Quentin Ruyant posted this article on the possible relevance of quantum mechanics to a philosophy of mind and consciousness. While he seems convinced (as are many neuroscientists and philosophers) that QM is not scientifically relevant to a philosophy of mind, he allows that there may be some metaphysical reasons to examine a possible connection. Posted … Read more
Is consciousness some ineffable force that can never be understood by science, or is it completely within our ability to one day understand and perhaps even replicate? Paller and Suzuki argue in a new paper that we need more and better research, but that an understanding of consciousness is fully within our reach. Unfortunately, the … Read more
From Nautilus, Kelly Clancy takes a look at the increasing evidence for chaos in the brain and nervous system. The nervous system is literally overwhelmed by incoming sensory data, so much so that much of it never makes it into consciousness. On the other hand, the brain stem and its adjacent structures, a collection of … Read more
Thomas Roberts is the author of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens Are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values (2013) and Psychedelic Horizons (2006), among other works. The paper below is posted at Academia.edu – it looks at re-visioning our understanding of consciousness from a singlestate model to a multistate model. As … Read more
From Upaya Zen Center, this is an 8-part series of podcasts featuring B Alan Wallace, one of the foremost scholars of Tibetan Buddhism. The series of talks is focused on the meditative practice of “settling the mind in its natural state,” which is foundational for both the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. … Read more
Halfway through the year, almost, and there have already been some seriously good books published that will appear on a lot of top-ten lists in December. Some of those books are below, but there also a lot of books below no one will have heard of about side of their respective fields, books from academic … Read more
Dissociation, derealization, and depersonalization have always been a coping mechanisms the human brain can employ when reality is too intolerable. Occasionally, this can result in the experience of seeing one’s double, or doppleganger. But what happens when it’s not part of mental illness, and not organic (often the insular cortex)? Can the experience of an … Read more
A long and interesting interview with Steven Pinker from the Harvard Gazette. Pinker is the author of a lot of really, really thick books, including The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2012), The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (2007), The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human … Read more
Buddhism, Mind, and Cognitive Science Conference, April 25-26, 2014, UC Berkeley This conference is dedicated to the exploration of the methodological underpinnings of the current encounter between Buddhism and cognitive science. Among the presenters and panelists are: Dan Arnold (Philosophy of Religion, University of Chicago) Lawrence Barsalou (Psychology, Emory University) Christian Coseru (Philosophy, College of … Read more
This is an interesting article on the occurrence of auditory hallucinations in psychosis/schizophrenia. It comes from the open access journal, Frontiers in Psychiatry: Schizophrenia. Later today or tomorrow I will post a commentary on this article, which is also quite interesting (if you care at all about this kind of stuff). A LOT of people … Read more