This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

COVID-19 caused nearly every college and university in the United States to rapidly shift to remote learning during the spring 2020 semester. While this impacted all students to different degrees, students with disabilities faced new challenges related to their mental health, the accessibility of their instruction, the receipt of accommodations, and their interactions with faculty and student support personnel. Literature is emerging that describes the experiences of SWD during the spring 2020 semester and the swift change to remote learning. However, (...) little is currently known about what followed for these students. The present study builds from a prior investigation of SWD during the spring 2020 semester and examines student experiences and perceptions during the 2020–2021 academic year. Eighty-eight SWD from colleges across the United States completed an instrument that contained a mix of demographic, yes/no, Likert scale and open-ended items. Responses revealed most items related to accessing services and instruction showed no improvement from the spring 2020 semester, and that items related to mental health, motivation to learn, and connections with peers were perceived as worse than in spring 2020. Open-ended responses revealed similar themes, with some students describing no improvements, and others noting that accessibility service offices and faculty provided enhanced methods of communication and support. Implications for practice and future research are presented. (shrink)

Much attention has been paid recently to the role of anomalous experiences in the aetiology of certain types of psychopathology, e.g. in the formation of delusions. We examine, instead, the top-down influence of pre-existing beliefs and affective factors in shaping an individual’s characterisation of anomalous sensory experiences. Specifically we investigated the effects of paranormal beliefs and alexithymia in determining the intensity and quality of an altered state of consciousness . Fifty five participants took part in a sweat lodge ceremony, a (...) traditional shamanic ritual which was unfamiliar to them. Participants reported significant alterations in their state of consciousness, quantified using the ‘APZ’ questionnaire, a standardized measure of ASC experience. Participants endorsing paranormal beliefs compatible with shamanic mythology, and those showing difficulty identifying feelings scored higher on positive dimensions of ASC experience. Our findings demonstrate that variation in an individual’s characterisation of anomalous experiences is nuanced by pre-existing beliefs and affective factors. (shrink)

The initial motivating question for this thesis is what the standard of rigour in modern mathematics amounts to: what makes a proof rigorous, or fail to be rigorous? How is this judged? A new account of rigour is put forward, aiming to go some way to answering these questions. Some benefits of the norm of rigour on this account are discussed. The account is contrasted with other remarks that have been made about mathematical proof and its workings, and is tested (...) and illustrated by considering a case study discussed in the literature. On the view put forward here one can obtain a manner of informal, rigorous mathematics founded on any of a variety of proof systems. The latter part of the thesis is concerned with the question of how we should decide which of these competing proof systems we should base our mathematics on: i.e., the question of which proof system we should take as a foundation for our mathematics. A novel answer to this question is proposed, in which the key property we should require of a proof system is that for as many different kinds of structures as possible, when the proof system allows a generalization about that kind of structure to be proved, the generalization actually holds of all real examples of that kind of structure which exist. This is the requirement of soundness of the proof system. It is argued that the best way to establish the soundness of a proof system may be by giving an interpretation of its axioms on which they are established as true. As preparation for this discussion, the thesis first investigates the logical and conceptual basis of various arithmetic concepts, with the results obtained used in the final discussion of soundness. (shrink)

Students with autism spectrum disorder are accessing college in increasing numbers. Within this cohort are students who are twice exceptional—those who are both academically talented and diagnosed with ASD. Little is known about factors and experiences that impact their successful transition to college. Parents play a critical role in the secondary transition process, but currently, there is a paucity of research that examines their perceptions of this experience. This study presents the results of semi-structured interviews with the parents of 10 (...) college students with ASD who were enrolled in postsecondary institutions in the United States. The parents provided perceptions of their student’s best and most challenging aspects of high school, as well as of the transition preparation the student received. Suggestions were offered in regard to how transition services can be improved for this group of students. Implications for planning and practice are presented. (shrink)

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been the subject of intense interest as a locus of cognitive control. Several computational models have been proposed to account for a range of effects, including error detection, conflict monitoring, error likelihood prediction, and numerous other effects observed with single-unit neurophysiology, fMRI, and lesion studies. Here, we review the state of computational models of cognitive control and offer a new theoretical synthesis of the mPFC as signaling response–outcome predictions. This new synthesis has two interacting (...) components. The first component learns to predict the various possible outcomes of a planned action, and the second component detects discrepancies between the actual and intended responses; the detected discrepancies in turn update the outcome predictions. This single construct is consistent with a wide array of performance monitoring effects in mPFC and suggests a unifying account of the cognitive role of medial PFC in performance monitoring. (shrink)

The article explores conceptual, intentional, and emotional dimensions of art , drawing on ideas from process theory , clinical neuropathology and phenomenology. The interdependence of emotion and perception are outlined, with emphasis on the more general role of knowledge in guiding perception.

In the past two decades, reinforcement learning has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of (...) a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. (shrink)

This superbly written and finery argued philosophical essay has potentially revolutionary importance for understanding "human consciousness, " and its author has accordingly been celebrated by the likes of Oliver Sachs and Karl Pribram. Showing the relevance of neuropathology for understanding the unifying processes behind perception, memory, and language, Jason Brown offers an exciting new approach to the mind/brain problem, freely crossing the boundaries of neurophysiology, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Hard science and the study of the nature of mind (...) (including Buddhist perspectives) come together in new ways, and without advocating the reductionist "computational model" for the mind/brain relation which dominates cognitive science today. Brown finds that every event in conscious life passes through highly determinate stages in a fraction of a second. These repeat both the stages of individual growth and of the evolution of the species: Not only does ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny, but the emergence of every moment of awareness recapitulates them both. This process begins deep in the brain stem with the mere awareness of duration, proceeds through concept-formation and image selection, and terminates with the apprehension of an object in the external world. The external object acts as a realistic constraint on consciousness. But in conditions such as brain damage, dream, meditation, as well as creativity, the preconscious stages enter into direct awareness, giving us explicit glimpses of developmental and evolutionary process and presenting a startling reversal of common ideas about the development of mind. Concept and image do not derive from perception and sensation, theycome first. And the principle of consciousness, rather than being a latecomer on the evolutionary and developmental scene, is a potentiality throughout. This lucidly written book will not disappoint the many readers concerned with the great frontier of scientific exploration -- the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Every step forward, in life and in thought, is a return to a beginning in that it empties that much more the plan by which the journey is directed. The journey that began this work was with the recondite lore of aphasia. This early work led to a psychology of language, perception, action, and feeling based on the principle of microgenesis. This psychology and its corre sponding brain process are detailed in my book, Life of the Mind, a vade mecum (...) for the ideas that are developed further in this work. Now this psychology, a single thought exposed at progressively deeper levels, is extended to the problems of time awareness, consciousness and the nature of the self. It is astonishing, is it not, that an aphasic error, a slip of the tongue, can be a peephole on some of the ultimate mysteries of life? Over the last few years I have had the occasion to present portions of this work at various conferences and to different audiences, and have found, to my dismay, that the theory is often difficult for many to grasp. (shrink)

A common quest among theoretical psychologists is the transformation of psychology to accommodate human agency and meaning. Several strong experimental methods are used in cognitive neuroscience but are based almost entirely upon a mechanistic ontology. A step toward rapprochement is proposed using precise and powerful experimental methods that are holistic, individualized, and compatible with an agentive ontology. Such methods must be applicable to all aspects of human experience, the subjective and agentive aspects, as well as the behavioural and the neurophysiological (...) Multivariate methods are capable of expressing and capturing the holistic isomorphism among multiple aspects of human existence and might even help provide insight into the mind-body problem. Results from a cognitive neuroscience study are used to illustrate this approach. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to respond to Jacques Derrida’s reading of Immanuel Kant’s laws of hospitality and to offer a deeper exploration into Kant’s separation of a cosmopolitan right to visit ( Besuchsrecht) and the idea of a universal right to reside ( Gastrecht). Through this discussion, the various laws of hospitality will be examined, extrapolated and outlined, particularly in response to the tensions articulated by Derrida. By doing so, this article will offer a reinterpretation of the laws (...) of hospitality, arguing that hospitality is not meant to capture all the conditions necessary for cosmopolitan citizenship or for a thoroughgoing condition of cosmopolitan justice as Derrida assumes. This is because hospitality could be understood as the basic normative requirement necessary to establish an ethical condition for intersubjective communication at the global level, where discursive communication regarding the substance of a future condition of cosmopolitan justice is to be subjected to global public reason. (shrink)