Search results for "Consciousness"
showing 8 items of 338 documents
Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research.
2013
This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and ful…
The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy
2018
This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess …
Using altered states of consciousness in improvisational music therapy : the potential of resonance frequency breathing
2018
Improvisational music therapy is a type of creative arts therapy in which clients are encouraged to express themselves through the symbolic and non-verbal medium of music, by creating free music improvisations together with the therapist. The present research aims at investigating whether the efficacy of this method can be further enhanced by purposefully accessing the ego-quieting properties of altered states of consciousness. This work proceeds in three main steps. First, the notions of consciousness and its alteration are examined and reformulated, resulting in a more comprehensive theoretical model. Then, existing methods for inducing altered states of consciousness are evaluated in ter…
A comparison of different synchronization measures in electroencephalogram during propofol anesthesia
2016
Electroencephalogram (EEG) synchronization is becoming an essential tool to describe neurophysiological mechanisms of communication between brain regions under general anesthesia. Different synchronization measures have their own properties to reflect the changes of EEG activities during different anesthetic states. However, the performance characteristics and the relations of different synchronization measures in evaluating synchronization changes during propofol-induced anesthesia are not fully elucidated. Two-channel EEG data from seven volunteers who had undergone a brief standardized propofol anesthesia were then adopted to calculate eight synchronization indexes. We computed the predi…
Turing's error-revised
2016
Many important lines of argumentation have been presented during the last decades claiming that machines cannot think like people. Yet, it has been possible to construct devices and information systems, which replace people in tasks which have previously been occupied by people as the tasks require intelligence. The long and versatile discourse over, what machine intelligence is, suggests that there is something unclear in the foundations of the discourse itself. Therefore, we critically studied the foundations of used theory languages. By looking critically some of the main arguments of machine thinking, one can find unifying factors. Most of them are based on the fact that computers canno…
Representing the Practice of Teachers' Pedagogical Knowing
2022
This study consists of five international articles and an introductory background review. Its focus is on the nature and structure of teachers' pedagogical knowing. Pedagogical knowing is characterized as an active process by which teachers perform their duties in situations involving intense social interactions. This study treats teachers' pedagogical knowing as a broad theoretical concept and as an extended practice. Patterns of teachers' narratives are analysed as reflecting the general nature of this type of knowing. The theoretical background consists of three concepts. The idea of phronesis argues that teaching can be understood as an embodied judgement linking knowledge and virtue. T…