JCS, 3 (2), 1996, pp. 98-111
Guy Claxton, University of Bristol School of Education, 35 Berkeley Square,
Bristol BS8 1JA, UK.
Abstract:
Neurophysiological and psychological evidence require us to see perception,
the `fabrication of (conscious) experience', as a process in time. Some
of the elapsed time between the onset of stimulation and the appearance
of a conscious image is accounted for by considerations of neural hardware.
Cognitive science conventionally assumes that these structural factors
are sufficient to account for the delay. However I argue in this paper
that the human information processing system may interpose an additional
strategic delay that allows for processes of checking and editing
the developing `sketch' or `draft', so that elements that might threaten
an underlying self system can be massaged or deleted. This cognitive
model parallels that which is found in the Buddhist Abhidhamma,
and improves upon the traditional, canonical formulation. Mindfulness meditation
can be seen as a process of `attentional retraining', in which the strategic
delay is reduced through practice, and self-related assumptions, which
had previously been dissolved in or pre-supposed by conscious experience,
become crystallized out and capable of being problematized.
JCS, 3 (2), 1996, pp. 112-126
Harald Atmanspacher, Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, D85740 Garching, FRG, and
Hans Primas, Laboratorium für physikalische Chemie, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, CH8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Wolfgang Pauli is well recognized as an outstanding theoretical physicist,
famous for his formulation of the two-valuedness of the electron spin,
for the exclusion principle, and for his prediction of the neutrino. Less
well known is the fact that Pauli spent a lot of time in different avenues
of human experience and scholarship, ranging over fields such as the history
of ideas, philosophy, religion, alchemy and Jung's psychology. Pauli's
philosophical and particularly his psychological background is not overt
in his scientific papers and was unknown even to many specialist scholars
until a number of enthralling and perplexing documents of a close interaction
between Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung became publicly
available in recent years. Both scholars stressed the inseparability of
the physical and the psychical and called upon a sense of more openness
toward the unconscious. Decades after his death, Pauli's innovative perspective
and his vision of a wholeness of psyche and matter are more than ever before
of great relevance.
JCS, 3 (2), 1996, pp. 127-138
John M. Horner, Department of Psychology, The Colorado College, 14 E. Cache La Poudre, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, USA. E-Mail: jhorner@cc.colorado.edu
Abstract:
Theories of epistemology have come a long way since Leucippus' account
of objects emitting copies of themselves that are taken up by the senses
and presented to the soul, but much of modern psychology and epistemology
are still based upon a representational theory of knowledge that there
is something in our head which `stands for' the things in our world. This
view has been challenged since Aristotle by an alternative view that knowledge
is simply a change in the organism such that the organism better fits within
its world in short, knowledge as an adaption. Recent advances in philosophy,
psychology and artificial intelligence reinforce this functional conception
of knowledge and give us a valid and consistent way of understanding meaning
and intelligence. In this paper, I articulate this alternative epistemology
and lay out its implications for intelligences of the artificial kind.
JCS, 3 (2), 1996, pp. 139-157
Gerd Sommerhoff, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
Email: g.sommerhoff@dial.pipex.com
Abstract:
The paper offers an account of consciousness as a biological process.
All its theoretical concepts are derived from the biological context and
accurately defined in causal and functional terms. To cover the essence
of what is commonly meant by the word `consciousness', and to avoid confusion
through a selective or theoretically biased interpretation of that word,
the paper addresses the dimensions of awareness which the word denotes
according to the dictionaries of the English language, viz., an awareness
of the surrounding world, of the self, and of one's thoughts and feelings.
These are examined at the primary levels at which they might exist also
in nonhuman species.
JCS, 3 (2), 1996, pp. 158-171
Richard Woods, O.P., Institute of Pastoral Studies, Loyola University Chicago, Illinois 60626, USA. Email: 70531.771@compuserve.com
Abstract:
In accounts of the western Christian religious tradition over the last
century, the existence of a positive connection between mysticism and social
action has generally been denied or largely dismissed by scholars as an
epiphenomenon resulting from the heightened compassion flowing out of the
culminating experience of union with God. Relying on the philosophical
analysis of western religious mysticism by William Ernest Hocking and more
recent writers, I propose that the connection between mystical experience
and social action is not only a necessary one but manifests a reciprocal
individual and social process by which communities recover, refine, and
renew their primary ethical and religious goals and the appropriate means
of achieving them. Although motivated by love, the mystic's calling, development,
and subsequent activity constitute structurally integral phases of a social
process involving a withdrawal from the world, a systematic re-evaluation
of the beliefs, goals, and values of the originating society, and the mystic's
return to the world intent on and equipped to contribute significantly
to social reform. This dialectical process can be interpreted in traditional
and indeed equivalent `Catholic' categories of contemplation and action
and more `Protestant' concepts of mysticism and prophecy.
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