Philosophy of Mind Commons^™

Beyond Enlightenment: The Evolution Of Agency And The Modularity Of The Mind In A Post-Darwinian World, Derek Elliott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Working out of the social and philosophical revolutions from the Enlightenment, contemporary action theory has unwittingly inherited several Cartesian ideas regarding the human mind: that it is unified, rational, and transparent. As a result, we have for too long conceived of action as intimately bound up with reason such that to act at all is to act for a reason, leaving us with theoretical difficulties in accounting for the behavior of non-human animals as well as irrational behavior in human beings.

But rather than propose that such difficulties can be resolved by retreating to a pre-Enlightenment view of human nature, …

The Toxicity Of Otherness, Justin Malone

English Department: Traveling American Modernism Posters (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This poster is a brief overview of my research on the dangerous philosophical principle of Othering, wherein a group of people are ostracized for being different from the majority. While categorization of information is a fundamental aspect of how the brain works, the categorization of people homogenizes their complexities. In doing so, a group is seen as a single entity, rather than individuals, which strips them of their humanity. After a group has been Othered, society will inevitably invoke some method of forced displacement upon them. Additionally, the article this poster summarizes puts emphasis on the importance of affected individuals …

The Toxicity Of Otherness, Justin Malone

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article discusses the dangerous philosophical principle of Othering, wherein a group of people are ostracized for being different from the majority. While categorization of information is a fundamental aspect of how the brain works, the categorization of people homogenizes their complexities. In doing so, a group is seen as a single entity, rather than individuals, which strips them of their humanity. After a group has been Othered, society will inevitably invoke some method of forced displacement upon them. Additionally, the article emphasizes the importance of affected individuals telling the stories of their experiences with oppression from Othering. Sharing one’s …

On Affect: Function And Phenomenology, Andreas Elpidorou

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper explores the nature of emotions by considering what appear to be two differing, perhaps even conflicting, approaches to affectivity—an evolutionary functional account, on the one hand, and a phenomenological view, on the other. The paper argues for the centrality of the notion of function in both approaches, articulates key differences between them, and attempts to understand how such differences can be overcome.

"Not A Simple Matter: Rejecting Materialism As A Solution To The Mind-Body Problem", Andrew Coyle, Steve Parchment Dr., Minh Nguyen Dr.

Posters-at-the-Capitol

"Not a Simple Matter: Rejecting Materialism as a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem"

By Andrew Coyle

Mentored by Dr. Steve Parchment and Dr. Minh Nguyen

Department of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies Many scholars accept materialism as an adequate solution to the mind-body problem. However, acceptance of materialism creates more problems than it purports to solve. This poster provides a background to the mind-body problem. This poster explores materialism as a potential solution to the mind-body problem. After reviewing materialism, it is rejected as an adequate solution to the mind-body problem. The poster concludes by positing property dualism as an …

Between The Mind And Body, Gabbie Pitt

CIE Essay Writing Contest

No abstract provided.

Personality, Psychological Profiling, And Philosophy Of Science: The Insider Threat And Betrayers Of Trust, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes philosophical challenges to the utility of profiling personality, especially with security and intelligence implications.

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. …

Theories Of Perception And Recent Empirical Work, Philip Zigman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I answer the following question: Does recent empirical work give us reason to think that naive realism is false or that indirect realism is correct? There is a small amount of literature arguing that recent empirical findings pose problems for naive realism and suggest that perception involves mental representation. I review this literature and the arguments therein, examine the relevant empirical work, and argue that recent empirical work on perception does give us reason to reject naive realism and to favour an indirect realist view that countenances mental representations.

Infodynamics: A Naturalistic Psychosemantics, Daniel E. Weissglass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When we think, we typically think ‘about’ something, a peculiar property of mental states often called ‘intentionality’. My dissertation is a collection of papers addressing key questions about the nature of intentionality. These questions demand answers because intentionality is poorly understood, yet fundamental to the way we talk and think about the mind in both folk and scientific contexts. The role of intentionality in the theory of mind is, in fact, so pronounced that it is regularly proposed as a candidate positive criterion of mentality, a so-called ‘mark of the mental’. While it is unclear whether intentionality does in fact …

Unarticulated Constituents And Theories Of Meaning, Jesse Rappaport

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work is an investigation into a phenomenon introduced by John Perry that I call ‘totally unarticulated constituents.’ These are entities that are part of the propositional content of a speech act, but are not represented by any part of the sentence uttered or of the thought that is being expressed - that is, they are fully unarticulated. After offering a novel definition of this phenomenon, I argue that totally unarticulated constituents are attested in natural language, and may in fact be quite common. This raises fatal problems for a prominent theory of underspecification defended by Jason Stanley, according to …

The Syndrome Of Romantic Love, Arina Pismenny

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What kind of phenomenon is romantic love? Many philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary folk think it is an emotion. I challenge this assumption and argue instead that romantic love is best characterized as a syndrome ⎼ a pattern comprised of different kinds of mental states and behaviors that tend to co-occur. An examination of major emotion theories in philosophy and psychology demonstrates that romantic love does not fit into any of them. Likewise, the commonly endorsed but increasingly controversial categories of basic and nonbasic emotions do not account for romantic love. While both culture and evolution have shaped the phenomenon of …

Counterterrorist Profiling, The Self, And The Problem Of Open And Quiet Skies, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Psychological profiling supporting counterterrorism may be based on an invalid presumption.

Rudolf Bahro's Invisible Church, Parton, Glenn

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of The "Mysterious Female" In Taoism: A Transpersonalist View, Tortchinov, Evgueni A.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Jean Gebser The Invisible Origin Evolution As A Supplementary Process, Translated By Theo Röttgers

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Jean Gebser Foreword To Eastern Wisdom And Western Thought: A Comparative Study In The Modern Philosophy Of Religion, Saher, P. J.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Inner And Outer Realities: Jean Gebser In A Cultural/Historical Perspective, Combs, Allan

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

On The Nature Of Consciousness And Reality: An Overview Of Jean Gebser's Thoughts On Consciousness, Feuerstein, Georg

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

From Homeland Earth; A New Manifesto For The New Millennium, Morin, Edgar

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Now that the fantastic adventure begun in the 15th century has come to an end, the shout of Columbus’ lookout man takes on at last a planetary meaning: Land! Land!¹ Even up to 1950-1960, we were living on a misapprehended Earth, on an abstract Earth. We were living on the Earth as object. By the end of this century, we discovered Earth as system, as Gaia, as biosphere, a cosmic speck—Homeland Earth. Each one of us has a pedigree, a terrestrial identity card. We are from, in, and on the Earth. We belong to the Earth which belongs to …

The Evolution Of The Culture Of Enterprise, Laszlo, Ervin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

At the top echelons of contemporary business, managers are becoming concerned with the unsustainability of the way companies now operate. A transformation of basic business strategies appears more and more indicated. For such transformation to be effective, the culture of the enterprise--the goals it pursues and the vision of these goals entertained by managers and collaborators--needs to change. Consequently there is a growing questioning of the viability of the typical culture of today's enterprise, and a search for more functional and timely concepts for creating anew and more timely cultural pattern.

Transpersonal Psychology And The Paradigm Of Complexity, Kelly, Sean M.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Death And Resurrection: Enlightenment And The Body Of Light, White, John

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Enlightenment or God-realization is not purely a psychological event. Bodily changes also occur, most dramatically in the higher phases of enlightenment. In the final phase, according to esoteric teachings in various sacred traditions and hermetic schools, the body is alchemically changed from flesh into light, becoming immortal. This transubstantiated body is called different names, such as resurrection body, light body, solar body and diamond body. This presentation looks at the phenomenon from a cross-cultural and evolutionary perspective. It then focuses on Christianity as a sacred tradition whose purpose is to enable people to develop through the resurrection of the body …

Chi Kung Facilitates Integral Growth: An Empirical Investigation, Arnold, C., Bruggerman, E., Kim, H., Combs, A.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Chi Kung Facilitates Integral Growth: An Empirical Investigation C. Arnold, E. Bruggerman, H. Kim, & A. Combs[1]

Swiss cultural philosopher Jean Gebser (1949/1986) proposed a theory of the evolutionary development of structures of consciousness that describes the common ways people living in different periods of history interpreted reality and constructed their worldviews. These included four major structures corresponding to four historical epochs, an archaic, magic, mythic, and mental structure which remains dominant today. Citing changes in art, literature, and scientific during the 20th century, Gebser also proposed the emergence of a forthcoming fifth structure, that he termed integral consciousness.

The …

Internal Alchemy, With Michael Winn, Published In "The Empty Vessel"

Journal of Conscious Evolution

No abstract provided.

Alchemical Transformation: Consciousness And Matter, Form And Information, Peat, F. David

Journal of Conscious Evolution

There has grown up, relatively recently, a nucleus of interests called ìconsciousness studiesî in which physicists and mathematicians, as well as neuroscientists and psychologists, attempt to discover the origins of ìconsciousnessî within the brain. A variety of approaches are employed, some based upon neural networks, others that argue that consciousness must have a quantum mechanical basis, or involve self-organization arising out of non-linearity. A common thread is a certain sense of optimism that ìthe question of consciousnessî will yield its secrets in the same way as, for example, the genetic code or sub-atomic matter. I must confess that I find …

Transition To Transcendence: Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Mathematical Yoga, Baruss, Imants

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Mathematicians--those who develop new mathematics--spend much of their time proposing the existence of mathematical constructions whose existence they then proceed to try to prove from the mathematics that has already been developed. Following that, they often try to prove that those mathematical constructions are unique, that there are no other constructions with the same characteristics. In practice, it is often easier to prove the uniqueness of a mathematical construction than its existence, so a mathematician may proceed by first proving uniqueness, as though the mathematical construction existed, and then using clues from the uniqueness proof to prove existence. I want …

The End Of Death? Conscious Life In Global Cyberspace, Purdy, Michael

Journal of Conscious Evolution

In The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser, in talking about the magical structure of consciousness[1], states: "All directing implies a consciousness process" (EPO 49). And so to die is to become not consciousness, to lose the power to direct, ultimately to lose control over our own destiny. Being only human, and realizing that death is often more real than an afterlife that we cannot experience while alive[2], we actively fight any loss of control-we fight the passage to death. In that directedness, the glimmerings of which began with magical consciousness, and that came to full awareness …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Semantic Realism And Historicity: Brandom, Habermas And Hegel, Norman Schultz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis of this dissertation is that Habermas’ universal pragmatic and the recent neo-pragmatist semantic realism of Brandom, aimed at bridging the divide, are both based on misinterpretations of Hegel. Both approaches misunderstand the central Hegelian idea of historicity, and thus fail to establish a correct connection to Hegel. The aim of the dissertation is to point to and sketch Hegel’s idea of historicity. As part of the discussion, I will defend the controversial thesis that Hegel did not have a system, but rather a historical account of how we develop knowledge under the historical conditions of society. Hegel, unlike …