Sale of Sperm, Health Records, Minimally Conscious States, and Duties of Candour Content Type Journal Article Category Recent Developments Pages 7-14 DOI 10.1007/s11673-011-9347-6 Authors Cameron Stewart, Centre for Health Governance, Law and Ethics, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia 2006 Bernadette Richards, Law School, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia 5005 Richard Huxtable, Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TH UK Bill Madden, School of Law, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia Tina (...) Cockburn, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Journal Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Online ISSN 1872-4353 Print ISSN 1176-7529 Journal Volume Volume 9 Journal Issue Volume 9, Number 1. (shrink)

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of (...) consciousness: how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness. (shrink)

Consciousness occurs when one is in a state of awareness of one’s self and the external environment. Quantum consciousness is computed within the cytoskeleton of the cells; basic units of life which comprise of unicellular and multicellular animal life. Consciousness has always been linked to the nervous system but there are several studies that have recorded conscious behaviors in animals with and without nerve cells. Animal behavior is represented as conscious moment, which occurs due to an event, (...) which may be intentional or unintentional. The existence of consciousness in animals can be based on the exhibited behaviors and its comparison to multifaceted conscious behaviors observed in higher beings; which is driven by protein conformational changes within the cytoskeleton network of cells, performed within the domains of space time geometry. (shrink)

We consider the relationship between neural and behavioural evidence for animal consciousness. We critically examine two recent studies: one neural and one behavioural. The first, on crows, finds different neural activity depending on whether a stimulus is reported as seen or unseen. However, to implicate this neural activity in consciousness, we must assume that a specific conditioned behaviour is a report of conscious experience. The second study, on macaques, records behaviours strikingly similar to patterns of conscious and unconscious (...) perception in humans. However, confounds are only ruled out in human subjects, presupposing substantial neural similarity between humans and macaques. Taken together, the two studies reveal a sense in which neural and behavioural research rely on each other. Looking ahead, these two types of evidence could prove to be either mutually reinforcing or mutually undermining. The science of animal consciousness needs both neural and behavioural evidence, ideally obtained as part of a single coordinated programme. (shrink)

Suppose that consciousness is a natural feature of biological organisms, and that it is a capacity or property or process that resides in a single organ. In that case there is a straightforward question about the consciousness organ, namely: How did the consciousness organ come to be formed and why is its presence maintained in those organisms that have it? Of course answering this question might be rather difficult, particularly if the consciousness organ is made of (...) soft tissue that leaves at best indirect fossil records, or if it has been fixed in the populations for such a long time that there are few available examples of organisms that lack the consciousness organ on which to conduct comparative experiments. No doubt there are other confounding practical obstacles as well. But these are just the complications that face biologists and natural historians on a regular basis, and they do not reflect any special problems about the study of consciousness. This is just to say that if consciousness is a natural feature of biological organisms then its origins and history can be studied in the same manner as other features of the biological world. It’s a hard business, but biologists are pretty good at it. (shrink)

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE BRAIN SELF-REGULATION PARADOX The relationship of consciousness to biology has intrigued mankind thoroughout recorded history. However, little progress has been made not only in understanding these issues but also in raising fundamental questions central to the problem. As Davidson and Davidson note in their introduction, William James suggested, almost a century ago in his Principles of Psychology, that the brain was the organ of mind and be havior. James went so far as to suggest that (...) the remainder of the Principles was but a "footnote" to this central thesis. This volume brings together diverse biobehavioral scientists who are addressing the various aspects of the mindlbrainlbodylbehavior issue. Although some of the authors have previously published together in other volumes, by and large the particular combination of authors and topics selected by the editors makes this volume unique and timely. Unlike the Consciousness and Self-Regulation series (Schwartz & Shapiro, 1976, 1978), also published by Plenum, this volume is devoted entirely to a psychobiological approach to consciousness. Although readers will differ in their interest in specific chapters, the well-rounded investigator who is concerned with the psychobiology of consciousness will want to become intimately acquainted with all the views presented in this volume. As noted by the individual contributors, the topic of this volume stimulates fundamental questions which, on the surface, may appear trivial, yet, on further reflection, turn out to have deep significance. (shrink)

Here is an account of the enlightenment experience and its consequences written by a trained philosopher and mathematician who is also a master of English prose.

Human consciousness is widely understood to be underpinned by rich and diverse functional networks, whose breakdown results in unconsciousness. Candidate neural correlates of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness include: (1) disrupted frontoparietal functional connectivity; (2) disrupted brain network hubs; and (3) reduced spatiotemporal complexity. However, emerging counterexamples have revealed that these markers may appear outside of the state they are associated with, challenging both their inclusion as markers of conscious level, and the theories of consciousness that rely on their evidence. In (...) this study, we present a case series of three individuals in disorders of consciousness (DOC) who exhibit paradoxical brain responses to exposure to anesthesia. High-density electroencephalographic data were recorded from three patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) while they underwent a protocol of propofol anesthesia with a targeted effect site concentration of 2 μg/ml. Network hubs and directionality of functional connectivity in the alpha frequency band (8–13 Hz), were estimated using the weighted phase lag index (wPLI) and directed phase lag index (dPLI). The spatiotemporal signal complexity was estimated using three types of Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC). Our results illustrate that exposure to propofol anesthesia can paradoxically result in: (1) increased frontoparietal feedback-dominant connectivity; (2) posterior network hubs; and (3) increased spatiotemporal complexity. The case examples presented in this paper challenge the role of functional connectivity and spatiotemporal complexity in theories of consciousness and for the clinical evaluation of levels of human consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.4 (2005) 23-41MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]"With Conscious Artifice" Auden's Defense of MarriageSusannah Young-ah Gottlieb1 "Auden Said That?"The greatest lesson of life comes from Auden—sort of.In Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, a line attributed to Auden forms the lesson around which the "runaway bestseller" revolves. As the first paragraph of the book explains and the last paragraph repeats, (...) the book recounts a pedagogical encounter between Mitch and a retired Brandeis professor of Social Psychology, Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS: "The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. The class met on Tuesdays. It began after breakfast. The subject was The Meaning of Life" [Albom, 1, 192]. Several years earlier Mitch had written his senior thesis under Morrie's direction. Upon learning of Morrie's condition from an episode of Nightline entitled "Life's Lessons," Mitch visits his dying teacher and finds his own feelings of "confusion and depression" [44] healed under Morrie's tutelage. From the first "class" of their renewed relationship Morrie emphasizes that contemporary culture condemns those under its influence to a "meaningless life" [43] and that the confusion Mitch experiences belongs to the entire era—and so, too, an urgent need for clarity. Mitch, in turn, sees in Morrie someone who, by virtue of his life-affirming wisdom and his proximity to death, can identify those "important things" that can fill the cultural vacuum about which he, as a sports reporter, knows all too well. On the fifth of their unofficial Tuesday "office hours," Morrie begins to fulfill his former student's expectations. Clarity comes in an imperative the old professor attributes to Auden:"Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, 'Love each other or perish.'""Love each other or perish." I wrote it down. Auden said that?[91]The line in question could scarcely be clearer, for it represents life in terms of a stark decision: love or death. Despite the simplicity of this choice, however, the scene is curiously complex, as if Mitch, against his explicit intentions, wants to dampen the effect of Morrie's wisdom. That Mitch writes down the line "Love each other or perish" is itself odd—even more so that he writes that he writes it down. As the beginning of the chapter explains at length, the conversation is being recorded, so that all of Morrie's wisdom may be preserved. The act of writing under these circumstances is less a sign of confidence in the supreme importance of the quotation in question than an indication of a degree of unresolved confusion: "Auden said that?" The confusion in this case cannot be attributed [End Page 23] to contemporary culture; rather, it consists in certain philological problems of citation: is Auden the author of the line, and if so, is it correctly rendered? Perhaps under the direction of another Brandeis professor, Mitch had learned and retained the famous last line of the penultimate stanza of Auden's "September 1, 1939": "We must love one another or die."1 Perhaps Mitch, or his publisher, having done some research, wants to signal an awareness of Morrie's misquotation but nevertheless remain faithful to the exact words of his teacher. And in any case who would care about such matters when something of great importance, indeed "life's greatest lesson," has just been articulated?Mitch's curiously inappropriate question does not, however, altogether disappear from Tuesdays. In response, Morrie does not so much insist on the accuracy of the quotation as on its goodness and truth:"Love each other or perish," Morrie said. "It's good, no? And it's so true. Without love, we are birds with broken wings."Say I was divorced, or living alone, or had no children. This disease—what I'm going through... (shrink)

Why is consciousness associated with recovery of memories that are initially dependent on the hippocampal system? A hypothesis is proposed that the medial temporal lobe/hippocampal complex (MTL/H) receives as its input only information that is consciously apprehended. By a process termed “cohesion,” the MTL/H binds into a memory trace those neural elements that mediated the conscious experience so that effectively, “consciousness” is an integral part of the memory trace. It is the phenomenological records of events (Conway 1992), integrated (...) consciousness-content packets, that are recovered when memory traces are retrieved. (shrink)

Impressions, energy radiated by phenomena in the momentary environmental scene, enter sensory neurons, creating in afferent nerves a data stream. Following Kant, by our inner sense the mind perceives its own thoughts as it ties together sense data into an internalized scene. The mind, residing in the brain, logically a Language Machine, processes and stores items as coded grammatical entities. Kantian synthetic unity in the linguistic brain is able to deliver our experience of the scene as we appear to see (...) it. Uniquely, the brain records its own history, synthesizing a Movie-in-the-Brain, called the Noumenal Cosmos. Attempting thereby to represent the actual Universe, this makes for a sovereign brain that governs itself. The brain is domicile of an Ego, with its selfhood at stake at all times. Yet, it can know itself only by its actions, in which it appears as an actor in its own movie. Phenomena enter garbled, as confused apparitions, and must be put in good form using top–down feedback control by Ego, so that each movie frame makes rational sense within the overall context of the Noumenal Cosmos. A stack of frames is processed typically in 40 Hz rhythm with 300 ms process time each, for about 12 in the stack at any time. Successive neural centers are processing the stack in the brain assembly line, based on data from increasingly global receptive fields. Ego stitches together the movie frames, but only the top frame is in consciousness for 25 ms. The top frame contains the whole scene where the Ego makes an appearance as the actor that imposes Kantian synthetic unity on the scene, merely an assembly of grammatical texts, in a system-internal coded process language, fitting the scene into the Noumenal Cosmos. But Ego observes Ego only to the extent permitted by the objectivity rule, only what it does and thinks, not its true face. From the Noumenal Cosmos, the Ego receives grammatical messages in the internal sense code. They are integrated into a whole in the reaction of the Ego to the momentary scene. The voluntary nature of Ego’s decisions is explained, based on its ability to code in advance its own actions sequentially in time, as it sees fit with a view to an orderly Noumenal Cosmos, records of code being arranged spatially in neural structures. (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)

Revonsuo makes a provocative and interesting claim: that currently available neurophysiological recording techniques will be unable to discover the neural basis of consciousness in the brain. Although the title refers exclusively to functional brain imaging, Revonsuo considers MEG, EEG, ERP and measurements of firing rate in single cell electrophysiology all in principle incapable of discovering consciousness in the brain. This conclusion is reached by assuming that only one particular type of physical entity constitutes awareness.

Conversations on Consciousness is just that - a series of twenty lively and challenging conversations between Sue Blackmore and some of the world's leading philosophers and scientists. Written in a colloquial and engaging style the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona or Antwerp, or in their labs or homes in Oxford or San Diego. The conversations bring out their very different personalities and styles and reveal a wealth of (...) fascinating detail about their theories and beliefs. Why is consciousness such a special and difficult issue for twenty-first century science? Sue, herself a researcher into this controversial and difficult topic, begins by asking each of her colleagues this simple question and is immediately plunged into the depths of the debate: How do the subjective experiences we call consciousness arise from the physical brain? Is this even the right question to ask? Can zombies - people who behave outwardly just like others but have no inner mental life - exist? What can dreams tell us about consciousness? Should we all be learning to meditate? Do we have free will, and if not is it possible to live without it? With an introduction setting out the broad structure of the debate on consciousness, and an extensive glossary, this book provides an engaging and accessible account of the most challenging problem of all, through the words of some of the leading figures involved in seeking to solve it. (shrink)

The great task of cognitive science is to explain the phenomenal, first-person experience through the brain’s biophysical processes. This articles takes up this challenge by presenting the theory of how to reconcile the distinguishable properties of a material and mental processes. For this purpose, I describe how knowledge representations arise and how they can correlate with the emotions that accompany their formation. These associations can lead to first-person sense impressions, that is, qualia, which are the gist of phenomenal awareness. I (...) hypothesize that perception and consciousness and their causal role can only be explained by pointing to two aspects of consciousness: The event reporting aspect responsible for being aware of what is happening and the executive aspect responsible for the body’s actions and bodily responses. Both of these aspects are functionally accomplished by two separate neural mechanisms. Explaining the stream of consciousness required diversification of the concept of consciousness and the distinction of “executive” and “reporting” consciousness, respectively. Impression of feeling, a stream of consciousness, and a train of thought felt as conscious perception are the effect of stimulation of the lower sensory fields of the brain by feedback stimuli from upper cerebral areas. Subjectively perceived sequences of such recreated images only accompany brain processes but do not affect them directly. However, they are not objectively epiphenomenal since they modify the neural representations of knowledge embedded in memory and thus influence future states of consciousness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

With reference to Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology (PoM) in my paper I will address three points, namely: To what extent Schelling’s PoM provides us with arguments in favour of 1. Realism, 2. Emergentism and 3. Documentality (Ferraris 2009). Accordingly, in the first section, Reality, I will present Schelling’s PoM as realism, arguing that in mythology Schelling finds the traces of the developing of consciousness, regarded as a real fact. But, as this latter can only be real if having a (...) history, i.e. if emerging from a previous natural status, which is devoid of any consciousness, PoM should be regarded as strongly related with a sort of emergentism. This will thus be the object of the second section, where I will investigate the genetic interpretation of Schelling’s Weltalter proposed by Wolfram Hogrebe (Hogrebe 1989) and suggest that precisely this analysis of the Weltalter explains also why Schelling’s project couldn’t but fail. In fact, against its intention, the Weltalter, as it was trying to explain the rise of semantics together with it the true genesis of the our acknowledgment of the world, still remains affected by an idealistic stance and hence couldn’t succeed in becoming positive philosophy. Eventually, in the third section of this paper, Documentality, I argue, that a solution of the problems left open by Schelling’s Weltalter and positively addressed in the PoM is offered by the interpretation of this latter as a contribution to Documentality. Even if created before and apparently independently from the act writing, in fact mythology relies on the possibility of recording tales, hence it is made of and eventually ends up in a written corpus. This means that the consciousness mythology gives us an account of, is the one that for the first time is able to present itself in narrated tales. It is not the mere possibility of acknowledging something, but in fact the possibility of binding our will to a freely formulated law trough our memory, i.e. the birth of conscience upon consciousness, which is the real sense of religion. In this sense Ferraris’ concept of documentality provides us an important theoretical framework to understand the hidden presuppositions of Schelling’s PoM and to relate this latter to its realistic and emergentistic character. (shrink)

out a visitation and a thorough assessment of his diocese. His predecessor (or rather his friend Benson, the bishop of Gloucester, who during Edward Chandler's decline had managed Durham's affairs) had kept the deanery records in good ...

Claude Lévi-Strauss holds that history and anthropology differ in their choice of complementary perspectives: history organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations. For R. G. Collingwood historical science discovers not only pure facts but considers a whole series of thoughts constituting historical life. Also Lévi-Strauss sees this: “To understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be.” However, Lévi-Strauss (...) does not perceive the double-sense of history, which can first be a record of historical “conscious” facts and second, a chain of unconscious or half-conscious acts. Like Lévi-Strauss, Charles Bally has derived the main theses of his theory from Saussure. However, contrary to Lévi-Strauss, Bally does not find structures at the inside of the phenomena but at their outside: “Our attention is drawn to the expressive side and not to the interior side of the facts of language.” Bally calls those structures not “history” but “style.” In Roland Barthes’s attempt to establish a structuralist system of fashion we can find a definition of style very similar to Bally’s. In the end, however, none of these thinkers addresses the fact that unconscious relations within historical life are constantly interlocked with conscious elements. (shrink)

A conscious moment occurs when an individual is in a state of awareness of one’s self and the external environment. The human brain has been extensively studied to understand the phenomena of human thought and behavior in the context of consciousness. Consciousness has always been linked to the nervous system but there are several studies that have recorded conscious behaviours in organisms without nerve cells. This paper hypothesizes that quantum energy generated consciousness emerges in each and every (...) living cell and traverses by means of electromagnetic radiation; an oldest form of energy that exist in the cosmos and which utilizes the cellular structures to flow by means of a coherent, invisible, powerful, recyclable process; a connection with the cosmic energy bridge. (shrink)

The purpose of learning is not to maintain records but to generate predictions. Successful predictions remain implicit; only prediction errors (“surprises”) attract consciousness. This is what Freud had in mind when he declared that “consciousness arises instead of a memory-trace.” The aim of reconsolidation, and of psychotherapy, is to improve predictions about how to meet our needs in the world.

This article presents a new interpretation of the consciousness-related neuroscientific findings using the framework of stochastic electrodynamics (SED), a branch of physics that sheds light on the basic principles underlying quantum systems. It is propounded that SED supplemented by two well-founded hypotheses leads to a satisfying explanation of the neural correlates of consciousness. The theoretical framework thus defined is based on the notion that all conceivable shades of phenomenal awareness are woven into the frequency spectrum of a universal (...) background field, called zero-point field (ZPF), implying that the fundamental mechanism underlying conscious systems rests upon the access to information available in the ZPF. The body of evidence can be interpreted such that in the extroverted, stimulus-oriented operating mode the brain produces streams of consciousness by periodically writing persistent information states into the ZPF (theta cycle). In the introspective operating mode, which goes along with activations of the default mode network, the brain is receptive to the flow of ZPF information states that constitutes the record of conscious experiences, suggesting that the sense of self and the retrieval of memories is accomplished by periodically reading (filtering) persistent information states from the ZPF (alpha cycle). Moreover, the data support the conclusion that meditative practices and psychedelics detune the filter, thus preventing the instantiation of self-referential conscious states, which leads to the dissolution of the ego. Instead, the brain taps into a wider spectrum of ZPF modes and, hence, gains access to an extended phenomenal color palette, resulting in expanded consciousness. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been growing interest in bridging bodies of knowledge from introspective and contemplative traditions with modern neuroscience. By making the primary object of study an individual’s subjective experience, scientists are then confronted with the challenging problem of how to record a given mental state at a given point in time. For simple experiences, such as in facial recognition tasks, an external recording device such as a button box or computer keyboard is adequate. However, these devices (...) pose fundamental problems when attempting to record more subtle states of mind, or to do so in situations where the presence of an external input device would disturb the subject, such as in the case of studying the evolution of internal states of highly advanced meditators. Here, I suggest that variants of the mnemonic techniques used in memory competitions can be used to make measurements in experiments where an external device would be impractical to use, or would unnecessarily disturb the subject. Demographic and performance data from memory competitions suggest that these techniques can be learned by ordinary subjects participating in multi-session experiments, and that, for highly trained individuals, events can be recorded at roughly 400 millisecond intervals for timescales on the order of tens of seconds, and at roughly one-second intervals for sustained periods of one hour or longer. Finally, I discuss the relationship of the current proposal to descriptive experience sampling (DES) and the visualization techniques of the Tibetan meditative tradition. (shrink)

This book presents an analytic investigation into the nature of cognitive reality. The author explores various manifestations of consciousness with rational and empirical rigor; he begins with more ordinary states such as thinking, sleeping, and dreaming and then continues on with more extraordinary states such as hypnosis, trance, psychedelic experiences, transcendence, and experiences associated with death. This comprehensive overview of altered states examines consciousness from the physiological, cognitive, and experiential points of view. Readers will gain from this text (...) an enriched understanding of consciousness, reality, and the scientific endeavor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Indigenous understandings of consciousness represent an important inspiration for scientific discussions about the nature of consciousness. Despite the fact that Indigenous concepts are not outputs of a research driven by rigorous, scientific methods, they are of high significance, because they have been formed by hundreds of years of specific routes of cultural evolution. The evolution of Indigenous cultures proceeded in their native habitat. The meanings that emerged in this process represent adaptive solutions that were optimal in the given (...) environmental and social milieu. We argue that it would not be appropriate to handle these meanings as something that science considers to be wrong, or outdated relics of the human past. In contrast, Indigenous concepts and their meanings may be considered to be an important heritage of native human populations, but moreover, they are also an interesting material for analyses and inspiration for recent scientific debates. Furthermore, it is also necessary to mention another reason why the exploration of Indigenous concepts has been so topical recently. Thus far, much psychological theoretical development has been published in English as a result of research conducted in Western countries. The dominance of English and the superiority of research conducted by researchers from Western countries may be considered as a kind of barrier toward other ways of knowing. We argue that the traditional cultural knowledge coming from Indigenous societies may offer an interesting source of new thought for science. The weakening of the strong dependence of science on well-established academic circles dominated by Western theoretical perspectives may be beneficial for stimulating its further development (Sidik, 2022). Therefore, this special symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies aims to open the doors for other ways of knowing, For the knowing that emerged in native Indigenous cultures. We argue that the rich cultural heritage of these societies may stimulate the emergence of new analytical perspectives for scientific theorising about the nature of consciousness. For all these reasons, the Indigenous concepts of consciousness captured our interest, and we decided to start investigating them. In 2020 and 2021, we retrieved and analysed pieces of information from past ethnographical field evidence gathered in various Indigenous cultures. After removal of data about the cultures showing a high acceptance of influences from external religious traditions (e.g. Christianity, Islam or Buddhism), a comparative analysis of data from 55 Indigenous groups was conducted and published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (Trnka and Lorencova, 2022). This primary project revealed many interesting results, but more importantly, it also showed many unexplored avenues that called for further exploration. This special symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies is a continuation and new development of research on the Indigenous understanding of consciousness. Past ethnographical evidence involved some valuable pieces of knowledge about Indigenous concepts of consciousness, but the relevant information was often fragmentary or even totally missing in some cases. Moreover, many authors of past ethnographic records applied a strong etic approach that clouded the understanding of native Indigenous thoughts. Therefore, the main goal of the recent symposium was to broaden the overall information basis for the analysis of Indigenous concepts of consciousness or closely related phenomena. In other words, the symposium aimed to bring more detailed knowledge of Indigenous concepts of consciousness, mind and body and their relations in various groups of Indigenous people. In 2022, we contacted potential contributors and were pleased by their positive reactions, which reflected the topicality of this research focus. The authors were asked to draft their papers with a special focus on (a) a cultural Indigenous understanding of the concept of consciousness, (b) a cultural Indigenous understanding of the mind-body differentiation (or consciousness-body differentiation) and (c) cultural metaphors and cultural beliefs related to consciousness, mind and body. Many of contributors were native members of Indigenous cultures that made the descriptions of Indigenous concepts more accurate and reliable. This enabled many truly emic, in-depth insights into the Indigenous concepts of consciousness and related phenomena to be gained. As a result, this issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies introduces eight papers, each focused on a different geographical region/Indigenous groups: Nahua and Maya (Mexico), Guna (Panama), Mapuche (Chile), Maori (New Zealand), Telingit (Altai), Mongolian groups, Igbo (Nigeria) and Asabano (New Guinea). These papers are followed by one more general paper discussing magical consciousness on the case of an Aboriginal wise man (Australia). The symposium closes with our concluding editorial essay, which generalises the findings and introduces three theoretical models of understandings of consciousness inspired by the analysis of Indigenous concepts of consciousness. Aside from the importance for basic research, the exploration of Indigenous concepts of consciousness is also very important for informing practitioners from many applied spheres. Many current methods for treating addictions, traumatic life events, professional burnout and other mental health problems use features of Indigenous healing practices. A proper understanding of meanings related to mind, body and consciousness are quite important for Western psychotherapists to adapt the Indigenous practices to particular Western cultural milieus. Furthermore, a proper understanding of meanings related to mind, body, and consciousness is also important for treating ethnic, linguistic and culturally diverse populations (APA, 1990). For therapists, psychologists and physicians, understanding the meanings of these concepts may promote their own better care of their clients from various Indigenous ethnic groups. Last but not least, Indigenous concepts, meanings and languages are closely related to the continuation of the heritage of Indigenous people (United Nations, 2016). The world’s Indigenous languages have recently been under threat of disappearing; many Indigenous languages are endangered globally, and the rate of loss is high (United Nations, 2016). Importantly, recent research has also shown that the retention of Indigenous languages may be protective for the psychological and physical health of their speakers. All these areas represent fields for potential use of the findings presented in this symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. As a concluding note, the editors of this symposium hope that this collection of papers will inspire academic scholars while also providing important information for practitioners from various spheres. (shrink)

ObjectiveWhen regaining consciousness, patients who emerge from a minimally conscious state (EMCS) present with different levels of functional disability, which pose great challenges for treatment. This study investigated the frontoparietal activity in EMCS patients and its effects on functional disability.Materials and methodsIn this preliminary study, 12 EMCS patients and 12 healthy controls were recruited. We recorded a resting-state scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) for at least 5 min for each participant. Each patient was assessed using the disability rating scale (DRS) to (...) determine the level of functional disability. We analyzed the EEG power spectral density and sensor-level functional connectivity in relation to the patient’s functional disability.ResultsIn the frontoparietal region, EMCS patients demonstrated lower relative beta power (P < 0.01) and higher weighted phase lag index (wPLI) values in the theta (P < 0.01) and gamma (P < 0.01) bands than healthy controls. The frontoparietal theta wPLI values of EMCS patients were positively correlated with the DRS scores (rs = 0.629, P = 0.029). At the whole-brain level, EMCS patients only had higher wPLI values in the theta band (P < 0.01) than healthy controls. The whole-brain theta wPLI values of EMCS patients were also positively correlated with the DRS scores (rs = 0.650, P = 0.022). No significant difference in the power and connectivity between the frontoparietal region and the whole brain in EMCS patients was observed.ConclusionEMCS patients still experience neural dysfunction, especially in the frontoparietal region. However, the theta connectivity in the frontoparietal region did not increase specifically. At the level of the whole brain, the same shift could also be seen. Theta functional connectivity in the whole brain may underlie different levels of functional disability. (shrink)

KARLSSON V, LINDAHL B and BERGBOM I. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 247–258 Patients’ statements and experiences concerning receiving mechanical ventilation: a prospective video‐recorded studyProspective studies using video‐recordings of patients during mechanical ventilator treatment (MVT) while conscious have not previously been published. The aim was to describe patients’ statements, communication and facial expressions during a video‐recorded interview while undergoing MVT. Content analysis and hermeneutics inspired by the philosophy of Gadamer were used. The patients experienced almost constant difficulties in breathing and lost (...) their voice. The most common types of communication techniques patients used were nodding or shaking the head. Their expressions were interpreted as stiffened facial expression, tense body position and feelings of sadness and sorrow. Nursing care for patients’ conscious during MVT is challenging as it creates new demands regarding the content of the care provided. In caring for patients undergoing MVT while conscious, establishing a caring relationship, making patients feel safe and helping them to communicate seem to be most important for alleviating discomfort and instilling hope. (shrink)

Written in a colloquial and engaging style the book records the conversations Sue had when she met these influential thinkers, whether at conferences in Arizona ...

In Sherrington's Loom, Alan McComas provides a historical account of the research that has led to recognition of key mechanisms underlying consciousness. Evidence is assembled from a rich variety of sources--neurological patients, animal behavior, laboratory studies, and especially brain stimulation and recording in humans and animals. Among the remarkable advances in the field has been the ability to identify nerve cells in the human brain that store memories of specific people, places, and objects. In addition to dealing with (...) the issue of "free will," the book assembles the information into possible working models for sensations, intentions, and actions. McComas concludes by considering the possibility of consciousness in artificially intelligent systems. (shrink)

Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the essential properties of experience and translates them into requirements that any physical system must satisfy to be conscious. It argues that the physical substrate of consciousness (PSC) must constitute a maximum of irreducible, internal cause‐effect power of a specific form, and provides a calculus to determine, in principle, both the quality and the quantity of an experience. Applied to the brain, IIT predicts that the spatio‐temporal grain of the neural units constituting the (...) PSC, and the relevant neural states, are those that maximize cause‐effect power. Moreover, the PSC can shrink, move, split and disintegrate depending on various anatomical and physiological parameters. These predictions are testable with brain stimulation and recording experiments. The theory can explain parsimoniously many known facts about the relationship between consciousness and the brain, including its association with certain cortical structures, its breakdown in deep sleep, anesthesia and seizures, and its return in dreams. (shrink)

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s (...) knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

_From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great faiths_ Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic (...) faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the basic properties of ''consciousness'' that temporal coding is postulated to relate to. A description of phenomenal consciousness based on what introspection tells us about its contents is offered. This includes a consideration of the effect of various brain lesions that result in cortical blindness, apperceptive and associative agnosia, and blindsight, together with an account of the manner in which sight is regained after cortical injuries. I then discuss two therories of perception-Direct Realism and (...) the Representative Theory. This includes a discussion of the concept of the body-image, phantom limbs, the alleged projection of sensations, the ontological status of phenomenal space, the homunculus argument, the validity of topographic coding, the difference between the stimulus field and the visual field, and two theories of brain-mind relationship-the Identity Theory and the Bohr-Heisenberg theory of brain-mind complementarity. Finally I suggest that the binocular rivalry obtained in the case of the stroboscopic patterns that result from intermittent photic stimulation of one eye, when used in animal expeiments with unit recording, offers a good experimental method of investigating the binding problem. (shrink)

One of the outstanding problems in the cognitive sciences is to understand how ongoing conscious experience is related to the workings of the brain and nervous system. Neurodynamics offers a powerful approach to this problem because it provides a coherent framework for investigating change, variability, complex spatiotemporal patterns of activity, and multiscale processes (among others). In this chapter, we advocate a neurodynamical approach to consciousness that integrates mathematical tools of analysis and modeling, sophisticated physiological data recordings, and detailed phenomenological (...) descriptions. We begin by stating the basic intuition: Consciousness is an intrinsically dynamic phenomenon and must therefore be studied within a framework that is capable of rendering its dynamics intelligible. We then discuss some of the formal, analytical features of dynamical systems theory, with particular reference to neurodynamics. We then review several neuroscientific proposals that make use of dynamical systems theory in characterizing the neurophysiologi-. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record (...) flooding, weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 120-137 [Access article in PDF] Discursive Mobility and Double Consciousness in S. Weir Mitchell and W.E.B. Du Bois 1 Susan Wells Here are two stories about double consciousness: they will become, eventually, stories about the public sphere: W. E. B. Du Bois formulating the theory of double consciousness, and S. Weir Mitchell presenting Mary Reynolds's case history, an instance of a (...) mental disorder known in the nineteenth century as double consciousness. I will begin with Du Bois's story, by far the most familiar to us: few texts are more central to contemporary rhetoric or cultural studies than the discussion of double consciousness in the opening pages of The Souls of Black Folk. 2 In the theory of double consciousness, Du Bois concentrated his contradictory experiences of scholarship, activism, social isolation, and active cosmopolitanism. Double consciousness was a methodological constraint that enabled Du Bois to build into the structure of The Souls of Black Folk a recognition that the complexity of African American life requires more than one perspective. And double consciousness was also a technique of writing, shaping the ironic and urgent voice of the book, by turns indignant and tender, eloquent and colloquial, a form of double address to both African American and Caucasian readers that allowed Du Bois to be two places at once. Double consciousness therefore controlled both the development and the presentation of The Souls of Black Folk, from the arc of its argument to its formal elements, includingDu Bois's famous use of chapter epigraphs to link canonic poetry with the melodies of the sorrow songs. Like the most relentlessly formal high modernist poem, the book continually enacts in its form not only its informing idea, but the circumstances of its composition and the constraints that shape its reading.The book's initial essay, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," offers an analysis of double consciousness as it is shaped by three central categories of modernity: temporality, embodiment, and expertise. Double consciousness is located in time, in history; it is placed in a story of the epochal succession [End Page 120] of races, and in the specific history of slavery. Double consciousness emerges as strategically shaping African American responses to the problems of disenfranchisement, poverty, and the denial of civil rights after the suppression of Reconstruction. The historical sections of The Souls of Black Folk, therefore, do not simply rectify the facts, setting the record straight on Reconstruction or Afrocentric scholar and theorist Alexander Crumell. These local arguments all motivate an understanding of consciousness as temporally constituted, so that the work of previous generations can be effective only when it is appropriated in the present. Such appropriation is supported and mediated by the form of the book: Du Bois ends with an invocation to "God the Reader," who alone can ensure that "these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed THE END" (19).Double consciousness is also connected with embodiment, specifically the embodiment of African Americans, externalized and displaced in two images: blood, which I will discuss later in the essay, and the veil or caul that grants second sight. Like skin color, the caul is an inconsequential physical object invested with enormous symbolic power (8); it is a mark of origins that foretells the future. The "second sight" offered to the Negro is a vision of "two warring ideals," a vision that can barely be supported by "one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder"(9). At moments in The Souls of Black Folk, the veil is generalized, and becomes a physical barrier between the white world and the world of African American culture; the work of separating these worlds, of rendering them invisible to one another, is staged on the bodies of African Americans. The veil is usually seen as a separation between the races, something that has happened ("Feeling deeply and keenly the tendencies and opportunities of the age in which they live, their souls are bitter at the fate which drops the Veil... (shrink)

In the latter part of this two-article sequence, the concept of emotion as reorganization of the organism-environment system is developed further in relation to consciousness, subjective experience and brain activity. It is argued that conscious emotions have their origin in reorganizational changes in primitive co-operative organizations, in which they get a more local character with the advent of personal consciousness and individuality, being expressed in conscious emotions. However, the conscious emotion is not confined to the individual only, but (...) it gets its content and the emotional quale in the social context, and in relation to the norms of the given culture. Emotion is fundamentally the process of ascription of meaning to the parts of the world which are relevant in the achievement of results of behavior. Although emotions may be studied as reorganizational processes in the organism-environment system with the help of physiological recordings and behavioral observations, it is argued — in contrast to the mainstream cognitive science — that emotions cannot be localized in the brain, although the brain is important in their generation as a part of the organism-environment system. It is suggested that the parts of the brain most closely related to emotional expression contain neurons subserving functional systems which are formed in early development, and which are therefore most intimately related to reorganizational processes in the organism-environment system. (shrink)

The article explores meditation-based examination of experience as a means for developing a contemplative, nonnaturalized, and existentially meaningful empirical research of consciousness in which the experiencing person is regarded as the primary investigator. As the first phase of a broader project, a group of seven researchers carried out a series of five meditation retreats. We sampled the ongoing experience of the researchers at the same random moments during meditation practice. The acquired data, consisting of more than 500 journal entries, (...) interview transcripts, and participatory analysis records, set the ground for three lines of enquiry: (1) What, if any, kind of meditative practice is suitable for researching experience? How can it be cultivated? (2) Can a group of researchers skilled in meditation systematically investigate selected experiential phenomena? (3) What is the actual lived experience of a group of researchers engaged in a continuous meditation-based examination of experience? In this report, we primarily focus on the third question, offering a concrete ethnographic overview of our research enterprise. We conclude by relating our findings to the discussion of the phenomenological practice of the epoché as an empirical tool for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

The meaning of consciousness, has interested thinkers throughout recorded time, and yet it is quite obvious that its understanding is still exceedingly remote. This is evident from the fact that even the presently used definitions give rise to contradictions. As implied by the title, the purpose of this paper is to remove some of the main difficulties concerned with this definition by using epistemological methods which have recently been developed. It is hoped that by clarifying the definition of (...) class='Hi'>consciousness, or, more accurately, by clarifying the process leading to a scientifically rigorous definition of consciousness, some of the paradoxes surrounding the concept might be removed. (shrink)

BackgroundThis manuscript presents a framework to guide the identification and assessment of ethical opportunities and challenges associated with electronic patient records (EPR). The framework is intended to support designers, software engineers, health service managers, and end-users to realise a responsible, robust and reliable EPR-enabled healthcare system that delivers safe, quality assured, value conscious care.MethodsDevelopment of the EPR applied ethics framework was preceded by a scoping review which mapped the literature related to the ethics of EPR technology. The underlying assumption behind (...) the framework presented in this manuscript is that ethical values can inform all stages of the EPR-lifecycle from design, through development, implementation, and practical application.ResultsThe framework is divided into two parts: context and core functions. The first part ‘context’ entails clarifying: the purpose(s) within which the EPR exists or will exist; the interested parties and their relationships; and the regulatory, codes of professional conduct and organisational policy frame of reference. Understanding the context is required before addressing the second part of the framework which focuses on EPR ‘core functions’ of data collection, data access, and digitally-enabled healthcare.ConclusionsThe primary objective of the EPR Applied Ethics Framework is to help identify and create value and benefits rather than to merely prevent risks. It should therefore be used to steer an EPR project to success rather than be seen as a set of inhibitory rules. The framework is adaptable to a wide range of EPR categories and can cater for new and evolving EPR-enabled healthcare priorities. It is therefore an iterative tool that should be revisited as new EPR-related state-of-affairs, capabilities or activities emerge. (shrink)

As Tulving argues, concepts shape psychologists’ thinking and determine how the end products of research are recorded. Currently in prominent use is not only Tulving’s concept of episodic memory but also his allied concept of autonoetic consciousness. And because, too, of the growing attention by psychologists to aspects of their subjects’ consciousness streams, I explore Tulving’s concept of autonoetic consciousness: to help improve the exercise of consciousness concepts in psychology generally. Two special topics among others are (...) discussed: the “flavor” Tulving claims characterizes recollective experience and corresponds to the warmth and intimacy James proposes consciousness states possess, and whether the autonoetic-consciousness concept applies to a brain-damaged man said to lack, probably, any capability for autonoetic awareness. (shrink)

Visual control of our actions can be unconscious as well as conscious. The book explores unconscious and conscious vision, investigated using psychophysical and brain-recording methods. The book sheds new light on and advances experimental, philosophical, and scholarly research on visual consciousness.

If we assume that consciousness is a natural biological phenomenon in the brain, should we expect the current brain sensing and imaging methods to somehow ‘discover’ consciousness? The answer depends on the following points: What kind of level of biological organization do we assume consciousness to be? What would count as the discovery of this level? What are the levels of organization from which the currently available research instruments pick signals and acquire data? Single-cell recordings, PET, fMRI, (...) EEG and MEG pick different types of signals from different levels of organization in the brain. However, it seems they do not manage to pick signals that would allow the direct visualization and reconstruction of the higher levels of electrophysiological organization that are crucial for the empirical discovery and theoretical explanation of consciousness. The message of the present paper is twofold: On the one hand, we should be aware of the practical limitations of the currently available methods of cognitive neuroscience and not read too much into the images produced by them. On the other hand, the present limitations could be overcome by more sophisticated methods in the future. Therefore, contrary to what several philosophers have argued, the empirical discovery of consciousness in the brain is not impossible in principle. (shrink)

Some patients, following brain injury, do not outwardly respond to spoken commands, yet show patterns of brain activity that indicate responsiveness. This is “cognitive-motor dissociation” (CMD). Recent research has used machine learning to diagnose CMD from electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. These techniques have high false discovery rates, raising a serious problem of inductive risk. It is no solution to communicate the false discovery rates directly to the patient’s family, because this information may confuse, alarm and mislead. Instead, we need a procedure (...) for generating case-specific probabilistic assessments that can be communicated clearly. This article constructs a possible procedure with three key elements: (1) a shift from categorical “responding or not” assessments to degrees of evidence; (2) the use of patient-centred priors to convert degrees of evidence to probabilistic assessments; and (3) the use of standardized probability yardsticks to convey those assessments as clearly as possible. (shrink)

Due to improvements in medicine, the figures of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) are increasing. Diagnostics of DoC and prognostication of rehabilitation outcome is challenging but necessary to evaluate recovery potential and to decide on treatment options. Such decisions should be made by doctors and patients’ surrogates based on medico-ethical principles. Meeting information needs and communicating effectively with caregivers as the patients´ most common surrogate-decision makers is crucial, and challenging when novel tech-nologies are introduced. This qualitative study aims (...) to explore information needs of informal DoC caregivers, how they manage the obtained information and their perceptions and experiences with caregiver-physician communication in facilities that implemented innovative neurodiagnostics studies. In 2021, we conducted semi-structured interviews with nine caregivers of clinically stable DoC patients in two rehabilitation centers in Italy and Germany. Participants were selected based on consecutive purposeful sampling. Caregivers were recruited at the facilities after written informed consent. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated. For analysis, we used reflexive thematic analysis according to Braun & Clarke (2006). Caregivers experienced the conversations emotionally, generally based on the value of the information provided. They reported to seek positive information, comfort and empathy with-in the communication of results of examinations. They needed detailed information to gain a deep understanding and a clear picture of their loved-one’s condition. The results suggest a mismatch between the perspectives of caregivers and the perspectives of medical profession-als, and stress the need for more elaborate approaches to the communication of results of neu-rodiagnostics studies. (shrink)

This paper investigated how implicit and explicit knowledge is reflected in event-related potentials in sequence learning. ERPs were recorded during a serial reaction time task. The results showed that there were greater RT benefits for standard compared with deviant stimuli later than early on, indicating sequence learning. After training, more standard triplets were generated under inclusion than exclusion tests and more standard triplets under exclusion than chance level, indicating that participants acquired both explicit and implicit knowledge. However, deviant targets elicited (...) enhanced N2 and P3 components for targets with explicit knowledge but a larger N2 effect for targets with implicit knowledge, revealing that implicit knowledge expresses itself in relatively early components and explicit knowledge in additional P3 components. The results help resolve current debate about the neural substrates supporting implicit and explicit learning. (shrink)

Consistent with numerous electrophysiological studies, we recently reported that conscious perception is associated with a widely distributed modulation of the P3 component . We also showed that correct objective performance in the absence of subjective awareness is associated with a spatially more restricted modulation of the P3. The relatively late occurrence of the P3 along with lack of control for post-perceptual processes suggests that this component might reflect processes related to stimulus evaluation or confidence rather than to visual awareness or (...) objective performance. The main aim of the current study was to test this hypothesis. While EEG was recorded, participants performed a forced-choice localization task and reported their subjective perception of the target on a 3-level scale that also indexed their confidence. The results showed that our previous findings are replicated when confidence is controlled for. (shrink)

This study is aiming at analyzing extemporaneous methods of instructional speech in the context of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order and its parallels with improvised music as well as potential for modern educational purposes. Focusing on a processual analysis covering the flow of events in the communication and its environment, the work is using approaches applied in performance studies as well as improvised music, as well as cognitive science and psychological perspectives concerned with the mechanisms of the subconsciousness. Field research data (...) collected at the Naqshbandi lodge in Lefke/Cyprus as well as a considerable amount of recorded speech acts serve as material for the conducted qualitative content analysis. (shrink)