Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Locke, Judgment, And Figure: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Anthós

John Locke has been famously credited with resurrecting the distinction between common and proper sensibles, better known in the Essay as primary and secondary qualities. Although some argue that Locke’s adherence to the doctrine of the common sensibles is in conflict with his empiricist sensibilities, I will show this is not likely to be the case. In order to achieve this I will argue that Locke held there to be cross-modal connections in the mind for the representational content of ideas of primary quality, through the relation of resemblance, but that these representations need to be empirically verified to …

How Does “Collaboration” Occur At All? Remarks On Epistemological Issues Related To Understanding / Working With ‘The Other’, Don Faust, Judith Puncochar

Conference Presentations

Collaboration, if to occur successfully at all, needs to be based on careful representation and communication of each stakeholder’s knowledge. In this paper, we investigate, from a foundational logical and epistemological point of view, how such representation and communication can be accomplished. What we tentatively conclude, based on a careful delineation of the logical technicalities necessarily involved in such representation and communication, is that a complete representation is not possible. This inference, if correct, is of course rather discouraging with regard to what we can hope to achieve in the knowledge representations that we bring to our collaborations. We suggest …

Locke, Figure, And Judgement: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Student Research Symposium

Ever since the early modern period the Molyneux Problem has been a topic of debate both in the philosophy of perception and the psychology of perception. The problem centers on whether the senses share representational content between one another, or does each sense modality have its own stock of representational content that becomes associated with the others after some habituation. For example, if you knew a shape only by touch, could you identify that shape when seeing it for the first time without being allowed to touch the object? Typically, rationalists have held to the former claiming yes, while empiricists …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

How To Go Beyond The Body: An Introduction, Guy Dove

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Embodied cognition represents one of most important theoretical developments in contemporary cognitive science. Many cognitive processes appear to be influenced by body morphology, emotions, and sensorimotor systems. This perspective is supported by an ever increasing collection of empirical studies that fall into two broad classes: one consisting of experiments that implicate action, emotion, and perception systems in seemingly abstract cognitive tasks and the other consisting of experiments that demonstrate the contribution of bodily interaction with the external environment to the performance of such tasks.

Now that embodied cognition is fairly well established, the time seems right for assessing its further …

Reducing Subjectivity: Meditation And Implicit Bias, Diana M. Ciuca

CMC Senior Theses

Implicit association of racial stereotypes is brought about by social conditioning (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This conditioning can be explained by attractor networks (Sharp, 2011). Reducing implicit bias through meditation can show the effectiveness of reducing the rigidity of attractor networks, thereby reducing subjectivity. Mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce bias from the use of one single guided session conducted before performing an Implicit Association Test (Lueke & Gibson, 2015). Attachment to socially conditioned racial bias should become less prevalent through practicing meditation over time. An experimental model is proposed to test this claim along with a reconceptualization of consciousness …

Schrödinger And Nietzsche And Life: Eternal Recurrence And The Conscious Now, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The phenomenological question of consciousness usually associated with Husserl (although there are echoes of this in Augustine as in Marcus Aurelius, Kant and Schopenhauer), is the consciousness of the now, the present moment. I explore this consciousness for Erwin Schrödinger, which for him included reference to the Upaniṣads together with Nietzsche’s central teaching or “thinking” of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Quality-Space Theory In Olfaction, Benjamin D. Young, Andreas Keller, David Rosenthal

Publications and Research

Quality-space theory (QST) explains the nature of the mental qualities distinctive of perceptual states by appeal to their role in perceiving. QST is typically described in terms of the mental qualities that pertain to color. Here we apply QST to the olfactory modalities. Olfaction is in various respects more complex than vision, and so provides a useful test case for QST. To determine whether QST can deal with the challenges olfaction presents, we show how a quality space (QS) could be constructed relying on olfactory perceptible properties and the olfactory mental qualities then defined by appeal to that QS of …

A Heart-Based Sufi Mindfulness Spiritual Practice Employing Self-Journeying, Faruk Arslan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Spiritual Psychology is the study and practice of the art and science of the human evolution of consciousness. The heart occupies an important place in Sufism and is considered to contain the divine spark that leads to spiritual realization. Fethullah Gülen’s action-oriented Sufi methods described in his book series “The Emerald Hills of the Heart” provides the basis for a heart-based therapeutic intervention through self-journeying, which is the objective of this thesis. These self-purification and mindfulness-related transpersonal methods generate a form of treatment that is culturally sensitive. Through my reflections in this research, I transformed my personal experiences into …

Can Enlightenment Be Traced To Specific Neural Correlates, Cognition, Or Behavior? No, And (A Qualified) Yes, Jake H. Davis, David R. Vago

Publications and Research

The field of contemplative science is rapidly growing and integrating into the basic neurosciences, psychology, clinical sciences, and society-at-large. Yet the majority of current research in the contemplative sciences has been divorced from the soteriological context from which these meditative practices originate and has focused instead on clinical applications with goals of stress reduction and psychotherapeutic health. In the existing research on health outcomes of mindfulness-based clinical interventions, for example, there have been almost no attempts to scientifically investigate the goal of enlightenment. This is a serious oversight, given that such profound transformation across ethical, perceptual, emotional, and cognitive domains …

Ethical Decision Making And Leadership: Merging Social Role And Self-Construal Perspectives, Crystal L. Hoyt, Terry L. Price

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This research extends our understanding of ethical decision making on the part of leaders by merging social role and self-construal perspectives. Interdependent self-construal is generally seen as enhancing concern for justice and moral values. Across two studies we tested the prediction that non-leading group members’ interdependent self-construal would be associated with lower levels of unethical decision making on behalf of their group but that, in contrast, this relationship would be weaker for leaders, given their social role. These predictions were experimentally tested by assigning participants to the role of leader or non-leading group member and assessing the association between their …

The Effect Of Spiritualism On The Cognitive Functions On Learning And Memory, Carla Antonieta Farcello

McNair Poster Presentations

Last summer I conducted a pilot study which researched whether better working memory would be documented among an experimental group (individuals who report being spiritual) as compared to the control group (individuals who report being non-spiritual).Total scores showed a significantly higher sense of spiritualism among the spiritual participants vs. the non spiritual participants (p < .001) along with a significant improvement in working memory for spiritual participants vs. non spiritual participants (p = .027). The results of this study documented significantly better performance on a task measuring emotional learning and memory among individuals who reported being spiritual as opposed to individuals who reported being non-spiritual. These findings build on prior studies suggesting the effect of positive emotions on broadening cognitive processes (Strauss & Allen, 2003).

My current study is building on what my prior findings have suggested and studies the effect of spiritualism on the cognitive functions of learning and memory. In addition to the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES) used in the pilot study, I am including the Spirituality Index …

On The Need For Embodied And Dis-Embodied Cognition, Guy Dove

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This essay proposes and defends a pluralistic theory of conceptual embodiment. Our concepts are represented in at least two ways: (i) through sensorimotor simulations of our interactions with objects and events and (ii) through sensorimotor simulations of natural language processing. Linguistic representations are “dis-embodied” in the sense that they are dynamic and multimodal but, in contrast to other forms of embodied cognition, do not inherit semantic content from this embodiment. The capacity to store information in the associations and inferential relationships among linguistic representations extends our cognitive reach and provides an explanation of our ability to abstract and generalize. This …

A Theory Of Mental Credit, Jason Soll

CMC Senior Theses

Many philosophical subjects attempt to analyze the basis of human welfare. Theories of desert, distribution of property, and happiness tend to dominate philosophical discourse. Mental credit, which is the mental acquisition of credit for one’s accomplishments and the satisfaction one derives from this credit, is absent from this discourse despite its underlying role in the way people think about their lives. Mental credit is an eternal cognitive good that deserves thoughtful attention and pious decisions for implementation. The following theory of mental credit seeks to serve as a unifying theory for the mental calculations that guide life’s most imperative decisions, …

Memory And True Lies, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the concept of memory, its relation to culture, and three hypothetical phenomena associated with it.

Explorations Of Self: A Philosophical Inquiry, Meredith Rathbun

Senior Honors Projects

Asking “Who am I?” seems to be something that everybody ponders. This concept of “I”—what is it? We all have an individual and unique “I”—something that has been with each of us since birth, something that has changed and grown, but also stayed the same in many ways. My question “What is The Self?” is imperative. What is it that experiences life, if not The Self? When a 99-year-old man watches his last sunset, reflecting on his life, what inside of him is doing that reflecting? As you read my ideas on this page, what inside of you is processing …

To See More Clearly And Broadly: Science And The Postmodern Sentiment, C. Jason Smith, Robert Froemke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

What we call postmodernism, whether we refer to the sciences or the humanities, is a certain preoccupation with the role of the human observer in the composition and perception -- perhaps even construction -- of reality. The postmodern condition, so to speak, is the moment in history when the hard sciences and the sciences of man seem to be suffering from the same anxieties about the relevance of the self-reflexive interaction between the observer and the subject to the fabric of existence and the web of knowledge. In simplest terms, we would define the postmodern question as this: …

Of Parts And Wholes: Self-Similarity And Synecdoche In Science, Culture And Literature, Dirk Vanderbeke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

The discussion here centers on how self-similarity, or parts resembling a whole, has been a recurring aspect in the most diverse fields of human thinking from antiquity to the present. Primary examples are drawn from physics, biology, cybernetics, alchemy, philosophy, myth and, of course, language and literature. The author argues that self-similar patterns are one of the persistent ways in which the human mind structures its experience and knowledge of the world, and then examines some of the questions that arise when an almost ubiquitous concept, structure or linguistic and literary phenomenon resurfaces in a new guise in …

Trends. Honest Broker As Broken Concept: A Middle East Example, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes the psychological and practical difficulties of being an honest broker of peace between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.

Trends. Rat Psychology During The United States Presidential Election, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article examines the ethics of the alleged use of subliminal perception - the word"Rats" superimposed on an attack on Vice President Gore's health care plans - by representatives of the Bush campaign in the 2000 presidential election.

The Moral Dilemma In The Social Management Of Risks, Andrew F. Fritzsche

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Dr. Fritzsche offers data seen as demonstrating that irrational fears can lead to grotesque imbalances in social efforts devoted to preventing fatalities.

Reply To Valverde, Paul B. Thompson

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Professor Thompson responds to Valverde's argument, in the last issue, that his approach to Risk puts too much emphasis on the distinction between Risk subjectivism and Risk objectivism. In doing so, he asserts, inter alia, that anchoring Risk judgments in a probabilistic framework does not go far enough in rejecting reigning Risk-analysis notions of "real Risk."

Scientific Method, Anti-Foundationalism, And Public Decision-Making, Kristin Shrader-Frechette

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

An examination of the legitimacy of attacks on lay assessments of environmental or other technological Risk. The case is made that rational policy requires an epistemology in which what we believe about Risk is bootstrapped onto how we should act concerning Risk.

Psyche And Time: The Phenomenology Of Time Consciousness, Sharon Fleet Hartman

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Time in its inward form may be able to provide a significance which sustains the human spirit. If this is true, it becomes unnecessary to seek an enduring significance for life in the transcendent.

Western man's attitudes toward time are a composite of religious, historical, and cultural assumptions. The Christian model of time supported man by its emphasis on God's interventions in the world. The scientific model of time left man adrift in an objective world. The ascendancy of the scientific model brought a devaluation of both time and human life.

Bergson, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty all describe a type of …