By portraying meaning as a phenomenon that eludes complete expression and arises spontaneously in our everyday embodied interactions with others and objects in the world, as well as in our own unconscious registering of those interactions, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is uniquely insightful concerning both the presence of meaning in modern life and the modern conception of the self--phenomena marked by a certain ineradicable tension between that which is constituted by us and that which is given from outside us. This paper (...) examines this tension through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, with special attention to the leitmotif of the «spontaneity of sense». Woolf and Merleau-Ponty both help to illustrate an important modern insight: that among the most meaningful experiences are those that are not only unexpected and unexplained, but in some sense foreign and unexplainable--mysterious events and yet everyday occurrences that explode the supposed privacy of our thought, and exceed our capacity for expression. (shrink)

There is currently no generally agreed-upon definition of the mechanism of action of psychedelic therapy. Existing proposals have approached the issue from various perspectives, utilizing concepts on many layers of abstraction. Most commonly, mechanisms based on neurotransmitters have been proposed. From a clinical perspective, explanations on the psychological level would be more useful. This study provides one such explanation, focusing on the destabilization of trauma-related memories and their replacement with memories that allow for more adaptive behaviors. This mechanism is not (...) specific to psychedelics, and the study therefore illustrates a non-pharmacological process involving it. -/- The study features a male entrepreneur in his early fifties who suffered from chronic but non-debilitating anxiety and depression since his teenage years. In his mid-30s, he suffered from severe burnout but partially recovered. The amount of alcohol consumed was constantly relatively high. More recently, due to simultaneous relationship and workplace stress, he experienced a more severe episode of burnout, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. He felt completely exhausted when trying to get something done and became fearful of the workplace. Psychotherapy and various pharmaceutical medications provided little benefit. -/- After three months on sick leave, a trip to the mountains triggered severe insomnia. Sleep deprivation likely contributed to a spontaneous experience of altered states of mind, including a two-day period of hallucinatory visions. There was the feeling of being a complete failure, but through a new relationship initiated just before the trip, he received love and validation from his new partner, which contradicted the feeling of worthlessness. The combination of an altered state of mind and love induced an alteration of identity that resolved his depression, burnout, and sleep disorders. After three more months of self-organized rehabilitation, he successfully returned to work. -/- Six months after the trip, financial decline caused by his absence and unchanged stressful conditions at the workplace led to disappointment, motivational issues, and stress, but his work performance remained good regardless. One year after the trip, although his work-related stress had increased rather than decreased due to the financial situation of his company being more demanding than before his burnout, the positive outcome prevailed, proving its long-term stability. (shrink)

I illustrate a formal similarity between the autonomy-heteronomy relation in Kant and the authenticity-inauthenticity relation in Heidegger, which then serves as an introduction to the affinity as well as the differences between Kant’s philosophy of self-consciousness and Heidegger’s investigation of the meaning of being. I sketch this in a two-fold manner: (1) for Kant and Heidegger, freedom is a form of energeia—a self-sustaining and (in some sense) complete or perfected activity. For each it may also be seen as constitutive of (...) our lived experience of time (or temporality, Zeitlichkeit) as the limit within which our everyday being occurs, allowing for fallenness or un-ownedness to manifest inside time; and (2) for both, the possibility of un-ownedness is to be understood through a form of self-deception. We will see that these two basic points are inextricably linked: freedom or spontaneity as a self-sustaining activity underlying philosophy as a whole, and which constitutes the possibility of activity in time, is the condition of the possibility and actuality of the phenomenon of losing one’s self-ownership to oneself within time. The inextricable link can be seen in the way that all activity which is properly described as taking place inside time always already presupposes a relation to the energeia constituting the whole of time. This distinction between being in time and being constitutive of time is registered in what I call the temporal difference. However, the striking disagreement between Kant and Heidegger may also be understood from this same vantage point. I suggest that this difference lies in the way that Kant conceives of the temporal difference, specifically by emphasizing the independence of self-consciousness from time. (shrink)

Common sense has it that some of the greatest achievements that are to our credit are creative, whether artistic or otherwise. But standard theories of achievement and merit struggle to explain them, since the praiseworthiness of creative achievements isn’t grounded in effort, quality of will, disclosing the agent’s values, or even reasons-responsiveness. I argue that it’s distinctive of artistic or quasi-artistic creative activity that it is guided by what I call aspirational aims, which are formulated in terms of evaluative predicates (...) (like painting something “moving” or engineering something “nifty”) whose descriptive realizers are not known in advance. Aesthetic creativity itself fundamentally consists in perceiving or conceiving of some modification of raw material or a medium as promoting or constituting a novel way of realizing the aspirational aim. Creative achievements like poems and paintings are then to our credit in virtue of being exercises of spontaneity that disclose a deep layer of our selves that is manifest in active perception of affordances, showing that there is something beautiful about the way we experience the world, as a Sally Rooney character puts it. As with other creditworthy achievements, what makes them difficult is that simply trying won’t suffice to make success likely – but unlike in many other cases, neither will trying hard, since we have no direct volitional or rational control over perceptual spontaneity. (shrink)

Sertraline is one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by spontaneous thoughts that are laden with negative affect-a "malignant sadness". Prior neuroimaging studies have identified abnormal resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the spontaneous brain networks of MDD patients. But how antidepressant medication acts to relieve the experience of depression as well as adjust its associated spontaneous networks and mood-regulation circuits remains an open question. In this study, we recruited 22 drug-naïve (...) MDD patients along with 35 normal controls and investigated whether the functional integrity of cortical networks associated with spontaneous thoughts is modulated by sertraline treatment. We attempted to predict post-treatment effects based upon what we observed in the pre-treatment rsFC of drug-naïve MDD patients. In the result, we demonstrated that (1) after the sertraline treatment, the medial temporal lobe of default network (DNMTL) and mood regulation pathway-the fronto-parietal control network (FPCN), the thalamus, and the salience network (SN)-were restored to normal connectivity, relative to the pre-treatment condition; however, the altered connections of FPCN-core DN (DNCORE), FPCN-SN, and intra-FPCN among MDD patients remained impaired; (2) thalamo-prefrontal connectivity provides moderate predictive power (r2 = 0.63) for the effectiveness of sertraline treatment. In summary, our findings contribute to a body of evidence that suggests salubrious effects of sertraline treatment primarily involve the FPCN-thalamus-SN pathway. The pre-treatment rsFC in this pathway could serve as a predictor of sertraline treatment outcome. (shrink)

What is the boundary between the animate and inanimate world? It is obvious that the animate world is under rules of inanimate world. Is the converse true? This paper is aimed at imposing the well-known Darwin's theory of evolution to inanimate world of atomic realm where bizarre behavior of electron challenges our everyday perception of inanimate world. This paper, suggests a weird, peculiar and highly elegant speculation of existing, leads suspicious about validity of the law of conservation of mass, provides (...) conceptual foundation for many odd explanations of quantum mechanics such wave-particle duality of elementary particles, the inherent randomness and probabilistic nature of world as quantum mechanics states, the Louis de Broglie proposition of wave-like behavior of moving particles, Schrödinger's wave function description of probability of finding electron at any location around the nucleus and even the roots of causality. It defines existence as follows: "All the elementary particles emerge spontaneously and randomly in space where the possibility of conforming the physical laws is higher and after appearing if they not conform the laws of physics, they vanish." It proposes, the emerging from nothing, as a natural process and in other word there is an inherent urge to existence not only for animate world but also for inanimate world. Assuming the correctness of the proposed speculation, leads to dramatic development of human perception of existing, reality and interaction with world. (shrink)

Research on the specific features of daydreaming compared with mind-wandering and night dreaming is a neglected topic in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive neuroscience of spontaneous thought. The extant research either conflates daydreaming with mind-wandering (whether understood as task-unrelated thought, unguided attention, or disunified thought), characterizes daydreaming as opposed to mind-wandering (Dorsch, 2015), or takes daydreaming to encompass any and all “imagined events” (Newby-Clark & Thavendran, 2018). These dueling definitions obstruct future research on spontaneous thought, and (...) are insufficiently precise to guide empirical studies. They also fail to illuminate the phenomenal core of daydreaming, namely, its dreamlike qualities. Although daydreaming is related to both mind-wandering and narrative imagination, it is not reducible to either. We argue that daydreams are experiences of spontaneous, immersive imagination in the waking state. The main task of our investigation is to distinguish daydreaming, conceptually and phenomenologically, from mind-wandering, on the one hand, and night dreaming, on the other. Although daydream experiences can vary widely, we distinguish prototypical experiences of daydreaming from adjacent imaginative activity, including fleeting imagery and “focused daydreaming,” or crafted visualization. We consider our phenomenological analysis as preparatory work for conceptually distinguishing different spontaneous and imaginative states so that they can be investigated accordingly with questionnaires and qualitative methods. We argue that precision about the phenomenal character of daydreaming can guide neurophenomenological investigations, help delimit studies on individual variance in daydreaming features, and identify differences among daydreaming, mind-wandering, and night dreaming conceptually and phenomenologically, and possibly eventually in terms of neural correlates. (shrink)

Questions regarding the formation of the Universe and ‘what was there’ before it came to existence have been of great interest to mankind at all times. Several suggestions have been presented during the ages – mostly assuming a preliminary state prior to creation. Nevertheless, theories that require initial conditions are not considered complete, since they lack an explanation of what created such conditions. We therefore propose the ‘Creatio Ex Nihilo’ (CEN) theory, aimed at describing the origin of the Universe from (...) ‘nothing’ in information terms. The suggested framework does not require amendments to the laws of physics: but rather provides a new scenario to the Universe initiation process, and from that point merges with state-of-the-art cosmological models. The paper is aimed at providing a first step towards a more complete model of the Universe creation – proving that creation Ex Nihilo is feasible. Further adjustments, elaborations, formalisms and experiments are required to formulate and support the theory. (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)

How one transcends the self depends on the self that experiences it. Is it instigated or sought, does it happen by accident, or by an act of Grace? Is it common or rare? Is it brought on by the ingestion of psychedelic agents or by meditation or by being overcome by fear or merely by caring more about the welfare of others than oneself? Is it transcendence to experience a shift of perspective or dissolution of the self? In the (...) pages that follow, each of these paths is explored in nine ways, each unique unto itself. None of them deal with absolute self-transcendence, which should be no surprise, for, as I’ve indicated, there would no longer a self or person to record or communicate the event. Many of them deal the transcendence of self-consciousness, my own included, but only two describe the ingestion of mind-altering psychedelics to catalyze the event. One sees self-construction from the ground-up, as it were, as a form of transcending a previous self that has disintegrated. One looks to acts of kindness to sidestep the illusion of self-consciousness. Two, at least, look to creative experience in the arts as a way to connect with universal spontaneity, but in very different ways. The others refer to what might be called spiritual experiences that, though thirsted for or sought, arrive unexpectedly, almost like a gift. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to focus on Arne Nass’s phenomenological method and some of its anthropological and cosmological implications. Nass’s Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, in fact, can be fruitfully read as an example of phenomenological inquiry, in which the notion of “spontaneous experience” plays a fundamental role. This method leads Nass to develop a “relational ontology,” in which the “ecological self” is seen as a “relational junction within the total field.” In addition, I show how Tymieniecka’s (...) philosophical thought can offer us the proper eco-phenomenological perspective to better understand Nass’s Ecosophy T. (shrink)

This paper presents phenomenology of out- of-body experiences (OBEs) occurring spontaneously or pathologically triggered as well as other types of anomalous perceptual experiences such as near- death- experiences (NDEs), temporal lobe irregularities, and ictal autoscopic phenomena (IAP). The paper further presents a brief overview of some of the OBEs studied in both the healthy and pathological populations, as well as anomalous perceptual experiences, with features common to OBEs, in the healthy population, as well as, pathological population. -/- .

Near-death experiences (NDEs) entail complex and structured conscious experience during conditions known to coincide with rapid loss of consciousness often associated with decline or disruption of the neurological correlates currently held to be causative factors of visual imagery and cognition. In this study, 653 NDE reports of cardiac and/or respiratory arrest patients were analyzed for unprompted, spontaneous references to quality of conscious visual imagery and mentation during an NDE. Results indicate that in a majority of NDEs, both figurative (...) and abstract mentation are either preserved or markedly improved during unconsciousness and unresponsiveness in the context of respiratory and cardiac arrests. These findings underscore the call to further study the mechanisms behind the ‘outliving’ of a conscious sense of selfhood and complex, structured visual imagery and cognition during severely deteriorating physiological function—and perhaps especially during clinical death. (shrink)

We have been observing how infants between 3 and 21 months react when a vibrotactile stimulation (a buzzer) is applied to different parts of their bodies. Responses included in particular movement of the stimulated body part and successful reaching for and removal of the buzzer. Overall, there is a pronounced developmental progression from general to specific movement patterns, especially in the first year. In this article we review the series of studies we conducted and then focus on possible mechanisms that (...) might explain what we observed. One possible mechanism might rely on the brain extracting “sensorimotor contingencies” linking motor actions and resulting sensory consequences. This account posits that infants are driven by intrinsic motivation that guides exploratory motor activity, at first generating random motor babbling with self-touch occurring spontaneously. Later goal-oriented motor behavior occurs, with self-touch as a possible effective tool to induce informative contingencies. We connect this sensorimotor view with a second possible account that appeals to the neuroscientific concepts of cortical maps and coordinate transformations. In this second account, the improvement of reaching precision is mediated by refinement of neuronal maps in primary sensory and motor cortices—the homunculi—as well as in frontal and parietal corti- cal regions dedicated to sensorimotor processing. We complement this theoretical account with modeling on a humanoid robot with artificial skin where we implemented reaching for tactile stimuli as well as learning the “somatosensory homunculi”. We suggest that this account can be extended to reflect the driving role of sensorimotor contingencies in human development. In our conclusion we consider possible extensions of our current experiments which take account of predictions derived from both these kinds of models. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of the first study part of the research project ‘Objectless sleep experiences’ aimed at exploring the phenomenological blueprints of conscious sleep states that lack a distinct object of awareness. A total of 573 responses were collected from an online survey that asked about the incidence, frequency, and phenomenology of a range of sleep phenomena. The survey’s results provide a better understanding of the variety of sleep experiences by yielding preliminary insights into the phenomenology of objectless (...) sleep experiences. Additionally, the results show that putative instances of objectless awareness during sleep are rare. From the thematic analysis, reports of objectless sleep experiences were characterised as a state of “void”, “emptiness”, or simply an awareness of the sleeping state. Moreover, two sorts of temporal dynamics of this sort of experience were distinguished from the reports: following the dissolution of a dream scene or arising spontaneously during sleep without recall of what preceded it. Furthermore, the results provide preliminary insights into the phenomenology of certain waking experiences that some have regarded as potentially related to instances of objectless sleep awareness. Such experiences include the phenomenon of white dreaming, the feeling of knowing, upon awakening, that one had a dream but was unable to recall its content. (shrink)

We argue that many intuitions do not have conscious propositional contents. In particular, many of the intuitions had in response to philosophical thought experiments, like Gettier cases, do not have such contents. They are more like hunches, urgings, murky feelings, and twinges. Our view thus goes against the received view of intuitions in philosophy, which we call Mainstream Propositionalism. Our positive view is that many thought-experimental intuitions are conscious, spontaneous, non-theoretical, non-propositional psychological states that often motivate belief revision, but (...) they require interpretation, in light of background beliefs, before a subject can form a propositional judgment as a consequence of them. We call our view Interpretationalism. We argue (i) that Interpretationalism avoids the problems that beset Mainstream Propositionalism and (ii) that our view meshes well with empirical results in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

We humans experience ourselves as objects and as subjects. The distinction initiated by Kant between consciousness of oneself as object and consciousness of oneself as subject was a strict one. The rigidity of that distinction has been challenged by philosophers from the continental and the analytic traditions [1]. From another perspective, researches about animal self-awareness are widening the horizon of studies relative to the nature of self-consciousness [2]. These various perspectives introduce the interest about addressing consciousness of oneself as (...) object and as subject in an evolutionary background. We propose here to follow that path by using an existing scenario about the evolutionary nature of self-consciousness based on evolutions of representations and of inter-subjectivity [3, 4]. The scenario presents an evolutionary approach that can introduce self-consciousness as an acting body and self-consciousness as a thinking and feeling entity. These two aspects of self-consciousness are then compared to consciousness of oneself as object and as subject. The scenario proposes that an evolution of inter-subjectivity brought our pre-human ancestors to reach the capability of identifying with their conspecifics. This process coupled with an evolution of representations led our ancestors to build up representations of themselves as entities existing in the environment, like the conspecifics they identified with were represented. As conspecifics were perceived as existing and acting in the environment, identifying with them led to an elementary version of self-consciousness as an acting body, close to self-consciousness as object. Also, as different conspecifics could display very different behaviors like dominant or submitted, it was not possible to identify with them spontaneously. Knowing and understanding one's own identity as perceived by other members of the group was necessary for a pertinent identification with conspecifics. Such need to think about one's own characteristics and identity introduced self-consciousness as a thinking and feeling entity, close to an elementary version of self-consciousness as subject. In addition, the mental states of the thinking and feeling subject monitoring the actions of the body object address the common evolutionary source for consciousness of oneself as object and as subject. We present here that evolutionary approach to consciousness of oneself as object and as subject with the corresponding phylogenetic outcomes relative to the mind-body problem. Continuations are proposed. (shrink)

Receptive Spirit develops the thesis that the notion of self-induced mental activity at the heart of German idealism necessitated a radical rethinking of humans’ dependence on culturally transmitted models of thought, evaluation, and creativity. The chapters of the book examine paradigmatic attempts undertaken by German idealist thinkers to reconcile spontaneous mental activity with receptivity to culturally transmitted models. The book maps the ramifications of this problematic in Kant’s theory of aesthetic experience, Fichte’s and Hegel’s views on the historical (...) character of philosophy, the Fichtean model of philosophical communication, and Friedrich Schlegel’s theory and practice of literary communication and criticism. Drawing on Gadamer and McDowell, I argue that the conceptual framework established by the Idealists remains indispensable for orientation in the contemporary intellectual landscape. (See the PDF file below for a synopsis). (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of the Kantian theory of disinterested pleasure in beauty reflects his own commitment to claims that closely resemble certain Kantian aesthetic principles, specifically as reinterpreted by Schiller. I show that Schiller takes the experience of beauty to be disinterested both (1) insofar as it involves impassioned ‘play’ rather than desire-driven ‘work’, and (2) insofar as it involves rational-sensuous (‘aesthetic’) play rather than mere physical play. In figures like Nietzsche, Schiller’s generic notion of play—which is (...) itself influenced by Kant’s claim that aesthetic pleasure is orthogonal to desire-satisfaction—becomes decoupled from his (further) Kantian view that aesthetic play essentially involves a harmony of sensuous receptivity and rational spontaneity. The result, I suggest, is a self-standing opposition between desires and passions. This motivates a recognizably Romantic vision of aesthetic disinterestedness, as freedom from desire realized in a state of creative determination by passion. (shrink)

Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against (...) this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) – all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In doing so, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination and if this relates to doing science. I conclude Whitehead's process philosophy falls short of allowing for the actual creative spontaneity of a dynamic (eternal) present. (shrink)

The author of this paper discusses the source experience defined in terms of the ancient Indian philosophy. She focuses on two out of six mainstream Hindu philosophical schools, Sāṃkhya and Yoga. While doing so the author refers to the oldest preserved texts of this classical tradition, namely Yogasūtra c. 3rd CE and Sāṃkhyakārikā 5th CE, together with their most authoritative commentaries. First, three major connotations of darśana, the Sanskrit equivalent of φιλοσοφια, are introduced and contextualised appropriately for the comparative (...) study of source experience. Then, three means of knowledge (pramāṇa-s) as well as the purpose of search for source experience are explained. Next, a specific understanding of source experience in the context of Sāṃkhya-Yoga is discussed to reveal both its contents and the reasons for apophatic formulation of the liberating insight. The self-knowledge and true knowledge both result from source experience based on distinguished discernment (vivekakhyāti) between “I”/ego and the self, gained during the multistage meditative absorption (samādhi). The analysis of discriminative cognition is followed by reconstruction of the arguments offered by the author of Sāṃkhyakārikā in favour of the existence of the self (puruṣa), immutable, inactive, and opposed to the domain of nature (prakṛti) characterised as spontaneously active and creative, which includes empirical consciousness, or “I”. The last section is devoted to the issue of the possible communication of achieved knowledge and its application in the everyday life practice. In conclusion, it is claimed that in Indian philosophy there has been no clear distinction between the practical value of subjective cognitive insight and theoretical ambitions of philosophy, which is why many authors of classical treatises are also recognised as eminent sapiential mentors. Often, especially in the texts of Yoga, Nyāyā and Buddhism philosophy is associated with therapy and philosophical exposition of the “cognitive ailments” is compared to medical treatment. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the performance stories in the Zhuangzi, and the Butcher Ding story, emphasize an activity meditation practice that places the performer in a mindfulness flow zone, leading to graceful, efficacious, selfless, spontaneous, and free action. These stories are metaphors showing the reader how to attain a meditative state of focused awareness while acting freely in a flow experience. From my perspective, these metaphors are not about developing practical or technical skills per se. My (...) argument challenges a strict instrumental reading. Although instrumental reasoning can easily lead one to focus on the pragmatic outcomes depicted in these stories (See Eno, “Cook Ding’s Dao;” Callahan, “Cook Ding’s Life;” and Robins, “Beyond Skill”), the proposed pragmatic outcomes are merely a kind of collateral result of effortless, free actions, in the flow experience. The metaphors of Butcher Ding, the Lüliang rapids swimmer, the Wheelwright Bian, the Woodcarver Qing, the cicada catcher, the naked artist and so on are used to show the reader a way to engage in free and graceful action in the flow experience. Zhuangzi is not concerned about developing labour skills. He criticizes such skills; seen below when the Butcher claims to have “… left skill behind …” (進乎技矣) (Graham, Chuang-tzu, 63), and chapter five notes that “… skill is a peddler” (工為商) (Watson, Complete, 75). (shrink)

Psycholinguistic methods hold great promise for experimental philosophy. Many philosophical thought experiments and arguments proceed from verbal descriptions of possible cases. Many relevant intuitions and conclusions are driven by spontaneous inferences about what else must also be true in the cases described. Such inferences are continually made in language comprehension and production. This chapter explains how methods from psycholinguistics can be employed to study such routine automatic inferences, with a view to assessing intuitions and reconstructing arguments. We demonstrate how (...) plausibility ratings, pupillometry, and reading time measurements can be used to examine hypotheses about automatic inferences in speech and text comprehension. Two experiments on inferences from polysemous (perception-)verbs provide evidence of a potentially consequential ‘salience bias’. Findings help assess intuitions about unusual cases and analyse a philosophical paradox (‘argument from hallucination’). The paper thus illustrates how we can adapt psycholinguistic methods for philosophical purposes and demonstrates the methods’ philosophical usefulness. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that an effective strategy for debiasing judgments is to have participants "consider the opposite." The present research proposes that considering any plausible alternative outcome for an event, not just the opposite outcome, leads participants to simulate multiple alternatives, resulting in debiased judgments. Three experiments tested this hypothesis using an explanation task paradigm. Participants in all studies were asked to explain either 1 hypothetical outcome (single explanation conditions) or 2 hypothetical outcomes (multiple explanation conditions) to an event; (...) after the explanation task, participants made likelihood judgments. The results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that debiasing occurred in all multiple explanation conditions, including those that did not involve the opposite outcome. Furthermore, the findings indicated that debiased judgments resulted from participants' spontaneous consideration of additional alternatives in making their likelihood judgments. The results of Study 3 also identified the perceived plausibility of the explained alternative as an important moderating variable in debiasing. (shrink)

Postpartum depression is a major maternal health problem after childbirth. It can start at any time within the first year after delivery and continue for several years. It is characterized by an inability to experience pleasure, anxiety symptoms, panic attacks, spontaneous crying and depressed mood. Some women with postpartum depression even have thoughts of harming their child and self-harm. This study aims to find out the status of postpartum depression and the associated factors among postnatal mothers at the (...) first, fourth and sixth month. This study is a prospective descriptive study, carried out in three major health facilities in Misurata. This study consists of a three-part questionnaire. Part 1 covers the demographic characteristics of the participants, while Part 2 explores the associated risk factors according to the variables used. Part 3 consists of the psychological evaluation of the participants. A hundred mothers (ages between 15 and 43 years) were enrolled in this study. The findings revealed that the prevalence of depression is 60.0% and 22.0% are suffering from borderline depression. Development of depression was strongly correlated with sleeping disturbances, the state of the neonate after birth, excess consumption of stimulants, less weight acceptance by mothers during pregnancy and infant illness. There was a weak relation between depression and delivery state, maternal admission to the hospital during the current pregnancy, and infant gender dissatisfaction. No correlation was found with the development of depression regarding miscarriage, maternal medical problems after delivery, previous child sex, maternal age, education, parity or neonate weight. Thus, this study shows that the chance of having a miscarriage and an unhealthy neonate increases with advanced maternal age. It also shows that caesarean section is associated with bad neonatal outcomes, more weight gain and having gestational diabetes or preeclampsia during pregnancy. Maternal sleeping problems are more pronounced in the first month, attributed to the baby's care, compared with the fourth and sixth months. The study indicates that depression is a common state of psychiatric disorders among Libyan women and should have appropriate attention by physicians and gynecologists. (shrink)

Postpartum depression is a major maternal health problem after childbirth. It can start at any time within the first year after delivery and continue for several years. It is characterized by an inability to experience pleasure, anxiety symptoms, panic attacks, spontaneous crying and depressed mood. Some women with postpartum depression even have thoughts of harming their child and self-harm. This study aims to find out the status of postpartum depression and the associated factors among postnatal mothers at the (...) first, fourth and sixth month. This study is a prospective descriptive study, carried out in three major health facilities in Misurata. This study consists of a three-part questionnaire. Part 1 covers the demographic characteristics of the participants, while Part 2 explores the associated risk factors according to the variables used. Part 3 consists of the psychological evaluation of the participants. A hundred mothers (ages between 15 and 43 years) were enrolled in this study. The findings revealed that the prevalence of depression is 60.0% and 22.0% are suffering from borderline depression. Development of depression was strongly correlated with sleeping disturbances, the state of the neonate after birth, excess consumption of stimulants, less weight acceptance by mothers during pregnancy and infant illness. There was a weak relation between depression and delivery state, maternal admission to the hospital during the current pregnancy, and infant gender dissatisfaction. No correlation was found with the development of depression regarding miscarriage, maternal medical problems after delivery, previous child sex, maternal age, education, parity or neonate weight. Thus, this study shows that the chance of having a miscarriage and an unhealthy neonate increases with advanced maternal age. It also shows that caesarean section is associated with bad neonatal outcomes, more weight gain and having gestational diabetes or preeclampsia during pregnancy. Maternal sleeping problems are more pronounced in the first month, attributed to the baby's care, compared with the fourth and sixth months. The study indicates that depression is a common state of psychiatric disorders among Libyan women and should have appropriate attention by physicians and gynecologists. (shrink)

Does consciousness collapse the quantum wave function? This idea was taken seriously by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but is now widely dismissed. We develop the idea by combining a mathematical theory of consciousness (integrated information theory) with an account of quantum collapse dynamics (continuous spontaneous localization). Simple versions of the theory are falsified by the quantum Zeno effect, but more complex versions remain compatible with empirical evidence. In principle, versions of the theory can be tested by experiments (...) with quantum computers. The upshot is not that consciousness-collapse interpretations are clearly correct, but that there is a research program here worth exploring. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the challenges of implementing reflective thinking in engineering ethics education (EEE). It examines existing methods for teaching ethical reflection in EEE and argues that pedagogical activities aiming to foster ethical reflection need to be infused with dialogical interactions and, at a deeper level, informed by dialogism. Dialogism is understood as a relational approach to inquiry in which interactions between moral agents enable them to develop their own understandings through the process of finding shared meanings with the others (...) in activities such as sharing reasons and deliberation. Drawing on pragmatism and phenomenology, the authors conceptualize reflection as a mode of thinking that enables us to monitor and question our assumptions and values – and to synthesize experiences and situations continuously and iteratively. Classroom reflection is a nuanced practice that can be captured through experiential, first-person accounts. Given the centrality of the dialogical experiences in reflection, the assessment methods should focus on evaluating the process rather than the learning outcomes, by emphasizing self-awareness, transformation, and spontaneity in class interactions. In creating opportunities for reflection, instructors need to purposefully consider their choice of specific cases and scenarios used in instruction. Students should be guided to recognize and engage in ethical situations by considering their full, diverse, and complex contextual reality, their own assumptions, values, and experiences, and by promoting dialogical practices in the classroom. (shrink)

A Few Notes on Aspect Seein g in Contemporar y Aesthetics In this paper author examines the problem of aspect seeing in reference to works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Virgil C. Aldrich posing the question of whether they are applicable to experience of musical works. Drawing on examples from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, author maintains that hearing a melody as solemn, sad, et cetera is neither universal nor unequivocal. Musical work, author suggests, does not present itself spontaneously to the listener. (...) Conversely it must be sought and found. To speak of aspect hearing or hearing as (as aesthetic hearing) in reference to music, one must seek out those qualities of musical work that are perceptual but also individually grasped in contrast to what is given in experience through acculturation and training. (shrink)

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan (...) De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been proposed as a potential way in which welfare states could be made more responsive to the ever-shifting evolutionary challenges of institutional adaptation in a dynamic environment. It has been proposed as a tool of “real freedom” (Van Parijs) and as a tool of making the welfare state more efficient. (Friedman) From the point of view of complexity theory and evolutionary economics, I argue that only a welfare state model that is “polycentrically” (Polanyi, Hayek) organized (...) as an evolving network of distributed decision-making can respond to the challenges of complexity in an adaptively efficient manner. UBI has the theoretical possibility to facilitate flexible, bottom-up innovation, since a) it embodies the “rule of law” principles of generality, nondiscrimination, simplicity, and transparency, and b) it grants people widespread freedom to experiment, innovate, and deviate from established practices and norms; but whether it can be made to work as intended depends on a number of variables in its design. I situate my research in the contemporary UBI debate around automation and technological development, which I interpret creatively through the lens of contemporary evolutionary political economy. I advance a syncretic model of institutional design based upon the shared insights of the Santa Fe, Neo-Hayekian, and Neo-Schumpeterian schools of evolutionary economics that, following Adam Thierer and Michael Munger, I call the framework of Permissionless Innovation (PI). Under the PI framework, which is a development of the tradition of evolutionary liberalism (Hume, Smith, Mandeville, Mill, Hayek, Polanyi, Schumpeter, Hodgson), individuals are granted the default right to innovate without having to ask for permission, and the right to basic income, which they can use to support their right to innovate, mutate, and experiment. This framework is a liberal framework to the extent it relies on widespread human freedom as a means of fostering innovation and social learning. And it is an evolutionary framework to the extent that it seeks to facilitate evolutionary socioeconomic processes for the sake of social progress and welfare advancement. I proceed to show, through an analysis of how innovation operates in both the economy and the cultural domain, that UBI can be used as an important cornerstone of an evolutionary liberal model of “ecostructural” governance that treats the socioeconomic order as an ecological garden of spontaneous growths, adaptations, and innovations. I call this the Permissionless Innovation Universal Basic Income (PIUBI) framework. In it, the right to innovate, deviate, and mutate is upheld as the “gold standard” of institutional design whereby individuals are granted widespread freedoms combined with the provision of UBI and other innovation-fostering (carefully bound) services and regulations. In the coming decades, UBI may even enable poor people to take better advantage of Human Enhancement Technologies (HETs) and other experimental innovations. Such a framework is compatible with a fast pace of evolutionary development, but the regulatory model accompanying such a framework must be capable of responding to evolutionary lock-ins, maladaptive innovations, self-destructive behaviour on the part of UBI recipients, and the management of catastrophic and existential risks. In the end, I will have shown that the PIUBI framework can be justified as a plausible default institutional mechanism for responding to radical uncertainty, but it needs to be experimentally adapted to changing circumstances with the help of various situation-specific, polycentric, multi-level, approaches. (shrink)

Abstract: In The Imaginary Jean-Paul Sartre makes what will strike many as an implausibly strong claim, namely that perception and imagination are incompatible kinds of experience - I call this the exclusion claim. This paper offers a reconstruction of Sartre’s exclusion claim. First, it frames the claim in terms of cross-modal attention distribution, such that it is not possible to simultaneously attend to what one is imagining and what one is perceiving. However, this leaves it open that a subject (...) can simultaneously imagine and perceive on the condition that either the perceived or imagined objects are not attended to. While this is a philosophically plausible position it fails to do justice to Sartre’s intended position, which suggests a more radical exclusion between perception and imagination. In light of this section 3 develops a supplementary argument to remove one of the possible configurations of attention that the ban on divided attention leaves in place by arguing that the objects of imagining must be attended to, which follows from Sartre’s characterisation of imagination as spontaneous. The resulting exclusion is as follows: attentive perception excludes imagination (and vice versa), given that the latter is necessarily attentive, but attentive imagination can co-occur with non-attentive or background perception (in this sense the exclusion is asymmetric in a way that Sartre fails to recognise). In concluding I detail how from this exclusion we get an important consequence – which Sartre wants the exclusion claim to have – namely that it rules out an imagination-based solution to the problem of perceptual presence. (shrink)

The mind thoughts of Wang Yangming come from long-term moral and spiritual practices. After the knowledge and action are honed, they fall on the level of conscience. In the early years, Yangming paid close attention to the mind. With the help of the concentrated observation amendments of law in Buddhism, Yangming looked at the ideas that have been developed and not developed from the perspective of the doctrine of the mean. Yangming believes that the essence of the dynamic mind is (...) natural. Therefore, it realizes the subtle purity of the mind from keeping one and settling down and from pure to spontaneous. At the same time, Yangming believes that the depth of Tao has a charm that is different from ordinary consciousness. However, Yangming criticized Buddhism for obtaining the silence of the no mind and the immobile mind through the practice of emptiness. Contrarily, Yangming paid more attention to the experience of "light" in moral practice, which made Confucianism standardize the practice of knowledge and action to the practice of mindfulness and doing instead of being in vain. The paper explored the philosophy of mind of Wang Yangming from three dimensions: one mind, no mind, and Mindfulness. (shrink)

Researchers have debated whether there is a relationship between a statement’s truth-value and whether it counts as a lie. One view is that a statement being objectively false is essential to whether it counts as a lie; the opposing view is that a statement’s objective truth-value is inessential to whether it counts as a lie. We report five behavioral experiments that use a novel range of behavioral measures to address this issue. In each case, we found evidence of a relationship. (...) A statement’s truth-value affects how quickly people judge whether it is a lie. When people consider the matter carefully and are told that they might need to justify their answer, they are more likely to categorize a statement as a lie when it is false than when it is true. When given options that inhibit perspective-taking, people tend to not categorize deceptively motivated statements as lies when they are true, even though they still categorize them as lies when they are false. Categorizing a speaker as “lying” leads people to strongly infer that the speaker’s statement is false. People are more likely to spontaneously categorize a statement as a lie when it is false than when it is true. We discuss four different interpretations of relevant findings to date. At present, the best supported interpretation might be that the ordinary lying concept is a prototype concept, with falsity being a centrally important element of the prototypical lie. (shrink)

Introduction & Objectives: Norwich’s Entropy Theory of Perception (1975 [1] -present) stands alone. It explains many firing-rate behaviors and psychophysical laws from bare theory. To do so, it demands a unique sort of interaction between receptor and brain, one that Norwich never substantiated. Can it now be confirmed, given the accumulation of empirical sensory neuroscience? Background: Norwich conjoined sensation and a mathematical model of communication, Shannon’s Information Theory, as follows: “In the entropic view of sensation, magnitude of sensation is regarded (...) as a measure of the entropy or uncertainty of the stimulus signal” [2]. “To be uncertain about the outcome of an event, one must first be aware of a set of alternative outcomes” [3]. “The entropy-establishing process begins with the generation of a [internal] sensory signal by the stimulus generator. This is followed by receipt of the [external] stimulus by the sensory receptor, transmission of action potentials by the sensory neurons, and finally recapture of the [response to the internal] signal by the generator” [4]. The latter “recapture” differentiates external from internal stimuli. The hypothetical “stimulus generators” are internal emitters, that generate photons in vision, audible sounds in audition (to Norwich, the spontaneous otoacoustic emissions [SOAEs]), “temperatures in excess of local skin temperature” in skin temperature sensation [4], etc. Method (1): Several decades of empirical sensory physiology literature was scrutinized for internal “stimulus generators”. Results (1): Spontaneous photopigment isomerization (“dark light”) does not involve visible light. SOAEs are electromechanical basilar-membrane artefacts that rarely produce audible tones. The skin’s temperature sensors do not raise skin temperature, etc. Method (2): The putative action of the brain-and-sensory-receptor loop was carefully reexamined. Results (2): The sensory receptor allegedly “perceives”, experiences “awareness”, possesses “memory”, and has a “mind”. But those traits describe the whole human. The receptor, thus anthropomorphized, must therefore contain its own perceptual loop, containing a receptor, containing a perceptual loop, etc. Summary & Conclusions: The Entropy Theory demands sensory awareness of alternatives, through an imagined brain-and-sensory-receptor loop containing internal “stimulus generators”. But (1) no internal “stimulus generators” seem to exist and (2) the loop would be the outermost of an infinite nesting of identical loops. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus argues that explicit thought disrupts smooth coping at both the level of everyday tasks and of highly-refined skills. However, Barbara Montero criticises Dreyfus for extending what she calls the ‘principle of automaticity’ from our everyday actions to those of trained experts. In this paper, I defend Dreyfus’ account while refining his phenomenology. I examine the phenomenology of what I call ‘esoteric’ expertise to argue that the explicit thought Montero invokes belongs rather to ‘gaps’ between or above moments of (...) reflexive coping. However, I agree that the ‘principle of automaticity’ does not adequately capture the experience of performing such skills. Drawing on examples of expert performance in sport and improvised music and dance, I argue that esoteric action, at its best, is marked by a distinct state of non-conceptual awareness- an experience of spontaneity, flow and ‘owned-ness’- that distinguishes it from the automaticity of everyday actions. (shrink)

The hope that art could be personally or socially transformational is an important part of art history and contemporary art practice. In the twentieth century, it shaped a movement away from traditional media in an effort to make social life a medium. Artists imagined and created participatory situations designed to facilitate potentially transformative expression in those who engaged with the works. This chapter develops the concept of “transformative expression,” and illustrates how it informs a diverse range of such works. Understanding (...) these artworks in this way raises two interesting questions, one about the nature of aesthetic value and the other about the nature of action. Answers to these questions lie in understanding the social and aesthetic character of our capacity to distance ourselves from our commitments and act in the expressive, playful, spontaneous, or imaginative ways that participatory art invites. (shrink)

In this paper I outline my propensiton version of quantum theory (PQT). PQT is a fully micro-realistic version of quantum theory that provides us with a very natural possible solution to the fundamental wave/particle problem, and is free of the severe defects of orthodox quantum theory (OQT) as a result. PQT makes sense of the quantum world. PQT recovers all the empirical success of OQT and is, furthermore, empirically testable (although not as yet tested). I argue that Einstein almost put (...) forward this version of quantum theory in 1916/17 in his papers on spontaneous and induced radiative transitions, but retreated from doing so because he disliked the probabilistic character of the idea. Subsequently, the idea was overlooked because debates about quantum theory polarised into the Bohr/Heisenberg camp, which argued for the abandonment of realism and determinism, and the Einstein/Schrödinger camp, which argued for the retention of realism and determinism, no one, as a result, pursuing the most obvious option of retaining realism but abandoning determinism. It is this third, overlooked option that leads to PQT. PQT has implications for quantum field theory, the standard model, string theory, and cosmology. The really important point, however, is that it is experimentally testable. I indicate two experiments in principle capable of deciding between PQT and OQT. (shrink)

This paper presents a case of anomalous perception, mainly in the form of out-of-body experiences (OBEs), of a healthy individual. The individual has been experiencing massive out-of-body experiences, spontaneously or at will, on a daily basis, since birth, which is more than 45 years. The paper further presents some characteristics of phenomenology as well as semiology of OBEs of the above mentioned subject based on anecdotal as well as first hand evidence.

Many philosophers and psychologists have sought to explain experiences of auditory verbal hallucinations and “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia in terms of a failure on the part of patients to appropriately monitor their own inner speech. These self-monitoring accounts have recently been challenged by some who argue that AVHs are better explained in terms of the spontaneous activation of auditory-verbal representations. This paper defends two kinds of self-monitoring approach against the spontaneous activation account. The defense requires first making some (...) important clarifications concerning what is at issue in the dispute between the two forms of theory. A popular but problematic self-monitoring theory is then contrasted with two more plausible conceptions of what the relevant self-monitoring deficits involve. The first appeals to deficits in the neural mechanisms that normally filter or attenuate sensory signals that are the result of one’s own actions. The second, less familiar, form of self-monitoring approach draws an important analogy between Wernicke’s aphasia and AVHs in schizophrenia. This style of self-monitoring theory pursues possible connections among AVHs, inserted thoughts, and the disorganized speech characteristic formal thought disorder. (shrink)

When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments. In this paper we focus on the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures to respond to the pandemic and show how they illustrate core elements of anarchist thought. We do not argue for the (...) correctness of any version of anarchist politics, nor claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas explicitly in mind. Nonetheless, the current pandemic, like many social crises before it, serves as a sort experiment in political implementation. -/- Two things have been striking in the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the chaos, incompetence, irrationality, and often cruel misguidedness of the centralized government response; and the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures in many parts of the country. In this paper we focus on the latter—especially the case of Washington, DC—to illustrate core features of anarchist politics. We do not argue for the correctness of any version of anarchist politics here, but merely illustrate guiding ideas that have been a part of anarchist theory and practice for well over a century. We also do not claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas in mind, or explicitly out of a commitment to anarchist politics. Some was, and some arises out of related ideological commitments, but most simply functions out of no more than a desire to support one another. -/- The current pandemic, like many social crises before it, rather than providing a stand-alone argument or functioning as an implementation of any political theory, serves as a sort of laboratory experiment. When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments, including how it arises through spontaneous action. If political thought is best illustrated through its implementation in practice, the functioning of grassroots individuals and organizations in a time of crisis is one way to understand the political mechanisms core to anarchist thought. (shrink)

A subject S's belief that Q is well-grounded if and only if it is based on a reason of S that gives S propositional justification for Q. Depending on the nature of S's reason, the process whereby S bases her belief that Q on it can vary. If S's reason is non-doxastic––like an experience that Q or a testimony that Q––S will need to form the belief that Q as a spontaneous and immediate response to that reason. If (...) S's reason is doxastic––like a belief that P––S will need to infer her belief that Q from it. The distinction between these two ways in which S's beliefs can be based on S's reasons is widely presupposed in current epistemology but––we argue in this paper––is not exhaustive. We give examples of quite ordinary situations in which a well-grounded belief of S appears to be based on S's reasons in neither of the ways described above. To accommodate these recalcitrant cases, we introduce the notion of enthymematic inference and defend the thesis that S can base a belief that Q on doxastic reasons P1, P2, …, Pn via inferring enthymematically Q from P1, P2, …, Pn. (shrink)

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the (...) sheer physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice. (shrink)

The given is the state of a mind in its primary engagement with the world. A satisfactory epistemology—one, it turns out, that is foundationalist and includes a naïve realist view of perception—requires a certain account of the given. Moreover, knowledge based on the given requires both a particular view of the world itself and a heterodox account of judgment. These admittedly controversial claims are supported by basic ontological considerations. I begin, then, with two contradictory views of the world per se (...) and the structure one experiences. I draw out the consequences of these two views for what intentionality is. The two views yield incompatible accounts of the given. The definitive spontaneity of the one account, and passivity of the other, can be understood in terms of the structure (or lack thereof) in the given. In defense of the claim that a structured given is not an apt epistemic basis, I examine an attempt to found an epistemology on such an account in light of the so-called myth of the given. I maintain that the given, if it is to provide some justification for taking the world to be a particular way, must be unstructured. To support this, I first discuss a significant problem with traditional foundationalism. I then argue that a satisfactory (foundationalist) epistemology requires the rejection of the orthodox propositional view of judgment in favor of a non-propositional, reistic view. (shrink)

The American novelist Walker Percy (1916-90) considered himself a "thief of Peirce", because he found in the views of C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, an alternative approach to prevailing reductionist theories in order to understand what we human beings are and what the peculiar nature of our linguistic activity is. -/- This paper describes, quoting widely from Percy, how abduction is the spontaneous activity of our reason by which we couple meanings and experience in our linguistic expressions. (...) This coupling of personal creativity and cultural tradition makes it possible to bridge the gaps between persons and cultures. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged that verbal auditory imagery, the reader's sense of hearing the words on a page, matters in the silent reading of poetry. Verbal auditory imagery (VAI) in the silent reading of narrative prose, on the other hand, is mostly neglected by literary and other theorists. This is a first attempt to provide a systematic theoretical account of the felt qualities and underlying cognitive mechanics of narrative VAI, drawing on convergent evidence from the experimental cognitive sciences, psycholinguistic theory, (...) and introspection. The central argument is that distinctions within the domain of embodied VAI also apply to higher-order meaning-making. That is, based on the imaginer's level of self-implication in their production, discrete types of VAI are associated with discrete tendencies in spontaneous literary interpretation. More generally, the aim of this paper is to isolate a new set of embodied experiences which, along with previously researched phenomena such as sensorimotor enactment or emotion, contribute to our understanding of literary narrative. (shrink)

Much of the characteristic symptomatology of schizophrenia can be understood as resulting from a pervasive sense of disembodiment. The body is experienced as an external machine that needs to be controlled with explicit intentional commands, which in turn leads to severe difficulties in interacting with the world in a fluid and intuitive manner. In consequence, there is a characteristic dissociality: Others become problems to be solved by intellectual effort and no longer present opportunities for spontaneous interpersonal alignment. This dissociality (...) goes hand in hand with a progressive loss of the socially extended mind, which normally affords opportunities for co-regulation of cognitive and affective processes. However, at times people with schizophrenia report that they are confronted by the opposite of this dissociality, namely an unusual fluidity of the self-other boundary as expressed in experiences of ambiguous body boundaries, intrusions, and even merging with others. Here the person has not lost access to the socially extended mind but has instead become lost in it, possibly due to a weakened sense of self. We argue that this neglected aspect of schizophrenic social dysfunction can be usefully approached via the concept of genuine intersubjectivity: We normally participate in a shared experience with another person by implicitly co-regulating how our interaction unfolds. This co-regulation integrates our respective experience’s dynamical bases into one interpersonal process and gives the interaction an ambiguous second-person character. The upshot is that reports of abnormal self-other fluidity are not indicative of hallucinations without any basis in reality, but of a heightened sensitivity and vulnerability to processes of interpersonal alignment and mutual incorporation that form the normal basis of social life. We conclude by discussing implications of this view for both the science of consciousness as well as approaches to intervention and therapy. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

In this paper I try to clarify and systematize some contributions with regard to (a) the main aspects of crisis situations that impose the management of emotions, (b) the correlation of certain social emotions with the factors that trigger them and their related tendencies to act, (c) the essential elements of emotional experience, (d) the differentiation of appropriate emotional reactions to a crisis situation from the inappropriate ones; (e) the in-stances in which emotions can be managed, and (f) the (...) balance between rationality and affectivity in the organization’s response to the risks or crises which it faces. By means of logical correlations I arrived at the following conclusions. Regardless of the social sphere in which the crisis makes itself felt, regardless of its type, phase or damage control strategies, the rational control of emotions contributes significantly to overcoming the crisis situation. Beyond the specificities, crises involve digressions form the norms of rightful conduct, breaches of the social norms that support institutions (as spontaneous order structures) and maladaptive reactions to reality. They can be corrected through a good management of emotions, with the caveat that we are not dealing with a problem of knowledge, but rather with one of will and character. All people can identify the adaptive emotional responses to a crisis situation, but only a few prefer them and train assiduously to use them. (shrink)

The Gathas, a corpus of seventeen poems in Old Avestan composed by the ancient Iranian poet-priest Zarathushtra (Zoroaster) ca. 1200 B.C.E., is the foundation document of Zoroastrian religion. Even though the dualistic axiology of the Gathas has been widely noted, it has proved very difficult to understand the meaning and genre of the corpus or the position of Zarathushtra’s ideas with regard to other religious philosophies. Relying on recent advances in translation and decryptions of Gathic poetry, I shall here develop (...) a philosophical interpretation of the Gathas, including, as shall be discussed here in detail, explication of the revelation he reports in the poem known as Yasna 30. I argue that, similarly to Marx, Henry, and Schutz, Zarathushtra connects social criticism with an original philosophy of (inter)subjectivity and existential reflection, placing his account in the context of a fully developed metaphysics which includes the human-divine sharing of mental properties. I show that in order to accommodate this complicated problematic, Zarathushtra uses the vehicle of multiple realities. Reflecting the spontaneity of life, the dynamics of various ontological modes in the text create a reference to subjectivity. A description of the dream in Yasna 30 is sufficiently within the limits of possibility for a dream experience, and thereby delivers three original phenomenological reductions. The reductions initiate a genetic account of the phenomenalization of invisible impulses which give rise to moral choices, and define the human-divine relationship. The opposing moral choices open into a reverse axiological intentionality in the sphere of intersubjectivity, and are said to plot life for the rightful and lifelessness for the wrongful. It can be concluded that Zarathushtra’s theism and views of the social world are “the first philosophy”, with a unique and original phenomenological ontology of intersubjectivity at its core. (shrink)