Contents
Refereed Papers
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K. Ramakrishna Rao
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Perception, Cognition and Consciousness in Classical Hindu Psychology
abstract
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Robert Arp
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Scenario Visualization: One Explanation of Creative Problem Solving
abstract
Continuing Debate
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Suitbert Ertel
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Are ESP Test Results Stochastic Artifacts? Brugger & Taylor’s Claims
Under Scrutiny abstract
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William Irwin Thompson
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The Case for Teaching Geometry before Algebra full
text
Conference Report
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John F. Barber
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Consciousness and Teleportation: 6th Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics
+ Aesthetics full text
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Clare McNiven
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Nicholas Maxwell, Is Science Neurotic?
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Erich Harth
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Jeffrey Gray, Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem
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Bill Faw
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Anthony Freeman, Consciousness: A Guide to the Debates
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Johnjoe McFadden
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Naoyuki Osaka (ed.), Neural Basis of Consciousness
ABSTRACTS
K. Ramakrishna Rao
Perception, Cognition and Consciousness in Classical Hindu Psychology
Abstract: Perception is sensory awareness. Cognition is reflective awareness.
Consciousness is awareness-as-such. In Indian psychology, as represented
by Samkhya-Yoga and Advaita Vedanta systems, consciousness and mind are
fundamentally different. Reality is the composite of being (sat), knowing
(cit) and feeling (ananda). Consciousness is the knowledge side of the
universe. It is the ground condition of all awareness. Consciousness is
not a part or aspect of the mind. Mind is physical and consciousness is
not. Consciousness does not interact with the mind, the brain or any other
physical objects or processes. Nor does it have any causative role in mental
activity. Hence the existence of consciousness does not interfere or upset
the apparently closed physical system.
Mind in this view is the interfacing instrumentality that faces consciousness
on one side and the brain and the rest of the physical world on the other.
Mind is closely connected with the different systems of the brain. In normal
perceptions, the mind takes the forms of objects via the channels of the
sensory system and the processes in the brain. The forms themselves are
non-conscious representations of the world of objects. The mental forms
(vrittis) become conscious experiences in the light of the purusha. The
vritti in sensory form is perception and with the reflection of the purusha
it becomes cognition. All conscious perceptions are therefore cognitions.
Correspondence: K. Ramakrishna Rao, Institute for Human Science and
Service, Visakhapatnam-530003, India. Email: krrao007@aol.com
Robert Arp
Scenario Visualization: One Explanation of Creative Problem Solving
Abstract: In this paper, I first present the ideas and arguments put forward
by evolutionary psychologists that humans evolved certain capacities to
creatively problem solve. Specifically, Steven Mithen thinks that creative
problem solving is possible because the mind has evolved a conscious capacity
he calls cognitive fluidity, the flexible exchange of information between
and among mental modules. While I agree with Mithen that cognitive fluidity
acts as a necessary condition for creative problem solving, I disagree
that cognitive fluidity alone will suffice for such an activity. I argue
further that the flexible exchange of information between and among modules,
as well as what I call scenario visualization — a conscious ability to
segregate and integrate visual images in future scenarios — evolved in
our species and accounts for certain kinds of creative problem solving.
Robert Arp, Department of Philosophy, Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell
Blvd., PO BOX 56907, St. Louis, MO 63156-0907, USA. Email: arpr@slu.edu
Suitbert Ertel
Are ESP Test Results Stochastic Artifacts? Brugger & Taylor’s Claims
Under Scrutiny
Abstract: Peter Brugger & Kirsten Taylor (B&T) regard positive
extrasensory perception (ESP) test results as methodical artifacts. In
their view, sequences of guessing, e.g. of symbol cards, being non-random,
overlap with finite sequences of non-random targets, and surpluses of hits
from chance are deemed to be due to correlated non-randomness. The present
author’s ESP test data obtained from his ‘ball drawing test’ applied with
N = 231 psychology majors were used for testing five hypotheses derived
from B&T’s claims. B&T would expect increased hit rates by intra-systemic
pattern correlation of both guesses with guesses and targets with targets
which are most favourable conditions for B&T’s matching mechanism.
But hit rates do not increase under such conditions, they decrease significantly.
Moreover, Brugger’s 1992 result does not replicate. B&T’s ‘deadly blow’
directed at parapsychology turns out to be a boomerang. The authors wanted
to get a ‘phantom slain’. They got one slain — their own.
Suitbert Ertel, Gossler Strasse 14, 37073 Göttingen, Germany. Email:
sertel@uni-goettingen.de
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