusing on discrete facets of creative cognition, namely the originality/novelty dimension and the practicality/usefulness dimension. Based on Eysenck’s conceptualisation of psychoticism as being characterised by an overinclusive cognitive style, it was expected that higher levels of psychoticism would accompany (...) a greater degree of conceptual expansion and elevated levels of originality in creative imagery, but would be unrelated to the practicality/usefulness of an idea. These hypotheses were confirmed in 80 healthy participants who were contrasted based on their EPQ psychoticism scale scores. Our findings suggest that the link between psychoticism and creativity is based on associative thinking and broader but weak top-down activation patterns rather than on goal-related thinking. (shrink)

Neurobiological and cognitive models of unconscious information processing suggest that subconscious threat detection can lead to cognitive misinterpretations and false alarms, while conscious processing is assumed to be perceptually and conceptually accurate and unambiguous. Furthermore, clinical theories suggest that pathological anxiety results from a crude preattentive warning system predominating over more sophisticated and controlled modes of processing. We investigated the hypothesis that subconscious detection of threat in a cognitive task is reflected by enhanced ''false signal'' detection rather than by selectively (...) enhanced discrimination of threat items in 30 patients with panic disorder and 30 healthy controls. We presented a tachistoscopic word-nonword discrimination task and a subsequent recognition task and analyzed the data by means of process-dissociation procedures. In line with our expectations, subjects of both groups showed more false signal detection to threat than to neutral stimuli as indicated by an enhanced response bias, whereas indices of discriminative sensitivity did not show this effect. In addition, patients with panic disorder showed a generally enhanced response bias in comparison to healthy controls. They also seemed to have processed the stimuli less elaborately and less differentially. Results are consistent with the assumption that subconscious threat detection can lead to misrepresentations of stimulus significance and that pathological anxiety is characterized by a hyperactive preattentive alarm system that is insufficiently controlled by higher cognitive processes. (shrink)

Dix modèles de conscience sont discutés. Les modèles en question sont proposés par des individus ne semblant pas comprendre « le problème difficile de la conscience phénoménale », vraisemblablement parce qu’ils n’ont pas de qualia eux-mêmes. Alors que les demandes des Zombies sont rejetées, la qualité de leurs commentaires et de leurs contributions augmente. La conclusion est qu’aucune solution précoce ne devrait être proposée à ce stade. Plutôt, il est suggéré que le problème devrait d’abord être pleinement examiné par les (...) scientifiques et les étudiants de toutes les universités concernées par le traitement de l’information dans le cerveau humain. Enfin, reste la question pourquoi le cerveau, lorsqu’il est dans un état particulier, vit sa propre activité de façon qualitative. La réponse à cette question contribuera probablement au développement de l’actuelle ontologie de la physique. (shrink)

Ten models of consciousness are discussed. The models are proposed by individuals who do not seem to understand “the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness”, presumably because they have no qualia themselves. As the Zombie’s proposals are dismissed, the quality of their comments and contributions rises. It is concluded that no premature solution to the hard problem should be proposed at this point; instead it is suggested that the problem must first be appreciated to full extent by scientists and students of (...) all faculties dealing with information processing in the human brain. Ultimately, the question is why the brain, when in a particular state, experiences its own activity qualitatively. The answer to that question will probably expand the current ontology of physics. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werden zehn Bewusstseinsmodelle diskutiert. Vorgeschlagen werden sie von Individuen, die offensichtlich das „schwierige Problem des phänomenalen Bewusstseins” nicht verstehen, vielleicht aus Ermangelung an eigener Qualia. Die Vorschläge werden einer nach dem anderen verworfen; unterdessen steigt die Qualität der Kommentare. Die Schlussfolgerung aus der Diskussion ist, dass momentan keine endgültige Lösung für das Problem in Sicht ist. Stattdessen wird angeregt, das Problem zunächst im vollen Umfang Wissenschaftlern und Studenten aller Fakultäten näher zu bringen, die sich mit Informationsverarbeitung im (...) menschlichen Gehirn befassen. Die entscheidende Frage ist letztlich, warum das in einem bestimmten physikalischen Zustand befindliche Gehirn seine eigene Aktivität qualitativ erlebt. Die erfolgreiche Beantwortung dieser Frage erfordert vermutlich die Erweiterung der Ontologie der Physik. (shrink)

In the age of artificial intelligence, the common interest in human autonomy is experiencing a revival. Autonomy has formerly and mostly been investigated from a theoretical scientific perspective, in which scholars from various disciplines have linked autonomy with the concepts of dignity, independence from others, morality, self-awareness, and unconventionality. In a series of three semi-qualitative, preregistered online studies, we investigated laypersons' understanding of autonomy with a bottom-up procedure to find out how far lay intuition is consistent with scientific theory. First, (...) in Study 1, participants provided us with at least three and up to 10 examples of autonomous behaviors, for a total of 807 meaningful examples. With the help of blinded research assistants, we sorted the obtained examples into categories, from which we generated 34 representative items for the following studies. Next, in Study 2, we asked a new sample of participants to rate the degree of autonomy reflected in each of these 34 items. Last, we presented the five highest-rated and the five lowest-rated items to the participants of Study 3, whom we asked to evaluate how strongly they represented the components of autonomy: dignity, independence from others, morality, self-awareness, and unconventionality. We identified that dignity, independence from others, morality, and self-awareness significantly distinguished between high- and low-autonomy items, implying that high autonomy items were rated higher on dignity, independence from others, morality, and self-awareness than low autonomy items, but unconventionality did not. Our findings contribute to both our understanding of autonomous behaviors and connecting lay intuition with scientific theory. (shrink)