scholarly journals Fruits of the Buddhism-Science Dialogue in Contemplative Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Hasenkamp
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Contemplative Science ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy Of Mind

The modern mindfulness movement rests largely on the twin pillars of scientific investigation and Buddhist philosophy of mind. However, in its current form and application, the scientific study of meditation is celebrated while the Buddhist roots of these practices and modes of investigation are often obscured. This paper highlights the utility and value of Buddhist ideas in the context of studying the mind in various domains of contemplative science. The role of Buddhism in the development of this field is discussed, as well as major areas of current influence, including neurophenomenology, subjective experience, attention, self, and the cultivation of prosocial qualities.

scholarly journals The Significance of “mushin”: The Essential Mind of Zen Buddhist Philosophy for Humans in a Contemporary World

Asian Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisaki HASHI
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Human Origin ◽  
Dynamic Approach ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Zen Buddhist

In our time of an information highway, digital networks are linked around the clock. Among various data many people are unconsciously depending on IT and digital medias with their body––but without any mind. The human origin, its creative thinking and acting, transmitting one idea to another for reforming and developing something new has been quite forgotten. Against this omnipresent phenomenon the Zen Buddhist Philosophy of Mind shows a dynamic approach to re-create and re-construct a human life, accompanied by the unique concept of the absolute one, “mu” (無), mu-shin (無心), the mind of mu presents a dynamic unity in its flexible activity.

Materialism in the philosophy of mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Main Difficulty ◽  
Ordinary Sense ◽  
Causal Dependence ◽  
Physical Relation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Mind

Materialism – which, for almost all purposes, is the same as physicalism – is the theory that everything that exists is material. Natural science shows that most things are intelligible in material terms, but mind presents problems in at least two ways. The first is consciousness, as found in the ‘raw feel’ of subjective experience. The second is the intentionality of thought, which is the property of being about something beyond itself; ‘aboutness’ seems not to be a physical relation in the ordinary sense. There have been three ways of approaching these problems. The hardest is eliminativism, according to which there are no ‘raw feels’, no intentionality and, in general, no mental states: the mind and all its furniture are part of an outdated science that we now see to be false. Next is reductionism, which seeks to give an account of our experience and of intentionality in terms which are acceptable to a physical science: this means, in practice, analysing the mind in terms of its role in producing behaviour. Finally, the materialist may accept the reality and irreducibility of mind, but claim that it depends on matter in such an intimate way – more intimate than mere causal dependence – that materialism is not threatened by the irreducibility of mind. The first two approaches can be called ‘hard materialism’, the third ‘soft materialism’. The problem for eliminativism is that we find it difficult to credit that any belief that we think and feel is a theoretical speculation. Reductionism’s main difficulty is that there seems to be more to consciousness than its contribution to behaviour: a robotic machine could behave as we do without thinking or feeling. The soft materialist has to explain supervenience in a way that makes the mind not epiphenomenal without falling into the problems of interactionism.

scholarly journals Embodiment and the Philosophy of Mind

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 35-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Clark
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Real World ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Inner Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Scientist ◽  
Biological Problem ◽  
The Mind

Cognitive science is in some sense the science of the mind. But an increasingly influential theme, in recent years, has been the role of the physical body, and of the local environment, in promoting adaptive success. No right-minded cognitive scientist, to be sure, ever claimed that body and world were completely irrelevant to the understanding of mind. But there was, nonetheless, an unmistakeable tendency to marginalize such factors: to dwell on inner complexity whilst simplifying or ignoring the complex inner-outer interplays that characterize the bulk of basic biological problem-solving. This tendency was expressed in, for example, the development of planning algorithms that treated real-world action as merely a way of implementing solutions arrived at by pure cognition (more recent work, by contrast, allows such actions to play important computational and problem-solving roles). It also surfaced in David Marr's depiction of the task of vision as the construction of a detailed threedimensional image of the visual scene. For possession of such a rich inner model effectively allows the system to ‘throw away’ the world and to focus subsequent computational activity on the inner model alone.

scholarly journals Commentary on Dan Arnold, Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy Of Mind

This paper is a commentary on Dan Arnold's book, Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind, presented at the Toshide Numata Book Prize Symposium, "Taking Buddhist Philosophy of Mind Seriously," University of California, Berkeley, November 15, 2013.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Moral Cognition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tony James Scott
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Inheritance Model ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Evolution Of Mind ◽  
Dual Inheritance

<p>Many modern approaches to the evolution of mind have claimed that the fundamental drivers of our cognitive capacities and cultures are genetically specified psychological adaptations, which evolved in response to evolutionary pressures deep within our lineage's history. Many of our cognitive capacities are innate. Recent approaches to moral cognition have similarly argued that moral cognition is innate. In this thesis, I argue that even though our capacity for moral cognising is an adaptation, it is a learned adaptation. Moral cognition is not innate. In arguing this thesis I will question many of the assumptions of traditional cognitive science and evolutionary approaches to the mind. By incorporating theory and evidence from cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, I apply the explanatory frameworks of embodied and extended cognition to the domain of morality: moral cognition is both embodied and extended cognition. This places particular importance on the role of our bodies and world in the fundamental structuring and scaffolding of the development and execution of moral cognition. Putting this in an evolutionary framework, I develop a dual inheritance model of the non-nativist evolution of moral cognition focusing on the roles of niche construction, biased learning and active learning in the transfer of moral phenotypes between generations. Morality is a learned adaptation that evolved through the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between genes and culture.</p>

Media and Radical Embodiment

Media in Mind ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Daniel Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Embodiment ◽  
Psychological Experiments

This chapter addresses the concept of mental representations in both media theory and philosophy of mind. It argues that, contrary to what representationalist models claim, the mind does not work by way of an internal language or internal images but through active bodily engagement with the environment. The chapter discusses how mental representations have functioned historically in media theory. It shows how video games have been employed in philosophical and psychological argumentation about the nature of the mind. It presents the case of Hugo Münsterberg, a psychologist whose encounter with film impacted his psychological theory. It discusses the role of imagery in video game play. It illustrates how the use of moving image media in psychological experiments can reinforce ideas about internal mental representations.

Beckett and the Cognitive Method

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Bernini
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
Modeling Technology ◽  
Dialogic Interaction ◽  
The Mind

How can literature enhance, parallel or reassess the scientific study of the mind? Or is literature instead limited to the ancillary role of representing cognitive processes? Beckett and the Cognitive Method argues that Beckett’s narrative work, rather than just expressing or rendering cognition and mental states, inaugurates an exploratory use of narrative as an introspective modeling technology (defined as “introspection by simulation”). Through a detailed analysis of Beckett’s entire corpus and published volumes of letters, the book argues that Beckett pioneered a new method of writing to construct (in a mode analogous to scientific inquiry) “models” for the exploration of core laws, processes, and dynamics in the human mind. Marco Bernini integrates models, problems, and interpretive frameworks from contemporary narrative theory, cognitive sciences, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind to make a case for Beckett’s modeling practice of a vast array of processes including: the (narrative) illusion of a sense of self, the hallucinatory quality of inner speech, the dialogic interaction with memories and felt presences, the synesthetic nature of inner experience and mental imagery, the developmental cooperation of language and locomotion, the role of moods and emotions as cognitive drives, the layered complexity of the mind, and the emergent quality of consciousness. Beckett and the Cognitive Method also reflects on how Beckett’s “fictional cognitive models” are transformed into reading, auditory, or spectatorial experiences generating through narrative devices insights on which the sciences can only discursively or descriptively report. As such, the study advocates for their relevance to the contemporary scientific debate toward an interdisciplinary co-modeling of cognition.

Attention and self in Buddhist philosophy of mind

Ratio ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-362
Author(s):  
Jonardon Ganeri
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy Of Mind
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