Generally speaking, the existence of experience is accepted, but more challenging has been to say what experience is and how it occurs. Moreover, philosophers and scholars have been talking about mind and mental activity in connection with experience as opposed to physical processes. Yet, the fact is that quantum physics has replaced classical Newtonian physics in natural sciences, but the scholars in humanities and social sciences still operate under the obsolete Newtonian model. There is already a little (...) research in which mind and conscious experience are explained in terms of quantum theory. This article argues that experience is impossible to be both a physical and non-physical phenomenon. When discussing causality and identity as transcendental, quantum theory may imply the quantum physical nature of conscious experience, where a person associates causality to conscious experience, and, thus, the result is that the double-aspect theory and the mind/brain identity theory would be refuted. (shrink)

Inspired by the eminently successful physical theories and informed by commonplace experiences such as seeing a cat upon looking at a cat, conscious experience is thought of as a measurement or photocopy of given stimulus. Conscious experience, unlike a photocopy, is symbolic—like language—in that the relation between conscious experience and physical stimulus is analogous to that of the word "cat" and its meaning, i.e., arbitrary and yet systematic. We present arguments against the photocopy model (...) and arguments for a symbolic conception of conscious experience. Learning and the corresponding plasticity of the brain make a strong case for the symbolic conception of conscious experience, while many extra-ordinary conscious experiences argue against the formalisation of consciousness as a measuring device. The notions of place-value notation and grammar, which organise quantitative measurements and conscious experiences in the medium of numbers and language, respectively, are suggested as model systems for putting together a comprehensive theory of conscious experience. (shrink)

In humans, knowing the world occurs through spatial-temporal experiences and interpretations. Conscious experience is the direct observation of conscious events. It makes up the content of consciousness. Conscious experience is organized in four dimensions. It is an orientation in space and time, an understanding of the position of the observer in space and time. A neural correlate for four-dimensional conscious experience has been found in the human brain which is modeled by Einstein’s Special (...) Theory of Relativity. Spacetime intervals are fundamentally involved in the organization of coherent conscious experiences. They account for why conscious experience appears to us the way it does. They also account for assessment of causality and past-future relationships, the integration of higher cognitive functions, and the implementation of goal-directed behaviors. Spacetime intervals in effect compose and direct our conscious life. The relativistic concept closes the explanatory gap and solves the hard problem of consciousness (how something subjective like conscious experience can arise in something physical like the brain). There is a place in physics for consciousness. We describe all physical phenomena through conscious experience, whether they be described at the quantum level or classical level. Since spacetime intervals direct the formation of all conscious experiences and all physical phenomena are described through conscious experience, the equation formulating spacetime intervals contains the information from which all observable phenomena may be deduced. It might therefore be considered expression of a theory of everything. (shrink)

Neuroscientific discourse on consciousness often resorts to "collection of elements", notwithstanding the Gestalt demonstrations against representing conscious experience as a collection of sensory elements. Here I show that defining conscious experience as an object of the category of conscious experiences, instead of as cohesion-less set of structure-less elements, provides the conceptual repertoire—basic shapes, figures, and incidence relations—needed to reason about the essence of conscious experiences and the essence-preserving transformations of conscious experiences. Viewed in (...) light of the category of conscious experiences, designers of user experience—in designing pre-conceptualized user experiences—are well situated to contribute to the development of the science of consciousness. (shrink)

Subjectivity theories of consciousness take self-reference, somehow construed, as essential to having conscious experience. These theories differ with respect to how many levels they posit and to whether self-reference is conscious or not. But all treat self-referencing as a process that transpires at the personal level, rather than at the subpersonal level, the level of mechanism. -/- Working with conceptual resources afforded by pre-existing theories of consciousness that take self-reference to be essential, several attempts have been made (...) to explain seemingly anomalous cases, especially instances of alien experience. These experiences are distinctive precisely because self-referencing is explicitly denied by the only person able to report them: those who experience them deny that certain actions, mental states, or body parts belong to self. The relevant actions, mental states, or body parts are sometimes attributed to someone or something other than self, and sometimes they are just described as not belonging to self. But all are referred away from self. -/- The cases under discussion here include somatoparaphrenia, schizophrenia, depersonalization, anarchic hand syndrome, and utilization behavior; the theories employed, Higher-Order Thought, Wide Intrinsicality, and Self-Representational. Below I argue that each of these attempts at explaining or explaining away the anomalies fails. Along the way, since each of these theories seeks at least compatibility with science, I sketch experimental approaches that could be used to adduce support for my position, or indeed for the positions of theorists with whom I disagree. -/- In a concluding section I first identify two presuppositions shared by all of the theorists considered here, and argue that both are either erroneous or misleading. Second, I call attention to divergent paths adopted when attempting to explain alienation experiences: some theorists choose to add a mental ingredient, while others prefer to subtract one. I argue that alienation from experience, action, or body parts could result from either addition or subtraction, and that the two can be incorporated within a comprehensive explanatory framework. Finally, I suggest that this comprehensive framework would require self-referencing of a sort, but self-referencing that occurs solely on the level of mechanism, or the subpersonal level. In adumbrating some features of this “subpersonal self,” I suggest that there might be one respect in which it is prior to conscious experience. (shrink)

The human mind is constituted by inner, subjective, private, first-person conscious experiences that cannot be measured with physical devices or observed from an external, objective, public, third-person perspective. The qualitative, phenomenal nature of conscious experiences also cannot be communicated to others in the form of a message composed of classical bits of information. Because in a classical world everything physical is observable and communicable, it is a daunting task to explain how an empirically unobservable, incommunicable consciousness could have (...) any physical substrates such as neurons composed of biochemical molecules, water, and electrolytes. The challenges encountered by classical physics are exemplified by a number of thought experiments including the inverted qualia argument, the private language argument, the beetle in the box argument and the knowledge argument. These thought experiments, however, do not imply that our consciousness is nonphysical and our introspective conscious testimonies are untrustworthy. The principles of classical physics have been superseded by modern quantum physics, which contains two fundamentally different kinds of physical objects: unobservable quantum state vectors, which define what physically exists, and quantum operators (observables), which define what can physically be observed. Identifying consciousness with the unobservable quantum information contained by quantum physical brain states allows for application of quantum information theorems to resolve possible paradoxes created by the inner privacy of conscious experiences, and explains how the observable brain is constructed by accessible bits of classical information that are bound by Holevo's theorem and extracted from the physically existing quantum brain upon measurement with physical devices. (shrink)

The physical basis of conscious experience is revealed by direct observation and analysis of any conscious experience. Human conscious experience has an invariant structural mode of organization based on the three types of space-time intervals (light-like, time-like, space-like). Sensory input activates the autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, and ascending reticular activating system to produce the awake conscious state. The dorsal and ventral frontoparietal attention networks are activated. Dorsal and ventral cortical functional streams carry (...) “what”, “where”, and “when” information to the medial temporal lobe for the encoding, storage, and recall of conscious experience (episodic memory). Hippocampal place cells and time cells encode events in space and time within spatiotemporal contexts conveyed by entorhinal cortex grid cells and ramping cells. Theta phase precession unifies the encoding of space and time in the hippocampus so that segments of space and time are encoded in the hippocampus. Theta travelling waves ensure that the instantaneous output of the hippocampus consists of topographically-organized segments of space and time, space-time intervals. By parsing spatiotemporal contexts into quantal units of where and when events occur (spacetime intervals), hippocampal neurons bridge, and thereby organize events, in a conceptual organization of events (conscious experience). Space-time intervals are extracted from the hippocampus by a prefrontal cortex-basal ganglia-thalamic-prefrontal cortex loop for the cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects of conscious experience. (shrink)

Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. This thesis is widely judged to be uniquely counterintuitive: the idea that consciousness is an illusion strikes most people as absurd, and seems almost impossible to contemplate in earnest. Defenders of illusionism should be able to explain the apparent absurdity of their own thesis, within their own framework. However, this is no trivial task: arguably, none of the illusionist theories currently on (...) the market is able to do this. I present a new theory of phenomenal introspection and argue that it might deal with the task at hand. (shrink)

Since John Von Neumann's proposition in 1932 of a relationship between quantum mechanics and the brain, different perspectives and proposals have evolved (Tarlaci, 2010). Hu & Wu (2006) point out that the seat of consciousness would be the spin within the membranes of neurons and proteins in the brain. Sieb (2016) applied the theory of relativity to spatiotemporal consciousness and found correlations with aspects of brain functioning. Another suggestion is that consciousness emerges because of the Orchestrated Objective Reduction in microtubules (...) (Hameroff & Penrose, 2003). However, few studies about the psychological implications of the relationship between quantum mechanics and the brain and its application to individual psychology exist. (shrink)

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could (...) become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium. (shrink)

Very plausibly, nothing can be a genuine computing system unless it meets an input-sensitivity requirement. Otherwise all sorts of objects, such as rocks or pails of water, can count as performing computations, even such as might suffice for mentality—thus threatening computationalism about the mind with panpsychism. Maudlin in J Philos 86:407–432, ( 1989 ) and Bishop ( 2002a , b ) have argued, however, that such a requirement creates difficulties for computationalism about conscious experience, putting it in conflict (...) with the very intuitive thesis that conscious experience supervenes on physical activity. Klein in Synthese 165:141–153, ( 2008 ) proposes a way for computationalists about experience to avoid panpsychism while still respecting the supervenience of experience on activity. I argue that his attempt to save computational theories of experience from Maudlin’s and Bishop’s critique fails. (shrink)

An extended examination of Libet's works led to a comprehensive reinterpretation of his results. According to this reinterpretation, the Minimum Train Duration of electrical brain stimulation should be considered as the time needed to create a brain stimulus efficient for producing conscious sensation and not as a basis for inferring the latency for conscious sensation of peripheral origin. Latency for conscious sensation with brain stimulation may occurafterthe Minimum Train Duration. Backward masking with cortical stimuli suggests a 125-300 (...) ms minimum value for the latency for conscious sensation of threshold skin stimuli. Backward enhancement is not suitable for inferring this latency. For determining temporal relations between stimuli that correspond to subjects' reports, theendof cerebral Minimum Train Duration should be used as reference, rather than its onset. Results of coupling peripheral and cortical stimuli are explained by a latency after the cortical Minimum Train Duration, having roughly the same duration as the latency for supraliminal skin stimuli. Results of coupling peripheral stimuli and stimuli to medial lemniscus (LM) are explained by a shorter LM latency and/or a longer peripheral latency. This interpretation suggests a 230 ms minimum value for the latency for conscious sensation of somatosensory near-threshold stimuli. The backward referral hypothesis, as formulated by Libet, should not be retained. Long readiness potentials preceding spontaneous conscious or nonconscious movements suggest that both kinds of movement are nonconsciously initiated. The validity of Libet's measures of W and M moments (Libet et al., 1983a) is questionable due to problems involving latencies, training, and introspective distinction of W and M. Veto of intended actions may be initially nonconscious but dependent on conscious awareness. (shrink)

In my dissertation I critically survey existing theories of time consciousness, and draw on recent work in neuroscience and philosophy to develop an original theory. My view depends on a novel account of temporal perception based on the notion of temporal qualities, which are mental properties that are instantiated whenever we detect change in the environment. When we become aware of these temporal qualities in an appropriate way, our conscious experience will feature the distinct temporal phenomenology that is (...) associated with the passing of time. The temporal qualities model of perception makes two predictions about the mechanisms of time perception; one that time perception is modality specific and the other that it can occur without awareness. My argument for this view partially depends on a number of psychophysical experiments that I designed and implemented myself and which investigate subjective time distortions caused by looming visual stimuli. These results show that the mechanisms of conscious experience of time are distinct from the mechanisms of time perception, as my theory of temporal qualities predicts. (shrink)

In this article I distinguish the notion of there being something it is like to be a certain kind of creature from that of there being something it is like to have a certain kind of experience. Work on consciousness has typically dealt with the latter while employing the language of the former. I propose several ways of analyzing what it is like to be a certain kind of creature and find problems with them all. The upshot is that (...) even if there is something it is like to have certain kinds of experience, it does not follow that there is anything it is like to be a certain kind of creature. Skepticism about the existence of something that it is like to be an F is recommended. (shrink)

We discuss cases where subjects seem to enjoy conscious experience when the relevant first-order perceptual representations are either missing or too weak to account for the experience. Though these cases are originally considered to be theoretical possibilities that may be problematical for the higher-order view of consciousness, careful considerations of actual empirical examples suggest that this strategy may backfire; these cases may cause more trouble for first-order theories instead. Specifically, these cases suggest that (I) recurrent feedback loops (...) to V1 are most likely not the neural correlate of first-order representations for conscious experience, (II) first-order views seem to have a problem accounting for the phenomenology in these cases, and either (III) a version of the ambitious higher-order approach is superior in that it is the simplest theory that can account for all results at face value, or (IV) a view where phenomenology is jointly determined by both first-order and higher-order states. In our view (III) and (IV) are both live options and the decision between them may ultimately be an empirical question that cannot yet be decided. (shrink)

The meta-problem of consciousness aims to explain the particularity of our intuitions about consciousness and how they trigger conceptual issues such as the hard problem of consciousness. I propose in this article that these stem from a basic function of the brain : self-evidencing explanation. To make sense of its sensory inputs, the brain is believed to build and test models of the state of the world based on sensory information (Hohwy, 2016). This self-evidencing process has been proposed to describe (...) the type of inference performed by consciousness (Friston, 2018). I will show how this situation is viciously circular and prevents from proving the existence of conscious experience or explaining it without presupposing its existence. I will show how it accounts for the particularity of our intutions about consciousness and thus propose an solution to the meta-problem of consciousness using a formally defined process at the core of conscious inference. (shrink)

In consciousness science, several promising approaches have been developed for how to represent conscious experience in terms of mathematical spaces and structures. What is missing, however, is an explicit definition of what a 'mathematical structure of conscious experience' is. Here, we propose such a definition. This definition provides a link between the abstract formal entities of mathematics and the concreta of conscious experience; it complements recent approaches that study quality spaces, qualia spaces or phenomenal (...) spaces; it provides a general method to identify and investigate structures of conscious experience; and it may serve as a framework to unify the various approaches from different fields. We hope that ultimately this work provides a basis for developing a common formal language to study consciousness. (shrink)

While the claim that certain functional states are sufficient for conscious experience has received substantial critical attention, the claim that functional states are necessary is rarely addressed. Yet the latter claim is perhaps now more common than the former. I aim to revive and revise a neglected argument against the necessity claim, by Michael Antony. The argument involves manipulating a conscious subject's brain so as to cancel a disposition which is supposedly crucial to the realization of an (...) experience that the subject is having at the time. The key step in the argument is to show that, contrary to what the functional necessity claim implies, the experience can survive such a manipulation. I defend that key step in a new way, by arguing that since the manipulation cannot influence the subject's thoughts, emotions, or behavior, there is no reason to suppose that it alters his conscious experience. (shrink)

Libet's (2000) arguments in defense of his interpretation of his experimental results are insufficient. The claims of my critical review (Gomes, 2008) do not suffer with his new statements.

There are two fundamental models to understanding the phenomenon of natural life. One is thecomputational model, which is based on the symbolic thinking paradigm. The other is the biologicalorganism model. The common difficulty attributed to these paradigms is that their reductive tools allowthe phenomenological aspects of experience to remain hidden behind yes/no responses (behavioraltests), or brain ‘pictures’ (neuroimaging). Hence, one of the problems regards how to overcome meth-odological difficulties towards a non-reductive investigation of conscious experience. It is (...) our aim in thispaper to show how cooperation between Eastern and Western traditions may shed light for a non-reductive study of mind and life. This study focuses on the first-person experience associated withcognitive and mental events. We studied phenomenal data as a crucial fact for the domain of livingbeings, which, we expect, can provide the ground for a subsequent third-person study. The interventionwith Jhana meditation, and its qualitative assessment, provided us with experiential profiles based uponsubjects' evaluations of their own conscious experiences. The overall results should move towards anintegrated or global perspective on mind where neither experience nor external mechanisms have thefinal word. (shrink)

Anil Gupta’s Conscious Experience: A Logical Inquiry provides an impressive and novel account of rational justification based on conscious experience which is used as a foundation for a new theory of empiricism. In this critical notice, I argue that Gupta’s project is fascinating, but is often hampered by a lack of sufficient philosophical justification and clarity regarding some essential features of his project, as well as a lack of engagement with relevant scientific domains that would directly (...) bear on it, such as computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. This limits the sort of logical inquiry available to him in problematic ways. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that the privacy of conscious experience is inconsistent with any kind of physicalism. That is, if you are a physicalist, then you have to deny that more than one subject cannot undergo the very same conscious experience. In the first part of the paper we define the concepts of privacy and physicalism. In the second part we delineate two thought experiments in which two subjects undergo the same kind (...) of conscious experience in such a way that all the physical processes responsible for their experiences are numerically the same. Based on the thought experiments and their interpretations we present our argument for the inconsistency of the privacy of experience with physicalism in the third part of the paper. In the final part we defend our argumentation against some objections. (shrink)

A physicalist view of qualia labelled non-eliminative reductionism is outlined. If it is true, qualia and physicalism can co-exist without difficulty. First, qualia present no particular problem for reductionist physicalism - they are entirely physical, can be studied and explained using the standard scientific approach, and present no problem any harder than any other scientists face. Second, reductionist physicalism presents no particular problem for qualia – they can be encompassed within an entirely physicalist position without any necessity, either to reduce (...) them to non-existence, or to treat them as new fundamental properties. It is suggested that the position also has sufficient explanatory power to successfully deal with the 'why like anything – why does experience exist at all' question and to counter both Chalmers' Conceivability Argument and Jackson's Knowledge Argument. (shrink)

Space-time intervals are the fundamental components of conscious experience, gravity, and a Theory of Everything. Space-time intervals are relationships that arise naturally between events. They have a general covariance (independence of coordinate systems, scale invariance), a physical constancy, that encompasses all frames of reference. There are three basic types of space-time intervals (light-like, time-like, space-like) which interact to create space-time and its properties. Human conscious experience is a four-dimensional space-time continuum created through the processing of space-time (...) intervals by the brain; space-time intervals are the source of conscious experience (observed physical reality). Human conscious experience is modeled by Einstein’s special theory of relativity, a theory designed specifically from the general covariance of space-time intervals (for inertial frames of reference). General relativity is our most accurate description of gravity. In general relativity, the general covariance of space-time intervals is extended to all frames of reference (inertial and non-inertial), including gravitational reference frames; space-time intervals are the source of gravity in general relativity. The general covariance of space-time intervals is further extended to quantum mechanics; space-time intervals are the source of quantum gravity. The general covariance of space-time intervals seamlessly merges general relativity with quantum field theory (the two grand theories of the universe). Space-time intervals consequently are the basis of a Theory of Everything (a single all-encompassing coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe). This theoretical framework encompasses our observed physical reality (conscious experience) as well; space-time intervals link observed physical reality to actual physical reality. This provides an accurate and reliable match between observed physical reality and the physical universe by which we can carry on our activity. The Minkowski metric, which defines generally covariant space-time intervals, may be considered an axiom (premise, postulate) for the Theory of Everything. (shrink)

In the interesting and thought-provoking article Grazziano and colleagues argue for their Attention Schema Theory (AST) of consciousness. They present AST as a unification of Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Illusionism, and the Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theory. We argue it is a mistake to equate 'subjective experience,' ad related terms, with dualism. They simply denote experience. Also, as presented, AST does not accurately capture the essence of HOT for two reasons. HOT is presented as a version of strong illusionism, (...) which it isn't, and HOT requires that one be aware of one's mental life, and postulates that his consists in a re-representation of what is occurring at at the lower-order levels. However, the authors deny that AST involves re-representing visual stimuli. We close by proposing an alternative unification: GWT and AST provide crucial accounts of how lower-order states are assembled and maintained, but higher-order theory provides the account of subjective experience. (shrink)

This short commentary discusses the importance of space-time intervals in scientific study. Space-time intervals underlie special relativity, general relativity, and quantum field theory. In doing so, space-time intervals underlie human conscious experience, gravity, and a theory of everything. Space-time intervals also explain many puzzling scientific phenomena: quantum phenomena, dark matter, dark energy, the origin and evolution of the universe, and the life force. The importance of space-time intervals cannot be overestimated. Two articles published in Neuroquantology explain how all (...) this was established from empirical evidence and theory. (shrink)

I offer an account of the experience of acting that demonstrates how agentive aspects of experience associated with the execution of intentions are richly integrated with perceptual aspects associated with parts of action taking place in the publicly observable world. On the view I elucidate, the experience of acting is often both an engagement with the world and a type of intimate acquaintance with it. In conscious action the agent consciously intervenes in the world and consciously (...) experiences the world she is changing. In section one, I discuss extant accounts of the experience of acting, noting deficiencies. In sections two and three, I develop my own account, drawing on Casey O’Callaghan’s work on multi-modal perception. In the conclusion, I discuss ramifications for psychology and philosophy. (shrink)

This is an excerpt of a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from The Unity of Consciousness and Sensory Integration conference at Brown University in November of 2011. This portion of the report explores the question: How should we study experience, given unity relations?

In response to Petitmengin and Bitbol's recent account of first-person methodologies in the study of consciousness, I provide a revised model of our introspective knowledge of our own conscious experience. This model, which I call the existential constitution model of phenomenal knowledge, avoids the problems that Petitmengin and Bitbol identify with standard observational models of introspection while also avoiding an underlying metaphorical misconception in their own proximity model, which misconstrues first-person knowledge of consciousness in terms of a dichotomous (...) epistemic relationship. The end result is a clearer understanding of the unique nature and epistemic properties of our knowledge of consciousness, as well as the epistemic status of subsequent first-person reports on conscious experience. (shrink)

Journal of Mind and Behavior 28 no. 2 , pp. 135-156. The self-prompting theory of consciousness holds that conscious perceptual experience occurs when non-routine perceptual data prompt the activation of a plan in an executive control system that monitors perceptual input. On the other hand, routine, non-conscious perception merely provides data about the world, which indicatively describes the world correctly or incorrectly. Perceptual experience instead involves data that are about the perceiver, not the world. Their function (...) is that of imperatively prompting the perceiver herself to do something (hence. (shrink)

This volume is product of the third online consciousness conference, held at http:// consciousnessonline. com in February and March 2011. Chapters range over epistemological issues in the science and philosophy of perception, what neuroscience can do to help us solve philosophical issues in the philosophy of mind, what the true nature of black and white vision, pain, auditory, olfactory, or multi-modal experiences are, to higher-order theories of consciousness, synesthesia, among others. Each chapter includes a target article, commentaries, and in most (...) cases, a final response from the author. Though wide-ranging all of the papers aim to understand consciousness both from the inside, as we experience it, and from the outside as we encounter it in our science. (shrink)

Disagreeing with Jerrold Levinson's claim that being conscious of broad-span musical form is not essential to understanding music, I will argue that our awareness of musical architecture is significant to achieve comprehension. I will show that the experiential model is not incompatible with the analytic model. My main goal is to show that these two models can be reconciled through the identification of a broader notion of understanding. After accomplishing this reconciliation by means of my new conception, I will (...) close the paper by discussing some reasons to accept an enhancing notion of musical understanding that includes levels and degrees of understanding. /// En desacuerdo con la afirmación de Jerrold Levinson: que ser consciente de la forma musical a gran escala no es esencial para comprender la música, sostendré que nuestra conciencia de la estructura musical es significante para alcanzar comprensión. Mostraré que el modelo experiencial no es incompatible con el modelo analítico y que ambos pueden ser reconciliados mediante una noción de comprensión más amplia. Después de llevar a cabo está reconciliación mediante la nueva concepción que propongo, concluiré discutiendo algunas razones para aceptar una noción de comprensión musical enriquecida que incluye niveles y grados de comprensión. (shrink)

Our experiences with the external world are possible mainly through vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell providing us a sense of reality. How the brain is able to seamlessly integrate stimuli from our external and internal world into our sense of reality has yet to be adequately explained in the literature. We have previously proposed a three-dimensional unified model of consciousness that partly explains the dynamic mechanism. Here we further expand our model and include illustrations to provide a better conception (...) of the ill-defined space within the self, providing insight into a unified mind-body concept. In this article, we propose that our senses “super-impose” on an existing dynamic space within us after a slight, imperceptible delay. The existing space includes the entire intrapersonal space and can also be called the “the body’s internal 3D default space”. We provide examples from meditation experiences to help explain how the sense of ‘self’ can be experienced through meditation practice associated with underlying physiological processes that take place through cardio-respiratory synchronization and coherence that is developed among areas of the brain. Meditation practice can help keep the body in a parasympathetic dominant state during meditation, allowing an experience of inner ‘self’. Understanding this physical and functional space could help unlock the mysteries of the function of memory and cognition, allowing clinicians to better recognize and treat disorders of the mind by recommending proven techniques to reduce stress as an adjunct to medication treatment. (shrink)

Locke endorses a distinction between passive reflection and voluntary attentive reflection, which he occasionally labels contemplation. Failure to recognize this distinction properly has had an effect on interpretations of Locke’s theory of reflection, and caused puzzlement about the relation between reflection and consciousness. In particular, the function of reflection as a passive internal sense that produces simple ideas of mental operations has been downplayed in favour of the view that reflection in one manner or another involves attention and/or presupposes consciousness (...) of mental operations. This has led a number of scholars to maintain, implicitly or explicitly, that Locke in fact abandons either his doctrine of sensation and reflection as the two exclusive sources of ideas or his doctrine of ideas as the only immediate objects of experience. -/- With the help of a distinction between reflection as a source of ideas and reflection as an operation about ideas I aim to show how Locke can hold to his empiricist maxim about the two sources of ideas and also endorse ideas as the only immediate objects of experience. A proper understanding of Locke’s theory of reflection requires that reflection and consciousness be delineated with respect to one another. I will show how Locke’s notion of consciousness differs from both types of reflection. (shrink)

The questions concerning “who we are”, “where we go to”, and “where we come from”, preoccupied the humanity from immemorial times. During the last few decades, with the accelerated improvement of the investigation methods and of the advanced successful interventions allowing the life salvation, there have been reported some attempts to correlate the psychic phenomena with the body status by the recuperation, analysis and explanation of the symptoms recorded during the near-death experiences. Such special situations, in which the heart and (...) the brain, the support of mental activities, cease their activity, has become a fundamental tool to investigate the consciousness associated phenomena during the arrest status of the fundamental processes of the life. The fundamental question actually is whether consciousness really continues to exist even if the body has ceased its function by stopping the heartbeat and brain support activities [1,2]. An answer to such a question goes toward even further questions: can there be “life” beyond the death [3]? This exciting question includes also several aspects: what is consciousness and which is its nature [4]? Could consciousness exist as a disembodied entity? To answer these fundamental questions of existence, the collaboration of several disciplines such as neurology, psychology, medicine, biology, pharmacology and also physics, to call only the most important of them, is necessary, the geriatrics finding suitable responses within the multidisciplinary researches to its various questions related to the life prolongation and the improvement of the life quality. Within such a context, it was recently developed an informational model of consciousness, which can offer response to the above questions, based on the last discoveries of the quantum physics and cosmology [4,5]. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of self-consciousness typically begin by dividing experiences of the self into types, each requiring separate explanation. The stereotypical case of an out of body experience may be seen to suggest a distinction between the sense of oneself as an experiencing subject, a mental entity, and a sense of oneself as an embodied person, a bodily entity. Point of view, in the sense of the place from which the subject seems to experience the world, in this case (...) is tied to the sense of oneself as a mental entity and seems to be the ‘real’ self. Closer reading of reports, however, suggests a substantially more complicated picture. For example, the ‘real’ self that is experienced as separate from the body in an OBE is not necessarily experienced as disembodied. Subjects may experience themselves as having two bodies. In cases classed as heautoscopy there is considerable confusion regarding the apparent location of the experiencing subject; is it the ‘real mind’ in the body I seem to be looking out from, or is it in the body that I see? This suggests that visual point of view can dissociate from the experience of one’s own “real mind” or experience of self-identification. I provide a tripartite distinction between the sense of ownership, the sense of embodiment and the sense of subjectivity to better describe these experiences. The phenomenology of OBEs suggests that there are three distinct forms of self-consciousness which need to be explained. (shrink)

In “Radical Interpretation” (1974), David Lewis asked: by what constraints, and to what extent, do the non-intentional, physical facts about Karl determine the intentional facts about him? There are two popular approaches: the reductive externalist program and the phenomenal intentionality program. I argue against both approaches. Then I sketch an alternative multistage account incorporating ideas from both camps. If we start with Karl's conscious experiences, we can appeal to Lewisian ideas to explain his other intentional states. This account develops (...) the multistage Lewisian approach presented at the end of my earlier "Does Phenomenology Ground Mental Content?" (2013). (shrink)

I criticize Bourget’s intuitive and empirical arguments for thinking that all possible conscious states are underived if intentional. An underived state is one of which it is not the case that it must be realized, at least in part, by intentional states distinct from itself. The intuitive argument depends upon a thought experiment about a subject who exists for only a split second while undergoing a single conscious experience. This, however, trades on an ambiguity in "split second." (...) Meanwhile, Bourget's empirical argument is question-begging. My critique also has implications for debates about the essential temporality and unity of consciousness experience, and, phenomenal atomism. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of consciousness are based on widely different concepts of its nature, most or all of which probably embody aspects of the truth about it. Starting with a concept of consciousness indicated by the phrase “the feeling of what happens” (the title of a book by Antonio Damásio), we attempt to build a framework capable of supporting and resolving divergent views. We picture consciousness in terms of Reality experiencing itself from the perspective of cognitive agents. Each conscious (...) class='Hi'>experience is regarded as composed of momentary feeling events that are combined by recognition and evaluation into extended conscious episodes that bind cognitive contents with a wide range of apparent durations (0.1 secs to 2 or more secs, for us humans, depending on circumstances and context). Three necessary conditions for the existence of consciousness are identified: a) a ground of Reality, envisaged as an universal field of potentiality encompassing all possible manifestations, whether material or 'mental'; b) a transitional zone, leading to; c) a manifest world with its fundamental divisions into material, 'informational' and quale-endowed aspects. We explore ideas about the nature of these necessary conditions, how they may relate to one another and whether our suggestions have empirical implications. (shrink)

Understanding the mechanics of consciousness remains one of the most important challenges in modern cognitive science. One key step toward understanding consciousness is to associate unconscious physiological processes with subjective experiences of sensory, motor, and emotional contents. This article explores the role of various cellular membrane potential differences and how they give rise to the dynamic infrastructure of conscious experience. This article explains that consciousness is a body-wide, biological process not limited to individual organs because the mind and (...) body are unified as one entity; therefore, no single location of consciousness can be pinpointed. Consciousness exists throughout the entire body, and unified consciousness is experienced and maintained through dynamic repolarization during inhalation and expiration. Extant knowledge is reviewed to provide insight into how differences in cellular membrane potential play a vital role in the triggering of neural and non-neural oscillations. The role of dynamic cellular membrane potentials in the activity of the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, cardiorespiratory system, and various other tissues (such as muscles and sensory organs) in the physiology of consciousness is also explored. Inspiration and expiration are accompanied by oscillating membrane potentials throughout all cells and play a vital role in subconscious human perception of feelings and states of mind. In addition, the role of the brainstem, hypothalamus, and complete nervous system (central, peripheral, and autonomic)within the mind-body space combine to allow consciousness to emerge and to come alive. This concept departs from the notion that the brain is the only organ that gives rise to consciousness. (shrink)

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in a permanent vegetative state, debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness, controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia, and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about (...) consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and those with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science. (shrink)

In The illusion of conscious will , Daniel Wegner offers an exciting, informative, and potentially threatening treatise on the psychology of action. I offer several interpretations of the thesis that conscious will is an illusion. The one Wegner seems to suggest is "modular epiphenomenalism": conscious experience of will is produced by a brain system distinct from the system that produces action; it interprets our behavior but does not, as it seems to us, cause it. I argue (...) that the evidence Wegner presents to support this theory, though fascinating, is inconclusive and, in any case, he has not shown that conscious will does not play a crucial causal role in planning, forming intentions, etc. This theory's potential blow to our self-conception turns out to be a glancing one. (shrink)

The question “What is the nature of experience?” is of perennial philosophical concern. It deals not only with the nature of experience qua experience, but additionally with related questions about the experiencing subject and that which is experienced. In other words, to speak of the philosophical problem of experience, one must also address questions about mind, world, and the various relations that link them together. Both William James and Kitarō Nishida were deeply concerned with these issues. (...) Their shared notion of “pure experience” is the conceptual cornerstone of their attempt to deal with the philosophical problem of experience. This dissertation is an analysis of “pure experience” and its relevance to several issues in contemporary hilosophy of mind. Drawing upon James’s and Nishida’s “pure experience”, I argue both for a sensorimotor-based, “extended” conception of consciousness and a bodily skills-based account of moral psychology. (shrink)

Our approach is based on a tri-partite method of integrating psychodynamic hypotheses, cognitive subliminal processes, and psychophysiological alpha power measures. We present ten social phobic subjects with three individually selected groups of words representing unconscious conflict, conscious symptom experience, and Osgood Semantic negative valence words used as a control word group. The unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words, presented subliminally and supraliminally, act as primes preceding the conscious symptom and control words presented as supraliminal targets. With (...) alpha power as a marker of inhibitory brain activity, we show that unconscious conflict primes, only when presented subliminally, have a unique inhibitory effect on conscious symptom targets. This effect is absent when the unconscious conflict primes are presented supraliminally, or when the target is the control words. Unconscious conflict prime effects were found to correlate with a measure of repressiveness in a similar previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). Conscious symptom primes have no inhibitory effect when presented subliminally. Inhibitory effects with conscious symptom primes are present, but only when the primes are supraliminal, and they did not correlate with repressiveness in a previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). We conclude that while the inhibition following supraliminal conscious symptom primes is due to conscious threat bias, the inhibition following subliminal unconscious conflict primes provides a neurological blueprint for dynamic repression: it is only activated subliminally by an individual's unconscious conflict and has an inhibitory effect specific only to the conscious symptom. These novel findings constitute neuroscientific evidence for the psychoanalytic concepts of unconscious conflict and repression, while extending neuroscience theory and methods into the realm of personal, psychological meaning. (shrink)