Philosophy Commons^™

Well-Being And Self-Transformation In Indian Psychology, Sangeetha Menon, Shankar Rajaraman, Lakshmi Kuchibotla

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper uses instances from literature covering a broad spectrum of Indian philosophies, art, medicine and practices—attempts to offer the components of a psychology that is rooted in transformative and transpersonal consciousness. Psychology, in this instance, refers to a systematic study of mind, behavior, and relationship, rather than the formal Western discipline as such. In the Indian approach to understanding consciousness, primary importance is given to the possibility of well-being. Such an approach facilitates an immediate comprehension of the unity of metaphysical opposites, such as matter and consciousness, and its experience as empathy, love and intuition. It involves a thinking …

The Fragmented Mind: Working Memory Cannot Implement Consciousness, Javier Gomez-Lavin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In both philosophy and the sciences of the mind there is a shared commitment to the idea that there is a center—the seat of consciousness, the source of deliberation and reflection, and the core of personal identity—in the mind. My dissertation challenges this deeply entrenched view. I review the empirical literature on working memory, psychology’s best candidate for the workspace of the mind, and argue that it is not a natural kind and cannot inform these central cognitive processes. This deflationary view directly imperils many naturalistic theories of consciousness that rely on working memory, which are reviewed in this project. …

Complexities And Challenges Of Nonduality, Elizabeth Stephens

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

States of consciousness referred to as nonduality, awakening, enlightenment, moksha, peak experience, unitive states, or void states, among other terms, have garnered increasing secular attention and have become a topic of psychological and neuroscientific research. A review of the literature revealed many challenges to studying this set of states, such as inconsistent conceptualizations, a variety of models and theories, and conflicting descriptions indicating that the actual experience may not live up to the superlative descriptions found in historical texts or the expectations put forth by nondual teachers. A great deal more empirical research on this topic is needed, and researchers …

Cephalopods Are Best Candidates For Invertebrate Consciousness, Jennifer A. Mather, Claudio Carere

Jennifer Mather, PhD

Insects might have been the first invertebrates to evolve sentience, but cephalopods were the first invertebrates to gain scientific recognition for it.

Communication Ethics: Ellul's Complexity Of Form, Marianne Pabis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to enlarge understanding of Ellul’s dilemma of the ethical Christian communicator through a hermeneutic exploration of his intentionally un-paradigmatic treatment of technology as the determining factor in the formation of contemporary structural realities, a claim central to Ellul’s theory of technological society. It attends to the question of why, over the course of more than 50 books and over 1,000 articles, Ellul has refused to expound upon this claim as an overarching theoretical construct. As a contribution to the field of communication ethics from Ellul’s Christocentric perspective, this work also explicates the importance of what has become …

Crowdsourcing Consciousness: You Think, Therefore I Am, Justin M. Campbell

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The challenge to understand consciousness is a centuries-old interdisciplinary research program. The search entails fundamental questions about our nature - the desire to understand who we are has been around for nearly as long as experience itself. It is also one of the most important questions we can ask; meaning itself is predicated on having some sort of conscious experiencer for whom something can matter. Given the magnitude and intractability of explaining the paradox of how consciousness can be at once the most obvious thing in the universe, and also the most inaccessible, the endeavor is a tremendous undertaking. Until …

Explaining The Illusion Of Phenomenal Consciousness, Daniel S. Shabasson

Publications and Research

According to illusionism, phenomenal consciousness does not exist. There is nothing “it is like” to see red or feel pain. Most people find illusionism highly counterintuitive and it remains a minority view among philosophers. To increase its intuitive plausibility, we proponents of illusionism must solve what Keith Frankish (2016) has termed the illusion problem. We must explain why phenomenal consciousness seems to exist and why the illusion that it exists is so powerful. Focusing on introspective judgments about our color experiences, I propose a theory to solve the illusion problem.

I intend to show that we can understand the …

If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor

Animal Sentience

Whereas we have denied the experience of pain to animals, including human babies, the evidence is becoming clearer that animals across a variety of species have the capacity to feel pain (Bellieni, 2012). As converging findings are collected from pain studies and the study of cognition, it is becoming harder to deny that fish are among the species that do feel pain.

Pain In Fish: Evidence From Peripheral Nociceptors To Pallial Processing, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

The target article by Sneddon et al. (2018) presents convincing behavioral and pharmacological evidence that ray-finned fish consciously perceive noxious stimuli as painful. One objection to this interpretation of the evidence is that the fish nervous system is not complex enough to support the conscious experience of pain. Data that contradict this objection are presented in this commentary. The neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the fish nervous system from the peripheral nerves to the pallium is able to support the sentient appreciation of pain.

Thinking Like A Fox: Individual Choice And The Unique Role Of Liberal Arts Colleges In Empowering America's Future Leaders, Christopher Tan

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

The dilemma faced by Dean Kelly Smith on whether to allow Chris Williams to graduate from her college challenges the current model of higher education in the United States from an economic and normative perspective. When considering the situation that Dean Smith faces, this paper aims to demonstrate how Chris Williams should not be allowed to graduate without first passing the Senior Seminar after: (1) exploring the role of liberal arts colleges in encouraging agency among their students; (2) assessing the qualitative value of a college education in diversifying students’ knowledge base and providing students with the resources and opportunities …

Fish Sentience, Consciousness, And Ai, Ila France Porcher

Animal Sentience

The systematic criticism of articles providing evidence that fish and invertebrates can feel pain is discussed. Beliefs are known to be stronger than evidence in the human mind, and could generate this outcry, while from another perspective, the criticisms appear as a territorial move by fishermen against a perceived threat to their domain. The scientific inconsistency in which consciousness is granted to machines but not to fish and invertebrates, purely due to political bias, is pointed out. No basis exists for denying sentience to any life form as long as science is ignorant of the nature and source of consciousness.

The Participating Mind In The Quantum Universe, Menas Kafatos, Keun-Hang Susan Yang

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The Orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics, which followed the Copenhagen Interpretation but was enhanced by primarily Werner Heisenberg and John von Neumann into a fully developed theory, brought in, among others, the role of measurement, available choices and response of the quantum system. It is, more consistent and clear than other interpretations of quantum mechanics as it provides account of the interactions of observers with the external world. As such, the Orthodox interpretation does a lot more than just account for physical interactions in the atomic world, which was the original goal of quantum mechanics in the early part of …