Advances in Consciousness Research
Series · 21
books · 1723-2012
Books in series
#64
Exploring Inner Experience
2006
Written for the psychologist, philosopher, and layperson interested in consciousness, Exploring Inner Experience provides a comprehensive introduction to the Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) method for obtaining accurate reports of inner experience. DES uses a beeper to cue participants to pay attention to their experience at precisely defined moments; participants are then interviewed to obtain high-fidelity accounts of their experience at those moments. Exploring Inner Experience shows (a) how DES uncovers previously unknown details of inner experience; (b) how the implications of this method affect our understanding of inner experience and the human condition more generally; (c) how DES avoids the traps that destroyed the introspections of the previous century; (d) why DES reports of inner experience should be considered reliable and valid; and (e) how to use the DES method. This book will be basic reading for all psychologists, philosophers, and students interested in consciousness, as well as anyone who is seriously concerned with understanding the human condition.(Series B)
#65
Signs, Mind, and Reality
2006
The book presents a new science of semiotic linguistics. The goal of semiotic linguistics is to discover what characterizes language as an intermediary between the mind and reality so that language creates the picture of reality we perceive. The cornerstone of semiotic linguistics is the discovery and resolution of language antinomies contradictions between two apparently reasonable principles or laws. Language antinomies constitute the essence of language, and hence must be studied from both linguistic and philosophical points of view. The basic language antinomy which underlies all other antinomies is the antinomy between meaning and information. Both generative and classical linguistic theories are unaware of the need to distinguish between meaning and information. By confounding these notions they are unable to discover language antinomies and confine their research to naturalistic description of superficial language phenomena rather than be concerned with the quest for the essence of language.
#66
Imagery And Spatial Cognition
Methods models and cognitive assessment
2006
The relationships between perception and imagery, imagery and spatial processes, memory and action: these are the main themes of this text. The interest in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience on imagery and spatial cognition has remarkably increased in the last decades. Different areas of research contribute to the clarification of the multiple cognitive processes subserving spatial perception and exploration, and to the definition of the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning these cognitive functions. The aim of this book is to provide the reader (post-graduate students as well as experts) with a complete overview of this field of research. It illustrates how brain, behaviour and cognition interact in normal and pathological subjects in perceiving, representing and exploring space.(Series B)
#67
Visual Thought
The depictive space of perception
2006
This volume starts from an interdisciplinary expertise of the contributors, and chooses to work on the very origins of conscious qualitative states in perception. The leading research paradigm can be synthesized in ‘ phenomenology to neurons to stimuli, and backwards’, since as a starting point it has taken the phenomenal appearances in the visual field. Specifically, the leading theme of the volume is the co-presence and interaction of diverse types of spaces in vision, like the optical space of psychophysics and of neural elaboration, the qualitative space of phenomenal appearances, and its relation with the pictorial space of art. The contributors to the volume agree in arguing that those spaces follow different rules of organization, whose specific singularity and reciprocal dependence have to be individuated, as a preliminary step to understand the architecture of the conscious awareness of our environment and to conceive its potential implementation in constructing any kind of embodied intentional agents. (Series B)
#68
On Being Moved
From Mirror Neurons to Empathy
2007
In this collective volume the origins, neurosocial support, and therapeutic implications of (pre)verbal intersubjectivity are examined with a focus on implications of the discovery of mirror neurons. Entailing a paradigmatic revolution in the intersection of developmental, social and neural sciences, two radical turnabouts are entailed. First, no longer can be upheld as valid Cartesian and Leibnizian assumptions about monadic subjects with disembodied minds without windows to each other except as mediated by culture. Supported by a mirror system, specified in this volume by some of the discoverers, modes of participant perception have now been identified which entail embodied simulation and co-movements with others in felt immediacy. Second, no longer can be retained the Piagetian attribution of infant egocentricity. Pioneers who have broken new research grounds in the study of newborns, protoconversation, and early speech perception document in the present volume infant capacity for interpersonal communion, empathic identification, and learning by altercentric participation. Pertinent new findings and results are presented on these topics:
(i) Origins and multiple layers of intersubjectivity and empathy
(ii) Neurosocial support of (pre)verbal intersubjectivity, participant perception, and simulation of mind
(iii) From preverbal sharing and early speech perception to meaning acquisition and verbal intersubjectivity
(iv) New windows on other-centred movements and moments of meeting in therapy and intervention. (Series B)
#69
Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind
A defense of content-internalism and semantic externalism
2007
What is it to have a concept? What is it to make an inference? What is it to be rational? On the basis of recent developments in semantics, a number of authors have embraced answers to these questions that have radically counterintuitive consequences, for example:
\* One can rationally accept self-contradictory propositions (e.g. Smith is a composer and Smith is not a composer).
\* Psychological states are causally inert: beliefs and desires do nothing.
\* The mind cannot be understood in terms of folk-psychological concepts (e.g. belief, desire, intention).
\* One can have a single concept without having any others: an otherwise conceptless creature could grasp the concept of justice or of the number seven.
\* Thoughts are sentence-tokens, and thought-processes are driven by the syntactic, not the semantic, properties of those tokens.
In the first half of Conceptual Atomism and the Computational Theory of Mind, John-Michael Kuczynski argues that these implausible but widely held views are direct consequences of a popular doctrine known as content-externalism, this being the view that the contents of one’s mental states are constitutively dependent on facts about the external world. Kuczynski shows that content-externalism involves a failure to distinguish between, on the one hand, what is literally meant by linguistic expressions and, on the other hand, the information that one must work through to compute the literal meanings of such expressions.
The second half of the present work concerns the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). Underlying CTM is an acceptance of conceptual atomism – the view that a creature can have a single concept without having any others – and also an acceptance of the view that concepts are not descriptive (i.e. that one can have a concept of a thing without knowing of any description that is satisfied by that thing). Kuczynski shows that both views are false, one reason being that they presuppose the truth of content-externalism, another being that they are incompatible with the epistemological anti-foundationalism proven correct by Wilfred Sellars and Laurence Bonjour. Kuczynski also shows that CTM involves a misunderstanding of terms such as “computation”, “syntax”, “algorithm” and “formal truth”; and he provides novel analyses of the concepts expressed by these terms. (Series A)
#70
To Understand a Cat
2007
To understand a cat: methodology and philosophy rests on the realization that the everyday behavior of a cat (but other animals too) should be understood through a new approach, namely methodological dualism. It appeals to mechanistic explanation models and to mentalistic explanation models. It puts up the methodological idea that these models have to be combined in one theoretical structure according to the scientific game-rules. This approach shows that specific mentalistic explanations are generated from explanation models or schemes, which meet the demands of the scientific games-rules; and it proposes a new theoretical structure called the multi-explanation theory to generate particular theories, which provide us with efficient explanations for behavioral phenomena. The book delves deep into anthropomorphism, and the complex question of whether a cat has consciousness and free will, and examines the intricate relations of the mental, the computational, and the neurophysiological.(Series A)
#71
Embodiment in Cognition and Culture
2007
This volume shows that the notions of embodied or situated cognition, which have transformed the scientific study of intelligence have the potential to reorient cultural studies as well. The essays adapt and amplify embodied cognition in such different fields as art history, literature, history of science, religious studies, philosophy, biology, and cognitive science. The topics include the biological genesis of teleology, the dependence of meaning in signs upon biological embodiment, the notion of image schema and the concept of force in cognitive semantics, pictorial self-portraiture as a means to study self-perception, the difference between reading aloud and silent reading as a way to make sense of literary texts, intermodal (kinesthetic) understanding of art, psychosomatic medicine, laughter as a medical and ethical phenomenon, the valuation of laughter and the body in religion, and how embodied cognition revives and extends earlier attempts to develop a philosophical anthropology. (Series A)
#72
The Reflexive Nature of Consciousness
2008
Combining phenomenological insights from Brentano and Sartre, but also drawing on recent work on consciousness by analytic philosophers, this book defends the view that conscious states are reflexive, and necessarily so, i.e., that they have a built-in, "implicit" awareness of their own occurrence, such that the subject of a conscious state has an immediate, non-objectual acquaintance with it. As part of this investigation, the book also explores the relationship between reflexivity and the phenomenal, or "what-it-is-like," dimension of conscious experience, defending the innovative thesis that phenomenal character is constituted by the implicit self-awareness built into every conscious state. This account stands in marked contrast to most influential extant theories of phenomenal character, including qualia theories, according to which phenomenal character is a matter of having phenomenal sensations, and representationalism, according to which phenomenal character is constituted by representational content. (Series A)
#73
Constructing the Self
2008
Constructing the Self analyzes the narrative conception of self, filling a serious gap in philosophy and grounding discussion in other disciplines. It answers the questions:
What are the connections between our interpretations, selfhood, and conscious phenomenal experience?
Why do we believe that our interpretations of our life-defining events are narrative in nature?
From the myriad of thoughts, actions, and emotions which constitute our experiences, how do we choose what is interpretively important, the tiny subset that composes the self?
By synthesizing the different approaches to understanding the self from philosophy of mind, developmental psychology, psychopathology, and cognitive science, this monograph gives us deeper insight into what being minded, being a person, and having a self are, as well as clarifies the difference and relation between conscious and unconscious mental states and normal and abnormal minds. The explication also affords new perspectives on human development and human emotion. (Series A)
#74
Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interaction
2008
Animated interactive characters and robots that are able to function in human social environments are being developed by a large number of research groups worldwide. Emotional expression, as a key element of human social interaction and communication, is often added in an attempt to make them appear more natural to us. How can such artefacts be given emotional displays that are believable and acceptable to humans? This is the central question of Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interaction .The ability to express and recognize emotions is a fundamental aspect of social interaction. Not only is it a central research question, it has been explored in animated films, dance, and other expressive arts for a much longer period. This book is unique in presenting a multi-disciplinary approach to animation in its broadest from internal mechanisms to external displays, not only from a graphical perspective, but more generally examining how to give characters an "anima", so that they appear as life-like entities and social partners to humans. (Series B)
#76
The Intersubjective Mirror in Infant Learning and Evolution of Speech
2009
The Intersubjective Mirror in Infant Learning and Evolution of Speech illustrates how recent findings about primary intersubjectivity, participant perception and mirror neurons afford a new understanding of children’s nature, dialogue and language.
Based on recent infancy research and the mirror neurons discovery, studies of early speech perception, comparative primate studies and computer simulations of language evolution, this book offers replies to questions as: When and how may spoken language have emerged? How is it that infants so soon after birth become so efficient in their speech perception? What enables 11-month-olds to afford and reciprocate care? What are the steps from infant imitation and simulation of body movements to simulation of mind in conversation partners?
#77
The Transparent Becoming of World
A Crossing Between Process Philosophy and Quantum Neurophilosophy
2009
The Transparent Becoming of World undertakes a penetrating inquiry into the quotidian world we take for granted and the brain that silently hoists our bubbles of world-thrownness. After critiquing the traditional views of direct realism, indirect realism and idealism, the continual becoming of world is explained by a novel integration of process dynamics, as formulated by Whitehead, Heidegger and Bohm, with the burgeoning field of quantum neurophilosophy. A rich ontological duality newly opened by quantum brain theory is exploited: the “between-two” of dual quantum modes. Existence as world-thrownness is between-two in waking and dreaming alike. This highly original interdisciplinary book may be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, consciousness researchers, indeed anyone attracted to the enigma of their own lived existence. (Series A)
#79
New Horizons in the Neuroscience of Consciousness
2010
A fascinating cornucopia of new ideas, based on fundamentals of neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry and therapy, this book extends boundaries of current concepts of consciousness. Its eclectic mix will simulate and challenge not only neuroscientists and psychologists but entice others interested in exploring consciousness. Contributions from top researchers in consciousness and related fields project diverse ideas, focused mainly on conscious nonconscious interactions:
1\. Paving the way for new research on basic scientific - physiological, pharmacological or neurochemical - mechanisms underpinning conscious experience ('bottom up' approach);
2\. Providing directions on how psychological processes are involved in consciousness ('top down' approach);
3\. Indicating how including consciousness could lead to new understanding of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression, dementia, and addiction;
4\. More provocatively, but still based on scientific evidence, exploring consciousness beyond conventional boundaries, indicating the potential for radical new thinking or 'quantum leaps' in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. (Series B)
#80
Mind Ascribed
2010
This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind, of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Mölder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism, the ascription theory, which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability, and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly directed against interpretivism, the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness – perception and the awareness of one’s own mental states – in the interpretivist framework. (Series A)
#81
Becoming Human
From Pointing Gestures to Syntax
2011
What do the pointing gesture, the imitation of new complex motor patterns, the evocation of absent objects and the grasping of others false beliefs all have in common? Apart from being (one way or other) involved in the language, they all would share a demanding requirement a second mental centre within the subject. This redefinition of the simulationism is extended in the present book in two directions. Firstly, mirror-neurons and, likewise, animal abilities connected with the visual field of their fellows, although they certainly constitute important landmarks, would not require this second mental centre. Secondly, others beliefs would have given rise not only to predicative communicative function but also to pre-grammatical syntax. The inquiry about the evolutionary-historic origin of language focuses on the cognitive requirements on it as a faculty (but not to the indirect causes such as environmental changes or greater co-operation), pays attention to children, and covers other human peculiarities as well, e.g., symbolic play, protodeclaratives, self-conscious emotions, and interactional or four-hand tasks.
#82
The Primacy of Movement
1723
Through diligent and rigorous attention to both natural history and phenomenological accounts of kinetic phenomena, particularly the phenomenon of self-movement, this richly interdisciplinary book brings to the fore the long-neglected topic of animate form and with it, a long-neglected inquiry into the significance of animation. It addresses methodological and foundational issues at length. In its detailed and extensive examinations and analyses of movement ― which range from Aristotle’s recognition of motion as the principle of nature to a critique of the common notion of movement as change of position, from critiques of present-day materialists’ trivializations of movement as mere output to kinesthetically-tethered accounts of the qualia of movement, from expositions of an evolutionary semantics and of the tactile-kinesthetic body as generative source of corporeal concepts to expositions of thinking in movement and of the pan-human phenomenon of learning to move oneself ― this book lays out in ground-breaking ways fundamental epistemological and metaphysical dimensions of animate life. (Series A)
#83
Phenomenology and the Physical Reality of Consciousness
2011
The predominant positive view among philosophers and scientists alike is that consciousness is something realized in brain activity. This view, however, largely fails to capture what consciousness is like according to how it shows itself to conscious beings. What this work proposes instead is that consciousness is a phenomenon that exists in and throughout the body. Apart from whether or not it involves intentionality and apart from whether or not it involves awareness of the self, consciousness is self-intimating, self-revealing, self-disclosing. Self-disclosure is the definitive phenomenological character of consciousness in all its forms. Taking this stance as a point of departure, the book presents a specific account of what bodily field phenomenon consciousness is. In this way, the current stalemate in philosophy over the question of the physical reality of consciousness is broken. Series A
#84
Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement
2012
Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement is an interdisciplinary volume with contributions from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and movement therapists. Part one provides the phenomenologically grounded definition of body memory with its different typologies. Part two follows the aim to integrate phenomenology, conceptual metaphor theory, and embodiment approaches from the cognitive sciences for the development of appropriate empirical methods to address body memory. Part three inquires into the forms and effects of therapeutic work with body memory, based on the integration of theory, empirical findings, and clinical applications. It focuses on trauma treatment and the healing power of movement. The book also contributes to metaphor theory, application and research, and therefore addresses metaphor researchers and linguists interested in the embodied grounds of metaphor. Thus, it is of particular interest for researchers from the cognitive sciences, social sciences, and humanities as well as clinical practitioners. (Series B)
#86
Consciousness in Interaction. the Role of the Natural and Social Context in Shaping Consciousness.
2012
Consciousness in Interaction is an interdisciplinary collection with contributions from philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and historians of philosophy. It revolves around the idea that consciousness emerges from, and impacts on, our skilled interactions with the natural and social context. Section one discusses how phenomenal consciousness and subjective selfhood are grounded on natural and social interactions, and what role brain activity plays in these phenomena. Section two analyzes how interactions with external objects and other human beings shape our understanding of ourselves, and how consciousness changes social interaction, self-control and emotions. Section three provides historical depth to the volume, by tracing the roots of the contemporary notion of consciousness in early modern philosophy. The book offers interdisciplinary insight on a variety of key topics in consciousness as such, it is of particular interest for researchers from philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive and social sciences, and humanities.
#87
Empiricism and the Foundations of Psychology
2012
Intended for philosophically minded psychologists and psychologically minded philosophers, this book identifies the ways that psychology has hobbled itself by adhering too strictly to empiricism, this being the doctrine that all knowledge is observation-based. In the first part of this two-part work, we show that empiricism is false. In the second part, we identify the psychology-relevant consequences of this fact. Five of these are of special importance:
(i) Whereas some psychopathologies (e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder) corrupt the activity mediated by one’s psychological architecture, others (e.g. sociopathy) corrupt that architecture itself.
(ii) The basic tenets of psychoanalysis are coherent.
(iii) All propositional attitudes are beliefs.
(iv) Selves are minds that self-evaluate.
And:
(v) It is by giving our thoughts a perceptible form that we enable ourselves to evaluate them, and it is by expressing ourselves in language and art that we give our thoughts a perceptible form. (Series A)
Authors
Sam S. Rakover
Author · 2 books
סם ש. רקובר הוא פרופסור לפסיכולוגיה באוניברסיטת חיפה .תחומי התעניינותו - תפיסה וזיכרון פרצופים, ופילוסופיה של המדע והתודעה .סם ש. רקובר פרסם מספר רב של סיפורים קצרים בירחונים ועיתונים שונים .כפסיכולוג, פרסם גם ספרים ומאמרים רבים בתחומי התמחותו פרסומים מקצועיים :רקובר פרסם 4 ספרים מקצועיים (1991)-Metapsychology: Missing Links in Behavior, Mind and Science (2001)- Explanation : Theoretical Approaches and Applications (with Giora Hon) (2001)- Face Recognition (with Baruch Cahlon) (2008) 'להבין חתול - מתודולוגיה ופילוסופיה' .בנוסף, פרסם למעלה משבעים מאמרים מקצועיים (ב- 1997 קיבל את הפרס לביטחון פנים (יחד עם פרופ' ברוך כחלון, מתמטיקאי .על פיתוח מודל מתמטי מיוחד וחדשני לזיהוי פרצופים Fellow לפרופ' רקובר מעמד של American Psychological Society -ב :ספרות 1986 - לפני היות הליצן - ספרית מעריב 1990 - ממי אתה מפחד, דב? - הוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד 1997 - חלום בשלוש בלילה - הוצאת כנרת 2002 - גזר הדין ה3- - הוצאת אסטרולוג 2005 -משחק הזוגות - הוצאת ביתן 2009 - כלא המשאלות - הוצאת כרמל
Mats Rosengren
Author · 1 books
Mats Rosenberg is a Swedish philosopher, translator and Professor in rhetoric and the Uppsala University. Since October 1, 2014, Rosengren holds the chair of Rhetoric at the Department of Literature. He is a member of the editorial board of Glänta and of the board of the Swedish Ernst Cassirer Society. His main interests lie in the fields of theory and history of rhetoric, epistemology and theory of science, French philosophy, cave art and artistic research. He has written on Plato, Montaigne, Chaim Perelman, Cornelius Castoriadis, Ernst Cassirer and Gilles Deleuze. Rosengren’s latest major work is a study focusing on the discovery of paleolithic cave art and the development of the discipline cave 'art studies', seen from a doxological perspective: Cave Art, Perception and Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). For the moment he is working on a book on Cornelius Castoriadis' philosophy. Rosengren is also a translator, mainly of French philosophy, and an editor, most notably of the now completed Logos/Pathos series at Glänta Produktion. Doxology – a rhetorical approach to epistemology Since 2002 Rosengren has been working on developing an 'other' take on epistemology. He has chosen to call his epistemic stance doxological in order to emphasise that all knowledge is doxic knowledge, thus turning the seminal Platonic distinction between doxa (beliefs, opinions) and episteme (objective, eternal knowledge) upside down. Protagoras dictum advocating man as the measure of all things is, perhaps, the most poignant expression of a doxological position, stating explicitly that no apprehension escapes the human-related conditions of knowledge alluded to in Protagoras' fragment. Departing from the pivotal question "What would a Protagorean position imply for epistemology today?", Rosengren develops a critique of the purely discursive notion of knowledge, still central in Anglo-Saxon epistemology. He emphasizes the fact that our knowledge is always embodied, in ourselves as biological beings as well as formulated and/or preserved in some language, institution or ritual; practiced and upheld by one or many individuals, always in one historical moment or other and within the admittedly diffuse framework of an ever changing but still specific social situation. Doxology is not a relativism abandoning all claims to objectivity or science – far from it – but an attempt, in the wake of the serious and fundamental criticisms of the late 20th century, to readdress and reconsider what knowledge, science and objectivity could be today. Nor is doxology a teaching about apparent or illusory knowledge, but about situated, variable and interested knowledge. In short it is a teaching about how we actually do create the knowledge that we need – in science as well as in life. In his publications on doxology Rosengen has tried to formulate and develop a concept of knowledge taking heed of all these factors. First introduced in 2002, this concept, doxology, has now become wildly used within the social and human sciences in Scandinavia.
