Eco-restrictive experiences forming extraordinary consumer experiences

This article contributes to different research traditions when proposes to reflect on theoretical fields, such as consumer culture and contemporary marketing. The study in a tourist and ecological conservation project revealed eco-restricted extraordinary experiences. We found a group of volunteers that build meanings and practices connected with new actions and habits that offer, not only ecological and sustainable benefits, but new value consumption relations. In contextualizing our findings, we highlight experiences and curiosities that are glossed over in academic and practical accounts that celebrate the extraordinary experience. It was observed, by analyzing data from various qualitative techniques, that the findings cross borders of mundane ingrained practices and bring an emerging domain, where both, consumption and anti-consumption experiences, offer insights into to a diversity of areas of knowledge.     

Translucent experiences

This paper considers the claim that perceptual experience is “transparent”, in the sense that nothing other than the apparent public objects of perception are available to introspection by the subject of such experience. I revive and strengthen the objection that blurred vision constitutes an insuperable objection to the claim, and counter recent responses to the general objection. Finally the bearing of this issue on representationalist accounts of the mind is considered.

Pediatric near-death experiences

A review of one previously reported and three new pediatric near-death experiences (NDEs), in which the experiencers were interviewed as children, suggests that the childhood core NDE as described by Melvin Morse and colleagues may be expanded to include feeling pain-free, seeing a light at the tunnel's end, entering the light, and time alteration. These cases also suggest that the life review may be a function of chronological age.     

Ordering autobiographical experiences

This study examined individuals' memory for the temporal order of autobiographical events and for the components that constitute autobiographical events. Study 1 measured performance on an across-event ordering task that involved the chronological arrangement of cards that displayed event labels. Results indicated poor ordering ability across events, but a reasonable ability to order clusters of events. Study 2 compared within-event and across-event ordering using computer-presented digital photographs. Participants were better at ordering the photographs in their own across-event trials than in their within-event trials. The results are discussed in terms of the retrieval of temporal information under within- and across-event conditions.     

Knowledge from multiple experiences

Philosophical Studies - This paper models knowledge in cases where an agent has multiple experiences over time. Using this model, we introduce a series of observations that undermine the...     

论宗教经验与宗教神秘主义--从约翰·希克的《第五维度》谈起

本文主要从约翰·希克的<第五维度>出发,谈宗教经验和宗教神秘主义.人总是有以超自然的方式来探求自然的内在倾向.人的本性中第五维度,即灵性的维度,它让每个人都有信仰的可能.我们的宇宙是一个含混的宇宙,包括我们认识宇宙的含混性,除了自然主义,宗教神秘主义也是从另一角度对宇宙的解释.但是,当我们以宗教的方法来解释宇宙的时候,我们就会发现,这种方法本身也具有含混性,于是约翰·希克提出宗教多元论假设成功地解决了这个矛盾.对于一些宣称体验到与终极实在本身完全合一的神秘主义,约翰·希克提出了反驳,认为对神圣者的体验只可能隐喻的统一,而不可能是字面完全的统一.     

Reconstruction of preverbal experiences

Only a few analysts (Deutsch, 1947, 1952; Braat?y, 1954) have systematically tried to investigate how nonverbal behavior may be derived from events and experiences from the preverbal phase of development. Their approaches to the analysis of such behavior differ. Extracts of an analysis are used to illustrate basic technical and theoretical questions with regard to the possibility of making use of nonverbal material to reconstruct preverbal experiences. It is inferred that the analyst's visual observations of the patient's nonverbal behavior may be a cue to significant events and trauma from the preverbal period. Besides, the specific visual imagery of the patient that, in this case, emerged just after the appearance of nonverbal behavior, may be a valuable source of data for analytic reconstruction.     

Near-death experiences and self-transformation

The near-death experience (NDE) may be one of many mechanisms that may activate renewal and transformation, fundamental tendencies of the psyche. An examination of three successive NDEs in one individual suggests that such alterations of consciousness weaken ego control and foster transcendence of the ego, promoting transformation and regeneration.     

Conditioning experiences and phobias

A retrospective study was conducted to examine the extent to which phobias are associated with a conditioning pathway to fear. The Phobic Origin Questionnaire (Öst and Hugdahl, Behav. Res. Ther. 19, 439–477, 1981) was administered to a sample of 91 phobic outpatients (patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia, social phobics, simple phobies). Results show clearly that conditioning experiences occur more frequently than either vicarious or informational, learning experiences, which confirms the findings previously reported by Rimm, Janda, Lancaster, Nahl and Dittmar (Behav. Res. Ther. 15, 231–238, 1977) and by Öst and Hugdahl (1981; Behav. Res. Ther. 21, 623–631, 1983). Yet, conditioning experiences consist mainly of panic attacks in confined environments. The findings also suggest that a considerable number of phobias are based on a combination of different pathways to fear.     

Angels in near-death experiences

The literature on near-death experiences (NDEs) contains no substantive discussion of angels in NDEs, even though there are references to angels in several studies of these experiences. In this article I identify angels in NDEs and describe their functions in the NDE based on published NDE accounts. I conclude that angels are personages with whom the NDEr does not usually recall having previous acquaintance. Angels, serve as guides, messengers, or escorts in the NDE.This research was supported by a sabbatical leave granted by the Sabbatical Leave Commitee of Western New Mexico University.     

Infant memory for musical experiences

Recent findings suggest that infants can remember words from stories over 2 week delays (Jusczyk, P. W., & Hohne, E. A. (1997). Infants' memory for spoken words. Science, 277, 1984-1986). Because music, like language, presents infants with a massively complex auditory learning task, it is possible that infant memory for musical stimuli is equally powerful. Seven-month-old infants heard two Mozart sonata movements daily for 2 weeks. Following a 2 week retention interval, the infants were tested on passages of the familiarized music, and passages taken from similar but novel music. Results from two experiments suggest that the infants retained the familiarized music in long-term memory, and that their listening preferences were affected by the extent to which familiar passages were removed from the musical contexts within which they were originally learned.     

Color opponency in synaesthetic experiences

Grapheme-color synaesthesia is a rare condition in which perception of a letter or a digit is associated with concurrent perception of a color. Synaesthetes report that these color experiences are vivid and realistic. We used a Stroop task to show that synaesthetically induced color, like real color, is processed in color-opponent channels (red-green or blue-yellow). Synaesthetic color produced maximal interference with the perception and naming of the real color of a grapheme if the real color was opponent to the synaesthetic color. Interference was reduced considerably if the synaesthetic and real colors engaged different color channels (e.g., synaesthetic blue and real red). No dependence on color opponency was found for semantic conflicts between shape and color (e.g., a blue lemon). Thus, the neural representation of synaesthetic colors closely resembles that of real colors. This suggests involvement of early stages of visual processing in color synaesthesia and explains the vivid and realistic nature of synaesthetic experiences.