scholarly journals On recovery: re-directing the concept by differentiation of its meanings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Friedman
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Health It ◽  
Social Perspective ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
The Common ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Common Understanding

AbstractRecovery is a commonly used concept in both professional and everyday contexts. Yet despite its extensive use, it has not drawn much philosophical attention. In this paper, I question the common understanding of recovery, show how the concept is inadequate, and introduce new and much needed terminology. I argue that recovery glosses over important distinctions and even misrepresents the process of moving away from malady as "going back" to a former state of health. It does not invite important nuances needed to distinguish between biomedical, phenomenological, and social perspectives. In addition, I claim that there are many conditions where we are making use of the concept of recovery, although the person recovered from the condition in question, has not regained the same degree of soundness. I show how the concept of recovery leads to conceptual discrepancies that can result in worsening patients' conditions. To gain a fuller understanding, I propose to rethink the direction of the process in question. I define the process of moving away from malady as a move forward towards a new state of soundness. I also suggest three terms, corresponding to different perspectives, to describe this movement forward: 'curing' (biomedical perspective), 'healing' (first-person perspective), and 'habilitating' (social perspective). This new terminology provides a more nuanced understanding of the states of both malady and soundness and an attentiveness as to how they differ and relate.

scholarly journals On the nature and role of Consciousness: is it time to move towards a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRICO FACCO ◽  
Fabio Fracas ◽  
Silvano Tagliagambe ◽  
Patrizio Tressoldi
Keyword(s):  
Anthropic Principle ◽  
First Person ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Common ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Common Field

The main aim of this paper is to support a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach to the study of Consciousness.After a brief historical resume of the debate between the mind-brain-body relationship, we discuss how the apparently irreducible contention between a physicalist and an anti-physicalist interpretation of Consciousness can be overcome by a metaphilosophic and metascientific approach in the attempt to overcome ethnocentric cultural filters and constraints yielded by the Weltanschauung and the Zeitgeist one belongs to. IN fact, a metaphilosophical perspective can help to recognize key concepts and meanings common to different philosophies beyond their formal differences and different modes of theorization, where the common field of reflection is aimed to find the problem’s unity in the multiplicity of forms. Likewise, the metascientific approach, such as the anthropic principle adopted in astrophysics, helps overcoming the problems of indecidability of single axiomatic disciplines.A metaphilosophical and metascientific approach seems appropriate in the study of consciousness and subjective phenomena, since the first-person perspective and the meaning of the experience are the condition sine qua non for their proper understanding.

scholarly journals Differentiating Real-World Autobiographical Experiences without Recourse to Behaviour

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 521
Author(s):  
Jonathan Erez ◽  
Marie-Eve Gagnon ◽  
Adrian M. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Medial Temporal Lobe ◽  
Brain Injuries ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Extrastriate Cortex ◽  
First Person ◽  
Autobiographical Memories ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Machine Learning Model ◽  
First Person Perspective

Investigating human consciousness based on brain activity alone is a key challenge in cognitive neuroscience. One of its central facets, the ability to form autobiographical memories, has been investigated through several fMRI studies that have revealed a pattern of activity across a network of frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobe regions when participants view personal photographs, as opposed to when they view photographs from someone else’s life. Here, our goal was to attempt to decode when participants were re-experiencing an entire event, captured on video from a first-person perspective, relative to a very similar event experienced by someone else. Participants were asked to sit passively in a wheelchair while a researcher pushed them around a local mall. A small wearable camera was mounted on each participant, in order to capture autobiographical videos of the visit from a first-person perspective. One week later, participants were scanned while they passively viewed different categories of videos; some were autobiographical, while others were not. A machine-learning model was able to successfully classify the video categories above chance, both within and across participants, suggesting that there is a shared mechanism differentiating autobiographical experiences from non-autobiographical ones. Moreover, the classifier brain maps revealed that the fronto-parietal network, mid-temporal regions and extrastriate cortex were critical for differentiating between autobiographical and non-autobiographical memories. We argue that this novel paradigm captures the true nature of autobiographical memories, and is well suited to patients (e.g., with brain injuries) who may be unable to respond reliably to traditional experimental stimuli.

scholarly journals An immersive first-person navigation task for abstract knowledge acquisition

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Doerte Kuhrt ◽  
Natalie R. St. John ◽  
Jacob L. S. Bellmund ◽  
Raphael Kaplan ◽  
Christian F. Doeller
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Navigation ◽  
First Person ◽  
Abstract Space ◽  
Motion Platform ◽  
Head Mounted Display ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Abstract Knowledge ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
Spatial Domains ◽  
First Person Perspective

AbstractAdvances in virtual reality (VR) technology have greatly benefited spatial navigation research. By presenting space in a controlled manner, changing aspects of the environment one at a time or manipulating the gain from different sensory inputs, the mechanisms underlying spatial behaviour can be investigated. In parallel, a growing body of evidence suggests that the processes involved in spatial navigation extend to non-spatial domains. Here, we leverage VR technology advances to test whether participants can navigate abstract knowledge. We designed a two-dimensional quantity space—presented using a head-mounted display—to test if participants can navigate abstract knowledge using a first-person perspective navigation paradigm. To investigate the effect of physical movement, we divided participants into two groups: one walking and rotating on a motion platform, the other group using a gamepad to move through the abstract space. We found that both groups learned to navigate using a first-person perspective and formed accurate representations of the abstract space. Interestingly, navigation in the quantity space resembled behavioural patterns observed in navigation studies using environments with natural visuospatial cues. Notably, both groups demonstrated similar patterns of learning. Taken together, these results imply that both self-movement and remote exploration can be used to learn the relational mapping between abstract stimuli.

scholarly journals Human Enhancements and Voting: Towards a Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities of Beings

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S. J. Blodgett-Ford
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
To Come ◽  
Additional Option

The phenomenon and ethics of “voting” will be explored in the context of human enhancements. “Voting” will be examined for enhanced humans with moderate and extreme enhancements. Existing patterns of discrimination in voting around the globe could continue substantially “as is” for those with moderate enhancements. For extreme enhancements, voting rights could be challenged if the very humanity of the enhanced was in doubt. Humans who were not enhanced could also be disenfranchised if certain enhancements become prevalent. Voting will be examined using a theory of engagement articulated by Professor Sophie Loidolt that emphasizes the importance of legitimization and justification by “facing the appeal of the other” to determine what is “right” from a phenomenological first-person perspective. Seeking inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, voting rights and responsibilities will be re-framed from a foundational working hypothesis that all enhanced and non-enhanced humans should have a right to vote directly. Representative voting will be considered as an admittedly imperfect alternative or additional option. The framework in which voting occurs, as well as the processes, temporal cadence, and role of voting, requires the participation from as diverse a group of humans as possible. Voting rights delivered by fiat to enhanced or non-enhanced humans who were excluded from participation in the design and ratification of the governance structure is not legitimate. Applying and extending Loidolt’s framework, we must recognize the urgency that demands the impossible, with openness to that universality in progress (or universality to come) that keeps being constituted from the outside.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Embodied Mental Imagery Improves Memory

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110092
Author(s):  
Quentin Marre ◽  
Nathalie Huet ◽  
Elodie Labeye
Keyword(s):  
Motor Imagery ◽  
Mental Imagery ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Memory Efficiency ◽  
Third Person ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Emotional Systems

According to embodied cognition theory, cognitive processes are grounded in sensory, motor and emotional systems. This theory supports the idea that language comprehension and access to memory are based on sensorimotor mental simulations, which does indeed explain experimental results for visual imagery. These results show that word memorization is improved when the individual actively simulates the visual characteristics of the object to be learned. Very few studies, however, have investigated the effectiveness of more embodied mental simulations, that is, simulating both the sensory and motor aspects of the object (i.e., motor imagery) from a first-person perspective. The recall performances of 83 adults were analysed in four different conditions: mental rehearsal, visual imagery, third-person motor imagery, and first-person motor imagery. Results revealed a memory efficiency gradient running from low-embodiment strategies (i.e., involving poor perceptual and/or motor simulation) to high-embodiment strategies (i.e., rich simulation in the sensory and motor systems involved in interactions with the object). However, the benefit of engaging in motor imagery, as opposed to purely visual imagery, was only observed when participants adopted the first-person perspective. Surprisingly, visual and motor imagery vividness seemed to play a negligible role in this effect of the sensorimotor grounding of mental imagery on memory efficiency.

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