It reveals the mind-brain interface, the growth-oriented dimension of the person, and the myth-making dimension of human experience. A possible secondary result of the book under review is that such a dialogue can trickle down to the psychological level.
About This Book
Taylor explains how Varela and his interpreters are on the threshold of a breakthrough in understanding James' philosophy of radical empiricism and the role of the intersubjective observer for a person-centered approach to science. These theories expand knowledge about the mind-brain relationship and the growth-oriented dimension of the person.
By integrating Western Anglo-American and Continental phenomenology with cognitive science and Eastern contemplative experiences and practices, neurophenomenology provides a bridge between the sciences that neither reduces the mind to the physiology of the brain nor the living organism to cause-and-effect relationships, but instead provides steps toward a science that is more human-oriented.
Notes
I am grateful to the Widener Library at Harvard and the Bibliotheque François Mitterrand in Paris for their assistance in my research. Sincere thanks to Sharon Panulla, Executive Editor at Springer, and her assistant Sylvana Ruggirello, the authors of this volume for their dedication, and Stanley Krippner for his guidance.
Embodied Mind: Opening an Interdisciplinary Dialogue
The Incarnate Mind was also written in the wake of Varela's existential crisis after fleeing his home in Chile following the military coup and overthrow of the Marxist Allende government. Daniel Stern's methods examined prereflective experience (which does not know itself, is without ego) in the expression of meaning and self-constitution of the infant.
In Tribute to Francisco Varela
As previously noted, Varela served on the faculty of the Naropa Institute during the 1970s and 1980s. To his credit, Varela was a founding member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) and a supporter of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson and served on the editorial board of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. .
Note
If we consider the history of emotion theories and research in psychology, most accounts of emotion have been inconsistent with the basic tenets of phenomenological psychology. A conception of emotion that would be consistent with a phenomenological psychology would necessarily include several essential qualities, in particular a non-reductive and holistic perspective, and by implication, a perspective that can explain the experience of emotion without simply explaining it (Robbins, 2003; Robbins & Parlavecchio, 2006.
Let me put it another way: What neuroscientists are charged with doing is taking the experience of emotion and then explaining it in terms of cognitive processes and physiological events in the nervous system. As the phenomenologist understands it, the first-person experience of emotions is the transformation of a world (Sartre, 2003.
Series of Revolutions
Later in the book, Lazarus elaborated, "the concept of appraisal does not imply rationality, consciousness, or awareness of the cognitive processes involved in emotion" (p. 152). However, the affective revolution is not the end of the story: the experiential revolution is already implicit in the affective revolution.
The New Affective Science
The cognitive system was identified with the cingulate region of the brain, and the emotion center was believed to be located in the thoracic bodies. He developed a triune theory of the brain, which identified more primitive brain regions as the seat of emotions.
The Next Step
The finding is "eidetic" in that it used the second step of the phenomenological method after Husserl's phenomenological reduction. A follow-up experimental study used second-person narrative descriptions of suppressed laughter and varied the themes for the social context.
Beyond Reductionism via Neurophenomenology
A unique feature of the human environment is its ambiguous status, which results from its dialectical relationships. What is radically denied and undermined is the objectivist view of the physical world.
Enactive Cognition and the Phenomenology of Emotion
With this inversion, one goes from the natural attitude of the scientist to the transcendental phenomenological attitude; is passed in the era. The life-world is that medium through which a transcendent world beyond experience can gradually be known through careful observation over long latitudes in the systematic observation of accumulated evidence—and nowhere else is this possible as far as we know, but in the order human.
Heidegger’s Theory of Moods
In the sense of the three above allusions, Befi ndlichkeit can be rather awkwardly translated into English as "how-will-you-be", or even "self-finding". Thus, as ontological, the existential of Befi ndlichkeit is prior to the metaphysical distinction between an independent self and others.
From Heidegger to Cognitive Science
In understanding, this means that human beings are always projecting possibilities for themselves, so the "world" is primarily a world of possibilities that have yet to be realized. In doing so, he seems to ground neuroscience in rigorous phenomenological analysis rather than the more arbitrary whims of folk wisdom.
From Heidegger to the Brain
Clegg (Ed.), The observation of human systems: lessons from the history of anti-reductionist empirical psychology (pp. 1–8). Poster presented at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, Division 32 of APA, Norwood, MA.
Applications to Learning and Pedagogy
It provides a plausible account of the need to naturalize phenomenology and to ground neuroscience in people's lived experiences. A phenomenological portfolio assessment can emphasize the preref ective lived experiences of learning by collecting reflexive first-person accounts of the 'how' of situated, active and embodied learning experiences to better capture the transformative dimensions associated with the learning experiences. to understand. The learning tool is closely linked to the learning situation (see Jordi, 2011).
Learning, Cognitivism, and Cognitive Psychology
Learning occurred when the sensory and perceptual abilities of the organism responded to stimuli from the environment. Furthermore, Dewey's experiential description of the learning experience is, in general, an appropriate precursor to Varela (1996), Varela et al.
Phenomenology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Despite their liberatory potential, these forms of learning (enactive, embodied, and situated) can be seen as subjugated. 19 The aforementioned extended, enactive, embedded and embodied forms of learning are also based on this rejection of cognitivism (Osbeck, 2009.
Neurophenomenology as Methodology
21 Furthermore, from a neurophenomenological perspective, there is an (inter)relationship between the brain and the world, and in one way or another, the brain represents the world. True enough, phenomena, as represented in human consciousness and brain, are part of nature, but the phenomenologist will insist that we co-constitute each phenomenon in question through the act of uniquely experiencing it (much less, studying it). his).
Neurophenomenology as Method
As Depraz (1999) makes clear, the phenomenologist does not transform perceptions in and of themselves; there is an “intersubjective sharing of the reductive experience” (p. 105). By using reduction, the researcher moves away from what has been given about the phenomenon and toward a meaningful construction of the phenomenon (Dreyfus, 1982).
Neurophenomenological Praxis
Operational closure, which indicates that the internal operations of the brain work in such a way that the by-product of their development remains within the neurobiological processes in the brain (Maturana & Varela, 1980. Disturbances are also part of the autopoietic structural coupling and their role in the implementation and experience of learning can be observed.
Neurophenomenological Pedagogical Praxes
Language, people and environment (milieu) are "semiotic resources" and are available for learning as meaning-making and "in relation to the architecture and dynamic processes of the body-brain complex" (Thibault, 2004, p. 236). . After much fussing and laughing, most students invariably refuse and our discussion begins.
Back to the Brain Itself
Rather, the modus operandi of higher-order learning and brain function is probably facilitated by phase synchronization of the frequency of neuronal oscillations (as measured by electroencephalography, EEG). Different areas of the brain likely communicate via oscillatory phase-locking; the brain has a multitude of cadences: waves of rhythms that communicate and inform (see Buzsáki, 2006; Varela and Thompson, 2003.
Neurophenomenological Portfolio Assessment
While it is true that Descartes implied much in the philosophizing of the mind (eg res cogitans beyond res extensa and God), at the end of his Sixth Meditation he looks, briefly, at the brain. Pierson (Eds.), The manual of humanistic psychology: Leading edges in theory, research and practice (pp. 247–262). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
The complexity and duration of the internal image depends on the functioning of the visual working memory (VWM). Moreover, training in meditation is individualized according to the abilities, character, mental qualities and progress of the particular practitioner.
Experience of Meditation and Scientifi c Research
Furthermore, subjective experiences during meditation, in addition to correlations with neuroactivity, were shown to be related to neuroplasticity and neurogenesis in the brain areas involved in meditation. 24 Phenomenological, i.e. strictly systematic reflective, analysis of the constitutive structures of experience in meditation took place only in a few studies.
Meditation Styles
Taking this into account, Lutz proposed a further refinement of the categorization of meditation into concentration and open awareness styles (Lutz, Brefczynski-Lewis, Johnstone, & Davidson, 2008). As noted by Guenther, the prominent scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, “The concept of meditation is not precise and will eventually have to be replaced by [another concept that] provides a fuller description and elucidation of the processes involved” (1992, p xi).
Toward the Cognitive Phenomenology of Meditation
31 A parallel trend in phenomenology also revealed the pure subjectivity of the ego and consciousness as such. Researching the spectrum of such states requires adapting psychological and cognitivist frameworks.
Phenomenological-Cognitive Mapping
Phenomenology of Consciousness in Tibetan Meditation
In Deity Yoga the focus is closer to the empirical center of the self than in Mandala meditation. The referential state of consciousness in deity yoga is not an end in itself, but is a way of achieving the non-referential.
Toward Future Research: Phenomenological Analysis Versus Meditation Styles
For the spontaneous activity of the brain at rest, see Doucet et al. For the first report on the layering of experiences in ecological consciousness, see Louchakova (2005.
For purposes of discussion, let us define neurophenomenology as the attempt to reconcile first-person science with third-person science, and the active approach as the idea that cognition does not stand alone, but is inextricably linked to the physical body and its interaction. with the environment. 1 The dialogue on the relationship between first-person science and third-person science began with the articulation of autopoiesis in Maturana and Varelas (1987), the idea in the new biology that self-governing systems that have arisen properties and developed into Varela's statement of a means by which objectivist third-person accounts of phenomena in traditional cognitive science can be linked to first-person accounts of immediate experience when personal experience is systematically examined, as it has been in the traditional discipline of phenomenology, which.
In my opinion, it cannot, the entirely subjective decision to do science in the first place be a feeling, according to James. For now, we will limit ourselves to the Lowell Lectures of 1878, which are instructive on some content in Principles of Psychology of interest to contemporary neurophenomenologists.
The 1878 Lowell Lectures on “The Brain and the Mind”
The Graduate School philosophy of science that emerged from these meetings contributed to the development of experimentally oriented mental sciences at Harvard from the 1870s onward in physiology, neuropathology, and experimental psychology. I am confident that I am able to make the course both entertaining for many because of the abundance of new facts and illustrations, and instructive for pedestrians because of my theoretical conclusions.
On The Brain and the Mind
Attacking the mind/body problem head on, these were also the influences that led James in The Nation in 1876 to argue that physiologists should study philosophy and philosophers should study physiology in order to approach the functional relationship of mind to body. as a whole (James, 1876. The course I propose deals with the subject to which I have given most attention—the Senses and the Brain and their relation to the Mind.
Lecture One
He then drew a brain and spinal cord on the blackboard, identified the afferent and efferent nerves, and then compared this to the brain and cord of the lamprey, dog, turtle, bird, beaver, horse, pig, elephant, and monkey. . 5 In this, he was able to demonstrate where the human brain appeared much more complex with the addition of cerebral hemispheres.
Lecture Two
Meanwhile, the critics of the new science, as he had previously said, saw the more brutal materialism that lay behind what its proponents called the Enlightenment and scientific progress, like a hideous pagan idol whose form is dimly seen through the glimmer of tribal reworkings. and gold dust and the dazzling fumes of incense with which his followers continually fill the air before him. Their subjective form is guessed only by analogy or by creating a fictitious anatomy (James, 1874.
Lecture Three
He then said that what we know physiologically, however, is merely an objective account of what we can see, which does not explain the internal experience of these systems at work.
Lecture Four
Lecture Five
He then launched into a discussion of the inherent philosophy of materialism that accompanies the scientific view, which he claimed was actually unnecessary for the explanation to remain scientific. However, there is nothing that rules out a physiology based on the opposite: that mental events cause physiological changes to occur and that conscious activity and all that it entails is the cause of the underlying physiology.
Lecture Six
Such a response of the nervous system is efficient, such a habit, habit, and so on. They also seem to think that every caprice or whim, however unacknowledged, of a scientific man must necessarily form an integral part of the science itself; that when Huxley, for example, has excluded feeling from the game of life and called it a mere bystander, a supernumerary, the matter is settled….
A Comment on the Relevance of the Lectures of 1878
James's point seemed to be that if we survey the field of consciousness from the lowest to the highest, we find that it "always seems to be comparing and selecting." He said,. It is then important to understand how James brought these ideas forward in relation to a scientific understanding of consciousness.
The Evolution of James’s Defi nition of Consciousness
Consciousness as What Is at the Cognitive Center of Attention
As for his position in the Principles, psychology was the study of the correlation of brain states with mental states, and thought the thinker, nothing else. Therefore, the focus of what constituted the psychology of consciousness was the object at the center of the field of attention.
The Germ of His Later Radical Empiricism
Experimental psychology was based solely on the rational ordering of syndata alone as a means of defining all of reality, which he believed produced only an incomplete truth because of the limits of its epistemology. Empiricism had always been limited to data from the senses, which he believed was part of the problem.
Exceptional Mental States
James believed that there can be certain cases of multiple personality where a superordinate personality can emerge and become the dominant personality for the rest of the individual's life. It caught fire nationally, along with Dewey and others, defining the Progressive Era in the United States for the first two decades of the twentieth century before becoming the first uniquely American philosophy to have international ramifications. .
Consciousness as Transcendent Experience
In any case, by the composition of Varieties (1902), James had covered the entire spectrum of consciousness during his long career as a philosopher and psychologist. He had covered the entire spectrum of experience regarding the phenomena of consciousness.
James’s Tripartite Metaphysics
With The Varieties in 1902, he came to the conclusion that the highest mystical states of consciousness that human beings can experience are the most profound in terms of the ultimate growth-oriented transformation of personality and are directed toward the highest. good human beings are capable of achieving. To the question "Does consciousness exist?" James scandalized psychologists and philosophers by declaring "no!" It did not exist as an independent object of study, but always exists as a function of someone's personal consciousness somewhere.
Points of Comparison
Even most Husserlians, however, are unaware that Husserl was introduced to James' later radical empiricism just after he had completed his own Logic (Husserl. In the Husserl archive in Louvain, for example, there is a copy of James' " A World of Pure" Experience".
What the Neurophenomenologists Have Been Saying About James
In any case, Gallagher descends into a discussion of the expansion and contraction of consciousness around the immediate moment as a factor in the virtual present. I agree that there are some interesting connections between radical empiricism and phenomenology, as well as James's notion of the apparent present and Husserl's temporal consciousness (personal communication, February 20, 2008).
Implications for Psychology
The issue seemed to be where Peirce saw psychology in the hierarchy of sciences. A key principle of the active approach is that the organism is a center of activity in the world.
The Embodied Self
Neurophenomenology encourages a vision of the integrated self through a re-examination of the relationship between the subjectively experienced mind and the mind's objectively known material substratum, the brain. It is argued that the HPA-HPG axes have neural correlates that are responsible for active engagement and the development of meaning through their connections to the higher-order functions of the brain that reveal the person's sense of self and well-being.
Flow of the Argument
This is followed by a discussion of the growth-oriented dimension of the person and the neurophenomenological self. Finally, I discuss the implications of the psychoneurointracrine model for the study of the person.
Autopoiesis and the Sense of Self
Consciousness was a distributed phenomenon of the entire active organism, not just the brain embedded in its environment. The Buddhist-active view of the self provides a middle way, where the flow of experience becomes self-referential through the structure of time consciousness.
Prerefl ectivity and Embodiment
As the active approach reveals, perception is not just a process in the brain, but an activity on the part of the person as a whole. Prereflective self-consciousness is the main feature of first-person experience or self-awareness as a subject that is not taken as an intentional object.
The Embodied Sense of Self
He proposed that the operating mechanism of emotional regulation began at the hypothalamus (adaptive function/. human drives); the cingulate cortex projects to the hippocampus (memory), and the hippocampus projects to the hypothalamus via the fornix. The limbic system is then informed by sensory input through the fast relay nuclei in the thalamus and amygdala and the slower pathways in the parahippocampal gyrus.
Perception of the Observer
Whereas dorsal amygdala activation to conscious stimuli appeared consistent across subjects independent of trait anxiety, basolateral amygdala activity to unconscious stimuli predicted differences in trait anxiety. Furthermore, individual differences in the serotonin transporter gene have been found to modulate affective processing (Canli, Congdon, Constable, & Lesch, 2008) and thus very likely observer perception.
Growth-Oriented Dimension of the Person
Maslow (1971) in his theory of metamotivation and the biological rootedness of the value life posited that the spiritual life (spiritual, religious, philosophical, transcendent and axiological) is rooted in the biological nature of the species. The process of individuation through active exploration of the unconscious revealed and enabled man's potential wholeness.
Theory of Psychoneurointracrine Autopoiesis
Remember that the nervous system does not process information in a computer sense, it creates meaning. Estrogen(s) play an excitatory role in the central nervous system by increasing the sensitivity of the reticular activating system (Goldstein et al., 2005) while decreasing monoamine oxidase (MAO) activity.
Theory of Emergent Global States
This CRF-ACTH pathway from the PVN to the arcuate nucleus/ME represents an important link in the communication between HPG and HPA axis neuronal axons. Most PVN projection neurons are positioned to evoke rapid reflex activation of the HPA axis and the corticolimbic and gonadal projection systems associated with the CRF-ACTH system.
Evidence from the Human Menstrual Cycle
The phenomenon of mood swings has often been shown to be related to depleted estrogen, the activity of type A MAO and the breakdown of serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine 48 hours before bleeding; when the level of estrogen decreases, MAO remains high; as catecholamines are degraded, estrogen is depleted in the brain (Luine & McEwen, 1997. There is also a significant positive correlation between estrogen(s) and plasma levels of the serotonin precursor 5-hydroxy-tryptophan (Thompson, Maddock, Ayaland) , & Oswald, 1977.
Conclusion
Direct projections innervated by the limbic system include the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST), the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH), the preoptic area (POA), and the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS). Meditation styles The term introduced by scientists to take into account the difference in the effects of the different types of meditation.
About the Editor
About the Authors
Schacher & A-P., Dauwalder (Eds.), The dynamic systems approach to cognition: Concepts and empirical paradigms based on the dynamics of self-organization, embodiment, and coordination (pp. 295-308). Massarik (Eds.), The human life course: A study of goals in humanistic perspective (pp. 12–26).
