In _Panpsychism in the West_, the first comprehensive study of the subject, David Skrbina argues for the importance of panpsychism -- the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things -- in consideration of the nature of consciousness and mind. Despite the recent advances in our knowledge of the brain and the increasing intricacy and sophistication of philosophical discussion, the nature of mind remains an enigma. Panpsychism, with its conception of mind as a general phenomenon (...) of nature, uniquely links being and mind. More than a theory of mind, it is a meta-theory -- a statement about theories of mind rather than a theory in itself. Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things. In addition, panpsychism is one of the most ancient and enduring concepts of philosophy, beginning with its pre-historical forms, animism and polytheism. Its adherents in the West have included important thinkers from the very beginning of Greek philosophy through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the present. Skrbina argues that panpsychism is long overdue for detailed treatment, and with this book he proposes to add impetus to the discussion of panpsychism in serious philosophical inquiries. After a brief discussion of general issues surrounding philosophy of mind, he traces the panpsychist views of specific philosophers, from the ancient Greeks and early Renaissance naturalist philosophers through the likes of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce -- always with a strong emphasis on the original texts. In his concluding chapter, "A Panpsychist World View," Skrbina assesses panpsychist arguments and puts them in a larger context. By demonstrating that there is panpsychist thinking in many major philosophers, Skrbina offers a radical challenge to the modern worldview, based as it is on a mechanistic cosmos of dead, insensate matter. _Panpsychism in the West _will be the standard work on this topic for years to come. (shrink)

Skrbina argues that panpsychism is long overdue for detailed treatment, and with this book he proposes to add impetus to the discussion of panpsychism in...

A general definition of consciousness is: ‘consciousness is a mental aspect of a system or a process, which is a conscious experience, a conscious function, or both depending on the context’, where the term context refers to metaphysical views, constraints, specific aims, and so on. One of the aspects of visual consciousness is the visual subjective experience (SE) or the first person experience that occurs/emerges in the visual neural-network of thalamocortical system (which includes dorsal and ventral visual pathways and frontal (...) cortex) during dynamic interactions among widely distributed neuronal groups. In this article, however, consciousness and SE are interchangeably used unless noted. Consciousness can be either access (reportable) or phenomenal consciousness. For access consciousness, the interactions are between feed forward stimulus dependent signals and fronto-parietal feedback attentional signals. The necessary ingredients for access (reportable) consciousness are (i) wakefulness, (ii) reentrant interactions among neural populations, (iii) fronto-parietal and thalamic-reticular-nucleus attentional signals that modulate consciousness, (iv) working memory that retains information for consciousness, (v) stimulus at or above threshold level, and (vi) neural-network proto-experiences (PEs) that are superposed SEs embedded in a neural-network. Attention and the ability to report are not necessary for phenomenal consciousness. The neural source for the arousal system is the ascending reticular activating system in the brain stem, which brings the thalamocortical neural networks to wakeful state as a baseline for consciousness to occur. Reentrant interactions among neural populations bind stimulus attributes (such as location and features) and entail consciousness. Attention could be the results of reentry and competitive interactions, and modulates the stimulus related feed forward signal and consciousness. The ‘sources’ of attention may be thalamic reticular nucleus for bottom-up or frontal cortex for top-down direction. The ‘target’ of visual attention is ‘V4/V8/VO’ for Red-Green (R-G) channel. The neural correlates of the psychophysical entity R-G channel appear to be ‘V4/V8/VO’-neural-network (retina → LGN ↔ V1 ↔ V2 ↔ ‘V4/V8/VO’, and areas for attention, memory, and wakefulness). The psychophysical Red-Green Channel, its neurophysiological correlates V4/V8/VO-neural-network, and related experience (such as redness) are integrated. The dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework (Vimal, J Integr Neurosci 7:49–73, 2008) was used to address the explanatory gap problem of materialism. Neural-network and related SEs are the results of the co-evolution and co-development of the material aspect (mass, charge, spin, force, quanta, and space-time) and the mental aspect of fundamental particles (strings or elementary particles (fermions and bosons)). Their mental aspects are considered as the carriers of superposed multiple possible experiences (SEs/PEs) in unexpressed form. These possibilities are actualized when neural-networks are formed via neural Darwinism, and a specific SE is selected by a matching process when the necessary ingredients of consciousness/SE are satisfied. A simple experimental design is suggested to address the necessary and sufficient attributes of consciousness. (shrink)

Our goal is to investigate the biological correlates of the first-person experience of time or phenomenal time. ‘Time’ differs in various domains, such as (i) physical time (e.g., clock time), (ii) biological time, such as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and (iii) the perceptual rate of time. One psychophysical-measure of the perceptual rate is the critical flicker frequency (CFF), in which a flashing light is perceived as unchanging. Focusing on the inability to detect change, as in CFF, may give us insight into (...) phenomenal time. CFF varies from 24 Hz for dim light and 60 Hz in bright light and is lower for colored lights. We propose that problem of the phenomenal time can be addressed using two contrasting but complementary approaches (inability to detect changes vs. ability to detect changes): (1) The soliton-catalytic model that entails invariant quantum coherent state for temporal frequencies (TFs) >= CFF, where flickering light is perceived as unchanging, similar to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). (2) Temporal frequency tuned mechanisms model, which starts with ability to detect changes for TFs < CFF and then their sensitivities decreases to zero at CFF. For a subject who has CFF of 60 Hz, the duration of one cycle or time-period of the flickering light is approximately 16.7 ms. Phenomenal time may be quantized into ‘subjective occasions of experience’ (SE), which arise out of the interaction of the individual with situation (environment). Pioneering work examining the complex interaction of neurons suggests the possibility that macroscopic quantum states similar to a BEC may also occur in the brain (Davia, 2006; Freeman & Vitiello, 2006; Georgiev, 2004; Vimal & Davia, 2008) . (shrink)

Nāgārjuna rejects ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ in favor of co-dependent origination, and that is also why he rejects causality. Causality is a major issue in metaphysical views; for example, one could argue that consciousness causes/affects our brain/behavior/function/matter or vice-versa. My goals are as follows: (i) which entities lack ‘inherent existence’ or ‘essence’ and which ones inherently exist? (ii) Do the entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise and hence can we reject causality as in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy? (iii) Do the entities (...) that exist inherently cause entities that lack inherent existence? (iv) Do structure, function, experience, and environment cause each other? And (v) we critically analyze, extend, and examine Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of dependent co-origination (Nāgārjuna & Garfield, 1995)with respect to the dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework (Vimal, 2008a, 2008b, 2009a, 2009c). Our analysis suggests that: (i)All conventional entities lack inherently existence, except subjective experiences (SEs)/proto-experiences (PEs) that are fundamental and irreducible and hence inherently exist. (ii) The entities that lack inherent existence dependently co-arise, and hence causality for them can be rejected but instead conditions (such as efficient, percept-object, immediate, and dominant conditions) might be necessary, as in Nāgārjuna’s philosophy. (iii) It is not clear that SEs that exist inherently cause entities that lack inherent existence, but one could argue that (a) superposed PEs/SEs in the mental aspect of stings or elementary particles might be the motivation for the evolution to form neural-nets to realize a specific SE, and (b) Nāgārjuna’s rejection of causality and ‘relational ontology’ (Caponigro & Prakash, 2009) need to be reconsidered for SEs. For example, the SE redness (redness-bhutatma (Vimal, 2009g)) inherently, independently, and eternally exists; and hence causality may not be rejected and the ‘relational ontology’ may not apply for any such SE. (iv) It is not clear that structure, function, experience, and environment cause each other, but they might be linked via conditions. (v) Furthermore, (a) an entity has double aspect: mental and material aspects, (b) string is a dual-aspect entity that dependently co-arises from string-vacuum or brane, and (c) the dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework is consistent with these premises. For example, PEs/SEs inherently exist and are in superposed form in the mental aspect of (a) string-vacuum and/or brane before Big-Bang, (b) strings, elementary particles (bosons and fermions) and all evolved entities after Big-Bang, and (c) entities before and after Big-Freeze/Big-Crunch or entities in cyclic universe as in the big bounce/quantum-bounce (Loop Quantum Gravity) framework. However, the selection of a specific SE has dependent co-origination (and hence not inherently existent, consistent with Nāgārjuna), i.e., a specific SE occurs in brain when (i) relevant neural-net is formed via neural Darwinism, (ii) the specific SE is selected via matching and selection mechanisms, and (iii) the necessary ingredients ―such as wakefulness, re-entry, attention, working memory, stimulus at above threshold, and neural-net PEs― are satisfied. If this is true, then only experiences (PEs/SEs in superposed form) are inherently existent and other entities have dependent co-origination. (shrink)

I here describe meanings attributed to the term consciousness, extracted from the literature and from recent online discussions. Forty such meanings were identified and categorized according to whether they were principally about function or about experience; some overlapped but others were apparently mutually exclusive - and this list is by no means exhaustive. Most can be regarded as expressions of authors' views about the basis of con-sciousness, or opinions about the significance of aspects of its con-tents. The prospects for reaching (...) any single, agreed, theory independent definition of consciousness thus appear remote. How-ever, much confusion could be avoided if authors were always to spec-ify which aspects of consciousness they refer to when using the term. An example is outlined of how this can be done. (shrink)

Previously (Vimal, 2009b) in Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies, we discussed (i) the dual-aspect-dual-mode proto-experience (PE)-subjective experience (SE) framework of consciousness based on neuroscience, (ii) its implication in war, suffering, peace, and happiness, (iii) the process of sublimation for optimizing them and converting the negative aspects of seven groups of self-protective energy system (desire, anger, ego, greed, attachment, jealousy, and selfish-love) into their positive aspects from both western and eastern perspectives. In this article, we summarize the recent development since then as (...) follows. (1) In (Vimal, 2009e), we rigorously investigated the classical and quantum matching and selection processes for precisely experiencing a specific SE in a specific neural-network. (2) In (Vimal, 2009i), we unpacked the quantum view of superposition related to the superposition-based hypothesis H1 of our framework in terms of subquantum dual-aspect primal entities (bhutatmas) and addressed the related explanatory gaps. (3) In, we developed alternative hypotheses of our framework, namely, the superposition-then-integration-emergence based H2, the integration-emergence based H3, the intelligent mechanism based H4, and the vacuum/Aether based H5. We concluded that our framework with H1 is the most optimal one because it has the least number of problems (Vimal, 2009j). (4) In, we found over 40 different but overlapping meanings attributed to the term ‘consciousness’ and suggested that authors must specify which aspect of consciousness they refer to when using this term to minimize confusion (Vimal, 2009f). (5) In, we proposed definitions of consciousness, qualia, mind, and awareness (Vimal, 2009h). (6) In, we investigated the necessary ingredients for access (reportable) consciousness: wakefulness, re-entry, attention, working memory and so on (Vimal, 2009g). (7) In, we discussed Nāgārjuna’s philosophy of dependent co-origination with respect to our PE-SE framework (Vimal, 2009a). (8) In, we linked dynamic systems theory and fractal catalytic theory with standard representation theory using our framework (Vimal, 2009d). (9) In, we introduce the PE-SE aspects of consciousness in theoretical classical and quantum physics including loop quantum gravity and string theory (Vimal, 2009k). (10) In (Vimal, 2009c), we proposed that the SE of subject or ‘self’ in self-related neural-network is tuned to the self-related SEs/PEs superposed in other innumerable entities during samadhi state via matching and selection processes. This leads to bliss, ecstasy, or exceptionally high degree of climax at samadhi state. We conclude that, so far, the dual-aspect-dual-mode PE-SE framework with hypothesis H1 is the most optimal framework for explaining our conventional reality because it has the least number of problems. (shrink)

Theory of everything must include consciousness. In this article, we focus on the subjective experiences component of consciousness. In Vimal (J Integrative Neuroscience, 2008: 7(1), 49-73), it was hypothesized that fundamental entities (strings or elementary particles: fermions and bosons) have two aspects: (i) material aspect such as mass, charge, spin, and space-time, and (ii) mental aspect, such as experiences. There are three competing hypotheses: superposition based H1, superposition-then-integration based H2, and integration based H3 where superposition is not required. In H1, (...) the fundamental entities and inert matter are the carriers of superimposed fundamental subjective experiences (SEs)/proto-experiences (PEs). In H2, the fundamental entities and inert matter are the carriers of superimposed fundamental PEs (not SEs), which are integrated by neural-Darwinism (co-evolution, co-development, and sensorimotor co-tuning by the evolutionary process of adaptation and natural selection). There is a PE attached to every level of evolution (such as atomic-PE, molecular-PE, … genetic-PE, … bacterium-PE, … neural-PE, and neural-net-PE). In H3, a string has its own string-PE; a matter is not a carrier of PE(s) in superposed form as it is in H2, rather matter is a proto-experiential entity and has two aspects at every level; H3 is a dual-aspect panpsychism. These two aspects are rigorously integrated together by neural-Darwinism. One could argue for H3 that the PE keeps on transforming appropriately as matter evolves from elementary particles to atoms to molecules to eventually neural-networks. For example, when long wavelength light is presented to the V4/V8/VO neural-network, the neural-net PE takes the form of SE redness, in analogy to water takes the shape and color of the container. However, one has to unpack this mystery. In H1, a specific SE arises in a neural-net as follows: (i) there exist a virtual reservoir that stores all possible fundamental SEs/PEs, (ii) the interaction of stimulus-dependent feed-forward and feedback signals in the neural-net creates a specific neural-net state, (iii) this specific state is assigned to a specific SE from the virtual reservoir during neural Darwinism, (iv) this specific SE is embedded as a memory trace of neural-net-PE, and (v) when a specific stimulus is presented to the neural-net, the associated specific SE is selected by the matching and selection process and experienced by this net. In hypotheses H2 and H3, a specific SE emerges in a neural-net from the interaction of its constituent neural-PEs, such as in feed-forward stimulus-dependent neural signals and fronto-parietal feedback attentional signals, in analogy to water emerges from the interaction of hydrogen and oxygen. In all hypotheses, SEs occur when essential ingredients of SEs (such as wakefulness, attention, re-entry, working memory, stimulus at or above threshold level, and neural-net-PEs) are satisfied. We found that the followings in physics are invariant under the PE-SE transformation: Schrödinger equation, current, Dirac Lagrangian, electromagnetic strength tensor, electromagnetic stress-energy tensor, the Lagrangian for free gauge field, the Lagrangian for a charged self–interacting scalar field, electromagnetic theory (Maxwell's equations), Standard Model, Lagrangian for the electromagnetic interaction of a charged scalar field (Higgs Mechanism), Newtonian gravitational potential and field, special theory of Relativity and Lorentz transformation, geodesic equation, general theory of relativity and gravitational field, the metric gmn, Ricci curvature tensor Rmn, Ricci scalar curvature R, the cosmological constant L, the stress-energy tensor Tmn, the PE-SE transformation, Loop Quantum Gravity, and string theory. For H1 and H2, we quantitatively introduced the superposition of experiences (SEs/PEs) in the mental aspect of bosonic and fermionic strings using the Polyakov action. We conclude that experiences are independent of the time-like and space-like parameters (t,s). This is interpreted as a string is dual-aspect entity and all fundamental SEs/PEs superposed in the mental aspect of the string remains invariant with time and space. The introduction of mental aspect in this manner suggests that the mental aspect of string could be in all dimensions: both (3+1)D real dimensions and also in the hidden dimensions that are compactified (curled up). In addition, the Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions were also satisfied. These led us to conclude that the material aspect of the behavior of system in string theory remains invariant under the introduction of experiences in the mental aspect of strings as a function of experiences. For hypothesis H3, the equations of string theory remain the same; we simply need to acknowledge that a string has dual-aspect; its mental aspect is string-PE. We concluded that it is possible to unify consciousness with all four fundamental material forces by the introduction of (i) SEs/PEs (as in H1) or PEs (as in H2) in superposed form in bosonic and fermionic strings or (ii) the bosonic-string-PE and fermionic-string-PE based on integration principle (as in H3). This leads us towards the theory of everything. (shrink)