Science of Consciousness Foundational Practices.doc

1992

The following article reports on ideas about how to study consciousness that emerged during the course of the January 1992 Athens Symposium on Science and Consciousness, one of the principal aims of the meeting being as far as possible to escape from constraints on thinking about consciousness that might be imposed by conventional modes of thought. The first half of the report discusses in general terms the question of opening up the mind to wider ways of thinking, and this is followed by a more detailed compendium of concepts and specific ways of proceeding.

Journal of Psychology & Clinical Psychiatry

Consciousness has proven difficult to define. One approach is to recognize it requires several different component 'prongs'. Neppe and Close had published on the EPIC prongs, now standing for Essence, Paradigmatic Levels, Information-Meaning, and Cybernetic Consciousness. While these were demonstrably valuable in one Neuropsychiatry study, the prongs require further amplifications and hence eight other have been introduced.

A fully-functioning consciousness science is vital for humankind's navigation of the 21st century. Unfortunately the field currently has a number of significant dysfunctions. Fortunately, they're all eminently fixable! However, there's very little attention currently either to the deep roots of problems, or to fixes. Notably, there's a crucial experiment that needs to be done, if we're to have any kind of scientific approach to conscious experience ... This Chapter ends with an explicit strategy for engaging with, and transforming, the current field. [Chapter 3 from 'The Science We Need - One Experiment to Change the World'.]

2007

This excellent book is aptly titled. It presents a closely argued analysis of the current state of consciousness studies and suggests a strategy of investigation, which the author believes is necessary to establish a robust science of consciousness. Before he introduces the details of his framework for a ...

The downfall of structuralist schools of psychology in the early-twenieth century is a well-known piece of cognitive science folklore. The ‘introspectionists’, as their detractors called them, intended to use scientific methods to map the world of sensory experience, but their research programme collapsed somewhat abruptly when it was discovered that the results of the various structuralist labs were incommensurable. If the stronger conclusions of Elizabeth Irvine’s first book, Consciousness as Scientific Concept, are correct, we might one day regard contemporary scientific research into consciousness as we presently regard introspectionism: a troubled chapter in the history of cognitive science. Irvine’s thesis is that the concept of consciousness should be eliminated from scientific practice....

Journal of Social Sciences, 2021

Contemporary science, in recent decades, reflects intensely on the phenomenon of consciousness. This fact is due to the accelerated development of cognitive sciences, biological and physical sciences, neuroscience, which have achieved certain successes in researching the problem of mind-body, consciousness. However, what is strictly required is the issue of the possibility of a scientific theory of consciousness, which would apply a new research methodology. The most recent approaches in this direction substantiate the need for research from a phenomenological structural perspective, which explains consciousness as a phenomenon determined by the subquantum level. Structural-phenomenological theory holds that this level is a profound reality regulated by specific principles and laws that make consciousness possible.

Dialogs: DynamEq, of InnerOuter Peace-building

Inclusions to this document saliently include primary branch-science background-traditions of the Prana and Qi systems' DynamEq interface (5 decades of research-experimentation), of foundational-background medically-qualified research for Consciousness Studies. This also highlights the lexical Indo-European precedent connotations as apt foundational communal-Intercultural Hermeneutic-studies. Background foundational Arts traditions of this research are of fathomed elucidation,. as authentically originating from intercultural accolades of the Theatre-and-Dance-Movement tradition. This is documented with rejoinders to source on specific curricula outlining the primary projects and protocoled dialog of Consciousness Studies.

Anthropology of consciousness, 1994

In recent years there has been an explosion of scientific work on consciousness in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and other fields. It has become possible to think that we are moving toward a genuine scientific understanding of conscious experience. But what is the science of consciousness all about, and what form should such a science take? This chapter gives an overview of the agenda. 1 First-person Data and Third-person Data The task of a science of consciousness, as I see it, is to systematically integrate two key classes of data into a scientific framework: third-person data, or data about behavior and brain processes, and first-person data, or data about subjective experience. When a conscious system is observed from the third-person point of view, a range of specific behavioral and neural phenomena present themselves. When a conscious system is observed from the firstperson point of view, a range of specific subjective phenomena present themselves. Both sorts of phenomena have the status of data for a science of consciousness. Third-person data concern the behavior and the brain processes of conscious systems. These behavioral and neurophysiological data provide the traditional material of interest for cognitive psychology and of cognitive neuroscience. Where the science of consciousness is concerned, some particularly relevant third-person data are those having to do with the following: • Perceptual discrimination of external stimuli • The integration of information across sensory modalities • Automatic and voluntary actions Published in (M. Gazzaniga, ed) The Cognitive Neurosciences III. MIT Press, 2004.

Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness: Ciba Foundation Symposium 174. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1993

""Classical ways of viewing the relation of consciousness to the brain and physical world make it difficult to see how consciousness can be a subject of scientific study. In contrast to physical events, it seems to be private, subjective, and viewable only from a subject's first-person perspective. But much of psychology does investigate human experience, which suggests that classical ways of viewing these relations must be wrong. An alternative, Reflexive model is outlined along with it's consequences for methodology. Within this model the external phenomenal world is viewed as part-of consciousness, rather than apart-from it. Observed events are only "public" in the sense of "private experience shared." Scientific observations are only "objective" in the sense of "intersubjective." Observed phenomena are only "repeatable" in the sense that they are sufficiently similar to be taken for "tokens" of the same event "type." This closes the gap between physical and psychological phenomena. Indeed, events out-there in the world can often be regarded as either physical or psychological depending on the network of relationships under consideration. However, studying the experience of other human beings raises further complications. A subject (S) and an experimenter (E) may have symmetrical access to events out-there in the world, but their access to events within the subject's body or brain is asymmetrical (E's third-person perspective vs. S's first-person perspective). Insofar as E and S each have partial access to such events their perspectives are complementary. Access to S's experience is also asymmetrical, but in this case S has exclusive access whereas E can only infer its existence. This has not prevented the systematic investigation of experience, including quantification within psychophysics, psychometrics, and so on. Systematic investigation merely requires that experiences be potentially shared, intersubjective and repeatable. In this the conditions for a science of consciousness are no different to a science of physics." Note added for 2012 Academia.edu upload: This paper, presented at a Ciba Foundation Symposiumin 2002 was the first time the epistemological implications of reflexive monism for a science of consciousness were presented to a group of internationally recognised scholars on consciousness, including John Searle, Dan Dennett, Thomas Nagel, Sydney Shoemaker, Colin McGinn, Michael Lockwood, Margaret Boden, Bernie Baars, Peter Fenwick, Michael Gazzaniga, Jeffrey Gray, Stevan Harnad, Marcel Kinsbourne, Nick Humphrey, John Kihlstrom, Ben Libet, Tony Marcel, Jerome Singer, Robert Van Gulick, Howard Shevrin, and Pat Wall. The discussion that follows the paper is of particular historical interest, much of it focusing on the how to interpret the projected nature (or out-thereness) of much of the phenomenal world. Over the following decade, various participants accepted the importance of the out-thereness of the phenomenal world (e.g. Libet, Gray, and Humphrey) along with other theorists such as Lehar, Revonsuo, Hoche, and Tye. However, whether phenomena that seem to be out in the world are really in the brain continued to be a source of contention.