Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Perceptual Expectation, Rebecca Keller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

You are currently seeing many things, and, hopefully, you are currently about to see many other things. Many of the things that you are about to see will not be surprising, because you expect to see them. Sometimes, though, when you expect to see one thing and are faced with another, that thing will look like the thing you expected it to be, and not like the thing it actually is. This dissertation is an attempt to get a handle on what is happening in the visual system in these instances. In particular, I am trying to figure out what …

Archetypal Energies And Global Mental Health, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

As a keynote speaker at the Global Mental Health Conference 2024, held at Sophia University, Costa Mesa, CA, in-person and virtually, August 16-18, 2024, my topic was "Archetypal Energies As A Framework for Self-Empowerment and Well Being". The theme of this 2024 global conference was: Enlightened Minds, Compassionate Hearts, and Embodied Wisdom. To supplement my keynote address, I wrote this blog article titled "Archetypal Energies and Global Mental Health".

Buddhism, Daoism, And Jeet Kune Do: A Contemporary Analysis Of Nondual Traditions In A New Age Martial Art, James H. Sutton

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Traditional martial arts are known for their focus on spiritual cultivation through a combination of self-defense training and contemplative practices like meditation. Traditional martial art systems tend to utilize nondual traditions commonly associated with Buddhism and Daoism; however, modern martial art practices, particularly those of MMA, no longer place a strong emphasis on such traditions. In turn, this has led to the development of high-performance sport athletes who emphasize self-defense efficiency in combat (usually combat sports) over all other attributes while also mixing “arts” or “styles” as necessary for the individual’s own self growth. I dub these as “new age” …

The Divided Self: Internal Conflict In Literature, Philosophy, Psychology, And Neuroscience, Yulia Greyman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thematic project examines the notion of self-division, particularly in terms of the conflict between cognition and metacognition, across the fields of philosophy, psychology, and, most recently, the cognitive and neurosciences. The project offers a historic overview of models of self-division, as well as analyses of the various problems presented in theoretical models to date. This work explores how self-division has been depicted in the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, Don DeLillo, and Mary Shelley. It examines the ways in which artistic renderings alternately assimilate, resist, and/or critique dominant philosophical, psychological, and scientific discourses about the self and its …

Precommentary: Animal Personality Needs Animal Sentience, Ralph Adolphs, Yue Xu

Animal Sentience

We are grateful to Owens, Bryja & Bekoff (2024) for their important discussion of individual differences in animals, emphasizing the role of personality in conservation, wildlife research, and wellbeing. But their emphasis also raises new challenges: How should we conceive of personality in nonhuman species? what modern tools could be leveraged to best measure it? and, perhaps most important of all: how can we ensure that the conscious experience of animals — their capacity for wellbeing and for suffering — is not forgotten along the way? We touch on each of these challenges in this invited Precommentary in the hope …

The Standing Of Anger: Insights From The Debate(S) On Constructed Emotion, Andrew Holzer

CMC Senior Theses

In her book, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, Martha Nussbaum argues that anger is inherently flawed because it fundamentally contains the desire for payback. To support her argument, she posits specific metaphysical claims about the nature of emotions like anger. This thesis is an extended critique of her metaphysical foundation from the perspective of empirical research in the neuroscience of emotion. The first reason to dispute this picture is descriptive; this view of anger is based on an outdated version of cognitive appraisal theory, which sees emotions as triggered directly by static moments of cognitive appraisal. The second …

Animal Personality And Sentience As Distinct Concepts, Mark Briffa

Animal Sentience

Owens et al (2024) discuss how knowledge of both animal personality and sentience in target populations can be leveraged to enhance wildlife conservation programmes. In this commentary I expand on the distinction between these two concepts. Behavioural differences should be considered broadly across conservation programmes, not just those involving species deemed sentient.

A Demonstration Of Enactivist Personality Assessment Using The Five-Factor Model, Garri Hovhannisyan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to extend the intellectual and existential horizon of the enactive approach by bringing forth an enactivist understanding of human cognitive life as it is lived from the perspective of personality traits. The theoretical task of this dissertation is to review existing evidence in support of the Enactivist Big-5 Theory (EB5T) of personality and its potential for bridging the phenomenological gap between minimal and human cognition. As a phenomenologically grounded theory of personality, EB5T conceptualizes individual differences not merely as differences in trait measures within a person but as differences in styles of how individuals bring forth, experience, …

Clausewitzian Theory Of War In The Age Of Cognitive Warfare, Amber Brittain-Hale, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

We can reconceptualise warfare by contrasting Clausewitz with the modern practice of cognitive warfare, as evidenced by Ukraine’s defence methodologies. The strategic orchestration of ‘infopolitik’ and the sophisticated use of social media can shape narratives and public perception. This article revisits Clausewitz’s tenet of war as a political instrument and juxtaposes it with contemporary conflict’s multidimensional tactics. By scrutinising Ukraine’s digital and psychological warfare tactics, one may question the applicability of Clausewitz’s framework, seeking to understand if these novel dimensions of warfare compel a redefinition or an expansion of his thesis to navigate the complexities of contemporary geopolitical confrontations.

A Talk With Time, Samanatha Kuban

Master's Theses

I chose to write a collection of genre-mixing short stories to depict the vastness and complexity of time as my English Master’s thesis project. Thinking about the constructs of time and how they function or do not function within our society sparked my interest in this field of knowledge and discussion. I am a person that tends to feel a large amount of anxiety surrounding the passage of time or time limits so reading deeper into studies of time and how we think about it in various ways proved to be an outlet for a better understanding. I chose to …

Mrs. Dalloway As A Window For Understanding Life, Kristen Venegas

English (MA) Theses

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway may be dismissed as fiction, and fiction consequently is dismissed as fantasy. However, the novel enables readers to practice an intellectual exercise of meta-awareness that extends beyond the pages and onto real world phenomena. Under a cognitive neuroscience perspective, Mrs. Dalloway is a literary masterpiece due to its hyper- realistic execution of the intimacies of life. Through the narrative style of free-indirect discourse, Woolf illustrates what occurs in the minds of characters as they develop their own perceptions of reality and identity, exposes the fear and inadequacies of mankind’s distress in times of chaos and disorder …

Avoiding Anthropomoralism, Julian Friedland

Between the Species

The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from merely sentient non-personhood. I describe it as a kind of anthropomorphizing moralism which I call anthropomoralism, defined as the tendency to project morally relevant characteristics of personhood onto merely …

New Commandments, Jacob Sussman

Masters Theses

I reach into the earth, pull out mud-encrusted objects, and recombine them to define new meanings. With every object transposed, the past breaks down; new potentials form. “New Commandments” recombines historical symbolism through an intuitive building, destroying, and merging to reimagine or re-establish meaning.

The work critiques rites of passage, masculinity, and stereotypes by deconstructing how histories, ideologies, and preconceptions form.

As a queer person raised in-between Judaism and Christianity, social preconceptions and religious expectations festered my formation. Our choice is taken away at this moment of conception. To take back autonomy, I reimagine historical, and religious symbolism and transmute …

The Politics Of Expertise And The Articulation Of Authority In Democracy: Cognitive Style And Intelligibility In The Education Of Problem-Solving And Professional Decision-Making In The Domain Of Law, Michael W. Raphael

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Computational complexity refers to the representational aspect of problem-solving. This representational aspect is commonly understood to describe the regularities that organize the definition of the problem-situation, the qualities that designate its difficulty, either in terms of the process of arriving at a definition of the problem or in the process of arriving at a solution. It is for this reason, that it is commonly said that “representational design precedes computational efficacy.” The point of this maxim is to serve as a reminder that an efficient use of resources begins with the design of near decomposability, the specification of the properties …

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

Plant Sentience: "Feeling" Or Biological Automatism?, Andrea Mastinu

Animal Sentience

Sentience refers to the ability of an organism to have subjective experiences such as sensations, emotions and awareness. Whereas some animals, including humans, are widely recognized as sentient, the question of whether plants are sentient is still debated among scientists, philosophers, and ethicists. Over the past 20 years, many scientists such as Trewavas, Baluška, Mancuso, Gagliano, and Calvo have reported interesting discussions about memory, behavior, communication, and intelligence in plants. However, the reported conclusions have not convinced the entire scientific community. In this commentary, I would like to focus on two critical aspects related to sentience: cognition and emotion

Plant Sentience: Bias And Promise, Sidney Carls-Diamante

Animal Sentience

Whichever side of the debate one chooses, plant sentience is a fertile research area that challenges received views and assumptions, generates novel insights, and suggests new ways that felt states might arise. My commentary discusses methodological and philosophical implications.

Insentient “Cognition”?, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

A sentient state is a state that it feels like something to be in. Cows have them, cars don’t. Cognitive capacities are a subset of behavioral capacities. Not all behavioral capacities are cognitive (but the distinction is fuzzy). Might the difference have something to do with whether the behaver is sentient?

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

Is Biological Death Final? Recomputing The Drake-S Equation For Postmortem Survival Of Consciousness, Adam J. Rock, James Houran, Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Brian Laythe

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the ‘Drake equation’ to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., "anomalous effects") or refutes (i.e., "known confounds") the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of ‘living agent psi’ via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found …

Two Dimensions Of A Bodhisattva, Douglas Duckworth

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper presents two dimensions of a bodhisattva, the ideal of Maha- ya- na Buddhism. One dimension involves contemplative practices that disclose a pure nature that is always already present; this reality is unveiled after the obscurations that cloud it are removed. I refer to this as a “top-down” approach because it is based on qualities of awakening that are already there, yet lie beyond an ordinary being’s comprehension. The second dimension, which I refer to as a “bottom-up” approach, involves directed training and discipline. Unlike the top-down approach, this is not about “going with the flow” or simply letting …

Authentic Mindfulness Within Mindfulness-Based Interventions: A Qualitative Study Of Participants' Experiences, Supakyada Sapthiang, Edo Shonin, Paul Barrows, William Van Gordon

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

There are concerns that participants of some modern mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are receiving a superficial form of mindfulness training. However, empirical investigation of this issue according to participants’ first-hand experiences has been limited. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to capture the first-hand perspectives relating to authentic mindfulness of participants who had recently attended an MBI in the UK. Ten adults completed a recorded, online semistructured interview. Based on a thematic analysis, the following four master themes were identified: (a) authentic mindfulness as a construct, (b) positive aspects of the training, (c) something missing, and (d) recommendations for authenticity. Although all …

Mindfulness Traps And The Entanglement Of Self: An Inquiry Into The Regime Of Mind, Richard Dixey, Ronald E. Purser

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

Mindfulness meditation can provide salutary therapeutic benefits, as well as lead advanced practitioners to states of calm and equanimity. In this paper, we argue that such forms of meditation may subtly entrap practitioners in circular, self-reflexive feedback loops. Because these meditation traps fail to clearly discern the operations of mind, they offer a temporary oasis of peace within an unaltered dualistic realm of mind that leaves the root delusion of self-identity intact. Drawing upon Tarthang Tulku’s seminal book Revelations of Mind, we present what he refers to as the “regime of mind,” the processes of cognition, identification and re-cognition in …

Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, And The Psychology Of Metaphor In Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices, Michael R. Sheehy

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

A classic set of eight similes of illusion (sgyu ma’i dpe brgyad) are employed recurrently throughout Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature to illustrate the operations of cognition, its correlative perceptions, and experiences that emerge. To illustrate a Buddhist psychology of metaphor, the fourteenth century Tibetan scholar and synthesizer of the Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) or Great Perfection system, Longchen Rabjam Drimé Ödzer (1308-1363), composed his poetic text, Being at Ease with Illusion. This work on illusion is the third volume in Longchenpa’s Trilogy of Being at Ease (Ngal gso skor gsum) in which he presents a series of Dzogchen instructions on …

Buddhism And Transpersonal Psychology, Elías Capriles

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In the debate between Freud and Romain Rolland the latter asserted the infants’ oceanic feeling to be saner than the adults’ limited sense of self, and that mystics recover the oceanic feeling without losing the learning achieved during socialization. Freud retorted that the oceanic feeling involved a sense of shelterlessness, and whoever went through derealization was psychotic and needed to be cured. However, the feeling of shelterlessness comes from the fledging sense of separation, and although derealization is a dangerous process, when it develops unhindered the result is greater sanity. So, Buddhism and TP agree in valuing transpersonal and holotropic …

Appraising Evidence For Valence, Víctor Carranza-Pinedo

Animal Sentience

I make some remarks about whether evidence of valenced responses constitutes evidence of valenced states, and therefore of sentience, in organisms.

Theorizing, Bounded Rationality, And Expertise: Cognitive Sociology And The Quasi-Realism Of Problem-Solving As A Course Of Activity, Michael W. Raphael

Publications and Research

The question facing sociology is whether it is a field or a discipline. If it is a field, then there is no need for theorizing. However, if sociology is a discipline, then problem-solving cannot be disentangled from theorizing without a loss of intelligibility – the inability to explain the social as the concept of the discipline. Through the quasi-realism of problem-solving as a course of activity, this chapter presents cognitive sociology as a paradigm appropriate to the concept of the social understood as an ongoing course of activity. In doing so, it is shown how bounded rationality and expertise play …

Disharmony Of The Soul: A Philosophical Analysis Of Psychological Trauma And Flourishing, Adam Blehm

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue that psychological trauma hinders human flourishing by disrupting psychic harmony and hindering virtuous relationships. Given the negative symptomology of posttraumatic stress related disorders (i.e., PTSD) this conclusion may seem a bit obvious to some. However, making the case for trauma as a hindrance to human flourishing is more complicated than it may first appear.

First, in the extant literature, trauma as a concept tends to be unclear. In much of the empirical and philosophical literature, trauma can include a certain kind of event, experience, effect, or a combination of all three. Furthermore, because of practical …

Envisioning Ethical Mass Influence Systems, Alex Mayhew, Yimin Chen, Sarah Cornwell, Nicole Delellis, Dominique Kelly, Liu Yifan, Victoria Rubin

Data and Test Instruments

This work envisions the possibility of ethical Mass Influence Systems (MISs). Modern algorithmic MISs, like Facebook and YouTube, have seen a link between the systems design for profit maximization and the increased radicalization of users (Wu, 2017). Using a Goals analysis grounded in philosophy (Falcon, 2022; Lipton, 1990; Bostrom, 2014), we will contrast the goals of existing algorithmic MISs with the goals of a future ethical algorithmic MIS. With the philosophical guidance of the Moral Parliament (Newberry and Ord, 2021) and the Moral Landscape (Janoff-Bulman and Carnes, 2013), we elaborate on a set of goals and mechanisms for promoting human …

Transformative, Noetic, And Transpersonal Experiences During Personal Development Workshops, Helané Wahbeh, Cassandra Vieten, Garret Young, Agnes Cartry-Jacobsen, Dean Radin, Arnaud Delorme

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

The global personal development market was valued at $38.28 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow an additional 5% from 2020 to 2027. Many of these workshops promise to be transformational. This secondary analysis study examined transformative, transpersonal, and noetic aspects of personal development workshops. We found that 74% of post-survey records endorsed that participants experienced a moment of clarity or profound insight during their workshop. In addition, 66% endorsed that participants had experienced at least one noetic experience, and 84% endorsed at least one transpersonal experience. These analyses provide preliminary evidence for the transformational potential of personal development …