Complexity and the Mind–Nature Divide

Descartes's distinction between res cogitans and res extensa is a paradigmatic concept on which Western thought has been grounded. The reductionist and objectivistic approach of modern science draws its fundamental premise from it. This dualism has also instigated a view of human as separate from nature. The complexity approach in its most radical form questions many of these assumptions, asserting that the subjective and objective dimensions are involved in a relation of mutual determination and dependence. This article argues that if the dualistic metaphysics is replaced by a vision emphasizing this mutual dependence, a new way of interacting with nature may also be fostered.     

A Review of Experimental Research on Embodied Creativity: Revisiting the Mind–Body Connection

A growing body of experimental work highlights the potential value of unstructured, interactive, or spontaneous motions, including gestures, dance, shifting body postures, physical object-manipulation, drawing, etc. to favorably impact creative performance. However, despite these favorable findings, to our knowledge, no systematic review has been conducted to explore the totality of evidence for embodied activities in this arena. Thus, the objective of this paper was to systematically evaluate the potential effects of embodied experimental manipulations on traditionally assessed creativity outcomes. A systematic review was conducted utilizing PubMed, PsychInfo, Sports Discus, and Google Scholar databases. The 20 studies evaluated employed a variety of methodological approaches regarding study design, embodied manipulation, and selection of specific creativity outcomes. Despite these variations, embodied movement robustly enhanced creativity across nearly all studies (90%), with no studies showing a detrimental effect. Based on the evaluation of the studies reviewed, several common themes emerged. These included the relevance of symbolic metaphors and distributed embodied cognitions, selection of embodied modality, specific measurement considerations, as well as the importance for implementing true, inactive control conditions in embodied creativity research. This review expands on these findings and places them in the context of improving future embodied creativity research.     

The Perspective of Psychosomatic Medicine on the Effect of Religion on the Mind–Body Relationship in Japan

Shintoism, Buddhism, and Qi, which advocate the unity of mind and body, have contributed to the Japanese philosophy of life. The practice of psychosomatic medicine emphasizes the connection between mind and body and combines the psychotherapies (directed at the mind) and relaxation techniques (directed at the body), to achieve stress management. Participation in religious activities such as preaching, praying, meditating, and practicing Zen can also elicit relaxation responses. Thus, it is time for traditional religions to play an active role in helping those seeking psychological stability after the Great East Japan Earthquake and the ongoing crisis related to the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, to maintain a healthy mind–body relationship.     

Events, Sortals, and the Mind–Body Problem

In recent decades, a view of identity I call Sortalism has gained popularity. According to this view, if a is identical to b, then there is some sortal S such that a is the same S as b. Sortalism has typically been discussed with respect to the identity of objects. I argue that the motivations for Sortalism about objectidentity apply equally well to event-identity. But Sortalism about event-identity poses a serious threat to the view that mental events are token identical to physical events: A particular mental event m is identical with a particular physical event p only if there is a sortal S such that m and p are both Ss. If there is no such sortal, the doctrine of token-identity is not true. I argue here that we have no good reason for thinking that there is any such sortal.     

Xiong Shili on the Nature,the Mind and the Origin of Badness as Evidenced in Ming Xin Pian 明心篇 (Explaining the Mind )

The question of the origin of badness is a core problematic in New Confucian philosopher Xiong Shili’s 熊十力 (1885–1968) Ming Xin Pian明心篇 (Explaining the Mind; 1959), a work representative of his thought towards the end of his life. In this essay, I examine how Xiong uses the concepts of the nature (xing 性) and the mind (xin 心) to explain the origin of moral badness. Xiong asserts that the Buddhists never concerned themselves with the problem of the origin of ignorance and delusion, afflictions that in turn lead to suffering and wrongdoing. Xiong sets out to redress what he claims the Buddhists had failed to do. I argue that the conceptual structure of both Xiong Shili’s and Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) theoretical approaches to this problem are isomorphic. The isomorphism is significant because it suggests that Xiong consciously drew on Zhu Xi and/or the Buddhist models that Zhu in turn drew on. I provide evidence to show that even as late as 1959, and despite his increasingly entrenched criticisms of Buddhism, Xiong continued to draw on key concepts and models drawn from Buddhist philosophy of mind.     

Beyond the Psychosexual: The Body–Mind Relationship Discussion of “Somatic Experiencing”

The author discusses the importance of focusing on the body in analytic work since it functions as an important springboard for the patient to discover his or her unique existence. It also helps develop a dialogue between the mind and the body’s sensory level. This is a more archaic domain than the more often emphasized psychoanalytic tradition of organizing our thinking psychosexually. The author also underscores the differences between psychoanalysis and Somatic Experiencing and the risks and advantages of modulating or heightening sensory experience.     

Can the Mind Command the Body?

People naturally intuit that an agent's ethereal thoughts can cause its body to move. Per intuitive physics; however, one body can only interact with another. Are people, then, covertly puzzled by the capacity of thoughts to command the body? Experiment 1 first confirms that thoughts (e.g., thinking about a cup) are indeed perceived as ethereal—as less detectible in the body (brain), and more likely to exist in the afterlife relative to matched percepts (e.g., seeing a cup). Experiments 2–5 show that thoughts are considered less likely to cause behavior than percepts (e.g., thinking of a cup vs. seeing one). Furthermore, mind–body causation is more remarkable when its bodily consequences are salient (e.g., moving an arm vs. brain activation). Finally, epistemic causes are remarkable only when they are ascribed to mental- (e.g., “thinking”) but not to physical states (“activation”). Together, these results suggest that mind–body interactions elicit a latent dualist dissonance.     

An Evolutionary Approach Toward Exploring Altered States of Consciousness,Mind–Body Techniques,and Non-Local Mind

Humans are a part of the complex system including both natural and cultural-technological environment. Evolution of this system included self-amplifying feedbacks that lead to the appearance of human conscious mind. We describe the current state of the understanding of human brain evolution that stresses neurohormonal and biochemical changes rather than simple increase of anatomical substrate for the mind. It follows that human brain is strongly influenced by the state of the body and may operate at various levels of consciousness depending on its biochemical environment created by ingestion of various substances and by specific physical activities. Through the study of the widespread phenomenon of shamanism that uses mind-altering practices we argue that altered states of consciousness and non-local minds are not only real phenomena, but that they are products of natural evolution, valuable for human survival and development. Consideration of altered states of consciousness and broadening of the framework for understanding brain function beyond mechanistic interpretations is necessary to further develop human adaptations and provide a better way of fitting humans as parts of the interconnected system into the global and universal patterns.     

Mind over Body? The Combined Effect of Objective Body Weight, Perceived Body Weight, and Gender on Illness-Related Absenteeism

This study examined the combined effect of objective and subjective body weight, as well as gender, on illness-related absenteeism. A sample of 162 Hong Kong white-collar employees was surveyed. Using hierarchical regression analysis, we were able to confirm our hypotheses, derived from the objectified body consciousness (OBC) theory, that the positive relationship between objective body weight and illness-related absenteeism is significant among women, not men; and only among those women who consider themselves obese (as opposed to those who do not). This finding supports the concept that a woman’s perception of weight affects whether obesity is more strongly related to illness-related absenteeism.     

Finding the Body of the Mind: Integrating Occupational Therapy’s Theories of Mutual Regulation and Dysregulation into Psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

A child’s state of emotional dysregulation is often the explicit complaint of parents, teachers, and others involved in child referrals. Psychoanalytic and, more recently, neuropsychoanalytic thinking along with attachment research have created a foundation for understanding the biological and relational development of parent and child emotional engagement. In particular, these perspectives have clarified the nature of what Donald Winnicott termed impingements on the potential space between parent and child. An important addition to the understanding of biological and relational impingements on parent-child emotional dynamics comes from the field of occupational therapy (OT), which views sensory-motor regulatory capacities as forming the basis for quality relating and engaging. From an OT perspective, impingements on relating and adaptive functioning result from compromised regulation of arousal, affect, attention, and activity level on the part of the child, the parent, and/or the child/parent “fit.” Sensory integration and sensory processing theories offer additional frameworks for understanding and communicating with parents about patterns of mutual dysregulation in the parent-child relationship. When integrated with psychodynamic formulations, these ideas from OT research and practice can provide parents with new, more effective and flexible narratives of their children’s inner lives and behavior, and of their own narratives as parents.     

What Is the Stuff We Are Made Of? The Body and the Body–Mind Relationship in Early Development: A Discussion of Thomson-Salo and Paul’s “Understanding the Sexuality of Infants”

Acknowledging the importance of the baby’s sensuality and sexuality in the infant–parent dyad, the author emphasizes the role of the body as the basis of the person’s being. The baby needs to develop, through his mother’s reverie, an internal capability to cool down his bodily turmoil. Early bonding requires from the mother a capacity to discriminate the sensual from the sexual in order to help the baby to contain his invasive sensory experience. This area of exploration is deeply related with the body–mind dissociation we often meet in our most difficult adult patients.     

Cutting Space—Cutting Body: The Nature of the Grotesque in Umwelt

We give psychological elaboration to some of Rayner’s (2011) ideas. For the idea of a space and boundaries within it many psychological explanations are possible. We elaborate the boundaries as these occur in urban contexts as well as in the flow of irreversible time (between future and past). Shifting boundaries or any act of transforming them leads to changes in the understanding of the whole. Boundaries within space and between different fields—while having a physical existence—have also a symbolic component, which is specific to human beings. We reframe the dynamic concept of boundaries along the lines of Bergson’s idea of durée, which allows us conceptualize boundaries between bodies and environments, as well as boundaries in the environment, as ever transforming in spaces of ambiguity and, following Bakhtin, grotesque. This opens way for treating the boundary phenomena as functionally emerging in person-environment—or, in von Uexküll’s terms, organism-Umwelt relation. Following Heidegger, we conclude that through dynamic boundary-making we as species dwell in the world and make the world.     

Not Half Bad: Self and Others’ Judgements of Body Size and Attractiveness Across the Life Span

Self-deprecating judgements of body size are a robust exception to the general tendency for people to make self-enhancing judgements of themselves. This paper investigates whether the failure to make self-enhancing body size judgements also generalises to judgements of other physically grounded attributes, namely, physical attractiveness and sexiness. Sixty Australian women and men aged between 18 and 88 years of age were photographed, and their own ratings of their body size, attractiveness and sexiness were compared with those made of them by others. Women and men made self-deprecating judgements of body size, but made self-enhancing judgements of attractiveness and sexiness. We suggest that the unambiguous nature of cultural standards for body size, rather than low self-esteem, accounts for the self-deprecating judgements of body size made by men and women.     

How Does the Body Get Into the Mind?

In this article, we propose that gestures play an important role in the connection between sensorimotor experience and language. Gestures may be the link between bodily experience and verbal expression that advocates of embodied cognition have postulated. In a developmental sequence of communicative action, gestures, which are initially similar to action sequences, substantially shorten and represent actions in metonymic form. In another process, action sequences are based on kinesthetic schemata that themselves find their metaphoric expression in language. Again, gestures enact kinesthetic schemata that are correlated with verbal expressions. Examples from a large database are used to illustrate the various processes by means of which language arises when students conduct school science investigations.     

Is the Ambivalence a Sign of the Multiple-Self Nature of the Human Being? Interdisciplinary Remarks

Ambivalence is a constituent feature of human beings. The aim of this article is to systematise the fundamental sources of ambivalence (neuropsychic, socio-cultural and situational) and highlight that ambivalence can be considered as an external sign or manifestation of a complex and multiple internal human nature; that is, a human being constituted by multiple selves. In this paper the self is viewed as a principle of organization and integration for action, that is, as a complex neurological process and not as a static entity. The purpose is to show how by assuming ambivalence and the multiple-self, social and anthropological theories can offer a more realistic view of human beings.     

What Am I? Virtual Machines and the Mind/Body Problem

When your word processor or email program is running on your computer, this creates a “virtual machine” that manipulates windows, files, text, etc. What is this virtual machine, and what are the virtual objects it manipulates? Many standard arguments in the philosophy of mind have exact analogues for virtual machines and virtual objects, but we do not want to draw the wild metaphysical conclusions that have sometimes tempted philosophers in the philosophy of mind. A computer file is not made of epiphenomenal ectoplasm. I argue instead that virtual objects are “supervenient objects.” The stereotypical example of supervenient objects is the statue and the lump of clay. To this end I propose a theory of supervenient objects. Then I turn to persons and mental states. I argue that my mental states are virtual states of a cognitive virtual machine implemented on my body, and a person is a supervenient object supervening on this cognitive virtual machine.