Sick body, vigilant mind: the biological immune system activates the behavioral immune system

Activation of the behavioral immune system has been shown to promote activation of the biological immune system. The current research tested the hypothesis that activation of the biological immune system (as a result of recent illness) promotes activation of the behavioral immune system. Participants who had recently been ill, and had therefore recently experienced activation of their biological immune system, displayed heightened attention to (Study 1) and avoidance of (Study 2) disfigured individuals--cognitive and behavioral processes reflecting activation of the behavioral immune system. These findings shed light on the interactive nature of biological and psychological mechanisms designed to help people overcome the threat of disease.     

The missing sense modality: the immune system

The five senses were handed down by Aristotle. I argue that it has only taken two millennia to recognize that the immune system has been the hidden sensory modality. The immune system completes the range of operation allowing detection of meaningful entities at all distances, from very near to very far. It also withstands the often implicit criteria for being a sense modality. Finally, cross-modal interactions between the immune system and vision and other sense modalities should be possible, opening up new research directions.     

The embodied mind

Abstract :  This paper considers Fonagy et al's concept of mentalization and contrasts aspects of this with aspects of Bion's model of the mind. The author argues that although mentalization adds to our understanding of mind it has limitations; that it may tend to over-emphasize certain types of external interaction between infant and carer and under-emphasize internal psychobiological processes. What is at issue here is the way in which an infant's carers facilitate the development of meaning out of experience. Bion's concept supposes a relatively 'interior' model in which, in important ways, the carer enables the infant to derive the meaning of his or her experience, whilst on the other hand Fonagy et al tend to talk more in terms of the ways in which the carer endows the infant's experience with meaning. Reference is made to Fordham's concept of states of 'Identity'. Fordham has pointed out that Freud's model is one in which mind is conceived of as evolving out of an infant's complex identifications with his or her carer(s); Jung's model envisages developmentally early states of identity as the means by which inherent capacities are realized.     

The restless mind

This article reviews the hypothesis that mind wandering can be integrated into executive models of attention. Evidence suggests that mind wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control. When mind wandering occurs, the executive components of attention appear to shift away from the primary task, leading to failures in task performance and superficial representations of the external environment. One challenge for incorporating mind wandering into standard executive models is that it often occurs in the absence of explicit intention--a hallmark of controlled processing. However, mind wandering, like other goal-related processes, can be engaged without explicit awareness; thus, mind wandering can be seen as a goal-driven process, albeit one that is not directed toward the primary task.     

The networked mind

The paper discusses the role of networks in cognition on two levels: on the level of the organization of ideas, and on the level of interpersonal communication. Any interesting system of ideas forms a network: ideas presented in a linear order (the order forced upon us by verbal expression) will necessarily convey a distorted picture of the underlying patterns of thought. Networks of ideas typically consist of a great number of nodes with just a few links, and a small number of hubs with very many links; that is, they are, to employ Albert-László Barabási’s term, “scale-free.” Barabási fits into a specific tradition: Hungarians had an early influence on the philosophy of networks, and on the philosophy of communication as developed at Marshall McLuhan’s Toronto Circle. In fact, this was the circle in which certain Hungarian and Austrian ideas on mediated collective thinking first came together—a telling testimony to the conditions of disturbed communication and idiosyncratic networking typical of East-Central Europe, past and present. The nodes-and-hubs pattern is characteristic, too, of social networks, in particular of scholarly and scientific networks. The paper analyses the role of “invisible colleges”—informal groups of scientific elites through whom the communication of information both within a field and across fields is channelled. By way of conclusion the notion of a new type of personality, the “network individual,” is discussed: the network individual is the person reintegrated, after centuries of relative isolation induced by the printing press, into the collective thinking of society—the individual whose mind is manifestly mediated, once again, by the minds of those forming his/her smaller or larger community.     

The inquiring mind

There is nothing, either in the recent developments of philosophy or in the development of the sciences, which should prevent philosophy from continuing its role of mother‐science and the sciences from influencing methods and conclusions of philosophers. The inquiring mind respects no boundaries between disciplines except those which are imposed by differences in questions raised. But basic questions, whether raised by philosophers or by scientists, tend to have components requiring co‐ordination of research or analysis of highly different disciplines. Both Anglo‐Saxon and continental developments in philosophy justify, however, a distinction between cultivating philosophy and being engaged in solving or resolving a philosophical problem, the former comprising the latter.     

The third in mind

Various aspects of the occult as they relate to psychoanalysis are discussed in this article. Drawing on both Freud's writings and Granoff and Rey's (1983) work on the occult in Freudian thought, the author considers the concept of co-thinking and its manifestations in clinical work. The psychoanalytic third is viewed in the context of the occult element known as thought transference, or thought transmission, and is also considered as it bears on psychoanalytic supervision.     

The mind considered as a system of meaning structures II. Concepts and representations

The theory of the mind considered as a system of meaning structures, which was sketched in an earlier paper (Lundh, 1981), is developed further in this paper. Whereas the earlier paper remained at a prelinguistic, sensorimotor level of functioning, the present paper extends the theory to conceptual thinking. Three main distinctions are drawn: between 1) mental representations and symbols, 2) sensorimotor intelligence and conceptual intelligence, and 3) habitual inferences and cognitive operations. Sensorimotor development consists in the development of mental representations, which the child, however, does not yet have any conscious access to. It is argued that sensorimotor structures are transformed into conceptual and propositional structures to the extent that the child becomes able not only to act, but also to think in terms of these structures—the latter is equated with the development of a kind of conscious access to already existent mental representations.