... Omnistent, Arch-istent, and Prim-istent Realities l "Searching for the Ox. The beast has never gone astray, and what is the use of searching for him? ...

Could robots be genuinely intelligent? Could they be conscious? Could there be zombies? Prompted by these questions Robert Kirk introduces the main problems of consciousness and sets out a new approach to solving them. He starts by discussing behaviourism, Turing's test of intelligence and Searle's famous Chinese Room argument, and goes on to examine dualism – the idea that consciousness requires something beyond the physical – together with its opposite, physicalism. Probing the idea of zombies, he concludes they (...) are logically impossible. Having presented the central problems, he sketches his solution: a version of functionalism, according to which consciousness consists in the performance of functions. While there is wide agreement among philosophers about what the main problems of consciousness are, there is little agreement on how to go about solving them. With this powerful case for his version of functionalism, Kirk offers an engaging introduction to both the problems and a possible solution. (shrink)

A guide to aligning your life with the frequencies of the Nine Waves of Creation.

What do psychedelics reveal about consciousness? What impact have psychedelics had on philosophy? In this rapidly growing area of study, this is the first volume to explore the philosophy of psychedelic experience, from a range of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives. In doing so, Philosophy and Psychedelics reveals just why the place of psychedelics in our societies should not be left to medical sciences alone, as psychedelic experience opens up new perspectives on fundamental philosophical questions relating to human experience, ethics, (...) and the metaphysics of mind. Mapping a range of philosophical responses to the surge in studies into psychedelic drugs in the cognitive sciences, this go-to volume examines topics including psychedelics and the role of governance; psychedelics and mysticism; what psychedelics can tell us about dyadic thankfulness; and psychedelics as ways to gain new knowledge. Written by leading international scholars, the essays cover Western and non-Western traditions, from analytic philosophy to Zen Buddhism, and discuss a variety of hallucinogens, such as LSD, MDMA, and Ayahuasca, in order to build a much-needed bridge between the rapidly growing scientific research and the philosophy behind psychedelic experience. (shrink)

What should philosophical theology look like after the critique of Onto-theology, after Phenomenology, and in the age of Speculative Realism? What does Kabbalah have to say to Philosophy? Since Kant and especially since Husserl, philosophy has only permitted itself to speak about how one relates to God in terms of the intentionality of consciousness and not of how God is in himself. This meant that one could only ever speak to God as an addressed and yearned-for holy Thou, but (...) not to God as infinite creator of all. In this book-length essay, the author argues that reality itself is made up of the Holy Name of God. Drawing upon the set-theoretical ontology of Alain Badiou, the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram, the physics of Frank Tipler, the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, and the genius of Georg Cantor, the author works to demonstrate that the universe is a computer processing the divine Name and that all existence is made of information (the bit). As a result of this ontic pan-computationalism, it is shown that the future resurrection of the dead can take place and how it may in fact occur. Along the way, the book also offers compelling critiques of several significant theories of reality, including the phenomenological theologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, Process Theology, and Object-Oriented Ontology. Reality in the Name of God explores how the concepts of Jewish mysticism can be articulated and deployed as philosophical theses within current metaphysical debates. It provides a new and dynamic Structural Realist ontology of information. Ultimately, the book aims to deal a death blow to the restriction of philosophy and theology in relation to elaborations of a how a believer relates to a God outside the mind and to return thought to a direct encounter with the divine nature of reality itself and its creator"--Website of the publisher, October 19, 2020. (shrink)

It is an important feature of creatures like us that our various motivations compete for control over our behaviour, including mental behaviour such as imagining and attending. In large part, this competition is adjudicated by the stimulation of affect — the intrinsically pleasant or unpleasant aspects of experience. In this paper I argue that the motivation-affect system controls a sub-type of attention called 'alerting attention' to bring various goals and stimuli to consciousness and thereby prioritize those contents for action. (...) This view allows me to flesh out the global workspace theory of consciousness, as well as some of the phenomenal characteristics of conscious experience. (shrink)

Primal emotional feelings are an optimal way to make scientific progress on the neural constitution of consciousness. Such research has revealed the existence of profound neuroanatomical and neurochemical homologies in the systems that control emotionality in mammalian and avian species. Wherever in their brains one applies localized Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), whether electrical or chemical, and obtains coherent instinctual emotional behavior patterns, animals treat these within‐brain state shifts as 'rewards' and 'punishments' in various learning tasks. Humans consistently report desirable (...) and undesirable affective changes to such DBS. These effects serve as gold standards for the detailed scientific study of affective qualia in animal and human brains. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Christopher Mole (2008) argued in favour of the view that, according to our commonsense psychology, while consciousness is necessary for attention, attention isn’t necessary for consciousness. In this paper I offer an argument against this view. More precisely, I offer an argument against the claim that, according to our commonsense psychology, consciousness is necessary for attention. However, I don’t claim it follows from this argument that commonsense has it the other way around, viz. (...) that consciousness isn’t necessary for attention. Instead, I want to motivate the claim that there isn’t such a thing as the view of commonsense psychology about the relation between attention and consciousness. I argue that people’s use of these terms — and, presumably, of their corresponding concepts — seems to be context-dependent. I conclude with a discussion of the possible implications of this claim for the empirical study of attention and consciousness. (shrink)

Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are three-dimensional in vitro cell cultures that mimic the developmental process and organization of the developing human brain. In just a few years this technique has produced brain models that are already being used to study diseases of the nervous system and to test treatments and drugs. Currently, HCOs consist of tens of millions of cells and have a size of a few millimeters. The greatest limitation to further development is due to their lack of vascularization. (...) However, recent research has shown that human cerebral organoids can manifest the same electrical activity and connections between brain neurons and EEG patterns as those recorded in preterm babies. All this suggests that, in the future, HCOs may manifest an ability to experience basic sensations such as pain, therefore manifesting sentience, or even rudimentary forms of consciousness. This calls for consideration of whether cerebral organoids should be given a moral status and what limitations should be introduced to regulate research. In this article I focus particularly on the study of the emergence and mechanisms of human consciousness, i.e. one of the most complex scientific problems there are, by means of experiments on HCOs. This type of experiment raises relevant ethical issues and, as I will argue, should probably not be considered morally acceptable. (shrink)

There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and related expressions function as intensional transitive verbs and (b) defending a particular semantic approach to such verbs, on (...) which they have readings that lack direct objects or themes. The paper further argues that this approach serves not only as a linguistic proposal about the semantics of ‘conscious of’, but also as a proposal about the metaphysics of conscious states. (shrink)

Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism Peter Harvey. The. SELFLESS. MIND. PERSQNALITY, CONSCIOUSNESS AND NIRVANA IN EARLY BUDDHISM. PETER. HARVEY. THE SELFLESS MIND THE SELFLESS ...

What is consciousness? Why and when do we have it? Where does it come from, and how does it relate to the lump of squishy grey matter in our heads, or to our material and social worlds? While neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, historians, and cultural theorists offer widely different perspectives on these fundamental questions concerning what it is like to be human, most agree that consciousness represents a 'hard problem'. -/- The emergence of consciousness studies as a multidisciplinary (...) discourse addressing these issues has often been associated with rapid advances in neuroscience-perhaps giving the impression that the arts and humanities have arrived late at the debating table. The longer historical view suggests otherwise, but it is probably true that music has been under-represented in accounts of consciousness. Music and Consciousness aims to redress the balance: its twenty essays offer a timely and multi-faceted contribution to consciousness studies, critically examining some of the existing debates and raising new questions. -/- The collection makes it clear that to understand consciousness we need to do much more than just look at brains: studying music demonstrates that consciousness is as much to do with minds, bodies, culture, and history. Incorporating several chapters that move outside Western philosophical traditions, Music and Consciousness corrects any perception that the study of consciousness is a purely occidental preoccupation. And in addition to what it says about consciousness the volume also presents a distinctive and thought-provoking configuration of new writings about music. (shrink)

Hurley’s is a difficult book to work through—partly because of its length and the complexity of its arguments, but also because each of the ten essays of which it is composed has a rather different starting point and focus, and because few of her arguments achieve real closure. Essay 2 discusses competing interpretations of Kant, essay 4 articulates nonconceptual forms of self-consciousness, essay 5 offers fresh interpretations of commissurotomy patients’ behavior, essay 6 develops an objection to Wittgenstein on rule (...) following, essay 8 attacks an alleged assumption of externalism, and chapter 10 explores the possibility of combining a “motor theory” and a “control theory” of perception. This is a very rich brew, and at least half the challenge this book presents consists in discerning its central argument and conclusion with enough precision to bring criticism to bear. (shrink)

For several decades, researchers have debated whether attention is required for consciousness or not. Throughout this time, three particular paradigms — inattentional blindness, change blindness, and the attentional blink — have been extensively used to examine this relationship. In this chapter, we highlight many of the key findings that have been discovered using these paradigms, and discuss what these findings have taught us about the role attention plays in perceptual consciousness.

This paper concerns the role that reference to subjects of experience can play in individuating streams of consciousness, and the relationship between the subjective and the objective structure of consciousness. A critique of Tim Bayne’s recent book indicates certain crucial choices that works on the unity of consciousness must make. If one identifies the subject of experience with something whose consciousness is necessarily unified, then one cannot offer an account of the objective structure of consciousness. (...) Alternatively, identifying the subject of experience with an animal means forgoing the conceptual connection between being a subject of experience and having a single phenomenal perspective. (shrink)

The function of the brain is intricately woven into the fabric of time. Functions such as (i) storing and accessing past memories, (ii) dealing with immediate sensorimotor needs in the present, and (iii) projecting into the future for goal-directed behavior are good examples of how key brain processes are integrated into time. Moreover, it can even seem that the brain generates time (in the psychological sense, not in the physical sense) since, without the brain, a living organism cannot have the (...) notion of past nor future. When combined with an evolutionary perspective, this seemingly straightforward idea that the brain enables the conceptualization of past and future can lead to deeper insights into the principles of brain function, including that of consciousness. In this paper, we systematically investigate, through simulated evolution of artificial neural networks, conditions for the emergence of past and future in simple neural architectures, and discuss the implications of our findings for consciousness and mind uploading. (shrink)

The equation of the world with 'life' and 'life' with consciousness ramified into the baffling account Wittgenstein gave of the 'philosophical self '. The physical world, as Descartes argued, is made of material substance, and the mental world 'is liable to be imagined as gaseous, or rather, aethereal'. Conceiving of consciousness as a private realm populated by private experiences, one is bound to be puzzled at its evolutionary emergence. Consciousness is attributable to an organism as a whole, (...) not to its parts, no matter how complex. And it is attributable to the organism on the grounds of the behaviour of the organism, its exercise of its perceptual faculties, its susceptibility to sensation, and its voluntary action. A venerable tradition going back at least as far as Descartes conceived of consciousness as the immovable rock against which the waves of scepticism break. (shrink)

This volume provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the emerging concept of the evolution of consciousness. It presents an overarching model that moves us to a new level of meaning and understanding of our place in the world.

Images, notions, terms, frames of reference for consciousness https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Problems-Consciousness-Reality-I/dp/1872152309/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8.

The “Crisis” itself is an attempt of enlightenment by examining origins. Husserl knows three philosophical origins of evidence and justification: (1) consciousness; (2) the life-world; (3) european philosophy and the history of the sciences. There is a tension of historicity and ahistoricity in all of these origins. I will show in how far all three origins are under this tension. Because even concerning the notion of absolute consciousness one can show, that it is linked to historicity. The exact (...) sciences are, as Husserl says, the accomplishments of the consciousness of knowing subjects. Subjectivity and the accomplishments of consciousness are for Husserl therefore the immanent reason (die immanente Vernunft) without which the objectivity of the sciences becomes absurd (widersinnig). As they are not domains of a priori truths, they derive their inherent reason from subjectivity. Subjectivity and consciousness are therefore prior conditions for the sciences and for the life world. The immanent reason that subjectivity and consciousness is for the sciences and the life-world is also part of the ground that enables critique on the sciences. But does it make sense to try to reconstruct historical anonymous subjective phenomena as the immanent reason of scientific developments as Husserl demands? The reduction to a pure intention or absolute ego is a process, which is dependant on a historical development. Therefore even if we conceded that the epoché was feasible it would still depend on a historical evolved concept. An absolute ego is only conceivable for those who live in a culture that allows such an abstraction. But as Husserl does not adopt a history of philosophy like Hegel that explains how the absolute ego comes to itself in time, the tensions between ahistoricity or non-historicity and historicity are not resolved in the “Crisis”. (shrink)

Rolls defends a higher-order thought theory of phenomenal consciousness, mapping the distinction between conscious and non-conscious states onto a distinction between two types of action and corresponding neural pathways. Only one type of action involves higher-order thought and consequently consciousness. This account of consciousness has implausible consequences for the nature of stimulus-reinforcement learning.

Written from the perspective of philosophy of liberation, this essay holds that the reform of basic human relationships and their cultural instantiation(s) is central to all serious societal change. The essay analyzes naive, mythological, and critical consciousness. It examines how these modes of consciousness are embodied in the health delivery system and then describes areas where practitioners and patients of critical consciousness might work for greater humanization of health care.

The irreducibility of language : the history of rhetoric in the age of typewriters -- The failures of empiricism : language, science, and the philosophical tradition -- What is a trope? : the discourse of metaphor and the language of the body -- The nervous systems of modern consciousness : metaphor, physiology, and mind -- Interpretation and life : outlines of an anthropology of knowledge.

Ideally, psychological and phenomenological studies of visual experience should be mutually informative. In that spirit, this article outlines parts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological view of visual experience as a kind of independently active opaque bodily synthesis, and uses those views to (a) help ground and extend Alva Noë's rejection of the “snapshot” theory of visual experience in favor of a more enactive view of visual content, (b) critique a failing of Noë's account, and (c) show how the assumptions underlying more (...) internalist and Cartesian views of visual experience can illegitimately creep in even when they are being carefully criticized. (shrink)

Dr. Vukov analyzing patients with disorders of consciousness, proposed that medical well-regarded policy recommendations cannot be justified by looking solely to patients’ actual levels of consciousness (minimally conscious state – MCS versus vegetative state – VS), but that they can be justified by looking to patients’ potential for consciousness. One objective way to estimate this potential (actual physical possibility) is to consider a neurophysiologically informed strategy. Ideally such strategy would utilize objective brain activity markers of consciousness/unconsciousness. (...) The Operational Architectonics (OA) theory of brain-mind functioning is an example of such a strategy. Besides being mathematically simple, neurophysiologically accurate, and compatible with the cognitive/phenomenal perspectives on consciousness, application of OA strategy to quantitative EEG analysis of patients in VS and MCS revealed that the absence of consciousness in VS is paralleled by impairment of overall EEG operational architecture. Specifically, neuronal assemblies become smaller, their life span shortened, and they became highly unstable and functionally disconnected (desynchronized). At the same time, fluctuating (minimal) awareness in patients in MCS was paralleled by partial restoration of EEG operational architecture (increased size, life span, and stability of neuronal assemblies, together with an increased number and strength of functional connections among them), approaching the level found in healthy fully conscious participants. Moreover OA strategy to EEG analysis allowed predicting the emergence of consciousness in VS patients after six years following the brain trauma. Therefore, the OA methodology could reliably predict which patients may regain consciousness, and thus determine which patients may have the potential for consciousness. (shrink)

The work of Joseph Delb??uf (1831‐1896), a philosopher, psychologist, and mathematician, provides fresh insights on the relationship between agency, consciousness, and evolution. Without agency, Delb??uf argued, the distinction between the self and the external world would be impossible, the function of feelings such as pain and pleasure would be incomprehensible, and consciousness would not have evolved. Delb??uf also posited a psychological stage of evolution, preceding that of natural selection, whereby sentient organisms influence the selection of their own traits (...) through the decisions they make during their reproductive lives. In relating these ideas and others, I show how Delb??uf’s work is relevant to current scholarship on the nature and evolution of consciousness. (shrink)

Psychedelics have been recognized as model interventions for studying altered states of consciousness. However, few empirical studies of the shamanic state of consciousness, which is anecdotally similar to the psychedelic state, exist. We investigated the neural correlates of shamanic trance using high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in 24 shamanic practitioners and 24 healthy controls during rest, shamanic drumming, and classical music listening, followed by an assessment of altered states of consciousness. EEG data were used to assess changes in absolute (...) power, connectivity, signal diversity, and criticality, which were correlated with assessment measures. We also compared assessment scores to those of individuals in a previous study under the influence of psychedelics. Shamanic practitioners were significantly different from controls in several domains of altered states of consciousness, with scores comparable to or exceeding that of healthy volunteers under the influence of psychedelics. Practitioners also displayed increased gamma power during drumming that positively correlated with elementary visual alterations. Furthermore, shamanic practitioners had decreased low alpha and increased low beta connectivity during drumming and classical music and decreased neural signal diversity in the gamma band during drumming that inversely correlated with insightfulness. Finally, criticality in practitioners was increased during drumming in the low and high beta and gamma bands, with increases in the low beta band correlating with complex imagery and elementary visual alterations. These findings suggest that psychedelic drug-induced and non-pharmacologic alterations in consciousness have overlapping phenomenal traits but are distinct states of consciousness, as reflected by the unique brain-related changes during shamanic trance compared to previous literature investigating the psychedelic state. (shrink)

The possibility of AI consciousness depends much on the correct answer to the mind–body problem: how our materialistic brain generates subjective consciousness? If a materialistic answer is valid, machine consciousness must be possible, at least in principle, though the actual instantiation of consciousness may still take a very long time. If a non-materialistic one (either mentalist or dualist) is valid, machine consciousness is much less likely, perhaps impossible, as some mental element may also be required. (...) Some recent advances in neurology (despite the separation of the two hemispheres, our brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent; the negation of the absence of a free will, previously thought to be established by the Libet experiments) and many results of parapsychology (on medium communications, memories of past lives, near-death experiences) suggestive of survival after our biological death, strongly support the non-materialistic position and hence the much lower likelihood of AI consciousness. Instead of being concern about AI turning conscious and machine ethics, and trying to instantiate AI consciousness soon, we should perhaps focus more on making AI less costly and more useful to society. (shrink)

According to philosopher Paul Woodruff, reverent awe is a feeling of being limited or dwarfed by something larger than the human, usually accompanied by feelings of respect for fellow human beings. Drawing from Jean-Paul Sartre’s early philosophy, this article responds positively to the title question, showing how reverent awe is in bad faith yet is similar to anguish, and unique with respect to both. Especially remarkable in reverent awe is the feeling of connectedness to humankind. In section two, building on (...) this section one framework of how Sartrean consciousness can be reverent, the article explores how being-in-itself can be an object of reverent awe. (shrink)

: Self-consciousness is considered in a framework comprising four dimensions which are theoretically defined and supported by clinical neuropsychological evidence. Self-monitoring is defined as the ability to reflect on one’s own behaviour, with supporting evidence for deficits in this capacity noted in anosognosia syndrome. Self-feeling is defined as the capacity to feel all sensations related to one’s own body, with supporting evidence from deficiencies occurring in alexithymia, psychosomatic states and Cotard’s delusion. Identity refers to the capacity to recognize an (...) object as identical to oneself, based on autobiographic memory; pathological conditions related to this dimension include delusions of identity and the Zelig syndrome. Ownership is the capacity to perceive the status of ones’ own body, and is clinically altered in somatoparaphrenia. All four dimensions are related to specific brain networks. Keywords: Self-Monitoring; Self-Feeling; Identity; Ownership; Neurocognitive Dimensions Le dimensioni neurocognitive dell’autocoscienza Riassunto: L’autocoscienza viene inquadrata in base a quattro dimensioni, determinate in via teorica e supportate da evidenze cliniche di carattere neuropsicologico. L’automonitoraggio è definito quale capacità di riflettere sul proprio comportamento ed è sostenuto da evidenze che derivano da quella sindrome denominata anosognosia. Il sentire il proprio sé è la capacità di avvertire tutte le sensazioni del corpo proprio ; questa dimensione è supportata da evidenze derivanti da condizioni cliniche quali l’alessitimia, le affezioni psicosomatiche e il delirio di Cotard. L’identità si riferisce alla capacità di riconoscere come identico a se stesso un oggetto, fondata sulla memoria autobiografica; le condizioni patologiche legate a questa dimensione sono il delirio di identità e la sindrome di Zelig. Il possesso di sé è la capacità di percepire lo stato del proprio corpo, condizione che risulta alterata nella somatoparafrenia. Tutte queste quattro dimensioni sono collegate a specifici network cerebrali. Parole chiave: Automonitoraggio; Sentimento di sé; Identità; Padronanza di sé; Dimensioni neurocognitive. (shrink)

(1997). Alchemical transformation: Consciousness and matter, form and information. World Futures: Vol. 48, The Concept of Collective Consiousness: Research Perspectives, pp. 3-22.