The Unconscious Mind

ABSTRACT— The unconscious mind is still viewed by many psychological scientists as the shadow of a "real" conscious mind, though there now exists substantial evidence that the unconscious is not identifiably less flexible, complex, controlling, deliberative, or action-oriented than is its counterpart. This "conscious-centric" bias is due in part to the operational definition within cognitive psychology that equates unconscious with subliminal . We review the evidence challenging this restricted view of the unconscious emerging from contemporary social cognition research, which has traditionally defined the unconscious in terms of its unintentional nature; this research has demonstrated the existence of several independent unconscious behavioral guidance systems: perceptual, evaluative, and motivational. From this perspective, it is concluded that in both phylogeny and ontogeny, actions of an unconscious mind precede the arrival of a conscious mind—that action precedes reflection.     

The Making of Mind

To understand how human beings come to have the mental faculties that they do, one would do well to consider the making of mind in at least two senses. First, an evolutionary perspective promises to specify what distinguishes Homo sapiens from nonhuman primate kin, and to set whatever is unique against a background of psychological abilities that we share with our ancestral relatives. Second, an account of individuals’ development from infancy onwards should enable one to see how humans’ species-specific biological endowment dovetails with what the environment provides to yield specifically human psychological capacities. In this article, I argue that to arrive at an overarching theoretical explanation, we should set the capacity to identify with the attitudes of other people at the very core of evolutionary and developmental accounts.     

论医务人员在医疗事故技术鉴定过程中的法律地位

世界上究竟有没有“心”、“心”是什么、心与身的关系如何,这一直是医学与心理学的基本问题。随着科学的发展和认识的深化,经由语言学的心灵剥离、科学主义的心灵放逐、实证科学的心灵祛魅,古老神秘的灵魂不断地“祛魅”,心理的本质得到了还原与澄清,灵魂问题亦演变为心理问题、心脑问题,而心灵哲学也正朝着自然化的方向重建。     

The Prison of My Mind

Abstract

This paper describes the process of two groups of students from high schools located in the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center grappling to make sense of the events of September 11 through the creation of a documentary chronicling their experiences. The process of creating these videos mirrored the process and curative factors of a psychotherapy group in a non–stigmatizing, innovative, and accessible format, one generated by the students themselves with the assistance of professionals in the visual and performing arts.

After reviewing the literature on the potential impact of violence on adolescents and the use of group treatment, especially in school settings, as an optimal choice for this population, we describe the distinctive process of the two separate groups of students, each culminating in different expressions of their very personal experience of September 11. We understand and contextualize their process through the lens of the therapeutic dynamics and elements of group work.     

The Genesis of Mind and Spirit

Spiritual life is made possible by the evolution of a human neuropsychology that requires social interdependence for its development. Extensive neuroplasticity requires experiential shaping throughout life. The evolution of frontal cortex hypertrophy suggests that much of this shaping is produced by a socially constructed virtual reality, extending beyond immediate experience. Prefrontal colonization makes possible the social scaffolding of neuroregulation, including the emotional attachments necessary for moral life. Cognitive independence from immediate environments enables symbioses with external memory systems, producing novel forms of socially constituted experience and making possible the transformative effect of religious systems upon individual biologies and psychologies.     

The Occult Mind of Simone Weil

This article argues that Weil's interest in occult and esoteric subjects such as Gnosticism and Egyptian mystery religion was not an eccentric sideline to an otherwise ‘Christian’ mysticism but emerged necessarily out of her philosophical method, which, quite independently of those texts where Weil deals with esoterica, displays that pathos of hiddenness so characteristic of occultism: the notion, expressed especially clearly in her late work, that philosophy is the search for a truth hidden from the eyes of ordinary persons and accessible only to those able to endure the ordeals required to gain access into its mysteries. In the second part of the argument, I show that Weil's ‘occultism’ was not an isolated phenomenon but symptomatic of broader trends among intellectuals at the time.     

The Mind as a Process

Essentially all behavior is regulated by the brain in response to information received from within the body or from the environment. The tangible structures of the brain serve as devices for processing thoughts and emotions as well as information. Stored among the interacting neural structures are memories of past experiences and responses to them. These intangibles participate in determining the decisions made and the actions performed by the brain's structures. There are valuable studies of the clinical and neurological effects of environmental stimuli, but we need to learn more about the processes that lead to these effects. More definitive correlations could be made between environmental stimuli and the neurological pathways they create by studying individual's real life experiences rather than laboratory simulations alone.     

Experience And The Active Mind

This paper investigates a new species ofskeptical reasoning about visual experience that takesits start from developments in perceptual science(especially recent work on change blindness andinattentional blindness). According to thisskepticism, the impression of visual awareness of theenvironment in full detail and high resolution isillusory. I argue that the new skepticism depends onmisguided assumptions about the character ofperceptual experience, about whether perceptualexperiences are 'internal' states, and about how bestto understand the relationship between a person's oranimal's perceptual capacities and the brain-level orneural processes on which they depend. I propose aconception of perceptual experience as a form ofskillful engagement with the environment on the partof the whole person or animal.     

The Mind of the Scenario Thinker

In the face of increasing uncertainty and changes, corporations must dynamically examine their business environment and activate the knowledge creation process in a future-oriented manner without getting hung up on analyzing their past (much like driving a car using only the rear-view mirror). In the previous article, we discussed the basics of scenario planning. We should not use this tool as a mere technique. Our knowledge of the world and the environment around us is important because it underlies our scenarios. When we look toward the future in an uncertain environment, we necessarily create knowledge proactively. Scenario planning and knowledge creation are commonplace when working on knowledge of innovations that shape the future. In this article we focus on the importance of having “scenario mind,” the philosophy underlying scenario planning. With any managerial tool, you cannot create real knowledge if you use only superficial know-how, like procedures described in manuals, to seek quick results. In the following sections, we discuss how scenario planning must be recognized as a “discipline of knowledge” to be embedded as a way of thinking and behavioral pattern of each individual or organization, not as a mere tool.     

The Extended Mind Rehabilitates The Metaphysical Hegel

The nonmetaphysical interpretation of Hegel's philosophy asserts that the metaphysical reading is not credible and so his philosophy must be rationally reconstructed so as to elide its metaphysical aspects. This article shows that the thesis of the extended mind approaches the metaphysical reading, thereby undermining denials of its credibility and providing the resources to articulate and defend the metaphysical reading of Hegel's philosophy. This fully rehabilitates the metaphysical Hegel. The article does not argue for the truth of the metaphysical Hegel's claims. Rather, it defends the correctness of reading his philosophy as metaphysical.