Mark Crooks’ article offers a new paradigm for exploration: namely, that many instances in the transcultural phenomenon of spirit possession reflect the activity of genuine and harmful spirits. Although subsequent research may refine a number of points, the activity of genuine spirits reflects the most common indigenous explanation and makes sense of a significant part of the data that is more difficult to explain on some other academic paradigms. Indigenous explanations do not always view all spirits as harmful, but they usually treat many spirits as harmful, and a case can be made that this is true of much other spirit activity as well. Crooks’ explanatory model brings coherence to many points of data less well served by some competing models, and thus merits continuing exploration.
Do we believe we exist? By this mean to ask about the belief that we would each express by saying I In this sense, you believe you exist, and the Queen believes that she exists. Why think that ordinary human beings (rather than philosophers, who may be anomalous), believe they exist? Some might say that the belief that we exist is a fundamental belief that we all have if we have any beliefs. Others might say that ascribing such a belief to ordinary folk is ascribing too much sophistication. shall argue that we do all believe that we exist. This belief is rarely at the forefront of our consciousness. It is a background or belief. But it is a belief nonetheless.The question of self-belief - of whether or we believe we exist - is intrinsically interesting. However, one might also have ulterior motives for addressing it. One ulterior motive might be that showing that we believe we exist is part of showing that we know we exist. The question of whether we believe we exist is less familiar than the question of whether we know we exist, even though the latter presupposes the former. But if the latter is important, so is the former. Knowing we exist depends in part on believing we exist (Zangwill, 2013b). So the issue of whether we believe we exist is philosophically important. Furthermore, if, in showing that we believe we exist we posit a connection between existing and believing we exist, then that could be part of an explanation of how we know we exist, and it would cast light on what is distinctive about the way we know we exist.1As we shall see, it turns out that this question - of whether human beings believe of themselves that they exist - raises interesting general issues about propositional attitudes. It raises the issue of how beliefs differ from other propositional attitudes. It raises issues about the contents of perceptual experiences and intentions. And it raises issues about the normative properties of beliefs, and the active power of the mind. In particular, shall argue that it is only when we consider normativity that we can make progress with the question of whether we believe we exist.In the first section of this paper pursue perhaps the most natural line of thought, which is to appeal to our beliefs about perceptions and actions as the source of our belief in our existence. This does succeed. In the second section pursue an appeal to the normative properties of the belief that exist, which does better but still falls short. The third section introduces the idea of agent causation and argues that given normative properties constitutive of agency, we must believe that we exist.Perceptual and Action Beliefs and Tacitly Believing We ExistExisting Without Believing One DoesMany belief ascriptions are controversial. When we are thinking about it, do we believe that the earth has existed in the last five minutes? Do we, when thinking about it, believe that there are elephants in the room? Do we, when thinking about it, have beliefs about what our names are? Do we, when thinking about it, believe that p and not-p cannot both be true? On the one hand, we want to say yes insofar as these things are obvious presuppositions of many other things that we believe. On the other hand, we want to say no or not sure because it is clear that these assumptions and presuppositions have psychological reality. Most people are consciously aware of having such beliefs, and it seems over-intellectualizing to ascribe such beliefs to ordinary people. will argue that the belief that exist does have psychological reality.One implausible idea is that having any propositional attitude necessarily generates a tacit belief that we exist. (I focus on propositional attitudes among other intentional states, because the belief that exist is a propositional attitude.) A tacit belief is one we are consciously aware of; nevertheless, it is a psychological state, a mere disposition to have a psychological state. …
The human brain processes a wide variety of inputs and does so either consciously or subconsciously. According to the Global Workspace theory, conscious processing involves broadcasting of information to several regions of the brain and subconscious processing involves more localized processing. This theoretical paper aims to expand on some of the aspects of the Global Workspace theory: how the properties of incoming information result in it being processed subconsciously or consciously; why processing can be either be sustained or short-lived; how the Global Workspace theory may apply both to real-time sensory input as well as to internally retained information. This paper proposes that: familiar input which does not elicit intense emotions becomes processed subconsciously and such processing can be continuous and sustained; input that elicits relatively intense emotions is subjected to highly sustainable conscious processing; input can also undergo meta-conscious processing. Such processing is not very sustainable but can exert control over other cognitive processes. This paper also discusses possible benefits of regulating cognitive processes this way.
In this paper, I will show that certain phenomenological considerations support a non-representational causal account of visual experience.1 This is a position in the philosophy of mind that claims that visual experience serves as a non-representational causally efficacious medium for the production of beliefs concerning the external world. So, it challenges both what Brewer (2006) calls the content view, which is the popular philosophical position that claims that visual experience is constituted by representational contents, as well as less fashionable alternatives such as naive realist (disjunctivist), sense-data, and adverbialist accounts. My aim is not to argue directly against any of these positions, but rather to present a non-representational causal account as another position worth taking seriously.In what follows, when I talk of a perceptual experience's cognitive significance, I will be referring solely to the role it plays in external world belief formation and sustenance, rather than in helping to render some external world beliefs justified and/or reasonable. That perceptual experience has the former role is fairly uncontroversial. For example, at the moment you have various (dispositional) beliefs about your surroundings, and it seems plausible to say that your current perceptual experiences play a crucial role in causing and sustaining those beliefs. A non-representational causal account understands this (roughly) as follows: in veridical cases, a non-representationally constituted internal mental state helps to produce a (reliably) true belief; whereas in non-veridical cases it obviously does not.As a way of framing my task, let me mention and then somewhat abruptly set aside two possible objections. First, throughout this paper I will be unapologetically assuming the existence of reflectively accessible mental states as constituents of both veridical and hallucinatory experiences. That such states exist has famously come under repeated attack (making my assumption here the source of one objection). However, rightly or wrongly, the philosophical debate between content theorists, naive realists (disjunctivists), sense-data theorists, adverbialists, etc., presupposes the existence of such states: the disagreement between them surrounds their status in hallucinatory cases, and/or the extent to which a proposed account of them in hallucinatory cases can be extended to the mental states involved in veridical cases. The purpose of this paper is to present a non-representational causal account as another horse in that particular race, so I will not here question the existence of such states. This may turn out to be a problematic theoretical commitment (see footnote 1 above); but given my aim, it is a necessary one.Next, even if they do exist, it might appear prima facie problematic to posit such mental states as a non-representational causal intermediary involved in belief-formation, at least if we are also to grant that perceptual experiences play some role in justifying external world beliefs. Natural causes aren't reasons, after all, and in what follows I will only speak of experiences as causes. However, for one thing, though I can't defend the claim here, I agree with Shaun Gallagher that: To have a belief is not to have an all-or-nothing mental representation, but to have some more-or-less-complete set of dispositions to act and to experience in certain ways (2005, p. 214). So, in my view, what it means to say that a belief is an intentional entity is, at best, far from clear. If nothing else, this muddles the issue: What exactly is the problem here for a non-representational account supposed to be? And even if we ignore issues surrounding how to understand the intentionality of beliefs, it is also crucial to note that there is no current consensus in the philosophical literature regarding how to understand justification, generally speaking. This matters here because the stand one takes on, say, the internalist vs. …
Consciousness is a term that is to define. In the simplest sense, it pertains to the subjective state of sentience or awareness that accompanies us throughout the day whenever we are awake and performing our daily tasks (Searle, 1992, 1993). At a higher or more intricate level, it is an essential mental phenomenon that applies to both humans and the vast majority of living creatures, creating a platform for the emergence of higher mental faculties like attention, perception, cognition, and memory. Every day we experience multitudes of perceptual sensations, subjective feelings, and streams of thoughts such as hearing the ringing of our alarm clocks, realizing the urgency to get up to go to work, deliberating about the tasks that await us, etc. How the brain makes sense of all these different experiences and bind them into a unified conscious state based on physical/ neural processes has been designated as the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995). Complementing this hard problem are the of consciousness, which aim at explaining the dynamics of consciousness by investigating the physical, functional, and/or computational properties of the brain (Baars, 1988; see Chalmers, 1995, for a list of mental phenomena [e.g., responding to stimuli, attention, verbal report, motor control] that are subsumed under such easy problems).In the domain of neuroscience, many researchers have sought to study consciousness in relation to neural and brain-related processes. The primary focus has been on the easy problems of consciousness, as represented by a search for the neural correlates of consciousness (Crick and Koch, 1998) and establishing a biological framework for visual consciousness (Crick and Koch, 2003). Partly due to the dearth of scientific techniques that could unambiguously reveal the phenomenal aspect of consciousness (i.e., what it subjectively feels like to have an organized or integrated experience of reality [Chalmers, 1995; Nagel, 1974; Searle, 1992]), extant neuroscientific studies showed that the relationship between our conscious decisions and neurophysiological activities is tenuous and susceptible to different interpretations.1 Keeping these issues in mind, this paper highlights the neuroimaging studies that commenced with the experiments of Benjamin Libet and his colleagues in the 1980s, the criticisms directed against Libet's methods, and the ensuing Libet-type experiments that were done after certain modifications to the original paradigm. By detailing the seminal neuroimaging studies that documented the neural precursors of motor acts, this paper aims to present a historical overview of the Libet-type experiments, and the implications of their findings for understanding conscious decisions and acts. It is vital to note that the study of consciousness via the Libet-type experiments adhered to the philosophical notion of access consciousness (Block, 1995), which considers any organism to be conscious as long as it can convert sensory or perceptual information into use for guiding decisions and behaviors. Consequently, there has been a lack of insight into what these experiments mean with respect to the phenomenal aspect of consciousness, and hence this paper proposes some ideas for how the neural precursors of motor acts can be interpreted with regard to some representative constructs of awareness.2The neuroscience techniques used in the studies reviewed pertain to the non-invasive techniques of electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic neuroimaging (fMRI), as well as to the invasive technique of microelectrode recording. In combination, these techniques greatly facilitated the discovery of pre-movement neuronal activity and engendered new questions about how this type of activity should be interpreted with regard to the plausible contents and stages of awareness.Libet et al.'s ExperimentsThe seminal studies that investigated the cortical mechanisms of motor acts in humans were performed by Benjamin Libet and his colleagues in the early 1980s at the medical school of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) [Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl, 1983; Libet, Wright, and Gleason, 1982]. …
Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., “A rewards B, then B rewards A”) but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure “A observes B help C, therefore A helps B.” Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that “B helped C”). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups.
Minds are characterized by their intelligence, which is their problem-solving ability, and by their consciousness, which is their privately experienced inner life of perceptions, emotions, and thoughts (this is lost in dreamless sleep). Consciousness has qualities (qualia) like pain and fear. Consciousness is private in that we cannot access each other s experiences. Consciousness also has unity, for example, the myriad shapes and colors in a visual image (and associated emotions and thoughts) are experienced as a unified whole. Consciousness also has causal characteristics, for example, it arises from brains and may affect brains.For nearly a century, various neuroscientists have seated minds in neuroelectrical activity, primarily in electromagnetic (EM) fields. These EM fields arise mainly from electrical impulses in neurons that travel down axons via their membrane channels, then initiate synaptic signals to other neurons. The electrical impulses usually occur in bursts, causing oscillations whose frequencies are reflected in the fields. These fields resemble mental activity, for example, sensory images arguably arise from discrete neurons in field-like ways as unified wholes spread intangibly across space (Libet, 1993).These neuroelectrical (or field) theories of mind have withstood various criticisms. For example, critics tried to falsify them by showing that animals can do visual tasks such as running mazes even after the cortical fields that create visual images are blocked. But, as later realized, maze learning involves many complex sensori-motor abilities. So, deprived of one ability, animals can learn mazes with other abilities. So the criticism is flawed. Field theorists also faced challenges in explaining, for example, why minds are not affected by fields outside brains, what keeps minds apart, whether just EM fields are conscious, and our various qualia and images arise. However, they now offer various well-developed replies to these challenges (Jones, 2013).Field theories have proliferated because they draw on considerable experimental evidence and offer ways of avoiding neuroscience's problems in explaining minds. One such is the binding (or unity) of how we achieve the experience of a coherent world of integrated objects, and avoid seeing a world of disembodied or wrongly combined shapes, colors, motions, sizes, and distances (Treisman, 1998, p. 1295). Similarly, for Singer (2007, p. 1657), the binding involves how the computations occurring simultaneously in spatially segregated processing areas are coordinated and bound together to give rise to coherent percepts and actions. The binding further concerns perception binds with thought to form an overall, unified experience.Most neuroscientists attribute perceptual binding to synchronized firing by neurons, hierarchical convergence of neurons, or focal attention. But each raises issues. Field theories may help here. In doing so, they may align with Tononi's predictions of when consciousness appears in brains.Finding a viable binding mechanism is part of the so-called problem of which neural processes (e.g., synchronized firing) correlate with consciousness (Chalmers, 1996). But the binding problem, as just characterized, also involves the problem of just neural processes such as synchrony can actually yield conscious percepts. This hard raises perennial issues of dualism, reductionism, emergentism, panpsychism, etc. For example, does consciousness pop into existence fully formed? Or does it emerge by uniting simple conscious elements? Field theories may help with this too, if allied with (for example) recent Russellian theories of mind. The claim here is not that hard and easy problems are readily separable in practice, but just that they raise different issues that need to be addressed in separate ways.Easy Binding ProblemsCurrent ProblemsOne theory of neural binding is based on synchrony. …
