This paper compares Kant’s and Leibniz’s views on the relation between knowing subjects and known objects. Kant discusses Leibniz’s philosophy in the ‘Amphiboly’ section of the first Critique. According to Kant, Leibniz’s main error is mistaking objects in space and time for mind-independent things in themselves, that is, for monads. The paper argues that, pace Kant, Leibniz regards objects in space and time as mind-dependent. A deeper divergence between the two philosophers concerns knowing subjects. For Leibniz, they are (...) substances. For Kant, we cannot know whether they are substances. Kant conceives of knowing subjects as complex systems of cognitive capacities. (shrink)

How a human observer perceives duration depends on the amount of events taking place during the timed interval, but also on psychological dimensions, such as emotional-wellbeing, mindfulness, impulsivity, and rumination. Here we aimed at exploring these influences on duration estimation and passage of time judgments. One hundred and seventeen healthy individuals filled out mindfulness (FFMQ), impulsivity (BIS-11), rumination (RRS), and depression (BDI-sf) questionnaires. Participants also conducted verbal estimation and production tasks in the multiple seconds range. During these timing tasks, subjects (...) were asked to read digits aloud that were presented on a computer screen. Each condition of the timing tasks differed in terms of the interval between the presentation of the digits, i.e., either short (4-s) or long (16-s). Our findings suggest that long empty intervals (16-s) are associated with a relative underestimation of duration, and to a feeling that the time passes slowly, a seemingly paradoxical result. Also, regarding more mindful individuals, such a dissociation between duration estimation and passage of time judgments was found, but only when empty intervals were short (4-s). Relatively speaking, more mindful subjects showed an increased overestimation of durations, but felt that time passed more quickly. These results provide further evidence for the dissociation between duration estimation and the feeling of the passage of time. We discuss these results in terms of an alerting effect when empty intervals are short and events are more numerous, which could mediate the effect of dispositional mindfulness. (shrink)

The problem of other minds has a distinguished philosophical history stretching back more than two hundred years. Taken at face value, it is an epistemological question: it concerns how we can have knowledge of, or at least justified belief in, the existence of minds other than our own. In recent decades, philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists and primatologists have debated a related question: how we actually go about attributing mental states to others (regardless of whether we ever achieve knowledge or rational (...) justification in this domain). Until the mid-nineties, the latter debate – which sometimes goes under the name of the “mindreading” debate – was characterized by a fairly clear-cut opposition between two theoretical outlooks: “theory-theory” (TT) and “simulation theory” (ST). Theory-theorists typically argued that we attribute mental states to others on the basis of a “theory of mind” that is either constructed in early infancy and subsequently revised and modified (Gopnik 1996), or else is the result of maturation of innate mindreading “modules” (Baron-Cohen 1995). (shrink)

Morris N. Eagle explores the understanding and role of subjective experience in the disciplines of psychology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of mind. Elaborating how different understandings of subjective experience give rise to very different theories of the nature of the mind, Eagle then explains how these shape clinical practices. In particular, Eagle addresses the strong tendency in the disciplines concerned with the nature of the mind to overlook the centrality of subjective experience in one's life, (...) to view it with suspicion, and to reduce it to neural processes. Describing examples of research in which subjective experience is a central variable, Eagle provides an outline of a model in which the dichotomy of conscious and unconscious is supplemented by subjective experience as a continuum. This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of theories of the mind to therapeutic practice. (shrink)

This book explores a neglected philosophical question: How do groups of interacting minds relate to singular minds? Could several of us, by organizing ourselves the right way, constitute a single conscious mind that contains our minds as parts? And could each of us have been, all along, a group of mental parts in close cooperation? Scientific progress seems to be slowly revealing that all the different physical objects around us are, at root, just a matter of the right parts (...) put together in the right ways: How far could the same be true of minds? This book argues that we are too used to seeing the mind as an indivisible unity and that understanding our place in nature requires being willing to see minds as composite systems, simultaneously one conscious whole and many conscious parts. In thinking through the implications of such a shift of perspective, the book relates the question of mental combination to a range of different theories of the mind (in particular panpsychism, functionalism, and Neo-Lockeanism about personal identity) and identifies, clarifies, and addresses a wide array of philosophical objections (concerning personal identity, the unity of consciousness, the privacy of experience, and other issues) that have been raised against the idea of composite minds. The result is an account of the metaphysics of composition and consciousness that can illuminate many different debates in philosophy of mind, concerning split brains, collective intentionality, and the combination problem, among others. (shrink)

Context: Research in the contemplative field has focused on trainable capacities that foster self-regulation and integration. From a psychological perspective, mindfulness and personality research ….

The holist and inferential condition that, according with Davidson, defines imperatively the cognitive process collides with the existence of the intuitive believes, that is to say, those believes that are of themselves the fundamentum and that, thus, don’t require other belief for their grounds. Nonetheless, if, for one part, is adopted the way in which Peirce understands the term “intuition” and, for another, is accepted the extension of inferential holism, is allowed, even so, to admit the existence of intuitive believes, (...) without transgressing the Davidsonian prohibition. Indeed, if the inferential basis of supported belief is located beyond of the individual agency of who support that belief, the very belief would count as intuition of the agent and would respect the Davidsonian holist constraint, in the sense that such a belief would be a belief whose basis would be in another belief, even when that belief was one that was in an external agency. The key for to accomplish this purpose is to sustain a reasoning extended theory —analogous to the Clark and Chalmers (1998) extended theory of mind—, by virtue of which the agent can obtain, from an intuitive assistant —as alien inferential authorship — what he cannot get by his own inferential authorship. Precisely, in this work we will expound a Davidsonian type of linguistic interaction model —namely, dialogic and triangular—, for cognitions persuasive transfer, by means of one’s reasons (the assistant) become other’s intuitions (the assisted). (shrink)

A common view about the phenomenology of episodic remembering has it that when we remember a perceptual experience, we can relive or re-experience many of its features, but not its characteristic presence. In this paper, we challenge this common view. We first say that presence in perception divides into temporal and locative presence, with locative having two sides, an objective and a subjective one. While we agree with the common view that temporal and objective locative presence cannot be relived (...) in remembering, we argue that subjective locative presence – the feeling of being immersed in a certain scene – can be so. Our argument for this claim starts by determining independently the underpinning mechanisms of subjective locative presence in quasi-perceptual imagination. These mechanisms are self-projection, imaginative pretence, and attentional focus. We then proceed to establish that they have been found to underpin conscious states of episodic remembering too. We conclude that episodic remembering can bring us to relive the subjective locative presence characteristic of a perceptual experience, and that the common view is mistaken. Our view – ‘mnemonic immersivism’ – has important consequences regarding the relationships between memory and imagination and the phenomenology of episodic remembering. (shrink)

How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This book seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine. The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an (...) abstract theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means for medicine to be "scientific". The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readily than others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially other people, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry. Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health. (shrink)

Balanced time perspective is associated with optimal social functioning and facilitates adaptation to pressure and changes in the environment. Previous studies have found that mindfulness is positively associated with and might promote balanced time perspective. However, the mechanism through which mindfulness affects balanced time perspective remains unexplored. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of self-compassion and subjective well-being in the relationship between mindfulness and balanced time perspective. A total of 754 Chinese college students, (...) aged 17–27 years, completed the Chinese versions of the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Self-Compassion Scale, Subjective Well-Being Scale, and Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory. There were significant positive correlations between mindfulness, self-compassion, subjective well-being, and balanced time perspective. Structural equation modeling indicated that in addition to the direct influence of mindfulness on balanced time perspective, self-compassion and subjective well-being played a partial mediating role. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that mindfulness has an important positive influence on balanced time perspective, and highlight the crucial role of the self-compassion in cultivating an individual's balanced time perspective. Limitations of the present study are also discussed. (shrink)

Recent studies claim to show that language delayed deaf subjects typically display longlingering deficits in Theory of Mind (ToM) development, despite suffering no known deficits in other cognitive domains. These claims are supported by experimental evidence indicating that such subjects fare poorly on False Belief (FB) tasks. This paper turns a critical eye on these claims. In particular, I argue that the reported results raise important questions about the status of FB tasks as evidence, and about how such evidence (...) should be weighted against naturalistic observations of subjects engaged in everyday activities requiring complex social coordination. I conclude that these studies give us no decisive reason to believe that language delayed deaf subjects suffer distinctively and symptomatically in the domain of social cognition. To the contrary, the attribution of significant socio-cognitive impairment is potentially stigmatizing and may not help us understand the unique challenges these subjects face or suggest remedial strategies to aid them in overcoming these challenges. (shrink)

Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

In this monograph Nicholas Georgalis further develops his important work on minimal content, recasting and providing novel solutions to several of the fundamental problems faced by philosophers of language. His theory defends and explicates the importance of ‘thought-tokens’ and minimal content and their many-to-one relation to linguistic meaning, challenging both ‘externalist’ accounts of thought and the solutions to philosophical problems of language they inspire. The concepts of idiolect, use, and statement made are critically discussed, and a classification of kinds of (...) utterances is developed to facilitate the latter. This is an important text for those interested in current theories and debates on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and their points of intersection. (shrink)

Many experimental findings with split-brain subjects intuitively suggest that each such subject has two minds. The conceptual and empirical basis of this duality intuition has never been fully articulated. This article fills that gap, by offering a reconstruction of early neuropsychological literature on the split-brain phenomenon. According to that work, the hemispheres operate independently of each other insofar as they interact via the mediation of effection and transduction—via behavior and sensation, essentially. This is how your mind and my (...) class='Hi'>mind interact with each other, however, giving rise to the intuition that a split-brain subject has two minds. (shrink)

This collection of essays extends the microgenetic theory of the mind/brain state to basic problems in process psychology and philosophy of mind. The author's microtemporal model of brain activity and psychological events, which was originally based on clinical studies of patients with focal brain damage, is here extended to such topics as the concept of the moment in Buddhist philosophy, conscious and unconscious thought, the nature of the self, subjective time and aesthetic perception. The author develops a (...) highly original psychology of mental process, actually a 'cognitive metaphysics', which is grounded in brain physiology and clinical psychopathology. A central theme is that the natural categories that arise in the extensibility of temporal data are continuous with conceptual structures in the human mind. (shrink)

Does phenomenal consciousness overflow access consciousness? Some researchers have claimed that it does, relying on interpretations of various psychological experiments such as Sperling's or Landman's, and crucially using alleged subjective reports from participants to argue in favor of these interpretations. However, systematic empirical investigations of participants' subjective reports are scarce. To fill this gap, we reproduced Sperling's and Landman's experiments, and carefully collected reports made by subjects about their own experiences, using questionnaires and interviews. We found that participants' (...) subjective reports do not support the overflow thesis, but rather suggest alternative interpretations of the experiments. (shrink)

Mind wandering refers to a state when attention shifts from the task at hand or current situation toward thoughts, feelings, and imaginations. This state is often accompanied by a decline in mood, and patients suffering from major depression exhibit more perseverative MW. Hence, although the directionality of the relationship between mood and MW is still under investigation, it may be useful to explore possible avenues to reduce MW. In an earlier pilot study, we investigated MW during auditory beat stimulation (...) in healthy subjects using thought-probes during a sustained attention to response task. We found evidence for reduced MW during monaural 5 Hz beats compared to silence, sine tones, and binaural 5 Hz beats. Moreover, the data tentatively suggested that this reduction was particularly pronounced in subjects with high levels of MW during silence. In the current study, we therefore asked whether MW can be reduced by monaural theta beats in subjects with high trait-levels of MW, as indicated by an online MW questionnaire. Preselected subjects performed a SART task with thought-probes assessing the propensity to mind wander, meta-awareness, and the temporal orientation of MW. Stimulation conditions comprised monaural theta beats, as well as silence, and sine tones as control conditions. Our main hypothesis stating that the propensity to mind wander during monaural theta beats is reduced compared to both control conditions was only partly confirmed. Indeed, MW was significantly diminished during exposure to the theta beats compared to sine tones. However, reduced MW during theta beats versus silence was only observed in a subgroup using stricter inclusion criteria. Considering possible reasons for this outcome, our data suggest that the preselection procedure was suboptimal and that beat effects are modulated by the individual responses to auditory stimulation in general. (shrink)

Mindfulness, derived from Buddhist psychology and philosophy, has gained broad popularity in the last decades, due importantly to scientific interest and findings. Yet Buddhist mindfulness developed in Asian pre-scientific culture and religion, and is predicated upon long-term cultivation of introspective awareness of lived experience, not highly accessible to empirical study. Further complicating the ‘science' of mindfulness, mindfulness's very definition is multifaceted, resistant to dismantling and requires substantial amounts of personal practice to gain expertise. Most scientists investigating mindfulness have not achieved (...) a high level of this expertise. Here I address how mindfulness is currently being invented as a scientific fact or object of inquiry. The intrinsic porosity of subjective and objective factors influencing the investigation of mindfulness is highlighted: the evolving body of ‘scientific' experts, instruments used to measure mindfulness, the alliances of funders and other supporters of mindfulness research, and the public representation of the related findings. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy has seen a proliferation of complex theories and intricate arguments brought to bear on the mind-body problem, perhaps the most intractable of perennial philosophical problems. In this concise and accessible text, Barbara Hannan provides an elegant introduction to this contemporary debate. Her emphasis is upon the clear and even-handed presentation and evaluation of the major theories of the mind, but she does not shrink from contributing to the advancement of the argument, including the presentation of an (...) original account, the theory of "content internalism." Along the way to the formulation of this account, Hannan puts into context and discusses the views of all the major contemporary philosophers writing on the mind, including Lewis, Putnam, Searle, Davidson, Dennett, and Fodor. Combining a deep respect for the depth of the issues with clarity of thought and lucidity of expression, Subjectivity and Reduction is the ideal introduction to the central problem of today's philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Since the ages of the Old Testament, the Homeric myths, the tragedies of Sophocles and the ensuing theological speculations of the Christian millennium, the theme of loneliness has dominated and haunted the Western world. In this wide-ranging book, philosopher Ben Lazare Mijuskovic returns us to our rich philosophical past on the nature of consciousness, lived experience, and the pining for a meaningful existence that contemporary social science has displaced in its tendency toward material reduction. Engaging key metaphysical discussions on causality, (...) space, time, subjectivity, the mind body-problem, personal identity, freedom, religion, and transcendence in ancient, scholastic, modern, and contemporary philosophy, he highlights the phenomenology of loneliness that lies at the very core of being human. In challenging psychoanalytic and neuroscientific paradigms, Mijuskovic argues that isolative existence and self-consciousness is not so much of a problem of unconscious conflict or the need for psychopharmacology as it is the loss of a sense of personal intimacy. The issue of the criteria of "personal identity" in relation to loneliness has long engaged and consumed the interest of theologians, ethicists, philosophers, novelists and psychologists. This book will be of great interests to academics and students of the humanities, and all those with an interest in the philosophy of loneliness.. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that the traditional mind-body problem, which seems intractable in its own terms, could be helpfully reconfigured by drawing on insights from the Phenomenological tradition concerning the “body-subject” or “lived body.” Rather than attempting to explain how consciousness relates to the body as understood by the natural sciences, the Phenomenologists concentrate on elucidating the first-person sense that we have of our own bodies in ordinary, prescientific existence. After surveying the traditional mind-body problem in section (...) 1, I introduce the Phenomenological account of embodied subjectivity in section 2. In the remainder of the essay I discuss two important issues raised by this account. First, in section 3, I consider how we can relate our everyday sense of ourselves as embodied subjects to the scientific understanding of the human body—what we might call the “body-body problem.” I argue that, in any case, the latter understanding cannot coherently be supposed to undermine or debunk the former. Secondly, in section 4, I consider whether the Phenomenological stress on the bodily nature of subjectivity allows any room for the notion of disembodied existence. (shrink)

A compelling new approach to the problem that has haunted twentieth century philosophy in both its analytical and continental shapes. No other book addresses as thoroughly the parallels between Wittgenstein and leading Continental philosophers such as Levinas, Husserl, and Heidegger.

Abstract:“Modern Sexual Organicity” (《现代性器》 Xiàndài Xìngqì) and “Super Killer” (《大杀器》 Dà Shaqì) by Han Bo, which I translate and discuss here, unfold around the poet’s playfully sustained series of observations of the irreconcilable gaps and irreducible dissonances between Western modernity and Chinese contemporaneity. Focusing on the (post)structural dimension of the extreme intricacy and intensity of Han’s language game that polysemically intersects with traditional Chinese poetic moves as well, which itself mirrors the structurally (bi)polarized and gendered social realities in China, this (...) essay highlights the unfused/able figure of the woman, a “farmwoman” on the train in particular, a moving image of precarious mobility, transience, and vitality. (shrink)

The name Charles Sanders Peirce is associated with the science of signs called semiotics, which studies the sign as the carrier of meaning that is placed in the center of his work. Peirce developed a system of concepts that describe how the sign as such is understood by the mind. For the conditions of its interpretations Peirce established various so-called interpretants for the explanation of signs associated with the utterer and interpreter and a shared process that enables the communication (...) between communicators. Further to the renovation of the theory of rhetoric and communication, we show that medium and communication must be understood within the framework of his theory in association to the sign and the object. Throughout his manuscripts the triads of his concepts are realized in the text in rhetorical tricola as terms of his philosophy. In comparison to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which employed the sign as a means for reasoning, we will show how Peirce developed techniques of reasoning based on Aristotle’s work and his model of mental understanding of the sign while foreshadowing a theory of communication that aims at describing the exchange of information in a model. (shrink)

This book presents a systematic exploration of the subjective experience, keeping the investigation for the most part within a subjective first person perspective through the use of “vignettes” as sources of data. It also uses incorporates a ‘"third person” objective approach when that is relevant. The goal of Journeys in the Mind is to capture and convey the operations of the mind: both the shared blueprints common to the elaboration of subjective knowledge as well as (...) the immense fishnet of personalized variables that operate in each mental phase-space and act upon the blueprints to continuously recategorize them into sets of coherent, dynamic outcomes, or mental landscapes. Dr. Sanguineti's meditative perspective holds the promise to enrich the way we understand the workings of the human mind. (shrink)

In this highly original monograph, Nicholas Georgalis proposes that the concept of minimal content is fundamental both to the philosophy of mind and to the philosophy of language. He argues that to understand mind and language requires minimal content -- a narrow, first-person, non-phenomenal concept that represents the subject of an agent's intentional state as the agent conceives it. Orthodox third-person objective methodology must be supplemented with first-person subjective methodology. Georgalis demonstrates limitations of a strictly third-person methodology (...) in the study of mind and language and argues that these deficiencies can be corrected only by the incorporation of a first-person methodology. Nevertheless, this expanded methodology makes possible an objective understanding of the subjective. Georgalis argues against the conflation of consciousness and subjectivity with phenomenal experience. Consequently, and contrary to common belief, he argues that consciousness without phenomenality is as strongly implicated in intentionality as it is in phenomenal states. He proposes a broader understanding of the "hard problem" of consciousness, arguing that there is an "explanatory gap problem" for both phenomenal and intentional states. His theory provides a framework that renders the vexing relations between mental and brain states comprehensible. Georgalis also argues for novel explanations of the phenomenal and of representation -- explanations that follow from the core concept of minimal content. Treating the topics of meaning and reference, he introduces a first-person concept of intended reference derivative from minimal content that resolves various problems in the philosophy of language. Eschewing ontology, Georgalis proposes his theory as a means to make sense of, analyze, and relate issues in the philosophies of mind and language. The concept of minimal content, he argues, plays a necessary, pivotal, unifying, and foundational role in advancing our understanding of these issues. (shrink)

The chapter focuses on attributions of the transparency of thought to early modern figures, most notably Descartes. Many recent philosophers assume that Descartes believed the mind to be “transparent”: since all mental states are conscious, we are therefore aware of them all, and indeed incorrigibly know them all. Descartes, and Berkeley too, do make statements that seem to endorse both aspects of the transparency theses (awareness of all mental states; incorrigibility). However, they also make systematic theoretical statements that directly (...) countenance “unnoticed” thoughts or mental states, that is, thoughts or mental states of which the subject is unaware and has no knowledge. Descartes, having identified the essence of mind with thought or representation, distinguishes bare states of mind from states of which we have reflective awareness, thereby providing a theoretical tool for understanding both his seeming endorsement of transparency and his actual denial of it: Descartes distinguished between a basic perceptual state, or a basic awareness, and reflectively conscious states that involve explicit noticing and cognizing on the part of the subject. Leibniz (as is better known) directly endorsed a similar distinction between bare perception and reflective consciousness, using the term “perception” for the first and “apperception” for the second. In these cases, bare perceptions are not transparently available to the subject, and so in fact the subject does not have knowledge, hence does not have incorrigible knowledge, of all its occurrent mental states. This chapter gives evidence to support these claims; elaborates the complex psychology of the subject found in Descartes and other early moderns; and notes some ways in which these early moderns contributed to the genesis of the modern subject. Finally, it compares McDowell’s conception of the Cartesian mind with the conceptions of mind found in the writings of Descartes, Berkeley, and Leibniz, finding that his characterization caricatures the positions of early modern philosophers. McDowell's characterization has four elements: consciousness as essence of mind; intentionality as exclusively mental; the veil of perception; and the transparency of mind. Only the second point, about intentionality, fully fits Descartes. As a consequence of his own misdirection, McDowell misses the actual basis of his difficulty in connecting mind with world, which arises from a point of agreement between him and Descartes: the removal of intentionality from material sensory systems. But whereas Descartes could relocate (nonconceptual) sensory intentionality in mental states, McDowell is left to account for it with his overly cognitivized scheme of perceptual content as exclusively conceptual. (Paper first given at the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy, 2007.). (shrink)

This paper argues for an inflationary and capacity-relative understanding of human enhancement technology. In doing so it echoes the approach followed by Buchanan. Particular emphasis is placed on the point that capacities themselves are relative to demands placed on the organism by its environment. In the case of human beings, this environment is to a very large extent institutionally structured. On the basis of the inflationary and capacity-relative concept of enhancement, I argue that the subject of enhancement must be understood (...) in terms of a bundle of capacities that is both extended and ecological. This consequence of the inflationary enhancement concept has some surprising upshots, namely that the subject itself must be considered as a technological enhancement and not a ‘platform’ or subjectum upon which the enhancement enterprise builds. This conclusion clashes, I argue, with some of the presuppositions of liberal philosophy, which starts by assuming a reflective subje.. (shrink)

This study explored the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy in trait mindfulness and subjective wellbeing. In this study, 323 Chinese kindergarten teachers were measured using the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Emotional Intelligence Scale, General Self-efficacy Scale, and Subjective Wellbeing Scale. The study found that subjective wellbeing can be predicted directly from trait mindfulness. Emotional intelligence could mediate the relationship between trait mindfulness and subjective wellbeing. Self-efficacy could mediate the relationship between trait mindfulness and subjective (...) wellbeing. In addition, emotional intelligence and self-efficacy played a sequential mediating role between trait mindfulness and subjective wellbeing. This study revealed the relationship between kindergarten teachers’ trait mindfulness and subjective wellbeing through structural equation modeling and understood its role path, enriching the research on the Chinese preschool teachers in the field, and providing a literature reference for the international community to understand the Chinese kindergarten teachers. At the same time, the study also has some limitations, such as the use of a cross-sectional design method, a relatively single method, and the impact of COVID-19. However, we believe that this study will further enrich the research literature on the relationship between trait mindfulness and subjective wellbeing of Chinese kindergarten teachers. (shrink)

The current orthodoxy in the philosophy of mind can be thought of as a kind of third-person imperialism, viz. the view that consciousness, like other natural phenomena, will yield to scientific explanation at some level of analysis. Among its dissenters are a group of antireductionists and antimaterialists who advocate a kind of first-person isolationism, viz. the view that consciousness, unlike other natural phenomena, will fail to yield to scientific explanation at any level of analysis. In its various forms, the (...) latter view is based on arguments that identify first-person phenomena, such as subjectivity and qualia, that no third-person approach to consciousness can explain. ;I argue that neither subjectivity nor qualia constitute insuperable obstacles for scientific explanations of consciousness. By identifying a set of persistent ambiguities within the subjectivity-based arguments of antiphysicalists, I provide a general framework for systematically locating fallacies within them. I then examine the common antiphysicalist assumption that the meanings of phenomenal concepts are fully determined by the conscious mental states to which they refer. By showing how it results in a commitment to the existence of essentially private language, I contend that this assumption is indefensible, and that antiphysicalist arguments that rely on it are therefore unsound. ;I then argue that qualia are intrinsic, basic, and subjective properties of conscious mental states, and that, contrary to antireductionists' suggestions, this higher-order classification is compatible with qualia reduction. I show this compatibility by examining the putative higher-order properties of qualia and comparing them to the higher-order properties characteristic of connectionist models of cognitive processes. I contend that the higher-order properties characteristic of connectionist networks approximate the putative higher-order properties of qualia sufficiently well to conclude that qualia reductionism can accommodate claims that qualia are intrinsic, basic, and subjective properties, and explain the motivating intuitions for those claims generated by inverted, absent, and alien qualia thought experiments. In this way I argue that the putative higher-order classifications of qualia not only fail to defeat qualia reduction but, ironically, turn out to support it. (shrink)

Challenging the modern day assumption of a mind-independent world populated with separate entities, this book regards the universe as an interconnected whole from which we construct simplified patterns to aid our survival. Consistent with this fundamental perspective, time itself is described as one such man-made construction. The true nature of time remains one of the fascinating mysteries of modern philosophy. This book provides unique insight into time as an interconnected mixture of subjective, social and psychologically personal characteristics. Questions (...) About Time contributes to the philosophy of time in three primary ways. For those who conclude that time is not real, this book provides a clear, consistent model for supporting that conclusion. In contrast, those who view time as a real entity will value the clearly articulated assumptions underlying the non-real case. The explicit list of assumptions provides, in one place, specific premises subject to attack in any quest opposing the non-real position. Furthermore, the book provides a representative list of 570 time-related questions that adequate views of time, real or not, are expected to answer. The detailed questions invite short, concise and consistent replies, which are supplied for the presented models as a demonstration of their use. (shrink)

Challenging the modern day assumption of a mind-independent world populated with separate entities, this book regards the universe as an interconnected whole from which we construct simplified patterns to aid our survival. Consistent with this fundamental perspective, time itself is described as one such man-made construction. The true nature of time remains one of the fascinating mysteries of modern philosophy. This book provides unique insight into time as an interconnected mixture of subjective, social and psychologically personal characteristics. Questions (...) About Time contributes to the philosophy of time in three primary ways. For those who conclude that time is not real, this book provides a clear, consistent model for supporting that conclusion. In contrast, those who view time as a real entity will value the clearly articulated assumptions underlying the non-real case. The explicit list of assumptions provides, in one place, specific premises subject to attack in any quest opposing the non-real position. Furthermore, the book provides a representative list of 570 time-related questions that adequate views of time, real or not, are expected to answer. The detailed questions invite short, concise and consistent replies, which are supplied for the presented models as a demonstration of their use. (shrink)

This book, published in 1976, presents an entirely original approach to the subject of the mind-body problem, examining it in terms of the conceptual links between the physical sciences and the sciences of human behaviour. It is based on the cybernetic concepts of information and feedback and on the related concepts of thermodynamic and communication-theoretic entropy. The foundation of the approach is the theme of continuity between evolution, learning and human consciousness. The author defines life as a process of (...) energy exchange between organism and environment, and evolution as a feedback process maintaining equilibrium between environment and reproductive group. He demonstrates that closely related feedback processes on the levels of the behaving organism and of the organism’s nervous system constitute the phenomena of learning and consciousness respectively. He analyses language as an expedient for extending human information-processing and control capacities beyond those provided by one’s own nervous system, and shows reason to be a mode of processing information in the form of concepts removed from immediate stimulus control. The last chapter touches on colour vision, pleasure and pain, intentionality, self-awareness and other subjective phenomena. Of special interest to the communication theorist and philosopher, this study is also of interest to psychologists and anyone interested in the connection between the physical and life sciences. (shrink)

This chapter suggests a new interpretation of Spinoza’s concept of mind claiming that the goal of the equation of the human mind with the idea of the body is not to solve the mind-body problem, but rather to show how we can, within the framework of Spinoza’s rationalism, conceive of finite minds as irreducibly distinguishable individuals. To support this view, the chapter discusses the passage from E2p11 to E2p13 against the background of three preliminaries, i.e. the notion (...) of a union between mind and body as it appears in Thomas Aquinas’ refutation of Averroism, Spinoza’s views on knowledge of actually existing things in E2p8c, and the phenomenological character of E2a2-4. It argues that while this view on the human mind does not undermine radical rationalism, it does require its amendment by some irreducibly empirical concessions. (shrink)

It has long been appreciated that the brain is oscillatory 1. Early measurements of brain electrophysiology revealed rhythmic synchronization unifying large swaths of the brain. The study of neural oscillation has enveloped cognitive neuroscience and neural systems. The traditional belief that oscillations are epiphenomenal of neuron spiking is being challenged by intracellular oscillations and the theoretical backing that oscillatory activity is fundamental to physics. Subjective experience oscillates at three particular frequency bands in a cognitive triad: perception at 5 Hz, (...) action at 2 Hz, and attention at 0.1 Hz. This triad functions as a means of information flow across scales of magnitude in a biological fractal. The _Homunculus Solution _is proposed in which mental experience occurs at fixed scales of biology. The mind is composed of minds, perceived as "the voices in your head." Each voice has voices inside its head to increasingly microscopic scales, forming an interactive fractal of subjective experience. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE. (shrink)

A compelling new approach to the problem that has haunted twentieth century philosophy in both its analytical and continental shapes. No other book addresses as thoroughly the parallels between Wittgenstein and leading Continental philosophers such as Levinas, Husserl, and Heidegger.

Subjective probability plays an increasingly important role in many fields concerned with human cognition and behavior. Yet there have been significant criticisms of the idea that probabilities could actually be represented in the mind. This paper presents and elaborates a view of subjective probability as a kind of sampling propensity associated with internally represented generative models. The resulting view answers to some of the most well known criticisms of subjective probability, and is also supported by empirical (...) work in neuroscience and behavioral psychology. The repercussions of the view for how we conceive of many ordinary instances of subjective probability, and how it relates to more traditional conceptions of subjective probability, are discussed in some detail. (shrink)

Introduction -- Epistemology, metaphysics, and rhetoric : contexts of imagination -- Aristotle, Phantasia, and the problem of epistemology -- Plato, the neoplatonists, and the vagaries of the sublunar world -- Phantasia and ecstatic knowledge -- A more skillful artist than imitation -- Dreams, doubts, and evil demons : Descartes and imagination -- Mediatio prima : certainty, the cogito, and imagination -- Imagination in the rules -- Meditatio secunda : the world of the cogito -- Descartes, Montaigne, and Pascal -- Analogies (...) and enthusiasm -- Excogitations : fabulating the cogito -- The reasonable imagination : Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy -- Imagination in the limits of pure reason -- Dreamers and madmen : imagination in the anthropology -- Natural art and sublime madness : imagination in the critique of judgment -- The highest point of philosophy : Fichte's reimagining of the kantian system -- The logics of positing intellectual intuition and the absolute subject -- Ecstasy, inspired communication, and philosophical genius -- Light, dusk, and darkness : the reconciliation of opposites -- The metaphysics of oscillation and the truth of imagination -- Reason fixations : arresting imagination -- A system without foundations : poetic subjectivity in Friedrich von Hardenberg's Ordo inversus -- A system without foundations -- Fantasy and the body -- Divine law and abject subjectivity : Coleridge and the double knowledge of imagination -- Divine imagination -- The abyss of the empirical self -- Coda: Imagining ideology. (shrink)

Cilj ovoga istraživanja bio je ispitati povezanost između usredotočene svjesnosti u roditeljstvu, kognitivne roditeljske svjesnosti i subjektivne dobrobiti adolescenata. U istraživanju je sudjelovala 101 obitelj koju su činili majka, otac i dijete adolescentne dobi, u rasponu od 10 do 17 godina, i to 69 adolescentica i 32 adolescenta. Primijenjeni su upitnici općih podataka za adolescente i roditelje, upitnik usredotočene svjesnosti u roditeljstvu i upitnik kognitivne roditeljske svjesnosti, dok su adolescenti ispunili skale usamljenosti, zadovoljstva životom i obitelji te općeg samopoštovanja. Rezultati (...) su pokazali da su adolescenti zadovoljniji životom i iskazuju više samopoštovanje u odnosu na adolescentice. Također, utvrđena je značajna povezanost između majki i očeva u većini mjera roditeljstva. Rezultati upućuju na zaključak da su usredotočena svjesnost u roditeljstvu i kognitivna roditeljska svjesnost značajni korelati subjektivne dobrobiti adolescenata kada je riječ o očevima, no ne i majkama. (shrink)