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Stream Of Consciousness (psychology)
The metaphor "stream of consciousness" suggests how thoughts seem to flow through the conscious mind. Research studies have shown that humans only experience one mental event at a time, as a fast-moving ''mind-stream''. The full range of thoughts one can be aware of forms the content of this "stream". The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855, when he wrote in '' The Senses and the Intellect'', "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness (on the same cerebral highway) enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense". But the man who popularized it is commonly credited instead: William James, often considered the father of American psychology, used it in 1890 in '' The Principles of Psychology.'' Buddhism Early Buddhist scriptures describe the "stream of consciousness" (Pali; ''viññāna-sota'') where it is referred to as the Mindstream. The practice of mindfulness, which is about being aware m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thought
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included. These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs, unlike perception. But when understood in the widest sense, any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking, including perception and unconscious mental processes. In a slightly different sense, the term ''thought'' refers not to the mental processes themselves but to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes. Various theories of thinking have been proposed, some of which aim to capture the characteristic features of thought. '' Platonists'' hold that thinking consists in discerning and inspecting Platonic forms and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Principle Of Sufficient Reason
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a Reason (argument), reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhauer and Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, William Hamilton. History The modern formulation of the principle is usually ascribed to the early Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gottfried Leibniz, who formulated it, but was not its originator.See chapter on Leibniz and Spinoza in A. O. Lovejoy, ''The Great Chain of Being''. The idea was conceived of and utilized by various philosophers who preceded him, including Anaximander, Parmenides, Archimedes, Plato, Aristotle,Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, Hamilton 1860:66. Cicero, Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, and Baruch Spinoza. One often pointed to is in Anselm of Canterbury: his phrase ''quia Deus nihil sine ratione facit'' (because God d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derek Parfit
Derek Antony Parfit (; 11 December 1942 – 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Parfit rose to prominence in 1971 with the publication of his first paper, "Personal Identity". His first book, ''Reasons and Persons'' (1984), has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s. His second book, ''On What Matters'' (2011), was widely circulated and discussed for many years before its publication. For his entire academic career, Parfit worked at Oxford University, where he was an Emeritus Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, All Souls College at the time of his death. He was also a visiting professor of philosophy at Harvard University, New York University, and Rutgers University. He was awarded the 2014 Rolf Schock Prizes, Rolf Schock Prize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anattā
In Buddhism, the term ''anattā'' () or ''anātman'' () is the doctrine of "no-self" – that no unchanging, permanent self or essence can be found in any phenomenon. While often interpreted as a doctrine denying the existence of a self, ''anatman'' is more accurately described as a strategy to attain non-attachment by recognizing everything as impermanent, while staying silent on the ultimate existence of an unchanging essence. In contrast, dominant schools of Hinduism assert the existence of Ātman as pure awareness or witness-consciousness, "reify ngconsciousness as an eternal self". Etymology and nomenclature ''Anattā'' is a composite Pali word consisting of ''an'' (not) and ''attā'' (self-existent essence). The term refers to the central Buddhist concept that there is no phenomenon that has a permanent, unchanging "self" or essence. It is one of the three characteristics of all existence, together with '' dukkha'' (suffering, dissatisfaction) and '' anicca'' (imperm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Individualism
Open individualism is a view within the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times; in the past, present and future. It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with "Empty individualism", which is the view that one's personal identity corresponds to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and "Closed individualism", the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time. History The term was coined by Croatian-American philosopher Daniel Kolak, though this view has been described at least since the time of the Upanishads, in the late Bronze Age; the phrase " Tat tvam asi" meaning "You are that" is an example. Others who have expressed similar views (in various forms) include the philosophers Averroes, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Arnold Zuboff, mystic Meher Baba, stand-up comedian Bil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Kolak
Daniel Kolak (born 1955 in Zagreb, SR Croatia) is a Croatian-American philosopher who works primarily in philosophy of mind, personal identity, cognitive science, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. He is professor of philosophy at the William Paterson University of New Jersey and an Affiliate of the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS). Kolak is the founder of the philosophical therapy known as cognitive dynamics. Biography Kolak is a prolific philosopher, who has written more than thirty-five books and edited nearly two hundred. He is professor of philosophy at the William Paterson University of New Jersey (WPUNJ), where he chaired the Philosophy Department and founded and directed thWPUNJ cognitive science laboratory He also directs research at the Brain Behavior Center and is an affiliate of Rutgers University'Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS) Kolak's numerous articles, stories, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avshalom Elitzur
Avshalom Cyrus Elitzur (; born 30 May 1957), is an Iranian-born Israeli physicist and philosopher. Biography Avshalom Elitzur was born in Kerman, Iran, to a Jewish family. When he was two years old, his family immigrated to Israel and settled in Rehovot. He left school at the age of sixteen and began working as a laboratory technician at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Elitzur received no formal university training before obtaining his PhD. Elitzur had a relationship with journalist Timura Lessinger, with whom he has a daughter. Academic career Elitzur was a senior lecturer at the Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He is noted for the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester experiment in quantum mechanics, which was publicised by Roger Penrose in his book '' Shadows of the Mind''. In 1987, he published ''Into the Holy of Holies: Psychoanalytic Insights into the Bible and Judaism''. That year, he was invited to present an unpublish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard Problem Of Consciousness
In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience. It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining why and how physical systems give a human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioural functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth. The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioural—since each physical system can be explained purely by reference to the "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon. Proponents of the hard problem propose that it is categorically different from the easy problems since no mechanistic or behavioural explanation could explain the character of an experience, not even in principle. Even after all the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susan Blackmore
Susan Jane Blackmore (born 29 July 1951) is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth. Her fields of research include memetics, parapsychology, consciousness, and she is best known for her book '' The Meme Machine''. She has written or contributed to over 40 books and 60 scholarly articles and is a contributor to ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Career In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St Hilda's College, Oxford, with a BA (Hons) degree in psychology and physiology. She received an MSc in environmental psychology in 1974 from the University of Surrey. In 1980, she earned a PhD in parapsychology from the same university; her doctoral thesis was titled "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process." In the 1980s, Blackmore conducted psychokinesis experiments to see if her baby daughter, Emily, could influence a random number generator. The experiments were mentioned in the book to accompany the TV series '' Arthur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global Workspace Theory
Global workspace theory (GWT) is a framework for thinking about consciousness introduced in 1988, by cognitive scientist Bernard Baars. It was developed to qualitatively explain a large set of matched pairs of conscious and unconscious processes. GWT has been influential in modeling consciousness and higher-order cognition as emerging from competition and integrated flows of information across widespread, parallel neural processes. Bernard Baars derived inspiration for the theory as the cognitive analog of the blackboard system of early artificial intelligence system architectures, where independent programs shared information. Global workspace theory is one of the leading theories of consciousness. While aspects of GWT are matters of debate, it remains a focus of current research, including brain interpretations and computational simulations. Theater metaphor GWT uses the metaphor of a theater (structure), theater, with conscious thought being like material illuminated on t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Baars
Bernard J. Baars (born 1946 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, US. He is currently an Affiliated Fellow there. He is best known as the originator of the global workspace theory, a concept of human cognitive architecture and consciousness. He previously served as a professor of psychology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, where he conducted research into the causation of human errors and the Freudian slip In psychoanalysis, a Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that occurs due to the interference of an unconscious subdued wish or internal train of thought. Classical examples involve slips of ..., and as a faculty member at the Wright Institute. Baars co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and the Academic Press journal '' Consciousness and Cognition'', which he also edited, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Armitage Miller
George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Miller wrote several books and directed the development of WordNet, an online word-linkage database usable by computer programs. He authored the paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," in which he observed that many different experimental findings considered together reveal the presence of an average limit of seven for human short-term memory capacity. This paper is frequently cited by psychologists and in the wider culture. Miller won numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science. Miller began his career when the reigning theory in psychology was behaviorism, which eschewed the study of mental processes and focused on observable behavior. Rejecting this approach, Miller devised experimental techniques and mathematica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
