The Non-existence of the Internal World

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-151
Author(s):  
Jan Westerhoff
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Limited Knowledge ◽  
Natural Place ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Mind

A natural place of retreat once the reality of the mind-independent world has been challenged is that of the certainty of our inner world, a world which, we assume, is perfectly transparent to us and over which we have complete control, which provides a sharp contrast with an external world of which we have limited knowledge, and which frequently resists our attempts to influence it. The second chapter considers a set of reasons against the existence of this kind of internal world. I consider arguments critical of introspective certainty and query the existence of a substantial self that acts as a central unifier of our mental life. The chapter concludes that a foundation in the internal world remains elusive: our introspective capacities do not give us any more of a secure grasp of an internal world than our five senses perceiving the external world.

scholarly journals The detective, the psychiatrist and post-modernism

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 573-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Beveridge
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
External World ◽  
Individual Psychology ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Inner World ◽  
External Events ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

The similarity between the work of the fictional detective and that of the psychiatrist has often been remarked. Both Marcus (1984) and Shepherd (1985) have compared the technique of the archetypal sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, with that of Sigmund Freud. The sage of Baker Street attempted to solve criminal cases by finding links between items in the external world, such as footprints, bloodstains or broken locks, while Freud tried to make sense of the mysteries of the mind by making connections between events in the inner world, such as dreams, thoughts and desires. Both attempted to provide an all-encompassing explanation of seemingly disparate phenomena. Over the years, the literary descendants of Holmes have become increasingly similar to psychiatrists, because, as well as attending to the external events, they also take account of the individual psychology of the criminal and the social context of the crime.

Psychology: Volume 5

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Science Volume ◽  
Western World ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Difference ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Indian Setting ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

This survey of research on psychology in five volumes is a part of a series undertaken by the ICSSR since 1969, which covers various disciplines under social science. Volume Five of this survey, Explorations into Psyche and Psychology: Some Emerging Perspectives, examines the future of psychology in India. For a very long time, intellectual investments in understanding mental life have led to varied formulations about mind and its functions across the word. However, a critical reflection of the state of the disciplinary affairs indicates the dominance of Euro-American theories and methods, which offer an understanding coloured by a Western world view, which fails to do justice with many non-Western cultural settings. The chapters in this volume expand the scope of psychology to encompass indigenous knowledge available in the Indian tradition and invite engaging with emancipatory concerns as well as broadening the disciplinary base. The contributors situate the difference between the Eastern and Western conceptions of the mind in the practice of psychology. They look at this discipline as shaped by and shaping between systems like yoga. They also analyse animal behaviour through the lens of psychology and bring out insights about evolution of individual and social behaviour. This volume offers critique the contemporary psychological practices in India and offers a new perspective called ‘public psychology’ to construe and analyse the relationship between psychologists and their objects of study. Finally, some paradigmatic, pedagogical, and substantive issues are highlighted to restructure the practice of psychology in the Indian setting.

scholarly journals Archetype, Psyche, World

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Jon Mills
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
External World ◽  
Analytical Psychology ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Internal Parameters ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Ontological Position

Abstract In our dialogues over the nature of archetypes, essence, psyche, and world, I further respond to Erik Goodwyn’s recent foray into establishing an ontological position that not only answers to the mind-body problem, but further locates the source of Psyche on a cosmic plane. His impressive attempt to launch a neo-Jungian metaphysics is based on the principle of cosmic panpsychism that bridges both the internal parameters of archetypal process and their emergence in consciousness and the external world conditioned by a psychic universe. Here I explore the ontology of experience, mind, matter, metaphysical realism, and critique Goodwyn’s turn to Neoplatonism. The result is a potentially compatible theory of mind and reality that grounds archetypal theory in onto-phenomenology, metaphysics, and bioscience, hence facilitating new directions in analytical psychology.

The Felt Body and Embodied Communication

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Schmitz
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
External World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Inner Sphere ◽  
Embodied Communication ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Western Intellectual

AbstractIn the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. the most significant paradigm change in Western intellectual culture occurred, later affecting Christianity and subsequently science. In the interest of personal empowerment over spontaneous stirrings, a private inner sphere, a so-called soul (psyche) was ascribed to every conscious subject which was taken to contain their whole experience, like a house, conceived of as an inner world in which reason was to be the master of spontaneous impulses; the empirical external world between these inner spheres was cleansed of all gripping forces and, for this purpose, ground down to a few elegantly selected types of features and their carriers (atoms, substances): the remainder of this grindingdown was deposited in the souls or overlooked to nonetheless be found in the souls in changed form. Man was dissected into body and soul. In the transposition into the soul’s huge amounts of life experience were forgotten. Among them can be counted the felt body which disappeared between body and soul as in a crevasse, even though it is the closest thing to human experience.

The doctrine of St. Nicetas Stethatus on the “four main virtues” in the context of ancient Byzantine literature. Part I

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-209
Author(s):  
Дионисий Шленов
Keyword(s):  
Small World ◽  
Detailed Comparison ◽  
The Body ◽  
General Context ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Mind

В XI в. монах Студийского монастыря прп. Никита Стифат в аскетико-богословском корпусе своих сочинений неоднократно пользовался выражениями «главные добродетели» и «главные страсти». В статье делается попытка раскрыть смысл выражения«главные добродетели», систематизировать представления автора о четырех главных добродетелях, известных ему от античной традиции через посредство христианских авторов, продолжавших и далее свободно пользоваться этим выражением. Общий контекст позволяет выявить своеобразие автора, который сравнивает «четыре главные добродетели» с четырехчастностью человеческой души как великого мира по сравнению с внешним, малым, миром, состоявшим, согласно античным представлениям, из четырех первоэлементов. Особо рассматривается еще более детализированное сравнение четырех добродетелей с четырьмя способностями высшей части души - разума. Наряду с этим, автор сопоставляет пять чувств тела и пять разумных сил души. Для прп. Никиты четыре главные добродетели являются основополагающими, что не исключает особого внимания автора к ряду других ключевых добродетелей, таких как смирение и любовь. Учение о четырех главных добродетелях отсутствует в корпусе сочинений учителя прп. Никиты - прп. Симеона Нового Богослова, что сильнее подчеркивает более«школьный» и компилятивный характер наследия Стифата. Учение Стифата рассматривается в контексте античной и византийской литературы. In the XI century a monk of the Studite monastery St. Nicetas Stethatus in the ascetic-theological corpus of his writings repeatedly used the expressions “main virtues” and “main passions”. The article attempts to uncover the meaning of the expression “main virtues”, to systematize the author’s ideas about the four main virtues, known to him from the ancient tradition through Christian authors, who continued to use this expression freely. The general context makes it possible to reveal the originality of the author, who compares the “four main virtues” with the fourfold part of the human soul as a great world compared to the external, small, world, which, according to ancient concepts, consisted of four primary elements. Particularly, an even more detailed comparison of the four virtues with the four abilities of the higher part of the soul, the mind, is considered. Along with this, the A. compares the five senses of the body and the five rational powers of the soul. For St. Nicetas the four main virtues are fundamental, which does not exclude the A.’s special attention to a number of other key virtues, such as humility and love. The doctrine of the four main virtues is missing from the corpus of St. Nicetas/St. Simeon the New Theologian, which more strongly emphasizes the more “school-like” and compilative nature of St. Stethatus’ heritage. The doctrines of Stethatus are considered in the context of ancient Byzantine literature.

Mind, Body and Embarrassment in Henry James’s The Awkward Age

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Attridge
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Public Behavior ◽  
Modernist Novel ◽  
The Mind

This chapter considers James’s The Awkward Age (1899) in the context of fin de siècle mental science and its preoccupation, most evident in theories of emotion, with the materiality of the mind. Contributing to recent accounts that challenge the commonplace equation between psychological depth and James’s transition to modernist novel, the chapter argues that The Awkward Age represents mental life – and in particular awkwardness – as public behavior rather than introspection, self-presence and interiority. In a similar fashion to late-Victorian mental scientists (including his brother, William), James was concerned with finding a vocabulary for representing mental life in physical terms, demonstrating the interrelation of mind and body. James’s use of a behavioural rather than expressive vocabulary for embarrassment determines the shape of the novel’s plot and forms part of its critique of a Victorian prudery that presupposes a mind-matter separation.

From Coder to Creator

2009 ◽  
pp. 635-650
Author(s):  
Andreas Matthias
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Responsibility Ascription ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Effective Supervision

Creation of autonomously acting, learning artifacts has reached a point where humans cannot any more be justly held responsible for the actions of certain types of machines. Such machines learn during operation, thus continuously changing their original behaviour in uncontrollable (by the initial manufacturer) ways. They act without effective supervision and have an epistemic advantage over humans, in that their extended sensory apparatus, their superior processing speed and perfect memory render it impossible for humans to supervise the machine’s decisions in real-time. We survey the techniques of artificial intelligence engineering, showing that there has been a shift in the role of the programmer of such machines from a coder (who has complete control over the program in the machine) to a mere creator of software organisms which evolve and develop by themselves. We then discuss the problem of responsibility ascription to such machines, trying to avoid the metaphysical pitfalls of the mind-body problem. We propose five criteria for purely legal responsibility, which are in accordance both with the findings of contemporary analytic philosophy and with legal practise. We suggest that Stahl’s (2006) concept of “quasi-responsibility” might also be a way to handle the responsibility gap.

Negative and Positive Mind-Wandering

2021 ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
Frederick Travis
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Negative Thoughts ◽  
The Mind

Mind-wandering is considered by many as a sign of an “unhappy mind” and associated with ill-health. Since the mind wanders half of the time, it is unlikely that mind-wandering plays no role in cognitive processing. Mind-wandering can be filled with negative thoughts ‑ negative mind-wandering associated with worry and rumination; or it can be filled with positive thoughts ‑ positive mind-wandering associated with imagination and fantasy, essential elements of a healthy, satisfying mental life. Mind-wandering with positive thoughts enables the mind to escape the constraints of the current situation and explore novel solutions.

Metric Entrainment and the Problem(s) of Perception

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-182
Author(s):  
Justin London
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Linear Chain ◽  
External World ◽  
Perceptual Process ◽  
Musical Rhythm ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Perceptual Systems

Chapter 11 discusses the limits and mechanisms of our perceptual faculties for auditory rhythm. Perhaps more than vision, a consideration of auditory perception, and our auditory perception of rhythm in particular, reminds us that the perceptual process is not a linear chain of information from the external world to the mind, but an active interplay between mind and world. But while considering our senses as perceptual systems—as cross-modal—solves some problems of perception, it creates other, perhaps deeper ones, the author argues. In the case of musical rhythm, our rhythmic percepts are often non-veridical, as we add accents, beats, and grouping structure to otherwise undifferentiated stimuli.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document