Depersonalization and derealization refer to states of dissociation in which one feels a sense of alienation in relation to one’s self and environment, respectively. Whilst transient episodes often diminish without treatment, chronic experiences of DP and DR may last for years, with common treatments lacking a strong evidence base for their efficacy. We propose a theoretical explanation of DP and DR based on interoceptive predictive coding, and discuss how transient experiences of DP and DR may be induced in the non-clinical (...) population using virtual reality. Further, we review the use of heartbeat evoked potentials in detecting the neural correlates of DP and DR allowing for an objective measure of these experiences in the non-clinical population. Finally, we discuss how the induction and detection of transient experiences of DP and DR in the non-clinical population could shed light on how the brain constructs one’s sense of self and reality. (shrink)

The study seeks to elucidate the nature of early Dhamma-transmission. While Buddhism has achieved broad geographical dissemination, sometimes earning the epithet ‘missionary’, P?li sources are ambivalent regarding approaches to potential followers. The Buddha’s final words do not instruct the sangha to spread the message; the exhortation, ‘walk, monks … for the blessing of the manyfolk’, rather appears to be an early, isolated episode. The Buddha’s own hesitation to teach provides the paradigm for the renunciant sangha, whose members rarely initiate teaching (...) episodes, preferring to wait for specific questions, an approach still formalised in modern practice. Following brahmanical norms, excessive eagerness to communicate would have devalued the message. Capacity to understand varied between individuals, and intelligent questions indicated preparedness. Given the dependence upon lay-followers, the alms-round ensured regular sangha visibility. Embodied serenity, closely regulated by the Vinaya, both excited curiosity and proved beneficial to onlookers – an affecting dar?ana. Frequently d?na, meal offerings, provided the locus for communicating Dhamma in a graduated, step-by-step manner, according to the capacity of the listeners. Kindness and generosity thus provided the point of departure, while miraculous displays were generally eschewed. In the proposed model, the alms-round is viewed as being undertaken to occasion generosity, making available a merit-field to generate benefits for the givers, rather than promotionally. The infrequent hints of greater assertion are confined to lay-followers, who, building on friendships, may occasionally draw attention to Dhamma. Arguably, this complements the role of the renunciant sangha, the guardian of the tradition, for whom teaching was not in fact obligatory. Though some lay-followers instructed others, their practice focussed on generosity and devotion. Some commentators have suggested that the original zeal waned over the centuries. However, the broadly reticent approach emerges as authentic in underlining the importance of the teachings, valuing goodness in other traditions, and accepting progression across multiple lifetimes. Most significantly, it underlines that coercion sits uneasily within a tradition which insists on exploration and personal transformation. (shrink)

Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought-mental content largely independent of the immediate environment-there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought-normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in (...) self-generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self-generated thought to influence general well-being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self-generated thought. We show that affect in self-generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self-generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self-generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness. (shrink)

This study examined variations in well-being as a function of the interaction between paranormal belief and psychopathology-related constructs. A United Kingdom-based, general sample of 4,402 respondents completed self-report measures assessing paranormal belief, psychopathology, and well-being. Latent profile analysis identified four distinct sub-groups: Profile 1, high Paranormal Belief and Psychopathology ; Profile 2, high Paranormal Belief and Unusual Experiences; moderate Psychopathology ; Profile 3, moderate Paranormal Belief and Psychopathology ; and Profile 4, low Paranormal Belief and Psychopathology. Multivariate analysis of variance (...) found that sub-groups with higher psychopathology scores reported lower well-being. Higher Paranormal Belief, however, was not necessarily associated with lower psychological adjustment and reduced well-being. These outcomes indicated that belief in the paranormal is not necessarily non-adaptive, and that further research is required to identify the conditions under which belief in the paranormal is maladaptive. (shrink)

Philosophers have long noticed the similarity of identity over time and identity across worlds. Despite this similarity, analogous views on these matters are not always taken equally seriously. Four-dimensionalism is one of the most well-known accounts of identity over time. There is a clear modal analogue of four-dimensionalism, on which objects are modally extended and their trans-world identity is a matter of having distinct modal parts located in different possible worlds. Yet this view, which we might call ‘five-dimensionalism,’ is rarely (...) discussed or defended, in comparison to its temporal counterpart. I argue that five-dimensionalism is at least as plausible as four-dimensionalism and deserves serious consideration as an account of trans-world identity. The strategy is to show that arguments typically used in defence of four-dimensionalism can be adapted to defend five-dimensionalism as well. A powerful consideration in favour of four-dimensionalism is the fact that it provides an elegant and unified solution to a variety of puzzles concerning material coincidence. I show that such puzzles come in equally troubling modal varieties and that five-dimensionalism provides an equally unified and elegant solution to them. (shrink)

This study investigated relationships between inter-class variations in paranormal experience and executive functions. A sample of 516 adults completed self-report measures assessing personal encounter-based paranormal occurrences, executive functions together with Emotion Regulation and Belief in the Paranormal. Paranormal belief served as a measure of convergent validity for experience-based phenomena. Latent profile analysis combined experience-based indices into four classes based on sample subpopulation scores. Multivariate analysis of variance then examined interclass differences. Results revealed that breadth of paranormal experience was associated with (...) higher levels of executive functioning difficulties for General Executive Function, Working Memory, Decision Making, and Belief in the Paranormal. On the Everyday Memory Questionnaire, scores differed on Attention Tracking and Factor 3, but not Retrieval. In the case of the Emotion Regulation Scale, class scores varied on Expressive Suppression, however, no difference was evident on Cognitive Reappraisal. Overall, inter-class comparisons identified subtle differences in executive functions related to experience. Since the present study was exploratory, sampled only a limited subset of executive functions, and used subjective, self-report measures, further research is necessary to confirm these outcomes. This should employ objective tests and include a broader range of executive functions. (shrink)

J’argumente que les Quiniens qui sont sceptiques par rapport à la distinction analytique/synthétique devraient aussi être sceptiques quant à la distinction entre conflits verbaux et factuels. Je développe une objection à la distinction entre conflits verbaux et factuels, dérivée des objections à la distinction analytique/synthétique. J’explique ensuite de quoi se compose le scepticisme qui en résulte. En définitive, ces sceptiques devraient reconnaître la différence entre conflits verbaux et factuels, mais pensent que certaines tâches philosophiques ne peuvent être performées.

In this paper, I argue that various disputes in ontology have important ramifications and so are worth taking seriously. I employ a criterion according to which whether a dispute matters depends on how integrated it is with the rest of our theoretical projects. Disputes that arise from previous tensions in our theorizing and have additional implications for other issues matter, while insular disputes do not. I apply this criterion in arguing that certain ontological disputes matter; specifically, the disputes over concrete (...) possible worlds and coincident material objects. Finally, I consider how one could show that some ontological disputes do not matter, using a Platonism/nominalism dispute as an example. (shrink)

Here we elucidate a paradox: how a single chemoattractant‐receptor system in two individuals is used for communication despite the seeming inevitability of self‐excitation. In the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, genetically identical cells that produce the same chemoattractant fuse via the homing of individual cell protrusions toward each other. This is achieved via a recently described “ping‐pong” pulsatile communication. Using a generic activator‐inhibitor model of excitable behavior, we demonstrate that the pulse exchange can be fully understood in terms of two excitable (...) systems locked into a stable oscillatory pattern of mutual excitation. The most puzzling properties of this communication are the sudden onset of oscillations with final amplitude, and the absence of seemingly inevitable self‐excitation. We show that these properties result directly from both the excitability threshold and refractory period characteristic of excitable systems. Our model suggests possible molecular mechanisms for the ping‐pong communication. (shrink)

Patient outcome after serious brain injury is highly variable. Following a period of coma, some patients recover while others progress into a vegetative state (unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) or minimally conscious state. In both cases, assessment is difficult and misdiagnosis may be as high as 43%. Recent advances in neuroimaging suggest a solution. Both functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography have been used to detect residual cognitive function in vegetative and minimally conscious patients. Neuroimaging may improve diagnosis and prognostication. These techniques (...) are beginning to be applied to comatose patients soon after injury. Evidence of preserved cognitive function may predict recovery, and this information would help families and health providers. Complex ethical issues arise due to the vulnerability of patients and families, difficulties interpreting negative results, restriction of communication to “yes” or “no” answers, and cost. We seek to investigate ethical issues in the use of neuroimaging in behaviorally nonresponsive patients who have suffered serious brain injury. The objectives of this research are to: (1) create an approach to capacity assessment using neuroimaging; (2) develop an ethics of welfare framework to guide considerations of quality of life; (3) explore the impact of neuroimaging on families; and, (4) analyze the ethics of the use of neuroimaging in comatose patients. (shrink)

How did the universe begin? What is truth? How can we live good live? The Little Book of Philosophy answers these questions and more. Packed with simple explanations, witty illustrations, and step-by-step diagrams that untangle complex theories, you'll find plenty of food for thought in this book, whether you're a novice, a student, or an armchair philosopher"--Page 4 of cover.

This study investigated personal perceptions and comprehensions of self-ascribed paranormal abilities. Twelve participants with supposed supernatural powers took part in semi-structured interviews exploring the origin, phenomenology, and nature of their powers. Interview transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, a qualitative method that identifies patterns within data. Four major themes expressed meanings and representations held by participants: Formative Influences, Subjective Paranormal Experience, Embodied Processes, and Perception of Reality. Consideration of themes identified an inextricable link between perception, interpretation, and belief in (...) ability. Within narratives, interviewees outlined, contextualised, and established the validity of their powers. They drew upon supporting autobiographical evidence from their life histories and obfuscated and/or discounted conventional explanations. Generally, accounts reflected individual attempts to comprehend and justify the nature and experience of professed abilities. The authors discuss these processes and suggest ways to extend and develop ensuing research. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

Review of Causation and Free Will by Carolina Sartorio, Oxford University Press, 2016. viii + 188 pp. £35.00.

There is more to legal knowledge representation than knowledge-bases. It is valuable to look at legal knowledge representation and its implementation across the entire domain of computerisation of law, rather than focussing on sub-domains such as legal expert systems. The DataLex WorkStation software and applications developed using it are used to provide examples. Effective integration of inferencing, hypertext and text retrieval can overcome some of the limitations of these current paradigms of legal computerisation which are apparent when they are used (...) on a stand-alone basis. Effective integration of inferencing systems is facilitated by use of a (quasi) natural language knowledge representation, and the benefits of isomorphism are enhanced. These advantages of integration apply to all forms of inferencing, including document generation and casebased inferencing. Some principles for development of integrated legal decision support systems are proposed. (shrink)

First published in 1975, this is a book of general intellectual interest about the role of the university in contemporary society and that of university teachers in relation to their subjects, their students, and their wider political commitments. Alan Montefiore offers preliminary analyses of the family of concepts most often invoked in discussions of these problems, taking the central dispute to be between those who hold a 'liberal' view of the university and those who regard this notion as illusory, dishonest (...) or undesirable. Six academics, representing, discuss issues of substantive conflict in light of Montefiore's initial distinctions. The volume is of particular interest to students of political and social philosophy, and political and educational theory. It is also intended for a wider readership among those who care about the political status of the universities and recognize the importance and difficulty of the problems involved in this. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of cultural and political ideals, this article highlights both the significance of mental health nursing in meeting population needs and the regulatory barriers that may be impeding its ability to adequately do so. Specifically, we consider how ambiguous notions of ‘proficiency’ in nurse education—prescribed by the regulator—impact the development of future mental health nurses and their mental health nursing identity. A key tension in mental health practice is the ethical‐legal challenges posed by sanctioned powers to restrict patients' (...) freedom at the same time as the desire (and obligation) to promote patients' self‐determined recovery. The genericism of the UK's Future Nurse Standards do little to prepare mental health nurses to navigate the tensions that ensue. This has consequences for nurses and patients alike, as both risk experiencing the distress and dissonance that attends giving or receiving poor care. We argue that more needs to be done to enable mental health nurses to define and articulate the nuances of the profession as part of becoming critical, thoughtful and confident practitioners. Educators can contribute to this mission by aligning curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to create meaningful opportunities for mental health nursing students to engage with the complexities of mental health nursing practice. Without this, the credibility of the profession will continue to be questioned; its future uncertain. (shrink)

This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation of (...) empirical evidence, makes testable predictions, and permits inferences and extrapolations. IIT 4.0 incorporates several developments of the past ten years, including a more accurate translation of axioms into postulates and mathematical expressions, the introduction of a unique measure of intrinsic information that is consistent with the postulates, and an explicit assessment of causal relations. By fully unfolding a system's irreducible cause-effect power, the distinctions and relations specified by a substrate can account for the quality of experience. (shrink)

Terence Horgan, George Graham and John Tienson argue that some intentional content is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone. We argue that this would require a certain kind of covariation of phenomenal states and intentional states that is not established by Horgan, Tienson and Graham’s arguments. We make the case that there is inadequate reason to think phenomenology determines perceptual belief, and that there is reason to doubt that phenomenology determines any species of non-perceptual intentionality. We also raise worries (...) about the capacity of phenomenology to map onto intentionality in a way that would be appropriate for any determiner of content/fixer of truth conditions. (shrink)

There is increasing attention given to academic integrity across university education and dental schools are not immune to this problem (Andrews et al. J Dent Educ 71; 1027–1039, 2007; Ford & Hughes Eur J Dent Educ 16(1):e180–e186, 2012). While there has been an increasing concern about academic dishonesty in written exams and assignments, there appears to be a false sense of security in the integrity of practical assessments, involving dental procedures on simulated patients.This paper will present a situational analysis of (...) two unusual cases of academic dishonesty in preclinical dental practical assessments. The first case involved a student bringing a previously prepared plastic tooth into the examination room and substituting it for the assessment tooth. The second case involved a student removing key teeth during the exam to enable them to have better access and advantage over others to complete the assessment task. These two cases resulted in a complete review of practical assessment procedures and the application of new processes to maintain academic integrity. (shrink)

The etiology of a perceptual belief can seemingly affect its epistemic status. There are cases in which perceptual beliefs seem to be unjustified because the perceptual experiences on which they are based are caused, in part, by wishful thinking, or irrational prior beliefs. It has been argued that this is problematic for many internalist views in the epistemology of perception, especially those which postulate immediate perceptual justification. Such views are unable to account for the impact of an experience’s etiology on (...) its justificational status, McGrath, Siegel, and Vahid ). Our understanding of what we have been told can also be affected by, for example, wishful thinking or irrational background beliefs. I argue that testimonial beliefs based on such states of understanding can thus be rendered unjustified. This is problematic not only for internalist immediate justification views of testimony, but also for some externalist views, such as the form of proper functionalism endorsed by Burge, and Graham. The testimonial version of the argument from etiology, unlike the perceptual variant, does not rest on the controversial hypothesis that perception is cognitively penetrable. Furthermore, there is a stronger case for the claim that testimonial justification can be undermined by etiological effects since, I argue, testimonial beliefs can be based on the background mental states which affect our understanding of what is said, and our states of understanding are rationally assessable. (shrink)

Introduction: thinking about globalization -- Systemic thinking: Immanuel Wallerstein -- Conceptual thinking: Anthony Giddens -- Sociological thinking: Manuel Castells -- Transformational thinking: David Held and Anthony McGrew -- Sceptical thinking: Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson -- Spatial thinking: Peter Dicken and Saskia Sassen -- Positive thinking: Thomas Friedman and Martin Wolf -- Reformist thinking: Joseph Stiglitz -- Radical thinking: Naomi Klein, George Monbiot and Subcommandante Marcos -- Revolutinary thinking: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri -- Cultural thinking: Arjun Appadurai -- Conclusion: (...) rethinking globalization again. (shrink)

A response to Graham Stevens’s response to Lugg, ‘Russell as a Precursor of Quine’ (Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly, nos. 128-129, pp. 9-21). Stevens challenges the argument of this paper that from 1912, if not earlier, Russell was “a naturalistically-minded epistemologist in the Quinean mould”. He maintains that to the contrary “Russell cannot be accurately characterized as an empiricist” and “Russell’s greatest influence on Quine’s naturalistic project did not stem from his epistemology but from his semantics”. In the present note (...) it is argued Stevens overlooks that Russell is in the empiricist camp as well as the naturalist camp and the empiricist elements of Russell’s philosophy are secondary to his naturalism. (shrink)