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Full-Text Articles in Neuroscience and Neurobiology

From The Handbook Of The Laszlo Institute Of New Paradigm Research And The Intelligence Of The Cosmos , Inner Traditions, September 2017, Ervin Laszlo Sep 2016

From The Handbook Of The Laszlo Institute Of New Paradigm Research And The Intelligence Of The Cosmos , Inner Traditions, September 2017, Ervin Laszlo

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

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The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis Part Ii: The Physiology Of Consciousness, Shelli R. Joye Sep 2016

The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis Part Ii: The Physiology Of Consciousness, Shelli R. Joye

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

A physiology of consciousness is elaborated, based upon implications of the Pribram-Bohm hypothesis (developed in Part I of this series). The model presented here is in sharp contrast to the prevailing conviction among neuroscientists that consciousness will eventually be discovered to be a physiological epiphenomenon of neuronal electrical impulses firing in the brain. In contrast, the Pribram-Bohm theory holds that consciousness, inherent in what Bohm views cosmologically as “the Whole,” manifests as a dynamic conscious energy resonance bridging the explicate space-time domain with the nonlocal, transcendent flux domain termed the “implicate order.” Presented in Part I, the Pribram-Bohm hypothesis posits …

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Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Allan Combs Sep 2016

Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Allan Combs

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

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Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Jim Smith Sep 2016

Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Jim Smith

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

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Integral In-Dwelling: A Prepositional Theology Of Religions, Bruce Alderman Sep 2016

Integral In-Dwelling: A Prepositional Theology Of Religions, Bruce Alderman

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

The concept of generalized co-presence is a central one in the gram- mar of Bhaskar’s metaRealist metaphysics. As a term denoting the radical relationality and mutual indwelling of beings in the cosmos, generalized co- presence finds analogues in the holographic principle of Morin’s Complex Thought, Wilber’s nondual inflection of holarchy, as well as multiple religious archetypes of divine interindependence. In this paper, I will explore the potential of this concept for framing a “deep participatory,” Complex Integral Realist model of interreligious relationship that can amplify the integrative potential of the metaRealist, Integral, and participatory approaches to this topic that have …

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Growth And Happiness In The Human Personality, Rien Havens, Allan Combs Sep 2016

Growth And Happiness In The Human Personality, Rien Havens, Allan Combs

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

This paper explores stages and styles of meaning making in a population at Kegan’s (1982) developmental levels 3 through 5. It is a qualitative study of the relationship between adult personality development and how individuals speak about meaning and well-being in their lives. Nineteen participants ranging widely in age and socioeconomic class were selected informally through connections with the researchers, and snowball sampling. They were chosen from an original group of 50, based on informal interviews suggesting that they had achieved Kegan’s developmental levels of “Socialized Mind” (stage 3), or especially “Self-Authoring Mind” (stage 4) or “Self-Transforming Mind” (stage 5). …

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Consciousness: Where We Are At, Imants Barušs Sep 2016

Consciousness: Where We Are At, Imants Barušs

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

It is useful every couple of years to take a bird’s eye view of consciousness studies and reflect on what we see. When I look, I still see two streams, one of which is the social and political framework for the study of consciousness, and the other of which is the substance of what we know about consciousness. The former is still largely defined by the extent to which the scientific study of consciousness has been freed from a materialist agenda. The latter includes recent research into the clarity of cognitive functioning in the absence of sufficient neurological support for …

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Why Consciousness Matters: Insights From A New Generation, Kathleen Noble Sep 2016

Why Consciousness Matters: Insights From A New Generation, Kathleen Noble

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

The University of Washington-Bothell is home to a transdisciplinary and integral minor in consciousness that is the first and only such program at a public research university. This study reports a content analysis of reflection essays submitted by 122 students who completed at least four of the five courses that comprise the minor between 2012 and 2016. Results indicate that students derived significant benefits from this approach to the study of consciousness, including a deep appreciation for the depth and breadth of the mind and the need to release their understanding of consciousness from the constraints of scientific materialism. They …

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Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Stanley Krippner Sep 2016

Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Stanley Krippner

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

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Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Joe Subbiondo Sep 2016

Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Joe Subbiondo

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

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Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Simon Senzon Sep 2016

Commentaries On Deepak Chopra And Menas Kafatos’ Book, “You Are The Universe”; 2017, Harmony Books., Simon Senzon

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

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Evolutionary Continuity Of Personhood, Anne Benvenuti Sep 2016

Evolutionary Continuity Of Personhood, Anne Benvenuti

Animal Sentience

Rowlands applies the two organizing ideas of the Lockean concept of personhood — mental life and unity — to animals as potential persons. Especially valuable in this context is his descriptive phenomenology of pre-reflective self-awareness as a fundamental form of mental life that necessarily entails unity. Rowland describes certain fundamentals of mental experience that exist across species boundaries, challenging assumptions of early modern philosophers regarding the definition of human personhood and affirming the principle of evolutionary continuity. This opens the door to a broader and deeper set of questions, related to whether we should continue to attempt to apply to …

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Darwin’S Empirical Evidence, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone Sep 2016

Darwin’S Empirical Evidence, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Animal Sentience

Darwin’s extensive writings may seem antiquated to current thinkers with their predilections for cognitive science, neuroscience, and analytic branches of philosophy. He showed that morphologies are not simply taxonomic distinctions that allow classification into species. They describe living animals, hence morphologies-in-motion: animate forms of life engaged in synergies of meaningful movement, all of which are testimony to animal sentience.

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Animal Personhood Is An Evolutionary Issue, James E. King Sep 2016

Animal Personhood Is An Evolutionary Issue, James E. King

Animal Sentience

The Rowlands target article makes a case, based on John Locke’s metaphysical argument, that personhood can be applied to many species beyond a few nonhuman primates. The problem with this argument is that personhood has an open-ended list of defining attributes and can, at best only be partially applied to nonhuman species. Therefore, a dichotomous distinction cannot be made between qualifying and non-qualifying species. Instead, between-species comparisons must be based on observational and experimental procedures to demonstrate the extent to which human mental attributes are shared with other species. This would allow a more informed view about the appropriateness of …

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How Could Consciousness Emerge From Adaptive Functioning?, Max Velmans Sep 2016

How Could Consciousness Emerge From Adaptive Functioning?, Max Velmans

Animal Sentience

The sudden appearance of consciousness that Reber posits in creatures with flexible cell walls and motility rather than non-flexible cells walls and no motility involves an evolutionary discontinuity. This kind of “miracle” is required by all “discontinuity” theories of consciousness. To avoid miraculous emergence, one may need to consider continuity theories, which accept that different forms of consciousness and material functioning co-evolve but assume the existence of consciousness to be primal in the way that matter and energy are assumed to be primal in physics.

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“Cellular Basis Of Consciousness”: Not Just Radical But Wrong, Brian Key Sep 2016

“Cellular Basis Of Consciousness”: Not Just Radical But Wrong, Brian Key

Animal Sentience

Reber (2016) attempts to resuscitate an obscure and outdated hypothesis referred to as the “cellular basis of consciousness” that was originally formulated by the author nearly twenty years ago. This hypothesis proposes that any organism with flexible cell walls, a sensitivity to its surrounds, and the capacity for locomotion will possess the biological foundations of mind and consciousness. Reber seeks to reduce consciousness to a fundamental property inherent to individual cells rather than to centralised nervous systems. This commentary shows how this hypothesis is based on supposition, false premises and a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. The cellular basis of consciousness …

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The Person And The Self As Social Accomplishment, Leslie Irvine Sep 2016

The Person And The Self As Social Accomplishment, Leslie Irvine

Animal Sentience

Rowlands (2016) presents a compelling argument for extending personhood to nonhuman animals. Sociological conceptions of the person also do not require that animals meet the elusive standard of self-awareness. Sociological ideas on selfhood support the claims about pre-reflective awareness and extend the requisite experiences to animals.

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The Evolutionary History Of Consciousness, Eirik Søvik, Clint Perry Sep 2016

The Evolutionary History Of Consciousness, Eirik Søvik, Clint Perry

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron argue that insects are capable of subjective experience, i.e., sentience. Whereas we mostly agree with the conclusion of their arguments, we think there is an even more important message to be learned from their work. The line of reasoning opened by Klein & Barron proves instructive for how neuroscientists can and should explore the biological phenomenon of consciousness.

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Beginnings: Physics, Sentience And Luca, Carolyn A. Ristau Sep 2016

Beginnings: Physics, Sentience And Luca, Carolyn A. Ristau

Animal Sentience

According to Reber’s model, Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), sentience had its origins in a unicellular organism and is an inherent property of living, mobile organic forms. He argues by analogy to basic physical forces which he considers to be inherent properties of matter; I suggest that they are instead the stuff of scientific investigation in physics. I find no convincing argument that sentience had to begin in endogenously mobile cells, a criterial attribute of the originator cell(s)for sentience according to CBC. Non-endogenously mobile cells, (i.e., plants or precursors) in a moving environment would suffice. Despite my concerns and the …

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Might Insects Experience Pain?, Robert W. Elwood Sep 2016

Might Insects Experience Pain?, Robert W. Elwood

Animal Sentience

The aim of this commentary is to expand the discussion about subjective experience to other arthropods, notably crustaceans. Various species of crustaceans show responses consistent with their feeling pain. Hermit crabs also show prolonged investigation of new shells. They clearly attend to and integrate information from a wide variety of sources that enable them to evaluate the quality of the new shell relative to their current shell. These observations too are consistent with their having subjective experience.

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Mind/Body “Hard Problem” Is Not A Category Error, Linda A.W. Brakel Sep 2016

Mind/Body “Hard Problem” Is Not A Category Error, Linda A.W. Brakel

Animal Sentience

Reber’s Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) has much to recommend it. However, while the CBC effectively renders null any ontological gap between mind and body, it leaves two important remaining gaps unaddressed: the epistemologic and the causal gap. Brakel’s (2013) Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism (DiCoToP) is briefly introduced as a beginning remedy for the epistemologic, but unfortunately not the causal, gap. Thus the “hard problem” remains both hard and problematic.

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Phenomenal Consciousness In Insects? A Possible Way Forward, Brian Key Sep 2016

Phenomenal Consciousness In Insects? A Possible Way Forward, Brian Key

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron (2016) propose that subjective experience in humans arises in the midbrain and then argue that insects have the capacity for subjective experience because their nervous system can perform neural processing similar to that of the midbrain. This approach ultimately fails because it is built on the false premise that the midbrain is the source of the awareness of sensory stimuli. I instead propose that the capacity for subjective experience must be based on fundamental neural computations that generate the “what it feels like” experience. Two such computations associated with metarepresentations and high level representations entering working memory …

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If Insects Have Phenomenal Consciousness, Could They Suffer?, Elizabeth S. Paul, Michael T. Mendl Aug 2016

If Insects Have Phenomenal Consciousness, Could They Suffer?, Elizabeth S. Paul, Michael T. Mendl

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (K & B’s) suggestion that insects have the capacity for phenomenal consciousness is a refreshing and challenging departure from the cautious and agnostic stance that is taken by many researchers when considering this possibility. It is impossible to falsify the sceptic’s view that neural and behavioural parallels between humans and insects need not imply either similar conscious experience or even any phenomenal consciousness in insects at all. But if K & B are right, it is important to consider the possible contents of insect consciousness. Here we discuss whether affective consciousness, with its implications for potential suffering, …

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Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo Aug 2016

Subjective Experience In Insects: Definitions And Other Difficulties, Shelley Adamo

Animal Sentience

Whether insects have the potential for subjective experiences depends on the definition of subjective experience. The definition used by Klein & Barron (2016) is an unusually liberal one and could be used to argue that some modern robots have subjective experiences. From an evolutionary perspective, the additional neurons needed to produce subjective experiences will be proportionately more expensive for insects than for mammals because of the small size of the insect brain. This greater cost could weaken selection for such traits. Minimally, it may be premature to assume that small neuronal number is unimportant in determining the capacity for consciousness.

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Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff Aug 2016

Bacteria And The Cellular Basis Of Consciousness, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

According to Reber’s theory, the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC), sentience originates as bio-sensitivity in unicellular organisms. For this reason, Reber regards sentience as evolutionarily foundational. Many bacteria show chemotaxis and, thus, according to CBC, they are sentient. Analysis of the genetic mechanisms underlying bacterial chemotaxis indicates that sentience has no explanatory power in this case. Genetic analysis also fails to show species continuity underlying bio-sensitivity in bacteria and bio-sensitivity in species with nervous systems, so it does not seem that sentience is evolutionary foundational. CBC is rejected on these grounds.

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Unity Of Consciousness In Animals, Bernard E. Rollin Aug 2016

Unity Of Consciousness In Animals, Bernard E. Rollin

Animal Sentience

Both Descartes the rationalist and Hume the empiricist, polar opposites philosophically, denied the unity and continuity of animal mind. Kant pointed out that the presence of retrievable memories entails unity of consciousness. Rowlands now argues that animals too have unity of consciousness.

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To Bee Or Not To Bee?, Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete Aug 2016

To Bee Or Not To Bee?, Shimon Edelman, Roy Moyal, Tomer Fekete

Animal Sentience

Klein & Barron’s (2016) (K & B’s) case for insect consciousness is a welcome development in an area that, in all of the science and philosophy of mind, is probably the most anthropocentric. In this commentary, we seek to strengthen K & B’s side of the argument by appealing not just to putative neural mechanisms but also to computational theory that supports it (section 1). We also offer some remarks on three distinctions that are relevant to K & B’s thesis and are central to phenomenal awareness: between the capacity for awareness and its contents (section 2); between …

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What Makes Us Conscious Is Not What Makes Us Human, Ezequiel Morsella, Erica B. Walker Aug 2016

What Makes Us Conscious Is Not What Makes Us Human, Ezequiel Morsella, Erica B. Walker

Animal Sentience

Consistent with the promising proposal of Klein & Barron (K & B), we discuss how what makes us conscious appears to be distinct from and more widespread in the animal kingdom than what distinguishes us from other species. Many of the abilities that do distinguish humans from other species (e.g., syntax and co-articulation in speech production) can be mediated unconsciously. The kind of functional architecture proposed by K & B may engender an “action selection bottleneck” in both humans and nonhuman species. As noted by K & B, this bottleneck is intimately related to conscious processing.

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Insect Consciousness: Fine-Tuning The Hypothesis, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg Aug 2016

Insect Consciousness: Fine-Tuning The Hypothesis, Jon Mallatt, Todd E. Feinberg

Animal Sentience

Although we are mostly supportive, we point out the strengths and weaknesses of Klein & Barron’s (2016) hypothesis that insects have the most basic form of consciousness. The strengths are in their application of Bjorn Merker’s vertebrate-derived ideas to arthropods, using their deep knowledge of insect brains. The weaknesses involve the controversial aspects of some of Merker’s ideas. We describe how the latter can be modified to strengthen the authors’ case for insect consciousness.

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Feel Or Perspective?, Mark Rowlands Aug 2016

Feel Or Perspective?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

The title of Klein & Barron’s well-argued and thought-provoking target article is, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience.” However, they also frame their claim using the term “consciousness,” which they seem to take as equivalent to “subjective experience.” This assumed equivalence, I shall argue, is problematic in a way that might vitiate their central argument.

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