Sessions are listed at the end of each abstract 

Poster Sessions 1 - 12 (P1-P12)

Concurrent Sessions 1 - 21 (C1-C21)

Plenary Sessions 1 - 12 ( Pl1-12)

1. Philosophy

[01.01]  The concept of consciousness

1  Theories of perception: narrow, wide and open  Jennifer Matey <jmatey@ic.sunysb.edu> (Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Tucson, Arizona)
    I discuss in depth, problems that theories of perception encounter when the term 'mind', and/or concept of a ‘cognitive system’ is applied too narrowly. A theory of perception can be considered complete if it can provide a thorough account of two phenomena, perceptual properties, and perceptual processes. Common accounts of perceptual properties and processes can be divided into two varieties. Both presume the materialist metaphysical paradigm. The two ontological varieties correspond with the location the material properties upon which components of perceptual processes and properties supervene vis a vis the perceiving subject. Theories of perception that account for the relevant phenomena in terms of properties and mechanisms that supervene solely on things internal to the perceiver are referred to as 'narrow' accounts. Perceptual theories that take external states of affairs to be necessary components of the cognitive system in order to account well for relevant perceptual properties and processes are referred to as 'wide' accounts. I argue that commonly held versions of narrow and wide accounts are not sufficient for this purpose. I propose a new account that resolves the shortcomings of both accounts That account presupposes close attention to the history, function and use of the term 'mind' and the concept of a 'cognitive system'.  P1

2  Defining “experience” as prerequisite to explaining “conscious experience”  Anthony Sebastian <Anthony_Sebastian@msn.com> (Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, San Francisco)
    Lack of a precise functional definition of the word “experience” acts as an obstacle to formulating a fruitful explanation of “conscious experience” at the most general level of narrative explanation. The practice of synonymizing “experience” and “conscious experience” occasions a missed opportunity to understand “conscious” as a *quality* of “experience”, which can have qualities other than “conscious”. After Leslie Dewart, I suggest a physiological definition of “experiencing” applicable to all sentient creatures. In experiencing events of reality, organisms must perform a physiological activity, first by receiving information about the event, then processing that information so as to generate a response (physical, mental) that serves the organism’s biological and/or cultural imperatives, directed ultimately to the production of biological and/or cultural progeny: genes and/or memes. Experience-initiating events may reside/originate in either the world outside the organism (external reality) or the world inside the organism (internal reality). In performing the physiological activity of experiencing events of reality, in the elemental sense as defined above, the organism lacks what generally goes by the term “conscious awareness”, either of the event experienced or of the ongoing activity of its experiencing the event. Elementally then, organisms perform the physiological activity of experiencing objects/events of reality “non-consciously”. I emphasize that organisms *perform* the physiological activity of experiencing, just as they perform other physiological activities, such as regulating arterial blood pressure, walking, etc. As with any performance, performance of physiological activities admit of qualities of performance, for example, efficient or faulty regulation of arterial blood pressure, slow or brisk walking, articulate or stuttering speech. In that context, we can take the view that an organism’s performance of the physiological activity of experiencing may admit of different qualities of performance. Humans can perform the physiological activity of experiencing events of reality “consciously”, a quality of performance that I next show admits of physiological definition. It does not stretch to recognize that performance of the very activity of non-consciously experiencing an event in the external world, say, itself qualifies as an event of reality (i.e., of internal reality). As such it therefore potentially could initiate, within the organism, the performance of the activity of experiencing itself as an event of reality, given the organism’s ability to experience events of reality, as I have defined “experiencing” performed elementally. A cognitively advanced organism might have the ability to receive information about that mental (physiologically-based) activity of its non-conscious experiencing of an event of external reality, leading it to generate an adjustive response. Performance of the physiological activity of an experiencing-complex consisting concurrently of experiencing the activity of a non-conscious experiencing has the quality we may define as “conscious”, as it speaks appositely to our intuitive conception of “conscious” and our intimate acquaintance with conscious experience. This formulation provides a physiological explanation of “conscious experience” at the most general level of narrative explanation. A more proximate explanation requires understanding how we perform the physiological activity of receiving and processing the information about our receiving and processing information about objects/events of reality.  P7

[01.02]  Ontology of consciousness

3  Paralysis and the enactive theory of perception  Kenneth Aizawa <kaizawa@centenary.edu> (Shreveport, LA)
    Where it is commonly thought that perceptual experience is caused, in part, by sensorimotor skills, in *Action in Perception*, Alva Noë proposes the more radical hypothesis that perceptual experience is constituted, in part, by sensorimotor skills. This paper will review cases in which individuals are paralyzed by neuromuscular blockade, such as that caused by succinylcholine. These individuals apparently lose their sensorimotor skills, but still have perceptual experiences. These kinds of cases have recently come to public attention in reports of awareness during surgery. These cases constitute a serious challenge to the enactive theory of perception which

predicts that loss of a constituent of perceptual experience will eliminate perceptual experience.  C9

4  Critique of Searle's interpretation of the ontological statute of Freud's unconscious  Jonas Coehlo <jonas@faac.unesp.br> (Ciencias Humanas (Human Science), Universidade Estadual Paulista, Bauru, São Paulo, Brasil)
    John Searle, in The rediscovery of the mind, criticizes the thesis of the existence of a unconscious mental state. According to Searle, the unconscious only can be accepted as content that can become conscious. Although he admits an aspectual and intrinsic unconscious intentionality, he also defends that its ontology consists totally of neurophysiological phenomena which produce subjective conscious thoughts. In this sense, unconscious beliefs would be dispositional states of the brain to produce conscious behavior or thoughts. Searle considers that the mental life is constituted by conscious states and by neurophysiological processes that in some conditions generate consciousness. In this way, there would not be any deeply unconscious mental state, that is, absolutely not accessible to consciousness. It is in this sense that Searle criticizes Freud stating that for Freud the unconscious mental states have an ontological statute, existing as unconscious intrinsic mental states. Is this interpretation of the ontological statute of Freud’s unconscious correct? We intend to show that it is not. In spite of accepting both, the neurophysiological process and the existence and causal role of conscious and unconscious mental states, Freud’s view can not be interpreted as a dualism of substance that considers mental states existing independently of body processes. The hypothesis we will develop is that the possibility to unveil unconscious thoughts from the conscious thoughts does not mean that the unconscious thought as such is in any other place but rather that its content can be inferred from the traces it imprints on the conscious thoughts. In other words, Freud would accept the thesis that the

mental states as such are always conscious but those mental states from which can infer unconscious thoughts have a characteristic content as we can observe in representations that were submitted to condensation-work.   P7

5  Phenomenal unity, mereology, and the individuation of experience  Brian Fiala <Brian.Fiala@asu.edu> (Tempe, AZ)
    In ordinary speech, we individuate experiences in a wide variety of ways. The following are all legitimate ways of using the word ‘experience’: “the car crash was a traumatic experience”; “crossing Antarctica by dogsled is an experience I’ll never forget”; and “uncle Steve had a near death experience”. Philosophers and scientists likewise devise various ways of individuating experiences: they talk of visual experiences, auditory experiences, color experiences, hallucinatory experiences, and so forth. Michael Tye endorses a monist metaphysics of experience on which these ways of counting experience are, strictly speaking, false (2004). Tye claims that there are no purely visual experiences, purely auditory experiences or purely taste experiences. Instead, normal subjects have only a single multimodal experience that is describable in more or less rich ways. When you bite into a juicy red apple, for example, you don’t have a visual experience of redness, a taste experience of sweetness, and a distinct auditory experience of *crunch!*. Rather, you have one big (red & sweet & *crunch!*) experience, describable in more or less complete ways. To motivate his monism, Tye considers a family of regress arguments that appears to threaten competing pluralist views of phenomenal unity. The regresses aim to show that if pluralism is true, then it is impossible for a subject to achieve total phenomenal unity. But it is plausible to think that it is possible (or even necessary) for a subject to achieve total phenomenal unity. According to Tye, this kind of regress constitutes a serious problem for pluralist theories of experience. He concludes that we should opt for a monist metaphysics of experience instead. I will first argue that we ought to reject monism about experience. Adopting experiential monism runs contrary to ordinary and technical ways of individuating experiences, and more seriously, it is not necessary to block the regresses. A holism about experience will block the regresses just as well, and as a bonus it is consistent with pluralism about experience. I'll also argue that when we look carefully at which logical properties of phenomenal unity are doing the work in blocking the regresses, we see that the unity relation closely mirrors the mereological relation (cf. Bayne & Chalmers’ “subsumption” relation, 2003). If this is right, we might sidestep the regress arguments by adopting any theory on which experiences can enter into something relevently analogous the mereological relation. Atomism could work just as well as holism, so long as the atoms can enter into the right kind of relation. Finally, I'll argue that treating the unity relation like the mereological relation helps to make sense of the Sperry split-brain cases. I conclude that it is worth our while to investigate the connection between phenomenal unity and the mereological relation more deeply.   P1

6  A few words about the type of relations between mind and body   Diana Gasparian <an

aid6@yandex.ru> (Philosophical, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia)
    If we try to characterize the direction of the modern consciousness research we find some tendency to keep some kind of “privileged vocabulary” as R. Rotry says, that is of scientific vocabulary which still provides criteria of satisfactory solution of the “mind-body problem”. Most clearly it can be seen from the program of demonstration of the productive connection between body and consciousness, i.e. in the understanding of the fact how physical produces nonphysical. But if we assume that mental states are not equal to physical and have their own ontological status, then it would be quite reasonable to expect that the type of relations between mind and body will differ from that used in science. Nowadays philosophy and science itself seem to realize that we can get very deep in our studies and registration of changes in the brain which accompany mental states, but not to get any access to mental states themselves, to what is called “first-person ontology”. The problem is that all the connections between consciousness and objects are explained from the point of view of the world of physical objects (it’s typical for J. Searle). Any search for the foundations of consciousness is equal to the attempts to present connections between consciousness and objects as connections between one object and another. For this connection to be described within the natural science approach it must belong to one research field, and it means that they must have one and the same nature. But, as was mentioned before, consciousness is not such a thing as body. It’s difficult to deny that the connection between body and consciousness is not a material one. In other words this connection can be described as conceptual, but not as physical, chemical or biological. On the other hand, if we believe consciousness is an object then there must be something that is aware of the consciousness which becomes an object in this process. If we accept the pair “consiousness – object of consciousness”, then there must exist a new consciousness that would make consciousness itself the object of consciousness. Here we have an alternative: either to stop at one of the points of the line, but then the whole line will put itself in the field of unconscious and we meet an introspection that is not conscious of itself. Or we agree to the endless regress which leads to nothing. If we resume everything said above we may say that a number of fundamental premises of science stop working as they should when they are applied to consciousness. First of all, consciousness is not an object that can be counted or related to some other object. And second is that we try to get access to consciousness through the frame of logical categories which itself is the fundamental attribute of consciousness. It is not clear at all what can be meta-description in this case.   P1

7  Conceivability, higher-order patterns, and physicalism  Amir Horowitz <amirho@openu.ac.il> (History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies, The Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, Israel)
    According to the zombie argument, zombies - beings who are physically identical to us, phenomenally conscious beings, but who lack phenomenal consciousness altogether - are conceivable and hence possible. The possibility of zombies, in turn, is taken to entail that the instantiations of phenomenal properties are not necessitated, or logically determined, by the instantiations of any physical properties. This paper argues that the assumption that the instantiations of phenomenal properties are necessitated, or logically determined, by instantiations of physical properties, does not imply that one cannot conceive of the former without the latter, as long as phenomenal properties are irreducible to physical properties in the way that multi-realizable higher-order properties are irreducible to lower-order physical properties. The zombie argument, then, fails to refute the physicalist view that phenomenal properties are higher-order physical properties which are irreducible to lower-order physical properties  C1

8  Perceptual consciousness is more than the head?  Yoshifumi Ikejiri <a1yoshi@yahoo.com.tw> (Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan)
    According to Noë’s sensorimotor contingency theory, perceptual consciousness is not only constituted by the neural activity, but also by the active body that is required for exercising sensorimotor knowledge. However, Block holds vehicle internalism and argued against Noë’s radical vehicle externalistic view. For Block, "sensorimotor know-how and perceptual experience are causally related, but that is no reason to think that they are constitutively related" and "the issue of the constitutive supervenience base for experience is the issue of what is—and is not—a metaphysically necessary part of a metaphysically sufficient condition of perceptual experience." To sum up, Block thinks that Noë conflated causation with constitution, and that it is wrong to support a claim about constitutive relation by appealing to a causal relation. However, I think that Block's point is misleading. For Noë, the body's activities, or actual movements, are not factually needed for one to have perceptual experiences. A patient with spinal cord injury could still have normal perception in the case that his sensorimotor knowledge is kept intact and he can exploit it smoothly. To say that the sensorimotor knowledge is bodily skill is in a counterfactual sense rather than a factual sense. Therefore, one needs not to do anything explicitly to cause perceptual consciousness, rather, one only needs to exercise the sensorimotor knowledge counterfactually and this exercising activity is perceptual consciousness. Perceptual consciousness counterfactually depends on body, not causally does, and this counterfactual dependency could be viewed as constitutive. Nonetheless, it should be noted that even Block's attack is ineffective, Noë still have to face challenges to his vehicle externalistic claim. With supporting evidences and arguments presented so far, it still favors vehicle internalism. That is, it is metaphysically possible for one to exploit one's bodily skill just within one's head. Either the counterfactual understanding of how stimulation varies with movement or the factually exercising activity of such understanding is possible to be neural activity alone. Any claim that sole neural activity is not enough should contain more metaphysical constrains to show beyond brain activity there is something necessary for perceptual consciousness to asise.   P1

9  Individuation of personal minds in panexperientialist models  Peter Lloyd <peter.b.lloyd@fencroft.com> (Fencroft Ltd, London, UK)
    The difficulty (some would say impossibility) of reducing consciousness to physics is well known and will not be rehearsed here. This difficulty has led some authors to propose that phenomenal consciousness (or some protophenomenal precursor of it) is in fact a fundamental component of the intrinsic quality of physical substance, as opposed to the extrinsic properties that are known to physics. (Historicallly, see Eddington 1928, Russell 1927. More recently, see Lockwood 1989, Chalmers 1996, Rosenberg 2004, Strawson 2005.) This seems like an elegant solution to the so-called 'Hard Problem' of consciousness. A key problem, though, is that consciousness as we observe it empirically exists only at the level of human minds, not at the micro-level of atomic or subatomic particles. There is therefore a problem for pan-experientialists to give an account of the individuation of personal minds. It will be argued that this cannot be done: any model that makes the conscious mind isomorphic to a spatially extended system (which anything like pan-experientialism must do) is vulnerable to some form of the 'argument by dissection' put forward by Lloyd (1999). As a response to this, it is argued that (a) pan-experientialism can usefully be regarded as a special case of idealism (following Lloyd 2005), and that (b) if we relax certain assumptions of pan-experienialism so as to get a more general idealism, then personal minds can be regarded as primitives and not as needing to be built up from micro-level consciousness. References: Eddington, A (1928), The Nature of the Physical World, NY: Macmillan. Russell, B, (1927), The Analysis of Matter. London: Kegan Paul. Chalmers, D.J. (1996b), The Conscious Mind. Oxford: OUP. Lockwood, M. (1989), Mind, Brain & the Quantum: The Compound ‘I’. Oxford: Blackwell. Rosenberg, G.H (2004), A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. Oxford: OUP. Strawson, G. (2005), Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism (or at least Micropsychism). Plenary paper, Toward a Science of Consciousness, 17-20th August 2005. Lloyd, P.B. (1999), Consciousness and Berkeley’s Metaphysics. London: Ursa. Llloyd, P.B. (2005), Mental Monism Considered as a Solution to the Mind-Body Problem, in: A. Batthyany, D. Constant, & A.Elitzur, 'Mind: Its Place in the World.Non-reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness’, Frankfurt: Ontos, in press 2005.   C15

10  Searle's expanded notion of the physical  Leopold Stubenberg <stubenberg.1@nd.edu> (Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN)
    Searle is among the growing number of philosophers who have argued that we must expand our notion of the physical to solve the mind-body problem. When the mental and the physical clash, the materialist reacts by attenuating the mental until coherence can be restored. Reversing this trend, Searle proposes to leave the mental intact and to enlarge the physical until it can accommodate the mental in its unreduced form. “What I mean” Searle tell us “is that the consciousness precisely as an irreducibly qualitative, subjective, first-personal, airy-fairy, and touchy-feely phenomenon is a process going on in the brain.” Thus the qualia of conscious experience are features of the brain in just as literal a sense as its weight and size and structure. This is what Searle’s idea of the expanded notion of the physical amounts to. While this view is very attractive, it does raise a serious question: How are these special qualities “in” the brain? How does the brain manage to realize or instantiate these remarkable qualities? For unlike the traditional physical qualities the qualia of the brain remain undetectable to the external observer. Thus we need an answer to the question in what sense of “in” these qualities are in the brain. In addressing this question I will follow up a hint that Searle gives us when he says that his view is “quite similar” to the version of the identity theory formulated by Grover Maxwell. The sort of view that Maxwell advocates—closely based on Bertrand Russell’s ideas about this question—is intriguing. But it also manifests a glaring lack of the theoretical virtues that Searle values so highly: simplicity, obviousness, commonsensicality, etc. I conclude that the Maxwell/Russell view is not available to Searle. Hence he still owes us a (simple, obvious, and commonsensical) answer to the question how the qualitative features of consciousness are in the material brain.   C15

11  Dynamic emergence and the epiphenomenality of consciousness  Rex Welshon <rwelshon@uccs.edu> (Philosophy, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, Colorado)
    In this paper, I try to assuage skeptical concerns about emergent consciousness in particular by assuaging skeptical concerns about emergents in general. I begin by entertaining the hypothesis that conscious events dynamically emerge from the physical events of the central nervous system. Neither the physical structures responsible for the emergence of consciousness nor a definition of ‘consciousness’' are provided. Rather, on the assumptions that some conscious events exist and that some of them bear a relation other than type identity to physical events, the hypothesis that conscious events dynamically emerge from physical events is considered. A general ontological model of dynamic emergence, with consciousness as the test case, is provided. This model identifies upward causation, high-level causation, and downward causation as constitutive claims of the species of emergentism defended. Next, Kim's Supervenience Argument for the epiphenomenality of emergent events is analyzed. I argue that it is unsuccessful because it does not fully acknowledge the differences between supervenience and causation. Against the Supervenience Argument, supervenient emergents need be neither always disqualified as causes nor always preempted by low-level causes. For, using the subset strategy of novel causes found in Shoemaker, Yablo, and Wilson, supervenient emergents can have their own causal powers and, in virtue of having their own causal powers, they are not always disqualified as causes. Again, using the subset strategy of novel causes, the Supervenience Argument's charge that emergents over-determine low-level causes is shown to be mistaken. In the conclusion, I suggest that emergence is less controversial than has often been made out and that for that reason offers more to those sympathetic to physicalism and less to those sympathetic to dualism than has frequently been thought. But I also point out that, just as supervenience may state the mind-body problem without solving it (as Kim has claimed), so too dynamic emergence may state the problem of conscious causation without solving it.   C15

12  The logic of phenomenal transparency: How to be a phenomenologist and a physicalist  Kenneth Williford <kwwilliford@stcloudstate.edu> (Philosophy, St. Cloud State University, St Cloud, Minnesota)
    One traditional view is that we have introspective access to all the essential properties of consciousness. This view has sometimes been used to motivate dualism. Critics of the view, concerned to defeat dualism, have sometimes taken their critique so far that they have made it difficult to see what connection introspective data bear to the theory of consciousness. An unattractive dilemma looms: either (i) pare down the pretensions of phenomenology to such an extent that introspective data play at most a minimal role in the theory of consciousness, and thereby salvage physicalism, or (ii) accept the traditional view of the powers of introspection, and forsake physicalism. I argue that introspective data can and should play a heuristic and regulative role in the construction of a physicalistically acceptable theory of consciousness. Proponents and opponents of the traditional view have typically run together two distinct theses. The first is that if one’s consciousness has a given property, then it will seem to one to have that property upon proper introspection; call this Strong Transparency (ST). The second is the converse claim that if consciousness seems upon proper introspection to have a given property, then it does in fact have it; call this Weak Transparency (WT). I argue that the conjunction of ST and WT is indeed incompatible with physicalism but that there is a defensible version of WT that is compatible with physicalism. Moreover, WT is enough to give a legitimate role to introspection in theorizing about consciousness. Perhaps surprisingly, I argue that ST is to be rejected not merely because it is incompatible with physicalism but on phenomenological grounds. This implies that there are properties of consciousness, perhaps essential ones, that are not accessible to introspection. And this paves the way for an explanation of the “Zombie” intuitions. I argue that the ease with which we can conceive of Zombies, etc., can be explained by the fact that consciousness has properties that are introspectively inaccessible to it. Furthermore, on the basis of this account, claims about the “diaphanousness” or “emptiness” of consciousness can be given a precise articulation which undercuts the uses to which those claims have been put by Representational theorists of consciousness and others. Finally, the framework I propose can arguably be used to solve the so-called “grain problem,” according to which conscious perceptual states cannot be identified with brain states because the former seem to have properties that the latter could not have.   C1

[01.03]  Materialism and dualism

13  Causality in the thinking body  George Kampis <gk@hps.elte.hu> (History and Philosophy of Science, Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary)
    In this paper I am developing the view that embodiment if understood properly as a biological notion offers a particular view of causality that in turn leads to a rethinking of the body. The work fits into a broader investigation into phenotypes in evolution [1] and into materialism. Here I elaborate remarks made in [2] where I discussed embodiment from the point of view of the self. The concept of embodiment implies a paradox that (despite the opposite rhetoric) it supports a strongly Cartesian view of organisms. A subjective self and its experience lies in the focus of embodied concepts like force, direction or action. I argued that in embodiment there is too much concern with the content of embodied mental states and too little with the coordination of interactions with biological meaning. To put it differently: the flesh is typically understood just as a source of a particular kind of structured experience – and interestingly, the same is true, with some modifications, even in artificial intelligence and robotics. However, situatedness, whole body interaction, sensorimotor coordination, adaptiveness and similar concepts of embodiment make also a more biological view possible. A biological minded strategy is the opposite of the above: first analyse causal interactions between phenotypes and their environment in cognition, then move on towards requirements for mental representations that utilize such interactions. To cut it short, the biological ‘wisdom of the body’ begins with the structure of causality, not of experience. Causal interactions in organisms, when viewed from this descriptive position (rather than through their consequences) involve a certain kind of interesting complexity. Whole body interactions and organismic actions are ‘fat’ (or as we say in [1] they “have ‘depth’”) in the sense that their effects are unbounded – the relevant phenotype traits that enter in an interaction (e.g. when an organism moves its leg) come along with an indefinite number of further, typically ‘hidden’ traits that are also modified as a consequence (such as the stretching of the skin or the change of the color composition of feathers as their angle changes in the motion, and so on – ad infinitum). I discuss how such hidden traits, i.e. traits with no ecological or cognitive-perceptual significance at a moment and in a given interaction can develop their own dynamics of causation that accumulates changes down on a chain and onto levels of ecological or cognitive significance (as when suddenly color, rather than the exact motion of the feathered leg determines evolutionary success). I also discuss how this notion can come to play a role in problems as diverse as ecological cognition and evolutionary niche construction. We will also see how the emerging picture of the body invites an anti-essentialist, relational ontology – with several notorious consequences. [1] Kampis, G. & Gulyás, L. 2004: Sustained Evolution from Changing Interaction, in: Alife IX, MIT Press, Boston, pp. 328-333. [2] Kampis, G.: Embodiment Without a Cartesian Self, in: Toward a Science of Consciousness, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, oral presentation.   P7

14  Buddhism implies dualism  Katalin Mund <mundka@freemail.hu> (History and Philosophy of Science, Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary)
    In their seminal book 'The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience' Varela, Thompson and Rosch suggested that by using first-person Buddhist methods, we can develop evidence for embodiment, which in turn would help to eliminate dualism between the mind and the body. In my presentation I try to show that Cartesian dualism has deeper roots. Even in Buddhism the method of introspection never results in a realisation of the non-existence of a separate soul. It cannot serve the purpose of eliminating dualism, because its ontology could not permit this insight. And what is more interesting, according to the Sutras and the commentaries of the Pali Canon, early Buddhist scholars were fully aware of this problem. Following this lead, I will talk about two topics: 1. Buddhist mindfulness/awareness (Vipasyana) meditation based on introspection. The purpose of this practice is to become mindful, i.e. to experience what the person's mind is doing as it is doing it, and to establish the presence of the mind in the world. The meditator understands that everything is changing all of the time, and there isn't any stable structure. The deconstruction of the self begins. The meditator attains higher and higher meditational levels, but, equally importantly, the 'seer' (i.e. subjective self) remains there, in the back. Even though theoretically anatman is accepeted as a basis, the subjective self as a centre pops up again and again by the very practise of meditation. 2. The philosophical problems of dualism in Buddhism Dualism in Buddhism has two levels: the problem of mind/body and the problem of subject/object distinction. Dualism appears to be an organic part of the Buddhist world concept, i.e. in the Dharma-theory, wehere they distinguished mental and material dharmas. Personality is analysed in a dynamic way according to the principal of "dependent arising' (pratityasamutpada). Nothing arises or ceases except in dependence on certain conditions. The application of this principle is most often done in terms of a series of twelve 'nidanas', or casual links, each one conditioning the one which follows it in the sequence. The most interesting part of this series, how 'name and form' emerges from consciousness. Name and form (nama-rupa in sanskrit) are sometimes translated as 'mind and body', because name (or nama) means feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention. Form (or rupa) means the four great elements, and the forms or physical bodies dependent on the four great elements. This is tha basis of the subject-object dualism. The etymology of 'vijnana' (consciousness) being derived from 'vi' + 'jnana', is a kind of knowledge (jnana) which separates (vi). It is defined that which 'vijanati': that which 'discern', 'discriminates', or distinguishes'. The working of vijnana, the discrimination constitute the dualism of object and subject, that is the objective world. it is possible that the reason why the Buddhist efforts of unification couldn't work is because the very concept of consciousness (vijnana) as such automatically implies dualism.  P7

15  The case for physicalism from part-time analog zombies  Gualtiero Piccinini <piccininig@umsl.edu> (philosophy, university of missouri - st louis, St louis, mo, usa)
    The possibility of zombies—as traditionally conceived by philosophers—entails property dualism. But traditional philosophical zombies are only a special and limiting case among the many varieties of zombie. There are also zombies whose possibility entails physicalism. Focusing on whether traditional philosophical zombies are possible, at the exclusion of all other zombies, skews the debate against physicalism. I introduce new kinds of zombie, which have not been discussed in the literature, and argue that the possibility of some of them entails physicalism. If that is correct, we reach a stalemate between physicalism and property dualism: while the possibility of some zombies entails property dualism, the possibility of others entails physicalism. Since these two possibilities are inconsistent, one of them is not genuine. Which? To resolve this stalemate, we need more than thought experiments about zombies.   C1

16  Dualism revisited?  John Searle <searle@cogsci.berkeley.edu> (Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA)
    For several decades, the prevailing orthodoxy in the study of the mind, especially in the philosophy of mind, was some version of materialism that denied the existence and irreducibility of mental phenomena. Recently, materialism has been in retreat, and dualism has reappeared. Dualism, for long regarded as obviously false, has now become a respectable theory. While rejecting materialism, I think dualism is equally mistaken. In this talk I will show that the arguments for dualism are invalid and that the dualist theory is mistaken.  PL8

17  A future for dualism as an empirical science?  Charles Tart <cttart@ucdavis.edu> (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA)
    Materialistic monism, so successful in the physical sciences, has become so pervasive that it has become a rather absolute habit of thinking, an unquestioned style of looking at reality, rather than being treated as a testable, but not necessarily complete, hypothesis for guiding research and theory. This critical presentation surveys empirically observable phenomena, both in nature and laboratory, which do not fit well with materialistic monism and suggest that a form of interactive dualism is necessary at this stage of our knowledge to work toward a complete scientific and philosophical understanding of mind. The basic laboratory paradigm is to take our knowledge of the material world as essentially complete and then set up a situation in which no observable effects, according to a monistic material paradigm, can happen. If something nevertheless happens, the comprehensiveness of materialistic monism is questioned and new questions arise about the nature of the phenomena observed. Such phenomena occurring in nature include out-of-body and near-death experiences and, under better observational conditions, extensive laboratory studies of psi phenomena (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis and paranormal healing), as well as semi-controlled studies of what would be the ultimate form of interactive dualism, communications from ostensibly deceased individuals suggestive of postmortem survival without a physical body. Some suggestions for further empirical research conclude the presentation.   P1

18  Finding middle ground between Chalmers' functionalism and Searle's anti-functionalism: A neutral monist third way  Kevin Vallier <kvallier@u.arizona.edu> (Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Abstract: Chalmers (1996) presents two arguments that he claims establish a kind of non-reductive functionalism: Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia. These arguments are meant primarily to combat the possibility of absent and inverted qualia, and to thereby show that what qualia we have is fixed by natural necessity via a certain sort of organizational invariance implemented by brains. Chalmers uses a related version of this argument to respond to Searle (1980) later on in his (1996). I intend to argue that the Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia do not establish functionalism, but rather merely establish that mental states weakly supervene on functional states of the brain. By weakly supervene, I mean that functional states do not cause mental states, but rather strongly correlate with them. This will leave open a number of potential views. I intend to outline one such view, which I take to be compatible with Chalmers’ (2003) Type-F monism or Russellian neutral monism. I will first show how one can accept both the conclusion of the Fading Qualia and Dancing Qualia arguments that for experience to change functional organization must change, and a Searle-style anti-functionalism. I will attempt to outline a view where the functional organization of the brain is necessary but not sufficient for mentality. My paper will consist of three parts: In the first section, I will discuss the proper upshot of the Fading and Dancing Qualia arguments: namely that is a matter of metaphysical necessity that experience once present will not change or disappear without a change in the functional organization of the brain. In the second section, I will show how this view is compatible with an anti-functionalist position, such as Searle (1980, 1992). In the third section, I will show how if one accepts both Fading and Dancing Qualia arguments and Searlean type anti-functionalist arguments that one is committed to a varying range of strongly anti-physicalist views. Time permitting, I will briefly discuss various different ontological options for someone who accepts both Chalmers’ and Searle’s arguments.  P7

[01.04]  Qualia

20  A defence of the conditional analysis of phenomenal concepts  Jussi Haukioja <jhau@iki.fi> (Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland)
    The conceivability of zombies – of creatures physically like us, but without consciousness – is often claimed to cause problems for physicalism. Very crudely, the argument against physicalism would run as follows: zombies are conceivable; therefore they are metaphysically possible; therefore physicalism is false. The argument has been challenged on many grounds. One recent strategy, suggested by John Hawthorne, David Braddon-Mitchell, and Robert Stalnaker, is to claim that phenomenal concepts have a conditional structure, of something like the following form: (1)If the actual world contains non-physical phenomenal states, our phenomenal concepts refer to them. (2)If the actual world is merely physical, our phenomenal concepts refer to the physical states which actually play the appropriate functional role. We cannot then know a priori whether the zombie world is possible, because we cannot know a priori which kind of a world the actual world is. But we have an explanation of the “zombie intuition”: the possibility of zombies is conceivable, because our phenomenal concepts do not rule them out a priori. The conceivability of zombies does not, then, entail their possibility, and physicalism is not threatened. Torin Alter has recently presented three objections to the conditional analysis. First, conditional such as (1) and (2) are, he claims, a posteriori, while they would need to be a priori for the response to the zombie argument to work. Second, he claims that the conditional analysis gives the wrong outcome in certain conceivable scenarios, and third, the conditional analysis only delivers the doubly modal claim that it is conceivable that zombies are possible, while the intuition driving the zombie argument is that zombies are directly conceivabile. In this paper I defend the conditional analysis against Alter's objections. The first two objections are seen to fail once we recognise that the conditionals which are supported by counterfactual reasoning are a little bit more complicated than (1) and (2). What we actually get is something like the following: (1') If the actual world contains non-physical phenomenal states and sensations of pain, and there is a non-trivial relationship between these two, our concept of pain refers to these non-physical states. (2') If the actual world is merely physical, and contains sensations of pain, and there is a non-trivial relationship between functional states and sensations of pain, our concept of pain refers to these functional states. These conditionals are, I think, a priori. They also give the right outcome in Alter's imagined scenario, so his first two objections do not succeed against this more elaborate conditional analysis. Finally, I will show that, while the conditional analysis (regardless of the details of the conditionals) entails that full zombie worlds are only indirectly conceivable in the above sense (their possibility is conceivable), it is fully consistent with the conceivability of individual zombies, and that is enough to account for the zombie intuition. Moreover, there is independent reason to think that full zombie worlds are not directly conceivable in the sense Alter seems to think.  C1

21  Qualia re-visited  Morey Kitzman <kitzmanm@mscd.edu> (Psychology, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Littleton, Colorado)
    The following is a thought experiment which attempts to further the understanding of the notion of qualia, the subjective components of perception. Imagine that you are in a room and your only communication with the outside world is in the form of taps that occur on the outside wall of the room. You have never been outside the room and the taps correspond to different events in the external world. In fact, for every event outside the room there is a unique pattern of taps. The taps eventually form Morse code like sequences. Further imagine that you have the ability to move this room about, although you do not know how the room is moved. Your movements in the external world result in positive and negative outcomes. Soon you learn to avoid the negative and to seek the positive. Now one might argue that this is precisely the way our perceptual systems operates or could operate, if you substitute the brain for the room. There would be no need to really know what is outside the room, just make the appropriate responses to insure survival. A thermostat reacts to the temperature of a room without really knowing or experiencing the qualia of hot or cold. There is no reason to actual represent hot or cold within the system in order for it to function properly. A organism could have a device for sensing hot and cold without ever having to actually experience hot or cold. In the future, AI will produce machines that appear dramatically human without having to represent the external world inside them. . This all being true, why did nature go to the incredibly tedious task of making internal representations of some external world when it has dubious survival advantage? Furthermore, how did the inhabitant in the room decipher the code sequences and represent light as light, given that light never entered the room. Would we not require some equivalent of the Rosetta Stone to make the proper decoding? Could we have ever deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs without a Rosetta Stone? Where do we find our Rosetta Stone? What does this all mean? The paper will attempt to show the importance of distinguishing energy and information. The experience of light cannot be derived from information about light, light must modulate consciousness directly. Consequently, the fundamental property of consciousness is energy.  P7

22  Quality as existence  Mark Pestana <pestanam@gvsu.edu> (Philosophy, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan)
    In this paper I explain the sense in which the qualitative character of a subject’s experience (the quale of experience) is representational of the sheer existence of both the objects of those experiences and, especially, of the subject of those experiences. This account hinges upon recapturing the original sense of qualitative accidents as various ways in which substances exist. In the initial section, I revisit this original Aristotelian characterization of qualitative accidents. He explicated this feature of things as a modification of/in the sheer existing of an individual substance. I proffer several examples of this modification in the be-ing of a substance and contrast this type of property with relational and quantitative features of things. This is followed by an account of the representational theory of consciousness and an account of the two ways in which the very existing of something and the quality of that existing can be represented. I first indicate how representations directly represent existing and the quality of existing in virtue of the spatio-temporal properties of the objects represented. However, such representations themselves possess a quality of being which arises from the being of the subject forming those representations. Accordingly, I next indicate how a representation indirectly represents existing in virtue of its own mode of existence. I conclude this section by explaining how “qualia”, the qualitative characteristics of experiences, are these modes of existing of mental acts and states of mind. Be it noted that the existence that is represented directly or indirectly can be the existing of the subject of experience or of the some other thing. Throughout the analysis, I proffer examples of all of these types of qualitative modes. The paper concludes with a presentation of several examples of my analysis of the qualitative character of experience as the quality of existence. First, I describe the function and use of electro-optical mind control devices that operate by exaggerating the qualitative character of specific experiences in order to induce an overall mood change in the subject. This is readily construable as bringing about a change in the quality of the being of the subject of those experiences. Second, I describe states of mind induced by meditative exercises that are variously referred to as states of “pure consciousness”, “empty mindedness” or (perhaps) “satori”. While acknowledging that there are differences between different traditions in such characterizations, I indicate how such states of mind can be conceived as “dwelling within the be” of an objectless state of consciousness that is thereby representational of the existence of the meditating subject. Third, I characterize the “boundary states of consciousness” that figure centrally in existentialist psychology. These are states of extreme consciousness brought on by extra-ordinary engagements in/with/against the world, e.g., radical confrontation with one’s own death, exposure to extremes of danger or gross injustices. The qualitative character of these experiences bespeak the qualitative character of the sheer existence of their subject.   P7

23  Metaphorical heterophenomenology: Vim vs. the anti-matrix  Keith Turausky <bickbyro@gmail.com> (Tucson, AZ)
    To support his “heterophenomenological” view of consciousness, Daniel Dennett has introduced the metaphor of “vim.” Vim describes the intrinsic worth of a currency as imagined by those who use that currency. The metaphor is intended to poke fun at those who posit the existence of qualia—or, to use Dennett’s coinage, those with the “zombic hunch.” I will argue that, contrary to Dennett’s intentions, the vim metaphor argues for panpsychism better than it discredits qualia. I will also present a more fitting metaphor for heterophenomenology: the “Anti-Matrix.” In the “classic” Matrix, the extrinsic is an illusion, but in the Anti-Matrix, the intrinsic is an illusion. Dennett’s views suggest that ours is an Anti-Matrix world, wherein massively deluded “zombic hunchers” perpetuate a false metaphysics. The suggestion raises troubling questions. While the Matrix is installed by outside forces to conceal a horrifying reality, Dennett would presumably credit our Anti-Matrix—our zombic hunch—to natural evolutionary forces. What function, if any, does the illusion of an intrinsic world serve in a wholly extrinsic reality? Does it represent an unfortunate error in the “hardware” or the “software”? Is it no error at all, but rather a necessary illusion? Has an error evolved into a necessity? Dennett argues that the zombic hunch compromises otherwise rational people’s beliefs about reality. It is worth considering whether this is a necessary compromise, even if qualia do not exist.   P7

23a Exploring the role of qualia in the intentionality of thought   Iris Oved <irisoved@rci.rutgers.edu> (Rutgers University)

     It has been argued that Qualia play no role in information processing and thus either Qualia are eliminable in a theory of mind (Dennett, 1990) or Qualia are genuine properties of mental phenomena but are epiphenomenal in the sense that information-processing agents could just as well do without them (Chalmers, 1996). I propose the hypothesis that Qualia play a very central role in information processing in that they are the key to making an agent a genuine information processor. The hypothesis is that mental phenomena are not information carriers unless they have intentionality, or a kind of aboutness, independent of further interpretation (Brentano, 1874), and that Qualia are what make such intentionality possible. A development and partial defense of the hypothesis is presented in this poster.
  (1) The role of perception in the intentionality of thoughts: Linguistic symbols, seem to be meaningful only by virtue of some agent’s interpretation of the symbols. But by virtue of what are mental symbols meaningful? A brief survey of literature in the areas of philosophy (Dretske, 1981; Fodor, 1987; Kripke, 1982) and psychology (Harnad, 1990; Pylyshyn, 2000) supports the view that mental phenomena come to be intentional via their connection to perceptual experiences, which serve to ground their meanings in the world.
  (2) What makes perception special?: One proposal is that perceptual experiences are composed from demonstrative representations, which are meaningful without further interpretation because they point to their contents directly. In contrast, the category representations found in thoughts, such as the concepts RED, CAT, and DOORKNOB, do not point to their contents demonstratively. The view that perceptual representations are at least partially constituted by demonstrative pointers is defended in psychology (Pylyshyn, 2000). A defense of the view that category representations can be caused to be triggered by perceptual demonstrative representations can be found in Pollock and Oved (2005).
  (3) Are there perceptual demonstratives without qualia?: Data that seem to undermine the hypothesis that qualia play the intentionality-making role come from experiments on blindsight (Weiskrantz, 1986) and masked priming experiments (Kinoshita and Lupker, 2003). These experiments suggest that perceptual representations of objects, properties, and relations in the world can influence thought without any (reported) qualitative perceptual experience. These data suggest that if perceptual representations play an intentionality-making role, it is not because they are accompanied by qualia.
  (4) Can unconscious perceptual demonstratives ground the meanings of thoughts?: A closer look at these data reveal that they leave room for qualia to play a role in their processing. All such cases of supposed unconscious perception seem only to be present in subjects who did in fact have conscious qualitative experiences of those very stimuli, which were later presented to them unconsciously during the experiments. Indeed, one experiment (Forster, unpublished) suggests that masked priming effects only occur under conditions of prior conscious exposure, suggesting that grounding may indeed require qualia.
  (5) Call for data: Further research is in call to further address the hypothesis that qualia play a role in cognition insofar as they are the intentionality makers of thoughts.  P7

[01.05]  Machine consciousness

24  Counterfactual computational vehicles of consciousness  Ron Chrisley <ronc@sussex.ac.uk> (COGS, University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex, UK)
    In a recent paper (Bishop 2002), Bishop argues against computational explanations of consciousness by confronting them with a dilemma. On a non-causal or weakly causal construal of computation, familiar arguments from Putnam and Searle reveal computation to be too observer-relative to be able to underwrite any law-involving explanation of consciousness. On a (much more plausible) strongly causal notion of computation (Chalmers 1994; Chalmers 1996; Chrisley 1994), computational explanations must advert to non-actual, counterfactual states and state transitions. Working this fact into versions of Fading Qualia and Suddenly Disappearing Qualia arguments, Bishop concludes that strongly causal computationalism cannot be physicalist, in that it maintains that two states may differ only their non-physical (i.e. counterfactual) properties and yet be phenomenally distinct. I rebut this argument by embracing the second horn, and denying that appeal to non-actual or counterfactual properties is at odds with physicalism; indeed, it is the lifeblood of normal, physical, causal explanation. I further cast doubt on the argument by showing that it is too strong; if it is correct, computational states could not explain anything at all, not even computational phenomena, let alone conscious experience. I show how computational states that differ in their counterfactual properties must, contra Bishop's characterization, differ with respect to some of their actual properties. However, I note that inter-dependencies between current experience and computational state may only be explicable by reference to explicit, counterfactual states rather than the occurrent physical states which realize those dispositional properties. This is shown to cohere with at least one understanding (Chrisley 2004) of the sensorimotor contingency theory of perceptual experience (O'Regan and Noe 2000), in which expectation is understood as a disposition to produce a computational state corresponding to the sensation one would have if one were to perform a particular action. I conclude by sketching some implications for the search for correlates of experience. The considerations arising out of Bishop's argument show that if computationalism is true, then the search for correlates will fail if it only considers occurrent non-dispositionally construed physical states at a time to be the possible correlates of the experience being had at that time. References: Bishop, J.M. (2002) "Dancing With Pixies", in Preston, J. & Bishop, J.M., (eds), Views into the Chinese Room, pp. 360-379, Oxford University Press. Chalmers, D.J. (1994) "On Implementing a Computation", Minds and Machines, vol.4, pp.391-402. Chalmers, D. (1996) "Does a Rock Implement Every Finite-State Automaton?", Synthese, vol.108, pp.309-333. Chrisley, R. (1994) "Why Everything Doesn't Realize Every Computation," Minds & Machines 4:4, pp 403-420. Chrisley (2004) "Perceptual Experience as the Mastery of Sensorimotor Representational Contingencies", abstract in The Proceedings of Towards a Science of Consciousness 2004, p 119. O'Regan, K., and Noe, A. (2001) "A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness", Behavioral And Brain Sciences 24(5).  C18

25  The mechanical implementation of consciousness  John Lin <johnlin@mysmartpost.com> (Prometheus Press, Cerritos, CA 90703)
    A "conscious room" metaphor is used to represent all the known operations of the human consciousness. The conscious room is run by a mechanical robot called "consciousness," and everything the robot knows represents the content of our conscious awareness. Functions replicated in the conscious room include a communication console by which the robot can communicate with the outside world, a language translator, working memory, explicit memory, an imaginary theater where thinking and imagery manipulation can occur, and various means the conscious can communicate with the unconscious by means of thoughts and feelings. A way for the "conscious" robot to activate the various unconscious operations will also be described. It will be shown that the setup of the conscious room can simulate all features of human consciousness, including subjective experiences. An "English Room" metaphor will be used to refute John Searl's "Chinese Room" metaphor to argue that purely mechanical processes can understand the meaning of language. Novel ways to simulate thoughts and emotions and human reasoning are also presented.  P1

26  Z-Counselors: Consciousness, counseling, empathy and emotions  Joe Marchal, Jack Presbury, Graduate Psychology Program; Eric Cowan, Graduate Psychology Program; Ed McKee, Graduate Psychology Program, James Madison University <marchajh@jmu.edu> (Integrated Science and Technology and Computer Science Departments, James Madison University, Harrisonburg , VA)
    Turing (1950) famously speculated that in about 50 years time the average interrogator playing the imitation game (Turing Test) would not have more than a 70% chance of making the right identification (as to if a machine or human is answering the interrogator’s questions) after five minutes of questioning. While this has not yet come to pass, enough progress has been made in AI technologies that we have a whole new set of Turing-like speculations: e.g., Moravec (1999) “Generation four robots will be so much like us we will begin to ask if they posse a mental life like ours, whether they have emotions, and if they are conscious;” Brain (2003) believes that by 2050 … it is likely that half the jobs in the United States will be held by robots, including jobs as … scientists, teachers, engineers, doctors and counselors, resulting in up to 50% unemployment. We are interested in the role (use) of consciousness in counseling. We mine Turing (1950) for implications for the claim that effective counseling does not require a conscious counselor. This comes to the claims that a Turing Zombie (Z) Counselor can be built to pass a Counselor Credentialing Test and that said Z-Counselor can provide counseling services adequate to the needs of most, if not all, clients. We update Turing’s assumptions about the technologies needed to build a Z-counselor; present anecdotal evidence from the histories of Eliza-like and Kismet-like systems illustrating the human propensity for attributions of human psychological state to non-humans; note that onlinecounseling is an ongoing business and that how upon hearing our story a surprising number of professional counselors are intrigued by, if not completely taken with both the plausibility and practicality of Z-Counselors. We review professionally informed intuitions about the role of consciousness in counseling; narratives of professional behavior that confirm our beliefs that counselors and clients bring consciousness to counseling and that consciousness plays a central role in session outcomes; everything about the claim that consciousness can in any way be absence from counseling feel wrong, verging on the absurd. To paraphrase one presenter, we cannot have counseling without empathy and we cannot have empathy without experiencing the rich panoply of human emotions in situ, that is, in the human mind-body in a cultural context. Theoretical support for this position is found in (Baron-Cohen 1996) our ability to mind read. In the exchange between counselor and client, minding reading is a critical part of the counseling process. This could also explain our propensity to attribute psychological states to non-human subjects noted above. Turing’s 1950 bet was” … that at the end of the (20th) century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.” Maravec et al are currently making the same bet about consciousness. Z-Counselors as it turns out are not zombies after all; an intentional stance (Dennett 1978) leads to a new meme (Dawkins 1976).   P1

27  The clock speed of consciousness and the moral worth of mind  Jeff Medina <analyticphilosophy@gmail.com> (Birkbeck, University of London; Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies; Singularity Institute, Fairfax, VA)
    Given a weak form of the computational theory of mind, physics allows the possibility of the acceleration of the speed of consciousness experience. The primary thrust of this paper is that we have a moral obligation to bring about such acceleration. Section one looks briefly at some scientifically realistic ways to accomplish this, a knowledge of which is helpful in the discussion that follows. One path to accelerated consciousness is the direct creation of new minds, or artificial intelligence, that take advantage of substrates more efficient than the human brain; another is the transference of a pre-existing mind from one substrate to another, a scenario known as uploading. In section two, the moral case for pursuing accelerated conscious experience is made from an aggregative consequentialist approach. An upper bound on the opportunity cost of not pursuing accelerated conscious experience is derived using data from neuroscience and the physics of computation, and is staggering. In section three, potential objections are examined and counterarguments are provided. Section four summarizes the results and provides some initial thoughts on areas indeed of future investigation, such as whether various deontological and virtue ethical approaches accord with this result.  C18

[01.06]  Mental causation and the function of consciousness

28  The significance of phenomenal consciousness: Why blindsight and neglect syndromes cannot undermine the function of phenomenal consciousness  Chien-Hui Chiu, Allen Houng <st.lynn@gmail.com> (Department of Life Sciences, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, Taiwan (Republic of China))
    Blindsight and visual neglect show interesting dissociation between phenomenal consciousness and the ability to discriminate, report and respond to visual stimulus. In this paper, I will first state that the two symptoms seem to strongly suggest phenomenal consciousness as neither necessary nor sufficient for cognitive functions, which imply viewing phenomenal consciousness as a functionless phenomenon. However, I will argue that from an evolutionary and biological point of view, functional phenomenal consciousness could be compatible with the above brain damage symptoms while being an important physical property of the brain. Many theories argue for the functionless of consciousness with neglect and blindsight syndromes as supporting evidences. Blindsight patients are blind in the visual fields of damaged areas; yet visual input is still “processed” and “perceived” without phenomenal consciousness. Cognitive function without phenomenal consciousness thus implies that phenomenal consciousness is not a prerequisite for these actions. On the other hand, neglect syndrome patients cannot acknowledge the existence of their left side of space or objects following lesions at the right posterior parietal lobes, resulting in inability to report or act upon the stimuli within. Psychological and neurological data on how perception of the neglected areas can be restored strongly suggest that neglect patients still retain complete phenomenal consciousness of the neglected part of the world, thus implying phenomenal consciousness’s insufficiency for function. From the two syndromes above, phenomenal consciousness is thus deemed useless in the sense that it is neither necessary nor sufficient for action or perception. But how consciousness could have evolved thus becomes a puzzle. Theories account for this puzzle by regarding consciousness as an evolutionary by-product, an epiphenomenon, or even an illusion. However, I argue that phenomenal consciousness, as a physical property of the brain, plays an important role in the realizing of cognitive functions. The function of wings—flying—seems to be a function that can be realized by different materials such as feathers, leather, metal, etc. Therefore, the materials seem nonessential for the function of flying. Likewise, phenomenal consciousness as a property of the material, brain, seems to be unimportant to its cognitive functions. However, the physical properties of materials coupled with its environment play crucial roles in determining the function of the realizer that makes the exact function only realizable by materials with those physical properties. Only feathered wings could fly “this way” in “this” environment, no other material could realize the exact way of flying. Phenomenal consciousness could have evolved as a crucial property of the brain that is biologically important to the realization of cognitive functions. By considering the role of low level functions in the development and evolution of high level functions in biological systems, blindsight and neglect syndromes could be explained while preserving the importance of phenomenal consciousness.   P1

29  Strange loops, downward causation, distributed consciousness  Douglas Hofstadter <dughof@cs.indiana.edu> (Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN)
    As everyone knows from hearing microphones screeching in auditoriums, feedback loops give rise to a highly stable type of locking-in phenomenon. A related phenomenon arises in other types of feedback loops -- in particular, in video feedback. The patterns that result from such feedback loops exhibit stability and robustness, and therefore take on a seeming reality at their own level. The brain¹s mirroring of the world is far more complex than that of a television camera, since its purpose is to ³make sense² of the world, which means the selective activation of small sets of symbolic structures, or as I call them, ³symbols², which reside on a level far higher than that of neurons. The interplay of symbols in the brain constitutes thought, and thought results in behavior, whose consequences are then perceived anew by the selfsame brain. Such a feedback loop exists in any system that has internal symbols, but when the symbolic repertoire is unlimitedly extensible (through the mechanism of chunking) and when it additionally gives rise not only to permanent records of past episodes but also to the possibility of imagining future and counterfactual scenarios (which is the case for human brains but not for, say, dog brains), then the system¹s representation of itself becomes an extremely stable, robust, locked-in, epiphenomenal pattern (which I dub a ³strange loop²), and the system thus fabricates for itself an ³I², whose reality (to the system itself) seems beyond doubt. The ³I² seems to act on the world purely through high-level phenomena such as desires, hopes, beliefs, and so on -- and this lends it an apparent quality of ³downward causation² (i.e., thoughts and other emergent phenomena ³pushing around² particles, rather than the reverse). To the extent that the ³I² is real, so is downward causation and also conversely: to the extent that downward causation is real, so is the ³I². Each human being, by virtue of being acquainted with (and thus internally mirroring) many other human beings, houses not only one strange loop or ³I², but many such, at extremely different levels of fidelity -- metaphorically speaking, mosaics at wildly different grain sizes. Thus each human brain is the locus of not just one consciousness (or ³soul²) but of many such, having different levels of intensity or presence. Conversely, a given individual, although it inhabits primarily a particular brain, does not inhabit that brain exclusively, and as a consequence each human ³soul² and each human identity is a somewhat distributed entity. The near-alignment of one brain and one soul is thus misleading: it gives rise to the illusion that consciousness is not distributed, and it is that illusion that is the source of much confusion about what we human beings really are.   PL6

30  Phenomenology, knowledge, cognition, and the function of consciousness  Aaron Nitzkin <anitzkin@tulane.edu> (Interdisciplinary, Tulane University, Paradise, CA)
    This essay presents a re-interpretation of the phenomenology of consciousness and a model of ‘what consciousness does and why’ that bridges the “explanatory gap” in terms of information processing. The author argues that the natural function of consciousness is the evolution of a certain kind of knowledge, definable in terms of the relationship between a conscious nervous system and the physical ‘multiverse.’ The author’s examination of the phenomenology of consciousness leads to a re-seeing of the relationship between conscious and ‘non-conscious,’ information, centered around the observation that the ‘non-conscious’ information in a conscious nervous system is implicitly present to consciousness in terms of its role in modulating conscious perception and behavior. The author then argues that the adaptive function of phenomenological consciousness is to organize information in a particular way that condenses the largest possible amount of information relevant to the self in each moment in order to maximize the intelligence of behavior. The intelligence-maximizing function of consciousness is defined and explored in terms of three cognitive capacities—sensitivity, insight, and creativity. The author presents a model of the information process embodied by consciousness that involves three streams of information—sensation, feeling (including instinctive response and emotion), and meaning (both primitive categorization and conceptualization). In this model these three streams of information progress through a loop including three distinct levels of organization—unconscious (inherited), sub-conscious (acquired from experience), and conscious. The central information structure of this process is the sub-conscious autobiographical identity. The author explores how this process enables consciousness to condense information into the conscious format in such a way that it potentially maximizes the intelligence of behavior. The author concludes by proposing that this process can be usefully related to current theories concerning the nature of knowledge relative to the ‘multiverse’ model of physical reality (as described by physicist David Deutsch). The author suggests that the conscious information process he has described is unique in terms of the range of possible universes to which it is relevant in such a way that it demonstrates the potential of consciousness to approach (or simulate?) ‘objective’ or multi-universally relevant knowledge. It is this capacity of consciousness, the author suggests, that makes consciousness potentially infinitely more adaptive than non-conscious cognition.   P1

[01.07]  The 'hard problem' and the explanatory gap

31  The explanatory gap: From a zombie’s point of view  Dave Beisecker <beiseckd@unlv.nevada.edu> (Philosophy, UNLV, Las Vegas, NV)
    Despite their lip service to the possibility of zombie worlds, I would suggest that even those neo-dualists who enlist zombies in their thought experiments to illustrate the gap between the material and the phenomenal fail to take the zombie threat seriously enough. For the weird thing is that the envisioned zombies themselves ought to find neo-dualist arguments against materialistic accounts of phenomenal consciousness every bit as compelling as “regular” folk. However, they would be mistaken to conclude from these considerations that immaterial qualia attend their own experiences. So the issue of whether we should be persuaded by explanatory gap arguments against materialism turns on our ability to rule out the possibility that we are not zombies, creatures that would be mistakenly seduced into believing in immaterial qualia. And this is precisely what I fear we cannot do, at least not without begging the question. So the real problem with zombies is not their ultimate inconceivability, but rather the “live” possibility that they are actual. In this paper, I plan to flesh out this possibility by telling the story from the perspective of Dave Chalmers’ zombie twin. Zombies like him have had to learn how to talk like everyone else, but they have to do it without the benefit of “consciousness,” as qualia-lovers understand it. Specifically, I offer an account of how zombies could come to talk about the qualitative dimension of their experience and accept an explanatory gap between the material and phenomenal without invoking immaterial properties of experience. On this account, by using the phrase “what it’s like” as a pre-theoretical means of talking about the inner states they use to discriminate between external properties in the world, zombies can easily embrace a form of what Chalmers would call “Type-B Materialism.” So what zombies find conceivable (though not actual) is the possibility that they use immaterial inner states to discriminate external properties of their environments. After showing how zombies can make perfect sense of such puzzling features of phenomenal consciousness as its transparency, first-person authority, inter- and intra-personal comparisons of what it’s like to have various experiences, and attributions of knowledge of what it’s like to have those experiences, I show how zombies can also endorse the intuitions that get explanatory gap arguments off the ground: that what its like to have certain experiences could have been vastly different from what they actually are and can come apart from a given experience’s intentional and physiological profiles. If this story about zombie consciousness sounds plausible (or better yet, familiar!), then it would seem that one ought to entertain the possibility, not that zombies aren't possible, but rather that we too live in a zombie world. What is really conceivable, though unlikely, is that we are not zombies – that we have conscious states are as the lovers of immaterial qualia understand them.   C1

32  Psychiatrists demand consciousness: Or the need for the middle road between Chalmers’ hard and easy problems.  Michael Cerullo <cerullom@hotmail.com> (Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati , OH)
    A curious article appeared recently in the flagship journal of American psychiatry. The article, "Towards a Philosophical Structure for Psychiatry", was written by Kenneth Kendler, one of the leading voices in psychiatry. Kendler advocates a “pluralistic” stance in philosophy of mind; rejecting both Cartesian dualism and epiphenomenalism and demanding bidirectional mind to brain causality. Kendler’s concerns reflect a pragmatic tendency among psychiatrists unimpressed with debates in philosophy that seem to “explain” away any real mental causality. In psychiatry, these are not merely theoretical questions but have immediate application in how to treat patients. Psychiatry requires more than functionalism can provide. While sympathetic to Kendler’s concerns, a major limitation in his essay was a lack of philosophical arguments supporting his position. The goal of this essay is to provide that support. First, there are strong pragmatic arguments in favor of mental causality. While out of fashion with philosophy of mind, pragmatism is what drives science and industry. Much of the recent work in philosophy of mind has developed from questions raised in artificial intelligence. However, scientists within the biological realm are concerned with very different questions. One important illustrative example is the field of cosmetic psychopharmacology, the development of drugs to enhance mood and emotion. The emotional system evolved from rapid appraisal mechanisms of the environment. These systems may no longer provide us with the most useful “truths” about the environment. The goal of cosmetic psychopharmacological research is liberation from current limitations in self and will by gaining more control over when emotional responses occur, and viewing ourselves as automatons is counterproductive in such research. These new endeavors challenge the usefulness of many current paradigms in the philosophy of mind. Within functionalism, it is paradox that creatures would attempt to expand something which does not exist. In fact, much existential and religious philosophy is also a paradox when functionalism is accepted. Current arguments within philosophy of mind also support Kendler’s concerns, illustrated by the recent debate between Pinker and Fodor. Pinker believes that we know exactly how the mind works; no new tools are needed to understand the mind/brain or their interaction. Fodor, one of the founders of cognitive science and functionalism, states that we actually understand very little about how the mind works, and he directly challenges the completeness of the functionalist account of mind based on the problem of abduction. The first step in resolving this dilemma (right after admitting there is a problem), is to acknowledge that another layer is needed in Chalmers’ formulation of the problem of consciousness. This new “middle problem” falls between Chalmers’ easy and hard problem and addresses mental causality with the recognition that functionalism is inadequate (although functionalism may still be the answer to the easy problem). The middle problem does not attempt to address the most fundamental questions about consciousness which are left to the hard problem. This new formulation is the first step in moving into the pragmatic new realm of empowered neuroscience.   P7

33  Conscious realism: A new formulation and solution of the mind-body problem  Donald Hoffman <ddhoff@uci.edu> (Department of Cognitive Science, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA)
    Despite substantial efforts by many researchers, we still have no scientific theory of how brain activity can create, or be, conscious experience. Current theories hint at where we might hope to find a scientific theory of consciousness—perhaps in information theory, information integration theory, complexity theory, neural Darwinism, reentrant neural networks, quantum holism, type or token physicalism, reductive or nonreductive functionalism. These theories fall short of the minimal standards of quantitive precision, novel prediction, and explanatory scope that are normally required of a scientific theory. This is troubling, since we have a large body of correlations between brain activity and consciousness, and between brain impairments and conscious impairments, correlations normally assumed to entail that brain activity creates conscious experience. In this talk I explore a solution to the mind-body problem that starts with the converse assumption: these correlations arise because consciousness creates brain activity, and indeed creates all objects and properties of the physical world. To this end, I develop two theses. The multimodal user interface (MUI) theory of perception states that perceptual experiences do not match or approximate properties of the objective world, but instead provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to that world. I argue for this thesis on evolutionary grounds, and on the basis of results in computational studies of vision. Conscious realism states that the objective world consists of conscious agents and their experiences; these can be mathematically modeled and empirically explored in the normal scientific manner. I present a mathematical model and discuss its implications. Together these two theses provide a new formulation and solution to the mind-body problem. They also entail epiphysicalism: consciousness creates physical objects and properties, but physical objects and properties have no causal powers. For the conscious realist, the mind-body problem is how, precisely, conscious agents create physical objects and properties. Here, I argue, we have a vast and mathematically precise scientific literature, with successful implementations in computer vision systems. To a physicalist, the conscious-realist mind-body problem might appear to be a bait and switch that dodges hard and interesting questions: What is consciousness for? When and how did it arise in evolution? How does it now arise from brain activity? Now, admittedly, with conscious realism there is a switch, from the ontology of physicalism to the ontology of conscious realism. This switch changes the relevant questions. Consciousness is fundamental. So to ask what consciousness is for is to ask why something exists rather than nothing. To ask how consciousness arose in a physicalist evolution is mistaken. Instead we ask how the dynamics of conscious agents, when projected onto appropriate MUIs, yields current evolutionary theory as a special case. To ask how consciousness arises from brain activity is also mistaken. Brains are complex icons representing heterarchies of interacting conscious agents. So instead we ask how neurobiology serves as a user interface to such heterarchies. Conscious realism, it is true, dodges some tough mysteries posed by physicalism, but it replaces them with new, and equally engaging, scientific problems.   C15

34  The hard problem: A twofold solution  Jorge Morales <jorge_mlg@yahoo.com> (Philosophy, Universidad Panamericana, México DF, DF, México)
    Most recent explanations of consciousness are, at least, incomplete. Usually (but not always) these explanations are coherent with the rest of our current scientific paradigm: they demystify the mind-body problem, and remove its halo of insolubility. However, they tend to dismiss philosophy, giving up command to neurosciences. I will argue that science and philosophy do not oppose each other in the study of consciousness; on the contrary, both are necessary to solve different aspects of the problem. The fact that philosophy seems to be out of fashion in its attempts to solve the mind-body problem is due to the belief of many scientists (and philosophers) that the so-called hard problem does not exist at all. The usual answer to the question ‘Why the brain works the way it does?’ is both bizarre and trivial: that is the way nature works; it simply does it. Those who deny the hard problem do not realize that the why in the question may not be answered by scientific theories, but by philosophical accounts. The assumption that there is a causal link between brain and mind really yields two kinds of questions: How it does it? and Why it does it? The how question is of a scientific-technical kind and its answer may indeed be expressed in terms of molecules, neuron firings, brain zones, neurotransmitters, or something like that. The why question, however, cannot be understood in material terms, but in terms of sense and meaning. Thus, there is a sense of asking why, whereby do not expect a material-functional answer, but a global explanation: an explanation of the meaning, not of the process. Hence, the mind-body problem question is twofold: one part belongs to neurosciences (the objective-material part of human beings), and the other part, the anthropological one, belongs to philosophy (the subjective-conscious part of human beings). This way, it makes sense to say that there is no hard problem for science (it shouldn't be, in some way...), while there is indeed some problem for philosophy, and its solution is still pending.  P7

35  Joseph Levine’s problem of duality  Chris Schriner <uuchris2@aol.com> (Unitarian Universalist Assn., Fremont, CA)
    In his book, Purple Haze (2001), Joseph Levine explores a puzzle about consciousness which he calls the problem of duality. This problem involves the relationship between the use of the word, ‘experience,’ as a verb and as a noun. In both casual and philosophical communication, people use this word in referring to the act of experiencing, to that which is experienced, or to a compound event that includes both act and object. Thus the experience of tasting a strawberry involves (1) enjoying the flavor, (2) the flavor which is enjoyed, and perhaps also (3) a mysterious combination of the two. Is this just a verbal ambiguity, in which a single word refers to more than one state of affairs, or is something more perplexing involved? Levine suggests that we ought to be perplexed, because in considering our own experiences, it seems as if ‘the very same state is both cognitive apprehension and object of cognitive apprehension.’ (P. 176) He finds it ‘deeply puzzling ... that ... qualia, seem to have a dual character as both act and object.’ (P. 9) His conclusion is that qualia are in some sense ‘self-intimating.’ (P. 109) Since it would be difficult to comprehend self-intimating phenomena in physical terms, this leaves us with an explanatory gap between subjective experiences and any scientific attempt to describe such experiences. One aspect of the problem of duality seems especially troublesome for physicalists: If the act and the object of experience are both brain events, where are qualia ‘located?’ Are they neural events which realize qualia as objects of awareness, or neural events which realize the act of experiencing qualia? Either interpretation leads to peculiar conclusions. This paper will address these concerns by suggesting that our descriptions of experiences may be radically mistaken. Many philosophers would agree that we can make important errors about our own experiences. I will argue that erroneous assessments of introspectable phenomena lead us to believe there is a problem of duality.  P7

35a Consciousness and the relativity of science  Richard Loosemore <rpwl@lightlink.com>

      The hard problem of consciousness can be resolved as follows. (1) The final arbiter of what the mind deems “real” is that a thing is real if the concept that represents the thing plays nicely with the brain’s concept-building mechanisms. More specifically, concepts are real to the extent that they are consistent with other concepts, and with the larger space of collective concepts shared by society—“reality” is an emergent property of the particular design of (societies of) human cognitive systems. (2) There is one mechanism in the mind, deployed by scientists and naive thinkers alike, that can analyze concepts into their explanatory constituents: call this the “analysis mechanism.” When a naive thinker is asked “what is a chair?”, her brain automatically uses the analysis mechanism to break apart the Chair concept into whatever simpler constituents it can find. Science systematizes and objectifies this mechanism as Scientific Reduction. (3) This analysis mechanism works for the vast majority of concepts, but there is a particular class for which it conspicuously fails: when we ask “what is the essential difference between redness and greenness?” the analysis mechanism probes into the furthest neural links coming from sensory input devices, but returns with no answer because the red and green signals simply come along different channels. The same argument can be applied, mutatis mutandi, to other situations where the analysis mechanism dead-ends into either a primary sensory input (qualia) or a recursive concept (the self). (4) We suggest that the analysis mechanism does, in fact, get as far as to return a concept representing “the essence of red,” but this is barren, so the thinker declares that there is a “real” thing called redness, but that this is inexplicable. (5) This argument does not dismiss consciousness as an artifact or epiphenomenon. The concept of “real” is a constructed part of the system of concepts, like all other concepts, and is merely a summary of how well a given concept plays the consistency game that minds like to play. The concept proton is real; a concept like phlogiston is not, but both of these can be analyzed, so they both agree to play the consistency game (where they differ is in how phlogiston plays the game: it does not fit, so it is not real). The subjective aspects of consciousness refuse to play the game because they cannot be analyzed: they are neither real nor unreal, but inexplicable. This may seem like a denial of the reality of consciousness, but it is not: the question of its reality is strictly beyond the bounds of science. There is effectively a dead zone at the center of science, which science can predict and delineate, but which it cannot enter. (6) Postulating a neural (or other) locus for consciousness is thus meaningless: those who try will never be able to say clearly what the explanandum is. (7) This argument may lead to verifiable predictions about the behavior of qualia. P7

[01.08]  Higher-order thought

36  Monitoring theories of consciousness and introspective richness  Michael Bruno <mbruno@u.arizona.edu> (Philosophy, Tucson, AZ)
    Monitoring theories of conscious have been developed in both higher-order and same-order varieties. Higher-order theories hold that a mental state is conscious when it is the target of a separate and distinct mental state. Same-order theories hold that a mental state is conscious in virtue of that state having dual contents, one world-directed and one self-directed. Given how we understand the nature of mental states and contents, however, there seems to be a prima facie worry that there is no substantial difference between these views. One difference seems to emerge when we consider how they each attempt to explain introspection. According to higher-order theories, introspection occurs when there is an unconscious higher-order representation directed at another higher-order representation. According to same-order theories, introspection involves an attentional shift in which a subject becomes more focally aware of the self-directed content she is usually only peripherally aware of. I will raise a problem for each of these treatments of introspection. Same-order theories have a problem accounting for the possibility of cases in which one is able to introspect and introspective state. Higher-order theories face a problem accounting for the richness of introspection. After raising these problems, I will discuss possible responses on behalf of the proponents of each theory. Finally, I'll argue that embracing either one of these responses threatens to render the dispute between these views terminological.  P1

37  Four theses on peripheral awareness  Rocco Gennaro <rocco@indstate.edu> (Philosophy, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN)
    It is frequently said that some kind of "peripheral" (or inattentional) conscious awareness accompanies our "focal" (or attentional) conscious awareness. I agree that this is often the case as a matter of phenomenology, but clarity is needed on several fronts. In this paper I first present four distinguishable theses, each of which includes some notion of peripheral awareness and crucially depends upon whether or not such awareness is outer or inner directed. For example, most uncontroversially, we might all agree that we (at least sometimes) have outer-directed focal consciousness accompanied by outer-directed peripheral conscious awareness. It is less obvious (though still true I think), however, that we can sometimes have inner-directed focal consciousness accompanied by outer-directed peripheral conscious awareness. I ultimately lay out four theses on peripheral awareness and argue that we have good reasons to think that three of them are true. However, I argue that the fourth thesis, commonly associated with so-called "self-representational approaches to consciousness," is false. This claim is that we have outer focal consciousness accompanied often (or even always) by inner peripheral conscious (self-)awareness. This thesis has enjoyed significant support from the phenomenological tradition and from several contemporary writers. I criticize several arguments for this fourth thesis and thereby also self-representational theories of consciousness. My criticisms stem from both methodological and phenomenological considerations. In doing so, I offer a diagnosis as to why the fourth thesis has seemed true to so many and also show how the so-called "transparency of experience," frequently invoked by representationalists, is importantly relevant to my diagnosis. In short, there are important differences between this fourth thesis and the others considered. What emerges is that if one wishes to hold that some form of self-awareness accompanies all outer-directed conscious states, one is better off holding that such self-awareness is itself unconscious, as is held for example by standard higher-order theories of consciousness (or something very close to them).  C2

38  The self-representational theory of consciousness  Uriah Kriegel <kriegel@email.arizona.edu> (Tucson, )
    According to the Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness, a mental state or event is conscious when, and only when, it represents itself. For example, my current visual experience of the laptop in front of me represents both the laptop and itself. It is in virtue of representing the laptop that my experience is the conscious experience it is, but it is in virtue of representing itself that it is a conscious experience at all. In this talk, I sketch out a philosophical case for the self-representational theory. The case is “philosophical,” rather than scientific, in that it is based on considerations pertaining to the nature of what needs to be explained in a theory of consciousness, rather than to the question of how to do the explaining. I will argue that the case can be made by citing three highly plausible considerations, each of which rules out another set of competing theories, resulting in a narrowing down of the field of live options to the self-representational theory.   PL7

39  "Consciousness and intrinsic higher-order content"  David Rosenthal, David M. Rosenthal <davidrosenthal@nyu.edu> (Philosophy/Cognitive Science, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY)
    Mental states occur both consciously and not consciously. But no state is conscious when the subject is in no way conscious of that state; so a state's being conscious consists at least in part in a subject's being in some way conscious of that state. A major task of any theory of consciousness is therefore to specify just how subjects must be conscious of their mental states for those states to be conscious. The various higher-order theories that have proliferated in recent years differ in how they answer that question. One issue that has divided theorists is how conscious states are related to one's consciousness of them. Some theorists, myself among them, have argued that one's consciousness of each conscious state is due to a distinct higher-order state that represents one as being in the target state. Others have urged that such consciousness is, instead, intrinsic to the state one is conscious of. These intrinsicalist theories follow Franz Brentano's (1874) Aristotelian view, on which each conscious state represents itself. Intrinsicalists urge that their view squares best with our introspective sense that consciousness is an intrinsic property of mental states. Because we are seldom aware of any distinct higher-order state, our awareness of our conscious states seems, from a first-person point of view, to be intrinsic to those states. Intrinsicalists also urge that their view avoids various objections to theories that posit distinct higher-order states, such as my higher-order-thought hypothesis. And they urge that intrinsicalism has various explanatory advantages. I'll argue that none of those considerations succeeds in sustaining the intrinsicalist view. Some of the advantages claimed for intrinsicalism simply beg the question against distinct higher-order states; others fail for other reasons. I'll also argue that intrinsicalism faces serious difficulties of its own, and that there are independent theoretical advantages to positing distinct higher-order states.   PL7

40  Kant on phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness  Tobias Schlicht <tobias.schlicht@uni-koeln.de> (Philosophy Department, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany)
    Higher-Order theories and self-representational theories of consciousness can both be seen as attempts of answering the question what makes a mental state conscious in mentalistic terms. According to the higher-order approach, in order to be conscious, a mental state has to be the object of some kind of higher-order representation or be part of a global state. According to the self-representational theory, mental states need to have the ability to represent themselves. Although such contemporary theories are highly original, their underlying idea goes at least back to Kant who already introduced a very detailed analysis of the structural connection between the mental state and the accompanying representation “I think”. In the paper, Kant’s very powerful approach is outlined and compared to contemporary positions and the challenges they meet. Kant’s famous phrase that it has to be possible for the “I think” to accompany all my representations firstly explains what it means that a mental state is something for me, the subject of experience. Thereby, it highlights a link between phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness which can be expressed using some Husserlian ideas and terminology. It also makes it possible to distinguish phenomenal consciousness from richer, conceptual forms of self-consciousness. In addition, it explains the unity of experience, i.e. that our experience always entails a manifold of representations yet being one coherent experience or global representation for one and the same subject. Finally, it provides a powerful account of the empirical fact that the subject of experience is conscious of its identity with respect to a manifold of changing mental states (representations). Kant’s account gives solutions to a number of puzzling phenomena in connection with phenomenal consciousness and the first-person-perspective. Therefore, it is still very fruitful to consider his ideas in developing a theory of phenomenal consciousness in our day.  C2

41  The structure of inner awareness vis-a-vis same-order monitoring  David Woodruff Smith <dwsmith@uci.edu> (Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California)
    In early modern philosophy, it was proposed that consciousness is characterized by a kind of self-representation or consciousness-of-consciousness (variously configured by Locke, Leibniz, Kant). In the early decades of phenomenology, it was proposed that this type of self-consciousness could not be a separate, higher-order consciousness of a conscious experience, on pain of infinite regress. This was the view of Brentano, Husserl, and Sartre, though their explications differed in important detail. In recent philosophy of mind, in the analytic tradition, it has been proposed that what makes a mental state conscious is a higher-order mental state that monitors the first or base state. This higher-order state may be a kind of inner perception of the base state, or a kind of thought about the base state, or its own type of monitoring of the base state, say, achieved by a unique form of brain activity. (Armstrong, Rosenthal, Lycan, and others.) Other philosophers, however, have objected to various features of these higher-order monitoring models of what makes a mental state conscious. (Myself, Siewert, Dretske, Thomasson, Kriegel, and others.) In this paper I shall explore in rather close detail two models of this same-order monitoring that is claimed to make a mental state conscious: my own evolving model, and Uriah Kriegel’s recent model. As Kriegel has argued, an advantage of his model over higher-order models is that the monitoring is an integral (essential, internal) part of the monitored base state. Sometimes he calls this a “logical” part of the mental state. I think this view is on the right track, and I shall try to explicate the sense in which this part is a logical part: namely, it is a dependent part of the given conscious experience, and its ideal content is a dependent part of the ideal content, or phenomenological structure, of the base experience. That said, I shall recur to my own model of the phenomenological structure of a typical conscious mental state or experience. There are, however, not one, but two places in the structure in which monitoring occurs. One place is in the periphery of attention; the other is in what I call the modal character of the experience. (I draw on two bodies of work to distinguish these forms of monitoring.) Thus, I distinguish two forms of inner awareness of an experience, both characteristic of normal states of consciousness. That said, I shall look to the relative merits of these two models of intrinsic, same-order monitoring. I shall recur to a characterization of “self-consciousness” that I think is effective yet elliptical, that by Jean-Paul Sartre. I shall then try to see how the two models of monitoring square with something like that phenomenological description of inner awarenss.   C2

42  Rethinking the self-reflexive nature of consciousness  Robert Van Gulick <RNVANGUL@syr.edu> (Philosophy, Syracuse University, Syracuse , NY)
    Most reflexive theories of consciousness explicate consciousness in terms of self-awareness. They typically appeal to higher-order mental states that are distinct from their mental objects and that explicitly represent those states as states of the same self that is the subject of those higher-order states. Such theories have several assets, but they are also open to a number of powerful objections. In particular they have been criticized for not adequately explicating the phenomenal and qualitative aspects of consciousness. Alternative reflexive models might be offered that retained the link between consciousness and self-awareness but that did not locate the relevant form of self-awareness in distinct explicit higher-order states. They might instead explicate it in terms of an implicit reflexive aspect that is present in the very structure of phenomenal states themselves. Such states are not conscious in virtue of some separate higher-order state that is directed at them, but rather in virtue the self-reflexive aspects embedded in their structure, organization and content. It is those aspects that enable conscious states to occur as states of a conscious self. Developing such alternative reflexive models involves carefully analyzing the sorts of distinctive intentional contents associated with phenomenal mental states, and then showing that such contents involve essential reflexive elements in a variety of ways. These alternative models treat the self as an emergent feature of phenomenal organization rather than as a separate element that in some way monitors or introspects conscious states. Such models may be able to avoid the sorts of criticisms aimed at more standard reflexive theories. Moreover they are also consistent with much of what is known about the neural substrate of conscious states.   PL7

43  The self-representational theory and the misrepresentation of consciousness  Josh Weisberg <jwsleep@aol.com> (Philosophy and Cognitive Science, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY)
    The self-representational theory (SRT) of mental state consciousness holds that conscious states are a special kind of self-representing state--a state that both makes the subject aware of the world and makes the subject aware of being in that very state. SRT theorists generally hold that this self-representational process can be explained naturalistically; thus, the SRT offers the possibility of a naturalistic explanation of mental state consciousness. However, naturally occurring representational process can go awry. It's possible that the complex mental state accounting for conscious experience might misrepresent some of its own properties. Further, the state might make us aware of a representation of the world that doesn't in fact exist. A number of objectors have previously argued that this possibility is damning for the "higher-order" (HO) theory of consciousness. In this talk, I extend the criticism to the SRT. However, I argue that the objection only has bite if we fail to characterize the explanatory data in the way demanded by the SRT. The views hold that a conscious state is a state that the subject is conscious of herself as being in. This suggests a second and more fundamental kind of self-representation at work in the SRT: conscious states are states we represent ourselves as being in. I argue that once this is taken into account, the objection fails. Further, it narrows the distance between the SRT and the HO theory. Both views, I argue, explain the same data with largely the same theoretical tools. I close by considering several further ways the views might come apart. I conclude the distance between them may be more apparent than real.   C2

[01.09]  Epistemology and philosophy of science

44  Integral methodological pluralism: Multiple perspectives in the study of consciousness  Allan Combs, Esbjörn-Hargens, S. Integral Institute <acombs@saybrook.edu> (Consciousness & Spirituality, Saybrook Graduate School, Galena, OH)
    The all-quadrants, all-levels (AQAL) epistemological model, originally suggested by Wilber in 1995, posits four aspects of consciousness that also can be understood in four approaches or orientations. Consciousness is represented differently by each orientation, and each contains a unique set of methodologies for its study. These orientations are represented graphically by a square containing four quadrants: the two left-hand quadrants signify subjective orientations as well as subjective aspects of consciousness while the two right-hand quadrants signify objective orientations as well as objective aspects of consciousness. Similarly, the two upper quadrants signify singular orientations as well as singular aspects of consciousness while the two lower quadrants represent plural aspects of consciousness and plural orientations. In Wilber’s recent work (in preparation) of these four orientations can each be approached from the “inside” or the “outside,” yielding a total of eight epistemological perspectives. Taking them one at a time, the upper left quadrant seen from the inside signifies the 1st-person perspective and individual subjectivity. This perspective gives rise to 1st-person methodologies such as James’ naturalistic introspection, Husserl’s phenomenology, Buddhist “insight meditation,” and so on. The content of this quadrant seen form the outside perspective, however, yields 3rd-person methodologies such as object relations theory (e.g., Loevinger) and Piaget’s developmental psychology. The content of the lower left quadrant experienced from the inside yields methodologies such as hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, and participatory epistemology, as well as philosophical explorations such as Martin Buber’s I and Thou. Seen from the outside, however, its content yields methodologies such as cultural anthropology, neostructuralism, and archaeology. The inside perspective of the upper right hand quadrant yields methodologies such as cognitive psychology and autopoietic modeling (e.g., Maturana and Varela), while the outside perspective yields methodologies such as empiricism and behaviorism. The inside perspective of the lower right hand quadrant provides methodologies that include social autopoiesis, as seen in the theories of Luhmann and Habermas, while the outside perspective yields functionalism and systems theory. Dividing these eight perspectives into interior and exterior viewpoints toward interior and exterior content generates four distinct approaches to the study of consciousness which Wilber terms Zones. Zone one represents 1st-person or interior approaches to both singular and plural interior content (“I” and “we”), while Zone two represents objective or “outside” approaches to both. The first instance is illustrated by “the look of a feel;” the second by the “look” of a shared experience. In analogous fashion, Zone three represents exterior content (“it” or “its”) understood from within its own boundaries, a 1st-person approach to 3rd-person content, while Zone four represents 3rd-person, objective, content seen from an objective 3rd-person perspective.   P7

45  Why the natural world does not work without qualia and consciousness of them  Stephen Deiss <deiss@appliedneuro.com> (Applied Neurodynamics, Encinitas, CA)
    Modern scientific methodology is based upon a metaphor that sees nature governed by natural laws. The search for them is what scientific research is all about. These laws have a precarious existence. Some would place them in the mind of God. Some would place the natural laws in a kind of netherland like Plato’s world of forms. Denial of both these options is the starting point for a new approach to philosophy of science and mind long overdue. When one considers how nature behaves when there are no gods in charge and no oracle to consult, one finds that nature is in fact quite natural and familiar. Qualia are found necessary for the normal operation of the universe. Conscious awareness, properly conceived, is found to be ubiquitous at all levels of natural organization. WHIL questions, “what is it like - ” become very tempting in thinking about nature. The result is that the panpsychism approach, an alternate metaphor for a really ultra-modern natural science, is the best metaphor to use going forward into a new eco-friendly century. While it is often assumed that panpsychism requires seeing nature with human colored glasses, it will be shown that this view is the only one on the table that is consistent with a truly natural universe without any transcendental nor supernatural factors and without projecting our humanity into it. There will always remain mysteries that are left to personal interpretive preference. However, the basic scientific way of observing nature and testing hypotheses will be recast into a new light that is more bullet proof because it will be based upon a view that is self explanatory and consistent with the way that nature works at all levels in a self-similar way. This overhaul of philosophy of science begins with a look at modern system theory and how dynamics is used to describe all manner of systems. There is a core set of ideas defining states, inputs, outputs, and state transition functions that is universal in science and technology. This metaphor has been around since the middle of the last century. There have been previous attempts to capture all of nature in a systems view under the names of General System Theory, Cybernetics and others related. They never quite finished the job because consciousness and qualia were always left out of the equations. That left us with some hard problems built into these new theories the same way it was built into the foundations of positivistic empiricism. However, it will be shown that once the transcendental realm is thrashed out of the systems view of nature, we are left with something very rigorous and yet very congenial with our own personal experience. If this thesis passes the test of public debate, it will in one leap of intuition and metaphorical recalibration solve the hard problem, solve the problem of qualia, eliminate dualism, set aside eliminative materialism, put meaning into nature, and thereby make it a more humane place to live and more worth preserving.   P1

46  Consciousness and the pseudonoumenal  Charles Fox <charles@robots.ox.ac.uk> (Engineering Dept, Oxford University, Oxford, UK, UK)
    Building on Kant, we define the 'pseudonoumenal' world to be a society's best current phenomenal model of the unknowable noumenal world. For example it has at various times consisted of: the 'four elements'; atoms and Newtonian forces; and various formulations of quantum wave functions. We argue that as all phenomena presuppose the existence of consciousness for them to exist in, then consciousness must be noumenal, not phenomenal. (To identify consciousness with a phenomenon would be to presuppose its own existence - a circular definition.) Consciousness is thus the only noumenon that is knowable. Noumena are generally unknowable but following Popper and Peirce we should (normatively) believe that our most useful pseudonoumenal model is 'true'. Pragmatically, consciousness should therefore be identified with an element of our pseudonoumenal model. Parsimony suggests that an identity with an already-postulated psuedonoumenon (property dualism) is more likely than an identity with a newly-postulated (substance dualist) noumenon /em{iff} we can empirically observe a correlation between the presence of first-person experience (for example, in anesthetic experiments) and the presence of the third-person pseudonoumenon. We will demonstrate how several popular identity positions including Functionalism, macroscopic Materialism and Panpsychism may be seen as types of Emergentist theories - which in turn reduce to Substance Dualisms - from the pseudonoumenal viewpoint when combined with most contemporary pseudonoumenologies ('it-from-bit' pseudonoumenology being a notable exception). Whilst this does not rule out these theories, it renders them less parsimonious than a well-correlated property dualist theory. Briefly, the argument is that functions, macroscopic objects and 'groups' of objects only exist phenomenally, not pseudonoumenally, and so Functionalists, macroscopic Materialists and Panpsychists respectively must all postulate new 'emergent' (substance dualist) pseudonoumena to make their identifications. We present a neo-Cartesian argument for pseudonoumenalism: Consciousness exists noumenally. I know this because /em{I} exist; I am not a fiction. Non-pseudonoumenal objects such as chairs, programs, functions and brains exist only phenomenally; they are useful predictive fictions. And one cannot make an identity between something that exists noumenally and something that is merely a fiction. /em{I} am not merely a fiction! Therefore consciousness is identical to a noumenon, and should only be identified with a pseudonoumenon in our theories. Finally we examine the 'hard problem' from the pseudonoumenalist viewpoint. We will argue that identifying consciousness with a pseudonoumenon - especially an already-postulated pseudonoumenon such as Orch-OR - is no more problematic than identities in other sciences, which ultimately bottom out into sets of observed empirical correlations. So we can never be completely certain of a pseudonoumenal identity theory, but this is no worse than other sciences, whose theories are also subject to change. The pseudonoumenalist is therefore as happy to use consciousness-affecting technology - based on his best model of the pseudonoumenal - as he is to use aeroplanes based on his best theory of aeronautics.   P7

47  Empirically testing the mind-brain identity theorem, a route to a kind of new science   Colin Hales <c.hales@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au> (Physiology, Melbourne University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)
    The mind/brain identity theorem is subjected to detailed scrutiny as a scientific theorem and found to be lacking in both definition and empirical support. That is, it can only currently be held as true as a form of dogma. To redress this situation the identity theorem is restated in a testable way in the unique evidentiary context of brain matter. The unique evidentiary situation arises in the paradox that occurs only when science uses its mandated scientific observation system (phenomenality) to scientifically observe and explain its observing system (phenomenality). In that situation the phenomenality is not observed, but the brain is observed in the act of delivering phenomenality. The empirical test of the mind/brain identity theorem results in a proposed seamless upgrade to the framework of our scientific exploration and knowledge base, but not its method. The framework incorporates the novel evidence and facilitates the scientific testing of the mind/brain identity theorem. The proposal is not a model for phenomenal consciousness, but a framework that may possibly give science the scope to incorporate a practical empirical physics of phenomenality. Thus the framework applies regardless of any particular model for phenomenality. The new framework requires no investment, has no negative impact and self-validates through the act of its use in the empirical verification of the mind/brain identity theorem. In effect the framework merely represents an attitude shift based on understanding the reality of an observer situated in the natural world. The conclusion includes a recommended strategy for the empirical verification of the mind/brain identity theorem and by extension, the framework itself.  P1

48  Reflections on the mysteries of physics and neuroscience: Suggestions for a new explanatory metanarrative  Jerry Josties, James W. Christy <jjosties@starpower.net> (Silver Spring, MD, Silver Spring, MD)
    Neuroscience is presently beset by the perplexing philosophical conundrums of the "hard problem" and "qualia". These problems can be resolved by a deeper consideration of the failed world view of Physics in which they arose. We shall suggest some features of a metanarrative which can provide explanation rather than the mere description which Physics provides. The work of physicists and neuroscientists, both experimental and theoretical, is basicly correct, but the understanding of it is seriously compromised by what we regard as a failed metanarrative. We consider Physics to be an abstract uninterpreted formal descriptive system. What is required is a re-interpretation of Physics in terms of a deeper, more intuitive metaphysics. The greatest obstacle to intellectual progress is the misperception that understanding has already been achieved. We believe that this characterizes the physicalist positions on qualia and the hard problem, because they implicitly assume that the abstract metaphysics of Physics cannot be replaced by a more comprehensive and explanatory interpretation. We contend that such an alternative interpretation can be given, and without changing any experimental results or their mathematical descriptions, so that the empirical warrant of the standard Physics story is not an argument against this view. Physics provides precise description of the measurable aspects of our experience, via the mathematical laws of nature. However, Physics cannot explain the laws themselves, nor say anything at all about why there are any laws, nor why mathematics is so efficacious in their expression. These questions are the province of philosophy, and demonstrate how science must be considered to be situated within a larger philosophical context. We contend that in such a larger context many of the mysteries of Physics and Neuroscience can be engaged constructively. Physics explicitly ignores the qualitative half of our experience in making its observations, and thereby maximizes their quantitative precision. However, this comes back to haunt Neuroscience which, having adopted the standard abstract story of Physics, now finds it impossible to conceptually interface with the qualitative portion of our conscious experience. This is the source of the qualia problem in neurophilosophy. In this paper we suggest aspects of a new metanarrative which can help to understand many of the mysteries of contemporary Physics and Neuroscience. It is intended to provide a balance between holistic and reductionistic approaches to explanation. Some of the topics which we will discuss in terms of this suggested metaphysics are: the hard problem of consciousness; qualia, especially color and why it is related to wavelength; the "becoming" of time; and the efficacy of mathematics in Physics.   P7

49  A new approach to the problem of other minds  Chia-hsin Ko <greekko@mac.com> (Philosophy Department, National Chung-cheng University, Taipei City , Taiwan)
    Are there other minds besides mine? If there are, how do I know them? These questions are traditionally called “the Other Mind Problem”. Here, I will propose an “Ecological Approach” for the problem. Generally, philosophers distinguish the Other Mind Problem into two ways. We usually deal with the second question above, called the “epistemological problem ”, for we’ve presupposed there are indeed other minds. The first question is called as the “ontological problem”. I’ll concentrate on the “epistemological problem” in the following statement. The traditional solution to the epistemological problem of the other minds has been the “analogical inference”. Psychologists assume that human beings have the capacity to identify the mental states of the others, and call such ability as “mind-reading”. One approach to mind-reading is “theory theory”, which takes that one can attribute her own mental states to the others by inferring their behavior. Just like folk psychology, they do not care about the neuron basis of such mechanism. The other approach is “simulation theory”, regarding that one can know others’ mind by reproducing behavior and attribute the behavior to one’s own mental state. Mirror neuron may tell us something that the simulation theorists want. Gallese et al.(1996) discovered “mirror neuron” in monkeys’ premotor cortex. The mirror neuron of Monkey A fires while A realizes Monkey B’s actions. It seems to be a support for simulation theory. For Monkey A, the process of realization is an intentional action. Interestingly, why can A intend B’s action? I think there might be several reasons: first, A and B have the same patterned behavior. Second, A must have the memory of motor sequences for B’s behavior. Third, A can plug-in such memory into her behavior so that mirror neuron fires. Mirror neurons may retort theory theorist, for there is indeed a mechanism for analogy. But it may tell us much more than the simulationists want. It is a too strong evidence for simulation theorists to verify. Since the simulationists do not focus on the interaction between one’s mental states and the other’s. Though “mirror neuron” offers a new ecological approach to mind-reading. It reveals the interaction of my memory of motor sequences, my intention to others, others’ action, and how others’ action attribute to mine. “Mirror neuron” still faces challenges. We cannot make sure whether the subjective report reliable, for it’s just a inductive case. The “Zombie” problem may show up when observer/ behavior is mentioned.   P1

50  Conceivability reconsidered:on limiting the power of zombies  Kristin Schaupp <schaupkp@uwec.edu> (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, Eau Claire, WI)
    Conceivability arguments are a mainstay in philosophy of mind. They have countless benefits. They engage the curiosity of new students. They bring out particularly relevant but previously overlooked aspects of a particular problem. They help the participants in ongoing debates to clarify their thinking. However, conceivability arguments are not without their own problems. I argue that these problems place certain necessary constraints on conceivability arguments. In this paper, I focus on two key problems. 1.) The difficulty in determining which criteria must be satisfied in order for something to warrant the label "conceivable." 2.) The difficulty of assessing the link between conceivability and possibility not only because of the lack of clear guidelines for conceivability, but also because the type of possibility that this conceivability entails is disputed. In addressing these problems, I focus on Chalmer's recent discussion distinguishing types of conceivability, including ideal and prima facie conceivability. I analyze the type of possibility that conceivability arguments are designed to show, looking in detail at thought experiments employed by Frank Jackson and David Chalmers. Although philosophers quickly dismiss any claims to natural possibility, the same cannot be said of logical possibility and metaphysical possibility, both of which are seen as possible contenders. What we mean when we talk about logical possibility or metaphysical possibility is yet another point of contention, and this often results in further distinctions such as strong and weak versions of logical possibility. I suggest that our understanding of the nature of scientific laws is the key to resolving these questions, and that oversimplified views of these laws result in significant deviations from the scientific mainstream and lack of consensus regarding the type of possibility entailed by conceivability arguments. The difficulty of linking conceivability and possibility is considerable. While conceivability arguments play an important role in philosophy, especially in philosophy of mind, it is time to recognize their limitations. I suggest that when properly employed, conceivability arguments show us something about what we think is possible. They point out facts about our concepts and how our concepts are employed. They also tell us something about the viability of a theory in philosophy of mind, not by ruling it out or proving its truth beyond a doubt, but by telling us something about the reasons we believe that a particular theory is a legitimate account of mental events, why we are hesitant to embrace another, and what prevents us from ruling out yet others. I argue that this should encourage us to employ conceivability as a guide to possibility, not as an infallible guide, but as one which will be subject to continual modifications as a result of our current state of knowledge.  P1

51  Collective deceptions in western science  Charles Whitehead <charleswhitehead@uk2.net> (Anthropology, University College London, London, UK)
    Is western science just one more mythological scheme with no more validity than, say, the belief in witchcraft, as some postmodern anthropologists claim? This is surely going too far. The postmodern assertion that there is ‘nothing outside the text’ is worse than theoretical nihilism – it denies the terrible human costs of real-world events and processes. Science is certainly not a mythological scheme. Science is based on testable hypotheses and repeatable observations, whereas mythology is based on out-of-body experiences or other ritually altered states. But this is not a valid reason to deny that science is embedded in political and economic processes and that anthropological analysis can help scientists to transcend the problems of cultural distortion. A typical objection to such analysis is: ‘What can anthropologists tell us about natural science? You do an experiment and you get an empirical result. How can anthropology change that?’ This is the wrong question of course. Culture does not affect empirical findings as such. But it does determine the choice of experiment, the interpretation of the result, and the tendency to ask the wrong questions such as the example just given. Cultural distortions are most pernicious in the field of consciousness studies. Apart from the physicalist paradigm itself, a central problem affecting all the behavioural sciences is the absence of any coherent theory defining human behaviour. This is not the result of simple ignorance or incapacity but of active and ingenious falsification – you could say that it is the 'job' of human culture to falsify our perceptions of ourselves and the world we live in. ‘Collective deceptions’ were at one time necessary to coerce our social but selfish ancestors into collaborating in a non-selfish system, and western science has not yet freed itself from them. In fact, in reacting against a vitalistic worldview, post-Enlightenment science created new deceptions of its own. Those affecting consciousness studies most directly include physicalism, cognocentrism, logocentrism, individualism, and ‘genocentrism’ (the last being in direct conflict with Darwinian principles). Once you start to ask the right questions, it becomes easy to show that commonly held scientific assumptions are self-contradictory and rooted in vested political and economic interests. Human cultures everywhere maintain fictive schemes which could aptly be described as ‘wholly believed-in make-believe’, and this is itself a widely accepted definition of the hypnotized state. Suggestibility is in fact a precondition of human culture, but as long as we continue to act out our make-believe fantasies in the real world, we will continue to add to the dangers that we created in the first place. It is high time we all took active steps to stop investing in our own collective dream-worlds.   P1

[01.10]  Personal identity and the self

52  Am I embodied and embedded? Externalism and the self.  Brie Gertler <gertler@virginia.edu> (Philosophy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA)
    Most philosophers and cognitive scientists now believe that the mind is ‘wide’: mental states and cognitive processes logically depend on features of the environment external to the subject’s skin. Philosophical objections to externalism have focused on those brands of externalism that stress environmental contributions to linguistic meanings, and thereby to thoughts. In this paper, I apply the three most prominent of these objections to an alternative type of externalism, less familiar to philosophers. This type of externalism focuses on cognitive processing, and sees cognition as embodied and embedded. Cognition is embodied in that extra-cranial features of the body constrain, or even partially constitute, the sorts of cognitive processes that a subject can engage in. And cognition is embedded in that the subject’s environment logically contributes to, or even partially constitutes, the subject’s cognitive processes. The three leading objections to externalism are these. (1) Externalism is incompatible with the fact that, ordinarily, subjects enjoy ‘privileged’ first-person access to their own mental states. (2) Externalism does not capture the cognitive or epistemic significance of thoughts. (3) Thoughts as externalistically construed are causally inefficacious; it is only narrow states that explain action. Each of these objections represents a purportedly necessary condition on mentality. Together, they constitute a traditional notion of mentality, and hence of the self: mental states (and states of the self) are those epistemically significant states to which we have privileged access, and that serve as the springs of action. The main task of the paper is to argue that the ‘embodied and embedded’ form of externalism is vulnerable to each of these objections. Given scope constraints, my argument will be less than comprehensive, especially as regards objection (3). But I do provide strong reason to doubt that this version of externalism can escape the charge leveled against the earlier version: that narrow states causally ‘screen off’ the contributions of wide states, thus rendering the latter causally superfluous. An attractive response for the proponent of the ‘embodied and embedded’ model is simply to reject the traditional picture of mentality that these objections reflect. Many already deny that we enjoy privileged access to our own mental states. Perhaps the criteria for epistemic significance at work in objection (2) are also tied to an outdated model of cognition; and perhaps the way that objection (3) individuates actions implicitly favors the anti-externalist. This response raises deep questions about the notion of mentality and of the self. If the externalist is vulnerable to all three objections, then she must reject not only the traditional model of cognition, but also the much more plausible claim that every state of the self meets at least one of the three conditions. I will close the paper by evaluating the consequences of this externalist response. Does the new externalism simply employ a different concept of ‘self’ than its competitors? Or does it provide grounds to think that some states of the self, in a sense of ‘self’ shared with internalists, meet none of the three conditions described above?   C9

53  Misimagining mind: A modular account of thought insertion in schizophrenia  Peter Langland-Hassan <peterlhmail@yahoo.com> (Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center, Brooklyn, NY)
    A particularly difficult aspect of schizophrenic experience to explain is the split that can occur between a patient’s subjective sense of thought ownership and thought agency. Patients commonly report having thoughts that they accept as being their own—in the same sense in which their arms are their own arms—while claiming not to be the authors or agents of those thoughts (a phenomenon called “thought insertion”). A related symptom manifests itself in the opposite direction: patients claim to be the agents or causes of events—such as the war in Iraq—which lie far outside their plausible realms of causal influence (this is sometimes called “thought broadcast”). Building on the work of Shallice (1988), Frith (1992) argues that a metarepresentational cognitive faculty is impaired in schizophrenic patients, leading the subject to attribute his own mental states to other agents, and to include external objects and events among the class of things over which he has cognitive control. Jeannerod & Pacherie (2004) offer a competing analysis, according to which a faculty responsible for the simulation of actions and plans is defective. I seek to unite the main insights of these two approaches in an account which understands thought insertion and thought broadcast as disorders of the perceptual imagination, where the perceptual imagination is understood as the interface of two faculties. One faculty, drawing on the resources of sensory modules, is responsible for generating imagery derived from perceptual experience; the other faculty incorporates this imagery in various simulatory tasks, whether it be to model the external environment, or one’s own internal states. Working from a suggestion of Proust (2006), I argue that the notion of a perceptual “reafference” can be fruitfully extended to introspective tasks, such that the success of an internal (or external) action is determined by the relation between an efference “copy” of anticipated feedback, and the actual information collected (be it a memory, or information about one’s environment). Such “copies”, I posit, will have an imagistic component. I support the claim that there is a strong tie between the normal use of imagery and one’s sense of self by noting the intuitive appeal of “neo-Lockean” accounts of personal identity (e.g., Shoemaker (1970), Parfit (1984)), which cite "experience memory" or "memory from the inside" as important constitutive features of the self. On the view I develop, a memory that is about oneself but is not "from the inside" is simply one which lacks an attendant sensory imagery. Given the close link between the capacity to use sensory imagery to represent one’s own mental states and the ability to think of certain states as being one’s own, we can anticipate that a disorder of the imagination will result in serious abnormalities of self-experience.   C2

54  Concepts of the self  Valerie Stansfield <val@valsplace.com> (Sherman Oaks, CA)
    The nature of consciousness is intimately joined with the notion one has of Self, one's locus of identity. Sometimes as we discuss these issues, we make assumptions as to another person's definition. This poster presents an interactive graph for conference participants to place themselves comparatively, according to their philosophic positions on the issue of Self. This offers 10-12 alternatives from the abstract to the concrete, from the materialistic to the metaphysical. There is also space for additions and comments. Participants are sorted as to academic status. Results will be presented in literary form at the Poetry Slam on the last night and available after the Conference.  P1

55  A relational view of self and mind  Laura Weed <weedl@strose.edu> (Philosophy, The College of St. Rose, Albany, NY)
    A Relational View of Self and Mind will present an argument that the western, Cartesian, ego-centered conception of a substantial, autonomous individual was always an inadequate conception of a self or mind. I will argue that a more adequate architecture of consciousness must view a self as a matrix of intersecting relationships, some among sections or functions of the body and brain, some between the self and the environment, including other people in the social environment, and some of a self-reflective kind that enables self awareness. I will support this position using contemporary work in cognitive science, such as 1) the work of Derek Parfit on R-Relations, and the work of Andy Clark on continuity between the environment and the self ,which I will use to argue for psychological and social connectedness to the environment. 2) The work of Raphael Núñez, Walter J. Freeman, Jaak Panksepp, Antonio Damasio and Jose Luis Bermudez, whose work I will use to support an argument for grounding a conception of consciousness in actions, intensions and emotions, and 3)the work of Bernard Baars and Francisco Varela, which I will use to support an interactive view of self-reflective consciousness. The conception of mental architecture that I will present informs these insights with the work of Asian Philosophers, especially from the Zen Kyoto School of Buddhism and Chinese Daoism, who also interpret the self and mind as systems of relations which are inter-penetrable both with each other and with the environment. The result will be an organic view of a self as part of an eco-system. Using these authors together with the latest neuroscience research, I will construct a conception of self and mind that is less essentialist and less autonomous than the typical western conceptions. This conception of self will, however, be responsive to cognitive science discoveries about how functional modules of the brain interact with parts of the body and aspects of the environment. It will reflect discoveries in neuroscience, such as Lawrence Weiskrantz’ blindsight insights, concerning how much of our brain processing takes place below the level of consciousness. It will also account for why we do have conscious access to the portions of our mental processing of which we do have consciousness. I will follow Weiskrantz in arguing that since self-consciousness developed, there must be a reason for its development. Rather than taking a dismissive or eliminativist approach toward the notion of a self or capacity to self reflect, I will treat both as real, natural, consequences of the interconnectivity of the parts of a brain/body/world/self system of relations. David Chalmers’ explanatory gap will be taken seriously, and will be bridged by describing differences among the types of relations that construct the self-conscious and non-self conscious layers of this matrix of inter-relationships. Both dualism and eliminativism will turn out to have been predicated on an inadequate conception of matter that failed to account for the relational nature or organic systems.   P7

[01.11]  Free will and agency

56  Laws, mind and freedom  Steven Horst <shorst@wesleyan.edu> (Philosophy, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT)
    The principal threat to libertarian free will comes from the incompatibility between libertarian freedom and determinism. Historically, the principal reason for embracing determinism has, in turn, come from the assumptions that (1) the physical sciences reveal a law-governed world, and (2) a law-governed world is a deterministic world. But need a commitment to the truth of scientific laws imply a commitment to determinism? The answer depends upon what philosophical analysis one gives of the nature of scientific laws. The Positivist/Empiricist analysis interpreted laws as universally-quantified statements about the real-world behavior of objects, and on this interpretation, laws do imply determinism. But, as Nancy Cartwright has shown, this interpretation would also imply many falsehoods: e.g., objects do NOT really fall exactly as the gravitation law predicts, because other causal factors are also in play. Cartwright joins many other contemporary philosophers of science in preferring a CAUSAL interpretation of laws: that laws single out robust causal capacities rather than making claims about real-world behavior. Or, as I prefer to say, laws single out causal invariants that play a potential partial role in determining real-world behavior. The causal view of laws is perhaps the dominant view in philosophy of science today. On this view of laws, I argue, a commitment to the truth of laws does not entail a commitment to determinism, and there is no incompatibility between the laws of nature, thus construed, and libertarian freedom.   C15

57  Definition of rudimentary psychic act and a new conception of volition  Michael Lipkind <lipkind@macam.ac.il> (Unit of Molecular Virology, Kimron Veterinary Institute, Bet Dagan, Israel)
    A volitional act directly associated with the problem of mental causation is an immediate manifestation of the free will enigma, whose status is under dilemma – whether it is an illusion, or a real datum. The first alternative means circular causality realized either by deterministic regularity (classic physics) or by probabilistic randomness (quantum physics). This alternative, although being in harmony with physical laws, exposes the notorious explanatory gap between the physical world and the free will phenomenology. According to the second alternative, the actual behavior is based on conscious intention to perform certain acts by making free choice (libertarian imperative). Then, the realization of the free choice means irregular and unpredictable violation of the established physical laws. The detailed analysis (Wilson, 1999) permitted to localize and concretize the violation, which concerns the conservation laws and which occurs during formation of actual voltage potentials at the synaptic transmission during formation of efferent impulses. The scientific task is to reconcile the strict regularities and circular causality provided by physical laws with their continuous violation by random volitional acts. The suggested approach is based on definitions of protophenomenal fundamental and rudimentary psychic act (Lipkind, 2003, 2006). The former is defined as “geometrical feeling” (“morphic sensation”), which is considered as an innate property of any living cell to feel an inevitable non-congruence between the cell’s species-specific abstract geometrical form and the material stuff filling this form. Striving for the minimal non-congruence is postulated as an immanent quality of the cell’s living state. The degree of the non-congruence is dynamically fluctuating depending on external factors, which make disturbing influence on the cell’s material substrate, thus upsetting the balance and increasing the non-congruence. This causes immediate spatial rearrangements of the cell’s material substrate leading to non-congruence minimization, such reaction being designated as a rudimentary psychic act. The principle of minimization of the non-congruence between the abstract geometry and solid physics within the frame of a current state of a living entity has a certain remote analogy with Le Chatelier principle concerning dynamic conditions of chemical equilibrium. If adjusted to the sphere of human volitional activity, the postulated non-congruence relates to the whole brain cortex dynamic continuum, while immediacy of the non-congruence minimization may have different degrees depending on actual state of the brain material substrate in current mind-brain dynamic relationships. In case the reaction of the non-congruence minimizing is not immediately realized, any delay may result in a suspended tensed state of fluctuating heightened non-congruence as if “waiting” for any material redistribution “easing the tension”. Such suspended state may be imagined as correlating with the emotionally colored processes of reasoning, considering, thinking, analyzing, accounting, interpreting, recollecting, doubting, hesitating, choosing, etc., which are somehow associated with realization of volitional actions. The abstract formulation of the free choice-based volition is “naturalized” by using Alexander Gurwitsch’s theory of irreducible cellular field whose postulates are deeply rooted in biological reality (Lipkind, 2005). In the frame of this theory, the species-specific field anisotropy determines the abstract geometrical form of any living entity.  P7

58  Emergent properties and decision-making: A critique of Libet’s account of “free will”  Gabriel Mograbi <gabrielmograbi@berkeley.edu> (Philosophy, UFRJ , Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
    This talk presents the relationship between emergent properties, decision-making and actions, by providing philosophical correlates and interpretations of neuroscientific experiments and proposing an account of Downward Determination consistent with a non-reductionist ontological model, namely a newer version emergentism of properties, as its basis. I am combining these two theses by stressing the relationship between bottom-up causation and top-down control. I will present an account of emergence that will be an alternative option to both spurious dualist and reductionist accounts and I will argue that emergent levels present novel emergent properties that could not be reduced to the isolated parts of a system. These properties are entirely constituted by lower levels parts, however cannot be reduced to them. Based on this philosophical background I will focus on outlining a framework that will show how to research decision-making processes and how the brain’s areas relate to this capacity but only in the necessary extent to answer to Benjamin Libet’s account of free will. I will scrutinize Libet’s very famous research on free will in a very critical fashion. Functional properties and interactions between different areas of the brain and the commerce and processing of information established between them are interesting questions that will arise as a consequence of this paper and I will consider these subjects in another context. Thus, in this paper I will restrict my attention to a perspective centered in the issues related to the so-called free will (in my words decision-making) and Emergence of Properties. Libet’s works on delays between neural firings in the pre-motor cortex, motor cortex, and the idea of “time for veto” will be assessed to help me provide an account of Decision-Making beyond the philosophical tradition in order to dismiss (at least temporarily) the concept of free will. My intention is to circumscribe the problem of free will and within this frame to show that it is scientifically and philosophically misleading to approach this question since it has several metaphysical, moral and theological presuppositions and implications.   P1

[01.12]  Intentionality and representation

59  Does synesthesia undermine representationalism?  Torin Alter <talter@as.ua.edu> (Philosophy, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa, AL)
    Does synesthesia undermine representationalism? Gregg Rosenberg (2004) argues that it does. On his view, synesthesia illustrates how phenomenal properties can vary independently of representational properties. For example, he argues that sound/color synesthetic experiences show that visual experiences do not always represent spatial properties. I will argue that the representationalist can plausibly answer Rosenberg’s objections. On reflection, synesthesia poses no serious threat to representationalism. Rosenberg’s argument from synesthesia resembles anti-representationalist arguments advanced by Ned Block (1995, 1996), Christopher Peacocke (1983) and others (e.g., Boghossian and Velleman 1989). Like Rosenberg, these philosophers argue that representationalism delivers implausible analyses of certain sorts of (actual) experiences. Michael Tye (2000) provides plausible representationalist replies to those objections. In particular, Tye shows how the objections often depend on oversimplified characterizations of the relevant representational properties. Some of my arguments will involve applying Tye’s reasoning to Rosenberg’s argument. Rosenberg’s discussion of synesthesia and representationalism is a small part of his defense of panexperientialism, “the view that experience exists throughout nature and that mentality (i.e., a thing requiring cognition, functionally construed) is not essential to it.” His concern is that on panexperientialism there might be “protoconscious” experiences that do not represent anything because they are not associated with any cognitive system. However, I will argue, it is not so clear that, given panexperientialism, association with a cognitive system is required for representation. I will argue that the panexperientialist has no compelling reason to resist representationalism. References Block, N. 1995. On a confusion about a function of consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 227-47. Block, N. 1996. Mental paint and mental latex. Philosophical Issues 7. Boghossian, P. and Velleman, D. 1989. Color as a secondary quality. Mind 98: 81-103. Peacocke, C. 1983. Sense and Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenberg, G. 2004. A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. New York: Oxford University Press. Tye, M. 2000. Consciousness, Color, and Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.   C8

60  Radical empiricism and the science of consciousness: Meanings beyond intention and description  Meurig Beynon <wmb@dcs.warwick.ac.uk> (Coventry, UIK)
    In introducing his emerging science of consciouness [2], Edelman acknowledges that: "In general, I have been in accord with, and even inspired by, the views of William James ..." (p.82) "... whose descriptions of consciousness still stand as a high-water mark in the field" (p.xii). He identifies features of consciousness (see e.g. Table 1 on p.120) that are well-matched to James's The Principles of Psychology [5], and relates these to the account of neural activity that underlies his own "revolutionary view of consciousness". Edelman (p.83-4) cites James's rejection of T H Huxley's "Automaton-Theory" as corroborating his conviction that "the brain is not a computer, and the world is not a piece of tape" (p.39); he disagrees with James only over whether consciousness can actually affect neuronal firing. In the context of modern consciousness studies, where both philosophy and neuroscience are represented, it is natural to seek a fuller understanding of how Edelman's contemporary neurological insights may be related to the "philosophic attitude" behind much of James's thinking - Radical Empiricism [4]. Consolidating the relationship between James's philosophical and Edelman's scientific treatments of consciousness might offer a promising alternative foundation for a science of consciousness; it might even inform and enrich future experimental practice. In this connection, it is somewhat paradoxical that the Radical Empiricist stance that supplies the context for James's account of consciousness [3,4] has been largely neglected over the intervening century [7]. This paper discusses Radical Empiricism, and its prospects in relation to the science of consciousness, with reference to two conceptual frameworks that have dominated thinking about experience and mind over the last century: phenomenology and computationalism. This discussion identifies the treatment of "meanings beyond intention and description" as a key issue in contrasting Radical Empiricism with phenomenology and computationalism, and in determining their relative usefulness as a foundation for Edelman's neuroscience. Whilst this issue is self-evidently problematic for classical Husserlian phenomenology and for the classical theory of computation, it will be argued that it is not fully addressed even by the treatments of the semantic relation in existential phenomenology and in a connectionist model of computation. The paper concludes by discussing an approach to modelling ("Empirical Modelling"), developed by the author and his collaborators [8], that has strong links with James's Radical Empiricism [1]. Empirical Modelling involves constructing interactive artefacts ("construals") to embody patterns of observables, dependencies and agents that are characteristic of the situations to which they refer. Whilst Empirical Modelling resembles phenomenology in privileging the "life-world", its emphasis is on how experience of interacting with such artefacts can serve a role in "representing" another experience. This affords an alternative way to address the issue of meanings beyond intention and description, and to circumvent a critical problem identified by Livingston in his discussion of the controversy that surrounded Husserl's phenomenological method: that, "for deep-seated and internal reasons, the logical structure of experience may not be expressible in linguistic terms" [6]. More speculatively, it may be that Empirical Modelling, with its affinity to Radical Empiricism, can provide an alternative approach to model-building in support of Edelman's neurological account of consciousness.   P7

61  The scrambler: Against representationalism  Stephen Biggs <biggs@email.arizona.edu> (Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Brentano (1874) famously claimed that two features demarcate the mental: consciousness and intentionality. Although he claimed that these features relate intimately, subsequent generations of philosophers rarely treated them together. Recently, however, the tide has turned. Many philosophers now accept that consciousness is intentional, where to be intentional is to be representational. In fact, weak representationalism, which holds that perceptual experiences are necessarily representational, is “now fairly uncontroversial” (Lycan, 2000/2004). This paper challenges this fairly uncontroversial claim. It argues that there could be a creature that duplicates the qualitative character of an ordinary perceptual experience such that her duplicated experience is not representational. The argument stems from a thought-experiment, which may be called the ‘Scrambler’. The Scrambler first describes a person with scrambled visual experiences; that is, his visual experiences are invariably jumbled such that, from our perspective, they look like ever-changing abstract paintings. It proceeds by describing people whose perceptual experiences are all, always scrambled. Finally, it asks that we imagine that one such person suddenly has a perceptual experience with an ‘ordinary’ qualitative character, with a qualitative character that resembles the one that you are having now, for example. It is argued that this experience would not be representational, despite being just like an ordinary perceptual experience. Accordingly, the claim that perceptual experiences are necessarily representational, albeit fairly uncontroversial, is false.  C8

62  Pure representationalism about phenomenal consciousness: A live option  David Bourget <david.bourget@utoronto.ca> (Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
    According to the dominant brand of representationalism, any phenomenal state has two (and no more) essential components: 1- its content (what it represents); 2- the special phenomenal manner in which it represents. Phenomenal manners of representation are comparable to attitudes such as desiring and believing, not to Fregean modes of presentation. They distinguish phenomenal states from unconscious beliefs with the same content. This impure representationalism is endorsed under one form or another by Dretske, Crane, Chalmers, Lycan, Tye, and many others. It contrasts with pure representationalism, which is the view that the phenomenal character of a mental state is fully determined by its content. Impure representationalism does not live up to the promise of representationalism: it does not successfully reduce the hard problem of consciousness to the softer problem of intentionality. Instead, it introduces a non-representational component which bears the burden of explaining the difference between conscious and unconscious states. Whether this extra ingredient is thought of as physical, functional, or irreducible, it is hard to see what is gained over the traditional non-representational views as far as narrowing the explanatory gap goes. For this reason and several others, it is worth investigating the ways in which pure representationalism might be salvaged. In this paper I offer a defense of pure representationalism based on the two-dimensional semantic framework championed by Chalmers and Jackson. I begin by indicating how the 2D framework might be applied to the contents of phenomenal states. I then explain how it neutralizes the three main objections against pure representationalism. The first objection I consider stems from the observation that we can think about what is represented in experiences others undergo without simultaneously having similar experiences. This suggests that beliefs that lack phenomenal character can have the same content as phenomenal states, which contradicts pure representationalism. Against this line of thought, I maintain that phenomenal and non-phenomenal states always differ in content at the level of sense (primary intensions), though they can evidently share content at the level of reference (secondary intensions). This can be seen with the help of thought experiments such as Jackson’s Mary: before being freed, Mary could refer to redness, but she could not grasp its nature. The two other objections I consider stem from naturalized semantics. If any of the main naturalist semantic theories applied to the contents of phenomenal states, these contents would have to be physical. Also, some unconscious sub-personal processes would have the same content as phenomenal states. These implications of naturalized semantics suggest that something beyond content is required for phenomenal character. I do not attempt to make a complete case against all such theories in this paper. However, I point out how the two-dimensional framework makes salient seemingly insuperable difficulties they face because of their commitment to the content of phenomenal states being physical. The bottom line is that 2D semantics leads straight to pure representationalism.   C8

63  The representational base of consciousness  Andrew Brook, Paul Raymont Department of Philosophy, Trent University, Peterborough, ON K9J 7B8, Canada <abrook@ccs.carleton.ca> (Institute of Cognitve Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada)
    Current theories of consciousness can be divided by whether the theorist accepts or rejects cognitivism about consciousness. Cognitivism as we understand it is the view that consciousness is a form of representation or an information-processing property of a system that has representations or both. Anti-cognitivists deny this, appealing to inverted spectrum and zombie thought experiments and the like to argue that consciousness could change while nothing cognitive or representational changes. All agree, however, that consciousness has a representational *base*. Whether consciousness simply is representation, it at least requires representation. In this paper, first we examine the two leading approaches to the representaitonal base, higher-order thought and what is sometimes called first-order representation models (e.g., Rosenthal and Dretske). Finding serious problems with both, we then sketch an alternative theory of what this representational base might be like, using a particular form of the idea of self-presenting representations. We conclude by urging that our approach is a better framework of concepts within which to investigate consciousness empirically than the leading alternatives.   P1

64  The qualitative character of conscious and unconscious thought  Marius Dumitru <Marius.Dumitru@ens.fr> (Département d'études cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, Paris, Ile-de-France, France)
    A number of philosophers (inter alia, Strawson 1994, Siewert 1998, Horgan & Tienson 2002, Pitt 2004) have argued that there is a distinctive phenomenology of conscious thought. In this talk I endorse the argument, construct an account of the phenomenology of thought in terms of inferential and associative potentials supervenient upon the structure of a thought composed of conceptual primitives and rules of combination of the primitives into compositional complexes, and extend it to unconscious thought. I first argue contra LOT views for a dynamic map/model theory on the basic nature of thought and proceed to develop the phenomenology issue in this framework. I do not temporarily address the problem of the qualitative character of propositional attitudes, contenting instead to tackle the qualia of thinking as entertaining. Thought may be seen as based on unconscious, inaccessible, mechanisms engendering a computational activity conducted via dynamic maps/models, subsequently translated in P-conscious internal soliloquies (HOTs included) or imagistic contents (keeping insights from the mechanistic theory of thought and the intermediate-level theory of consciousness) or as an activity conducted via dynamic maps/models, whose putative unconscious underpinnings are capable to become A and P-conscious via a sort of connection principle. I argue for the latter view, which may be dubbed the ‘transparency thesis’ and I challenge Carruthers’ 2005 form of eliminativism about conscious thought. I continue by distinguishing varieties of derived thought (mainly iconic and linguistic), opposed to basic dynamic map/model-based thought at both a sub-personal and personal level, using Mary-like scenarios adapted to the case of thought as a test to offer an affirmative answer to the question of the existence of a phenomenology of thought, and arguing that distinct inferential and associative potentials supervenient upon conceptual primitives and a conceptual grammar can be attached to the aforementioned varieties of thought. One important question that arises concerns the inter-individual variability in the phenomenal halo of a thought- is it determined solely by variations in associative potentials or is it determined by different inferential potentials as well? Moreover, could we consider the inferential potential of a thought as a subset of the associative potential, thus implying a neo-psychologist view on meaning? I argue for this thesis and for a moderate semantic holism. The perspective of a distinctive phenomenology of both conscious and unconscious thought raises a series of questions on dispositional mental states, causal powers, the phenomenologically manifest (Kriegel forthcoming) and the internalism vs. externalism debate with respect to mental content. I address the causal efficaciousness of manifest and latent thought by distinguishing degrees of conscious salience and I defend a narrow phenomenology, dismissing non-causal external-based components of phenomenal thought experience.   P1

65  Color representations as hash values  Justin Fisher <jcfisher@u.arizona.edu> (Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    The goal of this paper is to answer the following question. Q: When we have mental states that represent certain things as being colored, what properties are our mental states representing these things as having? Question Q is of interest to philosophers who want to understand the nature of color, to cognitive psychologists who want to understand how color vision works, and to anyone who is interested in the content of our conscious color experiences. I begin by stating three background presumptions about representational content. These presumptions hold that the content that we attribute to our color representations should help us to explain our successful use of these representations. These presumptions will be plausible to theorists who expect our theories of consciousness and cognition to be explanatorily useful. However, some people (especially epiphenomenalists) might want to deny that the contents of our conscious color experiences are explanatorily relevant in this way. Still, it is an interesting question what contents we would need to attribute to these states if these contents were to be explanatorily relevant in this way. I then present a simple overview of the potential answers to question Q, and of various puzzles that any successful theory of color must solve. With these puzzles in mind, I present the position that I favor. I argue that color representation systems work upon the same basic principles as hashing schemes employed by computer scientists. Suppose we have ten drawers in a big filing cabinet in which we wish to distribute a separate file for each of a hundred different items; and suppose that each time we’ll want to store or retrieve the file for a given item, we will have available some canonical information about that item. One solution would be to employ some quick-and-dirty ‘hash-function’ which associates each possible set of canonical infor¬mation with one of ten ‘hash-values’. We can then label each drawer with a hash-value, and store the file for each item in whichever drawer matches that item’s hash-value. This way, we’ll always have a quick way to determine which drawer to look in to find the file for a given item. I argue that color vision operates upon the same general principles as hashing schemes. What is relevant to explaining the success of color vision, like other hashing schemes, is that it consistently gives the same representations to the same items whenever they are encountered (a phenomenon that often goes under the heading ‘color constancy’), and not that it tracks any independently-interesting natural divisions in the world. By our presumptions above, this yields the following answer to question Q: a color-representation attributes to an object the disposition to engender that (syntactic) type of representation in a normal sort of way in normal encounters with that item. I conclude by discussing how this allows us to solve the puzzles that face other approaches. [The full version of this paper is available online at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jcfisher/papers/color-hash.pdf]   P1

66  Are semiosis and consciousness co-extensive? Charles S. Peirce, semiotic metaphysics and complexity theory  Shannon Foskett <sfoskett@uwo.ca> ( , University of Western Ontario, London, Canada)
    The purpose of this talk is to consider the role of signs and thought in American pragmatist philosopher Charles S. Peirce’s (1839-1914) triadic metaphysics – in particular the interpretation that semiosis is co-extensive with consciousness. In what sense does the presence of a sign indicate some degree of consciousness? Do rocks and cells partake in semiosis, and if so, are they conscious? Conversely, in what sense are thoughts as signs material? I will also discuss possible affinities between Peirce’s semiotic metaphysic and the dissipative processes of non-linear far-from-equilibrium systems. The autopoietic processes of critical self-organization share their structure with that of unlimited semiosis, whereby one sign produces another sign in order to be interpreted. As Peirce himself has observed, his triadic metaphysics demonstrates an ubiquity observable throughout most systems and phenomena – an omnipresence that I suggest it shares with the study of pattern dynamics. Since “our mere sensations are only the material quality of our ideas considered as signs” (Peirce (1991), Peirce On Signs. Ed. James Hoopes, p.143), the Peircean sign is not separate from thought. We think in signs. Signs are real, immediate biological states. Thoughts have material qualities and are subject to material constraints (p.54). The semiotic materiality of thought allows for the possibility of considering the agency of consciousness in terms of mental force and energy. Not only does thought for Peirce have an objective (if not physical) force on the world (including the brain), but its semiotic nature gives it a metric by which thought can be measured. Signs quantize thought. They make it discrete. This is an admittedly speculative consideration, but one that nevertheless follows from this theoretical convergence and which finds support in pattern dynamics literature (eg., Kelso 1995). Just as Planck’s constant measures the size of quanta – i.e., the energy of an electromagnetic photon – it is possible to conceive of a semiotic constant that measures some energy or force (recall Deleuze and Guattari’s “speed” of thought). With the added observation of the omnipresent pattern for the transition to chaos, it can be suggested that certain signs or bodies of thought find themselves at different values upon the bifurcation diagram depending upon, for example, the number of new interpretants they generate, or the number of connections they make to other semiotic systems. Perhaps it is also in this sense that thought, as thirdness, is objectively real for Peirce and “cannot be discounted as a general force in the universe” (p.10). Additionally, I suggest that while this synthesis between Peirce’s semiotic and chaos theory aligns itself with emergentist and evolutionary explanations of consciousness, it also provides support to and suggestions for theoretical and empirical investigations into such anomalous conscious events as non-sensory information transfer.   P7

67  The significance of emotion: A defense of phenomenalism against representationalism  Ta Lun Huang <linusthuang@gmail.com> (Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan)
    Brentano's Thesis, "Intentionality as the mark of the mental", has enjoyed resurgence in philosophy of mind, due to its fashionable contemporary version, the representationalism, which claims that phenomenal consciousness supervenes on or reduces to intentional content. In my opinion, both of these theses are false. Moreover, their falsity would be obvious, if emotion experiences were not ignored for the last one hundred years—emotion feelings are phenomenal states with no intentional contents. In one respect, emotions are obviously intentional. For example, we often verbally express our emotion states in such ways, "I am happy that p" or "I am disgusted that p". Yet, emotions in this respect are complex states with two components, a cognitive component (beliefs, beliefs and desires, or evaluative judgments) and a feeling component (emotion feelings). What this paper concerns is the feeling component—emotion feelings are not intentional. Call this thesis the Feeling Theory. Its proponents include David Hume, who claims that "A passion...contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any other existence or modification." The representationalist rival of Feeling Theory is Perceptual Theory, which claims that emotion feelings have non-conceptual intentional content. Michael Tye and Jesse Prinz hold this view. In this paper, I will argue for Feeling Theory. In the first section: Raising Initial Doubts, I will challenge the idea of illusory emotions. Intentional states can be right or wrong, e.g. visual perception can be veridical or illusory. However, there are no illusory emotions—all folk psychological concepts of illusory emotions are explained in terms of the cognitive component of emotions. The reason: there is no appearance/reality distinction for emotion feelings. For any intentional states, there is a distinction between the representing states and the represented, and the (conscious) intentional states subjectively present us with the represented property, e.g. visual experiences of a round shape represent the objective property of roundness. Yet, there is no such distinction for emotion feelings—there is no objective property of emotion. "There is, of course", Perceptual Theorists will argue. In the second section: Varieties of Perceptual Theories, I will evaluate the candidates for objective emotion property proposed by Tye and Prinz respectively, and argue that these proposals, though interesting, all face tremendous difficulties. Perceptual theorists' proposals all fail because there is no such objective emotion property. In the last section: Conclusion and Speculation, I will discuss some implications of Feeling Theory on the nature of consciousness and intentionality: Representationalism defeated, the evolution of consciousness and intentionality.   P1

68  Perception and demonstrative concepts  Caleb Liang <yiliang@ntu.edu.tw> (Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan)
    It is widely agreed that perceptual experience has representational content? experience represents things in a certain way. Conceptualism, as proposed by John McDowell, is the position that the content of experience is constituted by conceptual capacities. In this paper I investigate the fineness of grain argument against conceptualism, according to which conceptualism is at odds with the fine-grained phenomenology of perception. Experience cannot be exclusively conceptual because its content is more fine-grained than our conceptual capacities, such that the latter can never fully characterize the former. I first describe the conceptualist’s strategy of using demonstrative concepts to respond to the argument. The core idea is to identify possession of demonstrative concepts with having a kind of recognitional capacity. Then I examine two criticisms against the conceptualist response: (1) Sean Kelly argues that recognitional capacities are constrained by memory, but perceptions are not. One can make fine-grained perceptual discriminations but fail to satisfy the re-identification condition for the relevant demonstrative concepts. (2) Richard Heck argues that perceptual experience is explanatorily prior to our possession of demonstrative concepts. Conceptualism fails to provide a noncircular explanation of the acquisition and the reference of demonstrative concepts. I propose a low-threshold approach to respond to these criticisms. In reply to Kelly, I argue that if one fails to re-identify a particular shade of color in some contexts, such as the scenario described by Kelly, it does not follow that one does not have the relevant recognitional capacity. Also, there is actually no sharp distinction between discriminatory and recognitional capacities with regard to the debate?the two capacities are not different in kind. In principle, if discriminatory capacities can be as fine-grained as the content of experience, so can recognitional capacities. If recognitional capacities are considered as conceptual, then discriminatory capacities should be so considered as well. In reply to Heck, I argue that a noncircular explanation of the reference of a demonstrative concept can be given by a version of semantic externalism. The reference of a demonstrative concept can always be determined by the external world even when the subject is currently undergoing a nonveridical perception. The key is that demonstrative reference need not be fixed by one single perceptual situation, but by a sequence of applications of the demonstrative concept. Also, I argue that the idea of explanatory priority can be accommodated by appealing to the possibility of nonlinguistic innate concepts. Therefore, the fineness of grain argument, at least as formulated by Kelly and Heck, has not refuted conceptualism. I conclude by comparing my approach with McDowell’s account of conceptual content. McDowell advocates a high threshold account of concept possession, according to which only those who are able to engage in active linguistic thinking and to bring their thoughts under rational self-reflection can possess conceptual content. I suggest that it is advisable for the conceptualist to lower the threshold of concept possession by making two moves: to identify recognitional capacity with discriminatory capacity, and to allow the possibility of nonlinguistic innate concepts.  P7

69  Phenomenal consciousness and the allocentric-egocentric interface  Pete Mandik <mandikp@wpunj.edu> (Philosophy, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ)
    I propose and defend the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface Theory of Consciousness. Mental processes form a hierarchy of mental representations with maximally egocentric (self-centered) representations at the bottom and maximally allocentric (other-centered) representations at the top. Phenomenally conscious states are states that are relatively intermediate in this hierarchy. More specifically, conscious states are hybrid states that involve the reciprocal interaction between relatively allocentric and relatively egocentric representations. Thus a conscious state is composed of a pair of representations interacting at the Allocentric-Egocentric Interface. What a person is conscious of is determined by what the contributing allocentric and egocentric representations are representations of. The phenomenal character of conscious states is identical to the representational content of the reciprocally interacting egocentric and allocentric representations. I spell out the empirical and philosophical consequences of the proposed theory, with emphases on ramifications for debates concerning representational and self-representational theories of consciousness.  C9

70  Conceptualism: a neo-Kantian defense  Farid Masrour <fmasrour@email.arizona.edu> (Philosophy, Unibersity of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona)
    Conceptualism about perceptual experience has recently resurfaced in philosophy of mind. Broadly understood, the view holds that some form of conceptual activity is a necessary condition for having perceptual experience. The thesis is usually invoked for the purpose of explaining other features of perceptual states; say their role in justifying perceptual beliefs or even their intentionality. Conceptualism has been subject to strong criticism though. For example, some hold that our perceptual experience is richer than our conceptual resources could allow; perceptual experience is often much more fine-grained than conceptual resources. But conceptualism cannot make sense of this feature. Others have charged conceptualism with hyper-intellectualism. According to this objection, conceptualism puts very high demands on perceptual experience. If you accept conceptualism, you have to accept that say infants and animals cannot have perceptual experience. But this flies in the face of intuition and common mental state attribution practices. My main aim in this paper is to defend conceptualism by proposing a version of the view that is immune to these standard and some closely related charges. Conceptualists have typically tried to weaken the requirements for concept possession in order to resist the hyper-intellectualism charge. But their move against the richness charge has not won many advocates. Here, conceptualists appeal to short-lived recognitional concepts. But there are doubts as to whether these short-lived items can be properly called concepts or do the work that they are supposed to do. I believe that the conceptualist could have faced the richness objection in a radically different way. Almost without exception, contemporary conceptualists hold a principle according to which every present feature in experience is conceptualized. For example, experiencing redness requires the subject’s application of the concept of redness. I argue that the conceptualist can resist the richness charge by weakening this principle. This involves holding that only some and not all experiential features should be conceptualized. Distinguishing the experiential features that are dependent on conceptualization from those that are not is the main challenge for this new form of conceptualism. I propose a principled way for distinguishing two types of features in perceptual experience, namely material and formal features. The former is the group to which we normally ascribe intensity, e.g., experiences of colors, sounds, etc. The latter group contains experiential features to which we usually do not ascribe intensity, e.g., experiential spatio-temporal relations. I show how this distinction could be put in the service of weakening the mentioned principle. The paper ends with a positive characterization of how concepts are involved in experience. It is my strong inclination that the view thus presented is very close to Kant’s view in his First Critique. This is why the thesis is called a neo-Kantian thesis. I have tried to avoid defending this exegetical claim in this paper though.   C16

71  Goal dynamics and mental contents  Marek McGann <marek.mcgann@mic.ul.ie> (Psychology, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland)
    In this paper, criticisms by Clark (2002) of the dynamic sensorimotor view of consciousness put forward by O'Regan & Noë (2001) are used as a means of illustrating the demand for a theory of goals in contemporary Cognitive Science. While historical examples of such calls for a theory of goals abound (Rosenblueth, Wiener & Bigelow, 1943; Miller, Pribram & Galanter, 1960; Boden, 1972 and others), it is argued that conceptions of goals within the discipline have largely been left undeveloped, and that the relationship between goal dynamics and mental contents is still largely misunderstood. Recent embodied, enactive views of mind and consciousness throw these difficulties into stark relief, though these new approaches themselves want for a properly developed account of action. Combining the insights of the enactive approach with related dynamical systems approaches, such as Juarrero's (1999) theory of dynamical action, a new view of the relationship between goals and content can be sketched out. Juarrero herself turns to distributed connectionist representations in order to account for content, this contrasts somewhat with the more interactionist views of enactive theorists. However, it will be argued that a reconciliation of these two approaches is possible and profitable. This enactive view entwines content and consciousness into goal-directedness in an inextricable fashion. Meaning and consciousness both arise from the implications of the world for a goal-oriented agent. Such a view shows how Clark is correct in his criticisms of O'Regan & Noë, but also how he fails to take an appropriate next step in the examination of consciousness and its role in the cognitive system.  P3

72  Intentional psychologism  David Pitt <dalanpitt@yahoo.com> (Philosoph, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA)
    What is the relationship between consciousness and thought? Philosophers from Descartes to Searle, Siewert and Strawson have maintained that consciousness is, in one way or another, a prerequisite for thought: no creature can be in states that are “about” things if it cannot be in states there is “something it’s like” to be in. I have recently argued (“The Phenomenology of Cognition, or, What Is It Like to Think That P?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, July 2004) that there is a distinctive sort of phenomenology characteristic of conscious thought – a cognitive “what it’s like,” that different conscious thoughts have different phenomenologies, and that thoughts with the same phenomenology are about the same things – they have the same “intentional content.” The last of these three claims is open to at least two different interpretations. It might mean that the phenomenology of a thought expresses its intentional content, where intentional content is understood as propositional, and propositions are understood as mind-and language-independent abstract entities, such as sets of possible worlds, functions from possible worlds to truth-values, structured n-tuples of objects and properties, etc. Or it might mean that the phenomenology of a thought is its intentional content – that is, that the phenomenology of a thought, like the phenomenology of a sensation, constitutes its content. The second sort of view is a kind of psychologism. Psychologistic views hold that some kind of – numbers, sentences, propositions, etc. – that we can think or know about is a kind of mental thing. Since Frege, psychologism has been in bad repute among analytic philosophers. It is widely held that Frege showed that such views are untenable, since, among other things, they subjectivize what is in fact objective, and, hence, relativize such things as consistency and truth to the peculiarities of human psychology. Thus, it would seem that the second way of seeing the relation between the phenomenology of a thought and its intentional content is not workable. I do not think this is the case. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the thesis that the content of a thought is its phenomenology – “intentional psychologism.” I argue that though Frege’s objection applies to one kind of psychologism – “token psychologism,” it does not apply to another – “type psychologism.” The latter view faces a number of other objections, however, which I address in this paper. I conclude that intentional psychologism is a defensible view, and that there are in fact reasons to prefer it over standard, representationalist views of intentional content.  C16

73  Can representationalists be physicalists?  William Robinson <wsrob@iastate.edu> (Iowa State University, Ames, IA)
    It is possible that on Planet X there are no cows, but there are robots that look like cows and are known by Xers to be robots. In that case, something might look to a creature that is highly similar to me (my quasi-twin) almost exactly the way cows look to me, but his experience would, plausibly, present the world to him as containing robots (in the same sense in which my experience presents the world to me as containing cows). Does the analogue hold for blue? That is, could it happen that some things look to my quasi-twin almost exactly the way blue things look to me, but his experience presents the world to him as containing yellow things? I argue that the answer to this question is plausibly “No”, but that familiar, physically acceptable ideas about representation imply an affirmative answer to it. Two alternative views of representation are available, and permit the plausible negative answer, but it is doubtful that they can be regarded as compatible with physicalism. The upshot is that representationalism for, e.g., color experiences is either physicalistic, but implausible, or tenable but not knowably physicalistic.  C8

74  Human echolocation and sense individuation  Achill Schnetzer, Juan Suarez <achill.schnetzer@unifr.ch> (Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland)
    Lopes (2000) claims that the intermodal representationalist theory of sense individuation and phenomenal character has a clear counterexample in the phenomenon of human echolocation—the way in which (mostly blind) people become aware of some of the spatial properties of their environment by using the sounds reflected from objects. The crucial thesis of this theory is a supervenience claim: (IP) No difference in phenomenal character without a difference in representational content. The argument against IP depends on the following intuitive claim: (IC) What it is like to hear a shape is different from what it is like to see a shape. In his response to Lopes, Dretske (2000) claims that (IC) draws upon a confusion between property awareness and fact awareness, where only differences in property awareness without differences in phenomenal character yield pertinent counterexamples to his theory. We introduce three criteria for p-awareness, based on which we argue that echolocation might well consist in p-awareness of spatial properties. Whether in echolocation subjects are p-aware of spatial properties depends on the way these properties are represented by the subject. Alternatively the representationalist could claim that the phenomenology of echolocation and vision are the same. This option cannot be ruled out on the basis of current evidence, but it is unreasonable to presuppose that this will necessarily be so given the different ways spatial information is given to the subject in echolocation and sight.   C8

75  Sensory qualities and concept empiricism  Par Sundstrom <par.sundstrom@philos.umu.se> (Philosophy and Linguistics, Umea University, Umeå, Sweden)
    According to Limited Concept Empiricism (LCE), there are certain ("phenomenal") thoughts about sensory qualities that one can think only if one has experienced the qualities they are about. Unlike the classical, unlimited concept empiricism of philosophers like Locke and Hume, LCE enjoys a lot of contemporary support. For example, the view is often expressed in discussions about Jackson's (1982, 1986) Mary. It's frequently claimed that there is a range of thoughts that imprisoned Mary is unable to think. However, I think we don't have good reasons to believe in LCE. In this paper I provide a partial defence of this assessment. I discuss and respond to two motivations for LCE: (i) The motivation from Imagism, and (ii) the motivation from The What-Else Question. These motivations are not the ones that are most frequently given in the literature, but I think they are in some ways the most important ones to consider. They both have an obvious intuitive appeal, and one may reasonably suspect that they play an important, albeit implicit, role in making LCE appear attractive in many eyes. Moreover, it will be to some degree possible to extrapolate responses to other arguments for LCE from my discussions of these two. (i) Imagism about thinking phenomenal thoughts says that: in order to think a phenomenal thought about a sensory quality Q one must have either an instance or a "faint copy" of Q in one's mind. I grant that, if Imagism were true then LCE would be true (on the ground that, if one hasn't experienced a quality Q, then one can't conjure up a faint copy of Q in one's mind). But I argue that there is no reason to believe that Imagism is true. Two observations are made. First, even when we think "imagistically" about something what we think is typically not determined only by the images entertained, but also by how these images are understood. Imagistic thinking about sensory qualities is, I argue, no exception to this commonly made observation. And given the importance of this "cognitive" act, it is not clear why one shouldn't be able to think one and the same phenomenal thought about a quality Q both with and without an image of Q in the mind. Second, when I think non-imagistically about a given quality on a given occasion, it may be transparently and immediately clear to me that the quality I'm thinking about is the same quality that I sometimes think imagistically about. This knowledge may be no more fallible or inferential than my knowledge that I think about the same quality twice in two acts of imagistic thinking. Since this is so, it's hard to see how any standard, "Fregean" test for distinctness of thoughts could show that non-imagistic thinkings are, in general, thinkings of non-phenomenal thoughts. (ii) The What-Else Question asks: What, other than an experience of a sensory quality Q, could provide one with the ability to think a phenomenal thought about Q? One might urge that, since this question has no plausible answer, LCE is true. In response, I suggest that there is at least one plausible answer to this question. I defend The Linguistic Hypothesis, according to which one may acquire a phenomenal concept Q of a sensory quality Q by acquiring mastery of public language term that expresses Q.   C16

76  The spatial content of experience  Brad Thompson <bthompso@smu.edu> (Department of Philosophy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX)
    To what extent is the external world the way that it appears to us in perceptual experience? This perennial question in philosophy no doubt is ambiguous in many ways. But perhaps the most interesting version of this question concerns the relationship between the phenomenal features that characterize perceptual experience, on the one hand, and the mind-independent features of the external objects of perception, on the other. Views that identify phenomenal colors with external mind-independent properties have become increasingly popular in recent philosophy, but they remain controversial. Some of the challenges to such views have come from considering the possibility of inverted spectra, as well as cases of perceptual variation among species, among individuals, as well as within individuals (such as color constancy and color contrast effects). There has been comparatively little controversy in contemporary philosophy over whether the phenomenal spatial properties of experience are identical to external spatial properties. I argue that the spatial features of experience cannot be identified with the mind-independent spatial properties of external objects. I proceed primarily by considering the phenomenal content of spatial experience. I argue that the phenomenal contents of spatial experiences are Twin-Earthable. There can be two subjects with phenomenally identical spatial experiences that are both veridical, despite being in relevantly different spatial environments. I discuss three such spatial Twin Earth scenarios. One concerns Doubled Earth, in which everything is twice as large as on Earth. Another concerns a world in which the external causes of spatial experiences are qualitatively, rather than merely quantitatively, quite different from those in the actual world. Finally, I consider an El Greco scenario, in which everything is stretched vertically compared to Earth. I argue that in all three types of scenarios, our phenomenal duplicates on these respective worlds can be veridical perceivers of spatial properties. The upshot is that spatial phenomenal properties cannot be identified with either the spatial properties in the subject’s external environment or the external properties represented by those experiences.   C16

[01.13]  Miscellaneous

77  Do insects see or ‘see’? A significant issue for the evolution of consciousness   Stephen Bostock <mail@stephenbostock.fsnet.co.uk> (Philosophy, University of Glasgow, UK, Glasgow, Scotland, UK)
    Parker (2003) speaks of a camera ‘seeing’. All would agree that cameras do not literally see -- they have no visual experiences -- and most of us would probably agree that while some robots now ‘see’ they do not yet see. Clearly humans normally see, and also hear, smell, taste and touch in the full experiential sense; so, most likely, do other mammals, who share very similar sense organs and neural equipment, and probably other vertebrates, and perhaps cephalopods, well known for their advanced eyes and nervous systems. But what of such invertebrates as insects and snails? Are they likely to see or merely ‘see’? In favour of the latter view is the fact that in the case of mammals, seeing is the result of immensely complex brain processing, plus the fact that, as all neurons convey identical nerve impulses, it seems that the brain must construct visual and other sensory experiences and could, had this been evolutionarily useful, have produced seeing in response to sound waves and hearing in response to light waves. On the other hand the zoologist Hardy (1984) suggests that natural camouflage tells us much of what the predators who indirectly produced it perceive, and such predators might include insects. Parker not only argues in his book that the evolution of eyes in the Cambrian period made predation more effective and camouflage desirable, but provides us with a startling example of apparent warning coloration in the iridescence he has demonstrated in the Cambrian polychaete Wiwaxia’s defensive spines. Thus, it seems that predatory trilobites being warned off were not merely processing visual information but were (however simply) experiencing, i.e. seeing rather than just ‘seeing’. I will contrast two alternative accounts of the likely early evolution of nervous systems and sense organs; which we choose makes a considerable difference to our view of the nature and evolution of consciousness. On one theory the early vertebrate nervous system was concerned with receiving and processing sensory information and initiating reflex actions, without the occurrence of any sensory experience. The early vertebrate was, thus, merely 'seeing'. On the other theory, closer to Parker’s view, very simple sensory experiences including visual ones emerged as early as the evolution of eyes, at least eyes which involved the formation of a visual image rather than eyespots which would do little more, it seems, than register the direction of light. For Parker, trilobites were seeing. I will argue that Parker’s view is more likely to be correct given the complexity of our own conscious visual and auditory experiences, whose richness must have been evolving for millions of years along with the neural machinery required to produce it.   P1

78  What is a brain state?  Richard Brown <onemorebrown@yahoo.com> (Brooklyn, New York)
    Philosophers have been talking about brain states for almost 50 years and as of yet no one has articulated a theoretical account of what one is. In fact this issue has received almost no attention and cognitive scientists still use meaningless phrases like ‘C-Fiber Firing’ and ‘Neuronal Activity’ when theorizing about the relation of the mind to the brain. Though the issue first arose in the context of the Identity Theory, having such a viable theoretical account is vital to the success of cognitive science. For, whether you prefer correlation, supervenience, causation, or identity as an account of how the mind and brain relate, you will need to provide an account of what states of the brain this relation is to hold between. To date when theorists discuss brain states they usually do so in the context of making some other argument for or against one of the afore mentioned mind-brain relations with the result being that any discussion of what brain states are has a distinct en passant flavor. In light of this it is a goal of mine to make brain states the center of attention by providing some general discussion of them. So, what are these brain states supposed to be? Feigl is clear that ‘neural process’ is a dummy phrase that will need to be replaced by a mature neuroscience, and I am sure that Place and Smart would agree. Feigl guesses that the neuroscience of the year 3000 might be sophisticated enough to do so (Feigl 1967). I contend that we are in a position to do so now. I believe that neuroscientists discovered the identity conditions for brain states about 15 years ago. A full thousand years ahead of schedule! However, no one has articulated the theory as such. Doing so is my second goal. Most philosophers take a much dimmer view of the matter. For instance Bectel and Mundale say, “The notion of a brain state is a philosopher’s fiction,” (Bechtel and Mundale 1999, p 177) and more recently Thomas Polger has argued that “we don’t really even have a clue what such things are,” (Polger 2004). My strategy is as follows. I briefly look at the argument of Bectel and Mundale, as I think that they expose a common misconception philosophers had about brain states early on. I then turn to briefly examining Polger’s argument, as I think he offers an intuitive account of what we expect brain states to be as well as a convincing argument against a common candidate for knowledge about brain states which is currently ‘on the scene.’ I then introduce a distinction between brain states and states of the brain (cf. Chalmers’ specific and background NCC’s (Chalmers 2000)). Particular brain states occur against background states of the brain. I argue that brain states are patterns of synchronous neural firing, which reflects the electrical face of the brain; states of the brain are the gating and modulating of neural activity and reflect the chemical face of the brain.   C10

79  Does enactivism yield specific predictions?  Ralph Ellis, Natika Newton <ralphellis@mindspring.com> (Philosophy, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA)
    Does the enactivist approach to consciousness fail to yield specific empirical predictions? We argue that, since enactivism's appearance (Bateson, 1987; Maturana, 1987; Ellis 1986; Varela et al. 1991; Gallagher, 1995; Newton, 1996), at least seven predictions have been confirmed. (1) The cerebellum, known to coordinate movement, also contributes to higher cognitive operations including imagery (Schmahmann 1999; Duncan 2003). Enactivism predicts that subtle action imageries subserve models of abstract reasoning sequences and environmental affordances. (2) When brains of monkeys trained to play computer games are wired to joy sticks, they can play without using their hands (Donoghue 2002); this presupposes similarity between neural correlates of actual and imagined hand movements. Moreover, imagining but not actually moving one's hand normally involves more, not less activity: the activity required both to move the hand and to inhibit the command. Intelligent animals can imagine doing an action while not actually doing it: the highly developed frontal area allows inhibition of initiated commands. (3) Rizzolatti and Gallese (1998) show that neural groups ("mirror neurons") respond both to another's action and to the agent's own. Importantly, the response is to the other's intention, (Wohlschläger and Bekkering 2002), supporting Newton's(1996) account of understanding others through action imagery. Jeannerod (1986) finds that action-initiating imagery involves the same neural correlates as simply imagining the action, except in imagining we inhibit the command -- a finding simultaneous with but independent of Ellis's (1986) similar prediction. (4) The Mack and Rock (1998) inattentional blindness findings confirm that prior attention is required for perceptual consciousness. This finding is uniquely predicted by enactivism, and is contradicted by reactivism, which entails that information normally is extensively processed prior to attentional gating, with no role for intentional goal directedness (fundamental to enactivism). (5) Evidence mounts that intact emotional brain areas are necessary and sufficient for "core consciousness" (Damasio 1999); on the reactivist, passive-receiving model, emotional areas are not necessary for many conscious states. (6) Newsome (2005) finds that dopamine pathways play the dual role of causing actions (even without cortical intervention) and acting as reward circuits; thus reward is closely associated with the ability to perform preferred actions relative to basins of attraction supporting self-organization. (7) The primacy of the efferent over the afferent in conscious processing (Dennett 1969), is demonstrated in the unexpectedly long delay between occipital P100-N200 processing of perceptual information and the parietal P300 event-related potential accompanying perceptual consciousness of an unexpected stimulus (Runeson 1989; Aurell 1989). A 100-200ms delay from occipital processing to perceptual consciousness (accompanying the P300) cannot be explained by spreading activation. Consistent with the Ellis (1990) hypothesis, efferent processes involved in action imagery must be activated before sensory-cortex activity results in consciousness; the P300 signals resonance between this anterior/subcortical "looking for" activity and corresponding posterior afferent activity in sensory cortex. Damasio (2000) finds frontal 100ms. activation when an unanticipated stimulus is presented, consistently with the prediction in Ellis (1990, 1996) concerning timing of ERPs. Reactivism would predict the reverse of this order.  C9

80  Subjectivists and objectivists on secondary qualities: A pseudo-dispute  Nicholas Georgalis <georgalisn@mail.ecu.edu> (Greenville, NC)
    Sensory terms are systematically ambiguous in reference between phenomenal and physical qualities. While many philosophers may acknowledge this, I explain this ambiguity and develop a consequence of it that is not generally recognized: (*) Arguments between objectivists and subjectivists regarding the nature of heat, color, and the other secondary qualities are pseudo-disputes. To do so I examine: (1) how the term ‘heat’ is embedded in ordinary discourse, and (2) the familiar claim that (roughly) heat is reduced to kinetic energy. The examination of (1) supports a particular systematic ambiguity in the term ‘heat’, while my examination of (2) argues that the alleged identity offered in support of the supposed reduction fails. The arguments here readily generalize to the other secondary qualities. Once all this is in place, the basis for (*) is established. Various standard identities are frequently cited in support of various reductions: Heat = kinetic energy of molecules Light = electromagnetic radiation Lightning = electrical discharge in the atmosphere Typically it is also claimed that these identities exhibit “the real nature”, or “the essence” of the phenomena indicated by the left term, as if we now know that, say, that heat (at least in a gas) just is kinetic energy of molecules. I reject this view. On the way to establish this, I distinguish the above as feature reductions (f-reductions) from theory reductions (t-reductions), the latter include: Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics Ray optics to wave optics Wave optics to electromagnetic theory One key difference between these two kinds of reductions is that in t-reductions the terms on both sides are already regimented in some scientific theory, whereas in f-reductions only one of them is, the other term is from ordinary discourse. In the case of the reduction of Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics it is, for example, the Boyle-Charles Law (PV=kT) that is reduced, and the terms in this law are terms that already have been scientifically regimented and they have a metric. In contrast the term ‘heat’ is neither scientifically regimented nor does it have a metric. This difference in regimentation is crucial to showing that, while t-reductions are genuine reductions, the alleged f-reductions are not reductions at all. The so-called f-reductions actually mark a discovery of a new phenomenon. In f-“reductions” nothing at all is reduced. The f-reductions are, however, a critical juncture. They provide the reason and the occasion for the resulting ambiguity in the target sensory term. For it is in consequence of the discovery established by the new “reducing” theory which is the occasion for some pre-scientific concept to be applied to a new scientifically regimented domain, even while retaining, in part, its old application. The lesson that is missed by both objectivists and subjectivists is the implication of the systematic ambiguity in sensory terms: Talk of reduction or identity in the contexts of f-reductions is without merit. Talk of the true or real nature (“essence”) of, say, heat or color is no better.   P1

81  Diachronic unity of consciousness without the specious present  Bernard Kobes <kobes@asu.edu> (Philosophy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ)
    The phenomenal unity of consciousness is usually taken to have synchronic and diachronic forms. I take the problem of diachronic unity to be that of explaining what it is for phenomenal quality q1-at-t1 to be unified with phenomenal quality q2-at-t2. Michael Tye, in Consciousness and Persons (2003), explains diachronic phenomenal unity as the ancestral of the relation direct phenomenal unity, where the latter is a relation of experienced continuity between a quality experienced in one specious present and a quality experienced in the immediately prior specious present. I criticize Tye’s solution, in part by developing an objection that depends on a principle of conjunctive closure for phenomenally unified contents, together with a principle which states that an experience e represents phenomenal content q only if, at some time t, q is available for cognition at t in virtue of e. A more plausible theory of diachronic phenomenal unity invokes memory, and does without the specious present. Such a theory can be developed so as to respect the conjunctive closure principle and the principle of availability for cognition. An advantage of the theory is that the diachronic unity relation turns out be intransitive, whereas on Tye’s view it is transitive. Diachronic unity ramifies into several distinct but related notions, corresponding to distinctions among types of memory. At the smallest temporal scales I postulate a form of memory that is strictly identical to the temporal persistence of phenomenal consciousness itself.   C16

82  Cross-modal illusions and perceptual content  Casey O'Callaghan <cocallag@bates.edu> (Philosophy, Bates College, Lewiston, ME)
    The recently discovered sound-induced flash illusion is a visual illusion induced by sound (Shams, et al. 2000, 2002). A single flash paired with multiple beeps is perceived as multiple flashes. The illusion is characterized by its discoverers as involving "a phenomenological change in the quality -- as opposed to a small, gradual, or quantitative change -- of the percept of a non-ambiguous visual stimulus" that is induced by audition as a result of "cross-modal perceptual interactions as opposed to cognitive, attentional, or other origins" (2002:147). Alva Noë has recently challenged on independent grounds what he calls the "snapshot conception" of visual experience according to which perception presents discrete snapshot-like contents that represent a scene "in sharp focus and uniform detail from the center out to the periphery" (Noë 2004, ch. 2). On the basis of a discussion of cross- and inter-modal perceptual effects, I argue in this paper that what I dub the "composite snapshot" conception of overall perceptual experience fails. Cross-modal and inter-modal illusions, including the sound-induced flash illusion and the more familiar ventriloquist illusion (in which vision influences sound localization) suggest that the influence of one modality upon the phenomenological and perceptual content of another modality requires for its explanation appeal to a dimension of shared content across perceptual modalities. The cross-modal illusions demonstrate that a visuo-centric focus in theorizing about perception and perceptual content threatens to blind us to the nature and character of perceptual experience. Such effects indicate that individual modalities cannot fully be understood in isolation from the others -- even vision and visual content are illuminated by considering the non-visual modalities. Abandoning both the visuo-centric focus in theorizing about perceptual experience and the composite snapshot conception of experience also contributes to resolving puzzles about the other modalities. For instance, auditory perception plays a role in situating subjects in a world of objects and events. Auditory perception, that is, reveals not only a world of sounds but also furnishes information about the things and happenings that generate those sounds. How could audition, whose proper objects are sounds, include object-involving content? Appeal to a shared dimension of content among perceptual modalities makes this question tractable. Common content among modalities, appeal to which is required to explain cross-modal effects, could ground an explanation for how audition might furnish genuinely perceptual awareness of objects and happenings and not mere inferential or otherwise non-perceptual awareness. In short, attention to cross- and inter-modal effects and illusions enhances our understanding of the phenomenological and perceptual contents of experience by encouraging us to move beyond characterizing perceptual content as a composite of modality-specific contents. References Shams, L., Kamitani, Y., & Shimojo, S. (2000). "What you see is what you hear." Nature, Vol. 408, pp.788. Shams, L., Kamitani, Y., & Shimojo, S. (2002). "Visual illusion induced by sound." Cognitive Brain Research, Vol. 14, pp. 147-152. Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA. The MIT Press.   C9

84  General forms and characteristics of consciousness and their relevance to an artistic problem and their relevance to an artistic problem  Jeffrey Strayer, Jeffrey Strayer <strayerj@ipfw.edu> (Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne, Indiana)
    Consciousness is multifarious in the sense that there are many different kinds of conscious event, including such things as perceiving, recollecting, and anticipating in which it is possible to be aware of or to be Intentionally related to things in different temporal aspects of reality, and including as well such things as conceiving and imagining which extend the range of consciousness beyond the spatio-temporal reality in which it occurs and by which it is nevertheless informed. Not only are there different kinds of conscious event, but these events have five basic forms which are dictated by an event’s being either Intentional or non-Intentional, reflexive, irreflexive, or areflexive, monadic or polyadic, and first order or higher order. These forms are herein identified and their nature is described as the fundamental relations of conscious events to one another and to objects other than those events is articulated. The philosophy of the forms of consciousness is not only of theoretical interest but is relevant to the creative identification of the limits of Abstraction in art. The paper ends by considering that relevance.  P7

85  Mary Midgley's many maps model  Dennis Weiss <dweiss@ycp.edu> (English and Humanities, York College of Pennsylvania, York, PA)
    In a career spanning more than thirty years and more than a dozen books, Mary Midgley has repeatedly returned to a few common themes, one of them being the relation of mind and body and how to fit together the different aspects of ourselves as subjects and objects. Beginning with Beast and Man and continuing through The Myths We Live By and Science and Poetry, Midgley has articulated a well-defined, nuanced, and credible position on the nature and possibility of a science of consciousness. Despite this long career, her many publications (including the recently published The Essential Mary Midgley), and her regular appearance in journals such as Journal of Consciousness Studies, Midgley’s work has attracted relatively little attention. Outside of a few book reviews, there is no extended philosophical review or consideration of her contribution to consciousness studies. One might infer from this that perhaps she hasn’t made a significant enough contribution to warrant much philosophical consideration. I think that inference would be mistaken and in this essay will undertake a critical reconstruction of Midgley’s contribution toward a science of consciousness. This reconstruction serves, first, to pull together the main threads of her approach towards studying consciousness which are scattered throughout her many texts and not always systematically developed. Secondly, this reconstruction will be critical in that it makes apparent Midgley’s contribution to a discussion of the possibility of a science of consciousness and places her approach in its philosophical context while disclosing some potentially troublesome tensions in that approach to reconciling our inner and outer lives. Midgley is a naturalist whose work has consistently treated the human being as continuous with animals and nature and who has taken her cues from biology and ethology. At the same time, she has consistently been critical of many of the dominant aspects of contemporary philosophical approaches to consciousness, rejecting reductionism and scientism (the slavish devotion to quantitative models drawn from the physical sciences) and critiquing overly simplistic schemes of monolithic order. Rather, she has from the beginning argued that there is room for all methods in the study of consciousness and she has consistently been a champion of a non-reductive, pluralistic kind of convergent explanation. Central to her approach is the recognition that we need a different set of concepts, a different imaginative vision, if we are to come to an understanding of consciousness. And, indeed, she piles on the metaphors, making references to an ill-lit aquarium, a Chinese vase, cake-cutting, and what comes to be her primary model for thinking about consciousness, the many maps of the world in the opening pages of an almanac. “This analogy between different maps and different sources of knowledge seems to me very useful. It underscores the need for scientific pluralism…rather than reductivism…” (Myths). Simultaneously, however, Midgley argues that we need a holistic and integrated view of ourselves. It is in reconciling this need with her many maps model that Midgley’s approach to an understanding of consciousness faces its starkest challenge.   P2

2. Neuroscience

[02.01]  Neural correlates of consciousness (general)

86  Increased P300 event related potential amplitude during self-evaluation task: A replication  Joel Alexander, Ronald Alexander; Anthony Ryals; Danielle Osborne; Amanda Donahue <alexanj@wou.edu> (Psychology, Western Oregon University, Monmouth, Oregon)
    It has been demonstrated that self-identity information (e.g., name, date of birth) used as stimuli consistently produces a distinct increase in P300 amplitude (an index of schema and/or memory updating). Memory for one’s personal identity appears to be stored permanently, and well-rehearsed information is that which is frequently retrieved. This may explain why self-related information appears to elicit a larger than normal P300. This type of manipulation of self-relevance and personal identity sheds important light on the issue of self-consciousness. However, with these stimulus-driven methodologies, the true introspective moment of turning one’s attention inward was only indirectly manipulated with the hope that by using a self-relevant stimulus one would happen to think of one’s self. This does not seem to address the type of core self-consciousness that Damasio (1999) describes as a momentary introspective moment during which a self account occurs of how one is causally affected by the processing of a stimulus. Alexander et. al (2005) attempted to capture the introspective moment during a task that required the subject to evaluate their current emotional valance related to a standardized stimulus. The design of the study was different from previous studies in that the base sensory discrimination task was the same across all three conditions. However, in two of the conditions, the subjects were required to be ready for a secondary cognitive task in addition to the standard sensory discrimination task where they would be required to make a second stimulus-related judgment after their initial discrimination response. Across a 16-electrode array, they found a large increase in P300 amplitude during the condition with the added self-evaluation component. Their results appear to be evidence of engagement of greater cognitive resources during self evaluation than those used during Tasks 1 and 2, which do not incorporate emotion-related self evaluations of one’s first-order mental events. In the current study, a replication of the Alexander et. al (2005) study was conducted utilizing a 32-electrode array with the same design described above. The results support the previous findings in that the condition with the added self-evaluation component had higher P300 amplitude across electrode sites compared to the standard sensory discrimination condition and the secondary cognitive condition. This replication supports the utility of designing studies that measure the neurocognitive brain activity of subjects engaged in self-related cognitive tasks.   P2

87  Psilocybin effects on spontaneous EEG and visual event-related potentials and a comparison to the EEG effects of meditation  Rael Cahn, John Polich; Franz Vollenweider <rael@ucsd.edu> (Neurosciences, Medical Scientist Training Program, UC San Diego, Zurich, Switzerland)
    Data from EEG and Event-related potential studies of the altered neurophysiological processing of visual and auditory stimuli induced by psilocybin will be presented and discussed in relationship to the extensive older body of research on the neurophysiological effects of hallucinogens in humans and animals. Similarities and dissimilarities to findings in psychosis and schizophrenia will be discussed in addition to the specific relationships between the experiential altered state subjects' reported and their altered brain activity at rest and in response to gestalt visual stimuli (Kanizsa triangles, Mooney faces), simple visual stimuli eliciting the P300 response and auditory stimuli including hearing one's own name. Data will also be presented on the EEG and ERP changes induced by meditation as well as experiential reports. The differences and similiarities in the brain and subjective experience between these two inducers of "altered states" will be discussed.  C7

88  'Enabling' neural correlates for all consciousness: Latest findings in the mechanisms of cortical 'arousal'  Bill Faw <bfaw@bpc.edu> (Psychology, Brewton-Parker Colege, Mount Vernon, GA)
    John Searle chastises consciousness researchers for spending so much time on what he calls the "building blocks" of the neural correlates of consciousness (what it takes for specific mental 'content' to compete for conscious workspace); and calls on us to focus, instead, on the "unified fields" question (what makes creatures conscious versus in a deep sleep, coma or vegetative state). Traditionally, the function of the "unified-field" (Searle) or "enabling-NCC" (Koch) has been conceptualized as "cortical arousal" and linked to brainstem mechanisms. I trace the history of the "arousal" concept and putative mechanisms involved; piece together considerable data leading to splitting the "arousal" construct into components; and then trace a network of brain mechanisms, now re-centered in the basal forebrain, whose acetylcholine cells seem to be the "final common pathway" for tonically activating the cortex into a "basic cortical arousal" or state of "sustained attention", shared by QUIET waking, REM, and perhaps by trance and some meditative states. For this basic arousal, brainstem acetylcholine projects to basal forebrain acetylcholine neurons. The addition of a vast network of other connections with these basic-arousal acetylcholine neurons, adds attentional, salience detecting, perceptual, cognitive, plasticity, and intentional motor response components to basic arousal, creating the somewhat sustained state of cortical arousal of the normal waking state. I attempt a plausible synthesis of a number of mechanisms and corresponding cognitive abilities, involving brainstem reticular systems; posterior hypothalamus hypocretin and histamine; anterior hypothalamus sleep factors GABA and adenosine; acetylcholine projections converting the thalamus to "transfer mode"; gating and consciousness-work-space activation roles for thalamic intralaminar and reticular nuclei; recruitment of acetylcholine cortical projections by basal forebrain input from amygdala, hippocampus and nucleus accumbens; acetylcholine and glutamate teaming up for cortical plasticity and learning; and circadian control by anterior hypothalamic nuclei and the pineal.   C10

89  The neuron doctrine, “hyper-neurons” and the NCC  Stuart Hameroff <hameroff@u.arizona.edu> (Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona)
    The NCC is attributed to networks of discrete neurons, each with multiple synaptic/dendritic inputs and “all-or-none” digital axonal outputs. Stemming from Cajal’s century-old “neuron doctrine”, discrete neuronal input/output functions also support brain/computer analogies. Because all-or-none axonal output “spikes” are readily quantified and correlate with behavior, spikes are often equated with the NCC. However evidence casts doubt on both the neuron doctrine and spike-based NCC(1): 1) Dendrites do more than summate EPSPs/IPSPs to threshold. Highly branched dendrites contain mosaics of different receptors whose spatial distribution (organized by internal cytoskeleton/previous activity) is a complex determinant of neuronal function. Dendrites perform local complex logic, boost signals and modulate axon hillock spike threshold. In many neurons, spikes travel “backward”, and dendrites can initiate their own spikes. Triggering axonal spikes is not necessarily the raison d’etre of dendrites. 2) Electrophysiological and metabolic NCCs correlate with dendritic activity. The best electrophysiological NCC, gamma synchrony EEG is produced by local field potentials (LFPs) from dendritic graded potentials, and coordinated by cortical interneurons linked by gap junctions. Spikes are not gamma synchronized. Some cortical neurons have no axons, and extensive dendritic activity below spike threshold (historically considered noise) oscillates coherently across wide brain regions.(2) The fMRI BOLD signal also correlates with dendritic LFPs more than with spikes. 3) Gap junction “hyper-neurons” best represent the NCC. Gap junctions are windows between adjacent cells which electrically couple membranes and provide continuous internal cytoplasm. Gap junctions couple dendrites with other neurons’ dendrites, axons and glia, forming syncytial “hyper-neurons”(3) which oscillate coherently in the gamma EEG range and extend widely through cortex.(4) Gap junctions open, close, form and disappear, dependent on activity and cytoskeletal processes. Thus hyper-neurons are plastic and adaptive (e.g. “Hebbian”). 4) Anesthetics ablate consciousness via post-synaptic dendrites. General anesthetics reversibly erase consciousness with relative selectivity, sparing other brain activities including sub-gamma EEG, evoked potentials, and autonomic regulation. Anesthetics act on post-synaptic ligand gated ion channels, metabotropic receptors, dendritic spine actin, second messengers and cytoskeletal structures. General anesthetics have little or no effects on spikes. 5) Dendritic cytoskeleton is uniquely configured to process information. Unlike those in axons or non-neuronal cells, dendritic microtubules are discontinuous and of mixed polarity, connected by specialized microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) in local processing networks which regulate cognitive functions. Shape and dynamics of actin-filled dendritic spines have also been linked to cognition and consciousness (e.g. Crick). And metabotropic membrane receptors send signals into the dendritic cytoskeleton. For many years Sir John Eccles, Karl Pribram and others have argued that consciousness arises from dendrites, with axons providing input to, and output from, conscious processes in dendrites. Gap junction hyper-neurons fulfill this argument and are consistent with electrophysiology, fMRI, anesthetic mechanisms and all known neuroscientific data. It is logical to conclude that hyper-neurons are the NCC. 1. Bullock et al (2005) Science 310: 791 2. Woolf NJ Hameroff S (2001) TICS 5:472 3. Ferster D (1996) Science 272:1812. 4. Amitai, Y et al. (2002) The Journal of Neuroscience 22(10): 4142.   C10

90  The difference between consciousness and reportability: Neuroanatomical restrictions on phenomenal reports  Benjamin Kozuch <bigben@email.arizona.edu> (Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    One widely used tool in the scientific study of consciousness is contrastive analysis, which compares cognitive processes that occur consciously against those that do not. This comparison is only made possible through the use of subjects’ reports about what their consciousness contains. However, when we look at these reports in context of the brain that produces them, a difficulty appears. From the view of cognitive neuroscience, the brain is divided into many functionally-specific areas, with the exchange of information between these areas not universal. Because of this, when a subject produces a report about what their consciousness contains, the content that composes said report will be limited to whatever content is present in those areas the language-production system of the brain has access to. This has the following consequence: Any time a subject reports some content within his brain to not be conscious, there are two explanations for this: (a) the content has no phenomenology associated with it (the default interpretation), or (b) the content is conscious, but just not able to be reported upon. The implications for contrastive analysis become apparent if we view instances of it in light of this possibility. Well-known experiments conducted by Logothetis involving binocular rivalry have caused many to conclude that no conscious experience arises from brain area V1 (one of the earlier areas in the visual processing stream). This conclusion is based upon the fact that subject’s reports of what their conscious experience consisted of did not correspond to neural activity measured in V1: whereas their conscious image consisted of an alternating image, neurons in V1 fired in a stable pattern. There is, however, an alternate explanation. The content of V1 is actually conscious, but unavailable for use in a report because the language-producing areas of the subjects’ brains lack direct access to content of V1. Because similar problems to this will be raised for any other conclusions arrived at though the use of reports, this presents a significant challenge to the use of contrastive analysis.   P2

91  Functional magnetic resonance imaging of emotional reactivity and wisdom assessment of mediators and non-mediators  Marc Kurtzman, Monika Ardelt, Ph.D.; Shaya Isenberg, Ph.D.; Louis A. Ritz, Ph.D.; Gene R. Thursby, Ph.D. <mkurtzman@gmail.com> (Center for Spirituality and Health, University of Florida, Tampa, FL)
    The growing interest in meditation has opened the door for new and innovative research to understand both the psychological and physiological effects of this ancient practice. Research in the area of meditation is normally interdisciplinary in nature. Meditation research encompasses many fields of research from religious studies to psychology to neuroscience. The following study was an interdisciplinary venture that brought together researchers from the fields of religious studies, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience. The first portion of the study explored the psychological impact of meditation. Using Monika Ardelt’s Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (3D-WS), 42 subjects of meditators and non-meditators completed the 3D-WS and scores were computed among the various dimensions that comprise the 3D-WS. Various groupings and statistical analysis were performed in evaluating the possible differences. The results demonstrated significant differences in overall wisdom. Among the three dimensions that comprise overall wisdom, significant differences were found in the reflective dimension but most significant in the affective domain. In the second portion of the study, we utilized the technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a pilot study to explore possible differences in brain activation between meditators and non-meditators in the presence of emotional stimuli from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Six subjects (3 meditators, 3 non-meditators) underwent an fMRI and a descriptive volume analysis was used in exploring global and regions of interest differences between the two groups. Global asymmetries were found in the time-locked all affect based deconvolution. The occipital region showed asymmetries for all affect based deconvolution. Frontal region activity showed asymmetries for the time-locked negative affect only deconvolution. The study shed light on areas of exploration that should be further explored. The low number of subjects in the fMRI portion of the study inhibited statistically significant differences from being demonstrated. The implications of the study shed further light on the many changes that are possible in both mind and brain with the practicing of meditation.   P11

92  Are we studying consciousness yet?  Hakwan Lau <hakwan@gmail.com> (Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK)
    Many of us are interested in studying the NCC because we share the intuition that consciousness seems to be more than just basic information processing. While we do not know for sure whether this intuition would turn out to be correct, an unbiased investigation of the NCC should shed light on this issue. For instance, if it turns out that the NCC involves components that are physically different at a quantum level when compared to the neural circuits that subserve sublinal perception, this would be a strong evidence for quantum theories of consciousness. However, in conducting experiments most researchers neglect this possibility, and often (implicitly) treat consciousness as just as same as basic information processing. This is reflected by the fact that most studies on the visual NCC rely on a comparison between a condition where subjects can detect or discriminate the stimuli competently (the ‘conscious’ condition), and a control condition where subjects perform at chance level (the ‘unconscious’ condition). I argue that this standard approach is flawed, because the two conditions differ not only in terms of perception, but also in terms of performance. From studies of blindsight we know that good performance in forced-choice tasks does not necessarily require consciousness. Therefore, results obtained from many NCC studies could be trivialized by the fact that there is simply more information processing going on in the brain in the ‘conscious’ condition, and such processing does not necessarily reflect consciousness per se. I have dealt with this problem by creating matched experimental conditions where only the subjective report of awareness differs, but the objectively measured ability to visually discriminate does not. This relied on the non-linear masking function obtained in metaconstrast masking. Using this novel paradigm, an fMRI studies revealed specfic activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Activity in the parietal cortex, on the other hand, correlates with performance in general instead of the subjective report of awareness per se. This challenges the widely adopted notion that the NCC involves widespread activity in a fronto-parietal network. Instead, consciousness might depend on neural circuits that are localized at the apex of the information processing hierachy of the brain. Using dynamic causal modelling, a MEG study based on this new paradigm is conducted, and in a similar fashion it cast doubt on the notion that ‘recurrent feedback’ is a basis of consciousness.   PL1

93  Eyes wide open, brain wide shut : (Un)consciousness in the vegetative state  Steven Laureys <steven.laureys@ulg.ac.be> (Cyclotron Research Centre and Neurology Dept, University of Liège, LIEGE, BELGIUM)
    Consciousness is a multifaceted concept that has two major components : wakefulness or arousal and awareness of self and of environment. You need to be awake in order to be aware (REM-sleep being a notorious exception). The contrastive approach (comparing brain activation in circumstances that do or do not give rise to consciousness in either of its two main senses of awareness and wakefulness) is now widely applied in functional neuroimaging. Very few groups, however, have studied situations where wakefulness and awareness are dissociated. The most tragic example is the vegetative state. Here, patients ‘awaken’ from their coma but show no ‘voluntary’ interaction with their environment. Vegetative patients look “awake” but fail to show any behavioral sign of awareness. Recent neuroimaging studies are revealing how wakefulness and awareness can come apart in the vegetative state, illuminating the relationships between awareness and: (i) global brain function; (ii) regional brain function; (iii) changes in functional connectivity; and (iv) primary versus associative cortical activation in response to external stimulation -highlighting possible perception of pain and of self. References S Laureys (2005) The neural correlate of (un)awareness: lessons from the vegetative state Trends Cogn Sci, 9, 556-559 S Laureys, A Owen and N Schiff (2004) Brain function in coma, vegetative state, and related disorders. Lancet Neurol 3, 537-546 S Laureys (Ed) (2005) The boundaries of consciousness: neurobiology and neuropathology. Amsterdam: Elsevier ISBN 0-444-51851-7, 630 pages   PL9

94  Visibility, visual awareness, and visual masking of simple unattended targets are confined to areas in the occipital cortex beyond human V1/V2   Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde; Alexander A. Schlegel; Peter U. Tse <macknik@neuralcorrelate.com> (Neurosurgery, Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ)
    In visual masking, visible targets are rendered invisible by modifying the context in which they are presented, but not by modifying the targets themselves. Here, we localize the neuronal correlates of visual awareness in the human brain by using visual masking illusions. We compare monoptic visual masking activation, which we find within all retinotopic visual areas, with dichoptic masking activation, which we find only in those retinotopic areas downstream of V2. Because monoptic and dichoptic masking are equivalent in magnitude perceptually, the present results establish a lower bound for maintenance of visual awareness of simple unattended targets. Moreover, we find that awareness-correlated circuits for simple targets are restricted to the occipital lobe. This finding provides evidence of an upper boundary in the visual hierarchy for visual awareness of simple unattended targets, thus constraining the location of circuits that maintain the visibility of simple targets to occipital areas beyond V1/V2.  C3

95  The role of fixational eye movements in visibility and visual awareness  Susana Martinez-Conde <smart@neuralcorrelate.com> (Neurobiology, Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ)
    Our visual system contains a built-in contradiction: when we fixate our gaze on an object of interest, our eyes are never still. Instead we produce, several times each second, small eye movements of which we are unaware, called "microsaccades", "drifts" and "tremor". If we eliminate all these eye movements in the laboratory (using any number of retinal stabilization techniques), our visual perception of stationary objects fades, due to neural adaptation. Since we fixate our gaze about 70%-80% of the time during visual exploration, these fixational eye movements often are responsible for driving most of our visual experience. When our eyes move across the image once again, after having stabilized the retinas, visual perception reappears. Due to their role in counteracting adaptation, fixational eye movements are an important tool to understand how the brain makes our environment visible. Moreover, because we are not aware of these eye movements, they can also help us understand the underpinnings of visual awareness. For the last decade, my laboratory and others have recorded the neural activity generated by microsaccades (and the other fixational eye movements) at different stages of the visual pathway (LGN, area V1, MT). This presentation will review these discoveries and the implications for visual awareness in a variety of tasks. I will also present the results of a recent experiment (Martinez-Conde et al., Neuron 2006), which for the first time demonstrates a direct role of microsaccades in counteracting visual fading. Selected References: Martinez-Conde S, Macknik SL, Troncoso XG, Dyar TA (2006). “Microsaccades counteract visual fading during fixation”. Neuron 49: 297-305. Martinez-Conde S, Macknik SL, Hubel DH (2004). “The role of fixational eye movements in visual perception”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5: 229-240. Supporting by: Barrow Neurological Foundation  PL10

96  Glutamatergic mechanisms at the sensory cortex supporting conscious perception  Alfredo Pereira Jr. <apj@ibb.unesp.br> (State University of São Paulo (UNESP), Botucatu, São Paulo, Brasil)
    Glutamatergic transmission has been mostly related to learning and memory, while its role in conscious perception (including the formation of declarative memory) is not clear. An explanatory model is proposed: information from the external stimulus is carried by spike trains to the sensory cortical synapse, being transduced to glutamate (Glu) release patterns and then transmitted to post-synaptic neurons. Binding of Glu with AMPA receptors generates membrane potentials that trigger Ca++ entry into the post-synaptic neuron through calcium channels (voltage-dependent and NMDA channels). Binding of this transmitter with metabotropic receptors activate intra-neuronal signal-transduction pathways in a time scale that is not appropriate to trigger perceptual processes, but is able to sustain them. Therefore, the relevant signal carrying afferent information for the post-synaptic neuron is likely to be a population of calcium ions. I discuss two possibilities for the sensory message being encoded into Ca++ populations: astroglial cells proteins reading the sensory message from Glu patterns and encoding it in a population of Ca++ that enters the post-synaptic neuron, and/or the calcium channel itself transferring the message to the entering Ca++. In my model, the conscious perceptual process is generated soon after the synchronized Ca++ entry in a neuronal population when the ions are trapped by calmodulin, generating an entangled state in the whole neuronal population (see Rocha et al., 2001; Rocha et al., 2005). The effect of consciousness on behavior and memory formation occurs with the decoherence of the entangled state, by the binding of Ca++/CaM with CaM-dependent protein kinase II, which controls several cellular processes, including feedback on AMPA receptors. References ROCHA, A.F., PEREIRA JR., A. and COUTINHO, F.A.B. (2001) N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Channel and Consciousness: from Signal Coincidence Detection to Quantum Computing. Progress in Neurobiology 64 (6), 555 – 573. ROCHA, A.F., MASSAD, E. and PEREIRA JR, A. (2005) The Brain: from Fuzzy Grammar to Quantum Computing. Berlin: Springer Verlag.  C21

97  Bridging the microscopic and macroscopic levels of consciousness in single-neuron theories of consciousness  Steven Sevush <ssevush@med.miami.edu> (Psychiatry and Neurology, University of Miami, Miami, FL)
    While consciousness is generally believed to be a collective feature of whole brain activity, an alternative possibility has recently received attention: that the physical substrate of consciousness resides not at the whole brain level but at the level of individual neurons (Zeki 1999; Bieberich 2002; Edwards 2005; Sevush 2006). If such were the case, the two views might still be reconcilable if the term “consciousness” assumed two different meanings depending on the spatial scale being considered. At the microscopic level, consciousness could denote a process whose core features, subjective experience and free will, are real phenomena explainable perhaps within a quantum mechanical framework. At the macroscopic level, consciousness would then consist of a process that gives only the appearance of subjective experience and free will. A mechanism by which the microscopic and macroscopic levels of consciousness might be related is considered for the case of the single-neuron theory of consciousness (Sevush: J Theor Biol, 2006). According to the single-neuron theory, a single brain at any moment harbors many separate conscious minds, each associated with a different neuron. For a subpopulation of synchronously firing neurons in the lateral prefrontal cortices, a complex consciousness is posited to be separately and redundantly present in each of the participating neurons, with that consciousness being what in most other models is attributed to the activity of the brain as a whole. The theory incorporates the notion that subjective experience and freedom of choice might be real phenomena at the intraneuronal level, with subjective experience corresponding to the topology of quantum events evoked by dendritic excitation patterns, and freedom of choice corresponding to the influence of these quantum events on the generation of outgoing axonal action potentials. Given this arrangement, the microscopic conscious phenomena present at the neuronal level could be hypothesized to produce the appearance of consciousness at the whole brain level according to the following information preserving sequence: (1) the spatial pattern of electrical excitation induced at a given moment in each neuron of a pool of synchronously firing neurons is re-expressed at the neuronal population level in the spatial arrangement the neuronal pool assumes across the cortical surface; (2) neurons are then added to the pool, thereby amplifying its influence, via recurrent cortico-thalamic-cortical loop activity, presumably associated with gamma frequency electrical oscillations; (3) multiple such pools are assumed to exist, each carrying a different conscious content, and which compete for control of macroscopically observable behavior; (4) the result is an illusion of subjective experience and free will at the macroscopic level that derives from the actual presence of these phenomena at the neuronal level. An attractive possibility is that throughout the sequence, information is preserved through nonlinear dynamic mechanisms related to the self-similar nature of the axonal and dendritic branching patterns that characterize neuronal architecture.   C18

98  An information integration theory of consciousness  Giulio Tononi <gtononi@wisc.edu> (Madison, WI)
    Clinical observations have established that certain parts of the brain are essential for consciousness whereas other parts are not. For example, different areas of the cerebral cortex contribute different modalities and submodalities of consciousness, whereas the cerebellum does not, despite having even more neurons. It is also well established that consciousness depends on the way the brain is functioning. For example, consciousness is much reduced during slow wave sleep and generalized seizures, even though the levels of neural activity are comparable or higher than in wakefulness. To understand why this is so, empirical observations on the neural correlates of consciousness need to be complemented by a principled theoretical approach. Otherwise, it is unlikely that we could ever establish to what extent consciousness is present in neurological conditions such as akinetic mutism, psychomotor seizures, or sleepwalking, and to what extent it is present in newborn babies and animals. A principled approach is provided by the information integration theory of consciousness. The theory claims that consciousness corresponds to a system's capacity to integrate information, and proposes a way to measure such capacity. The information integration theory can account for several neurobiological observations concerning consciousness, including: i) the association of consciousness with certain neural systems rather than with others; ii) the fact that neural processes underlying consciousness can influence or be influenced by neural processes that remain unconscious; iii) the reduction of consciousness during dreamless sleep and generalized seizures; iv) the time requirements on neural interactions that support consciousness.  PL3

99  Late components of ERP correlated with visual awareness of change  Michael Wright, Louise Lakha; Hayley Boulton <michael.wright@brunel.ac.uk;> (Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, United Kingdom)
    Experiment 1 was a 32-channel ERP based “change blindness” study with a design equivalent to the fMRI study of Beck et al. (2001) Nature Neuroscience, 4, 645-650. On successive frames (500ms) with a blank interval (500ms), large, supra-threshold changes occurred in one of a pair of stimuli (faces or buildings). “Change blindness” occurred at elevated rates due to a secondary (letter identification) task. Awareness of changed stimuli was accompanied by increased amplitude of P300 (corresponding to the fMRI activation in frontal and parietal cortex observed by Beck, et al.). Additionally, later components (N400) were enhanced, but it might be argued that these were associated with variations in attention to the secondary task since N400 has been linked with textual stimuli. Experiment 2 dispensed with the secondary task and the “buildings” condition, and maintained equivalent rates of change blindness by increasing set size (4 faces) and reducing exposure time (150 ms.). A small enhancement of early components (N170) was noted on trials in which the change was seen. As in Experiment 1, a large enhancement of P300 was observed on "change aware" trials. Furthermore, later components (N400-N600, LPC) were also strongly enhanced on trials on which the change was detected, relative to those on which it was undetected. Since visual awareness of the stimuli was present on all trials, whether or not a change was detected, we specifically associate the enhancement of late components with conscious awareness of those visual attributes that were relevant to the task.   C3

[02.02]  Vision

100  Visual constancy and the properties of receptive fields  Eduard Alto <eduard.alto@kolumbus.fi> (Vantaa, Finland)
    Three-dimensional Receptive Field and Spatial Constancy. Gaze redirecting is in most cases accompanied by a number of other motions shifting the point of view. The initial and the final pictures resulting from such a shift might be compared to the two components of a stereopair and the same is also true for the numerous intervening phases. That’s why uniformed shifting the stored locations of the objects (Helmholtz) for the reconstruction of constancy is impossible: shift would be equal to the transfer of the left component of the stereopair to the place of the right one. This would result in total (and painful for the perception) visual distortion of all lines and surfaces tilted towards the frontoparallel plane and thus in the distortion of the whole picture. That’s why constancy should be a process of continuous three-dimensional changing of the picture. Monocular vision, as being constant too, has to be three-dimensional, though with certain limitations. Furthermore, a stimulus of any dimension (one-, two-, three or even a dimensionless one) should be processed within the neuron in the three-dimensional representation. We analyzed how this may occur in the visual receptive fields (RF) with their seemingly two-dimensional properties. This notion helps to understand the functional role of the retinal layer inversion. 3-D representation of a stimulus gives an opportunity to suggest the mechanism of spatial constancy. The 3-d lattice within the neuron can be deformed in such a way that its projection would fall on the same point of the outer space, despite the displacement of the image on the retina. The possible mechanism may act through the different latencies of the inputs coming up to the different points of the lattice. It is equal to the distortion of the lattice form.   P2

101  Perceptual filling-in: What the eye cannot see  Peter De Weerd, Bert Jans; Rainer Goebel <p.deweerd@psychology.unimaas.nl> (Psychology, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands)
    What we perceive most often is related to the physical environment, but in some cases conscious perceptions occur for which the physical basis in the environment is lacking. This is exemplified by the visual illusion of perceptual filling-in. That illusion can be induced by steady fixation of a spot away from a gray figure surrounded by a dynamic background texture. After several seconds of fixation, observers report that the gray figure disappears and is replaced (subjectively) by texture. This illusion demonstrates that conscious perception is a product of a reconstructive process that is probably shaped through ontogenetic and individual development to reflect useful aspects of the physical environment, while not guaranteeing veridical perception under all circumstances. Separating consciousness from physical stimulation permits the investigation of the neural processes that normally derive conscious perception from physical stimulation. Psychophysical experiments will be reviewed that demonstrate a role of retinotopically organized visual cortex to perceptual filling-in [1]. In addition, findings from extracellular single-unit recordings in rhesus monkeys will be discussed suggesting that extrastriate visual neurons reflect perception rather than physical reality, while striate neurons do the opposite [2]. However, further psychophysical experiments [3] complicate that conclusion, because the evidence suggests that attention to the locus of perceptual filling-in may be a precondition for the conscious perception of the illusion. In general, the psychophysical and neurophysiological data indicate that the neural network related to conscious perception includes extrastriate visual areas that are retinoptopically organized. An ongoing fMRI study revealed activity in both striate and extrastriate regions that correlated with perceptual filling-in, and the implications of these data will be discussed. [1] De Weerd P., Desimone R. & Ungerleider L.G. (1998). Perceptual filling-in: A parametric study. Vision Research 38, 2721-2734. [2] De Weerd P., Desimone R. & Ungerleider L.G. (1995). Responses of cells in monkey visual cortex during perceptual filling-in of an artificial scotoma. Nature 377, 731-734. [3] De Weerd P., Smith E. & Greenberg P. (2006). Effect of selective attention on perceptual filling-in. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, in press.   PL10

102  Unconscious processing of high and low valence visual stimuli: An fMRI analysis AN fMRI ANALYSIS.  Lynda Shaw, Michael Wright; Justin O'Brien <lyndashaw22@hotmail.com> (Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK)
    Background: Unconscious processing of positive and negative emotional visual stimuli was investigated using a foveal/peripheral paradigm. The visual system has limited processing capacity, and multiple objects in the visual field compete for neural representation. This competition can be biased by selective attention. An exception is the automatic processing of certain emotional stimuli, which by pass this mechanism. The purpose of this experiment was to measure the interaction of foveal (conscious, voluntarily attended) and peripheral (unconscious, not voluntarily attended) stimuli as a function of the emotional valence of the stimuli. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tested the effects of pictures of animals, faces, scenes and inanimate objects calibrated for both high valence (HV) (positive emotion), and low valence (LV) (negative emotion) on activations in the fusiform gyrus, parahippocampus, amygdala, insula and anterior cingulate. Method: Sixteen participants viewed stimuli passively in the fMRI scanner. The stimuli were 24 HV and LV pictures from four categories (animals, faces, scenes and inanimate objects) and 24 neutral pictures (IAPS, Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention 2001). Using a block design, stimuli were presented in three different conditions: (1) “large-field”, whereby single pictures occupy a rectangle 16x10 deg; (2) “small-field” conditions showing single pictures (3.75x2.5 deg); (3) “combined” conditions consisting of small-field pictures superimposed centrally on large-field pictures of opposite valence and equivalent category. Results and Conclusions: The important contrasts for testing the experimental hypotheses are those that show the activation produced by condition (3) versus condition (2) as a control condition. Thus by matching the valence and category of the small-field stimulus in (3) and (2), we show by subtraction the effect of the unattended surround stimulus. The fusiform gyrus, parahippocampus and insula were bilaterally activated by an unattended HV or LV surround, and some of these effects were category-specific. However, the fusiform gyrus was not shown to be a face specific area, nor did the parahippocampus only react to scenes alone, thus supporting the theories that these areas are not category selective regions. The RH was dominant in the insula for both unattended LV and HV stimuli, providing evidence this area is not specific to processing unconscious negative emotions. The left amygdala was activated when viewing unattended LV stimuli across all four categories and the exact opposite occurred when presented with unattended HV stimuli. This is a significant indication that the left and right amygdala subserve different functions in unconscious emotional processing. Bilateral activations in the anterior cingulate were evident for all four categories for unattended HV, but the left anterior cingulate was only activated when processing unattended LV scenes. This is consistent with the reported involvement of anterior cingulate in tasks requiring divided attention or response competition, but suggests that attention is fully captured by the central stimulus in the case where the centre stimulus is HV and the surround is LV. Overall, the right hemisphere (RH) was dominant for unattended LV stimuli, and bilateral activations were found for all four categories for unattended HV stimuli. The results provide evidence that all five target areas can discriminate stimuli based on valence and categories for the unconscious processing of emotional stimuli.   P8

[02.03]  Other sensory modalities

103  Different neurons population distribution correlates with topologic-temporal dynamic acoustic information flow  Walter Riofrio, Aguilar, Luis Angel <Walter.Riofrio@terra.com.pe> (Neuroscience and Behaviour Division, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Lima, Peru)
    It is reported a great variety of functional actions of GABA in auditory system. Although many studies reports the presence and distribution of GABA receptors; nevertheless, the studies about the inhibitory GABA-dependent neurons distribution in the Inferior Culliculus are scarce. We are interested in studies on the role played by GABAergic neurons in the acoustic information transmission in the Central Nucleus of Inferior Culliculus. The existence and distribution of GABAergic neurons in CNIC, could give us understandings on how the inhibitory actions of neurotransmitters are participating in ways which the information flow is spatial-temporal associated with the firing synchrony in each isofrequency region. And with these results, we could achieve some insights over the emergence of certain mind properties from neurons dynamics interactions.   P2

[02.04]  Motor control

[02.05]  Memory and learning

[02.06]  Blindsight

[02.07]  Neuropsychology and neuropathology

104  Transmission electron microscopy of brain biopsies of patients with severe brain trauma  Orlando Castejón, Acurero G, Arismendi Jj and Castellano A. <ocastejo@cantv.net> (Faculty of Medicine. Zulia University, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas, Maracaibo, Zulia, Venezuela)
    We have examined 64 cortical biopsies of frontal, temporal, and parietal cortex of patients with severe traumatic brain injuries, and examined by light and transmission electron microscopy. The biopsies were taken from the traumatized perifocal region during the neurosurgical treatment, and immediately fixed for transmission electron microscopy in the surgical room, in order to avoid delayed fixation and postmortem changes. Previous light microscopy study showed that areas of severe edema alternate with moderate edema, and the presence of perivascular and intraparenchymatous hemorrhages. In severe traumatic brain edema, fragmentation of nerve cell plasma membrane, enlargement and focal necrosis of rough endoplasmic reticulum cisterns,detachment of membrane-bound ribosomes, fragmented microtubules, and actin-like filaments are observed. The damage of rough endoplasmic reticulum suggests a decreased protein synthesis. Notably swollen mitochondria were predominantly found revealing decreased energy metabolism. The severely injured mitochondrial are related with nerve cell death and can be considered as markers of lethal nerve cell injury. The edematous and disorganized Golgi complex induced a decreased protein intracytoplasmatic transport. Most non-pyramidal nerve cells, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes undergo distinct types of nerve cell death, mainly an oncotic-apoptotic-necrotic continuum featured by swollen nucleoplasm, cytoplasm, and cell organelles, chromatin condensation and marginalization, and formation of apoptotic bodies. Other nerve cells showed either apoptosis (program cell death) or oncosis or ischemic cell death. The degenerated myelinated axons exhibited discontinuities of axolemma, disruption of cytoskleletal structures, myelin sheath vacuolization, and formation of inner and outer myelin ovoids. Swollen and beaded dendrites exhibited fragmentation of their limiting plasma membrane and cytoskeletal structures. Dendritic spines displayed atrophic changes of spine apparatus. The hematogenous edema fluid accumulated in the dilated extracellular space of cerebral cortex neuropil induced swelling and shrinkage of pre- and postsynaptic struc¬tures, and clumping, enlarge¬ment and depletion of synaptic vesicles, evincing features of synaptic plasticity and degeneration. Synaptic disassembly was found characterized pre¬synaptic endings separated from the postsyn¬aptic structures, and detached from the perisynaptic glial ensheathment. Phagocytosis of presynaptic endings or of the entire synaptic contacts by astrocytes, microglial cells, and by non-nervous invading cells was found. Clear, dense edematous and hyperthrophic reactive astrocytes, and glycogen-depleted and glycogen-rich astrocytes were distinguished. Four main types of oligodendrocyte subpopulations have been found: resting, reactive, anoxic-ischemic and hyperthrophic phagocytic oligodendrocytes. Traumatic blood brain barrier dysfunction was characterized by increased transendothelial vacuolar and vesicular transport, formation of transendothelial channels, opening of some endothelial junctions, capillary basement membrane thickening and vacuolization, and glio-basal dissociation. Loss of consciousness is apparently mainly related with the disruption of the blood brain barrier, axolemmal and cytoskeletal damage, dendrotoxicity, and synaptic disassembly. The alterations of nerve and glial cells are related with the coexisting vasogenic and citotoxic edema, featured by anoxic-ischemic conditions of brain parenchyma, free radical and lipid peroxidation, disturbed energy mitochondrial metabolism, altered metabolic cascades, glutamate excitotoxicity, hemoglobin toxicity, protein aggregation, and the presence of extracellular edema fluid. Loss of consciousness is in addition related with the above mentioned biochemical and molecular pathology. .   PL9

105  Depression, brain glucose metabolism and consciousness  Maria Alice Ornellas Pereira, Alfredo Pereira Jr.; UNESP (São Paulo State University); Adjunct Professor; Instituto de Biociências; 18618-000; Botucatu – SP – Brasil; apj@ibb.unesp.br <apjmaop@ig.com.br> (Botucatu, Brasil)
    A correlation between depression and resistance to insulin1,2 was recently discovered. How to articulate this finding with the fact that the brain’s glucose metabolism does not depend on insulin3? We present an explanatory hypothesis that describes a dynamical glucose homeostatic mechanism in the brain. This mechanism depends on lactate transport to neuronal mitochondria increasing ATP (and then cAMP) production, being partially influenced by conscious processes that control the ingestion of food. The depressed brain is likely to have a defective cAMP production, leading in several cases to an excessive glucose consumption that increases the level of insulin production in normal subjects. This view can help to explain the surprisingly positive results found in the treatment of depression with citrus fragrances4,5. We suggest that these odors fool the brain’s glucose level sensors. These findings together indicate that conscious processing may play an important role in the unfolding of this mental illness, and therefore psychosocial rehabilitation methods should be included in the therapy of depression. References: 1. Lawlor, D.A., Smith, G.D. and Ebrahim, S. (2003) Association of Insulin Resistance with Depression: cross sectional findings from the British women’s heart and health study. BMJ 327: 1383-1384. 2. Timonen, T., Laakso, M., Jokelainen, J., Rajala, U., Meyer-Rochov, V.B. and Kainänen-Kiukaanniemi, S. (2005) Insulin Resistance and Depression: cross sectional study. BMJ 330: 17-18. 3. Peters, A., Schweiger, U., Pellerin, L., Hubold, C., Oltmanns, K.M., Conrad, M., Schultes, B., Born, J., Fehm, H.L. (2004) The Selfish Brain: competition for energy resources. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 28 (2): 143-80. 4. Komori, T., Fujiwara, R., Tanida, M., Nomura, J., Yokoyama, M.M. (1995) Effects of Citrus Fragrance on Immune Function and Depressive States. Neuroimmunomodulation 2 (3): 174-80. 5. Komori, T., Fujiwara, R., Tanida, M., Nomura, J. (1995) Potential Antidepressant Effects of Lemon Odor in Rats. Eur. Neuropsychopharmacol.5 (4): 477-80.  P8

106  Social mind representation : where does it fail in frontotemporal dementia ?  Perrine Ruby, C. Schmidt; M.Hogge; A.D’Argembeau; F. Collette; E. Salmon <pruby@lyon.inserm.fr> (U280, INSERM, BRON, FRANCE)
    We contrasted early stage frontotemporal dementia patients’ and their relatives’ answers on personality traits judgment and on behaviour prediction in social and emotional situations. Patients gave similar answers when presented with the same questions within a one hour delay. This result ensured that patients had a good understanding of the questions and that they did not answer randomly. Further results revealed that patients were as accurate as controls in describing their relative’s personality, but failed to predict their relative’s behaviour in social and emotional circumstances. Concerning the self, patients were impaired both in current self personality assessment and in self behaviour prediction. However those two measures of self evaluation did not correlate. Only patients’ anosognosia for social behaviour disability was found to be related to decreased metabolic activity in the left temporal pole (measured with resting FDG-PET). Given that this region is known to be involved in memory and emotional processing, our data suggest that anosognosia for social behaviour disability in FTD originates in an impaired processing of emotional autobiographical events. This deficit would lead to a self-representation discrepant from the current behaviour and anosognosia of social disability would persist because FTD patients are blind to other’s reactions to their behavior (i.e. to external feedback on their social behaviour). This blindness is coherent with patient’s third person perspective taking (the ability to read others mind / to predict others behaviour) impairment detected in this study. In a social psychological view, our result suggest an intimate and reciprocal influence between first person and third person perspective representation of the self.  C19

[02.08]  Anesthesia

107  The anesthetized unconscious: A state with conscious but forgotten contents?  Anthony Hudetz <ahudetz@mcw.edu> (Anesthesiology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI)
    Anesthesia has been one of the empirical approaches applied to study the neural correlates of consciousness, or more correctly, the neural correlates of unconsciousness (NCUC). Attempts to uncover the NCUC under anesthesia parallel those conducted in natural sleep and persistent vegetative state or coma and look for commonalities among these unconscious states. An emerging view is that functional connectivity of associational cortical regions is a necessary condition for consciousness and may fail during unconsciousness. The former view of sensory deafferentation, involving the thalamus as a switch that would block information flow to the cortex during anesthesia, is now falling out of favor. Research in human subjects suggests that high level cognitive processes continue in the anesthetized or comatose brain. This is shown by content-specific activation of the cerebral cortex by salient stimuli as demonstrated by both functional brain imaging and event related potential recording techniques. Implicit memories may also be formed during general anesthesia. An unresolved issue is in what sense consciousness is absent in the anesthetized or comatose patient. Is it possible that extremely brief moments of consciousness arise in response to each sensory stimulus but the contents of consciousness are immediately forgotten? Would the person be conscious or unconscious if continually lived in the present with no reference to the past 100 milliseconds and before? Evidence suggests that 200 ms is required for elementary conscious sensory perception while a conscious frame is 100 ms long. With no reference to the past, the meaning of ongoing events would melt into chaotic timelessness. In laboratory studies we find that even in deep anesthesia, when the EEG is fully suppressed by a general anesthetic, sensory stimuli such as a hand clap or light flash will activate the brain. This is shown as a few hundred ms long EEG burst that closely resembles those EEG bursts that are produced spontaneously, in the absence of sensory stimulation. We speculate that these bursts or wave packets represent elementary units of information that the brain processes both when it is conscious and when it is anesthetized. These information units are received but not perceived by the anesthetized brain. If this was true, sensory neuronal processes in the seemingly unconscious but still responsive brain may not necessarily be different whether they code conscious or unconscious neural contents. What would make the conscious state different from the unconscious state is the presence of an iconic memory of the immediate past which would glue the elements of the sensory stream together. The same would apply to internally generated information, such as dreams. A corollary is that the neural correlates of consciousness should be searched for in the temporal contextual embedding of neural events. The ceaseless enfolding of the immediate past into the present is the critical ingredient to be found.   P2

[02.09]  Cellular and sub-neural processes

[02.10]  Quantum neurodynamics

[02.11]  Pharmacology

108  Effects of S-ketamine on cognition and their alterations by pretreatment with clozapine, ketanserin, and haloperidol. A PET study.  David Andel, Vollenweider FX <andel@bli.unizh.ch> (Psychiatric University Hospital, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland)
    The dissociative anaesthetic Ketamine - a selective NMDA receptor blocker - impairs attention in subanaesthetic doses. In addition, it changes perception and cognition in healthy volunteers in a similar way as are observed in schizophrenic patients. The antipsychotics Haloperidol (antagonist at D2 receptors), Clozapine (antagonist at D2 and 5-HT2 receptors), and Ketanserin (selective antagonist at 5-HT2A receptors) are all used in the treatment of schizophrenia. The distinct influences Haloperidol, Clozapine, and Ketanserin, respectively, have on the functional changes elicited by subanaesthetic doses of S-Ketamine will be compared to each other and discussed in relationship to the neuropharmacology of the compounds, neurophysiology and schizophrenia. Behavioral, psychometric, and physiological data (PET) will be presented for all cases and discussed.  C7

109  Signal theory: Towards a unified theory of psychedelicaction  James Kent <jamesk@tripzine.com> (Trip Magazine, Seattle, WA)
    Signal Theory presents a new model for objectively measuring psychedelic action and predicting subjective experiential results based on the intensity of feedback excitation ocurring within recurrent cortical circuitry. Signal Theory also proposes methodologies for mathematically modeling the action of psychedelic 5-HT2A receptor agonists in the production of diminished, amplified, and standing sensory feedback loops in simple neural structures. Signal Theory seeks to define consciousness in terms of the flow of signal through neural processing circuits; flow that can be measured via neural firing rate, feedback parity, and overall synchrony of firing between the neurons within any given circuit. Using Signal Theory, it can be logically demonstrated how the normal functioning of the human mind can be turned up or down; filtered; distorted; gated; delayed; and looped to create an infinite array of psychedelic perceptual effects, simply by introducing the proper chemical catalyst -- such as a psychedelic 5-HT2A agonist -- into the neural network. The primary presumption of Signal Theory is that all psychedelic action in the brain can be measured in terms of the intensity and synchrony of feedback excitation occurring within the recurrent circuits of the sensory processing cortices. A secondary presumption of Signal Theory is that psychedelic 5-HT2A receptor agonists will cause neural firing patterns to re-modulate to an optimal state where neural feedback circuits have a greater tendency to achieve standing waves of amplified signal recursion. The third presumption of Signal Theory is that when feedback circuits within task-specific areas of the brain reach sufficient levels of recursion intensity, one would expect to see a small -- if not exponential -- increase in the capacity and output of these sensory processing circuits. Following these three basic presumptions, a unified model for defining the entire range of expanded psychedelic states of consciousness can be rationally approached in a way that is empirically demonstrable.   P3

[02.12]  Neural synchrony and binding

110  Gamma oscillations, which are generated during higher level processing in the nervous system, are synchronized by electrical synapses between neurons   Michael V L Bennett <mbennett@aecom.yu.edu> (Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY)
    Neural processing depends on communication between neurons. This communication occurs primarily at synapses, sites morphologically specialized for intercellular transmission. This statement avoids defining “specialized”, and the use of “primarily” allows for transmitter leakage and electric field effects without clear anatomical specializations. Moreover, glia may have time-varying influences on at least the slower neuronal oscillations. Most if not all neurons express machinery for chemical transmission by secretion of a neurotransmitter from the presynaptic element that acts on a receptor in the postsynaptic element. Neurons also have genes to permit electrical transmission, i.e., where an electrical potential generated in one cell affects a neighboring cell. Early in development most neurons form gap junctions, which constitute the common kind of electrical synapse, but only a minority do in the adult. Gap junctions are formed by connexins, a gene family of ~20 members in mammals. Cloning of Cx36, a (nearly) neuron-specific connexin allowed demonstration of the wide distribution of electrical synapses, particularly in sites where oscillations are prominent. Generally, electrical synapses mediate synchronization, but lateral spread and forward transmission of excitation also occur. Although electrical transmission can be more rapid than chemical transmission, its speed of action is not necessary in generating gamma and related rhythms. (Electrical transmission may be required for the speed of high frequency “ripples”, but the cellular basis of these externally recorded responses is as yet unclear.) Synchronization at low frequencies could be driven by chemical synapses, mutually excitatory or, less obviously, inhibitory. In the latter case, computer simulations show that reciprocal inhibition superimposed on tonic excitation can result in synchronous oscillation. Oscillation is driven by the tonic excitation (or can be an intrinsic membrane property). If one cell doesn’t reach threshold when the others do, it is inhibited and then is ready to fire with the other cells in the next cycle. Most cortical neurons must “choose” to release either the excitatory transmitter, glutamate, or the inhibitory transmitter, GABA. Gap junctions permit GABAergic cells also to be excitatory and to synchronize with other GABAergic cells more precisely than with inhibition alone. Inhibitory interneurons provide the pacemaker of the oscillations; principle cells and other downstream elements are synchronized, not by excitation but by inhibition. In the Cx36 knockout mouse, inhibitory interneurons are not coupled and oscillations in the external field are smaller but not absent. The continued oscillations depend in part on intrinsic membrane properties or tonic excitation, and reciprocal inhibition mediates some synchronization. The phenotype is benign, although results of cognitive testing have not been reported. New methods of imaging and recording in vitro and in vivo make feasible characterization of microcircuitry of modules observed with earlier less inclusive methods. Neurons can express gap junction forming proteins, and electrical transmission is likely to be found wherever it is “useful.” The relatively benign behavioral phenotype of the Cx36 knockout mouse indicates that synchronization of neurons by gap junctions confers a modest survival advantage in the laboratory, but quite likely a highly significant one in the real world.   PL4

111  EEG coherence and experiential correlates during ayahuasca experiences  Frank Echenhofer <fechenhofer@ciis.edu> (Clinical Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies, Richmond, CA)
    This presentation reports EEG and experiential correlates of ayahuasca experiences. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic brew used by Amazonian shaman to facilitate visionary experiences for healing and knowledge acquisition (Luna, 1984). Method In Brazil in January, 2005 twelve participants experienced in ayahuasca ingested the ayahuasca brew and took part in a seven hour individual ayahuasca session with EEG monitoring. Nineteen EEG and two eye movement electrodes were attached using standard procedures. Results This study extended pilot EEG research conducted by Frank Echenhofer and David Stuckey in Brazil in July, 2000. In that study the EEG of two experienced individuals was recorded during ayahuasca experiences (Stuckey, 2004). Enhanced EEG coherence from 36 to 64 Hz was observed among the majority of 19 standard EEG recording locations during eyes-closed ayahuasca compared to the eyes-closed baseline condition. In this current study preliminary EEG coherence analysis for 3 of the 12 participants has been completed and what will be reported below are the moderate to large coherence changes observed from 1-48.5 HZ in .5HZ intervals from the baseline to ayahuasca conditions. Of these three cases, one participant (#2) had mild ayahuasca experiences and moderately enhanced coherence only at 10.5 and 21 HZ with moderately decreased coherence from 23-34 HZ. One participant (#3) with moderate to strong ayahuasca experiences had moderately enhanced coherence from 7-12 HZ and from 34-48.5 HZ. The participant (#1) with very intense ayahuasca experiences had very enhanced coherence from 19-48.5 HZ with maximal coherence increases at 22 HZ and marked decreases in coherence from 3-13 HZ. Conclusion EEG coherence and experiential results in these 3 cases suggest that the magnitude of coherence changes, the frequencies showing coherence changes, and the topographic patterning of coherence changes may all be related to ayahuasca experiences. EEG coherence analysis for all 12 participants will be available in the final conference presentation along with data showing the topographic patterning of these coherence findings and a report of the associated subjective experiences. Enhanced EEG coherence changes occurring during ayahuasca may be one of the neural correlates of the exceptional states of consciousness that arise during this hallucinogenic experience. Some of the EEG coherence changes observed at particular frequencies and showing specific topographic patterning may be correlates for the intensity of the exceptional visionary states of consciousness experienced. The next steps in this research program will be to replicate and extend these EEG coherence and experiential findings, develop biofeedback protocols based upon the EEG coherence patterns observed during visionary ayahuasca experiences, and then to use multi-channel EEG coherence biofeedback methods to attempt to facilitate voluntarily access to visionary experiences without the need for ayahuasca. References Luna, L. E. (1984). The healing practices of a Peruvian shaman. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 11(2), 123-33. Stuckey, D. (2004). EEG gamma coherence and other correlates of subjective reports during ayahuasca experiences. (Doctoral dissertation, California Institute of Integral Studies, 2004). University Microfilms International.  C7

112  A field-theoretic approach to understanding consciousness  Walter J Freeman <dfreeman@berkeley.edu> (Molecular & Cell Biology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA)
    Brains create neural activity in sequential chemical and electric states that support consciousness. We measure the states and describe them in numbers as information. We relate each successive state to a preceding state by a transformation that we call information processing. Differential equations are the language of choice to describe the rates of change in the numeric quantities during the transformations. By solving the equations we construct models that we use to simulate and predict brain activity. We have three levels of observation and analysis of brain states. At the microscopic level electrophysiologists record trains of action potentials (units) in relation to perceptions of objects and people and explain the states in terms of networks of feature detectors and cardinal cells. At the macroscopic level psychologists and engineers correlate behaviors with noninvasive brain images of regional variations in blood flow, oxygen depletion, magnetic fields (MEGs) and electric fields (EEGs) in order to localize cortical and nuclear modules whose states are coactive with intentional behaviors. I choose to study the states of ensembles of neurons at the mesoscopic level as revealed by local field potentials (LFPs) and electrocorticcograms (ECoGs) manifesting flows of excitatory and inhibitory dendritic currents. Using advanced techniques for spatial and temporal resolution with multi-electrode arrays, I find synchronized oscillations in neocortex that form spatial patterns of amplitude modulation (AM) of the shared wave form in patches that range in diameter from 1 to 4 cm in rabbit brains, that last 50 to 120 ms, and that recur at intervals of 100 to 250 ms in the theta and alpha ranges. I call these spatial patterns “wave packets”; they resemble cinematographic frames but often overlap while retaining their carrier frequencies in the beta or gamma ranges. The AM patterns have patches of high and low activity that serve for classification with respect to conditioned stimuli. I believe that the regions of high dendritic activity correspond to sites of active cardinal cells revealed by microelectrode recording and to red spots shown by macroscopic brain imaging. I conclude that the results from the three methods for observing brain function reveal three facets of fields of brain activity, and that field theory gives the optimal framework in which to simulate, predict and explain brain activity relating to consciousness. ......Website: http://sulcus.berkeley.edu ......Freeman W.J. [1975] Mass Action in the Nervous System. New York: Academic Press. In electronic form: http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/MANSWWW/MANSWWW.html ......Freeman W.J. [2001] How Brains Make Up Their Minds. New York; Columbia UP. ......Freeman W.J. [2003] A neurobiological theory of meaning in perception. Part 1. Information and meaning in nonconvergent and nonlocal brain dynamics. Int. J. Bifurc. Chaos 13: 2493-2511. Et seq. ......Freeman W.J. [2004] Origin, structure, and role of background EEG activity. Part 1. Analytic amplitude. Clin. Neurophysiol. 115: 2077-2088. Et seq. ......Freeman W.J., Vitiello G. [2006] Nonlinear brain dynamics as macroscopic manifestation of underlying many-body field dynamics. Physics of Life Reviews: in press. http://www.arxiv.org/find [Freeman] q-bio.OT/0511037   PL1

113  Neural synchrony, attention, and the unity of visual consciousness  Eric LaRock <larock@oakland.edu> (Philosophy Department, Oakland University, Rochester, MI)
    A central issue in philosophy and related neurosciences concerns how an object’s features are bound together as a unity in visual consciousness. This problem has arisen because we now know that an object’s features (e.g., its color, texture, shape, etc.) are represented in different areas of the visual cortex (Felleman & Van Essen, 1991). At the same time, there are very few, if any, direct neural connections between certain areas of the visual cortex, such as those that represent color and motion (Zeki, 2003). It also is unlikely that there could be a convergence zone that underlies what we visually experience because of the combinatorial capacity problem: the possible combinations of features that are represented throughout our lives would seem to far exceed the neural machinery with which we are equipped (e.g., see Crick & Koch, 1990, 1994; Singer, 1996; von der Malsburg, 1996, 1999). So how do unified objects arise in visual consciousness? Some neuroscientists propose that neural synchrony is the mechanism that binds an object’s features into a unity (e.g., see Crick and Koch, 1990, 1994; Singer, 1996; von der Malsburg, 1996, 1999; Roelfsema, 1998; Engel, 2003). As von der Malsburg observes, ‘If, during a time interval, the signals on a set of neurons are found to be significantly correlated, the set is interpreted as being bound during that interval’ (von der Malsburg, 1996, p. 137). The neural synchrony approach, however, has a difficulty that it must overcome if it is to successfully account for the unity of an object’s features in visual consciousness. This difficulty is the feature ambiguity problem: if separate neural assemblies were to respond to the features of two or more objects simultaneously, the brain could easily assign features to the wrong object. One proposal is that attention plays a critical role in selectively activating distinct neural assemblies at separate times (see Crick & Koch, 1990, 1994; von der Malsburg, 1996; Engel, 2003). This would presumably explain how the brain is able to demarcate an object’s features and thus somehow select (or ‘mark’) specific features as members that belong to their respective objects when two or more objects are part of one’s current visual interest. I argue that although neural synchrony and attentional mechanisms might help to explain feature disambiguation, it is difficult to see how these mechanisms could explain the unity of an object’s features in visual consciousness. I then suggest, on the basis of neuropsychological evidence, that a spatial structuring capacity could be what individuates the areas within which features like color and texture are bound to form unified objects. Even though this proposal does not entail a solution to the hard problem of consciousness (see Chalmers, 1995), it nevertheless implies a strategy that could help to explain how the spatial structure of visual consciousness is established.   C10

113a A phase synchrony model of consciousness  Russell Hebert  <tmeeg@aol.com>   Maharishi University of Management

  Network dynamics must explain integration of neural information into a cognitive whole. The most widely accepted theory of binding of sensory information into a cognitive moment has arisen from the discovery of zero-lag gamma EEG activity (around 40 Hz) across large distances in the human and animal cortex. There is no widely accepted mechanism of binding of gamma across distances. Several recent findings reviewed in the present paper in combination with EEG data published recently suggest a plausible new phase synchrony model of cortical integration. The word “binding” implies that EEG signals are “in phase”. Ordinarily EEG signals are not “in phase” due to the fact that signals travel across the cortex at neural propagation speeds. If a stationary EEG wave environment existed (such as in a stationary camera with a fast shutter speed) it would provide a medium for long-range zero-lag phase synchrony, and thus the acquisition of a clear wide-angle “snapshot” of ongoing sensory processing. Though stationary EEG waves have been proposed, only recently have they been documented in the spontaneous EEG. Alpha standing waves have been recently described and further documented in the present study. P8

[02.13]  Emotion

114  Affect, arousal and reward in limbic-striatal circuits  Bernard Balleine <balleine@psych.ucla.edu> (Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA)
    From a functional perspective, the ‘biological significance’ of an event for any organism can be defined in homeostatic terms; i.e. in terms of the ability of that event to minimize deviations from a physiological set point. In fact, although there are, undoubtedly, systems that function in this way, the behavior of many animals is not controlled directly by regulatory feedback of this kind. Rather, evidence suggests that feedback is provided by incentive stimuli derived from the association of sensory-perceptual events with the motivational and emotional processes that control feeding, drinking, sexual behavior, pain avoidance and so on. In this way, sensory events acquire biological significance through a process referred to as incentive learning. The operation of incentive learning is perhaps most obvious in the case of deliberated, goal-directed actions. Although shifts in primary motivation (e.g. from hunger to thirst or to satiety) have powerful and enduring effects on the biological significance of rewarding events (like foods and fluids), actions instrumental to gaining access to these events are not always immediately sensitive to these shifts in state. Rather, it appears that animals have to learn about changes in the effectiveness of primary rewards produced by the shift. This learning process, referred to as instrumental incentive learning, is engaged by consummatory contact with the goal and, contrary to the somatic marker hypothesis, encoding and retrieving the incentive value of a goal appear to be mediated by distinct processes. The encoding of incentive value is known to involve the basal lateral (but not the central) amygdala along with its visceral and sensory afferents whereas the influence of incentive learning on goal-directed action appears to be mediated by amygdala efferents on cortical and subcortical areas involved in encoding the instrumental action-goal contingency, notably the prelimbic cortex and its connections with basal ganglia via the ventral and dorsal striatum. The anticipation of reward on the basis of environmental events exerts a further modulatory influence on goal-directed action that can be dissociated from that of reward itself; earning a reward and anticipating a reward appear to be distinct processes and have been doubly dissociated at the level of the nucleus accumbens. Furthermore, the excitatory influence of reward-related cues can be both quite specific, based on the specific affective response elicited by the anticipated reward, or more diffuse based on general activation or arousal and these two influences have also been doubly dissociated within extended amygdala-ventral striatal circuits.   C11

[02.14]  Sleep and waking

[02.15]  Specific brain areas

[02.16]  Miscellaneous

115  Neural-metabolic coupling in the central visual pathway  Ralph Freeman <freeman@neurovision.berkeley.edu> (Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA)
    In fMRI, the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal is used to infer neural activity. However, there is a lack of direct evidence concerning the inferences. In addition, spatial resolution in fMRI is limited which makes it difficult to resolve columnar structure, for example. We have conducted experiments aimed at both these issues. We use a double barrel micropipette which incorporates electrodes to measure single cell neural activity and tissue oxygen concentration within LGN and visual cortex. This enables simultaneous co-localized measurements of neural and metabolic activity in a small volume of cortical tissue. In visual cortex, we find that as neural activity is raised by visual stimulation, there is an immediate proportional decrease in tissue oxygenation. This decrease corresponds to predicted neural changes in the cortical functions of orientation selectivity and ocular dominance. In LGN, we use the precise retinotopic organization to control neural activity so that it can be compared to tissue oxygen changes. Our findings suggest that activity-dependent increases in cerebral blood flow and oxidative metabolism occur on different spatial scales. Our results also indicate that the initial negative component of the change in tissue oxygen response is generated by a relatively small volume of cortical tissue.

  PL1

116  Mechanics of conciousness  Paul Jablonka <pauljablonka@hotmail.com> (Tucson, Arizona, Pima)
    Consciousness as a mechanical process involves mixing current input and context with the output of the last accessed file to obtain an address for the next file to be accessed. It is easily made cyclic, running at about 10 HZ and expansion from a small number of files to a large number, say a billion, is simple enough. The brain has a straightforward interpretation in support of this consciousness. For example, the thalamus involves the repression of most input to this mixing process. The thalamus can be addressed in minute detail to open just in time to receive anticipated information. A randomization process before birth leads to all files having unique addresses. These addresses are sensed by the apical dendrites of pyramid cells and the file contents are stored in the basal dendrites of these same cells. The indication to output a file is carried on the sarcoplasmic reticulum from the striatum to the cerebral cortex. The basal ganglia are involved in running a contest to determine which file is currently best addressed with the winner obtaining an indication that it should output its file content in parallel. In humans, only about one tenth of the pyramid cells participate in the contest, the remainder being available for temporal entailment (serial aspect of file content mediated by basket cells). Contests do not scale up well so mechanisms exist to limit participation: The striatal cells surrounded with very low free dopamine participate while those immersed in normally concentrated dopamine are repressed. Imagine that one part in 1000 is not repressed at any one time. The cerebellar cortex is a 12 terabit programmable, read-only memory (PROM) for learned coordination with the pontine nuclei, inferior olive, locus ceruleus, red nucleus, deep cerebellar nuclei, prepositus hypoglossi, and motor nuclei having obvious supporting roles. The hippocampus forms a memory for context. The raphe nuclei detect stress and output instructions (mainly via serotonin) for stress responses. The acetylcholine nuclei regulate overwriting old file content with new as well as connecting additional features to indicated file content. The locus coeruleus nuclei (via norepinephrine) regulate the addition of features to indicated file addresses. Overall, this scheme satisfies the constraint that the brain be constructed from no more than 300 cell types where cell type is a pattern of gene repression existing directly on the DNA/chromatin structure. This leads to remarkably coordinated explanations of the action of ergot toxin, LSD, and opiates, as well insights into cognition, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, depression, and ADHD. In the above cases and many others, the output of one nuclei is the input to another. The independent derivation of the mechanics of each nuclei leads (in all cases worked out so far) to mutually compatible IO codes, impedances, statistics and connectivity. The limit of about 300 cell types constrains all theories of brain function. Theories referring to electronic circuits, complex codes and computers detail into thousands of cell types and are thus all false. Careful study of the cell differentiation process has led to the discovery that retina cells are not formed by mitosis or meiosis at all but, rather, by an unexpected alternative cell division (called teliosis) that leads to cells that are all homozygous diploid.   P3

117  Consciousness in transition  Francisco Lopez III <flopeziii@hotmail.com> (Athens, OH)
    At the experiential level consciousness provides constraints that conceal the unconscious processing of a cloud of sensory data to bring about a sense of a coherent external world. I propose that conscious experience is a result of experiential constraints functioning as adaptive filters producing coherence across fuzzy engrams that encode perceptual representations. In this conceptual model cortical computation is hypothesized to be a form of cluster analysis that can be represented by a fuzzy hypercube in which each dimension of the unit hypercube represents an apical dendrite of a layer 5 pyramidal cell in a cortical fascicle. The fuzzy cube model is used to represent the multidimensional complexity of cortical microanatomy as well as elucidate what may be the fundamental principles of cortical computation – metasynaptic signal processing and cluster analysis. The intermingling of bottom-up frequency driven thalamic information with cortico-cortical top-down multiplex signals forms clusters in the respective cortical fascicles and fuzzifies the sensory signal providing the neural basis of consciousness. That is, this function takes place in the transition between multiplex and frequency modulated signals.  P4

118  The use of virtual reality in the study of consciousness  Maria V. Sanchez-Vives, Mel Slater, ICREA-Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya <mavi.sanchez@umh.es> (Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante, Universidad Miguel Hernandez-CSIC, San Juan de Alicante, Spain)
    A Virtual Reality (VR) system generates a surrounding 3D stereoscopic virtual environment (VE) into which people can enter and act. The displays are based on headtracking thus supporting head-movement parallax, and ideally support all sensory modalities. There have been numerous applications including entertainment, cultural heritage, training systems, rehabilitation and psychotherapy. One may wonder how such VEs that are neither highly detailed nor realistic in comparison to the sensory richness of physical reality often “work” for their participants,and are able to generate responses that are very similar to the ones they have in the real world. Here we introduce the concept of “presence” in VEs, which refers to participants acting and responding to virtual sensory data in a VE as if it were real, where the response is multi-level —from unconscious physiological responses, through to behavioral and cognitive— (Sanchez-Vives and Slater, Nat Neurosci 6: 332, 2005). When a person becomes present in a VE there is typically a conflict between involuntary behaviours and conscious awareness of their true situation. For example, in a number of recent studies we have explored what happens when people confront life-sized virtual humans within a virtual social context. In such experiments the subject is approached by virtual characters who speak, nod, smile, carry out body movements and gestures, and appear to respond to their behaviour. As a result subjects typically exhibit similar physiological and behavioural responses as would be expected if the situation were real – in spite of every subject knowing that the situation is not real, and in spite of the obvious lack of realism of the virtual characters. Thus subjects respond at one level automatically to the virtual events (interaction with a social entity) while simultaneously thinking ‘I know this isn’t real but … - e.g. … I can’t avoid smiling when she [the virtual character] smiles at me’. Hence the subject is self-conscious both in the situation portrayed in the virtual reality and simultaneously conscious of being in the wider context in which the VR experience is occurring. Since a VR is limited only by programming and hardware capabilities it provides an ideal laboratory for studying the critical elements that may induce presence in a VE. Findings suggest e.g. that visual frame rate >15 Hz, low latency head tracking, and wide field of view are important factors, while – surprisingly - visual realism may not be. There has been an overly great concentration on the impact of these technical factors to the detriment of studying perceptual and motor parameters. It is clear, however, that e.g., study of the impact of dissociation of sensory stimuli is possible in a VE and that in general it opens the door to numerous studies on perception. Particularly interesting is the study of self-perception or the elements that configure our body image, an important element for self-consciousness. Generally, if we restrict our focus to those behaviours and thoughts that are bound to the situation portrayed in the virtual reality, we can think of presence as consciousness within this domain.   PL12

119  Why is it so difficult to find neural correlates of consciousness?   Vadim Vasilyev <edm@rol.ru> (Philosophy, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia)
    Many people these days follow Francis Crick and Christof Koch in their quest for neural correlates of consciousness. Still the results are far from great success. Why is it so? To answer this question we should find out whence we could know that such correlates exist, to begin with. Speaking in terms of logical possibilities, it is evident that there is no necessity of such correlates. But perhaps we can be sure of their natural necessity? Most scientists, it seems, would agree with this statement. I think, however, that we have no serious reasons to believe it is true. Moreover, it is possible to refute it by direct demonstration. Indeed, let us consider a simple argument which goes as follows. (1) Everyone agrees that an event can have different causes (for example, a billiard-ball can fall in a pocket due to different previous movements). As we have no reasons to deny universality of that statement, we can conclude there is a natural possibility of brain twins (that is, people with identical brains interpreted as combinations of physical events at time t) with different causal histories, or, say, of myself as physical being with different history. (2) But individual histories of people are naturally registered in their memories, which are a source of their beliefs and desires. (3) It follows from (1) and (2) that physically identical people could in reality have different beliefs, desires, and other mental states. Indeed, any conjunction of true statements on natural possibilities concerning what happens at definite place and time provides a true statement on natural possibility, except in the cases where such conjunction results in logical contradiction, but evidently this is not our case. If that argument is correct, it means that in my brain, for example, there are no necessary correlates of my mental states, at least as regards their inner contents. The situation is analogous to that of the relation of tactual and visual data. There is something like a strong correlation between tactual and visual shapes, but not between tactual data and colors. Colors in this sense resemble such mental contents as e. g. phenomenal representations of objects of our desires. But the very mental contents matter in determination of our behavior. Because of their correlation with our actions (accepted even by epiphenomenalists), and because of their lack of neural correlates, we are to conclude that physiological states of our brains don't constitute the sufficient causes of our behavior. If so, this leads to the refutation of epiphenomenalism and restoration of the idea of nonreductive mental causation. In other words, desires, for instance, as qualitative states (I agree with David Chalmers in that desires are not just behavioral dispositions, but qualia as well), should play real causal role, and any knowledge of neural structures is insufficient for predicting of resulting behavior. This is possible only if such structures have some macro-indeterminacy at physical level - eliminated by private mental states, which can be considered as emergent companions of similar macro-systems.   P7

3. Cognitive Sciences and Psychology

@H2 = [03.01]  Attention

120  Attention and the new skeptics  Jason Ford <jford@d.umn.edu> (Philosophy, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Duluth, MN)
    In response to new research into the phenomena of inattentional blindness and change-blindness, several philosophers, psychologists and vision researchers have proposed a novel form of skepticism: they contend that we do not have the conscious experience that we think we have (the Grand Illusion Hypothesis, in other words, is that things do not actually appear to us the way that we think they appear to us). Several arguments of this sort are collected in Alva Noë’s 2002 anthology, Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion? The strong form of the New Skeptical argument goes like this: 1. We all think we have conscious experience of things that are outside of our focus of attention. 2. If something appears in consciousness, then we must have a determinate internal representation of that thing in our brains. 3. Recent experiments (exploring inattentional blindness and change-blindness) show that we do not have internal representations of all that we take ourselves to be conscious of. 4. Therefore, we all are mistaken about our own normal everyday conscious experience. The real question is not, “How does the brain produce a representation with all this detail?” but rather, “Why do we think we experience a rich representation with all this detail when, in fact, the only things that we ever seem to see are the things in the focus of attention?” I will show that the experimental evidence that is usually cited in support of the skeptical conclusion does not actually support it. The results of the inattentional blindness and change-blindness experiments can also (and more naturally) be explained in terms of peripheral conscious experience. Further, I expose what I believe to be the underlying error motivating this position: the belief that consciousness is either focal (what occupies the focus of attention) or non-existent. Once we appreciate the conscious phenomenology of the periphery of attention, we see that it is a mistake to assert that all consciousness must be focal, and a related mistake to hold peripheral experience to the standards of accuracy and detail that are appropriate for the focus of attention.   C3

121  The restless mind: Mind wandering as the privatisation of executive processes  Jonny Smallwood, Schooler JW <jsmallwood@psych.ubc.ca> (Psychology, UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada)
    This poster reviews the hypothesis that mind-wandering can be integrated into executive models of attention. Evidence suggests that mind-wandering shares many similarities with traditional notions of executive control. When mind-wandering occurs, the executive components of attention appear to shift away from the primary task, leading to failures in task performance and superficial representations of the external environment. One challenge for incorporating mind-wandering into standard executive models is that it often occurs in the absence of explicit intention - a hallmark of controlled processing. However, mind-wandering, like other goal-related processes, can be engaged without explicit awareness; thus, mind-wandering can be seen as a goal driven process, albeit one that is not directed towards the primary task.   P3

@H2 = [03.02]  Vision

122  The case against Alva Noë’s sensorimotor approach --- Our visual world is truly a grand illusion  Peng Chien <s19109047@ym.edu.tw> (Faculty of Life Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan)
    Alva Noë (2002) proposed that the worldly detail of our experience is not represented in our brains. Instead, the detail is present in the perceptual world and we access to the detail according to sensorimotor knowledge. Therefore, the visual world is not a grand illusion. According Noë’s proposal, there is no binding problem in our visual processing since the detail we experience is present in the perceptual world but not represented in our brain. In this paper, I will argue that we do have representation in our brain, and the representation is sparse and discontinuous. That is to say, our visual world is a grand illusion. First, in Treisman(2003), they showed that the percepts is a mess unless binding of features happens. Also, in Wu, Kanai, and Shimojo (2004), they showed that misbinding can be a “steady-state” and the binding problem really exists. Therefore, we may have representation of what we experience in our brain. Besides, in Chong and Treisman (2003, 2005), they showed that we do not have all detail of all objects in our visual fields, instead, our visual system abstracts the statistical properties, such as mean size, of objects preattentively. This process is called perceptual grouping. After perceptual grouping, our visual system attends to one object and binds right features to that object. This bound object and the statistical properties of all other objects then serve as substrates of our visual experience. Thus, it is true that our vivid, detailed visual experience is a grand illusion and Noë’s proposal does not accurately describe our visual experience.  P1

123  Choice blindness and introspective report: how something can be said about telling more than we can know  Lars Hall, Petter Johansson; Sverker Sikström; Betty Tärning; & Andreas Olsson <lars.hall@lucs.lu.se> (Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden)
    We have created a novel choice paradigm inspired by techniques from the domain of close-up card-magic, which permits us to surreptitiously manipulate the relationship between choice and outcome that our participants experience. In a recent experiment, participants were shown pairs of pictures of female faces, and were given the task of choosing which face in each pair they found most attractive. In addition, on some trials, immediately after their choice, they were asked to verbally describe the reasons for choosing the way they did. Unknown to the participants, on certain trials, a double-card ploy was used to covertly exchange one face for the other. Thus, on these trials, the outcome of the choice became the opposite of what they intended. Surprisingly, very few of the manipulated trials were detected by the participants. Even when they were given unlimited time to deliberate upon their choice, no more than 30% of all manipulations were detected. Thus, in the great majority of trials our participants were blind to the mismatch between choice and outcome, while nevertheless being prepared to offer introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. We call this effect choice blindness (Johansson, Hall, Sikström & Olsson 2005). At the conference we are concerned to further delineate and explicate the phenomenon of choice blindness, both with respect to the basic phenomenon, and the relation to verbal report and introspective consciousness. We will present new studies that investigate: (i) The relation between detection rate and the properties of the stimulus. Do we lack introspective access to the reasons behind our decisions particularly for stimuli with vague semantic properties, like faces, or does choice blindness also hold for objects easily labeled and categorized? (ii) The interplay between attentional processes, strength of preference, and memory formation in determining detection rate. (iii) The role of modality in choice blindness. To what extent is the phenomenon dependent on a rich and detailed visual scene, as compared to smells or flavors or sounds? (iv) Implicit measures of detection rate, such as GSR, eye-tracking, and fMRI, to investigate the relation between explicit and implicit processes in choice blindness. (v) A time-course analysis of the influence of manipulated trials on further choices, to see to what extent the feedback from manipulated trials shapes future decisions and preferences. Johansson, P., Hall, L., Sikström, S., & Olsson, A (2005). Failure to Detect Mismatches Between Intention and Outcome in a Simple Decision Task. Science. 310: 5745. 116-9.   C3

124  How the two visual systems hypothesis “neglects” the sensorimotor approach  Shun-Pin Hsu, Allen Y. Houng <g39303016@ym.edu.tw> (Institute of Neuroscience, Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC)
    Neural evidences for the two visual systems hypothesis challenge the sensorimotor approach. In this paper, I argue that the research of neglect syndromes gives a solution to the challenge and supports the sensorimotor approach. The sensorimotor approach of perception, proposed by Alva Noë, claims that action is an important component to perception. Without bodily skill we can’t have perception, because “to be a perceiver is to understand, implicitly, the effect of movement on sensory stimulation”. Objects loom or shrink as we move around them, our mastery of this sensorimotor dependency, which is a relation between the environment and the perceiver, depends on the possession of sensorimotor knowledge, which allows us to perceive. The sensorimotor knowledge plays a constitutive role in perception. The two visual systems hypothesis, proposed by Melvyn Goodale and David Milner, claims that there are two autonomous visual pathways in the primate brain, the ventral pathway for perception and dorsal pathway for action, respectively, that could exist independently. If the two visual systems hypothesis is correct, then it is possible that without dorsal pathway, we could still have the ability to perceive via ventral pathway. However, the dorsal pathway is important for sensorimotor contingency (or sensorimotor dependency), so the two visual systems hypothesis seems to threaten the sensorimotor approach. Based on the research of neglect syndromes, I argue that it is not possible for us to perceive without the dorsal pathway, and that the interaction between the dorsal and ventral pathways support the sensorimotor approach. First, the interaction between the dorsal and ventral pathway is important to perception. Neural evidences show that the inferior parietal cortex is a linkage between the dorsal pathway and the ventral pathways, which is important to visual awareness. Second, the dorsal pathway plays a role in perception in a sensorimotor approach’s way. In clinical studies, a neglect patient can see his “neglected” field just by turning his trunk while maintaining the same retinal input, visual awareness changes with only change in the relation between the perceiver and the environment. From previous single neuron experiments we can find similar neurons in monkey posterior parietal cortex that integrate retinal information with information of the relation between the perceiver and the environment as the eyes move. In conclusion, although there are two vision pathways for action and for perception, the interaction between dorsal pathway and ventral pathway play a role in perception in a sensorimotor approach’s way.   P3

125  A virtual labeling account of amodal perception  Jeff Ruan <single526@hotmail.com> (Philosophy, National Chung Cheng University, Taipei, Taiwan)
    In this paper, a virtual labeling account is proposed to explain amodal perception. We see a cat behind the fence, albeit not the hidden part, as a whole. In other words, phenomenologically, the hidden part of the cat we don’t perceive seems to be really presence. Such visual experience is called amodal perception. I will argue that not all content of our visual experience is really present. Part of content of amodal perception is virtually present. “Virtual presence” means that there cognitively exists something as a figment such as the unseen body of the cat behind the fence. That is cognitively virtually presence, not as real as we see. The argument is based on Daniel Dennett’s explanation of the blind spot problem. Dennett holds that the brain simply neglect the absence of information corresponding to the blind spot, and the region the blind spot falls is labeled. This makes our visual experience appear to be complete without a “hole”. Analogically, I suggest that Dennett’s idea be applied to the explanation of amodal perception. And the result would be that the phenomenon of amodal perception is cognitively virtual presence. My propositions about the operation of amodal perception are that: (1) people simply neglect the absent information in the visual field such as the hidden part of the cat we don’t perceive. Namely we are not aware of the way in which we don’t see the hidden part of the cat. It’s different from that we are aware of the way that we don’t see the hidden part of the cat. The latter is probably a kind of implicit understanding that we know the cat is voluminous with a hidden part. I suggest that this kind of implicit understanding perhaps overintellectualizes the mind. And (2) we spontaneously utilize the part of the cat in sight as clues, and the brain explains the clues (perhaps involving the process of recognition) thereupon cognitively labeling the object “a whole cat”. We don’t really perceive a complete cat, but the label enables us virtually sense the cat as a whole. Why the brain explains our visual information as whole? From the perspectives of evolution, maybe one of the reasons is that the labels are useful for us to swiftly identify the object in the environment for survival. For example, we utilize the part of a tiger’s feature as a clue, swiftly identifying it and escaping danger. It is concluded that amodal perception we experience is derived from virtual labels by the brain. The content of amodal perception is cognitively virtual presence. Therefore I propose that not all content of our visual experience is really present. At least, part of content of amodal perception is virtual presence. Based on this approach, I suggest, many varieties of visual phenomena such as perceptual constancies and issues regarding infant perception can be handled in a more appropriate way.  P7

126  Do things look flat?  Eric Schwitzgebel <eschwitz@citrus.ucr.edu> (Department of Philosophy, Riverside, CA)
    Does a penny viewed at an angle in some sense look elliptical, as though projected on a two-dimensional surface? Many philosophers have said such things, from Malebranche (1674/1997) and Hume (1739/1978), through early sense-data theorists, to Tye (2000) and Noë (2004). I confess that it doesn’t seem this way to me, though I’m somewhat baffled by the phenomenology and pessimistic about our ability to resolve the dispute. I conjecture that, maybe, such views draw some of their appeal by over-analogizing visual experience to painting or photography. Theorists writing in contexts where vision is less frequently analogized to two-dimensional media – signet ring impressions in wax in ancient Greece, stereoscopy in introspective psychology circa 1900 – seem substantially less likely to attribute such projective distortions to visual appearances.  C6

127  Induced fading of visual scenes  Daniel Simons, Alejandro Lleras, University of Illinois; Susana Martinez-Conde, Barrow Neurological Institute; David Slichter, Harvard University; <dsimons@uiuc.edu> (Psychology, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL)
    Visual stimuli fade from awareness under retinal stabilization or careful fixation, a phenomenon documented by Troxler over 200 years ago. Research on visual fading during normal visual fixation typically has been restricted to discrete, simple, low-contrast shapes presented peripherally against a uniform or textured background. In this presentation, I will discuss a series of studies exploring a new visual fading effects in which entire photographs of scenes fade to a uniform luminance and hue during normal visual fixation. In these studies, fading can be induced almost instantaneously and does not require a prolonged adaptation period. These effects are sufficiently robust that they can be experienced by most observers in a single trial. The potential implications of these results for our visual awareness of natural scenes and other complex stimuli will be discussed. Co authors: Alejandro Lleras, University of Illinois; Susana Martinez-Conde, Barrow Neurological Institute; David Slichter, Harvard University; Eamon Caddigan, University of Illinois; Gabriel Nevarez, University of Illinois   PL10

@H2 = [03.03]  Other sensory modalities

128  Persisting difficulties in overcoming dualism: A case study of the biopsychosocial model of pain   Yoshi Nakamura, Bryan Benham, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA <yn5@utah.edu> (Department of Anesthesiology, Utah Center for Exploring Mind-Body Interactions (UCEMBI), Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.)
    Virtually no one thinks of dualism as a viable approach in philosophy and biomedical sciences. In this presentation, we critically review the legacy of Cartesian dualism in pain research and medicine. We begin by reviewing why dualism is problematic and then provide an overview of various philosophical approaches to the mind-body problem. We then compare and contrast biomedical versus biopsychosocial models of pain to make a number of points. It is clear that the contemporary biopsychosocial model of pain rejected substance dualism and has attempted to go beyond simplistic reductionism associated with the biomedical model of pain. However, despite sophistications and refinements achieved in contemporary biopsychosocial models of pain and other chronic disease conditions, dualistic thinking persists in the dichotomistic logic for dealing with mental (i.e., psychological) versus organic (i.e., biological) causes of pain. Little genuine progress in understanding the nature of mind-body interactions has occurred in the last several decades. We speculate why this may have happened in pain medicine. We discuss several viable directions of inquiry that may help us explore hidden, poorly understood complex interactions between conscious mental states and brain-body states. This may ultimately force us to re-examine the causal role of consciousness in mind-brain-body interactions.   C19

129  Synesthesia, anthropomorphization, and animism  Noam Sagiv <noam127@yahoo.com> (Centre for Cognition and Neuroimaging, Brunel University, Uxbridge, United Kingdom)
    Synesthesia offers a unique point of view on the problem of conscious perception. However, much of synesthesia research focused on color only. I argue that frameworks for understanding synesthesia can be extended into other domains, specifically, intersubjectivity and social cognition, yielding new insights into the human mind and brain function. To illustrate this, I will first show that synesthetic experiences and their inducing stimuli are not always strictly sensory (Sagiv, 2005). Some synesthetes, for example, anthropomorphize certain concepts (e.g., letters of the alphabet) in additional to visualizing them in color. First described by Calkins (1895), the phenomenon has been largely ignored by scientists since. We collected detailed descriptions made by 30 individuals reporting such peculiar experiences (as well as behavioral data consistent with the subjective report). Many of them also reported some form of animism, i.e., they attributed feelings to inanimate objects. While normative in some cultures and among young children (Piaget, 1929), animism and anthropomorphization are rarely reported by adults in modern society. Nevertheless, they have a strong appeal and heavily utilized, e.g., in poetry or advertising. Furthermore, while personification of letters of the alphabet may be rare, arbitrary assignment of (grammatical) gender to nouns is found in many languages. Similarly certain patterns of cross-modal correspondences seen in synesthetes, are also found in non-synesthetes despite the lack of a concrete perceptual experience in non-synesthetes (e.g., Sagiv and Ward, in press). How is this possible and what does it have in common with human communication and interaction? One widely accepted model of synesthesia involves the cross activation of mechanisms involved in the perception of synesthetic experiences and their inducers (Ramachandran and Hubbard, 2001). The principle can be extended to mechanisms implicated in processing affective properties and social meaning. Indeed, neuroimaging and electrophysiological data in humans and primates suggests that such cross-domain interactions could underlie both empathy and communication skills. While it is hardly surprising that social exchange must involve correspondences between the self and others, it is not obvious why empathic responses or personality attributes would ever be directed towards inanimate objects or abstract concepts. I will attempt to make sense of these apparently unrelated observations and demonstrate that synesthesia does provide a window into not only visual perception but rather consciousness in a wider sense.   C19

@H2 = [03.04]  Memory and learning

130  Comparing the characteristics of autobiographical memories and memories for dreams  Caroline Horton, Prof. Martin Conway, University of Leeds. <c.l.horton04@leeds.ac.uk> (Institute of Psychological Sciences, Leeds University, UK, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK.)
    Although the characteristics of autobiographical memories and dream memories have been collected in various studies separately, they have never been systematically compared. Postgraduate students (N=20) were recruited and asked to take part in an experiment on memory. They generated autobiographical memories in a 5 minute fluency task, and then did the same for dreams. Significantly more autobiographical memories were reported (p<0.0001). Based upon date-matching criteria, 3 of each type of memory were selected for each participant and a 42-item questionnaire was completed for that memory, requesting characteristic information. Although no significant differences were found between ratings of the dream and autobiographical memories at the time of the experience, repeated measures ANOVAs found significantly more detailed ratings for the autobiographical events along a host of dimensions, in terms of the memory itself for those events (p<0.001, Bonferroni corrected). This was the case for the earliest, other and recent memories, which did not differ significantly for any of the dimensions. Thus there is little overlap between memories for dreams and normal autobiographical memories in terms of accessibility of those memories, and in terms of the characteristics of those memories. Results are discussed in terms of the continuity hypothesis of dreaming and waking cognition and consciousness.   P3

131  In and out of focus. Attention and empathy in autobiographical memory  Roberta Lorenzetti, Stame, Stefania; Nicoletti, Roberto; Borghi, Anna M. <r-lorenzetti@libero.it> (Communication Disciplines, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy)
    In the last decades the research on memory and autobiographical narrative appears to be at the core of the wide field of investigation about phenomenal consciousness. Actually, it is the activity of remembering life episodes and events and the activity of sharing their contents with others that allow individuals to ri/elaborate the meaning of their life. In other terms, these activities frame the sense of “being him/herself” situationally (i.e., synchronically) or along the timeline (i.e., diachronically). Autobiographical memories and narratives entail the processes of retrieval and expression of emotions joint to the original memory as well as the process of empathic sharing of emotions that narrator and listener feel during the narration itself. Recently, effects of attention orientation and the resulting effects on memory were ascribed to empathy defined as a “thematically induced emotion” (i.e., thematic arousal, Laney et al., 2004). Particularly, comparing the emotional arousal induced by visual stimuli with the empathic arousal a similarity was observed between them as regards the positive enhancement of the central gist of a narration. Nevertheless, empathy, opposite to arousal induced by visual stimuli, appears to preserve also the memory for the peripheral events, i.e., for the details of what is narrated. Thus, during the empathic activation the “narrowing effect” of attention doesn’t seem to take place (“Easterbrook hypothesis” or “weapon effect”). These results were obtained in laboratory settings using slides and stories artificially prepared for experimental goals. Our research aims to investigate if the same effects on attention and memory can be found when the empathic arousal is reached in “ecological” or “natural” settings and conditions of individual narration and/or interaction. Moreover, the research aims to investigate the effect of the positive or negative content of the autobiographical narrative on empathic arousal and, hence, on attention and memory. Two experiments were devised. In the first participants were presented with videotaped sequences of spontaneous autobiographical narrative concerning positive and negative events or internal states (“audience” condition); empathic arousal and delayed retrieval (of gist vs. peripheral events) were measured. In the second experiment dyads of subjects were selected, composed by a narrator and a listener. The narrator retrieved and narrated one of his/her autobiographical episode primed by a positive or negative cue (“interaction” condition); the listener was tested on the empathic arousal after a short retention interval (20 min.) and on memory retrieval after a short (20 min) and a long retention interval (1 week). The preliminary data elaboration points to significant differences between the “interaction” condition vs. “audience” condition and between negative content vs. positive content as to empathic arousal, attention and memory.   P9

@H2 = [03.05]  Emotion

132  Applying Damasio’s neurological theory of consciousness to violent, self-defeating behavior  Robin Bowers, Jelani Jones; Whitney Hendrcks <bowersr@cofc.edu> (Psychology, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC)
    Damasio (1999) advanced a theory of consciousness that describes the interplay between specific layers of the brain, and emerging complex thought. Accordingly, the making of consciousness involves hind, mid, and forebrain structures that build toward a capacity to notice body and brain activity—a capacity with the selective advantage of achieving biological homeostasis. Although brain-based theories of consciousness appear in the literature (Dennett, 1991), Damasio’s conceptualization appears to assemble the foundations needed to understand the changes that occur in consciousness when individuals commit violent, self-defeating behavior. The present research offers a model in which Damasio’s theory is placed side-by-side with sequences of emerging violence. Yet the model goes beyond to recast the origins of maladaptive behavior in new, heuristic light—applications guided by the emotion-to-homeostasis theme. More specifically, the examples used within the model employ the research and theoretical positions connected to rejection-induced violence, self-defeating behavior, and suicide. Although public concern over these behaviors is justifiably high, few models offer insight into the adaptive processes that underlie them; fewer still provide predictive and prospective direction. Controversial as it may seem, when Damasio’s neurological theory of consciousness is applied to violence, these acts are shown to exist within an adaptive, homeostatic context. Just as Damasio’s theory achieves its uniqueness by reminding us of the importance of considering homeostasis when thinking about the adaptive advantage of consciousness, the model presented here extends the same theme when approaching violent-motivated behavior. With this in mind, if normal thought shifts from a state of high-awareness and extended consciousness, to low-awareness and core-dominated consciousness, it is likely that self-defeating behavior follows a similar neuropsychological pathway. Moreover, memory and emotions that underlie the capacity to experience shifts in normal states of consciousness may also be driving and accompanying the shifts seen in seemingly non-adaptive behavior. The model connecting Damasio’s theory with self-defeating behavior becomes less speculative, however, when analyses focuses on the discrete behavioral trends that accompany changes in consciousness, and the onset of violence. Overall, the model provides a new look into the origins of self-defeating behavior. It assembles past and perplexing psychological findings within a common neurological framework, and offers insight into what may be done to alter maladaptive tendencies.  P3

133  The fear hypothesis and indigenous worldview: Hypersuggestibility and automaticity during apprehensive states as destructive or constructive depending upon worldview orientation  Four Arrows Jacobs <Don.Jacobs@nau.edu> (Educational Leadership, NAU, Flagstaff, Az)
    During times of fear, all creatures become hypersuggestible to the signals and language of perceived authority figures. The mnemonic, CAT-FAWN (Concentration-Activated Transformation, as influenced by Fear, Authority, Words and Nature) is a useful tool for understanding spontaenous hypnotic states and how worldview, especially generalized Western versus generalized Indigenous, can determine transformative outcomes.  P5

134  A Darwinian approach to emotion: Translating the value function for gains and losses into positive and negative feeling states  Timothy Ketelaar, Bryan Koenig, New Mexico State University <ketelaar@nmsu.edu> (Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM)
    An organism that is built to infer the future state of its environment from it’s emotional reactions to it’s current environment may have an adaptive advantage over other organisms that must directly experience consequences in order to learn the contingencies between current and future environments (e.g., that a snake bite right now can cause death later). In four experiments, participants were exposed to differing amounts of gains and losses in a valued resource and the intensity of their subsequent feeling states (i.e., emotional reactions to these gains and losses) were recorded. The basic logic of these experiments was that if “affective feelings” represent the prospective “value” of one’s current situation, then emotional reactions to gains and losses should correspond to several well-established descriptive properties of Prospect Theory, a leading model of value representation in the judgment and decision literature (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Results revealed that participant’s affective reactions to gains and losses did in fact map directly onto the two central descriptive properties of Prospect Theory (“losses loom larger than gains,” and “the carriers of value are change in value”). These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the relation between feeling states and information processing.  C5

135  Fine-grained emotions: Framing the world  Michelle Montague <michellemontague@mac.com> (Philosophy, Irvine, CA)
    It is commonplace to accept that emotions are more than just feelings. Most emotions have intentionality; they are directed at something or other. I will consider two approaches to explaining the intentionality of emotions. One view treats emotions as sui generis intentional attitudes; the other view reduces the intentionality of emotions to familiar propositional attitudes (e.g. judgment, belief, desire, thought.) In this paper, I argue that the sui generis approach is preferable. My argument begins by considering how the problem of ‘fine-grained’ content, a familiar phenomenon for belief contexts, also arises in emotion contexts. Although both belief and emotion contexts require fine-grained content, they differ in at least one important respect: they exhibit different inference patterns. An inference that is both licensed and rationally required in belief contexts is not licensed and is not required in emotion contexts. This difference in rational properties is a datum that theories of emotions must explain. That emotion contexts and belief contexts exhibit different rational properties initially seems to count against reducing the intentionality of emotions to anything like beliefs or judgments. If emotions were just belief/desire/feeling complexes, for example, it seems they should inherit the rational properties of beliefs. I will show, however, that appeal to a connection between emotions and values or agent-valuing affords both the sui generis view and the reductive view an explanation of the disparate rational commitments of beliefs and emotions. Despite their equal footing with respect to this issue, I argue that in the end the sui generis view offers a better account of an emotion’s intentional content. I argue that part of an emotion’s intentional content involves its experiential element—for example, the feeling of joy is part of that emotion’s content. Sui generis views more naturally account for this feature of an emotion’s content.  C11

136  Humans and other animals share many motional feelings: Lessons from a cross-species affective neuroscience.  Jaak Panksepp <jpankse@bgnet.bgsu.edu> (Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio)
    Basic affective processes of the brain/mind reflect the diversity of satisfactions (potential rewards/reinforcements) and discomforts (punishments)--inherited tools for living from our ancestral past. Core affects are neurobiologically-ingrained neurodynamic potentials of the brain, triggered, molded and refined by life experiences. Cognitive, information-processing and computational approaches cannot reveal their nature. Animal neuro-ethological research allows us to empirically analyze the large-scale neural ensembles that generate emotional-action dynamics that are critically important for creating emotional feelings. Such approaches offer robust neuro-epistemological strategies to decode the nature of affects in all mammals, but remain rarely implemented because of empirically unjustified doubts whether other animal have emotional feelings (see Consciousness & Cognition, 2005, 14: 30-80). Affective feelings and emotional actions may reflect the dynamics of the ancient viscero-somatic homunculus of self-representation, that courses through para-median strata of the brain, from midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) to medial regions of the forebrain. Cross-species affective neuroscience can reveal the general principles underlying various neuro-emotional affective states by studying the values that arise from “instinctual” emotional apparatus of the mammalian brains. Seven pre-propositional (initially largely object-less) emotional systems, shared homologously by all mammals, have been provisionally characterized. To minimize mereological fallacies, we capitalize them to highlight ethologically indexed emotional processes that actually exist in mammalian brains: (1) SEEKING is characterized by a persistent positively-valenced exploratory approach and engagement with the world—probing into the nooks and crannies of interesting objects and events (this system facilitates many other basic emotional responses, such as the seeking of safety when threatened); (2) FEAR is characterized by bodily tenseness and a shivery, negatively-valenced immobility, which can explode into dynamic flight to avoid harm (perhaps by recruitment of dopaminergic SEEKING urges); (3) RAGE is characterized by a vigorous casting of the body at offending objects with biting and pounding of the extremities; it is a mixture of positive and negative valence; (4) LUST is characterized by urgent, rhythmic thrustings of the body toward receptive others; (5) CARE is characterized by a gentle, caressingly nurturant body dynamics; (6) PANIC (separation-distress) generates crying and urgent attempts at reunion; and finally, (7) the bounding lightness of dynamic PLAY with its affectively positive poking and rhythmic qualities, which are assertive but not seriously aggressive. Many cognitive emotions, probably relying on these ‘primes’ for their underlying “energetic” arousals, however most important human cognitive issues cannot be clarified through animal research. Evidence for emotional feelings in animals (based on their many value choices) has encouraged us to focus our efforts on the neuro-ethology of positive emotional processes, especially PLAY and the accompanying 50 kHz “laughter”-type chirping responses when young animals are tickled (Physiology & Behavior, 2003, 79: 533-547). This response can be used to index positive affect in many situations, and key brain substrates are concentrated in limbic regions, especially ventral striatal dopamine systems coursing from the Ventral Tegmental Area up to Nucleus Accumbens and Medial Frontal Cortex. We are evaluating neurochemical controls that regulate this positive affect, in the hope of identifying new medications for depression.   C11

137  The “hard problem” in psychology of emotions, and how affective neuroscience can cut the Gordian Knot with the sword of Peircean semiotics  Louise Sundararajan <louiselu@frontiernet.net> (Forensic Unit, Rochester Psychiatric Center, Rochester, NY)
    What Chalmers refers to as the “hard problem” of consciousness may be stated thus: if intentionality is not included in the equation from the start, there is no way to account for it later on. This problem is rampant in psychology of emotions. A recent incarnation of this problem is Russell’s theory of core affect (2003), which declares emotion to be a heap of skandhas without a soul, to borrow a Buddhist metaphor, or as Russell puts it: the so-called emotion is perceived pattern of configuration out of multiple ingredients which have no intrinsic connection with one another. This paper argues that Peircean semiotics can help to put intentionality back in emotion research, and shows how affective neuroscience is already doing it to some extent. According to Freeman (1995), intentionality has three components: unity, wholeness (potential for growth), and intent. These are the essential attributes of the semiotic sign. According to Charles Peirce, a sign is a system that entails a relation among three elements: The signifier, the signified, and the interpreter of the sign. As such the sign is integrative (unity), generative (wholeness), and relational (intent). The intent of a sign consists in the fact that it is a sign to an interpreter, or “consumer” of the information, as Millikan (1989) puts it. According to the “biosemantics” of Millikan (1989), the consumer can be either the organism itself or a non-self. Feeling states pertain to signs for the consumer as the organism itself, whereas expressive signs such as facial expressions are signs for the consumer as non-self. In either case, an organism as the consumer needs signs that are true in order to function properly. A sign is true when a certain correspondence relation holds between sign and the world, for instance: touching the hot stove=pain. Pain is a true sign to the extent that the hedonic equation holds. From the perspective of biosemantics, signs are not fortuitous inferences; they are crucial for the survival of the consumer. Nor is the rule of correspondence and proper function of the sign fortuitous; they are in turn determined by the evolved needs of the consumer. This line of reasoning is consistent with Panksepp’s notion of affect as internal value codes that guide and sustain behavior. Because of its groundedness in the consumer, this notion of “biological value” is more informative than Russell’s “valence” (2003). Peirce claims that signs can function only as an integrated whole. This perspective challenges the dissecting, strip-down approach in search of psychological atoms in emotion research, and finds support in the focus of affective neuroscience on global neurodynamics of emotional system in action. Lastly, the Peircean notion of signs being generative curbs the excess of nativist claims about nature’s pre-packaging, allows for a dialectic of difference and continuity in the continuing development of a sign, and paves the way for a cross-species neuroscience.   C11

138  Emotions in a self-representational theory of consciousness  Knud Thomsen <knud.thomsen@psi.ch> (NUM, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, Switzerland)
    Recently a skeleton for a mind has been proposed in the form of an extended action / perception cycle. It is claimed by this account that all concepts are stored in schemata, i.e. some type of frame structures, where the activation of any one feature / slot in a schema biases associated other features, in their majority belonging to the same concept. Thus expectations are triggered. In an iterative recursive loop a monitor is constantly checking how well these expectations fit with the activities actually observed subsequently. Expectations can be violated, met or even exceeded, giving rise to negative or positive emotions, respectively. This type of self-monitoring, a version of "quality assurance" named "consumption analysis", can be brought to bear with input from the outside, e.g. sensations from vision or haptic features, and also apply to activity / percepts relating to a self when the actor directs attention to herself. A self-organizing structure unfolds: the overall context determines what emotion is felt, akin to what is described by the general gist of appraisal theories of emotions. At the same time such activations set the stage for all following activity and action similar to what is held by the various motivational accounts of emotions.   P9

@H2 = [03.06]  Language

139  Conversation theory: An organizing principle for consciousness research  Carl Flygt <carlflygt@verizon.net> (Novato, CA)
    The most ubiquitous and universal application of language is probably conversation, and if the term is defined broadly, it is perhaps the only such use. Until recently, no general and naturalized theory of conversation has made an appearance, and this apparent fact should give pause for reflection. The explanation here, I think, has to do with the spiritual realities of consciousness, and with the materialist commitments of modern secular institutions. Building on speech act theory, individualist theories of intentionality and representation and a few modest and unpretentious assumptions from moral philosophy, I have worked out a proposal for a general theory. My talk will summarize that proposal. If I am right about what conversation really is and about how it should be (must be) conducted among men (and women) of spiritual aspiration, we may find ourselves greatly aided in designing experiments to test our guesses about the embodiment of consciousness in its various substrata. Forthcoming from Lindisfarne Books: Conversation - A New Theory of Language.  P3

@H2 = [03.07]  Mental imagery

140  I think in pictures instead of language  Temple Grandin <Cheryl.Miller@colostate.edu> (Animal Sciences, Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, CO)
    I do not use language when I think and solve problems. All thoughts are images. When I design livestock equipment, images pop into my imagination and language only serves as a narrative of the images. If I think about what I will do tomorrow, I visualize activities such as driving to the university, teaching my class or going to the airport. I have no subconscious, I think with the part of my brain that is subconscious in most other people. I can see the decision making process in my brain. One day an elk ran across the freeway and I had about three seconds to react. Three images popped into my imagination like a menu on a computer screen. The images were a car rear ending me, the elk crashing through the windshield, and the elk passing in front of me. Each image was a consequence of a different action such as jamming on the brakes, swerving or slowing down. I clicked on slowing down and the elk passed by in front of me. I made a decision that was not a reflex. This may be similar to how a deer makes a decision when he hears a strange sound. I think this orienting response is the beginning of conscious behavior. When a deer hears a strange sound, it will turn and look. When it orients it makes a decision. Do I stand still and listen, run away, or continue grazing. It makes a decision and it is a choice not a reflex. All the images in my imagination are specific. There are no generalized images. When I think of church steeples, I only see specific ones. There is no generalized image. When I questioned many other people, many of them had more generalized vague images. They had a vague image first and when asked for more specific images, some, but not all people could produce them. Their thinking was top down. Generalized to specific. My thinking is the other way from the bottom up. I see specific images. My mind works exactly like the internet search engine – Google for Images. I can input a key word and images come into my imagination like a series of slides. All the images are specific. To form a concept, I have to put the images into categories. Detailed pictures are grouped by categories. When I was a child, I categorized dogs from cats by size. When a small dog came into our neighborhood I had to use a different visual criterion for categorization. I finally figured out that all dogs have the same nose. It was a visual feature all dogs have, but no cats had a dog’s nose. It is sensory based thinking instead of word based thinking. Cats and dogs could also be categorized by sound, barking or meowing or smell. As I get older, and have more and more experiences, my thinking becomes better because my internal Google search engine has more pictures to sort and search and categorize. That’s why I have become less autistic acting as I have had more experiences.   PL11

@H2 = [03.08]  Implicit and explicit processes

141  Automatic priming and conscious expectancy in a simple reaction time task  Arnaud Destrebecqz, Pierre Perruchet, Axel Cleeremans., Philippe Peigneux, Steven Laureys, & Pierre Maquet <adestre@ulb.ac.be> (Brussels, Brussels, Belgium)
    Some authors claim that learning is always accompanied by awareness while others defend the notion that learning can occur unconsciously. In this study, we present a series of experiments in which the conscious and unconscious components of performance are pit against each other in a simple reaction time task where a preparatory signal (a tone) is associated with an imperative stimulus (a visual target) in 50% of the trials. We also manipulated the time interval between the preparatory signal and the imperative stimulus. We show that, when the preparatory signal is increasingly followed by the imperative stimulus (a visual target), reaction times to this latter event tend to decrease. Importantly, the conscious expectancy for the target decreases at the same time. Results showed that conscious expectancy was systematically dissociated from reaction time, whatever the temporal relationship between the tone and the visual target. These results challenge those who argue against the existence of genuine dissociations between consciousness and behaviour and correspond to previous results indicative of the same dissociation in the context of classical conditioning (Perruchet, 1985). By contrast, in the conditioning literature, behaviour tends to be no longer dissociated from conscious expectancy when the delay between the preparatory and imperative events increases. This study therefore suggests that the influence of temporal factors on associative learning mechanisms differs when voluntary instead of automatic responses are involved.   C17

142  Inability to make accurate explicit emotional judgments to familiar faces in a Prosopagnosic   Rami Gabriel, Stanley B. Klein <gabriel@psych.ucsb.edu> (Cognitive and Percpetual Sciences, Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, santa barbara, CA)
    It has been shown that Prosopagnosics display implicit reactions to emotional faces using physiological measures, i.e, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR). My study probed whether a Prosopagnosic can make accurate explicit emotional judgments towards familiar faces. In the first phase of my experiment, the participant MJH was shown a total of 16 photographs of the faces of family members (for example, his parents and sisters) and famous evil faces (Stalin, Osama Bin Laden and Fidel Castro), then he was asked to rate each on two 7- point scales (Likeability and Pleasantness). MJH was told to complete the scales using his personal emotional knowledge while viewing the unrecognized faces. In the second phase of the experiment, MJH was asked to explicitly rate the same people on the same two scales (for example, Please rate your mother on the following two scales). Results show that MJH's ratings during the picture-viewing phase of the experiment and MJH's ratings during the explicit phase of the experiment were significantly different from each other (p<0.01). We conclude that MJH's ratings during the first phase of the experiment were not accurate and that MJH cannot explicitly access his emotional recations to unrecognized faces even when they are very familiar. In a related study, we tested MJH's ability to rate unrecognized familiar faces (family members and friends) on a list of 60 traits (for example, is this person friendly? not at all, somewhat, definitely). In the first phase of the experiment, MJH rated familiar faces that he did not recognize and in the second phase he was told explicitly who to rate on the 60 traits. Results show that the correlation between MJH's ratings for close family members between the two phases ranged from r= 0.3 to r=0.5 while the correlation for ratings of a picture of himself and a subsequent rating of himself was r= 0.75, this is a significant difference (p<0.05). We conclude that prosopagnosics may not have access to their own implicit emotional reactions, but that the self may be an exception.   C19

@H2 = [03.09]  Unconscious/conscious processes

143  Driving beyond consciousness: A test of multiple drafts theory  Susan Blackmore, Mary Osborn <susan.blackmore@blueyonder.co.uk> (none, Bristol, UK)
    “there are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes.” (Dennett, 1991, p 138) In the well-known ‘unconscious driving phenomenon’ experienced drivers can arrive at their destination to realise that they have no recollection of having driven there. They may say that they were conscious of listening to music or having a conversation, but not of driving. In a questionnaire study we collected accounts of the phenomenon, and found that it happens mostly to experienced drivers on familiar routes. Unconscious driving is often described as a case of automatised or skilled action without consciousness, but is this the right interpretation? We contrast two ways of conceptualising this experience, based on Dennett’s distinction between Cartesian materialism and his own multiple drafts theory. The common, Cartesian materialist, view implies that either the experience of driving or the experience of listening must have been “in consciousness”, while the other was unconscious. Multiple drafts theory, by contrast, claims that there is no fact of the matter about which was in consciousness because there is no theatre of the mind in which experiences are displayed for an inner observer; instead, a decision is made, after the fact, about which was conscious. This decision depends on how the system is probed at the end of the journey. In an experiment to test this theory, participants played an X-box driving game while listening to a CD and were probed in two different ways to report what they were conscious of. Multiple drafts theory predicts that the answers given should depend on the nature of the probe used. 17 participants (11 female, 6 male, average age 28) played “Gotham Racing” using an X-box console, driving around Princes Street Edinburgh in an SRR Chevrolet, while listening to a CD of “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” through headphones. After sufficient practise, they spent 20 minutes driving during which they were probed 16 times either by a light appearing on the driving screen or by a buzzer in the headphones (8 of each, in random order). When they either saw the light or heard the buzzer they were asked to say what they were aware of (what they were concentrating on or conscious of thinking about) immediately prior to the prompt. Their responses were recorded and, after the experiment was completed, independent judges read all the responses and categorised each as having been either concerned with driving or not. If the type of probe affected the response given we would expect more answers concerned with driving (D) after the light probe (L), and more not concerned with driving (nD), after the buzzer (B). This prediction was not confirmed (results for 255 responses: LD 74, LnD 54, BD 70, BnD 57; chi squared, 1df, = 0.188). The results did not provide evidence for Dennett’s MD theory. However, we think this technique could be developed to provide better tests of whether there really is a fact of the matter about what is in a person’s consciousness at any time.   C6

144  Neural dynamics of thought-full versus thought-free responses in orbitofrontal cortex  Arnaud Delorme, Scott Makeig <arno@salk.edu> (SCCN, UCSD, INC, La Jolla, CA)
    According to Wundt (1913, Grundriss der Psychologie) impulsive responses are triggered without the subject thinking about it. Indeed, it has been shown that complex tasks involving written language or category discrimination can be performed unconsciously (Dehaene et al, Nature, 1998, 395, 597-600; Fabre-Thorpe et al., J Cog Neuroscience, 2001, 13, 171-80). On the other hand, before slower non-impulsive responses, subjects might likely base their behavioral decisions on their more fully conscious experience. We studied the neural correlate of faster (thought-less) responses versus slower thoughtful responses in a visual selective attention paradigm. Following visual target stimuli presented infrequently at a covertly attended location, faster thumb button responses tended to follow a larger far-frontal evoked positivity (P3f or P2a) in the average eventrelated potential (ERP) (Makeig et al., J Neurosci, 1999, 19, 2665-80). Closer study of these data revealed a linear relationship (r=0.96, p<10- 11) between median RT and the upslope to the P3f peak. This result is compatible with a model in which the behavioral response is triggered when the area under the ERP, beginning at a relatively fixed latency near 200 ms, reaches a threshold. Consistent with this hypothesis, the area under the P3f was not correlated with response time. We then attempted to determine how this effect was related to the EEG activity in single trials. Interestingly, spectral decomposition of the EEG signal revealed that a 1.5-cycle theta (4.5 Hz) burst preceded and was weakly phase-locked to the button press. We found that the amplitude of this theta wave, as well as its phase, covaried significantly with response time (p<10-33), a higher theta-power wavelet tending to immediately precede fast responses. We also observed that this effect persisted even after regressing out the average response-locked P3f peak out of every trial. On the other hand, regressing the theta wavelet out of every trial removed the P3f and its relation to RT. Thus it seems that wavelet analysis in the theta band better characterizes the eventrelated brain dynamics in this case than ERP analysis. Finally, independent component analysis identified inferior frontal processes with similar theta dynamics in most subjects. Comparable components from two 256-channel recording sessions localized to orbitofrontal cortex. Overall, slower responders produced less P3f/theta activation, possibly reflecting these subjects' inability to respond reflexively, in line with Wundt's hypothesis. The orbitofrontal theta response complex may index inferior frontal processing of early limbic signals to facilitate or inhibit reflexive responses in speeded response tasks.  C3

145  The sources of insight: Conscious and unconscious problem solving  Colin G. DeYoung, Jordan B. Peterson; Joseph L. Flanders <colin.deyoung@yale.edu> (Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, U.S.A.)
    Moments of insight, when something previously not understood becomes clear in a sudden flash of illumination, are both dramatic and mysterious in nature. Such “Eureka!” moments are famous in the history of creative achievement, but the process of achieving insight may also be crucial to much every-day problem solving. Investigation of the phenomenon of insight may shed light on interactions between conscious and unconscious processes in problem solving. Any situation in which an individual’s current state does not match some desired goal state, and in which there is uncertainty as to whether, when, or how that goal state can be achieved, constitutes a problem. Problem solving, therefore, could be considered the central task of human existence and thus of the mind/brain. In this paper we discuss how and why insight is central to the ways people solve many problems. We argue that unconscious processes associated with insight are central to most real-life problem solving, which is quite different from most problem solving in educational or laboratory testing. Conventional test problems tend to be well-defined, meaning that all the elements necessary to solve them are specified from the beginning. Relevant skill or knowledge is likely to be required, but at least one knows what is expected. Many problems in life, however, are ill-defined, meaning that some of their elements are unspecified or specified incorrectly. Insight can be defined as a sudden reformulation that transforms an ill-defined, and therefore unsolvable, problem into a well-defined, solvable problem. Studies of formal ill-defined problems or “insight problems” have revealed that people typically do not have conscious access to cognitive processes leading to moments of insight, whereas they do have conscious access to processes involved in solving well-defined problems (Schooler & Melcher, 1995); hence the mystery inherent in moments of insight - and the importance of unconscious processes. Drawing on evidence from our laboratory studies of insight problems, we present a model specifying three types of cognitive process involved in insight problem solving: convergent thinking (linear, logical, largely conscious), divergent thinking (associative, holistic, largely unconscious), and breaking frame (unconscious - allows the transition from convergent to divergent thinking). Additionally, we utilize neurobiological findings to suggest how these cognitive processes are instantiated. Evidence regarding hemispheric specialization is crucial for understanding the neurobiological differences between convergent and divergent thinking. The left hemisphere appears to be specialized for convergent thinking, whereas the right hemisphere appears to be specialized for divergent thinking (Fiore & Schooler, 1998). We also review evidence for the importance of the hippocampus and dopaminergic system in insight. With this cognitive and neurobiological model of insight, we are equipped to begin answering several questions: Why should problem solving rely heavily on unconscious processes, in addition to conscious processes? How are these conscious and unconscious processes coordinated and integrated, and how are they instantiated in the brain? What does the phenomenon of insight reveal about the limitations of consciousness? How do these limitations play out in experiences of insight and in experience more generally?   P9

146  Unconscious cognition, intuition, and 'a blink of the eye'  Lois Isenman <Lisenman@brandeis.edu> (Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA)
    In a 1997 paper entitled “Towards an understanding of intuition and its role in scientific endeavor,” (Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 40, 3, 395-403) I presented the metaphorical definition of intuition as ‘a blink of the eye.’ In the paper I also recount the unusual experience in which this characterization came to me: “Early in my investigation of intuition, a colleague surprised me by asking for an impromptu definition of intuition. After a moment of searching, the phrase ‘a blink of the eye’ unexpectedly came to mind. This didn't seem to answer the question, so I looked again. This time a subliminal physical sense of the experience of intuition as a rapid closing and opening somewhere in my chest accompanied the mental experience of seeing a generic signal go down and then up on a graph.” Malcolm Gladwell popularized the metaphor in his 2005 book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: “…there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis (pg 17).” Gladwell considers the automatic, rapid, and generally habitual, though sometimes insightful, functioning of the unconscious mind and contrasts it with deliberate analysis. However, as the passage from my 1997 paper hints, the metaphor goes much deeper and provides many additional levels of understanding about the potential role of the unconscious mind in intuition (Isenman, forthcoming book tentatively entitled Intuition: The Bridge Between Science and Spirituality). For example, intuition often begins with the recognition of 'not understanding' or with the recognition that habitual understanding no longer fits. My presentation will examine the relationship between metaphor and intuition, using a blink of the eye as an example. One of the things I will show is how the metaphor turns back on itself and helps characterize slow-cooking intuitions---profound intuitions that come into focus only gradually, integrating more and more apparent contradiction as they do.   C17

147  Unconscious processing of unattended words  Eve Isham, Kenton C. Hokanson; William P. Banks <eve.isham@pomona.edu> (Psychology, Claremont Graduate University & Pomona College, Rancho Cucamonga, CA)
    Both Rock and Gutman (1981) and Merikle, Joordens and Stolz (1995) probed for effects of visual stimuli presented outside of awareness. They used different techniques for preventing awareness, and they got different results. Rock and Gutman presented two overlapping figures of which participants were to report only one, designated by color. They found no memory at all for the unreported stimuli, even though presentation times were long enough to allow perception of images. Merikle, et al. presented words at brief durations and found that the briefly seen words were used to complete subsequently presented word stems. Merikle, et al. instructed their participants to use any word but the one presented – exclusion instructions. At brief durations the excluded words were used to complete stems well above baseline. At longer durations the excluded words were used at below-baseline frequencies, suggesting that durations long enough for conscious registration allowed participants to exclude them. The current study presented pairs of stimuli as Rock and Gutman did but used a stem completion task and exclusion instructions as in Merikle, et al. If the unattended word was used in stem completion, the Rock and Gutman study would need to be reinterpreted as showing subliminal effects but no declarative memory for the unattended word. We presented pairs of overlapping words of different colors, and participants were instructed to attend to only one. They were then given a 3-letter stem and asked to perform a stem completion task, but to exclude any words previously presented to them. In each experimental trial, participants were given the stem of the word they had been presented but had not attended (the target word). In the baseline trials, participants were given the same stem after a presentation of two unrelated words. Despite instructions not to use any presented words for the stem-completion task, we found significantly higher completion rates using the target words in the experimental trials (M = .19 , SD = .12) than in the baseline trials (M = .06, SD = .09), p < .05. These findings suggest the existence of a significant level of unconscious processing of unattended words.   P3

148  Intuitive processes as forms of the unconscious - conscious spectrum  Alfred Levinson <alevinson@att.net> (Center for Consciousness Studies, Tucson, AZ)
    Intuition is perhaps the most basic method of acquiring information - of thinking. If Temple Grandin is correct then animals think intuitively - think in "pictures", i.e. images & patterns. The earliest written languages - the hieroglyphics - were pictures. Some of them developed into the ideographic languages. Ideographic languages can lead to thinking in images and patterns through the use of analogy. An intuitive process occurs when you "immediately" see something as images and patterns; hear something as sounds and patterns; "see" the answer to a math problem as images and patterns; or during musical improvisation, when the key is changed it occurs "immediately" as a shift in sounds and patterns. The end result of these activities is conscious, but the process is unconscious. Another form of intuition can occur during intense meditation when one has an enlightenment experience or during intense prayer when one experiences God. Intuitive thinking is contrasted with with the standard analytical and systems thinking that dominates thinking in the West. Wu claims to have used the ideographic nature of Chinese characters as a basis for developing imaging software, which he says is superior to those used in the West. There is a literature where specific forms of intuition are examined (mathematical, musical, meditation, etc.). Jackendoff, Koch and others have alluded to this process, but not as an intuitive process and not in the comprehensive approach that will be developed here. The beginnings of a broad based theory of intuition are proposed.   P9

149  Cognitive unbinding as a general theory of unconscious processes  George Mashour <gmashour@partners.org> (Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, U.S.A)
    INTRODUCTION: A comprehensive theory of the unconscious will be essential to the science of consciousness. I suggest that “cognitive unbinding”—the disruption of cognitive binding functions—is a common feature of the unconscious processes associated with anesthesia, repression, sleep, and coma. ANESTHESIA: The concept of cognitive unbinding was first postulated as a common mechanism of general anesthetics (1), based theoretically on neural synthesis as a pre-condition of consciousness and supported experimentally by the demonstration of anesthetic-induced electrical decoherence in the cortex (2). Since its original publication, the cognitive unbinding paradigm has gained traction in the literature of anesthesiology (3,4), as well as further empirical support (5). REPRESSION: The epistemology of psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion bears a striking resemblance to the neuroscientific concept of cognitive binding: Bion describes raw, unprocessed “beta elements” that are synthesized by an “alpha function” to generate the basis of cognition and consciousness (6). Of critical interest, Bion argues that the interruption of alpha function, the so-called “attack on linking,” leads to repressed “particles” or “fragments” that cannot be represented in consciousness (7). Thus, cognitive unbinding appears to describe the process of repression as conceived by a central thinker in psychoanalysis. SLEEP: Sleep is a process to which both anesthesiologists and psychoanalysts have turned to understand unconscious processes. Tononi has argued that information synthesis is essential to consciousness and that its interruption is associated with sleep (8,9). His recent work has confirmed this by demonstrating a loss of functional connectivity during non-REM sleep (10). It is of interest that such loss of functional connectivity has also been associated with general anesthesia (5), suggesting that qualitatively similar processes of cognitive unbinding may be common to both. COMA: If coma was a state of cognitive unbinding, one would expect to find unbound cognitive fragments that were still being actively processed, yet excluded from conscious representation. Data from cognitive neurology suggests that in certain instances this may be the case. In patients with catastrophic brain injury, residual cognitive activity appears to be present as isolated modules that are incapable of being synthesized due to neural injury (11,12). CONCLUSION: I argue that cognitive unbinding is a general principle of ostensibly dissimilar states of unconsciousness. This general theory supports integration as essential to consciousness and helps establish a foundation for the interdisciplinary study of unconscious processes. REFERENCES: 1. Mashour GA: Anesthesiology 2004; 100(2):428-33. 2. John ER et al : Consciousness and Cognition 2001; 10:165-83. 3. Rudolph U, Antkowiak B: Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2004; 5(9):709-20. 4. John ER, Prichep LS: Anesthesiology 2005; 447-71. 5. Peltier SJ, et al: Neuroreport 2005; 16(3):285-8. 6. Bion WR: International Journal of Psychoanalysis 1962; 43:Parts4-5. 7. Bion WR: International Journal of Psychoanalysis 1959; 40:Parts5-6. 8. Tononi G: BMC Neuroscience 2004; 5(1):42. 9. Tononi G, Sporns O: BMC Neuroscience 2003; 4(1):31. 10. Massimini M, et al: Science. 2005; 309(5744):2228-32. 11. Schiff ND, et al: Brain 2002; 125(Pt 6):1210-34. 12. Schiff ND, et al: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 1999; 11(6):650-6.   C10

150  Can only what we attend to be subliminally processed?  Grega Repovs <grega.repovs@artsc.wustl.edu> (Department of Psychology, Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, MO)
    Previous research has shown (e.g. Draine and Greenwald, 1998) that subliminal presented stimuli can influence the processing of subsequent stimuli, a phenomenon known as subliminal priming. Later studies have shown that subliminal priming occurs only when attention is directed towards the subliminal stimuli at the time of their presentation (Naccache, Blandin and Dehaene, 2002). The question arises, whether attention needs to be directed towards the relevant task and stimuli features as well, for the stimuli to be successfully subliminally processed. Asked differently, do only the features that one attends to get to be subliminally processed? To study that, a subliminal semantic priming study was set up. The participants were requested to make speeded judgments about either animacy or gender of the presented words. The task was carried out in three conditions. The information about the required judgment was provided either at the beginning of the block, as a cue two seconds before the presentation of the target, or simultaneously with the target word. In all cases subliminal primes - either congruent or incongruent in relation to the requested judgment - were presented before the target word. At the time the subliminal stimuli were presented, the subject paid preparatory attention, selective attention or no attention to the relevant aspect of the stimulus. The results showed that the priming effect was present only in the cases when the cue preceded the presentation of the subliminal stimulus. Based on these results it seems that attention to the task and the specific feature of the stimuli is needed for that feature of the subliminal stimulus to be processed. Subliminal perception seems to be as much guided by attention as conscious perception is, the only difference being in the extent of its influence and the ability to consciously report the stimulus. The task, however, required the participants to map the responses to both possible judgments to the same two keys, creating a response conflict between the two stimulus features. It could be, that both features of the stimuli are subliminally processed, but the attention is needed for the conflict between them to be resolved and the processing to be observed as priming effect. To test that possibility, a set of experiments is being carried out in which every response can be made independently of another, eliminating a possibility of conflict. The results of the study will be presented and the role of attention in subliminal perception will be discussed.  C17

151  Neuroimaging of disorders of consciousness: challenges and insights into underlying brain mechanisms  Nicholas Schiff <nds2001@med.cornell.edu> (Laboratory of Cognitive Neuromodulation, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY)
    The underlying pathophysiological mechanisms separating the vegetative state (VS), minimally conscious state (MCS), and late emergence from MCS (EMCS) will be discussed. We will examine evidence of residual cerebral activity following severe brain injuries using multi-modal neuroimaging techniques (positron emission tomography, structural, functional magnetic resonance imaging, quantitative electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography), as well as possible evidence for structural remodeling of the brain following severe injury obtained by diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging techniques. The results of the multi-modal imaging studies will be used to suggest models of the pathophysiologic basis of MCS and to develop markers for identifying residual functional capacities in severely brain-injured patients. The discussion will also address potential brain mechanisms underlying late recovery of communication in rare MCS patients.  PL9

152  Being consciously alert during undergraduate class of psychopathology  Josiah Shindi <josiahshindi@yahoo.co.uk> (Psychology, Benue State University, Makurdi, Nigeria, Makurdi, Benue, Nigeria)
    This is a report of whether the college psychology majors were consciously alert during the Psychopathology classes. Students were asked, to write their personal experiences of symptoms of Schizophrenia and Depression, especially during these classes; this was after the causes symptoms and management of these aliments had been discussed in class. Results indicate that over 90% of the students had experienced these symptoms and were busy recollecting and even experiencing these symptoms while the class was going on. As a result of this, the University has considered including conscious alertness and concentration during fresh student orientations.  P3

153  Proust and the promised land of involuntary memory  Maxim Stamenov <maxstam@bas.bg> (General and Applied Linguistics, Institute of the Bulgarian Language, Sofia, Bulgaria)
    There are not very many people worldwide that can proud themselves in managing to read the whole ‘continuous novel’ of the French writer Marcel Proust "A la recherche du temps perdu". The novel is by far the longest single one of literary significance in the history of culture – its French original counts 3054 pages and in English its wordcount comes close to 1,250,000. Correspondingly, it would be rather a challenge not only to read and comprehend it but also to present iin summary in 20 minutes in an intelligible manner what Proust wanted to say in several thousand pages of text. That being the case, each of us can still associate, if it comes to a challenge, that in the "Remembrance of Things Past" there was a famous episode involving the French cakes "petites madeleines". And it was the tasting of one of these cakes that opened up to the narrator the mysteries of the so called involuntary memory. The intricacies of the ‘explanatory theory of the involuntary memory’ Proust professed are however less known outside of the sect of Proust scholars and admirers. Some people tend to believe in this sort of revelatory memory, but others, including professionals like Barker (1958), prefer to comment that Proust was a great writer but the stories about madeleine and the like in the novel should be taken cum grano salis, i.e., they were rather a literary hoax. In this paper the original episode involving the tasting of madeleine will be taken to a close scrutiny and compared with what we know today about the nature and functions of autobiographical memory.  C20

154  Unconscious semantic activation in brightness and duration judgment tasks  Bart VanVoorhis, Avant, Lloyd L.; O'Connor, Patrick A.; Krebill, Darin <vanvoorh.bart@uwlax.edu> (Psychology, University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, La Crosse, WI)
    In three experiments, participants discriminated brief, masked letter-string inputs based on orthography (i.e., letter case), word class (i.e., noun, verb), letter-string type (i.e., word, nonword, pseudoword), and word relatedness (i.e., related, unrelated). In each experiment, participants were asked to either judge the apparent brightness or the apparent duration of two, 10 ms forward- and backward-masked inputs. The inputs in Experiments 1 and 2 consisted of concrete and abstract nouns (Exp 1) and verbs (Exp 2). In Experiment 3, inputs consisted of related word pairs or unrelated word pairs. In all experiments, nonwords (not pronounceable, illegal) and pseudowords (legal and pronounceable, but not a word; Exp 1 and 2 only) were created by rearranging letters of the word stimuli. Stimuli were presented in a Scientific Prototype Tachistoscope (T-scope). At the start of the trial, Ps placed their dominant eye over one eyepiece of the T-scope and viewed a pattern mask of superimposed Xs and Os. The mask was interrupted for 10 ms by the first input before it returned for 1 sec, and then was interrupted again for 10 ms. Each flash contained either word or non\pseudoword stimuli. The stimuli were printed on a 2 x 2 slide, with each stimulus appearing twice, one above the other. The stimuli were either both uppercase, or one was upper and one was lowercase. On each trial, participants (Ps) were asked to indicate which of the 2 “flashes” appeared to be either brighter or to last longer. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants consistently judged the flashes with matched case to appear to last longer than their mismatch case counterparts. Conversely, they consistently judged the mismatch case pairs to be brighter than the match case pairs. In Experiment 1, for both concrete and abstract nouns, Ps judged the flashes with words in them to last longer than flashes with pseudowords, which were in turned judged to last longer than the nonwords. Once again, however, the pattern reversed for brightness judgments. Participants consistently judged the nonwords to be brighter than pseudowords, which were in turn judged to be brighter than words. Interestingly, these patterns were reversed for the verb data in Experiment 2. Finally, in Experiment 3, Ps consistently judged flashes with unrelated word pairs to last longer than flashes with related word pairs. Related word pair flashes, however, were judged to be brighter than flashes containing unrelated word pairs. Considered collectively, these data show that a 10 ms masked input is sufficient for: • The brain to begin processing orthographic features of letter strings (i.e., letter case) • The brain to simultaneously activate its knowledge of words, pseudowords, and nonwords (i.e., letter string type) • The brain to simultaneously activate is knowledge of individual words of each word type (i.e., noun, verb) and, finally • The brain to simultaneously activate the meaning of words (i.e., related, unrelated). The data will be considered in light of a tentative model of visual recognition.   P3

@H2 = [03.10]  Sleep and dreaming

155  Lucid dreams and semantic analysis  Tamara Astakhova, Vadim Astakhov <tamara_astakhova@hotmail.com> (San Diego, CA)
    The present work reports a preliminary experimental investigation of association produced during lucid dreams. Modeling the flow of associations in terms of ontological graphs was performed. The data is produced through writing reports collected from group of student practicing lucid dreams. All individuals use "NovaDreamer" device to induce lucid dreams. Graph theory formalism is applied in order to characterize reports. Ontological term-graph was created for each report, where nodes represent terms from English vocabulary and edges represent relations that also come from an interpreted vocabulary. Some preliminary results were identified, including power-law underlying associations. Group theory was applied for semantic analysis and it reveals formal structures known from quantum mechanics. The fact allows introducing to quantum information and quantitative linguistics as well as concept strong and week virtual reality. Also, this method of text analysis is proposed for early diagnostics of psychological disorders.   P3

156  Paradoxes and promises: Meditation effects on sleep in depression  Willoughby Britton, Keith Fridel; Richard R. Bootzin <wbritton@u.arizona.edu> (Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Objective: Although mindfulness-based interventions have been associated with improvement in subjectively-rated sleep quality in a range of clinical populations, these findings have yet to be confirmed with objectively measured sleep in a laboratory. This study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that investigates the effects of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on both objectively and subjectively measured sleep. Introduction and Methods: Individuals with partially remitted depression (n=52) underwent overnight polysomnographic (PSG) sleep studies before and after 8 weeks of MBCT or a waitlist control condition. All participants also completed weekly sleep diaries and depression inventories before and after the program. Results: The MBCT group sleep diaries (n=26) showed a significant increase in sleep efficiency (p=.004), a marginal decrease in WASO (p=.054), and a trend toward decreased sleep onset latency (p=.11) between baseline and week 8 of the meditation treatment. Whole group PSG data showed no effect of group or occasion in any objectively measured sleep variable. However, when treatment groups were subdivided into individuals on or off antidepressant medication, then a significant interaction effect emerged. Medicated individuals in the MBCT condition (n=10) showed improvement on many indices of sleep disturbance, including decreases in awakenings (p=.005), arousals (p=.001), stage 1 minutes (p=.010) and stage 1 percent (p=.013), as well as an increase in REM minutes (p=.021) and percent (p=.010). Individuals in the MBCT condition who were not medicated showed the exact opposite pattern: an increase in awakenings (p=.072), arousals (p=.029) and stage 1 min (p=.037), but also showed patterns consistent with the suppression of REM hyperactivity. BDI scores decreased significantly from pre to post treatment in the MBCT group only, (p<.05), with no effect of medication on baseline or change in depressive symptoms. Changes in self-reported sleep efficiency predicted improvement in depression scores (r=-.66, p<.05) and are associated with meditation practice (p<.05). Conclusion: MBCT is associated with a sedating effect in medicated individuals and an arousing effect in non-medicated individuals. Possible mediators, such as monoamine changes, meditation practice, and baseline characteristics, will be discussed.   C7

157  The relationship of video game play to dreams and other related consciousness forms  Jayne Gackenbach <gackenbachj@macewan.ca> (Psychology and Sociology, Grant MacEwan College, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
    Psychologists have theorized that qualitative changes in cognition do not stop at the abstract verbal level, but development continues to higher stages of con¬sciousness. These nonverbal or nonlinear levels are thought to be characterized by spatial thinking, multimodal speeding of processing, and the integration of self and affect with cognition. Theorists suggest that exposure to appropriate amplifiers is necessary to move to the next higher level of consciousness. Both fact and fiction point to video games as one avenue that may provide us with relevant spatial-navigational experiences. These new media arrive on visual displays offering rich opportunities for perceptual engagement and spatial explo¬ration. The visions of virtual reality (VR) designers embrace notions of cognitive augmentation achieved via sensory amplification, and their advanced technology is designed to situate self within the visual display. Based upon two previous studies showing some relationship between experiences thought to be indicative of consciousness development, this study replicates and extends the previous work by Gackenbach and Preston. A survey was administered in classes at a Canadian college (short form) and online (long form). Participants were asked their video game playing history, dream experiences and selected questions from the self-transcendence subscale of the Temperment and Character Inventory which assessed mystical experience and absorption. These college students were tested in their sociology and psychology classes. The data was collected from

377 students using the classroom performance system (i.e., remote controls which register each students response in an electronic data base) in groups of 10 to 40 over one week in November of 2004. In terms of the short form of the questionnaire, it was hypothesized that frequent video game play would be associated with high lucid, observer and control dreaming, and high scores on the self-transcendence items. Factor analysis of all variables showed distinct factors for each variable type. Therefore, video game player groups were identified by four video game questions (frequency of play, length of play, age begun play, and number of types of games played). Three groups of players were identifed (high, medium and low/no players). As hypothesized, those who were high video game players were also more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams, and dream control when dream recall frequency and disorientation during play (i.e., nausea, headache, and dizziness) was controlled. However, contrary to hypothesis mystical experiences were significantly higher for the low video game play group with the high group second followed by the moderate group when controlled for absorption. Data collection for the longer online form gathered more detail about each of the groups of variables of interest. A ceiling effect was found such that the over 300 online respondents were significantly more sophisticated video game players thus there were no group differences for the dream and mystical variables of interest. When data was collapsed across administration form (face to face with remote control versus online questionnaire) bascially the same results were obtained.   C4

158  Freud's dream theory is misguided and misleading: It should be abandoned  J. Allan Hobson <allan_hobson@hms.harvard.edu> (Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA)
    Sigmund Freud was 50% right and 100% wrong! So is Mark Solms, but for different reasons. Freud was right to be interested in dreams and what dreaming could tell us about the human psyche, and especially its emotional aspects. But his dream theory is now obsolete, but its errors are still being promoted by such psychoanalysts as Mark Solms. Here is a checklist of Freudrian hypotheses and the corresponding alternatives offered by modern neurobiology. 1) Instigation of Dreaming Freud: Release of unconscious wishes Neurobiology: Brain activation in sleep 2) Characteristics of Dreaming a) Bizarreness: Freud: Disguise and censorship of unconscious wishes Neurobiology: Chaotic, bottom-up activation processes b) Strong Emotion: Freud: Can't explain that one! Neurobiology: Selective activation of limbic lobe c) Amnesia: Freud: Repression Neurobiology: Aminergic demodulation d) Hallucinations: Freud: Regression to the sensory side Neurobiology: Activation of REM's & PGO waverns e) Delusion, Loss of Self-Reflective Awareness: Freud: Ego dissolution Neurobiology: Selective deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex 3) Function of Dreaming Freud: Guardian of sleep Neurobiology: Epiphenomenon, but REM sleep essential to life via enhancement of thermoregulatory and immune functions. It looks like Freud was 100% wrong, why would we say he was 50% right? Because the cognitive bizareness is always emotionally salient, even if it is not diguised or sensored.  PL2

159  State-dependent thinking: A comparison of waking and dreaming thought  David Kahn, Allan Hobson <davidkahn01@earthlink.net> (psychiatry, harvard medical school, cambridge, ma, usa)
    A study of how thinking in dreams differs from thinking in the wake-state was undertaken. The study had 26 participants who submitted 178 dream reports. An affirmative probe methodology was employed in which participants were asked to report on their thinking during the dream. The participants were asked: “would your thinking when awake be the same as it was in the dream if the event that occurred in the dream occurred while awake? Please comment on how thinking differed, if it did?” They were also asked: “Would your thinking when awake be the same as your thinking in the dream regarding the occurrence of the event itself? Please comment on how thinking differed, if it did?” A statistically significant number more reported that cognition within a dream scenario was similar to what it would have been had they been awake. On the other hand, a statistically significant number more reported that, had they been awake, their thinking about the scenario would have been different. The study showed that thinking within a dream had two distinct components, one that was similar to wake-state cognition, and one that was very different: cognition within the hallucinated action was preserved but the knowledge that one is hallucinating the action was not present during dreaming. Recent analyses of the data have specified the kinds of hallucinated actions that repeatedly go unquestioned during dreaming. These will also be presented. It is suggested that our results are consistent with the functional imaging findings that there is a functional disengagement of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and the precuneus with other regions of the brain during REM-state dreaming.   C4

160  Dreams are not unpatterned: An argument for continuity between dream life and waking life  Stanley Krippner, Allan Combs <skrippner@saybrook.edu> (psychology, saybrook graduate school, san francisco, CA)
    Crick and Mitchison’s 1983 Nature article on REM sleep as a random brain process involved in off-line memory consolidation instantiated the view, already held by many psychologists and brain scientists, that dreams are meaningless. Indeed, this article came only a few years after Hobson and McCarley’s influential publication of the activation-synthesis hypothesis in 1977, arguing that dream experiences are efforts of the optic cortex to make sense of unpatterned PGO stimulation during REM sleep. Since then Hobson and his colleagues have continued to enlarge and develop their theory, but persist in the idea that dreams are essentially unstructured hallucinatory experiences resulting from unpatterned biological activity in the nervous system (e.g., Hobson, 2002). Contrary to the above, many investigations of dream reports support the conclusion that dream narratives are not unpatterned, but, in Alfred Adler’s (1938) terms, reflect a continuity with waking life. Such a continuity has been shown both for individuals (e.g., Winget, Kramer, & Whitman, 1972; Domhoff, 2003) and for cultures (e.g., D'Andrade, 1961; Prasad, 1982). Along with this, dream reports have been used to investigate cross-cultural differences (e.g., Heynick, 1993), as well as psychological differences between groups within cultures. For instance, developmental studies of dream content in the U.S. disclose more frequent appearances of animals in dreams of children than adults, but not in primary cultures where experiences with animals are common (Van de Castle, 1974). Gender differences have consistently emerged in the literature (e.g., Domhoff, 1996; Krippner & Weinhold, 2002; Soper, Rosenthal, & Milford, 1994), usually showing a higher incidence of aggression in dreams reported by men than by women, and differences in the ratios of male and female dream characters. Also consistent with Adler’s view and, incidentally, contrary to Freud’s wish-fulfillment hypothesis, an unusually low frequency of food consumption is reported in dreams within populations where food is scarce (Monroe, Nerlove, & Daniels, 1969). These and other aspects of dream content that distinguish specific dreaming populations are discussed in terms of the continuity hypothesis and the possibility that dreams are not unpatterned or random, but may serve psychological functions such as memory consolidation (e.g., Graves, Heller, Pack, & Abel, 2003), cognitive development (Foulkes, 1999), and social adjustment (McNamara, 2000, 2004).   C4

161  Do quantum brains dream of entangled sheep?  Joao Leao <jleao@cfa.harvard.edu> (CE, Harvard-Smithsonian Ctr. f/Astrophysics, Cambridge , Massachusetts)
    Much like the physics of the cosmos the science of Consciousness is dominated by its "dark side" comprising, in the latter case, the multifarious states of "consciousness in its absence" such as sleep and dreams, neurotic, psychotic, impaired and vegetative states, hypnotic, meditative, mystical and drug induced stasis. Among these dream experience enjoys perhaps the most strikingly ambiguous place after 100 years of theorization and empirical scrutiny in that the most contradictory opinions about remain viable and unresolved. Is dream content meaningful or merely physiological noise? Is dream function the consolidation of memories or their unlearning? Is dreaming an evolutionary trait or merely a metabolic epiphenomenon? Thus far the Quantum approach to Consciousness has not addressed the subject of dreaming but its strickingly "complementary" features suggest that quantum effects such as coherence, interference and entanglement may offer some systemic clues when not alternative interpretation for the abundant physiological data sets. In this work we sketch a possible approach to a Quantum Theory of Dreams which takes direct inspiration in the neural schematism introduced in Freud's "Project for a Scientific Psychology" to elaborate an analogue quantum network model displaying intrinsic non-computatinal features. Its purpose is not just to accomodate the polar attributions of the dream state but also to reproduce the scope of experiential space-time deformations which the dream state is known to induce in order to ellicit a time-less dream-cycle heuristic for the emergence of objectively conveyable mathematical archetypes. This emerges from entangled recurrences whose persistence beyond dreams and objective resilience is insured through socially and empirically reinforced abstractive conduct. The work aims thus to devise a cognitive basis for platonic intuition --- one of Penrose's recurrent thematics --- and to find out whether a continuist quantum approach may indeed fare better than any classical computational strategy in this respect. The answer is illuminated by some interesting references to a classic discussion between Wolfgang Pauli and C.G. Jung and to some recent speculations concerning the effacement of time in Quantum Gravity and other dreamed of final theories.   P2

162  Nightmares, PTSD and affect distress: A proposed neurocognitive model of nightmare production  Ross Levin, Tore Nielsen <rlevin@ymail.yu.edu> (Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York)
    While the past 10 years has seen a proliferation of brain imaging research in normative dream generation (e.g., Maquet et al., 2000. Hobson, Pace-Schott & Stickhold, 2000), little attempt has been made to understand the pathophysiological features of nightmares, negatively arousing emotional imagery produced during sleep which are often associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Harvey, Jones & Schmidt, 2003; Mellman, 1997; Pillar, Malhorta, & Lavie, (2000) and dissociative phenomena (Agargun et al., 2003a & b; Levin & Fireman, 2002; Watson, 2001). Nonetheless, a recent surge of research on the brain correlates of emotion, PTSD and normal human sleep provides a solid foundation for the neurocognitive modeling of nightmare formation. In this presentation, we propose a three part pathogenic model of nightmares that unites explanatory concepts at a neural level (i.e., a network of limbic and forebrain regions underlying emotion expression and representation), a cognitive level (i.e., a dream production system that transforms fear memory structures into nightmare imagery) and a personality level (i.e., situational and dispositional factors that influence processes at both the neural and cognitive levels). The role of elevated subjective waking emotional distress is emphasized as a primary causal mechanism in both traumatic and nontraumatic nightmares. We suggest that elevated waking emotional distress is most closely associated with the hyperarousal dimension of PTSD and sensitizes the individual to further dream disturbances by maintaining heightened activation of the fear memory networks most closely associated with the somatosensory encoding of the trauma and its attendant dysregulated affect. The repetitive content of these dreams further suggests that these memory networks are continuously primed for activation and are habitually scanned for threat under conditions of heightened emotional arousal (including limbic activation in REM sleep). We further propose that unlike idiopathic nightmares, the sensitizing process becomes so active in traumatic nightmares that it is somatized in the form of spillover from REM phase sleep, resulting in a greater incidence of Stage 2 episodes. Last, we suggest that each awakening from a traumatic nightmare reinforces the strength and subjective veracity of the underlying fear structure by functioning as a conditioned avoidance response which further hinders effective emotional processing of the dissociated trauma cues, resulting in increasing levels of waking emotional distress and more nightmares. Disruption of specific processes at these three levels can account for a variety of specific features commonly observed in nightmare imagery, (e.g., lack of emotional control, bizarre features, replay of traumatic memories). Furthermore, in emphasizing that nightmares reflect perturbations of a presumed fear extinction function of dreaming, the model unites normal dreaming with both traumatic and nontraumatic nightmares. In specifying additional situational and dispositional factors (affect load and affect distress respectively), the model is able to distinguish among nightmare subtypes, e.g., bad dreams vs. nightmares, low vs. high distress nontraumatic nightmares, traumatic vs. nontraumatic nightmares. Finally, in specifying neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation, such as amygdala involvement and affect distress, the model integrates emotional processes from the waking state with those of sleep.   P3

163  Differences in thought architecture of male and female dreamers  Kozmova MIloslava, Richard N. Wolman, Harvard Medical School <kozmova@hotmail.com> (Boston, MA)
    In the past, thinking in dreaming has been termed hallucinatory (Fosse, Stickgold, & Hobson, 2001); while in current research, the thinking within the dream is considered similar to waking thought with the exclusion of metacognition (Kahn & Hobson, 2005). Our previous research established that thoughts evoked during dreaming situations are rational. We define rational thought as “an intervening mental process between sensory perception and the creation of meaning, leading to a conclusion or to action taking” (Kozmová & Wolman, 2004). By delimiting dream narratives into thought unit (one unit represents “a coherent statement that analyzes, explain or elaborates the descriptive dreaming experience”) we were able to identify 7 main categories and varieties of subcategories of thought processes occurring in dreaming (Kozmová & Wolman, 2004). This report answers the question of whether there is a difference in the frequency of particular categories of rational thought as reported in the dreams of male and female dreamers. We hypothesized that there are specific distinctions in the prevalence of categories of rational thought processes between these two groups of dreamers and that these differences are observable through delimiting and scoring the written dreaming narratives. In the present study, the convenience sample of adult dreamers, who kept dream diaries for two consecutive weeks, consisted of a total of 14 participants. Seven male participants ranging in age from 28 to 57 years recalled a total of 62 dreams; seven female participants ranging in age from 26 to 44 years recalled a total of 75 dreams. From each dream journal we selected five dreams with a minimum of five thought units per dream for a total of at least 350 thought units for males and for females. Two individual judges blind to the hypothesis scored the delimited thought units. The judges were trained in scoring the thought units according to the Code Book of Rational Thought Processes. With the five dreams per dreamer, we created individual and group profiles based on the frequency of separate categories of rational thought processes. In order to control for the various length of the individuals’ dream reports, we calculated the percentages of the reported categories. The preliminary results indicate that there are group differences in the thought architecture of dreams. Male dreamers tend to use, in declining order, executive, reflective, and analytical memory-based thought. In contrast, female dreamers tend to use more analytical memory-based thought, affective, and executive thought. These initial results allow us to speculate that these differences might be correlated with personality characteristics or learning styles.  P9

164  The suppression and rebound of dream consciousness as critical factors in major depression  Rubin Naiman <rrnaiman@cox.net> (Program in Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Many aspects of modern lifestyles as well as healthcare result in the suppression of both REM/night dreaming and waking dream activity. Despite the fact that we are as dream deprived as we are sleep deprived, the field of sleep medicine generally subsumes dream consciousness under the rubric of sleep, largely disregarding the importance of REM/dreaming. This paper presents a new model for understanding the implications of damaged dream consciousness and the resulting dream deficiency for the etiology and treatment of depression. Depth psychology has long understood depression in terms of the metaphoric loss of one’s dreams. Likewise, cognitive-behavioral approaches emphasize the role of distorted cognitions about the future (personal dreams) as an element of the fundamental cognitive triad in explaining and treating depression. Substantial evidence from sleep and dream research has, furthermore, confirmed patterns of damaged dreaming associated with depression. These include reduced REM latency, increased REM density, and otherwise fragmented sleep patterns. Such changes in dreaming can be understood in terms of the rebound of suppressed or lost REM/dream consciousness. Beyond sleep difficulties, established diagnostic criteria for clinical depression include reduced interest in activities, social withdrawal, and compromised cognitive functioning. Additionally, in contrast to common belief, depressed individuals are actually more fatigued than they are sleepy. Viewed from the perspective of contemporary industrial culture, these symptoms pose a threat to the integrity of modern lifestyles because they essentially disable our extraversion and productivity. Consequently, they are treated aggressively with suppressive pharmacological therapies that reduce symptoms by further suppressing rebounding REM/dreams. In contrast, symptoms of depression can be understood from a functional perspective. Like a fever, rebounding REM/dream processes may have healing potential. When viewed positively, they function to introvert attention, drawing one away from the outer world and back to the dream. Compromised cognitive abilities are reminiscent of dream rebound symptoms seen in humans deprived of REM sleep. Fatigue may well be a low grade rebound of REM atonia, further inviting us back into the waking dream world. Depression can be reconceptualized as a psychological fever, reflecting the psyche’s attempt at self-healing through restoring lost dream consciousness. Implications for an alternative, “rest cure” approach to the treatment of depression are considered.   C4

165  The sleep substrate of dreaming  James Pagel <pueo34@earthlink.net> (Family Practice, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Pueblo, CO)
    This study was designed to determine which polysomnographic (PSG) sleep variables are associated with significant changes in patient reports of dream and nightmare recall frequency. Subjects were individuals undergoing full night polysomnography in an American Academy of Sleep Medicine accredited sleep laboratory: Age range (12-83), Gender ratio 142 female / 147 males. Interventions included analysis of intake and dream recall questionnaires and interpreted PSG data of patients referred to the sleep laboratory for clinical evaluation of sleep disorders. Data analyzed included: Sleep latency (SL); Total sleep time (TST); Sleep efficiency (SE); Wake after sleep onset (WASO); Arousal-wake index; REMS, Stage 1&2, and Stage 3&4 times; reported daytime sleepiness (Epworth); Apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), self reported insomnia, and Periodic limb movement index (PLMI). Statistical evaluation included analysis of the correaltion of these variables with the reported frequency of dream and nightmare recall as reported on a Likert scale varying from 1=never to 5=every night. This data was initially analyzed in a sub-grouping (N=110) that excluded all patients with obstructive sleep apnea (AHI >15), periodic limb-movement disorder (PLMI >15) and those using psychoactive medications. This analysis was then extended to the total group of patients evaluated in this study (N=289). Results: An associated decline in dream recall frequency was present at significant levels (p < 0.05) in at least one of the study groups for increased SL, decreased TST, decreased SE, increased WASO, increased Stage 1&2 minutes, and decreased REMS minutes. Different variables were noted to effect the reported frequency of nightmare compared to dream recall. For individuals with OSA (AHI > 15) dream recall was significantly higher for those individuals reporting insomnia. Conclusion: A decline in sleep quality as evaluated by polysomnography was associated with a decline in reported dream or nightmare recall frequency. Dream recall frequency was significantly lower when there was less time asleep, when sleep efficiency declined, when the time to sleep onset was prolonged, and when there was more time awake after sleep onset; as well as when REM sleep time was reduced. These findings suggest that a baseline quality of the sleep substrate is required for dreaming to occur that extends beyond the proposed REMS=Dreaming association.   C4

166  Con: Freud's dream theory is misguided and misleading - it should be abandoned  Mark Solms <paula.barkay@neuro-psa.org> (Neuropsychology, University of Cape Town, London, U.K.)
    Allan Hobson argued strongly from the 1970s onward that his research into the neural basis of dreaming disproved Freud’s dream theory. Since Hobson’s findings have themselves been brought into serious doubt by subsequent research, it is only fair that we now re-assess Freud’s theory in the light of the newer findings. In this debate, I shall demonstrate in relation to the points enumerated by Hobson that (1) his account of the neurobiology of dreaming is out of date, (2) that he misunderstands crucial aspects of Freud’s theory, (3) that much of his criticism of that theory is therefore unfounded, and (4) that some aspects of Freud’s theory are, of course, also wrong. Hopefully it will be possible in this debate to replace all the hubris and polemic with reasonable, evidence-based argument.   PL2

@H2 = [03.11]  Cognitive development

167  Wisdom: Are we close to agreement?  Tyler Lonczak <Lonczakt@yahoo.com> (Castleton, VT)
    In the last decade there has been a renewed interest in the psychological study of wisdom (Baltes and Staudinger, 2000). In many ways the Berlin Paradigm is leading research due to its experimentally testable paradigm of wisdom (Baltes and Kunzmann, 2004). According to the Berlin Paradigm wisdom is an expert system dealing with the meaning and conduct of life and is made up of five criteria. The purpose of the study was to attempt to provide a method of rating wisdom using untrained raters. 76 undergraduates participated in this study. Untrained raters were given the same life problem and randomly assigned one of three responses (low, medium, or, high on all five criteria). After untrained raters assessed the response using a 23-question assessment with a 1-13 likert scale. An overall form × average score interaction suggested a difference between the three forms, F (2, 75) = 7.549, p = .001, prep = .99. Post Hoc analyses using Tukey HSD found significant mean differences between forms A and B (M = -1.32774, p = .009, prep = .96), and between forms A and C (M = -1.36931, p = .003, prep = .98). No significant main differences between form B and form C was found (M = -.04157, p = .995, prep = .03) for overall scores.   P3

@H2 = [03.12]  Artificial intelligence & robotics

168  A robotic program that produces concepts and introspection  Iwama Kenzo <iwama@whatisthis.co.jp> (z_a corp., Hirakata, Osaka, Japan)
    An instance of a concept shows its sequence when it appears or behaves. For example, an instance of counting usually starts with “how many X”, and ends with “5 X”. Here “X” is the name of an object X, and “5” is the number of objects X. This presentation firstly describes a definition of acquiring a concept by a robot. Suppose that a human has given instances of the concept to the robot. But the human has not given an instance Ip to the robot. If the human gives the robot the beginning part of the instance Ip and if the robot finishes the rest, then one can say the robot has acquired the concept. For example, suppose the human has guided the robot to move objects one by one while the human has input words “how many X” followed by words “1”, “2”, and up to the number of the objects. And suppose the human has used various objects X. Suppose further the human has not guided the robot to count bamboo sticks but the human has guided the robot to move sticks with words like "pick sticks". Then one can say the robot has understood the concept of counting objects if the robot outputs the number of the sticks in front of the robot after the human gives the robot words “how many sticks”. The presentation argues that the robot begins introspection when the robot makes actions after it has acquired concepts defined as above. Suppose a human gives the robot a beginning part of an instance new to the robot, and the robot finishes the rest. Then the robot must do the following to decide what to do the next: representing in its program the part the robot has already done, and seeing the representation until the robot decides it has finished the instance. In the case of counting, the robot must represent which it has already counted and decide which it is going to count until the robot confirms it has counted the all. The representation includes robotic actions, and the robotic actions are parts of the self. Therefore the robot sees the representation of the parts of the self; in other words, the robot begins introspection. The presentation then explains how our robotic program acquires concepts such as counting objects, repeating a given number of actions, adding of two natural numbers, and answering questions like "what are you doing". The program has an initial program and component programs. The initial program roughly conducts the following to generate programs; (1) It forms assemblies of component programs and sequences of assemblies as the program gets inputs, and keeps them in its memory. In the case of counting, the initial program forms a sequence to count particular objects. (2) It generalizes sequences of assembled components, extracts relations among the components, and stores them in its memory. (3) It extracts generalized sequences of assembled components from its memory, and makes them match a new input (a new instance) by merging the generalized sequences of assembled components in such a way that merged components satisfy the relations extracted at step (2).   P3

@H2 = [03.13]  Neural networks and connectionism

169  A neural network theory of the development of rules for conduct  Daniel Levine <levine@uta.edu> (Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX)
    A set of interconnected neural network theories are presented that describe (1) how individuals develop rules for what actions to perform or not to perform; (2) how the content of such rules might be affected by cultural influences as well as by interpersonal interactions including psychotherapy; and (3) how the rules might develop within the individual's lifetime. A mathematical theory, on which research is in progress, is developed that indicates what types of rules might correspond to optimal attractors (global minima of a system function) versus nonoptimal attractors (local minima). This framework includes interconnected rules for systems involving the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and limbic system that are involved in self-directed, cooperative, and self-transcendent aspects of personality. Clinical observations by Cloninger and Maslow, and the Spinozist philosophy of Atlan, are also fit into this framework. Implications are discussed for how to structure psychotherapy and other interventions in an individual's life in order to maximize the likelihood s/he will move toward developing rules compatible with an optimal attractor, which is derived by various names (creativity; self-actualization; subjective freedom).  C18

@H2 = [03.14]  Cognitive architectures

170  Implications of the embodied cognition paradigm for the study of consciousness  Andrew Bailey <abailey@uoguelph.ca> (Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada)
    This paper looks at the recent wave of interest within cognitive science in the paradigm variously called ‘embodied,’ ‘extended,’ ‘situated’ or ‘distributed’ cognition, and investigates the significance of those ideas for the study of phenomenal consciousness. Although ideas applied in the embodied cognition research program can be traced back to the works of Heidegger, Piaget, Vygotsky, Merleau-Ponty, and Dewey, the current thesis can be seen as a direct response and, in some cases, a proposed alternative to the cognitivist/classicist view of the mind, which can be defined as a rule-based, information-processing model of cognition that 1) characterizes problem-solving in terms of inputs and outputs, 2) assumes the existence of symbolic, encoded representations which enable the system to devise a solution by means of computation, and 3) maintains that cognition can be understood by focusing primarily on an organism’s internal cognitive processes (i.e., specifically those involving computation and representation). Work in embodied cognition, by contrast, asserts that cognition arises from—or perhaps is enacted by—real-time, goal-oriented bodily interactions with the world. From this point of view, the manner in which organisms are embodied constrains and perhaps determines their cognition; cognition is situated and possibly off-loaded onto the environment; and it may be that off-line cognition, such as dreaming or metaphysical musing, is also body-based. After attempting to discern and fractionate the various themes that make up this movement, this paper discusses the extent to which embodied cognition constitutes a challenge to currently prominent approaches to the study of phenomenal consciousness, including intentionalism, higher-order theories, cognitivist theories (such as workspace theory), and naturalistic dualism. My main thesis is that different components of the embodied cognition paradigm are more plausible than others, and that there is an inverse relation between the degree to which they challenge common assumptions about consciousness and their independent plausibility.   P3

171  NeuroPrint: Revealing the mysteries of consciousness via "mind imaging" of cognitive architecture  Mark Evan Furman <neuroprint@yahoo.com> (independent, Corona de Tucson, AZ)
    NeuroPrint is a mind-imaging methodology originally designed as a research tool to explore human conscious and unconscious processes and their behavioral manifestations. The 10-step NeuroPrint methodology yields a unique "cognitive fingerprint" of the dynamical cognitive architecture of the human mind elucidating some of the mysteries of conscious subjective experience and its affect on behavior. NeuroPrint reveals the hidden relationships between conscious and unconscious behaviors, emotions, thoughts and the stimulus fields that organize those relationships. With this modeling technology we are able to look at conscious awareness in a new and resourceful way: as a window that gives us access to understand, and methodically influence, unconscious processes in order to explore the nature of disorder and to enhance quality of life. As we reveal the hidden linkages between unconscious behaviors, emotions, thoughts and changing stimulus fields we begin to understand how brain and mind "makes meaning" and presents it to conscious awareness. Why Explore Consciousness Through Mind Imaging? 1. To Make Unconscious Processes Available to Conscious Awareness 2. To Understand How Brain and Mind "Makes Meaning" via the Linkages of Elements Available to Subjective Experience 3. To Understand How Cognitive Architecture and Dynamical Processes Influence Perceptions, Decisions and Behavior 4. To Be Able to Predict the Probability of a Behavioral Outcome Based on the Unique Dynamical Linkage and Relative Stability of Various Cognitive Structures 5. To Clearly Elucidate the State-Dependent Nature of Learnings, Memories, Behaviors and Decisions and How This State-Dependency Effects the Structure and Function of Consciousness   P2

172  Toward a network model of the mind  Fred Kocks <fkocks@starband.net> (Materials Science and technology, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Placerville, CO)
    I use the word ‘Mind’ as an English synonym of Latin mens – and ‘mental’ as its adjective. It is asserted that the age-old philosophers’ Mind/Body problem' persists even though it has become a Mind/Brain problem: the two are not identical, and the important mapping task cannot succeed unless there is a model for the Mind (the abstract thing)†, complementing the advanced knowledge that neurology has produced about the Brain (the physical thing). Such a model will be presented for three essential aspects of the Mind: (long-term) Memory, Understanding, and the Psyche. Each of these is described in terms of a Network: a theoretical construct (rather than a claim about the structure of neuron ensembles), which replaces one-dimensional – even unidirectional – notions such as causality. It is hoped that collaboration with an expert in mathematical Network Theory will lead to the incorporation of quantitative assertions into what is so far a visual presentation: items of Knowledge are connected by links of Understanding. The structural aspects emphasized here are multi-dimensionality and robustness, including stability when not all links are established. So far as I can see, there has been no Model of the Mind on the table; the connections to Artificial Intelligence seem tenuous at best; for example, the ability to set problems (and not only to solve them), so essential for human intellectual activity, is denied all computer-based calculation even by mathematicians like Roger Penrose. Hopefully, an equivalence to the Statistical Dynamics of Neuron Ensembles proposed by Walter Freeman might eventually be established. ______________ *Retired Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory (www.lanl.gov/kocks); fkocks@starband.net; P.O. Box 89, Placerville, CO 81430. † While ‘Consciousness’ is an essential aspect of mental processes (not here addressed), it seems problematical to use this term as another synonym for (the entire) Mind.  P3

173  On the concept of post synaptic current tunneling towards modeling the thought process  Venkateswaran Nagarajan, Karthik Srinivasan, Research Trainee, WAran Research Foundation(WARFT), Chennai , India, sambasivant@warftindia.org <waran@warftindia.org> (Research, WAran Research FoundaTion(WARFT), Chennai, TamilNadu, India)
    Cognitive models are proposed based on a plethora of psychological experiments to analyze the functional aspects of the cognitive process. These works are mostly invasive, and range from reinforcement learning to forced learning to unsupervised learning. A key element that is lacking in such models is that they tend to model the functionality of the system, without giving much heed to the neurobiology of the cognitive process. Necessity drives us to derive from first principle the biological basis of the thought process, employing a simulation model and its unification across the associated senses. We provide a framework, one that gets to model the neurobiological basis and the computational structures behind the process of thought origination. The first principle, we here refer to the generation of biologically realistic neuronal interconnectivity and the associated synapse organization of the respective cortices. Hence we propose the notion of a biologically realistic thought process, addressed within the framework of the biologically realistic neuronal interconnection network that we are modeling. The most novel aspect of the entire model is that it is non-invasive and modeling the biological process provides a unified approach to correlate experimental results and computational models with BOLD-fMRI. Thoughts tend to originate from the input stimuli provided by the five senses and their associative memories (LTP, STP). Such an assumption is strengthened from fMRI experiments that reveal that whenever we are in an attentional learning like, say thinking of words, the regions corresponding to the visual and auditory cortices of words are also active. This comprehensive, real and unbiased experiment provides us the rudimentary concept that a new synaptic organization is generated when there is associated activity in the synaptic organization of different spheres of sensory recognition. With this basis of notions strongly considered, we reverse engineer from the fMRI experiments to the computational and biological aspects of addressing the what, how and why of thought process. We are developing two biophysical simulation models, ThoughtGraph and ThoughtOrg in this regard. ThoughtGraph models the biological process underlying thought generation, which tends to be random and stray. This model reflects the general nature of how we always keep thinking. The ThoughtOrg is more specific wherein it addresses not only biological process, also the biological mechanism responsible for the evolution of organized thinking. We introduce the concept of post synaptic current tunneling in evolving the biophysical simulation model for the ThoughtGraph and the ThoughtOrg. It is shown, that there is a finite threshold probability for this tunneling current to trigger a regenerative neuronal spiking process in the nearest neighborhood or elsewhere leading to excitation of another set of thought processes. We are now developing the simulator system for Multi-Million Neuron Interconnectivity Prediction for the cortices. Both the models ThoughtOrg and ThoughtGraph are built over this interconnect framework. The outcome of the simulations of these models will enable us to understand the natural phenomena implicit in thought origination. We are also simultaneously evolving models to link such networks with the BOLD fMRI of the brain regions. .   P10

174  The integrated self-aware cognitive architecture project  Alexei Samsonovich, Kenneth A. De Jong; Giorgio A. Ascoli <asamsono@gmu.edu> (Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia)
    The challenge addressed by this research project is to design a new, hybrid cognitive architecture that will possess key features of human cognition including the capability of autonomous cognitive growth, the basic kinds of human memory, and social, communicational and emotional capabilities. Our approach is based on a cognitive architecture that integrates symbolic and connectionist components from the outset. This integration is achieved through the blending and interaction of innovative concepts in both the symbolic and connectionist components. On the symbolic side the key innovative elements are: 1) a unique, central notion of self, and 2) a consistent and formal representation system based on the general notion of a schema. On the connectionist side the key innovative elements are: 1) neuromorphic cognitive maps that provide for associative indexing of symbolic memories and path-finding in modeled cognitive spaces, and 2) a functional mapping of the cognitive components onto brain structures that would, in principle, allow future elaboration to the level of neurons. The notion of Self plays a central role in this project and is defined in a unique way: as an imaginary abstraction (rather than the cognitive system per se). This abstraction is implemented via a set of axioms corresponding to fundamental beliefs that an agent holds about its own Self and via an emergent lattice of mental states representing multiple instances of the Self. The underlying schema-based representation formalism generalizes the principles underlying state-of-the-art cognitive architectures, including Soar, Act-R and Epic, raising them to a meta-level. The formalism is specifically designed to enable cognitive growth capabilities and to allow for indexing, retrieval, and organization by the connectionist components. The project further defines three neuromorphic cognitive maps: 1) a contextual map for handling episodic memories, 2) a conceptual map for handling semantic memories, and 3) a separate map for emotional memories that may involve episodes as well as semantic knowledge. These maps collectively provide for associative indexing and retrieval of stored memories, dynamic cognitive growth, and the path-finding in memory space necessary for contextual reinstatement, strategic free recall and episodic-to-semantic conversions. It is possible to specify a functional mapping of these cognitive components onto brain structures. In particular, such mapping would cover the brain's major functional areas associated with the limbic, medial temporal and frontal lobes, including but not limited to the hippocampal complex, the nuclei of the amygdala and the hypothalamus. The four key elements of the integrated architecture (self, schema, cognitive and functional mapping) are grounded in the current state of the art of cognitive psychology, cognitive and computational neuroscience, and cognitive modeling in artificial intelligence.  C18

175  Consciousness and adaptive behavior  Richard Sieb <siebr@shaw.ca> (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
    Human beings can interact with (adapt to) their changing environment in an enormously successful way. This is very important for survival and we have evolved various abilities to accomplish this. The most important of these is consciousness and the creation of voluntary new or novel intentional actions (adaptive behavior). Such actions allow us to respond in a rapid, versatile, and purposeful manner to changes in our environment. These actions are voluntary (made by choice, free will; that is, they are not predetermined by other forces ), new or novel (they are created anew, not learned or programmed in some way), and are always directed towards some goal (intentional). Voluntary new or novel intentional actions may include skeletal muscular movements (going to a store, playing a game, etc.), ocular movements (scanning a crime scene, etc.), speech (talking to a friend, etc.), thoughts (thinking about something read, etc.), and emotional reactions (an angry reaction, etc.). These are all new or novel responses created as the situation demands. They may include single responses or extended sequences of responses. Such actions are created from perception. Perception arises from our current sensory input and previous experience (memory). One interesting thing about voluntary new or novel intentional actions is that they always involve consciousness. Actions we perform that do not involve consciousness (reflexes, programmed and learned movements) are not created anew each time. Learned movements involve consciousness before they are learned (they are voluntary new or novel intentional actions before they are learned). Voluntary new or novel intentional actions are always composed according to the subject's particular point of view or perspective at the time. This subjectivity (phenomenology) is known as consciousness. It appears to arise from perception during the preparation (premotor areas) to make an action and appears to determine the specific action produced. Research indicates that the prefrontal cortex mediates (plans) the ongoing production of voluntary new or novel intentional actions through the operation of three cognitive processes: active short term memory, motor set (preparation and readiness for action), and the inhibition of excess activity. Active short term memory maintains elements of perception over a period so that they are available for the production of action. Perception is thus made explicit (stabilized and made available to other structures so that it can produce action). Active short term memory therefore might be said to be a point of view or perspective (consciousness) created for the production of action (voluntary new or novel intentional action). Hence active short term memory might be the basis of consciousness. Evidence indicates it may be formed from perception by a nonlinear emergent mechanism involving positive feedback and inhibition. This mechanism is a basic physical mechanism for nonlinear emergence which is responsible for a great many natural phenomena (candle flames, waves, social groups, businesses, etc.) and occurs throughout the brain. The foregoing suggests that consciousness is natural, material, and functional (it can be scientifically explained, is physical, and has evolved for the production of voluntary new or novel intentional action).   P9

@H2 = [03.15]  Ethology

176  Being conscious of animal pleasure: An ethical perspective  Jonathan Balcombe <jbalcombe@pcrm.org> (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington, DC)
    As science progressively awakens to the cognitive and emotional capacities of other species, it becomes apparent just how negligent we have been of their potential for positive experience. Animal pain is now widely acknowledged in neuroscientific and behavioural discourse; meanwhile, the question of animal consciousness remains stubbornly controversial. Against this backdrop, the nascent study of animal pleasure is emerging as an exciting new field of investigation.1 Just as evolution favors pain as punishment for dangerous or maladaptive behaviours, evidence is mounting that so, too, have good feelings evolved to reward behaviours that encourage survival and procreation. My argument for animal pleasure combines behaviour, physiology, neurochemistry, evolution, and a pinch of human empathy. Imaging studies are showing that humans and other mammals (at least) show homologous brain structure and neurochemical activity associated with comparable emotion-inducing events. Laboratory preference studies show that mice favor social company (even that of dominant individuals) to isolation, that rats run faster to be tickled than merely to be petted, and that iguanas will venture into the cold to get a gourmet tidbit based on the relative palatability of the treat. I also contend that a dogged adherence to ultimate/evolutionary contexts for the interpretation of animal behaviour robs us of insights we may gain by viewing individual animals as autonomous beings who, like us, make decisions on the basis of proximate experience. When golden hamsters showed preference for novel foods following several days pre-exposure to a single food, the investigators offered only ultimate hypotheses to explain the behavior: 1) avoiding over-dependence on a potentially short-lived food source, and 2) aversion to the risk of developing a micronutrient deficiency. We know that hamsters do not consult nutrition charts, but they likely do grow tired of powdered commercial chow and, given the chance, go for variety and palatability. It should be noted that ultimate and proximate explanations are compatible. Animals’ capacity for pain and suffering has clear ethical and legal implications in our treatment of them. To the degree that we recognize animal emotions, including pleasurable experiences and a quality-of-life potential, we may conclude that our moral obligations to them are enhanced. We may have no obligation to provide pleasure to another, but actively depriving them the opportunity to fulfil natural pleasures—as we may do when we cage or kill them—is another matter. 1Balcombe J. in press. Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good. London: Macmillan [May 2006]   C11

@H2 = [03.16]  Self-consciousness and metacognition

177  The strength of the weak: An alternative to a global theater of the mind  Karen Gilbert <wandsqueen@aol.com> (New York, NY)
    I conceptualize a notion of affect (1) as a mode of being that allows for the correlation of physical systems of perceiving and attending. Studies of self-correcting systems of task distribution in dynamic situations of parallel processing (2) offer an alternative to the metaphor of the front-stage and backstage of a theatre. But what makes this mechanism suitable for a self-conscious entity? The role of weak estimators in the stochastic mapping problem led me to think of the strength of the weak (2). “Weak,” in this context means not “strongly” (i.e., deterministically) correlated. In order to simulate a dynamic situation (one that changes over time) weak estimators introduce a degree of uncertainty into the program for learning automata. I therefore intend to investigate areas of uncertainty and/or ambiguity—the liminal, the littoral, and the cumulative indirect. Horn and Oommen’s report on the use of weak estimates to teach learning automata (6) deals with this issue. I propose to consider it in terms of sentient consciousness. Briefly, the program or person who needs to learn applies trial and error under a system of probabilistic rewards and penalties—i.e., the reward or penalty for a correct or incorrect choice is applied according to a degree of statistical probability, not deterministically consistently. This approach proved most efficacious in teaching the program to make best-guess choices in a quasi-predictable environment. Which is why I think it will also prove so for a person in real life. Fisher’s model of Information (3) posits an information economy, where what is known must be considered along with what is done. How does one know how much attention to give to each aspect in a multi-tasked environment? Things are subliminally noticed that don’t register in the consciousness scan, but are filed away without being noticed and are retrievable as needed in a different context. As we scan our preconscious attention configuration space things are attended to more or less deeply—attention can be modeled as “wells” or “sinks” of different depths in an energy landscape. Transitions between conscious of one thing and another happen with greater or lesser ease—concentration has degrees of fragility (4). In these measures of depth of attention and ease of transition I look for weak elements that make a difference. (1) Karen W. Gilbert (2005) “Affect as a Mode of Cyborg Communication,” Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Cybernetics and Information Technologies, Systems and Applications. (2) Geir Horn, John Oommen (2005) “Generalized Pursuit Learning Automata for Non-Stationary Environments Applied to the Stochastic Static Mapping Problem,” Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Cybernetics and Information Technologies, Systems and Applications (3) B. Roy Frieden (2004) “Fisher Information, a New Paradigm for Science: Introduction, uncertainty principles, wave equations, ideas of Escher, Kant, Plato and Wheeler,” http://www.optics.arizona.edu/Frieden/fisher_information.html (4) Salvatore Maguzu, Ersilia Bellocco (2005) “Fragility and Complexity: Experiments and Simulation,” Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Cybernetics and Information Technologies, Systems and Applications  P9

178  Loss of awareness in Alzheimer's disease (AD): Insight and legal liabilities in the United States  Charles Licata, M de Leonni-Stanonik, PhD; JC Aquino; A Konz; JD Dougherty Jr., MD <clicata@utk.edu> (Cole Neuroscience Center, Univeristy of Tennessee Medical Center, Knoxville, Tn)
    Background: Clinicians and researchers have commonly observed deficits in awareness in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The most frequently noted deficits involve a patient’s inability to recognize their own cognitive limitations. This abnormality of awareness in AD is referred to as anosognosia. In clinical practice, one of the greatest concerns is that of the Alzheimer’s patient who still believes they are capable of driving when it is clear that their dementia has caused a considerable deterioration in their driving skills. These patients have become a danger to both themselves and others, but have little or no realization of their limitation due to anosognosia. Such situations place not only the patient, but the caregiver and the patient’s estate at legal risk if an accident occurs resulting in injury. This has been shown in two instrumental legal cases: McCall v. Wilder (913 S.W.2d 150 (Tenn. 1995)) and Creasy v. Rusk (730 N.E.2d 659 (Ind. 2000)). The first case demonstrates that the estate of an individual can be held liable for the actions of an individual who is not capable of understanding the results of their actions, while the second discusses the potential legal liability of a caregiver when an action of an individual with dementia causes injury to others. Objective: In the following preliminary study the Cole Anosognosia Scale for Alzheimer’s disease (CAS-AD) is used to explore the insight patient’s have towards their personal driving skills. The relationship between these two factors is important in clinical practice since it is often difficult to make both the patient and caregiver understand why some individuals with dementia should not be allowed to drive. Identifying those patient’s with anosognosia helps to make it easier for the clinician to advise caregiver’s, as well as to make them understand the importance of limiting certain patient activities such as driving. Methods: 37 Mild to Moderate AD patients and their caregivers participated in the study. The CAS-AD, Clock Drawing Task, and Trail Making Task-Part B were used for the study. The 8-point Clock Drawing Task and Trail Making Task-Part B task has been shown to correlate with safe driving skills. The subjects were divided into two groups: those with anosognosia (n=16) and those without (n=21). A statistical analysis was performed to determine if there was a significant difference between patients with and without anosognosia in regards Clock Drawing scores and the time it took them to complete the Trail Making Task. Results: The scores on the Clock Drawing Task was significantly lower in anosognosia subjects then in non-anosognosia subjects (?=.05, p=0.024), as well as the significantly higher completion time on the Trail Making Task for anosognosia subjects when compared to non-anosognosia subjects (?=.05, t=, p=0.019). Conclusion: The study demonstrated the importance of being able to identify in the clinical setting an AD patient with anosognosia. Furthermore, the CAS-AD has the potential of being an effective clinical tool in convincing a caregiver of the need to restrict patient driving and other potentially harmful behaviors.   P3

179  Good stories reduce the stressful entropy of traumatic experiences  Raymond A. Mar, Jordan B. Peterson <raymond@psych.utoronto.ca> (Department of Psychology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
    The world is a complex array of information. We represent this array in a fundamentally low-resolution manner, subjectively designating its elements as either variables or constants, in relation to our current desires and goals. Subsets of the array are treated as constants. Constants have zero personal relevance from a phenomenological/functionalist perspective, and do not contribute to the entropy of the overall person/world/goal system. Within such a system, entropy is directly related to the amount of information/work required to transform the initial state to the desired state. This means that ill-defined pathways to desired goals are high-entropy pathways, either because they are complex and require much information or energy to enact, or because they are rife with uncertainty. The most fundamental existential problems, regardless of scale, are thus appropriately construed as navigational. Motivated creatures are constantly modeling movement from one state to a more desired state, using perceptual and cognitive maps devoted to that end. The amount of entropy in a given system/situation is therefore subjectively defined, as a function of the actor’s knowledge and goals. Narratives describe goal-directed actions in the world, and mirror human experience. Good narratives contain only elements that have a direct causal-temporal relevance to the goals of the protagonist. In consequence, good stories are low-entropy solutions – both elegant and coherent – to potentially complex navigation problems. Sometimes a phenomenon held to be constant for pragmatic purposes in representation is revealed by experience to be a variable. This revelation adds unexpected entropy to the person/world/goal system. When the constant so transformed is fundamental (when it is a precondition for operation in many situations), then the transformation is experienced as traumatic. A fundamental constant might be “The world is a safe place” or “my physical/mental self is predictable and reliable.” Treatment of a traumatic experience involves the post-hoc creation of a coherent and integrated narrative of the event. A good representation of a traumatic event pares the description of that event down to an absolute functional minimum, focusing attention on all events that are causally relevant, and eradicating from consideration those that are not. This “good story” reduces the entropy of the traumatic event, by integrating it back into a functional, low-entropy person/world/goal system. Integrating the information contained in the traumatic event allows for the functional reformulation of basic axioms (constants). “The world is a safe place,” violated, becomes “the world is not always a safe place, but when it is unsafe I can still cope.” “My self is predictable” becomes “my physical and mental self may vary, but I have the proper support to bring them back into a familiar state when necessary.” The reduction of uncertainty associated with the narrative update process reduces felt anxiety and psychophysiological stress. It is the cascade of beneficial psychological and physiological processes accompanying this reduction in anxiety and stress that accounts for the well-documented health benefits and increases in productivity attendant upon the construction of coherent self-relevant stories.   P9

180  Levels of consciousness: Recent proposals  Alain Morin <amorin@mtroyal.ca> (Behavioral Sciences, Mount Royal College, Calgary, Alberta, Canada)
    Quite a few recent models are rapidly introducing new concepts describing different levels of consciousness. This situation is getting confusing because some theorists formulate their models without making reference to existing views, redundantly adding complexity to an already difficult problem. I present and compare some current models to highlight points of convergence and divergence. More specifically, (1) I show how various forms of consciousness position themselves in relation to the "social/personality" model of levels of consciousness, and (2) I present a table summarizing levels, definitions, and related concepts of consciousness. I conclude that some novel concepts (e.g., core, extended, recursive, minimal consciousness) are useful in helping us distinguish between delicate variations in self-awareness.  P9

181  Understanding the neural correlates of self-awareness through diffusion tensor imaging of anosognosia in Alzheimer’s disease  Christopher Nicholas, John H. Dougherty, Yongxia Zhou, Charles Licata, Autumn Konz, Julia Aquino, Mateja de Leonni-Stanonik, Gary Smith, Kent Hutson, and Michael R. Nash <cnichol9@utk.edu> (Cole Neuroscience Center and Psychology Dept., University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN)
    Anosognosia is defined as the inability to recognize the state of illness in one's own self. In Alzheimer's disease (AD) it is usually manifested as an unawareness of cognitive deficits. Studies show that AD patients with anosognosia have significantly greater deficits in frontal lobe function on neuropsychological tests (Gil, 2001; Heilman, Barret & Adair, 1998; Heilman, 1997). In addition, recent authors have suggested that anosognosia in AD represents an impairment of self-referential processing or self-awareness (Salmon et al., 2005). Our recent fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) study compared early AD patients with anosognosia to AD patients without anosognosia on the counting stroop test. We found an abnormal decrease in glucose utilization within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in AD patients with anosognosia (de Leonni-Stanonik, Licata, & Dougherty, 2005). Furthermore, a recent study completed in our laboratory suggests that on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) there is disrupted connectivity (fiber loss) between the hippocampus and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) in early AD as compared to normal controls (Zhou, Dougherty, Smith, & Hutson, 2005). Since the involvement of reciprocal connections between the PCC and the ACC (Greicius, Krasnow, Reiss, & Menon, 2003) are a possible constituent of a self-awareness network (Northoff & Bermpol, 2004), there may be a disruption of these critical pathways in AD patients with anosognosia. DTI studies are planned in our laboratory to evaluate this self-awareness network by measuring the connectivity between the PCC and the ACC in AD patients with and without anosognosia. Abnormalities of awareness in Alzheimer's disease may offer important insights into the nature of self-awareness in nonpathologic states.   P3

182  Do judgments of learning (JOLs) tap future mental states?  James Van Overschelde <jimvano@psyc.umd.edu> (Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD)
    Judgments of learning (JOLs) are defined as judgments that “occur during or after acquisition and are predictions about future test performance on recently studied items” (Nelson & Narens, 1994, p. 16). Much research has focused on the accuracy of these judgments and the kinds of information used to generate them. One prior experiment (Koriat, 1997) reported that item-specific, post-test feedback affected the magnitude of the JOLs even though the JOLs were generated before the feedback was given to participants. To eliminate numerous potential confounds in this prior experiment, three new experiments are reported in which item-specific, post-test feedback was given unexpectedly. Furthermore, in two of these experiments, the computer determined randomly and after all JOLs were generated which participants would receive post-test feedback. In spite of these precautions, a significant negative effect of post-test feedback on the magnitude of the JOLs was observed in all three experiments. The results of these experiments imply that JOLs tap information about future mental states and further research on this topic is warranted.  C17

@H2 = [03.17]  Temporal consciousness

183  How long is a piece of time? - Phenomenal time and quantum coherence - towards a solution.  Christopher Davia <c.j.davia@sussex.ac.uk> (Informatics, University of Sussex at Brighton - UK, Brighton, East Sussex, UK)
    Time is intimately embedded in the way that we experience the world around us. Indeed, our temporal experience of the world seems so natural that we assume that this aspect of our conscious lives conveys something of the true nature of the world that we observe - that the events in the world really do unfold in a temporally ordered and continuous way. However, deeper reflection combined with our understanding of the physics of the universe reveals a problem of subtle complexity that seems to confound any classical approach at a solution. Part of the problem lies in the fundamental assumptions we make when attempting to find the physical basis for phenomenal time. It seems quite natural (if not inevitable) that we should begin to address this problem within the context of a causal relationship between the brain and external stimuli such that temporarily structured events that are observed lead to correspondingly temporally structured neural events. Such an approach assumes that within the context of this classical and causal relationship the answer to the question of phenomenal may be found. Unfortunately, such approaches lead to vicious circularities. My presentation will explore the question of phenomenal time by considering our experience of pure tones of sound (sine waves). Why do we experience a particular sine wave stimulus as a particular tone rather than a semitone higher or lower? Can our experience of sound waves lead to a greater insight into what it means to experience time? This analysis leads to an interesting proposition – that temporally structured stimuli may give rise to neural states that are invariant with respect to time. The invariance suggested is not trivial. To illustrate what is meant by invariance in this instance, imagine that we were able to film the brain state that was the neural correlate of someone’s experience of a pure tone. If we were to subsequently show the film of this brain sate at different speeds, then, although the stimulus would appear to increase or decrease in frequency accordingly, the brain state would nevertheless appear to be completely unchanged! Is such a state possible? Although contentious, there is a growing group of researchers who are pointing to the possibility that macroscopic quantum states may be implicated in the phenomenon of consciousness. My own research points to macroscopic coherent states in the form of solitons similar to Bose-Einstein condensates. A Bose-Einstein condensate in the form of a soliton exhibits precisely the type of invariance proposed. Following on from this, I will explore the question – ‘What does it mean to experience time?’ given that the neural correlate of consciousness is to be identified with such temporally invariant coherent states. REFERENCES Davia, C. J. (in press). Life, catalysis and excitable media: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Metabolism and Cognition. In J. Tuszynski (Ed.) The Emerging Physics of Consciousness. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag. pp. 229-260. Le Poidevin, Robin, "The Experience and Perception of Time", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).   C21

184  Time-patterns in behavior as signs of the organization of neural activity leading to conscious thought: examples from schizophrenic, anxiety disorder and normal subjects.  Melvin Lyon, Beth Zelonis; Maggie Ney <mellyon@earthlink.net> (Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Santa Monica, CA)
    Objective measures of how individuals become conscious of their own behavior in problem-solving have been elusive. However, Magnusson's (2000) THEME method demonstrates that response time-patterns (TPs) on a problem-solving task result in the growth of highly structured relationships between behavioral events. These TP structures are predicted to become increasingly more organized and complex, and closer to consciousness during attempts to achieve maximally efficient reinforcement 'strategy', even with inherently insoluble problems. A two-choice task, pseudorandomly reinforced with knowledge-of-results (K ) or coin rewards (RF), was given to schizophrenic (SCZ), anxiety disorder (ANX), and healthy control (CON) subjects. The importance of K and RF events was shown by the fact that these events were almost always the starting point for increasingly complex TP structures. SCZ subjects were shown to have a greater number of significant TPs (p=0.0001) than controls (Lyon et al., 1994; Lyon and Kemp, 2004). However, TPs of SCZ and ANX subjects were randomly distributed across test sessions, while CON subjects showed, as predicted, a distinct increase in significant TPs (p=0.005) in the second half of the session. Furthermore, if the total TPs per subject was divided by the total responses used to build these patterns, the ‘TP production efficiency' of control subjects was, as expected, greater than that of the SCZ subjects. THEME findings therefore suggest that orderly growth of TPs over time is closely related to the development of response-time/reinforcement patterns that eventually lead to conscious recognition of a correct 'strategy' for solving a given problem   P9

@H2 = [03.18]  Intelligence and creativity

185  Consciousness, nonconscious processes, and logical reasoning: experimental studies  Roy Baumeister, C. Nathan Dewall; E.J. Masicampo <baumeister@darwin.psy.fsu.edu> (Dept of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL)
    This paper reports a series of experiments designed to show an important role for conscious process in logical reasoning. The so-called “integration consensus,” as indicated by many different writers across multiple fields, holds that consciousness is especially useful for combining information and that nonconscious processes are not nearly as effective at that. A related and also commonly asserted view holds that conscious thought processes may have evolved to facilitate kinds of thought that are open to introspection and social communication (and hence interpersonal correction), especially thinking ways that proceed from one idea to another according to socially recognized rules. Accordingly, it is plausible that logical reasoning would be one vital and powerful benefit of consciousness. Some writers have asserted that full-blown logical reasoning is limited to conscious beings and conscious processes, though naturally there are hints and preliminary steps in other creatures and nonconscious processes. We conducted a series of experiments to test this. In the first two, research participants attempted to solve logic problems while listening to music. By random assignment, some were instructed to monitor the lyrics on the music, a “cognitive load” manipulation designed to preoccupy the conscious mind. Thus, both groups had a distraction, but only one had to direct conscious attention away from the reasoning task. These participants performed significantly worse than others on the reasoning task. They answered the same number of problems in both conditions, but the ones under cognitive load gave more wrong answers (in fact did not get any more correct than chance guessing would yield). In another study, conscious processes were engaged by telling participants they would have to justify and explain their answers. These participants performed significantly better at logical reasoning than other participants. In four other studies, nonconscious processes were manipulated by activating the concept of logical reasoning via a priming procedure. Nonconscious priming succeeded in making the idea of logical reasoning prominent (accessible) in people’s minds, but it did not make them more successful at reasoning. Last, and in response to journal reviewer suggestions, we tried a nonconscious load manipulation. Participants were instructed to think about and then suppress thoughts of a former relationship. This procedure gets the nonconscious processes busy thinking about the suppressed relationship. It had no effect on logical reasoning — if anything people were slightly better at it. Further studies are in progress to improve the methods and rule out alternative explanations. The implication is that logical reasoning is best performed by conscious processes. When conscious goals were activated, people performed better, and when the conscious mind was “loaded” with another activity, people performed worse. In contrast, nonconscious activation of goals failed to improve performance, and nonconscious “loading” failed to impair it. These findings fit the view that the conscious mind is the province of logical reasoning.   C17

@H2 = [03.19]  Miscellaneous

186  The masking of consciousness in voice-twined prospective arrays  Whit Blauvelt <whit@closeread.org> (Bellows Falls, VT)
    Each presenter at this conference will make a case she or he hopes will make sense. Make sense do what? Make sense coalesce around the path the presenter lays out. The presenter will provide images, words, tones of voice, gestures ... all to conduce our several senses -- visual imagery, prospectively-held speech, feelings and so on -- to come together and hold before us (com-prehend) the presenter's special path in an attractive light. Just as each presenter here will advocate for a path, so when we imaginatively entertain any prospective path (as we do constantly) the path will often be advocated by a prospective speaker (in our imagery). The speaker's words may form a path in their own right, running along beside, wrapping around, encompassing, forming a case for the path. While advocates' personalities can add to our comprehension -- witness our preference for conferences over just reading journals -- only by looking beyond personalities can we gain objective views of the paths themselves and the world they, taken together, map out. 

      Advocated cases for paths often come with ancillary cases against alternatives; most presenters will not just illuminate a path they favor, but portray competing paths as less rewarding, as dead ends, even as nonsense for which no good case can be made. With illumination of one, competing paths are cast into shadow. While it is not always essential for a path under consideration to shadow others, it is in the style of many an advocate to lend not just its own good face to the one path, but demonic faces to the alternatives. Alternatives may be effectively "masked out" of fair consideration. When our hero's face (or our own) assumes advocacy of a single path, the shadow cast across other paths can be so exaggerated as to deprive us a view of the larger map those paths could assemble into, along with whatever advantages we might enjoy with that map in hand. This can narrow the sense of our identity, consisting as identity does to large degree in available prospects. Being on the map-in-hand (virtually, in mind) is essential to many prospects' realizability.    

      Such a narrowed sense of identity can have implications for our intuitions about the natural scope of consciousness. For example, this subjective narrowness might suggest a natural lack of freedom, prejudicing us towards advocating the white flag of determinism. The "paradox" here: the very advocative style which constrains our map, thus our practical scope of freedom, is often itself conflated with "will." Another possible consequence is limitation of conscious awareness, when such awareness may lead into shadowed areas, as it were against such "will." It is hypothesized that mindfulness techniques may afford an effective release from this tricky bind. Specifically, in light of current knowledge of brain processes, we may do better to "collect" attention than to "pay" it. Collected attention may support better prospective mapping, more effective capitalization of pragmatic capability, and truer intuitions to ground our path towards science.  P3

187  Empathy: interpersonal adaptive resonance networks  David Glanzer <glanzerd@emu.edu> (Graduate Counseling Program, Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA)
    Clark & Chalmers (1998) and Haugeland (1998) make the case for broadening the scope of personal identity beyond the brain by, in some circumstances, including body-external components as active components integral to the person. Similarly, mirror neurons demonstrate that the non-neural gap between discrete neural systems can be bridged by the capacity of those systems to synchronize with each other. Such perspectives extend naturally to rendering an account of empathy. To explore and extend this argument, the functional components and behaviors of Carpenter & Grossberg’s (1987) Adaptive Resonance Theory (neural network theory) will be used to describe the dynamics of empathy as a resonant system. This exploration dovetails with the concept of “betweenness,” reviewed by Arisaka (2001), and Glanzer’s (2002) discussion of the locus of consciousness in empathy.   P9

188  We can and we must explore inner experience carefully: Bulimia as an example  Russell Hurlburt, Jones-Forrester, Sharon <russ@unlv.nevada.edu> (Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV)
    Much (if not most) of psychological and philosophical views of consciousness are based on first-person self reports. However, many (if not most) of those reports are relatively casual self-observations (“armchair introspections”) or retrospective characterizations. Such reports are, we believe, too flawed to form the foundation of a science of inner experience. There are methods that we think may be adequate; one such method is Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES). DES uses a random beeper to cue subjects to pay attention to the experience that was ongoing at the moment of the beep and to jot down notes about that experience. Shortly thereafter (within 24 hours), the investigator interviews the subject about the randomly selected experiences. The procedure is repeated over several sample-then-interview days. It is of course reasonable to question whether the DES procedure provides anything new and/or interesting by comparison to other methods. One step toward answering this question is to identify a group of people who have outward characteristics in common and about whom inner characteristics are presumed known (usually from retrospective self-reports or from clinical interviews). Then we can examine that group using DES and ask whether (a) these people have inner experiences in common; and if so (b) whether those commonalities are the same or different from what is expected from the non-DES results. To illustrate, we take diagnosis of bulimia as the outward characteristic in common. There is substantial presumption about the inner experience of bulimic individuals: that they experience excessive preoccupation with their weight or shape; that they experience high levels of negative affect; that they perceive a high degree of pressure to conform to standards of thinness; and that they experience poor social adjustment and higher levels of sensitivity to rejection and peer pressure. We have used DES to explore the inner experience of 11 bulimic individuals, finding (a) that they did have substantial commonalities: that they had a marked fragmentation of attention; that they had a high degree of bodily sensory awareness; that they had consistent difficulty distinguishing between affect and cognition; that they had few clearly differentiated affective experiences; and that they were concerned with weight and shape. Thus (b) the picture of bulimia that comes from DES stands in some ways in sharp contrast to the assumptions held within the current bulimia literature. We did find a fairly strong preoccupation with weight and shape (occurring in 12% of the collected samples across participants). More salient, however, was the fragmentation of attention which has not been described in the retrospective bulimia literature. We did not find negative affect; rather we found very little affect, and what affect existed was largely undifferentiated. We did not find evidence of cognition or affect that would support a continuous pressure to conform to societal standards of thinness; perhaps it is the fragmentation of attention that leads to vulnerability to outside pressure. This study thus confirms that inner experience is important, and that substantial care must be taken to explore it adequately.   C19

189  Toward empirical investigation of the self: Reframing the dynamics of emotion and consciousness as a system of systems processes  Lynn Rasmussen <lynnras@maui.net> (Institute for Advanced Systems Studies, California State Polytechnic Univ, Pomona, Makawao, Hawaii)
    As Dennett pointed out, the self cannot be found in neural pathways. While neuroscience can provide explanations of consciousness, a description of consciousness comes from the level of subjective experience where empirical study is notoriously difficult. A view of subjective experience as a system of processes makes empirical research possible and provides a framework for the application of findings from the level of neuroscience/neurobiology. This paper sketches a view of consciousness and emotion from a systems perspective using findings and theories from neuroscience (Freeman, Ramachandran, Damasio). First, hierarchy theory is applied to delineate the focus of study: the self. Next, a series of questions from Banathy’s three “lenses” for developing a systems view of human systems is applied to subjective experience and it components, using consciousness and emotion as examples. What emerges is the beginning of a model for grounded, empirical studythat is situated between and integrates the explanatory level of neurobiology and the level of significance of the social environment. From this perspective, emotion is seen as intentional action (as described by Freeman, W.) and as an indicator of one's level of awareness or attention in any given moment of space/time. Finally, the paper describes how the self and consciousness are a system of processes that emerge from a system of processes, and how the development of Troncale’s system of system processes can provide a framework for integrating diverse findings from neuroscience, cognitive science, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and more.   P3

4. Physical and Biological Sciences

@H2 = [04.01]  Quantum theory

190  Notions of consciousness in quantum mind theories  Imants Baruss <baruss@uwo.ca> (Psychology, King's University College, London, Ontario, Canada)
    As an application and extension of my previous work to categorize the notions of consciousness in the ordinary waking state (Baruss, 1990), the purpose of this paper is to examine the notions of consciousness that occur in several different quantum mind theories. Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue, and Yasushi Takahashi (2004)have relied on the notion of consciousness1 (the behaviorally manifested capacity for discrimination of environmental stimuli and acting upon them in a goal-directed manner) in their Quantum Brain Dynamics theory of memory as a spinor field underlying cortical electric dipoles in which quantum mechanical tunnelling instantiates memory decay and the creation of Goldstone bosons is the process of memory recall. For Henry Stapp, Jeffrey Schwartz, and Mario Beauregard (2004), it is the attention density of subjective consciousness2 (the subjective experiential stream characterized by intentionality that goes on privately for a person) which modulates neural activity through the agency of the quantum Zeno effect. Ian Marshall (1989) has paid particular attention to consciousness3 (the sense of existence that one has subjectively for oneself) when he has posited the indistinguishability of bosons in the brain to account for the continuity of the identity of the subject of mental acts. I extend my original metanalysis of definitions of consciousness to take into account notions of consciousness in altered states such as those Marshall associates with ground states of Frohlich’s Bose-Einstein-like condensates. More dramatically, although Evan Harris Walker (2000) has conceptualized subjective consciousness2 as the interlaced quantum mechanical tunneling of electrons originating from macromolecules located within neural post-synaptic membranes, he has also hypothesized, as previously have I (Baruss, 1986), the existence of a separate volitional component of quantum measurement that brings physical reality into existence. I propose the notion of deep consciousness as a pre-physical substrate akin to David Bohm and Basil Hiley’s (1993) implicate order from which physical manifestation could arise prior to decoherence effects. Such a conjecture is at least in the spirit of Hans-Peter Durr’s (2005) injunction that quantum theory move beyond being just a deformation of classical mechanics and Diederik Aerts and Sven Aerts (2005) contention that space itself, along with macroscopic material, emerges from a microworld. I use descriptions of transcendent states of consciousness given by Franklin Wolff (1994) and John Wren-Lewis (1994) to theorize about the characteristics that could be associated with the notion of deep consciousness. In this manner the original definitions of consciousness can be extended to encompass phenomena associated with quantum mind theories.   C12

191  The complex number space of brain's self and Bohm's mind-matter theory  Matti Bergstrom, Ikonen, Pia <juliasbrain@kolumbus.fi> (Helsinki University, Espoo, Finland)
    The physicist David Bohm presented a new theory of the relationship of mind and matter (1986, 1990). He founded this theory on his own work on relativity and quantum theory, where he developed the concept of "implicate" order, which means that the whole of the universe is enfolded in everything, so that everything implicates everything. In the explicate order, which dominates our experience and thinking, each thing is seen as separate. Bohm’s basic proposal is that the implicate order is the more fundamental order and common to both mind and matter, so that these two are not as different as they may appear. Bohm made use of his ontological interpretation of quantum theory (Bohm and Hiley 1993): the Schrödinger wave function contains information which acts upon particles, so that their movements cannot be wholly determined by their local interactions. Instead, a nonlocal factor, a quantum potential Q, is involved . Bohm considers the wave-function as analogous to “mind”, and the local particles and their microscopic behaviour ("dance") in the physical space as corresponding to “matter”. In the end, mind and matter are not separate but forming the same common process. In earlier presentations in conferences on consciousness (Skövde 2001, Tucson 2002 and 2004, Copenhagen 2005) we presented an empirically based mathematical model of the brain´s limbic "Self", where the system between brain stem and neocortical effects (MacLean 1973) was considered as an empty border. The Self is a 2-dimensional (i,r)-space: r is a real number dimension recording the physical environmental effects via cortex, i is an imaginary number dimension (Bergström 1964) recording the effects of mental feelings and values via brain stem. The Self-space is a complex number space, reflecting the interaction between “mental”, brain stem macrostates and cortically mediated “physical” microstates (Bergström 1967, 1972, 1986). The objective microstate is represented in the r-dimension. But because the observer is involved, the situation also has a projection on the i-dimension. The observed particle moves (in nonpredictable "dance") in the (i,r) space, where the i-dimension describes "active information" in observer’s mental nonlocal "consciousness potential” (Bohm´s Q-potential). Since the i-projection of the perceived particle describes the mental content and the r-projection the physical content, we can say with Bohm that mind and matter are not separated but forming the same common process. The square root of (-1) of the observer´s i-dimensional mental Self is the main obstacle for the r-dimensional physics and its r-mathematics to penetrate to the fundamental reality of mind and matter. Our results indicate that implicate order is imaginary order. In our earlier model of the Self-space in the brain (see above references) we have a 3:rd dimension (p) for free "possibilities" of mental acts of the subject. Since the word "tempus" originally means "opportunity" (possibility), this p-dimension apparently describes time, not the physical, but the imaginary time (simultaneous, as in the "Child-brain") described by Hawking.   P10

192  The power of energy medicine: restoring health and balance with meridian therapy  Carol Look <Carol@CarolLook.com> (New York, New York)
    Energy Medicine is creating breakthroughs in therapeutic outcomes by neutralizing the ravaging effects of trauma and anxiety that debilitate the body, mind, and soul. Many of these cutting edge methods leverage the client's innate body/mind intelligence by accessing and re-integrating the "stuck" energy from trauma, anxiety, and emotional conflict that has been stored in the limbic region of the brain. While still under study, empirical results for Meridian Therapy and other Energy Medicine techniques are deeply encouraging and have repeatedly demonstrated that these methods have enhanced therapeutic outcomes dramatically. Based on the ancient and brilliant principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Meridian Therapy allows both clinician and patient to enter the body's acupuncture meridian system without needles by using a mild percussive tapping on the acupuncture points. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, illness is brought about by blockages, or stuck energy in the body and mind. Inserting needles in prescribed body points allows the stuck energy and blockages to be released, thereby restoring the body's ability to resume its natural healing processes. Meridian Therapy, combined with intention and appropriate methods to orient the client's consciousness, activates the original event, trauma, or conflict and makes it available for neutralization and reprocessing through the acupressure tapping. Accessing, neutralizing, and "metabolizing" the trauma and anxiety brings emotional, physical, and spiritual relief to the client. This poster session will provide a model for integrating Meridian Therapy with traditional forms of psychotherapeutic work with unconscious conflicts and conscious processing for releasing trauma and anxiety. The poster session will address emotional states, neural networks/connections, chemical habits, and trigger memories that disrupt psycho-social functioning. The session will demonstrate how to diffuse the complex clusters of stress factors that may precipitate re-traumatization and emotional disintegration and demonstrate how to restore health and balance with Meridian Therapy. Clinical treatment considerations include models of addiction treatment, affective disorders, secondary gains, and relapse triggers.  P10

193  Large extra dimensions: a tight squeeze for Orch-OR?  Jonas Mureika <jmureika@lmu.edu> (Physics, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA)
    The Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) model of consciousness relies on a Newtonian gravity-driven mechanism to collapse superposed quantum states (qubits). Recent developments in high energy physics have suggested that the apparent weakness of gravity as compared to the other fundamental forces may arise from the existence of extra spatial dimensions into which only gravitations can propagate. Furthermore, it has been proposed that these dimensions need not be Planck scale, but rather may be as large as a few micrometers in size. The existence of such large extra dimensions modifies the behavior of Newtonian gravitation below these length scales, and thus could have a critical impact on the viability of the Orch-OR model. Is is demonstrated that extra dimensions larger than 100 femtometers in size can compromise the model's candidacy for conscious phenomena. If the dimensions are on the order of 10 femtometers in size, then a significantly smaller number of qubits are required to form a pre-conscious correlate. Implications for the evolution of consciousness are also possible, based on the notion that the size of the extra dimensions may have been changing over the history of the Universe.  C12

194  Quantum theory and conscious experience  Thomas Schumann <tschuman@calpoly.edu> (Physics, California Polytechnic State University , San Luis Obispo, California)
    According to quantum thory the state of a system can consist of a superposition of mutually exclusive possiblities, such as possible energies or possible locations. When the system is observed, one of these characteristics becomes "real" - that is, one of the possibilities is actually observed - with a probability that depends on the original state, before the observation. We compare this situation to a dream for which the brain determining the dream also produces the non-local hidden variables which determine which of the characteristics is actually observed. The variables of the brain are hidden because during the dream, the brain which produces the dream is not observed by the dreamer. If one dreams of a mountain, one may ask what lies behind the mountain, is there a jungle or is there a desert? There is no meaningful answer until the other side of the mountain is observed in the dream and then the answer is certain, just as in quantum physics for a superposition of possibilities, no possibility is real until it is observed and then it is certain. We consider examples and arguments to fortify this model for quantum physics.  P4

195  Further support for the radical subjective solution of the measurement problem   Stephen Whitmarsh, Dr. Dick J. Bierman <9933875@student.uva.nl> (Psychology Psychonomics, University of Amsterdam, Kortenhoef, Netherlands)
    In an earlier experiment we compared the evoked brain potentials caused by observation of an auditory beep in two conditions. In the first condition the beep was triggered by quantum event and, after a delay of about a second, presented to the observer (O2). In the second condition the beep was also triggered by a quantum event but immediately pre-observed (O1) and then, after the same delay, presented to the same observer (O2). Trials were mixed and the condition of a beep (pre-observed or not) was unknown to the observer (O2). Significant differences were established for some early peak amplitudes. I.e. in the region where the processing of the beep by (O2) was still non conscious. It was suggested that the difference in brain potentials was due to the fact that conscious (pre-) observation was responsible for the collapse of the state-vector suggesting that the brains of (O2) were capable of discriminating between a superposition and a singular state. In a follow up experiment also classical events were used. For these events there shouldn’t be an effect of pre-observation. This was confirmed. However that experiment failed also to give some support to the earlier findings. I.e. the effect of pre-observation in the quantum condition was not replicated. To elucidate the reasons for this discrepancy a third experiment was set up along the same lines with two observers participating. That experiment is still work in progress. Parallel to that experiment a new approach was started. We realized that there is no need for two observers in the experiment because an observer can be his or her own pre-observer. We call this eigen-observation. Thus we compared the brain signals of beeps that were presented the first time after the quantum trigger with beeps that were presented again after the first beep. Great care was taken to maintain exactly the same time-interval distributions for the first and the second (eigen-preobserved) beep. Evoked brain potentials arising from observation of first and second beep were compared. At the time of submission we have measured 19 subjects and significant differences of max. 2 microvolts are found at several locations on the scalp but most clearly in the parietal parts of the brain around 50 milliseconds after stimulus onset. These results do suggest a crucial role of consciousness in collapsing the state vector and thereby provide support for the radical subjective solution of the measurement problem.   C12

@H2 = [04.02]  Space and time

196  Temporology, category theory, and the scientific study of consciousness: Interdisciplinary bridging principles for your methodological toolbox  Erik Douglas <erik@temporality.org> (Philosophy, University of Texas, Portland, OR)
    This talk addresses three of five goals associated with its corresponding textual material (with the above headline as working title – to be submitted to the JCS in 2004). To begin, I introduce temporology as a sibling problem set of the science of consciousness and outline some of the key issues relevant to the latter’s study: i.e., the plurality of meanings of time from across “3rd person” and “1st person” domains; the distinction between time, space and space-time; structural aspects of these models; the conflation of possibility and potentiality; the origin of the so-called “arrow of time” and its conflation with direction; as well as the nature and meaning of transience and its further conflation with presence. With respect to each of these issues, I also sketch their significance for any comprehensive scientific model of consciousness. There has been a tacit recognition that the issues of time bear importantly on the nature of consciousness since the inception of its formalized study – c.f., Metzinger’s (1995) – but with only a few exceptions, there has been negligible progress made during the interim decade. It is my second goal here to review and highlight these few key developments to outline what will (hopefully) become a viable research programme within the interdisciplinary science of consciousness studies. The aforementioned developments include methodological attempts to bridge neuroscience with phenomenology (cf. Varela, Gallagher, et al.), a range of psychophysical, neurophysiological and parapsychological empirical studies (cf. Libet, Radin, et al.), assorted ontological models (cf. Hameroff, Penrose, et al.), as well as direct attempts to integrate the issues of time and consciousness (cf. Novak, Smythies, Sanfey, Douglas, et al. ) –this list is not intended to be exhaustive. The third goal of this talk lies implicitly in the demonstration of the methodology I employ to frame the above questions, conjectures and problem-sets: category theory. Not only does the “language” of category theory provide a very accessible and intuitively relevant mode in which to conduct interdisciplinary discussions about such disparate and prima facie unrelated notions as introduced above, it moreover manages to do so with an unsurpassed rigour that is on par with set theory and symbolic logic. If category theory is powerful enough to produce an analytically robust synthesis of temporology, physics, neuroscience and phenomenology, then it clearly suggests itself as a first-rate candidate for the many other necessary interdisciplinary, conceptual integrations necessary for any further, important successes in the discipline of consciousness studies. For lack of time, I will only touch upon the fourth and fifth noted goals, which comprise ideas I develop in more detail elsewhere, but which nonetheless bear importantly on the content of this presentation. Briefly, I introduce two intimate (possibly essential) conceptual relationships that follow naturally from my adopted approach: the first relates transience (the “flow of time”) with agency (consciousness), and the second demonstrates a deep correspondence between the ostensible direction of time and intentionality.   P4

197  Towards physical interpretation of complex spacetime based models of non-local consciousness.  Anatoly Goldstein <a_goldshteyn@yahoo.com> (Voice Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Swampscott, MA)
    It is shown that qualitative concept of consciousness functioning beyond space (L. LeShan, 2004) can be interpreted in terms of at least two known quantitative models. The first one is a geometric model of remote viewing based on 8D complex Minkowski spacetime (CMST) allowing a connection of zero distance between any two points leading to psi non-locality (Rauscher-Targ, 2001). Longitudinal electromagnetic waves, predicted based on CMST model (E. Rauscher, 1983), were produced experimentally by Saari & Reivelt (1997). The 2nd model follows from ADS/CFT correspondence (J. Maldacena,1997,2004), leading to a conclusion that "spacetime and everything in it emerges dynamically from the interaction of the particles living on the boundary" (holography in string theory context). This allows us to assume that consciousness functionality is originated within spacetime boundary. We can get an idea of physical meaning of complex coordinates from the works of E.T.Newman(1974,2002) who while treating real Maxwell Field and real linearized Einstein's General Relativity equations as imbedded in CMST for a particle having non-zero mass & charge proved that:"particle's magnetic moment and intrinsic spin arise as a "shadow" or "projection" into the real, of a particle moving in the complex spacetime"; the particle's magnetic moment arises from its displacement into imaginary center of charge; classical relativistic spin-angular momentum can be interpreted as arising from the paticle's displacement into imaginary center of mass; if the complex centers of mass & charge coincide, "the gyromagnetic ratio is that of the Dirac electron". We are suggesting 2 hypothetic models of consciousness based on CMST, Newman's findings and the concept of active information (D. Bohm,1990). The first model assumes that CMST includes a Platonia-like world (see also S. Hameroff, 1998; B. Josephson, 2003) in which active information processes are running that support consciousness and are similar to a known process of rapid oscillations of imaginary part of electron position termed zitterbewegung. Electron spin, being a function of imaginary coordinates of CMST, may play a role in conscious information exchange. This is in agreement with spin-mediated theory of consciousness (H.Hu & M.Wu, 2002) assuming that unpaired electrons of oxygen bi-radicals contribute to information exchange in brain by means of spin-spin coupling. Our model suggests that magnetic moment of the oxygen electron, representing another function of imaginary coordinates of CMST may be responsible for known effects of magnetic field on gambling results in the days of geo-magnetic anomalies (D. Radin, 1997). To formulate the second model as a modification of the first one we: 1) accept a known hypothesis that consciousness can survive death (P. van Lommel, 2001); 2) interpret the law of correspondence (E. Swedenborg, 1756) of all events in the physical world to the events in the spiritual world, located "not in space", by modeling spiritual world with active information processes running in complex spacetime, their projection into real coordinates representing observable physical processes. Swedenborg's spiritual concepts might become more useful for science of consciousness if we try to map his theological vocabulary to scientific, e.g. if we rename "angel" to "conscious life form" (CLF) that survived death as assumed above. An image of a human is a property not only of individual CLF, but it also represents CLF societies up to the level of heaven as a whole that looks like a large man. This author concludes that Swedenborg's heaven has properties of holographic film and therefore Maldacena's holographic ADS/CFT correspondence may represent a string-theoretic version of Swedenborg's law of correspondence. Therefore 4D spacetime & its contents seem to be dynamically generated from the holographic film, represented by the CLF societies & surrounding "landscapes", functioning in complex spacetime.  P4

198  Constraints on a physical explanation of consciousness arising from the dynamics of observation within a continuum of change  John Sanfey <johnsanfey@mac.com> (Alvaston Medical Centre, derby, uk)
    It is possible to deduce certain unique properties of consciousness by examining the general dynamics of one continuously changing physical system observing another. The physical world is indeed in a state of continuous change, according to both relativity and quantum theories. In the former, something at rest with regard to its space co-ordinates is moving through time; the opposite is true in the case of light. In quantum theory on the other hand, a particle whose space co-ordinates are known to be at rest, cannot, paradoxically, have zero momentum, because of the uncertainty principle. If consciousness has a physical explanation other than a panpsychist one, then it too must be a continuously changing process. Another constraint to be considered arises from causation. The causal structure of space-time given to us by general relativity means that when A causes B, it must be in the past of B (or vice-versa). This is also true in quantum theory, despite its probabilistic nature and non-locality; quantum theory always uses a time continuum in which A and B are at different times when they are causally related. With these two constraints as the initial premises, the following deductive argument identifies a unique property of consciousness, which is defined in physical terms: (i) Physical reality, external to the mind of an observer, meets our senses as a process of continuous change from A to B such that A causes B, and is in the past of B: (ii) Any duration of time, even an infinitesimal one, that is external to the mind of the observer, can only be experienced such that the beginning of the duration, is re-created by the mechanism of consciousness: (iii) Anything that exists physically, must occupy a volume of space-time: (iv) Consequently, something that exists outside the mind must occupy duration of time: (v) Given (ii) and (iv), something external to the mind of an observer, occupies duration of time in a manner determined by the mechanism of human consciousness: (vi) The subsequent, theoretical representation of something separated from the observer by space-time, requires some conceptual device that is functionally equivalent to this function of human consciousness. Consciousness contributes something to the manifestation of the external world, something diachronic. Anything external to the mind, that occupies duration, does so because of a specific diachronic contribution by consciousness. This rather Kantian conclusion, means that consciousness performs a physical task, which in turn makes it possible to develop a physical explanation of consciousness, based upon axiomatic principle. Sanfey, J.J (2003), ‘Reality, and those who perceive it’. In The nature of time: geometry, physics, and perception. R. Buccheri, M. Saniga, W.M. Stuckey, (eds.) NATO Science Series. Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Press. Sanfey, J.J (2005), ‘The mind in physics’. In Endophysics, time, quantum and the subjective; R. Buccheri. A.C. Elitzur and M. Saniga (eds.); pp 531–546. Singapore. World Scientific Publishing Co.   P10

199  A new angle on the neural correlates of consciousness: Insights from Maharishi Vedic science  David Scharf <dscharf108@gmail.com> (Mathematical Sciences, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA)
    The search for the neural correlates of consciousness has proceeded largely on the basis of assumptions grounded in classical physics. Tracing the neural mechanisms of perception to their cortical destinations, for example, has seemed to many to define the paradigm for research in consciousness. However, this approach leads to untenable paradoxes such as those associated with the brain-in-a-vat scenerios critiqued in depth by Hilary Putnam, among others. Recent proposals by a number of researchers have sought for a quantum mechanical basis for consciousness. Since quantum theory represents our most advanced theory of matter, it makes sense to look for the neural correlates of consciousness in quantum physics. One promising proposal, put forward by Hammeroff and Penrose, looks to the neuronal microtubules as a plausible site for the anticipated quantum neuroscience. Discussions of quantum measurement—since the time of Niels Bohr and the other founders of modern quantum theory—have more often than not pointed to the complementarity and interdependence of consciousness and the objective world as constituting an essential part of the resolution of the fundamental issues of quantum physics. In this context, the quantum-microtubule hypothesis, and the approach of quantum neuroscience generally, have considerable merit. Not surprisingly, given the paradigm-busting character of the Hameroff/Penrose hypothesis, it has been vigorously contested on a number of grounds. The most important of these objections is that the measurement reduction is a mysterious and controversial phenomenon in physics proper and will, therefore, not help shed light on the problem of consciousness. Against this backdrop it will be helpful to consider that the Eastern tradition has long investigated what may usefully be termed the quantum mechanical nature of inner experience, particularly transcendental consciousness and higher states of consciousness. The question of neural correlates compels us to address features of experience that defy a material construal, where matter is understood in terms of classical physics. Thus, features such as the meaningful (although non-causal) interconnectedness of apparently diverse phenomena as well as the unity of personal experience and— the ultimate binding problem—the unanalyzable character of self-awareness, particularly as it becomes increasingly prominent in higher states, all suggest a quantum mechanical elucidation. This quantum mechanical elucidation is supplied with a coherent framework by Maharishi Vedic Science, whose insights express the relational and holistic interdependence of consciousness, the brain and the external world. On the basis of this understanding, it becomes easier to understand why neuroscience derived from advanced physics—and substantiated by transcendental experiences and associated higher states of consciousness—provides an integrated understanding of the relationship of consciousness and the objective world. Finally, we will review recent work by Travis, et al, which documents the neurophysiological correlates of transcendental experiences and thereby opens the way for a quantitative evaluation of higher states of consciousness.   P11

@H2 = [04.03]  Integrative models

200  Dynamic core mathematics for complex systems and delocalization of consciousness  Vadim Astakhov <vadim_astakhov@hotmail.com> (UCSD, San Diego, )
    My purpose in this paper is to illustrate broad application of "Dynamic Core" hypothesis mathematically defined in G. Tononi and G. M. Edelman. I collected statistical data for three different none-linear systems such as EEG data from binocular rivalry experiment, routing data from Internet and simulation cosmology data about early stages of our Universe. I apply same statistical formalism proposed by "Dynamic Core" hypothesis and found dynamic similarities in terms of Dynamic Core functional clusters and complexity that emerge in all three systems. Also, I demonstrate that simple holographic model implemented by neural network can emulate "functional cluster" in none-linear system with multiple elements. System can act as if the cluster exists at the time when the actual cluster is not active. This lead me to suggestion that either Dynamic Core formalism should be extended to catch unique aspects of brain dynamics or term "Consciousness" can we explored for other complex systems (not particular brain).   P4

201  A heuristic model of consciousness: as seen by the philosopher-coach  Jesse Bettinger <jessbett@hotmail.com> (The Stone House Conference Center // Men's Soccer, University of Southern Maine // St. Joseph's College, Freeport, Maine, United States of America)
    Building off of the Logic and representation of Minkowski spacetime with a Lockwood signature; and implementing certain select features of Peirce's phenomenology in tangent with recent discoveries made from MIT SpaceLab concerning Black Hole theory; and simplifying the recent Neuroquantological theory of De and Pal; and including select neuroscientific issues such as memory, attention, learning acquisition, and perception---- in order to arrive at a premier model of what stands potential as an all-inclusive, systematic venture into the science of consciousness. Among the abilities of this model, I will also run through the different philosophical issues that the model appears to clear up in the domain of "pure" philosophy as well as the philosophy of physics, mathematics, and quantum mechanics. Such problems to be dealt with here include: free will and determinism, volition and agency, infinitesimals & asymmetries (Peirce, Putnam, Bergson, and Auspitz), the Cainopythagorean categories, semiotics, set-categorical theory; entropy, syntropy and neg-entropy. The real decisive factor though comes by virtue of an implementation of an “x-factor” in regards to the discourse on qualia. What I attempt to do is instill a (potentially) mathematical signature on information processing by virtue of a type of “chromatic scale” (think sound, not color, as in: “the chromatic scale”) that acts just like electrons do in a quantum field, demonstrating the properties of emergence, gravitation, decay, charge, and coupling. Also, i will attempt to reconcile the language and concepts that underwrite the Yang-Mills theory (such as Mass gap, quark confinement, and chiral symmetry breaking) within the logic of the proposed model in order to show the logical symmetry that appears to hold. In addition to these features, I will also demonstrate the compulsory, Hyperbolic/Process nature of the model, using specific features of the philosophical discourses of Whitehead, Russell, Peirce, and Hegel, to name the major theorists. As an initial “test” of the model I have gone through a philosophical dictionary and found an extraordinary yield of logical symmetries between theorists of philosophy and religion from the earliest recorded times to the present. I will share these findings in the paper that accompanies the model/poster as an appendix. Overall, I am suggesting that with the help of other seasoned veterans in the fields that comprise mind theory, there stands to be unveiled a new basis for to house all future matters of consciousness and well as an organizational basis for all that has come before. Also, I believe that the model has the ability to filter between which current theories hold water and which ones might be lacking in approach. The model also deals with ontological issues of consciousness. What becomes clear is that the model is a systems theory of consciousness which holds a great potential not only for mind theory but also for philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. In addition there is another signature to the model which holds for soccer and life, which I call the Miller-Bettinger model. I will also give props to my teacher, Dr. Schwanauer, throughout the paper.   P5

202  The hard problem of matter, Baars notion of subjectivity, and bolstering the relevance of consciousness in science  Bhausaheb Biradar <intense_quest@yahoo.com> (Bhaktivedanta Institute, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India)
    In the landscape of Consciousness Studies there are but only a few major questions, and all the debate revolves around them: Why are we conscious, how does brain give rise to consciousness, what is the ontology of consciousness, where can we localize consciousness, when can we regard a system as a conscious one? However, as an upshot of limiting our pursuit to these questions we have been missing out on one extremely crucial issue. The issue is the following: How is it that dead and inanimate matter (anything in the external world) can give me subjective conscious experiences? I shall call this the Hard problem of matter. Physics has apparently never addressed this problem so far. And the idea that some property of matter (in its superposed state) is invoked in its intyeraction with consciousness (and thus the collapse of wave function), adhering to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory, supports the legitimacy of the Hard problem of matter. In the second part of the poster I take issue with Bernard Baars’ “much more relaxed view of subjectivity” (Baars 1996). He says that instead of “what it is like to be” criteria subjectivity should mean “the self as observer of conscious experiences.”. I argue that this doesn’t go too far, since this notion misses out the defining characteristic of subjectivity, namely the qualia. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen’s 1935 paper “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” created ripples in the already turbulent enterprise of quantum mechanics. In their paper they conduct a thought experiment (which presently stands experimentally corroborated) and the result is known as the EPR Paradox, where the paradox is the instantaneous flow of information that violates the fundamental adage of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that nothing can travel faster than light. Here, I bring to the notice one important aspect in the formalism of quantum theory, which alludes to the idea that there might not be after all an instantaneous flow of information in Einstein el al’s EPR Paradox. The upshot of my argumment is that it bolsters the relevance of consciousness in quantum physics and attempts to dissolve the mystery of instantaneous flow of information in EPR Paradox. References: 1) Baars B.J. 1996. Understanding subjectivity: Global workspace theory and the resurrection of the observing self. Journal of Consciousness Studies 3:211-17. 2) Einstein, A., Podolsky, B., and Rosen, N., (1935) “Can Quantum mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?”, Physical Review, 47: 777-780.   P7

203  Human consciousness as an ontological solution in search of an epistemological problem: Introducing the intercultural intersubjectivity framework  Ravi Vatrapu <ravikira@hawaii.edu> (Communication and Information Sciences, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI)
    The intercultural intersubjective framework (IIF) is an attempt to re-conceptualize human consciousness as an always already ontological solution in search of an epistemological problem that can be legitimated in the scientific discourse. This somewhat polemical first take on consciousness studies is employed mostly as a pedagogical/rhetorical strategy to demonstrate the essential and irreducible nature of human consciousness: intercultural intersubjectivity. The IIF is posited at two analytical levels, the micro analytic level of contiguous discourse emergence and the macro analytical level of processual outcomes. The only prescription of the IIF is that discourse should always be analyzed as second order phenomena and no claims to first order reality a priori doing analysis should be made if methodological integrity is to be maintained.. In IIF, at the macro level of analysis, after a well-charted return to Descartes, the Cartesian axes are redrawn as the horizontal intercultural axis that is Consciousness--World and the vertical intersubjective axis that is Other--Self. These neo-Cartesian axes configure interactions at the macro analytical level of measurable outcomes that impact the social world. Analogous to Descartes productive synthesis of algebra and geometry into analytical geometry, IIF at the macro level argues for a synthesis of being and thinking to arrive at an analytical praxis which is argued to be a non-eliminable reduction of human activity. The vertical intersubjective axis of the Other—Self configures the “ways of being”. It is the axis of ethics and politics. The horizontal intercultural Consciousness--World (re)presents the “ways of thinking”. It is the axis of aesthesis and logic. At the micro analytic level, human discourse is posited as second-order phenomenon that emerges from intercultural intersubjective interactions that mediate and/modulate the fundamental nature of human consciousness: intercultural intersubjectivity. Discourse is operationalized as an emergent phenomena that under analysis is always already of the second order. Having established the micro and the macro analytical levels of the nature of the human consciousness, the concrete human reality of the everyday consciousness is conceptualized as constitutive of both these levels. In other words, the ontological bracketing of human consciousness grants an epistemic access that is constitutive of the very ontological bracketing. Yet in other representational gestures epistemic access to human consciousness is symbolically articulated as an embrace of these braces: }{ with each brace representing one analytical level. In a sense, the intercultural intersubjectivity framework is at once a theoretical framework to locate the ontological enclosure of human consciousness and also a theoretical framework for epistemic analytical access to it. As mentioned already, ethics and politics are the proper domain of the intersubjective while logic and aesthetics are the proper domain of the intercultural. I conceptualize human consciousness as not only being mutually constituted by the above aspects but also as Nature’s solution to the philosophical problems that arise from our contemplation of the above. I conclude by arguing that human consciousness is an always already ontological solution whose proper epistemic study should include at least the problems of ethics, politics, logic and aesthetics.   P6

204  How consciousness determines human behavior: Achieving behavioral transformation through an understanding of the duality of consciousness  Sol Weingarten <jdwein@comcast.net> (Correctional Medical Facility Vacaville State Prison, CA, Walnut Creek, CA)
    A significant way to discover the nature of human consciousness is to study it in the laboratory of life in its ultimate expression as human behavior. The result of forty-five years of working with people in all walks of life has led me to an understanding of the universal duality of human nature. The knowledge and recognition of this duality, which I refer to as the lower level and higher level of our consciousness, has enabled those with whom I work to change their behaviors and live more productive lives. Most attendees will recognize in the first few minutes of the presentation that they regularly experience the two states of consciousness being described. The lower level state of consciousness has as its activity the feelings, emotions and beliefs fueled by the amygdala in the lower primitive brain. The amygdala contains emotional memory, which, by connection to the cortex, chooses thought that is supportive of the feeling. As feelings are measurements of environmental stimuli and are generally not chosen by us, there is little free will in this state of mind. Survival of the self is at the center of the lower level mindset. It is a closed frame of mind that includes one’s thinking, attitudes, rationalizations and memories consistent with and supportive of the feeling that triggers it, often producing behavior that may be damaging to ourselves and others. It is automatic, effortless and universal in nature. In contrast, the higher level state of consciousness is open and receptive rather than closed and self-centered. Even though the two states are seamlessly joined, recognizing the lower level for what it is enables the choice of the higher level mindset, which empowers us to find creative solutions and reach more of our potential. In my psycho-educational program, I have found recognition of this mindset essential to changing errant behaviors of prison inmates, addictive teens, and domestic violence perpetrators as well as the behaviors creating difficulties in everyday conflicts. The transformation that can result in the change of mindset from lower level to higher level has surprising effects with separate different identities, moralities and behaviors in each state. All humans seek to behave morally, but all of us in all societies can be impelled by our nature to amoral behavior. Who amongst us has not wondered, “How could I have done that or said that?” If everyone could learn to choose moral and decent behaviors by applying the simple principles brought to light by this theory of consciousness, the potential for control of most unnecessary violence would conceivably be possible. Because of the equivalencies of the dualities and transformations occurring in quantum and classical physical expression, a theory of the physics of consciousness has been developed and will be introduced if time permits.   P5

@H2 = [04.04]  Emergent and hierarchical systems

205  Toward a new philosophy of nature and a naturalistic foundation of community: Implications of synchronicity and the emerging science of spontaneous order  Werner Krieglstein <krieglsteinw@hotmail.com> (Philosophy, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Il)
    Self-Organization is a key concept in understanding processes of Collective Orchestration in the animate and so-called inanimate world. Such Collective Orchestration is based on cooperative aspects of systems and advancement of systems through cooperation. A detailed analysis of these processes will lead to a better understanding of the concept of community even among human beings. The paper will investigate the natural powers that orchestrate such community formation and will show the necessity of community because only from that perspective can a universal ethics evolve. Collective phenomena are investigated from the perspective of system theory, cybernetics, and the Theory of Complexity. Since Chaos Theory put self-organization into the center of the scientific debate, many researchers have confirmed that self-organizing systems are crucial in the understanding of the formation of life. The paper suggests that self-organizing, collective processes may also be the key to understand evolutionary advance at all levels, and by providing a scientific explanation once and for all put to rest the debate about Intelligent Design.  P10

206  Models of subjectivity: Latent emergent order and Its detection in attractor networks  Raymond Pavloski, Mitchell, S.; Alwine, T.; Field, K.; Hawkins, S.; Kraszewski, E.; Mook, A.; Nieto-Quintero, M.; Sliko, N.; Thomas, K.; Thompson, K.; Vanecek, C.; Yetsko, K.; Barrett, B.; Derstine, K.; Heisey, M. <pavloski@iup.edu> (Psychology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA)
    The theory of Primary Mental Models (PMM) proposes that subjective experience is a dynamic global macrostate that emerges from the interactions of the elements of its substrate (Pavloski, 2005). Such states have a necessarily subjective existence, and are therefore referred to as latent rather than as manifest. PMM suggests that latent order characterizes macrostates that appear to emerge from interactions among relationships that, in turn, are dynamic constructs of the objective interactions among elements of the system. Three attractor models producing latent order are presented. The simplest model is an adaptation of the Ising model of magnetism. Latent order is produced by having binary elements with states ±1 combine some inputs multiplicatively rather than additively, as they do in attractor neural network models. The dynamics of the model reduce an energy that depends on alignment of products in the same way that the energy of the Ising model depends on alignment of states of elements. Simulations confirm that latent macroscopic order emerges at a critical noise level, and that this order is not evident in the space defined by neural activities (Pavloski, 2005). Since the energy of this model depends on products in the same way that the energy in an Ising model depends on the states of the elements, it is easily generalized to a virtual Hopfield network that produces patterns of products rather than patterns of states of the elements. Computer simulations demonstrate that the virtual Hopfield network stores and retrieves latent patterns just as the Hopfield network stores and retrieves manifest patterns of neural activity. Furthermore, the virtual network shows interference effects among latent patterns, and is influenced by external inputs at the level of the latent patterns rather than the level of neural activity. The third model eliminates the need to compute products of inputs by having feedforward networks with hidden layers compute arbitrary relationships between elements comprising clusters of neurons. The resulting interactions between neurons produce virtual interactions between these arbitrary sets of relationships. Computer simulations confirm that latent order is produced, and that the ordered states are not evident in state vectors of neuron activity. Finally, a modification of latent semantic analysis was applied to this last model by applying singular value decomposition (SVD) to matrices of neuron activities sampled in attractor states. Results show that SVD can be used to reveal the latent order using a number of dimensions much smaller than the number of neurons. Further, the accuracy of the approach (using a signal detection framework) varies inversely with both the number of manifest neural patterns that are consistent with a given arbitrary relationship and with the variability of the distribution from which the patterns are drawn. Implications for the analysis of actual neural patterns are discussed. Reference Pavloski, R.P. (2005). An attractor lattice model with latent emergent order. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and the Life Sciences, In Press.  P10

[04.05]  Nonlinear dynamics

206a The chaotic epigenesis of self  Angela Bruzzo <angela.bruzzo@libero.it> (Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy)

     Current research on neural systems and higher brain functions is a combination of classical neuroscience with the more recent non-linear science, in spite of the technical hitches in applying the concepts developed to describe mathematical models of deterministic chaos, not only to the brain and biological systems, but also in philosophy, to the concept of Self. In section I, I present the main arguments that support the existence of chaos, from the simplest to the most complex level of the nervous system. In section II, I use the concept of epigenesis, taken from biology, to illustrate parallels between Self and physical Self-organizing systems. Like in embryonic development, stability is one of the main features of Self. However, if the Self is perturbed, it will not necessarily return to its previous state. Finally, I focus on the metastability as an adequate conception of Self-functioning. P4

[04.06]  Logic and computational theory

207  What is the algorithmic complexity of subjective experience?  Sean Lee <seanlee@bu.edu> (Office of Technology Development, Boston University, Boston, MA)
    Addressing the 'hard-problem' of consciousness wholly within the modern scientific tradition requires that the 'what-it-is-like' aspects of subjective experience, or qualia, be unambiguously related to objective physical information states, such as, for example, physio-neurological brain states, computational states of a Turing machine, or quantum states of special complex systems. Taking this view seriously then requires the somewhat paradoxical program of 'objectifying' qualia in some manner in order to treat them as elements of a proper set Q which may then be mapped to an appropriate set of physical information states P. Because any set of physical information states can be generally mapped to a subset of the real numbers R, the same must necessarily hold for the set of 'objectified' qualia. Thus a faithful 'objectification', or coding, of a given quale must be able to express the entire content, including the 'what-it-is-likeness', as a bit string. We investigate the algorithmic complexity that such a bit string must have in order to reflect its difficult 'genealogy' as a subjective experience. We discuss further conceptual advantages of such a modeling, and argue that it places stringent constraints on any future scientific treatment of 'the hard problem'.   P10

[04.07]  Bioelectromagnetics/resonance effects

208  Oscillation of amplitude as measured by an extra low frequency magnetic field meter as a biophysical measure of intentionality  Melinda Connor, Schwartz, Gary; Tau, Genevieve <melinda_connor@mindspring.com> (Program in Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Marana, AZ)
    There are approximately 1 million energy medicine practitioners in the US at this time (Connor, Schwartz & Jacobs, 2005). Braud & Schlitz (1989) Schlitz & Braud(1997),Winstead-Fry & Kijek (1999 ), Warber et al. (2000), Astin, Harkness & Ernst (2000), in their meta-data analysis of energy medicine studies have found significant effects. Creath & Schwartz (2005), Rubik & Schwartz (2005), have demonstrated cellular changes produced as effects of energy medicine. It is unclear from the data at this time how the practitioners are producing effects. Clarification between placebo, intentionality, and randomly produced effects needs to take place. As part of this process scientists need a simple measure which predicts potential practitioner competence in a research environment. This study tests the use of Triaxial ELF Magnetic Field Meter as a method to confirm that a practitioner is able to produce measurable and reliable changes of amplitude in the extra low frequency range through the use of intentionality, on demand and in a research setting. Information will be presented on the test methods, the results of testing and potential methods of use. Data analysis to date demonstrates effect significance to p<.0001 on a one minute measure of the energy practitioners hand at the universal qi point in the palm.   P4

209  Biophoton imaging around and between plant parts: are “auras” real?  Katherine Creath, Gary E. Schwartz <kcreath@ieee.org> (Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Biophoton emission is a type of self-bioluminescence that has been proposed as one possible mechanism responsible for intra- and intercellular communication (information transfer) as well as for regulation of biological and biochemical functions within cells and living systems. Measurements by other researchers have shown that this emission has the properties of coherent light and is measurable from the UV through the near IR. Experimental evidence gathered by various researchers since the 1920’s indicates that light plays an important role in certain biological functions and processes. We have developed an imaging system and analysis techniques using biophoton imaging of plant leaves as a diagnostic tool for tracking state of health of a biological system over time. Using these techniques we have also investigated the response of plant leaves as a subtle energy detector. The imaging system is comprised of a light-tight dark chamber using a high-performance, low-noise, cooled Princeton Instruments VersArray 1300B CCD imaging array. As we studied thousands of biophoton images recorded of plants and plant parts over the past three years, we have observed patterns in the “noise” surrounding plant parts. Through a series of experiments these “halo-like” patterns appear to extend beyond the plants and they appear more intensely between plant parts in close proximity falling off as the distance between plant parts increases. Comparison of images taken with different backgrounds shows that images taken using a non-fluorescing white background to enhance the light scattered around and between the leaves yields much more evidence of halos and resonance effects than images taken with an absorbing black background. This may be a similar effect to sensitives who claim they can better see auras when the subject is in front of a lighter colored background. Image processing techniques to stretch and enhance mapping of signal levels can aid in visualizing these effects. Are these “halo-like” patterns similar to what many sensitive people call “auras”, and are they indicative of some kind of biological communication / resonance via light? Dynamical systems theory offers a plausible explanation for resonance effects we have observed. The role of photonic interaction at the systemic level in biological systems has received relatively little attention. Yet, a better understanding of these processes would help us in deciphering the nature and role of light in biological systems. Partially supported by NIH P20 AT00774-01 (Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science) from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).   C21

@H2 = [04.08]  Biophysics and living processes

210  From the nature of life to consciousness  James Beichler <jebco1st@aol.com> (Physics, Division of Natural Science and Mathematics, West Virginia University at Parkersburg, Belpre, Ohio)
    By any scientific estimation, life is necessary for the development of consciousness. Some people believe that inanimate objects are conscious, but there is no scientifically verifiable evidence to support such a conclusion. Therefore, it is safe to suggest that life is a necessary condition for consciousness and a theory of life should precede a theory of consciousness. However, anything beyond this suggestion, such as deciding which living beings possess consciousness, depends upon the particular definition of consciousness applied. Science can only guarantee that human beings have consciousness. What then is so special about life that consciousness can only be associated with living things and, in particular, with humans beings? All living organisms have extremely complex chemical and mechanical structures that distinguish them from inanimate material objects, so life must be associated with the chemical complexity of living organisms. Chemical interactions are electrical in nature, from a classical point-of-view, and deal with energy exchanges between molecules, both areas of which are studied in physics. So the chemical complexities involved in life can be reduced for study and explanation by physicists and a theory of life is a matter for biophysics rather than biology. In particular, a new physical theory of life has been developed that takes into account electromagnetic theory, molecular energy exchanges and the complexity of the chemical interactions associated with living organisms, but this theory is anything but classical. Instead, this theory is based on a five-dimensional Einstein-Kaluza model of space-time, which offers a non-classical unification of electromagnetic theory and relativity out of which a physical model of life and consciousness emerge logically from the structure of space-time.   P10

211  Cellular automata model of a microtubule using a double potential well found in tubulin  Travis Craddock, Catherine Beauchemin; Jack Tuszynski <tcraddoc@phys.ualberta.ca> (Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
    Recent evidence shows signalling, communication and conductivity in microtubules (MTs) and theoretical models have predicted their potential for both classical and quantum information processing. Several aspects of MTs have been studied and well-established principles of classical statistical physics have been applied to study elements of information processing and storage as well as signal propagation in these cellular structures. Arguments for and against the existence of quantum effects in MTs are numerous, and working quantum models of MTs are required. To investigate the existence of quantum computation in microtubule protein assemblies we model this system via cellular automata using both classical and quantum neighbour rules. Using a typical MT configuration of 13 protofilaments and a seven member tubulin neighbour-hood in a tilted hexagon configuration, we take the interior of tubulin to contain a region of two areas of positive charge separated by a negative potential region constituting a double well potential. Position of a mobile electron within this double potential well is used as the determining factor for the state of an individual tubulin dimer, with transitions determined by the minimization of the systems energy associated with electrostatic interactions of neighbouring electrons and thermal effects. Classically the model allows transitions for electrons with sufficient energy to overcome the potential barrier (taken as 100meV) in which the new configuration lowers the systems energy, or if the configuration raises the systems energy with a finite probability of exp(-deltaE/kT). The quantum model allows the electron to tunnel through the potential barrier allowing transitions for which the systems energy is lowered even if the electron does not possess the necessary energy to overcome the potential barrier, or for configurations that raise the systems energy with the same finite probability as in the classical scenario.  P10

212  Advances in cosmology suggest a link between information, complexity and the age of the universe. This development could remove a fundamental obstacle to strong emergence in nature.  Paul Davies, Life and Consciousness as Emergent Phenomena <pdavies@els.mq.edu.au> (Australian Centre for Astrobiology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia)
    The claim that life and consciousness are emergent phenomena exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an upper bound on the information processing capacity of the universe may resolve this conflict for systems exceeding a certain threshold of complexity. A numerical estimate of the threshold for life places it at the level of a small protein. The calculation supports the contention that life is an emergent phenomenon. The analogous calculation for neural complexity remains an open problem. The same treatment suggests that classicality emerges from quantum mechanics at a level of complexity corresponding to about 400 entangled particles.   PL4

213  The transition between life and death - exploring the parameters  Jeremy Horne <jhorne18@earthlink.net> (MCC - Philosophy, RhinoCorps, Ltd., and Mesa Community College, Mesa, AZ)
    Where is the boundary between human life and death, or is there even such a boundary? Suggesting the existence of “boundary” raises the ageless problems of continuum and discrete: Zeno’s paradox, the modern calculus, Heisenberg-type problems, and, indeed, quantum mechanics and cosmology. Alternatively, are “alive” and “dead” just visible signs of a deeper process of universal motion permeating every aspect of our universe? I present two approaches to exploring how we might discover a boundary, if such exists: biological entities being progressively replaced by artificial ones and cell apoptosis, or cell death. First, with the whole body approach, easily identifiable human mental process may undergo a major qualitative change, as in how awareness of prostheses affects one’s response to the environment. Given recent developments, one may consider the substitution of various parts of the brain with artificial devices, such as silicon-or organic molecule-based neural network chips. Medical developments appear to be leading us in this direction. With the second approach, apoptosis, I ask about life in the body’s fundamental units, the cells. What is the “crossover” point (at the genetic, molecular, or even lower level) in the ability of a cell to sustain itself, although the environment in which it is maintained is hospitable for that cell’s life? I ask if a nanotechnology could sustain a cell indefinitely. In this discussion, it is essential to identify parameters for ascertaining boundaries of “consciousness” and “life”. Both have many definitions. However, in each case, there are collections of conditions that could be the minimal basis of what may be regarded as degrees of consciousness or life. Arguably, the most frequently used Glasgow Coma Scale could serve as an example. While we can vary the environment to observe how those conditions for each are changed, there is to us a “crossover” point when a self-sustaining or even an adaptive entity no longer can maintain its integrity. In both approaches, I examine the nature and type of homeostasis. Not unlike Frank J. Tipler (The Physics of Immortality), we might approach the transition of organically based homeostatic entities to non-hydrocarbon-based ones in terms of finite state machines, and automatons, while keeping in mind the conditions we discussed above for consciousness and life.   P4

214  Toward quantification and verification of spin-mediated consciousness theory and biological entanglement  Huping Hu, Maoxin Wu <hupinghu@quantumbrain.org> (Biophysics Consulting Group, Stony Brook, New York)
    The principle of science dictates that a theory or hypothesis should only achieve legitimacy if it is experimentally verified. Thus, since the summer of 2004 we have mainly focused our efforts on the quantification and verification of our spin-mediated consciousness theory. These efforts include designing and implementing computer simulations and experiments. Important results shall be presented if it is feasible. Our ongoing efforts also lead us to propose that quantum entanglement originates from the primordial spin processes in non-spatial and non-temporal pre-spacetime, is the quantum “glue” holding once interacting quantum entities together in pre-spacetime, implies genuine interconnectedness and inseparableness of the said quantum entities, and can be directly sensed and utilized by the entangled quantum entities. The said efforts further lead us to tentatively conclude that (1) quantum entanglement can influence brain properties and functions, many chemical/physical processes and micro/macroscopic properties of all forms of matters, thus, playing vital roles in consciousness and many biological/natural processes; (2) it is the genuine cause of many anomalous effects, if they do exist, in parapsychology, alternative medicine and other fields as some authors have already suspected in some cases; and (3) it can be harnessed, tamed and developed into revolutionary technologies to serve the mankind in many areas such as health, medicine and even recreation besides the already emerging fields of quantum computation. In the context of the spin-mediated consciousness theory, we strongly believe that the solutions to the binding problem and decoherence challenge lie with quantum entanglement. According to our theory, quantum spins are the mind-pixels, consciousness emerges from the collective dynamics of various entangled spin states and the unity of mind is achieved by entanglement of these mind-pixels. Quantum entanglement as understood herein allows mind to achieve binding and overcome decoherence in pre-spacetime. The essential question then becomes how does mind process and harness information from these mind-pixels to have conscious experience. We have argued previously that contextual, irreversible and non-computable means within pre-spacetime are utilized by mind to do this.  C21

215  Evolution and long-term memories in humans: Implications for theoretical and clinical research on consciousness and the transpersonal  Roulette Smith <najms@postgraduate-interdisciplinary-studies.org> (IPIS and ITP, Palo Alto, CA)
    Previous reports (1-4) focused on possibilities that DNA in brain may be repositories of long-term memories in living systems [LTM]. This report examines implications for evolution, and the evolution of cognition and consciousness, the transpersonal, and several clinical entities (e.g., dementia and other neurocognitive / neuromuscular disorders, autism, temporary autism (5), and several non-genetic transmissible diseases). Evolutionary perspectives are shown to introduce clarity and parsimony where none existed previously. Several methodological and ethnomethodological challenges also are considered. In particular, evolutionist perspectives, when coupled with 2001 findings from two “human genome projects" [HGPs], reveal that LTM and consciousness may have a neo-Darwinian and non-proteomic (i.e., non-genetic) basis grounded in alternative modes of molecular information transfers involving mirror neurons and/or an inverse molecular information pathway different from the one articulated in the “central dogma.” Several “trinucleotide repeat diseases” [TNR] provide compelling evidence for this alternative information pathway and non-proteomic basis for some consciousness. References 1. Smith, R. W. (1979). Long-Term Memories: Where Does the 'Buck' Stop? — Toward a Testable Theory of Debugging the Molecular Basis of Long-Term Memories in Living Organisms. Abstracts, Seventh Meeting of the International Society for Neurochemistry [Jerusalem, ISRAEL — September 2-6], p. 590. 2. Smith, R. Wm. (2003). Revisiting the Molecular Biology, Genetics and Genomics of Long-Term Memory in Living Systems. Abstracts, International Congress of Genetics [Melbourne, AUSTRALIA – July 6-11], Abstract #5.C.0802, p.133. 3. Smith, R. Wm. (2004). Towards a Molecular Biology of Long-Term Memory in Humans: Implications for Research on Consciousness, Subconsciousness, Dreaming, Nurture and Commonsense. Abstracts, Toward a Science of Consciousness 2004 [Tucson, AZ – April 8-11], Abstract 196. 4. Smith, R. Wm. (2004). Towards a Molecular Basis for Spirituality and Religious Knowledge: Implications for Nurture and Evolution in Long-Term Memory. In 2004 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Religious Research Association Conference (“Neurotheology, and the Biological and Evolutionary Aspects of Religion”) Annual Meeting Abstracts, p22 (see also 2004 SSSR/RRA Program Schedule, p17) [Kansas City, MO – October 24]. 5. Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink – The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Company.   P4

@H2 = [04.09]  Evolution of consciousness

216  Cognition, recognition and the immune system  Uzi Awret <uawret@cox.net> (Falls Church, Va.)
    In recent years we have witnessed the appearance of embodied and environmentally embedded theories of cognition that blur the line of demarcation separating action and representation. Examples would be Alva Noe’s work on enacted perception, Andy Clark’s ’enacted representation’ and important contributions by Varela and others. Because these theories are based directly on our physical theories they seem to supply us with an opportunity to ground cognition. The implicit assumption made here is that pattern recognition supervenes on our physical theories. I will try and claim that pattern recognition is a fundamental process that does not supervene on the physical anymore than the physical supervenes on pattern recognition. If the paradigms of physical action and pattern recognition are mutually irreducible than we should consider enacted cognitive theories in conjunction with their pattern recognition counterparts. The mutual irreducibility of action and pattern recognition is closely linked to the way in which information and the matter in which information is necessarily inscribed can neither be fully united nor separated, I will suggest a more ‘cognitive’ theory of cognition by considering a broader view of the evolution of biological pattern recognition that appeals to molecular ‘pre-technology’ and ‘pre-culture’. The paper will attempt to expose deep dynamic and structural similarities between the brain and the immune system as cognitive systems to support the claim that human cognition resulted from the pre-technological evolution of more primitive ‘cogntive societies’. The comparison between the brain and the immune system will borrow from Llinas’ concepts of neuronal recruitment and augmentation and Irun Cohen’s distinction between a non-specific, preparatory, contextual and ecological immune response vs. the more specific acquired immune response. I will consider some of the structural similarities shared by these systems, especially some of the new developments relating the neurological synapse to the immunological synapse. I will end by suggesting that the brain utilizes many of the more primitive cognitive skills displayed by the immune system in a more coordinated way and about a million times faster.   P10

217  On logic and consciousness  Valeriy Bulitko, Vadim Bulitko <valeriyb@athabascau.ca> (Centre for Science, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada)
    Piaget showed that the ability to reason logically is not innate but is developed in children between the age of seven and twelve [1]. Prior to such a development, children demonstrate ``pre-logical" operations that are either innate or developed at an earlier age. We study how logical structures can emerge on the basis of the pre-logical operations discovered by Piaget as a means to search for an appropriate behavioral model in an actual or imaginary world. In our framework, an acceptable behavior is a result of a search in the state space $S$ with two preference relations $P_i,P_o$ defined on $S$. The preference relation $P_i$ is a prior (subjective) representation of utility of a state. The preference relation $P_o$ is an objective representation of such state utility. A behaving subject chooses the next state in accordance to the preference relations. If $P_i$ and $P_o$ disagree in their evaluation of utility of a state, the subject may modify $P_i$ in accord with $P_o$. This process represents an adaptation or learning. It is important that the preference relations are defined in terms of Piaget's pre-logical operations.For the purpose of our study, we assume that the subject has access to $P_i,P_o$ {\em only} in its current state. We show that a (posterior) preference relation $P_p$ emerges in a search for a better state as a modification of the initial preference relation $P_i$. These modifications can be described in terms of logic-like formulae over $P_i, P_o$. Notably, for particular $P_i,P_o$, these formulae become classic logical propositions. Thus, in this framework certain kinds of logic can be demonstrated to have an adaptive meaning. Development of the posterior preference relation $P_p$ can happen over the course of organism's lifetime or even over the course of the organism's species lifetime. In the former case we would say that $P_p$ is developed via learning. In the latter case, $P_p$ ensues in the process of evolution. A different scenario takes place when an organism demonstrates, without a trial-and-error process, a rapidly emerging logical behavior that has no immediate adaptive value. In our framework we argue that this kind of logical behavior requires a sufficiently high level of consciousness in order to reflect and operate on the preference relations $P_i, P_o$ in the organism's mind. This reflection together with the ability to manipulate states different from the organism's current actual state and determine their utilities, allows the organism to refine its $P_i$ rapidly without a trial-and-error. Thus, such a refinement of $P_i$ in organism's mind presumes a sort of self-reflection and self-awareness. Consequently, presence of logical reasoning appears to be an indicator of organism's reaching a certain level of consciousness. We therefore conjecture that children reach a higher level of consciousness at the age of seven to twelve. References: 1. J. Piaget. Logic and Psychology. Manchester University Press, 1956.   P10

218  The evolution of nonalgorithmic consciousness  Steve Cousins <cousins@rikkyo.ne.jp> (Rikkyo University, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo, Japan)
    If consciousness is a higher-order feature of the brain with causal powers of its own, then it is most likely a product of natural selection. Yet if consciousness is not fully reducible to the brain, how could it have evolved? Natural selection in its orthodox formulation is a materialistic and algorithmic process: it produces physical traits through a sequence of automatic, law-like steps. Unlike physical traits, however, consciousness is made up of meaning; it exists only as experienced. The basis of this meaning--and what makes consciousness nonalgorithmic--is reference: a triadic process in which the relation of sign to object is mediated by a conceptual ground or interpretant. The question occurs: How could an algorithmic process create a nonalgorithmic mind? As Dennett (1995) asked, "how could anything born of automata ever be anything but a much, much fancier automaton?" It couldn't, which suggests that natural selection isn't an entirely algorithmic process. The concept of natural teleology, according to which biological traits exist for the sake of certain end-states or goals of the organism, lends support to this view. In contrast to teleology involving the goals of an external agent, in natural teleology the goals of a process develop from the process itself. By contributing to specific or "proximate" end-states of the organism, biological traits contribute to the "ultimate" end-state of fitness; this contribution, by allowing the organism to be born again, thus helps explain the traits' very existence. This is the basis of designating such end-states as goals, as well as designating the adaptive effect of a given trait as a proper function. What makes natural selection nonalgorithmic, then, is a triadic process in which the relation of form to function is mediated by immanent goals. This perspective opens up the possibility that nonalgorithmic consciousness could evolve, but leads to another question: Why would it evolve? Natural selection designs traits to fit specific, local environments, based on an "a priori" standard of good design. But what could be the a priori principle of consciousness, which has no observable substance nor any link to a particular environmental niche? I propose that natural selection evolved a version of itself; consciousness is natural selection incarnate. Unable to guide organisms in the moment, natural selection created consciousness as a surrogate, to bring the goal of fitness to bear on the immediately unfolding conditions of the environment. Just as the relation of form to function in biological traits is mediated by immanent goals, so the relation of sign to object is mediated by an interpretant. Whereas the goal in natural selection is the fitness of the organism in the environment, the interpretant in consciousness consists of representations of such fitness, as embodied in memory. In either case its mediating influence is such that this third term tends to bring about its own realization. As with other evolved traits, consciousness has a proper function, and that is to replicate the work of natural selection itself.   C5

219  The evolutionary function & the physiological realization of the experience of thirst  Hans Dooremalen <zombies@xs4all.nl> (Philosophy, Tilburg University & Groningen University, Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands)
    In science explanations of phenomena often starts with a functional analysis. This is an answer to the question: What does the phenomenon do? After answering it, a second question – the realization question – is asked: How is this done? If both questions are answered the phenomenon under investigation is explained. We have gained knowledge and understanding of another piece of the world. Influential philosophers like Ned Block, David Chalmers and Jaegwon Kim have expressed their doubts about the possibility of a functional analysis of consciousness. If experiences indeed cannot be functionally analyzed, a scientific explanation cannot be found. Assuming that experiences are properties of organisms, the functional analysis that is required will be an evolutionary one: What does a certain type of experience add to the survival and reproductive success of the experiencing individual? Though consciousness can be said to be homogeneous (every experience has a certain what-it-is-likeness) the heterogeneous character of consciousness (every type of experience differs from every other type) implies that solving the problems of consciousness will require much work, for we have to explain every type of consciousness separately (Cf. Flanagan 1992). In this paper I will focus on the experience of thirst, for the simple reason that this is a type of experience we can be sure about that our ancestors had them too. If we take a look at experiences of thirst (based on data gathered by Derek Denton and his colleagues) it is not that hard to provide a functional analysis of this type of experience, showing what the advantage is for the individual in evolutionary terms. The data that I will discuss show that phenomenal consciousness is evolution’s shorthand. In this case the experience of thirst is shorthand for an increased serum osmolality (i.e. there is a lack of fluid in the body). What is important in this case is that the thirsty organism does not know anything about the complicated process of osmoregulation. The organism acts because it is thirsty, not because it knows that it’s serum osmolality has increased. This blocks any conceivability argument that is meant to show that a physical duplicate without experiences would still act the same. The second question is how this evolutionary function is performed by the organisms that experience thirst. Here too we can give an answer. Since answering both the functional and realization question is enough to solve the problem concerning a type of experience, the problem of the experience of thirst is solved. References Block, N.J. (1995), “On a confusion about a function of consciousness.” Chalmers, D.J. (1996b), The Conscious Mind. In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Denton, D., R. Shade, F. Zamarippa, G. Egan, J. Blair-West, MN. McKinley, J. Lancaster & P. Fox (1999), “Neuroimaging of genesis and satiation of thirst and an interocetptor-driven theory of primary consciousness.” Flanagan, O.J. (1992), Consciousness Reconsidered. Kim, J. (1998), Mind in a Physical World, An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation.  C5

220  Associative learning as the functional context for the evolution of basic consciousness  Simona Ginsburg, Eva Jablonka <simona@openu.ac.il> (Natural Science, The Open University of Israel, Raanana, Israel)
    We propose an evolutionary account of basic consciousness, the set of processes that lead to first-person feelings, that are present in (some) organisms with a nervous system. We define the selective context in which first-person experiences first appeared, and try to give an account of the selection pressures that led to their evolution. In other words, we try to account for the evolutionary transition from a non-feeling, non-conscious animal, to a feeling animal with basic consciousness. We suggest that associative learning is the indicator for, and was the functional context in which basic consciousness emerged and evolved. During associative learning stable dynamic "representations" of new relations between causes and effects are formed via the attribution of whole-organisms "selection values" (the sensory-motor correlates of rewards and punishment) to these relations. These value-laden, whole-organism sensory-motor states are the primary distinct first-person experiences that an organism can be said to have, and associative learning is therefore an indicator of basic consciousness. The biological structures and mechanisms enabling this basic consciousness evolved to allow a coordinated motor response of a multicellular organism, that had to move efficiently and rapidly, as a unit, in response to relevant stimuli, and to learn new, relevant cause-effect relations. We suggest that the neural organization allowing first-person experience evolved in this context, and depended on the following: 1. Continuous, two-way, reciprocal signaling that led to integrated, systemic, dynamic, sensory-motor connection-patterns, or "representations"; these sensory-motor patterns evolved in the context of selection for coordinated motor responses. 2. Temporal persistence of such "representations"; this persistence evolved as a consequence of selection for effective binding of different aspects of sensations, as well as for memory. 3. Categorization of such "representations" into reward-related ("positive") or punishment-related ("negative") classes, which evolved as a consequence of selection for effective trial-and-error learning. Once such neural organization arose, it "captured" every persistent sensory stimulus, making it reverberate through the neural network, thus leading to unlimited sensor-specific organism qualia. We therefore propose that basic consciousness and qualia are phylogenetically ancient, unambiguously present in the round worms, and that basic consciousness emerged and fueled the Cambrian explosion   C5

221  Did the mind evolve?  Roberto Gonzalez-Plaza, Mimi E. Lam, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada <rgonzalez@nwic.edu> (Science, Northwest Indian College, Bellingham, WA)
    When the evolution of the human brain is considered, the ‘evolution of the mind’ comes to mind. While much has been written on this in recent years, the concept of the mind has remained elusive. Here, we adopt the operational view that the mind is the total output or activity of the brain and that the mind, in turn, affects the brain. New paleontological and archaeogical findings are rewriting the human story with plausible ‘timescapes’ for the emergence of the sapiens mind. In the absence of fossilized brains, deducing the mind’s emergence from the evolutionary stages of the brain’s lineage poses several challenges. First, each extinct species of the Homo lineage shows ‘discrete’ brain volume increments, which are used to define the respective species. Second, the differences in brain volume of each extinct Homo species represent, minimally, differences in the number and architecture of the cortex cells, its layers, and other brain areas. Was there a state of ‘mind’ correlated to its own brain for each species in our lineage? Or were there proto-human minds leading towards ours and if so, what would this imply? The questions become more poignant when the ‘mind’ of Pan paniscus, our closest extant cousin, is used as the ‘baseline’ for the modern human mind. We but only superficially understand the fundamental analogies and homologies between human and chimp ‘minds’ and still do not yet know if we share psychological mechanisms for problem-solving. Comparative genomics of human and chimp genomes tell us that differential expression and positive selection of brain genes may be important in the evolution of ‘minds’. But the mechanism of how genes build minds is still unknown; otherwise, we could reconstruct the brain pathway leading to our mind. Are extinct Homo species’ minds laddered up from a chimp baseline or did we take a unique evolutionary brain/mind turn? A phylogenetic grading towards the human mind is often assumed: the closer in phylogeny, the more human-like the output function, i.e., mind, of a particular species. Meanwhile, it is not yet possible to correlate the differences in the structure and architecture found in the brain’s lineage with the specific behaviors that our ancestors displayed. We propose a parsimonious model of the emergence of the human mind, where the sapiens mind appears as a quantum event in evolution, from the biology of the sapiens brain. The birth of the human mind has lead to the unprecedented journey of our lineage and today, faces unprecedented possibilities, such as that of multiverses. Contemplating their existence takes us full circle, to the moment when the mind first realized its own existence, alone, in awe and astonishment, before the void of ‘unsensed’ realms.  P4

222  Evolution of representations. From basic life to self-representation and self-consciousness.  Christophe Menant, Christophe Menant <crmenant@free.fr> (http://crmenant.free.fr/Home-Page/index.HTM, Bordeaux , France)
    The notion of representation is at the foundation of cognitive sciences and is used in theories of mind and consciousness. Other notions like 'interactivism', 'intentionality' and 'guidance theory' have been associated to the notion of representation to introduce its functional aspect. We would like to propose here that a conception of 'usage related' representation eases its positioning in an evolutionary context, and opens new areas of investigation toward self-representation and self-consciousness. Presentation of subject contains four parts. First, we characterise a representation as being an information managed by a finalized system, by a system submitted to a constraint that has to be satisfied in a given environment. We consider that such a system can generate a meaningful information by comparing its constraint to a received information (Menant 2003 ). We define a representation as being made of the received information and of the meaningful information. Such approach allows groundings in and out for the representation relatively to the system. The second part analyzes how such a representation defined in terms of information can be positioned in an evolutionary thread. We take as starting point a simple living element that has to satisfy a 'stay alive' constraint. We then follow an evolutionary path that brings the organism to the level of prehuman primates that can be compared to our today great apes. The performance of Mirror Self Recognition (Gallup) that can be considered as existing at this level of evolution introduces the notion of auto-representation, first characterized in its simplest version without the notion of self. The third part is about introducing the notion of self in evolution via the transformation of auto-representation into self-representation, avoiding the homunculus risk. Still focusing on our prehuman ancestors, we use a hypothesis concerning the performance of intersubjectivity as made possible by group life with the presence of Mirror Neurons in the organisms. Mirror Neurons have been discovered in the 1990' (Rizzolatti 1996, Gallese 1996). The attribution to nonhuman primates of a performance of intersubjectivity as related to Mirror Neurons is currently a subject of debate (Decety 2003). As a continuation to other presentations (Menant TSC 2004 and 2005), we consider that identification to suffering conspecifics in a hostile environment creates an important anxiety that has to be limited. Anxiety limitation becomes a new constraint that generates new representations. Corresponding anxiety limitation is implemented by the development of empathy, imitation, language and group life. The development of these performances increases self-representation, and so creates a positive feedback loop implying a significant acceleration in the evolutionary process. We propose that such an evolutionary engine can lead to self-consciousness, then considered as a by product of the evolution of self-representation. Such evolutionary process naturally roots self-consciousness in emotions. The last part summarizes the here-above developed elements, and introduces some possible continuations. The evolutionary scenario proposed here does not introduce explicitly the question of phenomenal consciousness (Block 1995). This question is to be addressed later with the help of this scenario.  P10

223  The wings of imagination - the missing link in the origin of consciousness?  José Monserrat <rijik@ufla.br> (Computer Science Departament - DCC, Universidade Federal de Lavras - UFLA, Lavras, MG, Brazil)
    Consciousness is examined through the focus of imagination which, traditionally, means the 'capacity' to create fictions about reality and the 'fantasies' themselves created. Here, however, imagination is viewed at the core of the origin of consciousness. Following James' approach – mind as a continuous flow of mental images – 'imaginary' is proposed to be both a process and result of the organism-object relationship, the source of imagination (Castoriadis). A perspective that views consciousness through the evolution of imagination is sketched. The imaginary (organism-object relationship) is generated in three levels. The first order flow maps the organism and the environment. The second one maps the transformations of the organism during its interaction with an object, generating in a transitory form the sense of self and the representation of the object. The third order flow maps the previous mapping, generating a meta-representation of the object and self, but in a symbolic and non-transitory form. The third level is hypothetical but suggested to explain the extended capacity of imagination in higher animals. The imaginary engenders both the sense of self and the representation of the interacting object as mental images, creating “what is seen” and “what sees”, the “thinking” and the “thinker” (Damásio). Mental images and their qualia – representations – are regarded as being born from within the imaginary as a 'genuine creation' of the living being, prompted by the interacting objects. The imaginary of others animals is mostly dedicated to find food, self preservation and procreation. The hominids' imaginary suffers a gradual rupture and loses function in terms of strict biological needs. It becomes relatively autonomous and capable of disconnecting itself from external things of here and now, and may turn back on itself: the object of the imaginary becoming the imaginary itself. This capability made possible the creation of images from images in a recursive cycle without any precedents in the biological world. The human consciousness arises as an outcome of a reciprocal and recursive interaction between the imaginary of each human being and the imagination already instituted previously and collectively in language, culture and society. A hypothetical scenario for the evolution of imagination is sketched, explaining the emergence of first humans. From core self that composes the 'swift' primary consciousness (Damásio), this would have evolved to an episodic narrative consciousness, already symbolic, but limited. Later, through a 'community of minds' (Donald), and with the evolution of vocal language, a wholly symbolic but mythical narrative consciousness evolved. Lastly, with the creation of written records, came the reflexive consciousness of present-day humans. The view of mind as a flow of images in three levels, and as a process and result of the organism-object relationship (imaginary), seeks to break up the antinomy between subjectivity and objectivity, and to regard the status of representation as simultaneously “real” and “fictitious”. Finally, the role of imagination in education, art and science is analysed, and shown to be essential for understanding the creative way in which human beings learn and (re)construct their reality.   P4

224  How a simple reversal in the preferred direction of information flow in the hominid neocortex led to the mind’s "big bang:” The frontal feedback model  Raymond Noack <cmsresearch2000@yahoo.com> (CMS Research, Seattle, WA)
    It is argued here that the entire complex of mental attributes that many consider to be uniquely human (including language, creativity, logico-mathematical and music ability, sentient experience, and self-awareness) may have arisen in the hominid brain as the simple result of a fundamental, evolutionary reversal in the preferred direction of information flow in the highest association areas of the cerebral cortex. In the nonhuman brain, vast projections from several large sensory association areas converge on and “drive” a much smaller prefrontal cortex. Such an arrangement provides for the tight control of motor behaviors by sensory processes and yields a mechanism for the global function of the nonhuman brain known as the “perception-action cycle.” In the human, however, the situation is the reverse: the large prefrontal cortices in humans drive the relatively smaller posterior association areas to which they project. Such an arrangement in the human sets up a mechanism for the global function of the brain known as the “frontal feedback system.” The frontal feedback system is characterized by the intrinsic generation of motor programs in prefrontal cortices feeding back on and manipulating the release and reconstruction of stored sensory representations in posterior sensory cortices. This feedback influence proceeds initially through parieto-temporal association cortices and then back through the entire sensory processing hierarchy towards primary sensory areas. What results from this feedback effect in humans is the establishment of an “ego-centric frame” or central character/self in posterior parieto-temporal cortex, along with a “virtual environment” within which that self resides, located in earlier sensory areas. The frontal feedback system works by manipulating this central character/self within its virtual environment through the effects of frontally generated “action-schemes” manipulating posterior sensory representations in a manner described by Piaget. Anatomical and physiological evidence for this proposed reversal will be presented along with a proposed experiment designed to test for the presence of frontal feedback in the human brain and its absence in the nonhuman brain using current multivariate analytical techniques.  C5

225  Self-consciousness and the evolution of conscience  Gottfried Suessenbacher <gottfried.suessenbacher@uni-klu.ac.at> (Institute of Psychology, University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Carinthia, Austria)
    Doing research on the problem of consciousness and on related questions like the evolution of morality (Katz, 2000) and free will (Lukas, 2004; Hodgson, 2005) psychologists, philosophers and a lot of interdisciplinary oriented scientists reflect the question whether there will always be an unsolvable “ignorabimus” to such classical human mysteries. Evolutionary psychologists - not interested in questions of consciousness - maintain that the brain “functions as a computer” and in this way, being subject to evolutionary principles, developed its current peculiarities (Cosmides & Tooby, 2004). However, considering, for instance, the development of fire usage during periods of transition from simple primate to cultural human existence, the evolution of the genus homo shows: The achievement of fire usage, especially of its more sophisticated forms, needed an interplay between (a) the control of affects, (b) a multitude of cognitive abilities and (c) the development of sufficient communication/ interaction - it needed, in short, the mastering of a strong interference between principles of self- and species-preservation. Therefore, contrary to evolutionary psychology, which simply might hypothesize the prehistoric development of a domain-specific cognitive (fire-usage) module, this paper concludes that the functional and structural alterations within the brain (which were needed in order to adapt to the handling of fire) may have allowed the evolution of self-consciousness (SC). This happened by the improvement of preceding abilities which led to a gradual convergence of morality/conscience (M) and (primordial) language (L) - in this way expanding nonsymbolic primate consciousness ( C). The result of such fire-dependent evolutionary steps, going on over milleniums, can be expressed in the following formula: C + (M x L) = SC. This paper explains the multiplicative expression in the formula, gives an overview of hypothetical evolutionary stages regarding the development of fire usage and shows how these stages correlated with necessary neuro- and sociopsychological changes of characteristics of the genus homo.   P10

226  Attention, choice and the co-evolution of consciousness and ethics  Wendell Wallach <wwallach@comcast.net> (Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies, New Haven, CT)
    At a crucial stage in evolution, an animal made the transition from preconcep-tual adaptive behavior to an organism that occasionally engaged in a conscious deliberation about what it perceives. In all likelihood, this was a very crude form of deliberation, somewhere on the cusp between an instinctual response to stimuli and the rudimentary representation of information. Though largely dependent on emotional input, this seminal event in the emergence of consciousness should be understood as laying the foundations for choice and ethics. Learning is largely the ability to develop more complex unconscious processing mechanisms or the restructuring of existing mechanisms. Kandel elucidated the molecular biology through which even primitive organisms can learn new behavioral responses. In sophisticated organisms, learning introduces complex branching into unconscious action sequences. Unconscious cognitive mechanisms, like computers, are limited to the processing of information which is clear or well structured. In biological systems, this includes affective input. I will propose that consciousness emerges when attention is directed at information that cannot be assimilated by unconscious processing mechanisms because the information is unclear or incomplete. When it is possible to clarify or complete the information through attention alone the information will automatically be reintroduced for processing by unconscious cognitive mechanisms. Baars hypothesizes that attention alone is enough for learning. If the information remains incomplete it must either be discarded or be interpreted or valued in order to give it a form where it can be processed by unconscious mechanisms. In our primitive ancestors, this might be understood through a scenario where neither of two instinctual action sequences is activated due to the sustained ambiguity of the available information, such as whether to flee from a distant predator that may or may not be satiated. An animal under instinctual pressure to direct its attention elsewhere (care of the young, need for nourishment) will be forced to introduce some form of primitive heuristics in order to deal with the sustained ambiguity. While it is well understood that cognitive brain structures are built upon and evolved out of the instinctual emotional brain, what is less well understood is the two-way relationship between conscious deliberation and the unconscious initiation of specific action sequences. An appreciation for how primitive heuristics are formed will not only suggest hypotheses for elucidating this relationship, but also holds far reaching ramifications for our understanding of the structure and grounding of our ethical sensibilities.   C20

@H2 = [04.10]  Medicine and healing

227  Remote diagnosis of medical conditions: A double-blind experiment of medical intuition  Sheryl Attig, Schwartz, Gary <sattig@u.arizona.edu> (Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, Pima)
    Remote Diagnosis for Medical Conditions: A Double-Blind Experiment. Attig, Sheryl; Schwartz, Gary. Background: Medical intuition is the practice of using intuition to diagnose and treat illness. There is a long history of medical intuition including the beliefs and practices of Ancient Greek physicians, shamans throughout the world, healers in India, and Edgar Cayce in America. In more recent times research has been conducted to study this phenomenon in therapeutic touch, Silva Mind Control, Mind Dynamic in Sweden, and in a variety of other intuitives. To date there has not been a double blinded study of diagnosing using medical intuition. Aims: To further test the hypothesis of medical intuition a double blind experiment was performed using seven medical intuitives, 19 congestive heart failure patients and their 19 spouses who did not have congestive heart failure to serve as controls. Methods: A Cardiologist collected medical data on the patients with congestive heart failure as well as on their spouses. Medical intuitives were asked to give medical diagnoses for all subjects at a distance, given only the subjects’ names, dates of birth, gender, and the city and state in which they live. Undergraduate students counted the number of diagnoses given to each subject by each intuitive. Two cardiologists rated the likelihood of a diagnosis being congestive heart failure for each diagnosis given by the intuitives. Results: On average the intuitives gave more diagnoses to the subjects who were diagnosed by the diagnosing cardiologist as having congestive heart failure than to the subjects who did not have congestive heart failure. The cardiologists rated the congestive heart failure patients as more likely to have the diagnosis of congestive heart failure than their spouses. Limitations: There was a small number and variety of medical intuitives. It is possible that some of the subjects to be diagnosed may have died by the time the diagnoses were performed. Distance in diagnosing may have been a limiting factor for practitioners who are used to being in the same room with the person to be diagnosed. Conclusion: Medical intuition appears to be a real phenomenon, worthy of further research. With further validation it could be used as an adjunct tool for diagnosing patients, especially in difficult cases. Further research should investigate the factors that contribute to the success or failure of a medical intuitive being able to diagnose properly, such as mood and health factors, the effects of incentive, and the effect of distance. Also, investigating whether or not medical intuition is something innate or something that can be learned could be of value.  P5

228  Interaction of distant Johrei and patient belief in receiving Johrei on health outcomes: A double-blind study  Audrey Brooks, GSchwartz, GE; Reece, K; Goldtooth, R; Nangle, G; Campesino, M; & Hamilton, A <brooksaj@email.arizona.edu> (Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Objective: To examine the influence of patient treatment guess on change on self-report mood and health in Coronary Bypass surgery patients. Methods: Patients in the study were participating in a double-blind randomized controlled trial examining the effect of distant Johrei on self-report health, pain, and mood outcomes (N=55). The self-report measures were completed prior to surgery and 3-days post-surgery. Mood was measured with the Global Mood Scale and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The Arizona Integrated Outcomes Scale (AIOS) measured overall well-being. The McGill Pain scale was used to measure pain and the Idler was used to measure health status. At the 3-day post-surgery follow-up patients were asked whether they thought they were in the Johrei group and how confident they were with their choice. Results: A majority of patients (75%) thought they received Johrei. There was no significant difference between the Johrei (71%) and control (77%) groups in the proportion of persons guessing they received Johrei. Forty-three percent who thought they didn’t get Johrei actually received Johrei (NJ), while 31% guessed correctly that they received Johrei (YJ). Thirteen percent guessed Johrei but were in the control group (YC) and 13% guessed no Johrei and were in the control group (NC). Overall, persons who thought they had received Johrei had significantly higher confidence ratings (Means: guess Johrei 7.5 vs. no Johrei 5.3). When analyzed by the 4 guess groups, the group that guessed no Johrei and were in the control group had significantly lower confidence ratings than the other 3 groups (Means: NC: 3.4 vs. NJ 7.9; YC 7.1, YJ 6.9). Oneway ANOVAs were conducted with correct guess as the independent variable. Correct guess significantly predicted AIOS change, pain in the last week, and health compared to others. Sensory pain change was also marginally significant (p<.08). The group that guessed Johrei and received Johrei showed improved health and well-being and a smaller increase in pain than the group that guessed no Johrei and were in the control group. Conclusion: The placebo effect is widely debated as a possible explanation for the positive outcomes found in alternative medicine studies. The present findings suggest that receiving a healing treatment alone is not sufficient; patient belief in whether a person received treatment appears to interact with the treatment to produce positive outcomes. Furthermore, it is the lack of belief in conjunction with receiving no treatment that contributes to poorer outcomes. The present study was conducted with a small sample and needs to be replicated on a larger sample, with other illnesses, and utilizing different energy modalities.  P10

229  Roles of consciousness in the clinical use of the biopsychosocial model of illness  Bruce Carruthers <bcarruth@telus.net> ( physician, Vancouver, B.C., Canada)
    This model, originated by Engel in 1980, states that all illness has biological, psychological and social causes, which should be included in a diagnosis that purports to be holistic, since all 3 realms are relevant to disease. Because all illness involves changes in biology and occurs in a psychosocial context, this is trvially corrrect. Problems of relevance occur when the innumerable possible causes from any realm are brought to bear on diagnostic decisions concerning the clinical situation of an individual patient. Problems of causation arise when a given symptom could arise from any or all of the 3 realms. Problems of interaction arise because of the model's segregation of the 3 realms, along with body-mind dualism. While the above model is usually presented as an all-inclusive, impersonal third person framework applicable to all patients, the actual clinical situation is complex in a very different way. Our personal relating to the world, including clinical activities, occurs in a matrix whose fundamental structure is one of I-THOU-IT(Patocka), which represents a very different form of holism- that of the undivided conscious individual. Observation of individual patients involves several forms of consciousness- first, second, and third person- active in a single individual and his/her observers within her/his lifeworld. Unavoidably, intertwining experiential data of different kinds arise, with boundaries between these different modes often ambiguous. Thus objective biological dysfunction is usually self-experienced through subjective symptoms. Yet symptoms can also express psychological and social discord. How can one tell the difference? Objective testing, while necessary, is necessarily incomplete and may give irrelevant results. Psychological and social data can be confirmed using third person-like standardised testing, but this is usually based on first and second person data and properly applies to patients as set members, not individuals. These instruments cannot assess causal force and relevance in individual cases. Clinical observation of illness occurs in a Patockan personal matrix, where causal force and relevance unfold along with the symptoms. Using second person modes of observation, the clinician clarifies the origin of a patient's first person experience of symptoms using a special form of 'bracketing' in order to separate direct proprioceptive bodily experience, reversible between subject and object, from experience derived from psychological and/or social realms which cannot be so reversed. If it proves impossible to verify this segregation of symptoms, so essential to proper therapy, using independent third person means, the philosophical STICKING POINTS suggested by Hacking can be used to clarify whether a symptom has been generated within the organic realm of biopathophysiology or its psychosocial context (e.g. symptom beliefs). If symptoms require accommodation, remain internally stable and/or show an inherent stucture as psychosocial circumstances change, they are more likely of bodily origin. If dynamic syndromes or symptom sets show coherence and consilience, they are more likely of bodily origin. The opposite holds true if symptoms originate in the psychosocial world. Ref.- Jan Patocka "Body, Community, Language, World" Tr. E Kohak Ian Hacking "The Social Construction of What?"   P4

230  Biofield therapies: helpful or full of hype? A systematic review of clinically-relevant studies  Shamini Jain, Paul J. Mills, Ph.D. <sjain@ucsd.edu> (sdsu/ucsd joint doctoral program, clinical psychology, San Diego, )
    Biofield therapies a(such as Reiki, external QiGong, Therapeutic Touch, and Healing Touch) are therapies that purport to utilize and promote altered states of consicousness for the purposes of healing. These therapies are controversial within Western medicine, and relatively little information has been synthesized with respect to their potential clinical efficacy. This systematic review examined 58 clinical studies (both randomized controlled trials and within-subject designs) of a variety of proximally-practiced biofield therapies (i.e., patient and practitioner in same room), to determine whether such therapies might positively effect outcomes of clinical relevance. Each study was systematically reviewed for quality based on the following criteria: 1) Methodology (use of a standard control and/or baseline, use of a comparison group, use of a placebo or nonspecific control, delineation of proper randomization or counterbalancing procedure, description/testing for recipient blinding, description/testing of blindness of outcome assessors, description/testing of naïve observers to real vs. mock treatment, reporting of attrition, and inclusion of follow-up data) 2) Statistical analysis (sample size, proper data analysis procedure, alpha control, and assessment/use of covariates) 3) Outcomes assessment (use of reliable/valid measures, more than one domain of outcomes assessed). Characteristics of participants, intervention information, domains of outcomes, and ratios of positive versus total outcomes (for both biological and psychological variables) were also assessed for each of the 58 studies. Results indicated that 84% of studies reported psychological self-report outcomes, 54% reported biological (cardiovascular, hormonal, and immune) or functional outcomes, and 13% examined qualitative reports. Studies overall were of below average quality, but met minimum standards for validity of inferences (i.e.., randomization and use of control or comparison groups, appropriate statistical procedures, and reliability and validity of measures). Neither study quality nor treatment duration were associated with number or ratio of positive outcomes reported. Review results indicate that biofield therapies show promise for decreasing pain perception as well as enhancing quality of life for a variety of patient populations. Studies also repeatedly demonstrated biofield therapies’ ability to promote an acute physiological state consistent with the relaxation response. Findings in other domains (such as anxiety, depression, and longer-term biological and functional endpoints) were equivocal. Further clinical research with biofield modalities appears warranted. More specific endpoints (including biological, psychological, spiritual, qualitative, and biophysical) are needed to potentially distinguish biofield modalities from other behavioral medicine interventions.   C12

231  Closing the divide: Phenomenological perspectives on transformations of consciousness evoked during healing in the context of life-threatening illness  Susan W. Schwartz <ssbaraca@meganet.net> (Sturbridge, MA)
    Academic literatures and laypersons’ illness-healing narratives indicate patients’ experiential awareness and understanding can promote curing and are pivotal to healing. Yet scientific medicine tends to under-utilize such data as routine resources for curing or healing, and scientific investigation of healing from the perspective of healees (individuals engaged in personal healing) is in its infancy. This poster presentation of a qualitative exploration aims to illuminate healing as experiential process and outcome by the transformation(s) of consciousness (TOC) evoked during healing in the context of life-threatening illness (LTI). The phenomenological methodology constructed by Giorgi (1985) was used to conduct and deconstruct in-person, recorded, depth-interviews, in which 3 respondents (1 female and 2 males) described their LTI-healing experiences. Data analysis revealed each healee’s overarching TOC to be: the conversion of a self beset with crippling fear of death into a self willing to encounter fears of dying and living, which revitalized and/or actualized capacities to be more fully oneself and engage life more deeply. Correspondingly, healing as closing the divide—the overarching metaphor signifying experiential healing as process transforming into outcome—was found to be a multiform, multidimensional, integrative phenomenon expressed within intrapersonal, interpersonal, situational, and transcendental contexts across domains of being and realms of consciousness. Fear of death and cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) were key catalysts prompting divisive and healing TOC. Personal growth entailed coping more effectively with traumatic cognitive dissonance and, as the intention to be cured expanded to seek healing, locus of control tended to shift from external to internal. Healing is transformative precisely because it literally must flow through one’s person. Themes are presented, and the general structure of a TOC healing instance is articulated as experiential sequence (e. g., quintessential TOC yielding liberation), prevalent aspects (e.g., hope & trust), and infrastructure (constituted by flow of consciousness, interplay, intensity, intuition, loving care, expectation, paradox, openness, intention, surrender, and empowerment; acronym: FIIILEPOISE). Giving voice to and heeding healees’ experiential awareness and understanding are advocated for advancing theoretical and therapeutic knowledge of healing. Tolerance for ambiguity, fear of the numinous, plasticity, and the proposed infrastructure are suggested arenas for future research.  P5

232  Predictors of improvement in self-reported health, pain, and mood in a sample of persons undergoing coronary bypass surgery  Gary Schwartz, Brooks, AJ; Reece, K; Goldtooth, R; Nangle, G; Campesino, M; & Hamilton, A <gschwart@aol.com> (Department of Psychology, Tucson, AZ)
    Objective: To examine the role of demographic, psychosocial and spiritual predictors on change on self-report mood, health, and pain scales in patients following Coronary Bypass surgery. Methods: Patients in the current study were participating in a double-blind randomized controlled trial examining the effect of distant Johrei on surgery outcomes. The self-report change measures were completed prior to surgery and 3-days post-surgery. Mood was measured with the Global Mood Scale and Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale. The short form of the McGill Pain scale was used to measure pain and the Idler was used to measure health status. Spirituality was measured by the Openness to Spiritual Beliefs (OSBE), the Daily Spiritual Experiences (DSE) scale, and the Religious and Spiritual Practices (RSP) scale. Results: Correlations between the predictors and change scores were examined first. Having experienced a person who had passed away (OSBE) was most frequently correlated with the change scores, followed by the DSE scale and receiving help from your congregation (RSP). Experiencing a person who had passed away was correlated with improvements in depression, mood, health ratings, overall well-being (trend), and pain. The DSE scale correlated with improvements in health ratings and pain. Individual DSE items were correlated with improvements in mood and health ratings. Congregation prayer and assistance correlated with improvements in pain, overall well-being, and health rating. Significantly correlated variables were used as predictors in regression analyses. Experiencing a person who had passed away was a predictor of improvement in mood, sensory pain, and health rating. The DSE was not significant in any of the models. Conclusion: These findings suggest that experiencing a person who had passed away and spiritual experiences are positively related to self-report health outcomes. Interestingly demographic, psychosocial and baseline mood variables rarely correlated with the change scores.   C12

233  Systemic family constellation work in clinical perspective: Multigenerational consciousness fields linked to illness formation.  Helmut Wautischer, Brigitte Essl, European M.D., M.A., D.C. <helmut.wautischer@sonoma.edu> (Philosophy, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA)
    For more than a decade, the German psychoanalyst and family therapist Bert Hellinger has developed a systemic approach that allows for a heightened understanding of effects from multigenerational trauma for the development of illness. In clinical settings all over Europe, Systemic Family Constellation Work is used to reintegrate traumatic events in affected family lineages where a subconscious transfer of information takes place, which can activate the occurrence of emotional and physical disorders in subsequent generations. Hellinger postulates a “knowing field” to account for information storage that enacts latent memories of traumas in family systems. Typical traumas with systemic effects are exclusions of family members (due to adoption, illegitimate children, institutionalizations for mental disorders and physical handicaps), early loss of family members (including siblings, stillborn children, late miscarriages, and at times even abortions), or loss of country and fortunes. This presentation describes applied dimensions of constellation work, along with selected case studies. The authors demonstrate how entanglements with ancestral trauma can develop in early childhood stages of the preverbal phase, when lineage information pre-cognitively imprints and becomes integrated in the child’s maturing ego formation. When this process brings conflicts in integration, illness receptivity in children and adults can result. Based on an archaic sense of order, birthright belonging and transgenerational transference of injustice are landmarks for subconscious entanglements of descendants to restore a system’s balance. The theoretical implications of integrating such a concept of order in complex systems point to non-linear information processing that is available to conscious states and becomes actualized in embodiment. The authors conclude that a precognitive field in biological systems allows for subconscious traumatic memory transfer between generations.   P10

@H2 = [04.11]  Miscellaneous

5. Experiential Approaches

@H2 = [05.01]  Phenomenology

234  Consciousness and perception: The point of experience and the meaning of the world we inhabit  Sergio Basbaum <sergiobasbaum@pucsp.br> (Ciências da Computação, Pontificia Universidade Catolica - São Paulo, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil)
    This work tries to establish a dialogue between a phenomenological approach to perception and consciousness, and an anthropological view of sensory experience, thus discussing ways of perceiving and making meaning of the world, and of beeing aware of reality. Starting from Merleau-Ponty´s Phenomenology of perception (1945), which is the most radical and possibly unsurpassed effort made in XXth century’s philosophy to deal with the question of lived perception, it is possible to state that the senses (perception) launch us in the direction (sense) of the world and are the foundation of the meaning with which we invest the living experience (sense). So, we start by re-estabilishing the role of perception in allowing consciousness to be such. We take in account problems put by hermeneutics (e.g. Nixon, 1999: The hermeneutic objection - the limits of language to describe in personal terms subjective experience), and the distinctions between the meaning of the perceptual experience in different cultures, as a contemporary anthropology of the senses (Classen, Howes, Synnot) has been showing. By starting a dialogue in such terms, we supersede the Western modern notion of "point of view" for the idea of a "point of experience", which engage the whole sensorium in different arrays to make meaning of the living experience, making it possible to conceive perception and consciousness under a cultural bias: by experiencing and making meaning of the world through distinct sensory arrangements, different ways of beeing aware of the self and the otherness emerge - ways by which different people inhabit radically different "worlds", thus experiencing consciousness in radically distintic ways. From this, we derive some insights about perception and consciousness in contemporary technological societies, in which a technologically saturated environment is shaping our perception and thus our conscious relation with reality.  P5

235  Liminal cases and mutual interplays of experiential modalities of life-world situations  Ivan M. Havel <havel@cts.cuni.cz> (Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University Prague, Prague, Czech Republic)
    Human life is composed of a multitude of various life situations (or life episodes), each subjectively experienced as something endowed with a distinctive meaning for the experiencing person and as such worth remembering or reporting. Each situation typically has a certain temporal and spatial extension, narrative content, and several types of linkage with other situations. Most importantly, these situations are consciously experienced by a subject. Normally we experience various kinds of situations holistically and pre-reflectively, in the sense that we do not submit them to objectified theoretical or even philosophical reflection. However, occasionally we may reflectively contemplate, analyze, generalize and conceptualize them, and we can even report on them and share our reflections with others. To emphasize that such a reflection does not presuppose a philosophical skill or conceptual knowledge, I call such an intuitive attempt to understand lived situations a naïve reflection. Taking a hint from Czech philosophical tradition, I propose the term concrete phenomenology for theoretical analysis of such naïve reflection of lived situations (or life episodes). In concrete phenomenology of lived situations, we can follow a decomposition strategy by identifying several different modalities of situated experience, such that – in spite of an essential interconnectedness – each modality can be conceptually taken apart for independent scrutiny (Havel 2005). Among such modalities the following are most salient: temporality, spatiality, scenic structure, episodic plot, intuitive feeling of efficacy, sense of one's own body, selfhood, and sociality (interaction with others). In the contribution for this conference, I elaborate this approach in two directions. First, in view of the fact that any type of conscious experience has a characteristic horizon – an inherent fringe of accessibility – I point to liminal cases of some of the mentioned experiential modalities, for instance liminal duration of the present time consciousness (Varela 1999, Stern 2004, Havel 2005), proximal space awareness (Merleau-Ponty 1945), liminal percept of temporal efficacy (Shallice 1964), marginal awareness of the body image in the course of automatic behavior (Gallagher 2005), etc. Second, taking advantage of the analysis of liminal cases, I pinpoint several mutual interplays among the different experiential modalities. Thus, for instance, (1) the body image and the sense of self are crucial for the sense of embodiment; (2) the embodiment and general sense of efficacy are involved in understanding oneself as an agency; (3) the sense of agency is essential for one's taking an active role in an episodic plot; (4) spatiality, scenic structure, and the body image are combined in one's ecological (perspectival) sense of space; (5) the sense of self and the knowledge of others is a ground for sociality (and communication); etc. It quickly becomes apparent that such multi-modal dependencies form a complex conceptual network, rich in various reciprocal and circular linkages. From a general theoretical perspective, the reported study is aimed at conceptually clarifying the mutual interplay between first-person phenomenological reflections and third-person objective accounts of human situational experience.   C6

236  Empathy externalized: Kitaro Nishida, Zen, and the structure of the extended mind  Joel Krueger <jwkruege@siu.edu> (Philosophy, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Carbondale, IL)
    In this paper, I argue for an externalist view of empathy. More broadly, I argue that empathic awareness is an invariant structural feature of phenomenal consciousness. Both empathy and consciousness writ large thus extend beyond the skin and skull of the subject. Therefore, a phenomenological analysis of empathic awareness shows that the mind is (at least partially) distributed out into the world. Put differently, both the structure and content of consciousness are functions of our empathic, externally-realized sensorimotor engagement with the world. I argue for this externalist view of empathy by utilizing two aspects of the twentieth-century Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida’s (1870-1945) characterization of consciousness and experience. As Japan’s most important modern philosopher, Nishida’s corpus is an attempt to wed Zen meditation with western philosophical methodology (logical and conceptual analysis). Nishida thus develops an enactive model of consciousness in step with many contemporary discussions. The central argument proceeds as follows: 1. First, I examine Nishida on “pure experience”, a notion borrowed from both William James and Zen Buddhism. Pure experience is the primitive level of experience in which consciousness, action, and perception are integrated. It is on this nonconceptual level of experience that body and mind are integrated non-dually both with themselves and with the world in which they are embedded and extended. 2. Secondly, I examine how Nishida develops “acting-intuition” to describe our ability to concretize pure experience within certain forms of somatic practice. In short, acting-intuition is the modality of action by which we embody pure experience within our intersubjective relations. Thus, acting-intuition is coextensive with pure experience, and the two must be understood as working together. 3. Building off of Nishida’s insights, I next argue that empathic awareness is an invariant structural feature of phenomenal consciousness, present from the very onset of consciousness. I argue this by highlighting weaknesses of two influential explanations of empathy: Theory Theory (TT), and Simulation Theory (ST). I argue that both TT and ST wrongly assume that empathy is a conceptual achievement, entailing the formulation of theories about or mental simulations of another person’s mental states. Neither TT nor ST capture the nonconceptual (i.e. “pure”) and embodied nature of empathy as it shapes our basic experience of the world. Moreover, both TT and ST wrongly assume that empathy is constituted internally by mental processes and particulars located within the subject. 4. Finally, I develop a positive externalist characterization of empathic awareness. Using Meltzoff’s and Moore’s research on neonate facial imitation, I argue that empathic awareness arises from implicit proprioceptive self-awareness, present from the very onset of consciousness. I argue that this proprioceptive self-awareness is the “enabling condition” for our awareness of our embodied agency in its exteriority. I show that the interplay between our implicit awareness of our interiority and our exteriority grounds empathic awareness—and that this empathic awareness literally shapes the way that phenomenal content presents itself to us. I conclude by showing that empathic awareness is a form of perception, externally constituted through our active engagement with the world.   P11

237  The dimensions of visual experience: A quantitative analysis  Steven Lehar <slehar@cns.bu.edu> (Peli Lab, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Manchester, MA)
    What are the dimensions of visual experience? Is it possible to express the content of conscious experience in quantitative terms? Phenomenological investigation reveals that visual experience appears in the form of a three-dimensional volumetric world, like a museum diorama. The appearance of that world in our experience is a causal consequence of patterns of activation in the visual brain. But is the spatial structure of visual experience part of the experience itself? Or is it a property of the world viewed through experience? This raises the old epistemological divide between *direct perception* and *representationalism*. Is the world in our experience the world itself? Or is it merely a perceptual replica of that world in an internal representation? Other alternatives have been proposed, such as a *projection theory*, whereby experience is indeed a spatial structure constructed by the brain, but it is projected back out of the brain to appear superimposed on the external world. And there is also the *eliminative hypothesis*, according to which spatial experience is an illusion, the experience is not actually spatially structured at all. While the epistemological question remains unresolved to this day, one thing that is beyond question is the fact that a spatial structure appears in our experience when we open our eyes to see. A quantitative model of visual experience therefore must include a model of the structure that is experienced. To representationalists, this data structure can be considered a model of the sense-data of experience, a direct computational product or "output" of the brain based on sensory input. To a proponent of direct perception, this same data structure can be considered a model of the objects and surfaces that would be directly perceived out in the world for a given sensory input. For proponents of projection theory, it is a model of the experience that is experienced to be projected from the brain to the world, and for proponents of the eliminative hypothesis, this is a model of the spatial experience which does not exist, and is not even experienced to exist, but only *seems* to be experienced to exist. Whichever epistemological approach satisfies your personal paradigmatic preferences, there is a spatial structure that is experienced as the end result of the causal chain of vision, and it is that spatial structure that I propose to model as the most significant product or consequence of visual processing.  PL12

238  Ontopoiesis and the self: Phenomenological investigations of egological and non-egological condition  Olga Louchakova <olouchakova@itp.edu> (Residential Ph.D. program, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA )
    The concept of ontopoiesis, articulated in the phenomenology of life of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (2000), has potent implications for the analysis of the ever-unfolding construction of self-awareness. Ontopoiesis was examined as an intrapsychic mechanism leading to the construction of the egological (De Monticelli, 2002) and non-egological conditions within the inter-subjectivity. Egological is the term coined by E. Stein for a complex of cognitions which has I-thought as a common denominator. Research shows that egological congnition is associated with emotions and body sense. Consequently, in regard to constitution of the self, the term egological condition is suggested versus egological cognition. Two conditions of the self, egological and non-egological, were identified, as connected with two powerful trends in spirituality based on the notion of Reality as the self (Vedanta), and as the no-self (Theravada Buddhism). The egological condition is ontopoietically constituted through the hierarchical ordering of phenomena. In the non-egological condition, this ordering is abscent. The sense of one’s self, I-am-ness, organizes the internal hierarchy of experiences. The egological sense has a core, an internal fulcrum point, i.e. the point at which awareness endlessly opens inward into the field of pure subjectivity beyond space (Louchakova, 2005). Contra to the egological reduction as related to egological cognition alone (Strasser, 1975), one arrives at absorption in this point by reduction through the egological sense, including reductions by meaning, by perception, and by the sense of touch. The axis of reduction via the sense of touch creates a foundational sense of hierarchy and ordering within the egological condition. Term “hyletic reduction” is suggested. Besides spatial stratification, and hyletic ordering, the noematic contents of the egological experience are organized according to a sense of their ontological primacy. This resonates with Schleiermacher’s feeling of absolute dependence, a central denominator of the experience of the sacred, emerging upon the depth exploration of the self (1989/1994).In the absence of an internal organizing principle, the “I”, i.e. in the non-egological condition, the ordering is absent. All happenings are the same in terms of their ontological status, and their value is relative, based on individual attachment and non-attachment. Traditions acknowledging reality as Self, such as Vedanta or Sufism, describe our inner world in terms of ontological hierarchies; Buddhism, holding Reality as No-Self, describes our inner world as egalitarian, a set of happenings which have equal ontological stance in regard to the existential emptiness which is inherently free of any phenomenal content.The principal ontological autonomy of pure awareness is sustained in both egological and non-egological conditions. The constructs of the individual psyche are experienced as dependent on this foundational, ontological ground of the self. It seems that out of such ground, and out of this hierarchical ordering observed in the egological condition, Husserl hints at the existence of domains and Tymieniecka fully develops the notions of ordering and ciphering in regard to the Logos of life (Tymieniecka, 2000).   P5

239  Being conscious differently: A complementary approach to phenomenological research into consciousness  Jack Petranker <petranker@att.net> (Center for Creative Inquiry, Berkeley, CA)
    In contrast to third-person methodologies, which aim at explaining consciousness, first-person methodologies focus on describing conscious states and events. However, first-person research does not have to stop with description. It has available to it a different methodology, based on learning to be conscious differently. Let us call this approach “differential inquiry.” The central premise of differential inquiry, prefigured in James and Merleau-Ponty, is that changing the parameters, the focus, or the presuppositions of ordinary conscious experience (without necessarily aiming at extra-ordinary experience) in itself constitutes learning something new about what it is like to be conscious. It is a methodology consistent with enactive cognitive science (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991) and with radical simulation, a theory that attributes our ability to make sense of the experience of others to transforming our own consciousness to match theirs (Gordon, 1996). The common critique that first-person methodologies cannot yield reliable data about consciousness does not apply to differential inquiry, which generates knowledge through the process of inquiry, not its outcomes. Differential inquiry reframes (or trans-forms) ordinary experience and investigates in accord with the new possibilities such reframing or transforming reveals. Inherently playful and open-ended, this method requires little prior training, only commitment to inquiry and a focused interest in what is happening as experience unfolds. As with Husserlian phenomenology, differential inquiry brackets all truth claims and views all theoretical positions as provisional. Still, it favors theories that expand rather than reduce the potential range of inquiry (for example, free will over determinism). Since it focuses on changing standard ways of being conscious, it generally favors research carried out in the life-world of roles and goals rather than the controlled settings of the laboratory or the meditation cushion. And since the theories and ongoing stories it brackets include the investigator’s claim to be the subject of experience, differential inquiry can legitimately claim to be objective in its approach, even though it arrives at its ‘first-person objectivity’ by a route quite different from that of third-person science. Because differential inquiry places a premium on generating and exploring creative variations (often quite subtle) on conventional modes of being conscious, each investigator will implement it differently, and results arrived at by different investigators may well be incommensurable. Still, differential inquiry can yield intersubjectively assessable outcomes. First, it will affect how researchers interact with others, shaping an ‘art of living’ (Nehamas, 1998). Second, it can generate theories of conscious experience available for front-loading third-person experiments (Gallagher, 2003). Finally, researchers may be able to communicate the fruits of differential inquiry to others, much as artists and artisans communicate through their works what they have learned in their own creative inquiries. If so, differential inquiry may lead to a shared body of knowledge and a community of inquiry, the prerequisites for any

scientific method.   P11

240   I, me, you & it: The phenomenology of self and others.  Jack Presbury, Joe Marchal PhD; Ed McKee EdD; Eric Cowan PsyD <presbujh@jmu.edu> (Grad. Psych., James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA)
    Professional counselors, working with clients who have certain mental disorders, are often dismayed by the unusual ways in which these clients experience themselves and other people. Of particular interest are the so-called Personality and Dissociative Disorders. People with these disorders are not “crazy,” but they have distorted ways of experiencing their own being-in-the-world and conceiving of other minds. Our analysis of the criteria for personality disorders revealed that, of the 79 specific criteria listed across the diagnostic categories for personality disorders, 54 were clearly of a relational nature; meaning that they pointed to interpersonal behaviors or perceptions that were somehow distorted or inappropriate. Furthermore, many of these disorders also involve a distortion of self-perception. For example, people with Paranoid personalities often feel righteously indignant as they misattribute the motives and behavior of others; Schizoid personalities have a restricted range of emotions and difficulty interacting with other people, from whom they tend to withdraw; Antisocial personalities are impulsive and lack the ability to plan ahead, seem to lack empathy, and treat other people as objects; Borderline personalities have a fluid and unstable sense of their self-image and usually have conflicted relationships; Narcissistic personalities require an inordinate amount of admiration from others due to their own ontological insecurity (DSM-TR, 2000). Persons with a Dissociate Fugue sometimes turn up far from home not knowing who they are or where they have come from; those who are experiencing Depersonalization have difficulty feeling in touch with their own mental processes and their body; while someone with a Dissociative Identity Disorder may experience having multiple selves. While the nomenclature of the DSM describes each of these conditions in detail, it lacks a unifying dimensional model to explain the phenomenological experience of the individuals suffering from these disorders. Rather than being criteria for separate categories, these features could be considered as aspects of every person’s experience. Furthermore, those of us who could be considered “normal” usually develop an adult personality configuration that may be lacking a degree of vividness in some aspect of our experience of self (I and Me) and others (You and It). Unlike the DSM system, which places signs and symptoms into discrete categories, a holistic model is needed for understanding each individual’s personality, whether or not he or she qualifies for a disorder. The Dimensions of Self and Other is such a model. Viewing people with a dimensional paradigm avoids the trap of labeling and offers a way of understanding the client who is complaining of personal insecurity and relationship problems. All people seem to display at least mild deficits in one of the four major areas on the Dimensions of Self and Other model. The authors of this model explain how certain impairments--and particular strengths--in one or more of these areas tend to create a particular sense of being-in-the-world. American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR) Washington, D. C.   P11

241  Explaining the phenomenal structure of consciousness in the implicate order framework  Paavo Pylkkänen <paavo.pylkkanen@his.se> (Consciousness Studies Programme, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden)
    One of the central features of conscious experience is it spatio-temporal, phenomenal structure (van Gulick 2004). Connected with this is the metaphor that consciousness is a kind of “virtual reality” associated with the brain (e.g. Velmans, Revonsuo, Metzinger). An adequate theory of consciousness thus has to tell a story about how the virtual reality of consciousness is created. One place to look for inspiration in this endeavour is contemporary physics and algebraic geometry. For some physicists have been led to consider how space-time emerges from some deeper structure they often call “pre-space” (Wheeler; Bohm and Hiley). The interesting question is whether the work in physics, which describes the ground of the “real spatio-temporal reality” could be useful also when trying to describe the ground of the “virtual, phenomenal spatio-temporal reality” of consciousness. Bohm and Hiley (1984) generalized the Penrose twistor theory to a Clifford algebra, paving the way for a description which allows continuous space-time to emerge from a deeper pre-space they call an implicate order. Bohm (1986) proposed that the “explicate” space and time that we consciously experience is likewise projected from its enfoldment in deeper implicate orders. This paper considers the prospects of developing an account of the spatio-temporal, phenomenal structure of consciousness in the implicate order framework. Reference: Pylkkänen, P. (forthcoming) Time Consciousness. The Relevance of Bohmian Physics to Our Understanding of the Mind., Heidelberg: Springer, Frontiers Collection.   PL12

242  What is a shamanic pattern of phenomenal properties?  Adam Rock, Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. <arock01@bigpond.com> (Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia)
    Shamanism and its associated phenomenological experiences (e.g., magical flight, spirit possession) are exerting a rejuvenating force on contemporary anthropology. We critically examine the term “shamanic state of consciousness” and argue that affixing the qualifiers “shamanic state” to consciousness results in a theoretical confusion of consciousness and its content, that is, consciousness is mistaken for the content of consciousness. We refer to this fallacy as the “consciousness-content inversion error.” We argue that this fallacy is avoided if one supplants “shamanic states of consciousness” with “shamanic pattern of phenomenal properties,” an extrapolation of the term “phenomenal field.” Problems associated with operationally defining the term “shamanic pattern of phenomenal properties” are elucidated via a critical examination of the term “shamanic” from the perspective of the problem of universals (i.e., whether entities that are purportedly exemplified simultaneously by several spatially discontinuous objects exist). It is concluded that the term “shamanic” refers to a set of resembling tropes, that is, a set or class of particular or individual attributes. Finally, we use a principled complementary mixed-method approach to formulate a proposed experiment consisting of stimulus conditions traditionally considered by indigenous cultures to induce shamanic patterns of phenomenal properties with the aim of identifying: (1) the pattern of relationships between pairs of phenomenal properties for each specific stimulus condition; and (2) the resulting invariant and emergent themes identified through phenomenological analysis of the qualitative data.   P11

243  Phenomenology, literature and the first person experience  Venkatachalam Shilpa <ajxsv@nottingham.ac.uk> (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire)
    Can we develop rigorous methods for investigating and formalizing data about conscious experience from the first-person perspective? In my paper I will be examining whether imaginative literature written in the first person can provide for an understanding of the ontic-ontological divide as explicated by Heidegger in Being and Time. Husserl famously declared that imagination was the life blood of phenomenology and his notion of free variation in imagination to reach the essence of things offers a paradigm for consciousness studies in texts of imaginative literature. Imagination is the means by which we move from the particular to the universal, from existence to essence. Early into Being and Time, Heidegger makes a distinction between the terms existential and existentiell. Existentiell refers to the act of existing and of the understanding of oneself that each Dasein derives either by grasping or ignoring its possibilities. Existential analysis refers to an inquiry into the Being of Dasein. There is also an important distinction drawn up between ontic and ontological such that existential and ontological form a working pair as against existentiell and ontical. Ontical existentiell understanding refers to the different ways of being for different Daseins. It is concerned with the very act and question of existence. And it is individual. Existential ontological, on the other hand, refers to the structure of being. Are not literary novels practical variations of the theoretical issues that are examined in philosophy? If it is impossible to arrive at the essential qualities of self, objects and the world through experience but possible to do so through phantasy and imaginative thought, can it be argued that literary fiction provides us with one such mode of “free variation in imagination”? Literature contains a dual paradox: it is an ontical exploration, it focuses on the particular. However if the particular is an imaginative particular, does it then have the possibility to transcend the particular and arrive at the essential? These are some of the issues I will be looking at in this paper. I will specifically look at first person narratives to examine consciousness through a first person experience.  P12

244  Dimensionality and experience: Methodologies for analogizing physical and experiential properties  James Clement van Pelt <jvanpelt@yalescienceandreligion.org> (Initiative in Religion, Science & Technology, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT)
    1. When the concept of consciousness is unpacked, the constituent that most immediately presents itself is pure experience, an irreducible noun/verb (primitive) connoting the results of the process of encountering appearances. Experience in that sense can be regarded as discrete from the objective basis of that which is experienced, i.e. existence. 2. If the defining properties of each of these two domains are in some degree analogous, then it should be possible to explore some structures and instrumentalities of experience by analogizing from the known properties of existence. An example of such an analogy is dimensionality, as when we speak of “space” referring to both physical and experiential properties. 3. Yet physical dimensions are not perfectly analogous to experiential dimensions. The former are defined in reference to a universal POV, whereas the latter can be defined in reference to a POV projected from the point in space-time that anchors each dimension's point of reference to the individualized self. This arrays the experiential dimensions along the continuum of experience bounded by self and world. 4. Starting with on this distinction, the properties of the several experiential dimensions can be derived by means of a Flatland-like perspectival regression, a process of repeatedly “stepping back” of the POV that can be compared and contrasted with the ways other types of dimensions (e.g. physical, mathematical) are defined. 5. This process indicates that experiential dimensionality, like physical dimensionality, is structured in “bundles” of three dimensions each — e.g. the three spatial dimensions. Whereas physical dimensionality is exhaustively defined by four such spatio-temporal “bundles” (with the fourth lacking one dimension, for a total of eleven), the aforementioned perspectival regression suggests that experiential dimensionality comprises seven dimensions arranged between the most-phenomenal and most-personal boundaries of the continuum of experience. 6. A question guiding this exploration concerns whether success in defining the structures and instrumentalities of experience could contribute to establishing a more co-equal ontological priority for experience in relation to existence. Such a revaluation would reverse the longstanding trend toward ephemeralizing experience in relation to its existential correlates. This would seem to be a vital step toward facilitating progress in developing a science of consciousness.  C6

245  Experience and the concept of play  Zoltan Veres <veresz@c3.hu> (Social Sciences, College of Dunaujvaros Hungary, Dunaujvaros, Hungary)
    In the recent developments of Science of Consciousness there seems to be an increasing interest in non-conceptual forms of experience. Mainly because this may answer questions regarding the non-representational states of mind, then because the type of consciousness shaped by such experiences would mean a more ‘flexible’, integrated model of it (see for instance Robert van Gulick’s HOGS, or Alva Noe’s concept of ‘perception’). The Philosophical Hermeneutics – using the phenomenological description of ‘play’ as a heuristic concept – has worked out a special model of experience. Experience in this context is neither objectiv, nor subjective. Both ‘problematic’ features of experience are suspended. The suspension itself means in fact the suspension of a special teleological system organizing the set of everyday life experiences. This teleological system is characterised mainly of rather personal interests shaping these experiences. The personal interests are defined as ‘prejudgements’ having an important role in the process of knowing. However, these ‘prejudgements’ are then necessarilly stepping aside giving their place to a rather non-intentional (in this sense non-directed, or non-thematical) set of experiences (best expressed in hedeggerian terminology by concepts like ‘Erignis’, or ‘Gelassenheit’). The suspension of these prejudgements (aware accounts of thought through aims, about which the subject may give a conceptual account, identifying him/herself by this conceptual structure) does not lead to a dissolution of neither the metaphysical subject, nor its subjectivity. The main result of this process is rather the ‘reinterpretation’ of experience, and of the role of perception. This ‘reinterpreted’ form of experience may allow us to apply a different model of consciousness, similar to the ones mentioned above. In my presentation I would like to give an account of this shift in understanding experience using the tools of Philosophical Hermeneutics, connecting it to problems of representation, higher orderness, or perception.   P6

246  Classifications of phenomenological features of subjective conscious experience  Burton Voorhees <burt@athabascau.ca> (Center for Science, Athabasca University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
    While third person objective measures such as EEG, fMri, and PET scans provide evidence on the neural correlates of certain aspects of subjective awareness, the states that can be studied with these methods are limited to those that are either pathalogical (e.g., coma), do not allow for direct first person report (e.g., sleep, anesthesia), are narrowly task specific (e.g., priming and masking), or are not generally available in everyday life (e.g., deep meditation). States encountered in daily life, on the other hand, are fragile, situation specific and difficut or impossible to explore via direct third person methods. Under such conditions the best that can be done given present technology is to rely on first person reports. For such reports to be useful, however, a classification scheme is required that allows a person to recognize and report of a state, and on the transitions between states in a way that can be intersubjectively verified. In this talk several traditional classifications of everyday subjective states will be described, focusing attention on what can be called levels of subjective consciousness. In particular, attention will be given to ideas on the way that transitions between states can occur, and the possibility of discovering higher level dynamic mechanisms driving these transitions.   P11

247  Who is truly seeing the world? The importance first-person accounts of autism for a phenomenology of perception  Talia Welsh <Talia-Welsh@utc.edu> (Philosophy & Religion #2753, Univeristy of Tennessee, Chattanooga, TN)
    The importance of first-person narratives from disabled persons cannot be underestimated. They help erode the invisibility which has allowed the disabled to be ignored, maltreated, and abused. However, as valuable as such accounts are, we might think they fall outside anything useful for the diagnosis, treatment, and philosophy of the disabled. Indeed, part of promoting the authenticity of these narratives seems to forbid making any generalizations based on them. To truly take seriously someone’s story seems to require not assuming it is nothing but a symptom of the person’s disability. Temple Grandin’s story has done much to raise awareness about autism, yet we learn from other narratives that her story is not identical to other first-person accounts of being autistic. This paper argues that such sentiments, although well-intentioned, fail to grasp how first-person narratives of the disabled are critical for challenging our basic epistemological assumptions. Phenomenology, particularly in the tradition of Edmund Husserl, has long endeavored to explore a systematic manner in which to work from the complexity of first-person experience in order to better understand the nature of perception, intentionality, and other-awareness. First-person accounts of autism raise important puzzles for a phenomenology of perception. Commonly one uses autism as a counter-example to “normal” perceptual experience. Thereby, the abnormal is used to provide greater relief as to what the diversity of normal experience can be. One also typically finds the autistic narrative as helpful in formulating a better sense of what is going awry in autism. However, I argue that such an approach, while potentially illuminating in some respects, fails to grasp the deeper philosophical question present in considering autistic perception: why doesn’t everyone see this way? Is the normal mode of perception more engaged with the world, more embodied, healthier? Indeed, the accounts of heightened sensibility to perceptual givens, the intricate examination of particular objects, the focus on the visual data itself, makes one wonder if a phenomenology of perception should be a phenomenology of non-autistic perception. Perhaps autistic perception is more engaged in the perceptual experience and less determined by cultural determination. This paper first explores first-person accounts of autistic perception and mainstream phenomenologies of perception in order to highlight important differences. It asks to what degree is the sense of the naturalness or normalness of non-autistic perception really a result of a more holistic lived experience or a result of fitting-in with cultural norms? If it is the case that autistic perception results in serious inabilities to naturally (as in abstracted from cultural constraints) live meaningfully in the world, it might still make sense to use autistic perception as an example of “perception gone wrong.” I will conclude by suggesting that a comparison of the phenomenologies of autistic and normal perception makes such a claim highly questionable. Thus, we must return to our philosophical understanding of perception in the face of such narratives.   P11

@H2 = [05.02]  Meditation,contemplation & mysticism

248  Nondual awareness and the mutual transparency of self and other  Judith Blackstone <realizationctr@aol.com> (Woodstock, NY, Ulster)
    This paper examines the relationship between nondual realization, psychological and relational healing, and somatic transformation. Nondual realization is described, in accordance with the Shentong traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, such as Mahamudra and Dzog-chen, as the realization of one's own nature as subtle, unbounded awareness, pervading one's own body and one's environment as a unified whole. The paper argues that the radical openness of nondual realization is based on deep contact with the internal space of one's own body. We therefore experience ourselves as coherent, authentic individuals at the same time as we experience ourselves as unified with our environment. The paper also looks at nondual awareness as the basis of direct contact between human beings. In addition to the paper, there will be an experiential component to the presentation. This will be a series of original exercises, developed by the author, called Realization Process. These exercises facilitate direct attunement to nondual awareness, as well as the experience of being with another person in this dimension. When two people attune to nondual awareness together, they experience mutual transparency: a single expanse of awareness pervading them both as a unity. Judith Blackstone, Ph.D. is author of The Enlightenment Process, Living Intimately, The Subtle Self, and the upcoming Intersubjectivity and Nonduality.   P11

249  Neuroscience, mystical states, and quadratic consciousness: A contemporary model of mind and preliminary field test results  Robert Christie <r.christie@att.net> (General Education, DeVry University, North Brunswick, New Jersey)
    First, the neuroscientific findings of D’Aquilli and Newberg (The Mystical Mind) will be analyzed and shown to imply a contemporary model of mind. Particularly relevant is the identification of seven “cognitive operators” that correlate with specific locations in the brain and which process and determine conscious experience. Underlying this correlation is the ground for a contemporary philosophy of mind that ultimately grounds the model of consciousness presented later in the paper. Secondly, utilizing the results of the collaboration of the Mind and Life Institute’s interdisciplinary dialogue between science and religion (“The Scientific Study of Consciousness,” in Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama), the correlations between neuroscientific studies of perception and response and Buddhist philosophy and epistemology will be analyzed, particularly data drawn from the experience of meditation. Particularly relevant is the justification for first-person (phenomenological) reports in addition to empirical studies to validate conscious experience. The import of the role of emotion in consciousness and behavior will be discussed, especially the Dalai Lama’s insight that “there can be no perception without emotion.” A comparison will be made to the work of D’Aquilli and Newberg. These two stages provide the framework for a final and thorough presentation of a contemporary model of mind, or a “cognitive architecture,” with four essential complex quadrants, termed quadratic consciousness. Both the structure and functioning of the model will be demonstrated “in living color” with powerpoint. Its philosophical and religious implications will be discussed. Lastly, the preliminary field test results of this model, which have been conducted utilizing student volunteers, will be presented.  P9

250  The neuroscientific study of Tibetan contemplative practice: Methodological issues and details of practice  John Dunne <jdunne@emory.edu> (Religion, Emory University, Atlanta , GA)
    This presentation provides background and contextual information concerning recent neuroscientific research on long-term Buddhist practitioners. In such research, the methodological problems begin with the need to specify clearly the way in which a particular practice—rather than “meditation” in general—may or may not be suitable for neuroscientific study. To make a detailed examination of a particular contemplative practice, one clearly requires the cooperation of contemplatives educated within the relevant tradition, but in turning to traditional accounts, the researcher encounters another problem: one must discern which parts of a traditional account are useful in formulating a research strategy and experimental design, as opposed to parts that are not suitable for that purpose. The problem here is that traditional accounts often describe techniques and resultant states that are measurable and repeatable in a laboratory context; nevertheless, parts of the same account may also focus on issues that can neither be measured nor repeated. In many traditions, the distinction between these parts of an account reflects a tension between 1) close descriptions of meditative techniques and states; and 2) the metaphysical or soteriological requirements that must be met by those states. Having worked through these methodological issues, this presentation will then discuss the specific practice of “non-referential compassion” (Tib., dmigs med rnying rje), a significant focus of recent neuroscientific research. The discursive strategies and other techniques that initially enable the practitioner to cultivate a particular emotional state will be presented. So too, “luminosity” (Tib., gsal ba) as the central metaphor in the Buddhist theory of consciousness will be addressed, along with the process that allegedly enables the practitioner to develop a type of reflexive meta-awareness in which “luminosity” is said to be experienced or known. Finally, the types of changes that such a practice are meant to effect in the individual will be presented in both emic and etic terms.   PL5

251  Psychophysiological characteristics of meditation state  Simon Golosheykin, Ljubomir Aftanas <goloshes@psychiatry.wustl.edu> (Psychiatry, Washington University in St.Louis, St. Louis, MO)
    According to the age-old theory the true meditation, as an altered state of consciousness, should include at least three important concomitants: sustaining internal focus of attention, elimination of thinking activity, and persistent positive emotional experience. (Sat-Chit-Anand state in Sanskrit). On the other hand modern psychophysiology advanced a lot in understanding of such components and manifestations of human awareness as attention, emotions and cognitive functions. Thus there was hypothesized that appropriate changes can be revealed in brain electrophysiological activity of subjects involved in meditation process. In order to test this hypothesis the high-resolution EEG study was performed. The 62-channel Neuroscan system was used to record EEG of novice and experienced meditators during the closed eyes rest condition and meditation session. In the meditation state the experienced meditators shown the significant increase of theta 1 (4-6Hz), theta 2 (6-8Hz), and alpha 1 (8-10Hz) power over the frontal scalp areas. Spectral and spatial characteristics of EEG power changes definitely indicate the ongoing processes of internalization of attention, decreasing thinking activity and emotional experience. After the session all the subjects were asked to formalize their meditation experience using specially designed quantitative scales. The subjective score of the specific meditative positive emotional experience and intensity of thinking activity significantly correlated with theta 1 and theta 2 power changes respectively. Therefore the results of this study appears to be a useful to define a reliable physiological markers of meditation induced altered state of consciousness traditionally known as Thoughtless Awareness.  P11

252  The effects of sahaja yoga meditation on anxiety  Wolfgang Hackl <wolfgang.hackl@aon.at> (impact, vienna, austria)
    Abstract In different cultures people talk about a living energy within human beings which can transform human awareness and awaken different powers. The names given are manyfold and we know some like: Kundalini, Ruah, Holy Ghost, Waters of Life and others. If this energy is awakened different effects can be expected such as described at JANANDEVA in the JNANESHWARI (6/42) in the 13th century “I think that the body is an incarnation of tranquillity, or it is a colourful piece of the work in the picture of god, or the form of the self-bliss. The body gets full of brilliance." According to SHRI MATAJI NIRMALA DEVI (1993-06-06) an individual whose energy is activated and who keeps it up by his own meditation can pass on the awakening of Kundalini. So the hypothesis says that meditators can act as catalysts to create a state of tranquillity and mental peace, which is a state beyond anxiety. Design In the Austrian college of Wr.Neustadt young people of five different classes had been randomly sampled. 103 students participated – 101 forms could be used. A very difficult unit test was used as stressor. It was a pre- and after- test situation and the sample was randomly spilt into three groups. Control group KG (no systematic variable – neutral situation) Test Group 1 VG1 (Relaxation and Mozart music “alla turca” Test Group 2 VG2 (Awakening of Kundalini without the knowledge of participants) Hypothesis in short A significant deviation of STATE mean values is expected between the pre and after situation from VG1 and VG2. (Limit of significance for p<0,01) The deviation of STATE pre and after mean values of VG2 should be significantly higher as in KG and VG1. (Limit of significance for p<0,01) Test The “STAI” State-Trait Anxiety Inventory of SPIELBERGER was used. It discriminates anxiety between State and Trait. State: Anxiety as an emotional temporary condition and Trait: Anxiety as a temporal relatively stabile attribute. The scale reaches from 20 (lowest anxiety) to 80 (highest anxiety). The lowest standard values of STATE (N=2385) under “neutral conditions” were quantified by Spielberger for females (34,75) and for males (35,42). Results There was a significant decrease of STATE anxiety in both groups of VG1 (from 54 to 43) and VG2 (from 53 to 32) between the pre and after condition of p<0,001. The STATE value of VG2 after the meditation was less than SPIELBERGER´s standard value under neutral conditions. KG decreased as expected insignificantly from 48 to 47,5. The TRAIT values decreased surprisingly significant for p<0,001 in the VG2 only. They decreased slightly significant in the VG1 for p<0,05. The difference of STATE mean values between KG and VG1 was significant for p<0,001 and p<0,05 for TRAIT. Between KG and VG2 the significance was at the level of p<0,001 for both forms of anxiety. There was also a highly significant difference of STATE mean values between VG1 and VG2 (p<0,001) and for the TRAIT of p<0,05.   C14

253  Imaginative freedom in comparative meditation: A cross-cultural analysis of meditation techniques  Brandon Harwood <tiresiaspallas@yahoo.com> (Louisville, KY)
    Though meditation has been prescribed by holy men and women since the ancient period, this technique has only recently entered into the realm of science, medicine, and psychotherapy. A possible reason for this reticence is the view that meditation is “cultic” as inferred by Herbert Benson in his work on The Relaxation Response. Meditation, however, is as present in every major religion as prayer—i.e. nearly all. This project began as an attempt to uncover the examples of meditation, so that future psychotherapeutic practice can provide forms of this practice to any client regardless of religious faith. Through investigating six modern faiths—Catholicism, Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism (Islam), Judaism, and Wicca—a spectrum of imaginative attention was discovered. This article illustrates the variety of meditation practices in regards to how much encouragement is given to imaginative freedom. The phenomenon of negative meditation, focused attention on negative experience (darkness, nothingness, suffering), and active meditation, focused attention on the physical body and movement, is also explored. Through exposition on meditation technique, could increase the base of clients that could benefit from this ancient practice.   P6

254  Influence of meditation styles on visual/spatial cognition: Neural correlates of nondual awareness  Zoran Josipovic, Maria Kozhevnikov, Michael A. Motes <ZJ108@aol.com> (Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ)
    This study was undertaken to examine the effects of non-conceptual versus conceptual constructed meditation styles on visual/spatial cognition. We contrasted emptiness meditation, which employs open-ended attention, with the deity-yoga meditation, which employs focused attention and extensive visualization. Computerized mental rotation and visual memory tests were administered before and after the meditation, and compared with the control group of non-meditators that rested. Our results show that the practice of deity-yoga meditation facilitates visual/spatial abilities, while the practice of emptiness meditation appears to inhibit them, at least immediately afterward. Our hypothesis is that this is due to the activation of a number of areas involved in mental imagery during the deity yoga meditation, and to their de-afferentation during emptiness meditation. The study points to the need for further fMRI and EEG studies of the deity yoga and emptiness meditations. _______________________________________________________________________ Second study: Neural Correlates of Nondual Awareness: This fMRI study of nondual awareness—pure consciousness occurring with experience—advances a hypothesis that nondual (open-ended) awareness is mediated by the neural correlates of space in the posterior parietal cortex in conjunction with the areas in pre-frontal cortex. Nine long-term meditators, selected by their teachers from either the Tibetan Buddhist or Zen traditions, did nondual awareness meditation (Tib. Rig-pa; Jap. Shikan-taza) in the MR scanner, both with eyes open and with eyes closed. Block design was used to compare periods of nondual awareness meditation with resting and with counting (adding numbers).   P11

255  Using meditation expertise to study brain neuroplasticity and the neural correlates of subjective experience  Antoine Lutz <alutz@wisc.edu> (Waisman Laboratory For Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, usa)
    The goal of this presentation is to explore some of the motivations and initial findings of neuroscientific research on long-term Buddhist practitioners. Two claims made by Buddhist contemplative traditions are particularly relevant for a neuroscientific research agenda. The first claim is that experience is a flexible and transformable process. This claim resonates with the scientific view that experience changes the brain, a concept known as neuroplasticity. The findings on neuroplasticity raise the possibility that training and practices which are specifically designed to cultivate positive qualities such as compassion and loving kindness will produce selective alterations in brain functions. The plasticity of these emotional processes has not been studied yet. The second claim is that meditative training develops first-person introspective skills such that advanced practitioners can provide more refined first-person descriptions of their experiences than naïve subjects. Thus, these first-person accounts can help the experimenter to more easily define, identify and interpret the neurophysiological counterpart of subjectivity. These two claims will be evaluated in the light of recent neuroelectric (EEG) and neuroimaging (fMRI) correlates of compassion and loving-kindness meditation in a group of expert Buddhist meditators (> 10,000 hours of retreat practice) and in a group of newly trained control subjects (one hour of daily practice for one week prior to the collection of data).   PL5

256  Meditation, Sahaja and the Indian idea of optimal consciousness: Reconciling the modern evidence base with popular and traditional perceptions by revisiting the original definitions of meditation  Ramesh Manocha <r.manocha@healthed.com.au> (INSEAD, unsw, Randwick, NSW, Australia)
    1-Does Meditation Have Unique Effects? Is there scientific evidence for meditation as a unique state of consciousness? Popular perception and traditional ideas of meditation clearly connect meditative consciousness with therapeutic effects and better performance. A review of the scientific database shows that poorly designed scientific studies support this idea whereas the thoroughly designed ones do not (1, 2). This may not however mean that meditation is a lost cause. A closer examination of the scientific publications indicates that western scientists have assimilated a definition of meditation that characterizes it PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICALLY as a method of evoking physiological relaxation (3,4) whereas the ancient tradition characterizes it EXPERIENTIALLY as a state of consciousness whose main feature is mental silence (5). The media, and meditation entrepreneurs focus on the former definition yet it is the latter that appears to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Our research team has for the past several years conducted rigorous clinical studies of a traditional Indian form of meditation called Sahaja Yoga (6) which appears to elicit the state of mental silence even in novices. Randomised controlled trials indicate a robust specific therapeutic effect on conditions such as asthma (7) and occupational stress. Experimental clinics also suggest its effectiveness in the management of such diverse conditions as ADHD (8), menopausal hot flushes, migraine, epilepsy (9), hypertension (10) and anxiety (11). Importantly, physiological trials suggest that this state is biologically distinct from simple relaxation (12). Brain studies demonstrate large, significant correlations between subjective experience of this state of meditation and electrical activation patterns which again suggest a characteristic neurophysiological state with important implications for neural correlates of consciousness (13,14). 2-The Traditional Eastern Understanding of Consciousness. A powerful thought Experiment that clearly illustrates the relevance of the traditional definition of meditation In order to understand the traditional idea of meditation it is important to become acquainted with the Eastern philosophical perspective on the nature of thought, mind, self and the principal of non-dual awareness. The Eastern tradition views normal mind-oriented awareness (duality) as an inferior state of consciousness whereas consciousness devoid of the interfering effect of the mind (non-duality) is viewed as fundamentally superior, therapeutic and more reliable. The non-dual state has is known as the “Sahaja State”, and represents the ideal state of consciousness (15). This notion is simply illustrated by a guided thought experiment in which participants are able to personally perceive the significance of mind versus non-mind awareness and the ramifications of this for our notions of consciousness and self. Western academic thinking is dominated by mind-oriented awareness and this has become a fundamental obstacle in the West’s study of meditation. 3-A simple meditation session A brief hands-on meditation session aimed at eliciting the state of mental silence. The Same technique that was used in our clinical and physiological trials, Sahaja Yoga, will be demonstrated for the audience to personally experience the practical aspects of meditation. Delegates can take this basic skill with them and use it whenever they wish to combat stress or experience some sense of inner rest see refernces in comments section   C14

257  Effect of meditation on plasma beta-endorphins in humans  Ram Mishra, Cia Barlas, A. Pradhan <mishrar@mcmaster.ca> (Psychiatry, Mcmaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)
    Meditation is considered a state of mind when it is focused upon a single point of reference (Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, 1991). Certain types of yoga or meditation involve the mental state of internalized attention and emotionally positive experience of “bliss”. The present study was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of the meditative practice of Sahaja yoga on plasma ß-endorphin levels. Elevated levels of ß-endorphins have been shown to be associated with pain relieving mechanisms; therefore, changes in the levels of such molecules following meditation may serve as a useful physiological measure for the effectiveness of the type of meditation. 15 control and 15 meditating subjects were used in this study. The subjects in the meditating group were allowed to meditate for 45 minutes in a comfortable situation. One subject at a time from the meditation room was called upon and blood was withdrawn in a separate room. Subjects in the control group were allowed to do their routine work. Blood samples were collected and plasma was used for the estimation of ß-endorphins by radioimmunoassay. This protocol was approved by the local ethics board. Data were analyzed using a t-test. There was a significant increase (p<0.01) between control and meditating subjects when controlled for age and gender. Female subjects, however, displayed less increase in the ß-endorphins as compared to male subjects. This difference may be attributable to hormonal or menstrual state of the female subjects. In conclusion, the results of this study clearly show that at least one form of the meditation, namely Sahaja yoga, has a profound effect on ß-endorphin release. The mechanisms involved in the regulation of ß-endorphin following meditation can only be speculated. However, the mechanisms involved in the release of endorphins may be explained by considering the assumption that the Kundalini energy upon rising from the sacreal region to the limbic system may trigger the stimulation of anterior pituitary gland. Kundalini is described as an indwelling divine feminine energy (according to Eastern religion) that can be awakened during meditation. This awakening involves the Kundalini moving up the central channel and reaches to the limbic system. The stimulation of the pituitary gland by this energy results in increased release of ß-endorphins and elevated levels of this class of proteins.   P7

258   The Buddhist science of mind and the western mandala of consciousness  Bill Potter <billpotter@uq.net.au> (IP First, Toowong, QLD, Australia)
    I refer to the Buddhist understanding of the mind, ‘Abidharma’ as a science, since it is based on an experiential method of meditation which is as rigorous in its way as the Western method of testing scientific theories. I also depict the view of consciousness which I see emerging from Western science as a mandala since it is best expressed in the graphic form of the mandala which attempts to express the nature of both the external and internal worlds in symbolic form. Accordingly I first describe the mind as revealed by the practice of Buddhist meditation which can be divided into three categories. The first is meditation on the very nature of mind, the second comprises analytical meditations on the dependant and transitory nature of the self and the external world and the third seeks to visualize the unity of mind in all sentient beings. I then construct a mandala of the universe which incorporates the concepts developed in Western philosophy and science. It is built on the axes of space and time and of reason and emotion, concepts which we use to order conscious experience. Of these axes space and time are the most familiar and the most highly developed. Physics has moved from the primitive notions of here/there and before/now/after to orthogonal xyz co-ordinates and sophisticated definitions of past /present /future in relativity theory. Reason and emotion as axes of conscious experience are not as familiar as space and time but they play a similar role in ordering our experience. Thus we use our deductive and inductive powers of reasoning to order our experience and extend it from the observed to the unobserved. The notions of number, positive/negative, true/false and valid/invalid perform ordering functions which are no less relational than those of spatial and temporal relations. Similarly although emotion is the least understood of the organising principles of consciousness in the West, whatever analysis we give of the notions of good/bad, right/wrong, love/hate, trust/fear and the numerous other value laden binaries, they surely constitute ways in which we order conscious experience. The integrated scientific view of consciousness represented in The Mandala correlates closely with Buddhist teaching on the mind. Clearly Science tells a more detailed story about the material world of space and time and has promoted technologies which have transformed the physical world. However the evidence of wide spread suffering in the world, much of which has accompanied technological advances, indicates that Science is not a complete solution to the human condition. Tibetan Buddhism has developed an understanding of the nature of mind and a practice of meditation that has been successful in removing suffering and producing harmony. It is an obvious complement to Western Science.   P11

259  The effect of meditation on the behaviour of children with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder  Katya Rubia, Ramesh Manocha, Linda Harrison <k.rubia@iop.kcl.ac.uk> (Child Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, LOndon, UK)
    The eastern concept of meditation is that of a state of mental silence characterised by the elimination of unnecessary thought, effortless attention on the present moment and alert awareness. Meditation is thus thought to enhance self-awareness, attentional focus, and self-control, functions that are typically impaired in children with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The aim of this study was therefore to investigate whether meditation has a beneficial effect in improving ADHD behaviour. In this study, Sahaja Yoga Meditation (SYM) was used as a family treatment programme for children with ADHD and their parents in a 6–week programme of twice-weekly clinic meditation sessions and regular meditation at home. Pre-and post-treatment assessments showed significant improvements in the parents’ ratings of the core ADHD behaviours of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Furthermore, improvements were also observed in associated symptoms of poor self-esteem and poor relationship quality. Benefits were described by children at school (better concentration, less conflict) and at home (improved sleep pattern and anxiety). Parents reported feeling happier, less stressed and better able to manage their child’s behaviour. Indications from this pioneering study thus suggest that SYM offers an effective management tool for treatment of ADHD. There are several potential mechanisms of action of SYM on ADHD behaviours that will be discussed. Meditation has been suggested to relax the sympathetic nervous system by activating parasympathetic-limbic pathways that relax both body and mind, which has been confirmed by modern imaging studies showing limbic activation during meditation (Lazar et al., 2000). Improvements in hyperactivity may thus be related to the relaxation effect of meditation. Electrophysiological (EEG) studies of SYM have shown an enhancement of beta and alpha rhythms and a reduction of the complexity of EEG patterns over fronto-central brain regions (Aftanas & Golocheikine, 2002), suggestive of enhanced attentional control over cognitive processing, allowing the maintenance of focused internalised attention via inhibition of irrelevant processes. Similarly, Tibetan Buddhist meditation has shown to increase consciousness-related high amplitude gamma synchrony in medial fronto-parietal brain regions (Lutz et al., 2004). Poor inhibitory and attention control are key cognitive impairments in ADHD that have been shown to be associated with a reduction in brain activation in mesial and prefrontal brain regions (Rubia et al., 1999, 2005). Meditation with its potential for enhancement of frontal-lobe mediated attentional focus, self-awareness and self-control seems thus to be a most suitable tool for a disorder of attentional control that is ADHD. Aftanas L.I., Golocheikine S.A. (2001) Neurosci Letters 310: 57-60. Lazar SW, et al.. (2000) NeuroReport 11 (7): 1581-1585. Lou HC et al., (1999) Human Brain Mapping 7:98-105. Lutz et al., (2004) PNAS 101: 16369-16373. Rubia K et al. (1999). Am J Psychiatry, 156:6:891-896. Rubia, K. (2005) Am J Psychiatry, 162, 1067-1075.   P11

260  Contemplative mind and consciousness research: An integral perspective  Marilyn Schlitz <schlitz@noetic.org> (Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA)
    This is a remarkable time in human history. Great truth systems, including science, religion, and the wisdom traditions, are coming into contact as never before. Each has its own way of knowing and understanding consciousness. Just as an understanding of consciousness is expanding through the application of science to contemplative practices, so too does science have the chance to expand and grow through its interface with the world's wisdom and spiritual traditions. An integral perpsective, which brings together subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity, may offer a way of bridging the different epistemological and ontological assumptions inherent in the differing truth systems, leading to a more complete understanding of consciousness. This talk will apply the integral model to the topic of contemplative practice and meditation.  PL5

261  The physiology of mental silence: Is meditation the same as relaxation?  David Spiro <dms@dspiro.com> (Institute of Psychiatry, London, London, UK)
    There are many traditional descriptions of meditation that define it as a specific state of consciousness, best described as “Mental Silence”, rather than as a state of relaxation. In some of the early scientific investigations into meditation it was proposed that meditation was a particular state of consciousness. However more rigorous studies failed to demonstrate any specific physiological, behavioural or clinical effects. Thus, despite popular and traditional expectations that there should be a difference between meditation and “just resting” meditation has come to be viewed simply as a process characterized by physiological rest/relaxation. Our study seeks to re-explore the possibility that meditation involves physiological changes different from simple rest/reduced arousal. We designed a physiological trial involving 26 subjects which compared a group of meditators skilled at achieving the state of mental silence with a matched control group of non-meditators who simply rested. Subjects were instructed to either meditate or rest in a temperature-controlled environment for 10 minutes while heart rate and skin temperature were monitored. The control group experienced an increase in skin temperature, would be expected on physiological grounds. Despite the expectation that the meditation group would show a similar change in skin temperature, the opposite occurred: This group manifested a significant (p<.05) reduction in skin temperature. Yet there was no difference in heart rate between the two groups. In addition to feeling relaxed, meditators reported a sensation of coolness on the hands. This study raises the possibility that the state of consciousness characterized by mental silence is physiologically different from the state of consciousness that is associated with rest. We explore the implications of this with regard to the traditional yogic description of 4 fundamental modes of consciousness as well as our modern understandings of consciousness.  C14

262  Is fetal NREM the archetype for deep meditative state’s of consciousness?  John Sullivan <consciousness@gmail.com> (Tucson, Arizona)
    The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the plausibility that the adult experience of State VIII – Ultimate Being (as defined by James Austin) may be the reemergence of physiological conditions and neural activation patterns that where used by the developing fetus to model the brain for consciousness. This is accomplished by comparing the similarities and differences in physiology between fetal NREM and the adult experience of deep meditative states of consciousness.   P11

263  Are all meditations the same? Comparison of brain patterns, mental benefits and descriptions of mindfulness meditation, Tibetan Buddhism, and Transcendental Meditation  Frederick Travis <ftravis@mum.edu> (Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, IA)
    Current neural imaging and EEG (brain wave) patterns answer the question: Are all meditations the same? The research answers with a resounding “No!” Mindfulness meditation is characterized by greater left hemisphere activation—alpha lateral asymmetry. This is reflected in higher left hemisphere cerebral metabolic rate and lower left hemisphere EEG alpha activity. Mindfulness involves attention on one’s breath with eyes-closed, and dispassionate observation of bodily, mental and perceptual states with eyes-open. Preliminary research suggests that Mindfulness Meditation improves immune functioning. Grossman’s recent meta-analysis of 10 areas of mental benefits reported significant effects of Mindfulness Meditation only on reduction in pain perception. Tibetan Buddhism is characterized by heightened 40 Hz power and coherence. This meditation is done with eyes half open, while one creates inner states such as “pure compassion” or “loss of sense of self.” Research has not yet reported physiological or mental benefits of practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Transcendental Meditation is characterized by higher frontal 6-45 Hz coherence and higher global alpha power. TM practice is described as an “effortless” process of transcending—inner awareness expanding to a state of complete freedom, unboundedness, and silence, called transcendental consciousness. Meta-analyzes report significant reductions in anxiety, breath rate, heart rate, blood lactate, blood pressure, and cigarette and alcohol use, and significant increases in self-esteem resulting from TM practice. Recent research investigated one-year longitudinal changes in alpha lateral asymmetry, gamma activity, and broadband coherence in the first year of TM practice. This research is the first to compare in a single population these three brain patterns, which are reported in the literature to characterize different meditation practices. Data were recorded during TM practice, eyes-closed rest, and computer tasks. Alpha lateral asymmetry and gamma power and coherence did not change over the year in any of the three conditions. Broadband frontal coherence rose to a high level during TM practice after 2 months practice and remained at that high level at 6 and 12 months practice. Coherence linearly increased during eyes closed rest and the computer tasks over the year. Now is the time that meditation researchers should agree on common physiological variables and measure them in their perspective meditating populations. The resulting physiological profiles could objectively classify meditation practices, serving as a brain-based matrix to discuss meditation practices and understand their effects on the mind, body and the environment.   C14

264  Effects of level of meditation experience on attentional focus: Is the efficiency of executive or orientation networks improved?  Marjorie Woollacott, Davina Chan <mwool@uoneuro.uoregon.edu> (Institute of Neuroscience, Dept.of Human Physiology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR)
    Background: There is increasing research (using fMRI, EEG, etc) attempting to delineate neural circuitry underlying the process of attentional focus during meditation. Though this research is of interest, it is also important to understand the long-term effects of meditation on attentional processing in daily tasks, both through behavioral studies of attentional performance and understanding the attentional networks contributing to the behavioral change. Networks hypothesized to be involved in attentional processing include the orienting network (e.g., to specific sensory information; involving parietal lobe) and the executive control network, involving conflict resolution (e.g., ignoring irrelevant stimuli; involving anterior cingulate/frontal cortex). It could be hypothesized that meditation improves the efficiency of orientational processing in order to focus on a specific object or alternatively, that meditation improves executive processing, which monitors for conflict in sensory information and inhibits incorrect responses. In order to test the above hypotheses, this study aimed to compare the effect of meditation experience on the performance of two behavioral tasks (Global/Local Letters task vs Stroop task) designed to test, respectively, the efficiency of the orienting vs the executive attentional networks. Methods: Participants included meditators (50 total, 22 male/28 female, mean age 43 yrs) varying in degree of meditation experience (6-150 min/day and .5 to 35 yrs overall) and type of meditation practiced, and non-meditating controls (10 total, 5 male/5 female, mean age 47 yrs). There was no difference in age, education or gender between groups. Experiments compared the performance of these participants on the Stroop task (measuring executive attentional network processing) and Global/Local Letters task (measuring orientational network processing). Results: Meditators showed superior overall performance on the Stroop task, indicated by significantly higher scores than non-meditators on detecting words alone (p<0.001, one-tailed), colors alone (p<0.001), and dealing with color-word interference (p<0.03). Meditation experience as measured by minutes/day of meditation was negatively correlated with Stroop interference (p<0.05), suggesting that the more time individuals spend meditating/day, the less susceptible they are to Stroop interference. No correlation was found between meditation experience as measured by total years of meditative practice and Stroop interference (r=-0.06). Meditators also responded faster than non-meditators across all trial types. On the Global/Local Letters task no correlation was found between the congruency effect score (measure of orientation abilities) and meditation experience, as measured by minutes of meditation/day or years of practice, in either the global or local conditions (all p's>0.13). However, again, meditation experience, as measured by minutes of meditation/day, was associated with faster response time across all trial types. Discussion: The significant improvement in Stroop task performance associated with meditational experience, in contrast to the lack of effect of meditation on Global/Local Letters task performance suggests that meditation produces long-term increases in the efficiency of the executive attentional network (anterior cingulate/prefrontal cortex) while showing no effect on the orientation network (parietal systems). It is unclear whether the additional meditation-related facilitation in RT performance in all task conditions may simply be due to enhanced visual-motor abilities or whether it reflects greater ability to focus attention.   C14

@H2 = [05.03]  Hypnosis

265  Neutral hypnosis affects the frontal functional connections of the brain  Sakari Kallio, Revonsuo A., Fingelkurts Al. A., Fingelkurts An. A. <sakari.kallio@utu.fi> (School of Humanities and Informatics, University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden)
    The neural changes associated with hypnosis were studied in a single very highly hypnotizable individual (hypnotic virtuoso) by measuring the ongoing EEG during neutral hypnosis and baseline conditions. The data were analyzed by using a novel approach measuring changes in local and remote functional connectivity in the brain. The main finding was that during neutral hypnosis active functional connections were diminished between the anterior cortical areas and other cortical areas in all measured frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma). These findings are discussed in light of the ongoing debate of altered state of consciousness (ASC) and hypnosis.  P11

@H2 = [05.04]  Other altered states of consciousness

266  Radical transformation of consciousness: Myth or reality  Siddharth Arora, Rajni Arora;Vinod Arora <sidarora007@gmail.com> (Dept. of Information and Communication Technology, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India)
    This paper discusses the possibilities of radical transformation of consciousness and means by which it is possible to do so in an effective and a sustained manner. Consciousness has been defined differently by different cultures, societies and religions. In scientific language; a person is conscious if he is awake, otherwise unconscious. Here being awake refers to the individual being able to sense his environment and respond to that, i.e. the focus is on “sense-consciousness” .On the other hand, religions have defined consciousness to be a state when an individual is awake and be aware from within. Rather on “sense-consciousness”, the stress is now on “self-consciousness”. I define consciousness to be state of mind that leads to absolute unfragmented awareness. Consciousness is responsible for awareness, i.e. it leads to sense of “what is”. The content of our awareness depends on our ability to perceive, to feel “what is”. But due to the conditioning that we all receive, we comapre reality with "what should had been", and our perceptions are maneuvered in a particular direction leading to fragmented and incomplete awareness such that the self not only lacks observation and analyzing power but also lacks "attention". Awareness in itself has to be absolute, which is only possible from complete knowledge. A student is aware he is in physics class, but he is unaware of what's going on or why is he actually there if he doesn't want to be there, the awareness is incomplete. The reason for this incomplete awareness is that consciousness works on different levels, where each level is responsible to a different kind of awareness. Consciousness is viewed in a layered hierarchical structure, where each level is strongly bonded with all other levels, and each layer leads to a kind of awareness. A radical transformation is possible only when all these hierarchical layers of consciousness transform proportionally in a constructive and synchronized manner such that the distinction of different layers of consciousness vanishes, and one may view consciousness as absolute structure rather than distinguishing it on basis of “awareness it leads to”. The transformation is possible and complete only when all the levels of consciousness, leading to different kinds of awareness, are single structured composed to give rise to a “complete consciousness”. This complete consciousness results in absolute awareness and it is through this absolute awareness, that a one comes to know about the self, true self. Thus, to achieve a radical transformation of consciousness, one needs to accept reality as is, rather than constantly comparing and conflicting it with our views of what reality should had been like. Once we accept reality, we start to see things as they are, the beauty of life is not in counting true and false, but in living them in fullest and learning from them. It is only then when mind is silent and undisturbed by conditioned thoughts, “one starts to live in accordance with himself” the utmost necessity of human life that can only be achieved through absolute awareness.  P5

267  Experimental data demonstrating extraordinary human-generated ambient geomagnetic field and gravitational force augmentation  Danielle Graham <livingsys@ywave.com> (NW Frontier Research Institute, Yelm, WA)
    In recent decades, much rigorous documentation has been published on human-generated phenomena (e.g. remote viewing, teleportation, etc.) However, that research has been primarily focused on either the observation of the macro-phenomena itself, or the cumulative statistical deviation from chance. This presented experimental data examines, instead, the influences upon and the augmentation of ambient geomagnetic fields and gravitational force, a previously unobserved and unrecognized concurrent physics phenomena during activities requiring singular and total concentration. Utilizing simple field measurement instrumentation, this original and extraordinary data is shown, discussed and compared with controlled baselines. Previous research examining the influence of ambient fields upon human subjects, or, the study of the effects of indirect human interference on engineering instrumentation never considered ambient fields for experimental control, perhaps limiting potential theoretical modeling and integration. Insomuch as natural, human-generated phenomena currently stand as the most accessible and repeatable examples of anomalous environmental interactivity, the data and suggested research protocols presented offer exploratory perspectives for observing the underlying scientific principals and physics concepts of ambient field interface as well as potential applications in developing more effective theoretical models for mind/matter integrative sciences.  P4

268  Defining a science of fractal consciousness  Reginald Humphreys, Kathleen Eagan-Deprez <DrRBH@compuserve.com> (American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, Dallas, Texas)
    Can the inclusion of Mandelbrot’s fractal mathematics inform the science of consciousness beyond the analysis of neural architecture? What is the meaning of fractal consciousness? Although the phrase “fractal consciousness” is popularly used to denote complexity or chaoticism, no scientific use of the term has been established. Fractal mathematics provide the best description of numerous phenomena of nature, from the subatomic level to the interstellar. Fractal mathematics describe any natural object, such as a landscape or coastline, in its original pristine condition, before any deterioration or erosion could occur. “Fractal” denotes nature, in an optimized, perfected state. Historically, certain scientists have objected that many of the presumed indicators of altered consciousness are also found in everyday consciousness. When consciousness is both altered but still normal, consciousness may be altered in the direction of more perfect natural (fractal) functioning than usually prevails. Increases in attentional focusing, absorption, introspection, insight, and self-awareness may occur, all reflecting enhancements. Defining fractal consciousness seems as difficult as defining consciousness itself. Scientists now believe the Mandelbrot set describes the most complex object in the universe. Fractal consciousness is the description we choose when searching for the best opposite of “linear” thinking. Fractals define a dimensional pole of maximum complexity, while linearity defines minimum complexity. Numerous fractally-complex modes of functioning are embedded in human physiology, while the linear mode is a man-made overlay set against these fractal inner workings. The rigidity and demand for conformation of the linear mode disrupts the natural fractal modes, and replaces them. The competition between linear and natural, fractal modes of functioning is nowhere more evident than in heart rate variability (HRV). Recent success in decomposing the HRV into fractal and non-fractal parts has demonstrated the fractal component’s linkage to cardiac health. Likewise, coherent (fractal) HRV is necessary for autonomic states of parasympathetic dominance underlying hypnosis and meditation. In contrast, sympathetic-dominant states lack neural coherence, and exhibit linear dynamics. While the world needs many verbal languages, all peoples comprehend the linear time-clock. Forcing organized society to live according to a linear time-scale has resulted in an ongoing world context which is fundamentally in opposition to our natural fractal nonlinear human tendencies. Having yoked ourselves to a linear time clock, we immediately become involved in a variety of “races” against this clock and against nature itself. This tendency to race is codified in elevations within the sympathetic nervous system, experienced as toxicity and stress. A pathological relation to time, “time-sickness”, may be the only available style of human adaptation to the unhealthy linear time-system. Fractal means optimized, unadulterated nature, nonlinear, maximally complex, and vibrantly responsive to the environment. The fractal is a suitable metaphor for consciousness, demonstrating maximal complexity. Understanding consciousness in terms of fractal dynamics holds considerable promise for the future of consciousness studies. Humphreys and Eagan-Deprez (2004, 2005) documented the ability of fractal video to foster trance and mind-body synchronization as an emergent property. It now seems evident that fractal dynamics play a fundamental role in both regular consciousness and trance.  P4

269  The foundation for a pragmatic epistemology of the imagination  Scott Jackson <scottjaxon@gmail.com> (Humanities, Prescott College, TUCSON, AZ)
    Traditionally, consciousness studies, cognitive scientists and philosophers have wondered how the conscious mind produces an image in the imagination. The fundamental question my talk will address is exactly the opposite; how to bring the conscious mind to imagination. An epistemology of the imagination will address the current interdisciplinary crisis in consciousness studies, cognitive science and philosophy. The crisis is the lack of methodology that can adequately explore or study the phenomena of consciousness. The scientific world view tends to undervalue first-person data derived from subjective experience but the attempt to form a science of consciousness has many scholars investigating eastern spiritual methods, often without success. The epistemology of the imagination described herein delivers a method capable of producing dramatic changes in conscious experience, effectively, bringing the conscious mind to the imagination.  P5

270  Expanded sensory consciousness (ESC) versus pure consciousness experience (PCE)  Alex Shalom Kohav <alex.kohav@tui.edu> ( Interdisciplinary Consciousness Studies, Union Institute & University, Boulder, CO)
    There has been a discussion in the literature pertaining to altered states of consciousness from the first-person perspective, centered on the so-called PCE or Pure Consciousness Experience (or Event). The latter has been defined as a state from which all sensory content has been eliminated, with Zen cited as a prime example (Austin, 1998; Forman, 1990; Shear & Jevning, 1999). This paper’s thesis is that there also is a no less—and arguably more—important altered state of consciousness which the author proposes to name Expanded Sensory Consciousness or ESC. The latter is characterized not by the elimination of sensory content from consciousness but, on the contrary, by a dramatic increase of quantitative and qualitative—expanded-and-extra-sensory—content. Moreover, this state is found to be capable of sustaining a consciousness that is able to overcome the habitual—and largely faulty—unconscious conceptual metaphors. These we normally internalize since our childhoods via neuronal network hardwiring, and they typically circumscribe humanity’s mental life (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). The ESC is found supporting and characterized by a conceptual framework consisting of exceedingly rare consciously-created conceptual metaphors, or "megaphors"—in effect, master thoughts unacceptable, even intolerable to those not in such a super-conscious state. The paper identifies two classic examples of entire systems of ESC in Indian Kundalini Yoga and the original archaic Hebrew sensibility of the Genesis, Exodus, and other Pentateuch books. In the latter, the ESC is symbolized by the Promised Holy Land; the struggle to reach it is with the (Kundalini) Serpent, over such issues as the nature of human knowledge (the Tree of Knowledge) versus “God.” Garden of Eden’s primal Scene of Instruction becomes more intelligible when one bears in mind that the Hebrew deity’s supreme designation, the so-called Ineffable Name, is the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton that is a condensation of permutations of the verb “to be,” or “being” (Boman, 1970; Friedman, 2001). This has curious, meaningful parallels with the recent century’s efforts to center hermeneutics on epistemology, then focus it on Being (Heidegger, 1962; Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Sartre, 1956), only to refocus it again on epistemology (Ricoeur, 1981). The paper proceeds to examine ESC’s key features, concluding that no authentic theory of human consciousness is possible without taking into consideration this higher-gear mode of consciousness—since it appears to be the very raison d'être of consciousness. ESC seems to simultaneously comprise consciousness’ outer limits as well as its highest potential.  P11

271  Hallucinations - a framework for research  Benny Shanon <bshanon@mscc.huji.ac.il> (Psychology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel)
    A series of topics is introduced that together define a novel framework for the psychological study of visual hallucinations. A great part of the discussion is based on the empirical investigation of the state of mind induced by the Amazonian psychoactive brew Ayahuasca (see my monograph “The Antipodes of the Mind”, Oxford University Press, 2002). Standardly, hallucination is conceived as perceptual experience without corresponding objects or states of affairs in the real world. Usually, hallucinations are further characterized by their vividness, the cognitive agent not being aware of their status, and the false judgments associated with them. Furthermore, the received conceptualization usually assumes pejorative evaluation. Examining non-ordinary visualizations encountered in substance induced altered states of consciousness, I show that the common characterization of hallucination is inadequate: empirically it does not do justice with the facts and theoretically it is misguided. Investigating the phenomenology of hallucinations, I follow a linguistic-oriented analogy, and examine the lexicon of hallucinations, their themes, structural forms of articulation, global textual structure, pragmatics, as well as their contextual and temporal dynamics. Inspecting a large corpus of Ayahuasca visualizations, I have found some semantic categories to be especially prevalent. These are reported by informants coming from different geographical regions and different personal histories and socio-cultural backgrounds. Structurally, hallucinations may consist of non-figurative elements, isolated figures, rudimentary pictures, or full-fledged scenes that may reach remarkable breadth and development. When sufficiently rich, hallucinations may exhibit elaborate structures akin to those associated with textual narratives or musical compositions. Pragmatic variations are marked in the stance individuals take vis a vis their hallucinations. Specifically, the individual may be a mere passive inspector or s/he may step into the scene of the hallucination and act in it. Dynamically, hallucinations exhibit marked sensitivity to context as well as long-term evolution. In their totality, they manifest a small set of general underlying factors - notably, metaphoricity and enhanced import of the medium. Both significant experientially and central in the theoretical conceptualization of hallucination is the epistemic status attributed to it. Phenomenologically, three main types of hallucinatory experiences are distinguished: (i) non-real scenes perceived as real without the experiencer appreciating this, (ii) non-real scenes are perceived as real with the experiencer being cognizant of this, (iii) the real perceived as non-real. This bears on the philosophical issue of the nature of reality. I propose a tripartite distinction between reality, non-reality and other reality. The third type is discussed in conjunction with artistic fiction. We may further ask how the act of hallucinating is to be conceived. This relates to psychological modelling, philosophical questions, as well as anthropological and cultural considerations. In some quarters hallucinating is regarded as gaining access to “other realities”; alternatively, the unconscious can be invoked. Opposing both options, I propose a conceptualization in terms of heightened creativity. Lastly, the investigation has methodological ramifications. The standard view reflects an extrinsic perspective, that of an external, judgmental observer. The alternative intrinsic perspective advocated here is grounded in the phenomenology of experience proper. I argue that only with the latter can the varied psychological phenomena be recognized and fruitfully investigated. In addition to presenting a new view of hallucination, the present analysis bears on the nature of psychological investigation at large. A call is made towards a general phenomenological psychology of experience.   C7

@H2 = [05.05]  Transpersonal and humanistic psychology

272  Effects of the psychomanteum process on states of consciousness and bereavement  Arthur Hastings <ahastings@itp.edu> (Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, CA)
    This research reports the effects of the recently rediscovered psychomanteum technique for inducing altered states applied to bereavement feelings, in which significant reductions in bereavement resulted from a 3 hour experiential process. The psychomanteum is a dimly lit deliberately featureless booth with a diffusely reflecting mirror to focus attention and a comfortable chair for the subject. This can create a mildly altered consciousness state and is a form of sensory deprivation (now called Restricted Environmental Stimulation Technique). Persons who have experienced a death of friends or relatives, and who are interested in exploring an ostensible contact with the deceased, are taken through a three stage psychological process in which they remember the deceased, sit in the booth for 45-60 minutes, and then talk with the facilitator about their experience, thoughts, and feelings. Subjects sitting in the booth report visual imagery as if it were in external space, mental imagery, sudden light and darkness, alterations in time, body energy sensations, and tactile sensations. In a research series of 100 volunteer subjects, changes in 21 bereavement effects were measured before and after the psychomanteum session, and one month later to assess long term effects. A Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test showed statistically significant reductions in negative feelings such as grief, guilt, anger, and missing the person, and significant increases in positive feelings, such as love and resolved feelings, indicating a strong shift in bereavement effects. The qualitative reports show that about half the individuals felt as if the dead person were somehow present, with reports of mental dialog with the person they sought, visual images, kinesthetic or other sensations that were felt to be related to the deceased person. The research facilitators did not interpret the experience and left the meaning up to the subjects. The reports show that for the subjects these communications were almost always positive, they often resolved issues left over from the death, and they changed the individual’s relationship toward the deceased. The changes in bereavement occurred for almost all the subjects, whether there was an ostensible encounter or not. These findings are consistent with our first study of 27 subjects published in Omega, 2002, 45(3), 211-228). The altered state of consciousness produced by the process appears to facilitate emotional openness for most subjects and a reduction of defenses regarding bereavement feelings. Correlations with standard personality assessments are being analyzed and will be reported. The psychomanteum appears to hold potentials for transensory experience and therapeutic applications. Further research on the altered state produced by the psychomanteum may suggest ways in which consciousness can be directed toward specific phenomenal experience.   P11

273  Ego-consciousness as a flight into disturbance  Fred Patrizi, Fred Patrizi <fpatrizi@mailclerk.ecok.edu> (Psychology, East Central University, Ada, OK)
    Freud proposed a three-stage compromise model to describe how psychological disorders result from an attempt to avoid confronting psychological conflicts by converting them into physical symptoms which serve as symbolic expressions while also punishing and distracting the individual. Disorders are, thus, self-generated and self-serving, although they also result in suffering. A psychological condition is rendered into a biological/physical one which is less threatening and more socially acceptable. It may also result in secondary gain in the form of sympathy from others or avoidance of unwanted tasks or obligations. Freud adopted the phrase “flight into illness” to describe this condition. Disturbances of ego consciousness are the many and varied ways in which a sense of peace and security is disturbed. This can range from physical ailments and conditions, to psychological disorders, to current stressors, like having to complete a report, to everyday hassles such as not being able to find your car keys. The current paper proposes that human experience encompasses biological, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of being. Just as psychological disturbances are converted into biological conditions in Freud’s model, it is proposed that spiritual conflicts are regularly converted into psychological disturbances. The spiritual dimension is here conceived of as an invisible, connected substrate of vital energy or force that unifies and animates all levels of being. It is conceived of as being elemental to consciousness and matter. Spiritual conflicts are those which have to do with the relationship between the individual and the spiritual dimension or between individual consciousness and unified transpersonal consciousness. Historically, many “spiritual” conflicts have fallen under the heading of existential crises. Being fundamental to the ego’s subjective sense of well-being, these conflicts can be intensely threatening. Failure to achieve resolution can disturb the very foundation of one’s mental stability. It is, thus, proposed that ego consciousness serves to occupy itself with an ongoing series of less-threatening psychological and physical disturbances so as to avoid confrontation with more fundamental issues of one’s relationship to the underlying essence of being, i.e., spirituality. Such “problems of everyday living,” whether they be a search for validation of a scientific theory or how to fix a dripping faucet, are the ego’s way of distracting the individual from realizing participation in the spiritual dimension. It is proposed that the ego has good cause to engage in such activity in that realization of the spiritual dimension requires dissolution of the ego. A dimensional model of consciousness is proposed which views physical and psychological evolution as efforts to escape confrontation with the spiritual essence of being. Spiritual enlightenment is viewed as an evolutionary stage involving transcendence of ego consciousness and body identity. It is proposed that since ego consciousness evolved from a unified state of transpersonal consciousness, it retains a vague memory of this condition and a yearning for re-union in the form of identity attachment and fear of identity extinction. Therefore, as a compromise, ego consciousness opts for temporary satisfaction through attempting to resolve momentary disturbances rather than realizing lasting peace via transcendence.   P5

@H2 = [05.06]  Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy

274  Top ten benefits of determinism  Herb Korpell <HerbKorpell@aol.com> (Lafayette, CA)
    Attractive elements of a deterministic psychotherapy are reviewed, including scientific realism, causality, no free will, interactional viewpoint, simplicity, responsibility, emotional comfort, detachment, experiencing being one with everything, and acceptance.   P5

@H2 = [05.07]  Lucid dreaming

@H2 = [05.08]  Anomalous experiences

275  Of brains and branes: String theory and consciousness  J. Kenneth Arnette <jkarnette@hotmail.com> (Department of Social Science, Spokane Falls Community College, Spokane, WA)
    If non-material consciousness exists, what are its origin and composition? How does it interact with the body during physical life, and where does it go at the time of death? In this paper, I answer these questions based on three areas of study: string theory and theoretical cosmology; the near-death experience (NDE); and my theory of essence (or consciousness), which connects theoretical physics with the NDE (Arnette, 1992, 1995, 1999). Theoretically, strings are the basic components of the physical world. Strings are tiny strands of energy, either closed-loop (CL), which are free-floating, circular strands; or open-ended (OE), bound on both ends to our four-dimensional spacetime. Both types vibrate according to the energy they contain, forming elementary particles. Spacetime is a gigantic string (a “membrane” or “brane”), stretched to enormous proportions. Forces are an exchange of particles between objects: photons for electromagnetism and gravitons for gravity. Gravitons are composed of CL strings, while photons (and particles with mass) are OE strings. Photons and particles are thus bound to our brane, but gravitons exist in our universe only transiently before disappearing, and we experience a corresponding apparent weakness in gravitational force. Gravitons can disappear because of a fourth spatial dimension, within which exists our brane and potentially an infinite number of others parallel to our own. During the NDE, many experiencers (NDErs) have reported “spiritual gravity” that pulls them through a tunnel and into a different reality. NDErs also report that they are unable to make physical contact with people or objects on this side of the tunnel, instead passing through physical things. The theory of essence holds that the NDE is an actual experience, and states that the essence is the seat of consciousness and is composed of a substance constructed from energy, but fundamentally differently from matter. The essence can occupy the same space as matter without interacting with it. But the essence has a physical property, since it is a substance: an electromagnetic field that binds the essence and body and allows essence-brain interaction. This second substance does not originate in our universe. Instead, the NDE tunnel (identical to the relativistically predicted wormhole) allows passage from our brane to others by way of a higher spatial dimension. Essences enter and leave this universe through wormholes. String theory complements the theory of essence and NDE phenomenology and fleshes out the implications of relativity. Relativity implies at least one higher spatial dimension. String theory makes the specific prediction. Relativity suggests a mode of travel between universes. String theory overtly predicts that gravitons make these journeys. The theory of essence proposes two kinds of substances. String theory provides constructions for these. The theory of essence suggests that spiritual gravity is overcome by electromagnetic interactions between essence and body, but reasserts itself upon the death of the body and its field. String theory confirms that, in this universe, electromagnetism is much stronger than graviton-related forces, but provides for escape from this brane by graviton-like substances freed from electromagnetic interactions.   P10

276  Consciousness—it’s Greek to me: The origin of Plato’s dualism in the near-death experience  Denise Ottosen, J. Kenneth Arnette <deniseo@nctv.com> (Grant Mental Healthcare, Moses Lake, WA)
    Plato’s Republic includes the Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of Er. The Myth of Er has been cited as an early description of the near-death experience (NDE), but no such analysis has been applied to the Allegory. This paper proposes that the Allegory’s most fundamental level of meaning is in terms of a symbolic retelling of the NDE and that the NDE is the source of Plato’s dualistic metaphysics and epistemology. We begin with a summary of the features of the NDE and then describe the relevant portions of the Allegory, demonstrating the close correspondence. Frequent features of the NDE, particularly the operating-room (OR) NDE, include: the NDE experiencer (NDEr) coming to consciousness and finding herself observing events below her; not initially understanding what she is witnessing; feeling pity for the person on the table, only to realize that it is her own body; feelings of revulsion upon realizing this; attempting to stop the medical team from reviving her body; moving beyond the OR; experiencing uninhibited flight; noticing a tunnel or passageway; entering it; noticing a very bright golden light at the dark tunnel’s end; and encountering other entities, in or on the other side of the tunnel, who guide the NDEr. NDErs report the new reality being bathed in the golden light; scenes (both cities and landscapes) of indescribable beauty; temporary access to seemingly infinite knowledge, which is forgotten upon return to life; encountering an all-loving being who initiates in the NDEr’s mind a life review; a desire not return to physical life; a decision to return, or not being given a choice; and not remembering the return trip. Upon their return, NDErs find that the world routinely rejects their accounts. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners are born in chains that allow them to see only the cave’s wall. When one prisoner is freed, he is able to turn and see the cave’s mouth and the light of the sun outside. He has trouble adjusting to his new freedom and recognizing his surroundings. As he adjusts, he better understands the nature of what he sees. He emerges into the sunlight (the world of Forms), perhaps with a guide or instructor. After adjusting, the prisoner thinks about his life in the cave and loses his desire to return. The prisoner observes scenes of incredible beauty and experiences the world of Forms, the highest reality and source of all knowledge. Although he wants to stay, he eventually goes back to the cave to enlighten the other prisoners. But, the prisoners reject the freed one, his observations, and his attempts to enlighten them. The parallels between the Allegory and the NDE are compelling. The Allegory appears to demonstrate that Plato had knowledge of the NDE, thus providing an origin for his dualistic metaphysics and epistemology. We close with a brief comment regarding the Myth of Er and how it fits into our hypothesis.   P11

277  The informational fields of consciousness and the brain. A new concept based on recent scientific research on near-death experiences.  Pim van Lommel <pimvanlommel@wanadoo.nl> (Velp, The Netherlands)
    During the period of unconsciousness due to a life-threatening crisis like cardiac arrest patients may report the paradoxical occurrence of enhanced consciousness experienced in a dimension without our conventional concept of time and space, with cognitive functions, with emotions, with self-identity, with memories from early childhood and sometimes with (non-sensory) perception out and above their lifeless body. In 3 prospective studies with a total of 496 survivors of cardiac arrest between 11% and 18% of the patients reported an NDE, and in these studies it could not be shown that physiological, psychological, pharmacological or demographic factors could explain the cause and content of these experiences. Through many studies with induced cardiac arrest in both human and animal models cerebral function has been shown to be severely compromised during cardiac arrest, with complete cessation of cerebral flow, and electrical activity in both cerebral cortex and the deeper structures of the brain has been shown to be absent after a very short period of time (10-20 seconds). So we have to conclude that in cardiac arrest NDE is experienced during a transient loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem. How could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death, with a flat EEG? How is consciousness related to the integrity of brain function? And is there a start or an end to consciousness? Scientific study of near-death experiences (NDE) pushes us to the limits of our medical and neurophysiologic ideas about the range of human consciousness and mind-brain relation, because we have to admit that it is not possible to reduce consciousness to neural processes as conceived by contemporary neuroscience. It is still an unproven assumption that consciousness and memories “emerge” from brain function and are exclusively “localized” in the brain. Direct evidence of how neurons or neuronal networks could possibly produce the subjective essence of the mind and thoughts is currently lacking. I will discuss new hypotheses that could explain the several universally reported elements of an NDE with non-local interconnectedness of fields of consciousness. According to this concept we can conclude that our consciousness could be based on fields of information, consisting of waves, and that it originates in a higher dimensional phase-space. During life we can receive aspects of our consciousness into our body as our waking consciousness. During cardiac arrest the function of the brain stops and the interface between consciousness and the physical body is interrupted. As a result enhanced conscious experiences are reported independently of brain function. So a functioning brain could be compared with a computer which does not produce the internet, but only receives it. This concept is a complementary theory, like both the wave and particle aspects of light, and not a dualistic theory. The particle aspect, the physical aspect of consciousness in the material world, originates from the wave aspect of our consciousness from the phase-space by collapse of the wave function into particles (“objective reduction”), and can be measured by means of EEG, MRI, and PET scan.   C6

@H2 = [05.09]  Parapsychology

278  Are research mediums real? A triple-blind study of anomalous information reception  Julie Beischel, Gary E. Schwartz <beischel@email.arizona.edu> (Psychology, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ)
    Previous research from the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona (http://veritas.arizona.edu) has documented apparent anomalous information reception by carefully selected research mediums. The present experiment was designed to be a "triple-blind" study to rule out all potential sources of conventional information retrieval. Eight University of Arizona undergraduate students were selected to participate as research "sitters;" 4 had suffered the death of a parent, the other 4 experienced the loss of a peer. To maximize identifiable differences between the experimental “readings,” each deceased parent was paired with a deceased peer of the same gender. The sitters were not present at the readings; an experimenter blind to the identity of the sitters and their deceased served as a "proxy sitter." Eight research mediums, blind to the identities of the sitters and their deceased but given the first name of the deceased, each read for two absent sitters and their paired deceased; each pair of sitters was read by two mediums. After the readings were conducted, the sitters, blind to the origin of the information, each scored a pair of readings; one was a reading intended for his/her deceased, the other was the paired control reading. The blind global rating scores given to each reading by a sitter were significantly higher (p <0.01) for readings intended for the sitter than for the control readings that were intended for the paired sitter. These findings are consistent with the continuance of personal information hypothesis as well as the survival of consciousness hypothesis.   P5

279  Cinema and consciousness: Model, paradigm or simulacra  Michael Punt, Martha Blassnigg <mpunt@plymouth.ac.uk> (School of Computing Communication and Electronics, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, Devon, UK)
    This paper is speculation about the cinema as a model of consciousness. It draws on original research by both presenters at the universities of Vienna, Amsterdam, Wales and Plymouth over the past decade into the relationship between cinema, parapsychology and consciousness from the background of film studies and cultural anthropology. This research considers perception and cinema drawing on the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, Henri Bergson, Edgar Morin and Gilles Deleuze relative to an historical study of early cinema technology as a material manifestation of an imaginary imperative (see Punt, 2000. Early Cinema and the Technological Imaginary). In this paper both authors will refer to their contributions in the forthcoming anthology (Punt eds. 2006. Screen Consciousness: Cinema, Mind and World, Rodoipi) and argue that reflections on cinema and its cultural distribution might be useful in articulating some key ideas concerning consciousness relative to extended reality, remote sensing, telepathy and ESP. Using illustrative film footage drawn from various moving image archives the presenters will show how an analysis of material from the very early period and the pre-history of cinema can highlight the ubiquity of the idea of an independent reality as a force in popular culture. We will demonstrate that cinema technology was the product of a nexus of forces and as such can be regarded as a symptom of a widespread predilection at the end of the nineteenth century to understand reality as contingent. Following this Blassnigg will show how in a discussion of clairvoyance in a contemporary European context the cinema has remained paradigmatic in that her recent anthropological studies reveal the clairvoyant experience as one in which matter and spirit become indistinguishable in the processes of perception. By revisiting the story of technology and popular spiritualist practices we emphasize an historical continuity between the metaphysics and empirical, which is foreshadowed in what might be termed the prehistory of Consciousness Studies evident in the work of Spinoza, Bergson, Warburg and later Morin. By reflecting on an archaeology of both cinema and consciousness studies as they concern the interrelation of idea and matter, the implications of this paper suggest that the pre-history of cinema can offer an eerie simulacra of the mind and its processes. The consideration of cinema as a technological manifestation of experiences that have evaded orthodox modes of description will prove useful in articulating questions concerning contemporary developments in consciousness studies and parapsychology. The paper will be presented by both authors and use examples and film clips suitable for DvD projection from a laptop.   C13

280  Entangled minds: Reassessing extrasensory experiences from a quantum ontology  Dean Radin <dean@noetic.org> (Research, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA)
    One of the most surprising discoveries of modern physics is that objects aren’t as separate as they may seem. When you drill down into the core of even the most solid-looking material, separateness dissolves. All that remains are relationships extending curiously throughout space and time. These connections were predicted by quantum theory and were called “spooky action at a distance” by Einstein. Erwin Schrödinger dubbed this peculiar form of connection entanglement, adding that “I would not call that one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.” The deeper reality suggested by entanglement is so unlike the world of everyday experience that until recently, many physicists believed it was interesting only for abstract theoretical reasons. They accepted that the microscopic world of elementary particles could become curiously entangled, but those entangled states were assumed to be fleeting and have no practical consequences for the world as we experience it. That view is rapidly changing. We are now finding that there are ways in which the effects of microscopic entanglements “scale up” into the macroscopic world. Entangled connections between carefully prepared atomic-sized objects can persist over many miles. Tasks can be theoretically accomplished by entangled groups without the members of the group communicating with each other in any conventional way. Some scientists suggest that the coherence displayed in living systems might depend in some fundamental way on quantum effects like entanglement. Others suggest that conscious awareness may be related in some important way to entangled atoms in the brain. Some even propose that the entire universe is a single, self-entangled object. What if these speculations are correct? What would human experience be like in such an interconnected universe? Would we occasionally have numinous feelings of connectedness with loved ones at a distance? Could “entangled minds” result in the experience of your hearing the telephone ring and somehow knowing who’s calling? Or having a dream that later came to pass? If we did have such experiences, could they be due to real information that somehow bypassed the usual sensory channels? Or are such reports better attributed to coincidence and delusions? This talk will review the state of the laboratory evidence for such “psi” experiences from the meta-analytic perspective. The evidence suggests that some of these experiences are genuine, and that the principle reason for persistent scientific skepticism about psi appears to be outdated assumptions about the nature of reality. When the fabric of reality is closely examined, nothing resembling a classical, mechanistic universe remains. Instead, reality is woven from strange, “holistic” threads that aren’t located precisely in space or time. This holistic fabric provides a new way of thinking about psi. No longer are these experiences rare human talents, divine gifts, or “powers” that magically transcend ordinary physical boundaries. Instead, psi becomes an unavoidable consequence of living in an interconnected, entangled physical reality. Psi experience is reframed from a bizarre anomaly that doesn’t fit into the normal world – and hence labeled paranormal – into a natural phenomenon of physics.   C21

281  Turing, Psi, and consciousness  Richard Shoup <shoup@boundary.org> (Boundary Institute, San Jose, CA)
    In his famous 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Alan Turing convincingly refuted eight common arguments that had been put forth against the possibility of artificial intelligence. A ninth argument against AI -- the possibility of ESP, or Extra-Sensory Perception -- he agreed would put the machine at a disadvantage were it proven to exist exclusively in human beings. Today ESP is more frequently included in a class of phenomena and abilities called psychic or "Psi", and the evidence for it is abundant, yet still controversial. In this paper, we argue that certain important and puzzling aspects of consciousness and of conscious experience are due to and enabled by Psi, and that consciousness researchers and theorists should take care to tease apart these more provocative aspects, especially when considering whether quantum phenomena in the brain are required to explain consciousness. We discuss how such Psi phenomena might be explainable without contradicting existing physics, and how their presence leads to confusion in

understanding conscious experience. ========   P4

@H2 = [05.10]  Miscellaneous

282  System of consciousness. Husserl's theory from the perspecive of autopoietic systems.  Marek Maciejczak <marmaciejczak@poczta.onet.pl> (Collegium of Social sciences, Warsaw University of Technology, Warszawa, Poland)
    In the last period of his work Husser seemed to have found all necessary elements, layers, rules of operating, source of dynamics, aim, etc. due to which consciousness is an ordered unity, a system. But he did not bring them together and did not show, how consciousness efectively worked. My aim is to put together Husserl's main ideas just to show the way consciousness becomes a homogenous system. The very base of the reconstruction is a concept of autopoietical system proposed by biologists (H.Maturana and F.Varela). It is very helpful to explain intentionality - a causal power of consciousness, its competence to gaining objective knowledge. Intentionality results from the functional relationship within the system that comprises numerous intentional subsystems and their correlates (structures of senses). In any given epistemic situation the system activates individual motivations that in turn are determined by their internal forms and rules of operating. Consequently the object of experience is presented as ideal or real, individual or general, empirical or abstract. Structures of the system order these objects into clasess. It depends on the place within the system if an object is classyfied as real, imagined, possible, contradictory of even absurd. Thereafter its structure and properties are determined. Striving for evidence makes life of the mind rational, oriented toward truth and objectivity. The system of consciousness constitutes its unity and limits cooperating with the surrounded world, with something that is not experience, concept or idea. The system has roots in the dynamics of bodily subject.   P11

6. Culture and Humanities

@H2 = [06.01]  Literature and hermeneutics

283  Emotion, visual-haptic correlation in motor action, simulation, and similarity of motion-style in machine metaphors in literature: skywriting and rail-writing in Woolf and Dickens.  Kristen Corman <kristencorman@mac.com> (English, Boston College, Allston, MA )
    This interdisciplinary work on embodied, literary metaphor explores correlations between emotion as a bodily sense and human kinesthetic motor action. I look at the relation between Antonio Damasio’s formulation of the “as if” body loop (1999), and research on intermodal correlation: visual-haptic cross-modality, “tactile-kinesthetic sensations” (Gibbs, 2006), mirror neurons, simulation (Fadiga; Gallese; Rizzolatti), and similarity of motion style in language metaphors (Dent). We find evidence of hand-eye connection not only in the body but also in manifestations of these cognitive capacities that are visualized (and felt) exterior to the body—in prosthetic machines. Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens excel at visually articulating machines that ‘write lines’ in plane trails and rail tracks. Motive ‘writing lines’ metaphorically parse out a complex emotional understanding of mechanized culture. Machines, like animate bodies, involve kinesthetic action. The early steam Loco-motive and aeroplane re-present motor principles designed after human physiomechanical ones. Woolf’s plane metaphor in Mrs. Dalloway and Dickens’s on trains in both “By Rail to Parnassus” (1839) and “Mugby Junction” (1866) enable us to see the relation between the environment, visual-haptic perception, kinesthetic action, and human imagination. Both authors formulate hand writing of words that were read by the eye as a type of engineering. Writing shapes is like the visual mechanics of engine culture that replicates manual labor. Woolf’s skywriting is a visual metaphor for the routing, regulation, and writing of emotional life. Dickens’s ‘railway lines as writing lines’ re-route and renovate life. Writing out our inner emotion publicly ‘exteriorizes’ (John) consciousness. These imageries are evidence that, contrary to Western mind-body division, kinesthetic action or perceptuomotor bodily sense forms perception (Damasio “Time-locked,” 1989; Gibbs, 2006), perception forms thought and emotions, and emotions that are perceived and registered through our body form the dynamical, emergent, world-body-mind process. Damasio holds that the feature fragments, including perceptuo-motor ones, become the content of consciousness, of feeling (DE 98). Motor activity is an internal (somatic) event (“TL” 42). All perception calls on motor action and somatic state (29). Somatic states are not nonspecific; they are memorized in feature fragments just as external stimuli are (57). Only the multiregional retroactivation of the fragment components become the content of consciousness (39). Fragments are associated on the basis of similarity and space-time placement (“TL” 39). Stimulus: particularity of sensory cortice intake, and visual-somatosensory (manipulable) status affect storage (“Regionalization” 1990, “Concepts” 1989). Questions: Does visual constraint of touch in the process of “visual capture” also play a role in ‘normal’ vision (2002)? In ideomotor behavior (Easton, 1975)? If there are potentials for constraint in visual-haptic cross-modality, are there also potentials for bias or adjustment in 1) mirror neuron simulation; 2) the simulating capacities of Damasio’s “as if” body loop (1999, 315-319); 3) momentum studies; 4) time to impact studies (the optic array)? Are the “re-presentations” of the body (Gibbs, 2006, 51, 16) constrained to produce similarity by means of bias, adjustment? Metaphors here suggest similarity of emotion and represented shape of motion.   P6

284  The role of play in developing superior psychological functions in institutionalized and non-institutionalized children under a Vygotskian perspective  Carlos Alberto Ferreira <cmattos@ccard.com.br> (Health Politics and Institutions- Social Medicine Institute, Rio de Janeiro State University (IMS-UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
    The purpose of this study was to investigate L.S.Vygotsky´s hypothesis about the role of play in early childhood development, beginning with the analyses of the stages of playful constructions found in the superior psychological functions, stated as: Volunteer Attention, Volunteer Movement, Speech, Logical-Verbal Thought, Semantic Memory and Meaningful Perception. The research sample was composed of institutionalized and non-institutionalized children. The investigation was conducted by means of a comparative study, with qualitative foundation, using participant observation, individual interviews and document analysis. The research field took place in a Rio de Janeiro public county school and in the Aldeias Infantis SOS. The study – having an exploratory, non-generable nature – showed significant differences regarding the responses presented in both groups researched. The data analysis points to a more complex construction level of playful activity and development of the superior psychological functions in children who live with their natural family, than in those living with substitute families. We come to the conclusion that there is an intimate bond between the playful activity and the superior psychological functions, that is, playing is a fundamental means to the infant’s development, and also that influences coming from the community affect the different levels of learning. These findings guide us towards strengthening the playing performance strategies in the field of Infant Education, in its whole dimension.  P9

285  Consciousness and the short story  William Haney <whaney@aus.edu> (Language and Literature, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates)
    Theorists describe the short story as an impressionistic representation of sacred experience. Unlike the novel, a public form that springs from encounters with the everyday, the short story depicts “the immaterial reality of the inner world of the self in its relation to eternal rather than temporal reality” (May 133). But if the short story depicts momentary mythic encounters with the sacred, then what happens when the protagonist is no longer human in the traditional sense, or even postmodern—the two for all practical purposes being physiologically identical—but rather posthuman—a cyborg? As the body becomes technophilic, whether through the modification of functional organic structures or through genetic engineering, the quality of subjective experience mediated by this body is bound to undergo significant change. As we move from the contemporary/postmodern to the posthuman as a cultural construct, stories depicting posthuman experience will no longer be confined to the subgenre of science fiction. The posthuman science of mind tends to promote cognitive activity and intensify the computational response of the human nervous system. Short fiction in contrast tends to promote cognitive stasis or disinterestedness through aesthetic contemplation. In the short fiction of James Joyce, Raymond Carver, Kate Chopin, Jorge Luis Borges, and others, we find that epiphanic moments experienced by characters and reader derive from a level of consciousness associated with a transcendence of time, place, and culture. Posthuman technology attempts to simulate these experiences on a mechanical/electronic basis through “telepresence,” or virtual presence in cyberspace. In this presentation I explore how the transcendence of spatial/temporal boundaries as represented by short fiction could be under threat from bionic technology.   P6

286  Perceptive-literary construction of the body in psychopathology  Alfonso Santarpia, Alain Blanchet; Riccardo Venturini; Michele Cavallo <metaforacorporea@yahoo.fr> (Universite Paris *, Saint-Denis, France)
    Firstly, the objective of our study is to identify different types of body conceptualizations expressed in psychoanalytic and psychiatric practice and in poetic works selected for their focus on this theme. The objective of our study is to organize these conceptualizations into categories of conceptual metaphors based on a model inspired by the research of Lakoff and Johnson. Secondly, the objective of our study is to identify different types of bodily metaphors on various organs and bodily substances expressed in psychoanalytic and psychiatric practice and in poetic works selected. We wanted to understand the distribution of these metaphors. The analysis of psychiatric and psychoanalytic manuals and works of poetic literature show differences in the use of conceptual metaphors in these respective discourses. Our categorization provides an alternative to the anatomical description of the body; we call this alternative a perceptive-literary construction of the body.These studies aim at elaborating an electrophysiological instrument called ABLASMI [Santarpia et al., 2005].   P12

@H2 = [06.02]  Art and aesthetics

287  Comprehensive space: Harnessing consciousness in architecture and design  Peter Anders <peter@mindspace.net> (MindSpace.net, Midland, Michigan)
    The buildings we occupy at home and work sustain us physically, providing us with shelter and amenities. In their accommodation they also support our mental well-being and, arguably, the mental processes at work in our daily activities. This accommodation may be as material as the configuration of a library stack, or as subtle as the play of light across an art gallery. Although a great deal of architectural effort goes into prescribing the substance of a building – its layout, materials and construction – ultimately this is secondary to the real subject of design: the conscious experience of the occupant. With the advent of advanced computers and virtual reality many of the effects of buildings can be emulated. Architects have been using building simulation since the early 1980’s to predict the performance of future buildings. As technology has advanced so too has the realism of and interactivity with the simulation. Virtual reality walk-throughs provide satisfying alternatives to full-scale models and detailed renderings. So much so as to prompt the question: When do the simulation and the building itself complete – even become redundant? If, as we note, the architect sculpts the spatial/conscious experience of the occupant, the domain of architecture may reach beyond physical buildings to the technologies that mediate phenomena. This challenge to architectural materialism has a history reaching back to the mid-1980’s. Marcos Novak was among the first to predict the obsolescence of buildings, favoring the new, plastic environments of cyberspace. These claims were echoed by Gerhard Schmidt, Stephen Perrella and a varied host of architectural futurists. However, in the years since the early 1990’s, virtual reality has not succeeded buildings to any substantial degree. The reasons for this are various, but the effect is the same: for most professionals cyberspace has little or no bearing on their practice. This presentation will evaluate the building/simulation redundancy by challenging its dualistic premise. Virtual reality does not eliminate the need for building, but it can crucially alter the nature of what’s built and why. Further, by integrating emulated and actual environments, a new hybrid experience can be formed in the minds of occupants. These new environments, here called “cybrids”, are practical and aesthetic implementations of augmented or mixed reality, a successor to virtual reality that situates illusions within a physical context. This paper will illustrate these issues with a series of animated demonstrations and examples drawn from a project for the Planetary Collegium. The Collegium project, a form of distributed campus, integrates physical and cyberspaces into a collective whole – a comprehensive space – in the minds of its users. It proposes a technologically augmented mnemonic structure, an advance on the practice of situated memory and memory palaces. The Collegium project proposes a new learning environment that places the user in a coherent space, consistent throughout all modes of interaction. Screens, AV displays, Internet access, virtual reality headsets variously reinforce users’ view of the cybrid, while conforming to a perceived structure of the whole.   P6

288  Syncretic reality: New media art in the technoetic culture.  Roy Ascott <roy.ascott@btinternet.com> (The Planetary Collegium, Plymouth, England)
    Syncretism, seen historically as an attempt to reconcile and analogise disparate epistemologies and cultural practices, may serve us today in understanding the multi-layered world views, material and metaphysical, that are emerging with our engagement in ubiquitous computing and post-biological technology. The human mind and telematic systems are interacting to produce a new sense of self and planetary consciousness. Is our drive to created wider and deeper and faster networks an evolutionary impulse to engage more fully with universal mind? Immaterial connectedness, central to telematic art, also defines quantum reality, and the spiritual domain. A moistmedia art is emerging from the convergence of silicon-dry computational systems and wet biological processes; is there equally an emergent faculty of cyberception that augments our awareness of the field of consciousness? Does the flow of electrons and photons across the planet's telematic networks parallel the biophotonic information network of the body? We are developing a syncretic reality that merges mixed reality technology, altered states of consciousness, and ontological models derived from biology, quantum physics, language and social custom, as well as the arcana of older cultures. A syncretic art lies beyond the 3 VRs (validated, vegetal and virtual realities).  C13

289  Game of life/now and then  Marlon Barrios Solano, Lenara Verle <unstablelandscape@yahoo.com> (unstablelandscape/independent artist, New York City, NY)
    This is the first of a series of interactive multimedia installation/performance environments in which I continue exploring the idea of real-time composition, bottom-up architecture for multimedia design and embodied motion a as an extension and sampling of improvisation of movements by a trained dancer/performer or a visitor.?The digital system is designed in order to deconstruct, rearrange, accumulate and recompose the space-time relation that the perception and execution of movement and the sound implies.?The installation will be connected to the internet creating a hybrid and distributed performance including the context of execution and its display in a webpage as a part of the performance. The local performance is also its documentation in the internet.?I am interested in the emergent patterns in imager and sound as a recorded interaction and in its arbitrary juxtaposition with the performed actions and its aesthetic uses. They are pieces that are created by the interaction.?Interaction determines its formation. The "Game of Life" or the Conway Algorithm is used for the visual representation of autonomous processes juxtaposed with the interactive sampling of motion and sound as the limitation of memory. I use the interactive system and internet to deconstruct the idea of interaction, and to foreground embodied motion and the entrapments of memory and technological simulations. In this piece, I deploy the coupling of creative process, designed experience and the embodied performances within cognitive system.?The installation is a reminder of the coupling of discursive and technological systems with minds bodies and their environments. The portability allowes to be set up in non conventional spaces. Only WiFi i or internet connection is needed.  P12

290  When content matters more than form: Impact of aesthetic experience on emotion and value change in highly stressed individuals  Maja Djikic, Sara Zoeterman; Jordan. B. Peterson <mdjikic@wjh.harvard.edu> (Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachussets, U.S.)
    A set of three experiments were completed to examine the impact of perceived daily stress on emotion and value change due to aesthetic experiences. Our hypothesis was that when under stress, individuals will rely on any available content presented in art, making the artistic form (level of aesthetics) insignificant. In Experiment 1 (Literature), 166 participants were randomly assigned either read a short story (high aesthetic group) or a documentary text based on the same format (low aesthetic group). Texts were matched for length, complexity, and interest level. In Experiment 2 (Music), 87 participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Music and Lyrics (high aesthetic), Music Only group (medium aesthetic), and Lyrics Only group (low aesthetic). The visual and auditory stimulation was kept constant across three groups. In Experiment 3, 94 participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Painting and Description (high aesthetic), Painting Only (medium aesthetic), and Description Only (low aesthetic). The results across experiments yield consistent results. In Experiment 1, participants who reported high levels of daily stress experienced greater Emotion Change across conditions (F(1, 164) = 12.04, p < .01) than those with low daily stress. In Experiment 2, participants with high levels of daily stress experienced significantly greater Value Change (F(1, 85) = 4.20, p < .05), across conditions, than participants with low daily stress (also present was a non-significant trend for Emotion Change (F(1, 85) = 3.00, p < .10). In Experiment 3, participants with high daily stress experienced greater Value Change (F(1, 92) = 4.63, p < .05) across conditions than those with low daily stress. The results indicate that individuals with high levels of daily stress are more likely to experience significant emotion and value changes as a result of aesthetic experience, than those with low daily stress. Highly stressed people will be moved/changed by content rather than form of

art.  C13

291  Visual analogy as a navigational tool in virtual reality for perceptual shifts  Margaret Dolinsky <dolinsky@indiana.edu> (School of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington , Indiana)
    This research focuses on projection based interactive arts and the development of navigational strategies defined by visual imagery. The displays include the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment, a virtual reality (VR) display theater for stereo graphics and audio with head and hand tracking and related passive stereo displays. The images and objects in the CAVE environment act as navigational icons that show the visitor the way through a narrative. Perceptual shifts in cognition can be facilitated by a subversive confrontation with 3D worlds that are rich with the provocation of visual analogy. In the CAVE, this subversive confrontation occurs through the imagery as navigation devices. The CAVE situates 3D objects within a theater where a visitor can physically walk around objects and look underneath them while maintaining proper visual perspective in real time. The CAVE experience is a combination of perceptual stimuli - visual, auditory, kinesthetic – and aesthetics (Interface, Content, Environment, Performance, Plasticity). Oftentimes, the technology is new to visitors but even more often the environments are unfamiliar to visitors. The CAVE’s perceptual language is still new enough to allow the senses to remain open, perhaps a moment longer than usual, which might facilitate a path to perceiving some element of synaesthetic flow. The VR community has not defined a visual language so an investigation into VR aesthetics as it relates to perceptual cognition is warranted. This visual navigational movement is a sort of pseudo hallucination, which is a category of hallucination that occurs when the person realizes the unreality of what they are seeing. I am attempting to define this pseudo hallucination as related to the CAVE experience and currently refer to the experience as a series of perceptual shifts. The paper will present an understanding of perceptual cognition as related to hallucinations, fluid concepts and creative analogies. The pseudo hallucination is important because we move through the world in a synaesthetic flow and is important in the art making and the art appreciating processes. Fluid concepts and analogies are important for filtering out excess in order to focus on current objectives. This filtering process is a healthy method of survival yet at the same time it is a heavy method that conditions us to disregard potent moments of realization for potential cognition. By examining how perception and cognition work in unison towards navigation of the actual world, we are able to develop navigation through the virtual world which establishes these perceptual shifts. The dynamics of how these generalizations function and can be translated into interpreting visual phenomena for the CAVE. For example, the light of the projector in the CAVE creates shape and form, which is interpreted to be an object even though there is no real object. We can react to it by walking around it, looking at it and listening. Our perceptual cognition and kinesthetic movement facilitates the process of identification, making choices and deciding our intentions: this dynamic is a perceptual shift. As a result, certain forms of art in the CAVE can illustrate how hallucination in everyday life actually works.   C13

292  To make the familiar strange - aesthetic derealization in the work of Alberto Giacometti  Oren Kalus <okalus@aol.com> (Accord, NY)
    Derealization, the clinical phenomenon in which things appear strange and unfamiliar and consequently associated with a constriction of perception is presented here in an aesthetic context as a method of perceptual enhancement. Exploring the notion of how cognitive processes associated with routine perception inevitably entail modification, alteration and even bias towards predictable and stereotyped responses I present detailed biographical and phenomenological evidence from the work of the artist Alberto Giacometti, complimented by the theoretical notions of “visual innocence” and “defamiliarization” to argue that sometimes it maybe advantageous to see things as if they were strange, unfamiliar or even “meaningless”. In effect peeling away the layers of interpretation imposed on sensation it suggests that everyday "reality" and consciousness can be “deconstructed” to recover one’s original or unedited experience or support alternative perceptions. In comparing these contrasting forms of derealization I propose that both might profit from knowledge of the other in elucidating common and distinctive features. Not just sharing phenomenological features I argue that clinical and aesthetic expressions of derealization might also share a common cognitive mechanism modeled on the concept of dissociation between sensory and semantic representations. But whereas clinical derealization represents a disorganizing and ultimately disorienting experience - the aesthetic variety manifests as a more refined, controlled and ultimately enlightening mechanism. For example suspending the meaning, context or even the name of “familiar” objects might permit artists to see them newly, freshly and as if for the “first time”. In contrast the loss of an explanatory narrative leaves traumatized subjects with confusing “nameless” images. I argue that artists might employ an intriguing mix of sophistication and naiveté in seeing things strangely.   P6

293  Seeing and painting  John Lobell <JohnLobell@mac.com> (School of Architecture, Pratt Institute, New York, NY)
    A fundamental question for consciousness studies is: How do we get from the flickering of light striking the retina to what we “see” (or think we see)? TWO PREMISES: 1. Artists, including painters, investigate “reality.” 2. Painters often paint what they “see:” painters regard what they do to be the observation of “true reality” and the rendition of that observation onto a two dimensional surface. AN OBSERVATION: The deep structures of paintings change over time. CONCLUSION: The way the brain organizes the flicking of light on the retina to make what we “see” changes. PAINTING, SEEING, AND CONSCIOUSNESS Many painters have studied and written about how they generate what they see, as have art theorists. Today we can combine observations of paintings, statements by artists, art theory (particularly as presented by Anton Ehrenzweig in The Psycho-Analysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing), and gestalt perception theory with contemporary studies of the neurophysiology of vision and consciousness to help understand how we create what we “see.” We might refer to the deep structures of paintings as space, time, objects, causality, etc. But that would be to presume the issue, since space, time, etc. are Western Renaissance notions. The underlying depth organization of experience is different in different cultures. We might be tempted to say that before the Renaissance use of perspective painters had not solved the problem of how to represent what we see, and after 1900 they chose to distort or abstract what we see. The premise of this paper is that what artists actually see changes. There are two parts to this presentation. The first describe the process whereby the brain constructs an “after image” (the thing that we think we see) out of the flickering of light that strikes the retina. The second analyzes key paintings from major cultural periods with descriptions of how they are generated by the brain, and speculation of why they are different in different periods. The painting include examples from: EXAMPLES FROM KEY CULTURAL PERIODS Cezanne (Still Life with Apples) Brief analysis of one painting to show the methods being used in this presentation. Medieval There is no perspective (which implies the fixed position of the viewer), since god (the pervasive knower) is everywhere. The image depicts not a moment in time but a narrative. Renaissance (Leonardo da Vinci) With perceptual dominance moving to the center of vision, a part of the brain that works by linear logical rationalism takes over and creates a unified perspective image freezing one moment in time. Impressionism (Monet) Objects do not exist; only the light they reflect. Post Impressionism (Cezanne) Objects do not exist in not in space and time. Each object generates its own space-time. Cubism and Futurism (Picasso and Duchamp) Time in not a linear flow and there are no moments in time, but rather layered sequences. CONCLUSION Vision is addressed by numerous disciplines besides conscious studies, including studies of painting. The cross fertilization of these disciplines can be beneficial to both.  P12

294  Consciousness (studies) and Friedrich Schiller’s concept of comedy  Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe <meyerdinkgrafe@btopenworld.com> (Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Wales Aberystwyth, Tregaron, Ceredigion, Wales, Great Britain)
    Schiller is mainly known for his tragedies, and his aesthetic writings focus on that genre as well. However, there is a short piece in his literary remains that deals specifically with comedy. Comedy leads its spectators to a state that is “calm, clear, free, cheerful, in which we feel neither active nor passive, we observe, and everything remains outside of ourselves; this is the state of the gods, who are not concerned with anything human, who are hovering freely above everything, who are not moved by any fate and not bound by any law”. In the paper I summarise Schiller’s position, and relate it to recent findings in consciousness studies about the concept of pure consciousness.   C13

295  Art and consciousness  Cristina Miranda de Almeida, Jiménez Huertas; Inmaculada <cristmiranda@telefonica.net> (Drawing, University of the Basque Country, Getxo, Vizcaya, Spain)
    Is it possible for art -and most specially for an art performed with eyes closed-, to collaborate to an increase in consciousness? Drawing with eyes closed produce changes in the artist’s perception of time, space, matter and action. The result is an intensification of attention, and attention is an instrument for enhancing consciousness. Drawing with closed eyes is a method of artistic work that increases concentration, memorization and attention to the phases of the creative process. External vision is substituted for internal vision, attention on phases and memory. Internal vision, attention and memory assume the role of instruments of control of the artistic process, a function that usuallly is performed by external vision. In this theoretic and experimental work, our aim is to reflect on some of the means by which art can contribute to the development of consciousness.   P6

296  The digital and the real  Barbara Rauch <b.rauch@chelsea.arts.ac.uk> (Research, University of the Arts London, London, Greater

London, UK)
    The paper will built on my research into consciousness, Virtual Reality and the dreaming brain. In my PhD dissertation I explore the relationship between natural virtual reality in the brain and online digital VR environments. I am a practicing artist and have produced several installation works I would like to present to highlight on my research. This is a presentation on how contemporary art practice can contribute through critical analysis and theories to the investigation of what reality means today. The second part of this paper would reveal a current (AHRC-funded) project where I use a 3D high-resolution laser scanner to capture animal faces (in association with the Natural History Museum and UCL, Dental Institute) and using the data of these faces, animate and then combine them with human emotional facial expressions. In doing so it is hoped to visualise through critical experimentation what evolution has selected and accommodated. While it is often through new technologies that we aim to expand our current understanding of the world, I would question whether it is possible to imagine beyond this in terms of the human perception in the way we analyze and rationalize taking into account the emotional responses we usually house as human beings? I propose with this practice-based research project to question typical assumptions that we usually project onto other forms of existence. The way we think about reality, the world, the surrounding natural environment, including our own creations with new digital technologies are limited by our imaginations. I want to explore how digital technology can alter the way we usually impose our human understanding of the world onto other systems. I also want to re-establish our relationship to physical nature and elaborate how it has changed with computer technology, digital forms of immersivity and virtual reality systems.   P12

297  DomeWorks: Perception, reflection, and projection in the dome of consciousness  Diana Slattery <faithfulscribe@gmail.com> (Domeworks; Planetary Collegium, Albany, New York)
    DomeWorks is an arts project involving multiple artist/technologists creating and performing experimental media works for domed or dome-like spaces. We are building hardware and software tools for technological, scientific, educational and aesthetic experimentation in wraparound realities. This paper describes how the artists are approaching the science of consciousness from a performative perspective, and closes with suggestions for artistic-scientific collaborations. The Dome environment of hemispheric projection surface, hemispheric projector, and surround-sound, models by analogy the “mechanics” of biological and psychological processes involved in the dome of conscious experience. We are in an inner space projecting outward, making explicit the cyclic cybernetic system of sensory input, reflection, projection, and perception that complexly creates our bound experience of a wraparound-ongoing-flow-of-events-in-a-world we call reality. The projection of the evanescent flow of inner states, using EEG (or other) bio-signals to shift the parameters of visual and sonic electronic performance instruments can add another layer of self-reflection to the tightly coupled system of perception-projection in the dome. The question of the relevance of aesthetics in a neurofeedback display to aid learning (as in adaptive technologies) is one area for scientific investigation. Domeworks explores extended and re-organized perception in a variety of ways. The Dome creates a physical space of performance that loosens the forward fixation of gaze onto small or large flat framed rectangles, as in TV, movies, or the computer screen, spreading both sound and sight throughout a 360? immersive, edgeless surround. Dome performance seeks to extend the dimensionality of sight and sound through spatialization, to the edges of and beyond peripheral vision, exploring the borders of audibility and visibility, opacity and transparency, and the protean shapes and qualities of attention that construct aesthetic experience. Domeworks’ metaphoric underpinnings resonate from the archaic past of our first sacred spaces—the starry dome of the night sky, the caves we sheltered in, painted our totem animals and deities in —and forward into an imagined future of zero gravity space stations and alien holodecks where one can navigate a 3D dataspace. The intensity of these multiple metaphors coupled with the known attractions of immersion on multiple sensory channels creates a magical environment for art events. The Dome environment draws inspiration and practical guidance from psychologist Roland Fischer’s “revolving stage” model of a circular continuum of conscious states and stages of hyper- and hypo- sub-cortical arousal, corresponding to states of perception-hallucination continuum on the one hand, and the perception-meditation continuum on the other. Fischer’s scientific work with states of consciousness altered by psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline, and his introduction of humanistic interpretative contexts is itself a model for interdisciplinary understandings of consciousness. We have particular interest in using “mind-cap” EEG sensor signals to drive visualization and sonification instruments in the dome to experience conscious activity as flowing performance, and in linking those performances with both the phenomenological description of concurrent subjective mind-states, and their neuronal correlates as represented separately by the imaging capabilities of neuroscientific instrumentation.   P6

298  From patterns to Pollock: Being in the world  Liz Stillwaggon <stillwag@mailbox.sc.edu> (Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC)
    In a seminal 1996 article, Michael Wheeler raised the provocative question of how a fully scientific explanation of cognition could ever account for the ‘metaphysical’ experience one has while staring at a Mark Rothko mural. This question serves as a prompt in the article for the main discussion that introduced the artificial life community to the new, phenomenological approach to cognition in the then emerging field of evolutionary robotics; a comparison was made between the Heideggerian notion of being-in-the-world and the embodiment and situatedness of this new brand of robots. But the philosophical question Wheeler uses as a prompt is inherently interesting, so in this paper I revisit the question and approach it head-on. I show that it is possible, at least in some cases, for a naturalistic account of mind to explain the emotive experience we have when in awe of a work of visual art. I employ a peculiar example from the art world—the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock—to argue that our aesthetic appreciation of some forms of visual art may be due in part to our evolved pattern recognition capabilities. Because the underlying patterns of the famous drip paintings are the same as some found in nature, (namely, fractals ), I take this as my starting point in developing an account that sheds light both on the emotive aspect of appreciating visual art and on the related questions of how and why it should be possible to give a naturalistic account of such. Viewing fractals in the fractal dimension of 1.3-1.5 (in paintings, computer simulations, and pictures of natural clouds, trees, etc.) has a demonstrated relaxing effect on people. Could it be that the chaotic overlay of a drip painting, although inherently interesting to some, is not what really draws us in, that being the underlying order that subconsciously affects our psychological state? If this suggestion is plausible, then it might begin to explain the difficult to articulate or ‘metaphysical’ experience we have when appreciating a work of visual art, i.e., some forms of visual art may affect us in ways that are not available to introspection and thus cannot be made conscious through articulation. I see my argument in the first part of the paper as building on theories of innate pattern recognition structures, particularly those of Ray Jackendoff (some of whose arguments rely heavily on Noam Chomsky’s), and Stephen Pinker. In the more exploratory part of the paper, I speculate as to why our being embedded in the natural world helps to explain why we are so apt at recognizing and creating natural patterns, in nature and in art, respectively; perhaps, being embedded in the natural world, we should expect to find some (or all?) of nature’s patterns embodied in us. Wheeler, Michael. (1996). “From Robots to Rothko: the Bringing Forth of Worlds,” in (ed.) Margaret A. Boden, The Philosophy of Artificial Life, New York: Oxford University Press, 209-236. Taylor, Richard P. (Dec. 2002). “Order in Pollock’s Chaos.” Scientific American, 116-121.   P12

@H2 = [06.03]  Music

@H2 = [06.04]  Religion

299  Testing religious accounts of consciousness: The case for the Christian view  Lluis Oviedo <loviedo@ofm.org> (Theology, Pontificia Universita Antonianum, Roma, Roma, Italy)
    The study of consciousness requires the interdisciplinary involvement of more theories. It seems that religious and theological accounts of mind can provide significative information and relevant data based on long term experience. At the moment, the Buddhist way has been privileged in research, as it furnishes some special ways of experiencing consciousness. Indeed some meditative states throw light into a variety of “states of consciousness” useful for a method that stresses its quality as “variable”. The question is if other religious traditions may contribute to such a research from a different focus. The paper answers making the case for Christian understanding, in at least three different ways: the relational origin and identity of consciousness; its inaccessibility as a property of the self; and consciousness as a place of contact between the self and God.   P6

300  Glossolalia, consciousness states, and the mind/body benefits of fluent spiritual speech: Extending the purpose of linguistic experience  Susan R. Sheridan <ssheridan@drawingwriting.com> (unaffiliated scholar, Addison, Maine)
    "The Scribble Hypothesis" and "A Theory of Marks and Mind" (Sheridan, 2002, 2005, www.drawingwriting.com) connect the development of mark-making and speech, identifying them as defining behaviors in humans. This paper explores spiritual speech as part of that linguistic continuum. Across cultures, prayer exists and persists. We theorize that prayerful speech evolved as a linguistic strategy for communication in situations requiring especially synchronous, low-energy brain states. Brain scans show that chi ldren who have trouble reading, writing and speaking over-use their brains. Like other efficient systems, brains are designed to conserve energy. To not know why one feels a certain way, to be helpless to analyze or to communicate wastes energy, while promoting negative feelings which may interrupt or even block linguistic production. Efficient brains do not struggle with word-production or image-making, arguing for training in both. Communicative fluency frees the hand and the tongue. Can prayerful speech open closed communication pathways? Does the especially fluent prayerful speech called glossolalia (or "speaking in tongues") confer extra body/brain advantages? Prayerful speech focuses attention while achieving positive (happy, peaceful, joyful) feelings. We theorize that such focused, attentive, positive feelings coincide with and are evidence of healthy brain states. Fluency in mark-making and in speech are desirable neurologically not only because they conserve energy, but because they occasion "clarified" or "transparent" quantum events, experienced on conscious levels as healing states of mind like peace, joy and enlightenment The fields of cognitive science, quantum physics, medicine, and neurotheology provide support for the functional relationships between quantum events including minimal energy brain states, visual and verbal fluencies (and thus of a whole language education which includes a full range of marks and speech sounds), clarified or enlightened consciousness states, and powerfully therapeutic, systemic health or well-being..  P12

300a Consciousness in the spiritual traditions of India T.R. Anantharaman <trananth@hotmail.com>

(Ashram Atmadeep, Haryana, India)

    The beginnings of India’s spiritual tradition are lost in the mists of pre-historic antiquity, but its verbal foundations can  be located in the pre-Buddhist classics in Sanskrit like the early Upanishads, theYoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gi ta. These ever-green ancient texts deal inter-alia with the evolution of consciousness in homo sapiens and the crucial role of spiritual-cum-yogic exercises and practices in accelerating the movement towards attainment of Prajnana, i.e., universal or cosmic consciousness. In this context we have to grasp the age old concept of the evolving Antah Karana, the eternal and invisible instrument of cognition and consciousness, and the possibility of its purification, refinement and eventual perfection through sustained spiritual practices, particularly meditation, that may well need more than one lifetime on this earth. P11

[06.05]  Mythology

[06.06]  Sociology

301  Live to ride, ride to live: Toward an identity theory approach to extracurricular social roles  Scott Reid <borderphd@aol.com> (U of Texas, Brownsville, Texas)
    Using Identity theory (e.g., Burke and Rietzes 1981; Callero 1985; Howard and Callero 1991; Stryker 1968, 1980, 1987), this paper focuses on the degree to which occupants of the role of "motorcyclist" regard the identity connected with the role as salient and authentic. Within the field of Sociological Social Psychology, Identity theory is currently the preeminent theory for the examination of the linkage between social structure and the self. The self, within the Identity theory framework, is defined as “an organized collection of identities, each of which serves to shape our behavior in social interaction where there is a choice among possible alternative behaviors” (Burke and Reitzes 1991, p. 29). The purpose of the paper is to gain a greater understanding of the identity consequences of occupying the ‘motorcyclist’ social role and how it is empirically related to perceived and actual behavior in the role. This research also facilitates the larger task of investigating how extracurricular social roles affect the hierarchically ordered self structure of their occupants. Hypotheses concerning how the concepts of role-identity salience and role authenticity are linked to behavior in the role are examined with data from a sample of motorcyclists culled from diverse motorcycle rallies throughout the United States and Canada. Two of the more notable rallies sampled are “The Black Hills Motorcycle Classic” (aka, “Sturgis”) held annually in Sturgis, South Dakota and the international “Dust to Dawson Rally” that traverses the Northern Canadian Rockies from Anchorage, Alaska to Dawson City, Yukon. Data are gathered using an instrument devised by the author and drawn from the work of Reid, Epstein, and Benson (1994a, 1994b), Callero (1985), Burke and Reitzes (1991), and Trew and Benson (1993), primarily using standardized scales measuring the major concepts employed. Additional data are collected on the sample's demographic characteristics including age, education, race, religious preference, income, and marital status. Two hypotheses deduced from Identity theory are addressed in this research. The first posits that the identity salience of the motorcyclist role identity will be positively associated with time spent in the role. The second that perceiving a sense of authenticity in the role of motorcyclist will be positively associated with time spent in the role. Role Identity Salience is measured via a five item scale adapted from Reid, Epstein, and Benson (1994a, 1994b), Reid (2004), and Callero (1985). Role Identity Authenticity is measured using a three question scale devised by Trew and Benson (1993) to assess the degree to which a role occupant feels that fundamental and important features of their sense of self are contradicted by the characteristics of the role. Time Spent in the Role of motorcyclist is measured with two questions, one assessing the amount of time spent in the role and one the perception of time in the role. A third item measuring the perception of the future amount of time that will be spent in the role of motorcyclist is also utilized. In that there are no extant scales for assessing ‘adjustment’ to a role, Perceived Adjustment to the Role of motorcyclist is measured with one direct, phenomenological question: "How well do you feel you have adjusted to being a motorcyclist?" Using a Likert format, respondents are presented with five response choices ranging from “poorly adjusted” to “very well adjusted.” Findings are presented and deliberated along with an itemized assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the study. Also discussed are the contributions of the study to extant identity theory research. Findings are evaluated relative to identity theory studies adopting congruent measures of the major study variables. Lastly, suggestions are offered for the direction of future research examining alternatively based, extracurricular social roles within an identity theory context.   P12

@H2 = [06.07]  Anthropology

302  The objectivity of spontaneous mental imagery: The spiritual space of a Brazilian-Amazonian religion experienced by sacramental users of ayahuasca.  Marcelo Mercante <mercante@excite.com> (Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, Spring Valley, New York)
    Indigenous people of the Amazon have consumed ayahuasca, a psychoactive beverage, for at least 4000 years. It contains the alkaloids N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT – a serotonin agonist), harmine, and harmaline (inhibitors of monoaminoxidase, enzyme responsible for controlling the levels of serotonin). Ayahuasca is obtained from the vine Banisteriopsis caapi (Malpighiacea; source of harmine, and harmaline) and from the leaves of Psychotria viridis (Rubiacea; source of DMT), by boiling them in water. Three syncretic, Christian-based, religious movements have evolved in Brazil that use ayahuasca as a sacrament. The Santo Daime (during the 1930s), the Barquinha (during the 1940s), and the União do Vegetal (during the 1960s). I conducted fieldwork at Barquinha during 2004. People participating in Barquinha’s ceremonies may experience spontaneous mental imagery. They claim that those experiences take place in a non-physical although very objective space, which I call the “spiritual space.” I intend to contribute ethnographic data suggesting that Barquinha’s members believe that participants in their ceremonies share a common spiritual space. The spiritual space for Barquinha’s members is immaterial and multi-dimensional. The number of the dimensions composing the spiritual space is relative to the breadth of consciousness of the observer/participant of/in the spiritual space. The spiritual space is for them original (not collective or emergent), generating dispositions, intentions, and meanings, and also containing the physical and psychological levels of existence. The exploration of that space during ceremonies is a process of spiritual development, occurring through spontaneous mental imagery. Spontaneous mental imagery is the experience called “miração” by Barquinha’s members. People claim that they become conscious of the spiritual space through miração. Miração seems to play the role of providing an interconnection among perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, mediating between spiritual space, culture, and individuals. Miração therefore would be the result of a combination within individual’s consciousness of ritual and ingestion of Ayahuasca, under the influence of elements of the spiritual space. Sentences like “I was there” as well as “I flew,” I swam,” “I walked” are very common when someone describes a miração. These sentences imply movement within a space, although a non-physical space, and people claim that they perceive objectively that space and its inhabitants via miração. On the subjective level, the miração is generally a very emotional experience and the most eagerly awaited one; it is the moment when people claim to receive the teachings of spiritual beings, the source of knowledge and of self-transformation. The miração is a revelation, the highest moment in the ecstatic experience, opening new dimensions in a person’s inner life. For Barquinha’s members, the border between the subjective and the objective world is moved away from the physical level towards the inner world of each individual’s consciousness. The physical body no longer set the limits between objective and subjective: for Barquinha’s members consciousness accomplishes that function, and what is lived within consciousness in the spiritual space is claimed to be an objective experience that can sometimes also be shared by the consciousness of other participants at the same ceremony.   P12

303  Physical dualism, or how to feel meaning  Koen Stroeken <koenraad.stroeken@ant.kuleuven.be> (Anthropology, KU Leuven, HULDENBERG, Belgium)
    Language and the Lascaux paintings mark the birth of the meaning system, a fairly autonomous ‘second’ environment humans are logged into. The permutation of meanings radically complexifies the neurobiological organization of our feelings. It renders the content of consciousness unpredictable and primary; decentres the brain, nurture or learning, to instead locate human consciousness in ‘the now’, that is, in the actual moment of interaction with the two environments. Natural selection explains the neural functions shared with other animals, but to understand phenomenal content we should turn to cultural selection. The seeming incompatibility explains the disconnection of social anthropology from the scientific study of the human (anthropos). This paper argues that an interdisciplinary definition of human consciousness will require to restore the link. Can we carve out a third position in the debate between physicalism and dualism? The first subsumes feeling under 'meaning' (concept). The second subsumes meaning under 'feeling' (qualia). Neither can account for ‘the feeling of meaning’ we call consciousness. Three sets of ethnographic data are illustrative. Why do humans need to not only physically heal but also symbolically, by getting at the meaning of their affliction (as in the universal practice of divination)? Why do non-western communities fear zombification when embracing the objectivism of modern economy and education? Joining the current discussion of how neural traffic synchronizes to form consciousness (Baars, Freeman, Hameroff, Koch, Varela), I seek what crosscuts and bundles neurobiological, psychological and intersubjective levels into a particular state of consciousness. Of all the levels, from micro to macro, the intersubjective may reveal most on this crosscutting ‘wave’, because unlike neurons it speaks our language. In the age-old Chwezi spirit cult the ritual symbolically enacts a quaternary structure for the body to synchronize with something as external as the spirit. What interests us here is not if it works but to hear first-hand from culture itself how the synchrony proper to consciousness is supposed to arise (which may not be unlike what happens on the micro-level of neurology). Returning to the neurobiological discussion, I conclude on an anthropo-logical position that combines the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis with Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism. I propose as the most simple hypothesis respecting the diverse data (e.g., gamma synchrony, quantum theory, development psychology, Descombes' objective mind) that the meaning system physically exists, as a parallel order of oppositions and possibilities that allow for the laws, symbolics and language without which there would simply be no world for us to be conscious of. This 2D space gives physical input to be 'known', just as the four-dimensional world does to be perceived.   P6

@H2 = [06.08]  Information technology

304  When wires collide: Neural correlates and neural prosthetics  Donald Dulchinos <dopod@indra.com> (Neurosphere Institute, Boulder, CO)
    Twentieth century telecommunications technology, in the view of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, is a mechanism for the inexorable evolution of this noosphere. "A consciousness is that much more perfected according as it lines a richer and better organised material edifice." And if humanity is an organism, then Teilhard proposed that "we should endeavour to equip it with sense organs, effector organs and a central nervous system." Indeed, "thanks to the prodigious biological event represented by the discovery of electro-magnetic waves, each individual finds himself simultaneously present in every corner of the earth. If the industrial era and the information age are epochs of incredibly compressed growth and change, then surely the phenomenal adoption of the Internet by the general public and the corporate world in the last ten years is an even more vivid confirmation of Teilhard’s theories. This paper surveys the scope and pace of technology adoption relevant to the interconnection of people, and perhaps of individuals' consciousness. Television, the Internet and mobile telephony are the primary focus of the growth in network infrastructure, the “central nervous system”. The paper then surveys the state of actual physical interconnection of people with technology through the nascent medical field of neural prosthetics, the material edifice” tying people together. The paper then surveys technology that combines network and personal infrastructure to act as “sense organs” of the noosphere. Finally, the paper speculates on the implications for human interconnection and shared consciousness of these technologies, and offers some examples of a tendency toward wholeness of humanity, the fulfilled effects of the noosphere of Teilhard’s dreams.   P6

305  Resolving order in chaos: navigation in complex data sets  Yacov Sharir, Ayiter, Elif. Sabanci Univ. Istanbul, Turkey; Balcisoy, Selim. Sabanci Univ. Istanbul, Turkey; Artut, Selcuk. Sabanci Univ. Istanbul, Turkey; Germen, Murat. Sabanci Univ. Istanbul, Turkey <sharir@mail.utexas.edu> (Theater and dance, University of Texas at Austin, austin, tx, usa)
    In the ordinary flow of daily activities the self-descriptive, self-reflexive, and recursive processes of data collection reveal themselves. These pairs are not encountered as binary oppositions in conflict, but in a continual management of data transformation. This paper presents our working hypothesis on data navigation problems, especially navigation in large data sets. Chaomei Chen's list of top 10 Unsolved Information Visualization Problems (1) identifies Usability; Understanding elementary perceptual and cognitive tasks; and Prior knowledge as the top three problems in this domain. We propose to adress all three problems by using our own solutions - and the development of technological tools - and engender scientific tools as well as artistically generated tools, literally and figuratively. ".. a system prototype - 'Vineta' - has been developed at the Max Planck Institute allowing navigation through scientific and technical data without typing and revising keyword-based queries. The chosen approach to visualising documents and terms in navigational retrieval includes the representation of documents and terms as graphical objects, and dynamic positioning of these objects in a 3-dimensional virtual navigation space". (2) Complex data production and data collection is clogging up all aspects of productive data management and organization, occupying increasingly enormous amount of space. The scientific, cognitive approach produced by thinking in and/or out of existing parameters triggers changes in how we think about possible productive and creative solutions. Thus, affecting context, meaning, physical, and virtual practices. We propose a process of generating meaning through cybernetically inscribed human gestures by identifying and navigating the visual representation of data clusters. A gestural human sign language and human postures are exploited utilizing additional possibilities through the use of advanced technologies as medium for inscription. The composed/collected gestures and movement material become a source of intention that relates to itself; its communicating environment becomes a visualization of the self-reflexivity inherent in the workings of both the vast data and consciousness. The solution is in between the worlds of data and the source language as it transforms into the domain of visible thought. Methodologies include the use of large scale multi-dimensional data management, visual data representation systems, the combined seductive power and agency of technologically charged interactive systems, wearable devices/computers, and 'virtual reality'. They are fed through direct gestural human intervention within a remembering knowledge space/system by way of accumulation. The working hypothesis for this aim is that a vocabulary of direct gestural and electronically generated sound expressions of creative intentions can be recognized, so that a set of gestures/movement can map the experiential body state of each gesture to corresponding system actions. In conclusion, we attempt to address issues related to perception and consciousness deriving from the management of complex data, utilizing artistic/design/sonic practices in virtual/augmented environments. (1) Chaomei Chen,"Top 10 Unsolved Information Visualization Problems", IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, July/August 2005 (2). Elzer, P. Krohn, U. "Visualization of Scientific Information in a Virtual Information Space". pp. 122. Rpt. in "Human-Computer Interaction: Communication, Cooperation, and Application Design" Ed. Bullinger, H. Ziegler, J. Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. 1999.   P3

@H2 = [06.09]  Ethics and legal studies

306  A critique of mind augmenting technologies  Lee Frank <leefrank@leefrank.com> (Digital Immortality Institute , Tucson, AZ)
    There are four major technological approaches to augmenting the mind: Capacity, Capability, Relocation, and Longevity. While interest in these approaches has been with us for decades, only recent technology has made them plausible. Of course, these approaches are more than just what their labels indicate and none are mutually exclusive. Capacity means expanding the mind’s storage. This is more than adding memory, since this memory must be comparably accessible. The enhancements to Capability are only limited by imagination. Many proponents of this approach believe a quantitative change in brain capability will result in a qualitative change. Relocation proposes to upload the brain (or mind or consciousness) to a computer. More than just relocating the brain, this is also copying and more than one copy is possible. Extending the Longevity of the mind is incidental to the extension of life, but is the primary goal of uploading and digital immortality. Current examples of increasing Capacity include products such as Microsoft’s MyLifeBits and DARPA’s Lifelog. Projects enhancing brain Capability range from genetic engineering and the super-intelligences of AI (BM2), to the extremes of smart drugs and super-brain computers (Jupiter Brains, etc.). Sometimes referred to as Whole-Brain Emulation, the most significant current effort aimed at Relocating the brain is the “Blue Brain” project using IBM’s “Blue Gene” computer. Examples of Longevity range from extending life (cryonics, Life Extension) to extending aspects of mind (digital immortality) to extending brain existence (uploading). All these approaches have historical precursors and there are many fictional examples in popular culture, especially science fiction. Embedding memory chips in the brain and connecting the brain to computer memory are but two examples of earlier speculation on increasing Capacity. Initial attempts at enhancing Capability through artificial intelligence resulted in a division into weak and strong AI, and the extrapolation from strong AI to Transhumanism. Relocating brains has long been a staple of science fiction: first to robots, then computers, androids, and now clones. Before we sought digital immortality for Longevity there was analog immortality, and its prime example is Leonardo da Vinci. While it’s estimated that only a fourth of Leonardo’s Notebooks survive, those may still prove to be more enduring than our obsolescing digital media. The major thrust of the paper, however, is not simply to describe the primary technological approaches to augmenting the mind, but to evaluate their practicality: e.g., their progress to date, how much more work is needed, and the likelihood of success. Finally, the paper will consider the potential of each for the good or ill of humanity,

i.e., the ethical, legal, and social implications.   C20

307  Neuroethics and the law: Cognitive liberty and the constitution  Linda MacDonald Glenn <lindaglenn@biomedlaw.com> (College of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont )
    This presentation will be an examination of the potential legal impact and precedents that cognitive science and neuroscience advance. Cognitive science, an interdisciplinary field, deals with the brain’s software – analyzing how the processes in the brain, mind, and intelligence develop and interact. Neuroscience, on the other hand, deals with the brain’s hardware. It is the point of convergence between cognitive science and either biotechnology or information technology. Through this convergence, science will have the capacity to determine an individual’s propensity to commit a criminal act before it happens, much like in the movie Minority Report. This ability will have a direct impact on the justice system, the admission of scientific evidence, the issues of criminal intent, free will, and neural privacy – calling into question our definition of what it means to be human, and the constitutional rights of an individual.  C20

308  Morals, minds and consciousness.  Ted Hazelton <JEHAZ@MSN.COM> (Psychiatry, Meharry Medical College, Nahville TN, Nashville , TN)
    It is believed that morals are acquired attitudes. However, Joshua Greene, et al. have recently created experimental neuroscience using moral dilemmas and brain scan measures that emotional responses to various moral issues appear to be innate, independent of cultural and environmental factors. The basic moral attitudes of all cultures are biological, although they vary in ways of demonstration through action and language. Greene has reviewed the underlying philosophers from Aristotle to present inquiries in his paper "From Neural 'is' to moral 'ought': What are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?" If it is assumed that the material received by Greene is confirmed by further research, the impact on philosophers, theologians, and neuropsychologists could be very disturbing, and even alarming to people in general. It is now accepted by biologists that species other than ourselves can act as if they have 'moral' action, with examples such as anthropoids. The brain produces the 'mind' which can be interpreted and dependent upon conscious awareness. It has been observed that for those people who have brain damage and disorders such as speech loss and who later recover, are often able to discuss their unfortunate illness. The classic case exemplifying this phenomenon is Phineas P. Gage who, a hundred and fifty years ago, had an iron tool enter his left cheek into his brain. His whole personality changed and his social behavior showed a marked deterioration, which could be perceived by some as a deterioration in morals. In other cases, the perception varies from case to case, the consciousness changes with those recovering from a stroke and, in some cases, they may feel punished, guilty, blessed, or "grateful to God," as a result of the stroke. It is clear that Greene has explored important experiments on 'morals' and 'ought' that demand further investigation. Now if 'morals' and 'ought' have an innate basis, the Personal Constructs may be impacted by the genes and DNA as by cultural development. (Greene, Joshua. "From neural 'is' to moral 'ought'; What are the neural implication of neuroscientific moral psychology?" Nature Reviews/ Neuroscience. Volume 4, October 2003).  P6

309  The case of cognitive enhancement: An ethical perspective  Stephan Schleim <schleim@students.uni-mainz.de> (Neurophysiology & Neuroimaging, University of Frankfurt, Mainz, Germany)
    Cognitive Enhancement is one of the techniques where neuroscience becomes applied neurotechnology and merges with our daily life. There is an increasing amount of scientific evidence that by means of pharmacological treatment and transcranial magnetic stimulation cognitive functions like wakefulness and alertness, working memory, an individual’s emotional state, and even theory-of-mind capabilities can be improved (see, for example, Fregni & Pascual-Leone 2005; Gobbi et al. 2003; Lynch 2002; Turner et al. 2003). After giving an overview of the state-of–the-art scientific literature on cognitive enhancement, its ethical implications are discussed from a utilitarian standpoint. Arguments that are known from discussions in the literature will be evaluated in more detail from this perspective. These include considerations about safety and dangers of cognitive enhancement, its potential of coercion versus the restriction of an individual’s liberty, questions of distributive justice in a broader social context, and putative influence on personhood (for an overview, see Chatterjee 2004; Farah et al. 2004; Farah 2005). Given that negative side-effects can be avoided or at least controlled, and given a broad social accessibility of the means of enhancement, it is shown that cognitive enhancement is recommendable according to utilitarianism. Subsequently, an argument against cognitive enhancement from the distinction of natural versus unnatural techniques is shown to be either too liberal or too restrictive to cope with our intuitions. Further, an essential distinction between cognitive and bodily enhancement introduced by Michael Gazzaniga (2005), that is used to recommend the former but not the latter, is refuted. Likewise, an argument against enhancement focusing on the “desire for mastery” of Michael Sandel (2004) is invalidated. The conclusion of this talk is that while cognitive enhancement offers a great number of valuable possibilities and – given certain boundary conditions – morally should be done, individuals planning to engage in pharmacological, magnetic, or, as expected to become available in the future, even genetic enhancement, should neither underestimate the risks nor the complexity of the issue. Chatterjee, A. (2004). Cosmetic neurology: the controversy over enhancing movement, mentation, and mood. Neurology 63(6): 968-74. Farah, M.J., Illes, J., Cook-Deegan, R., Gardner, H., Kandel, E., King, P., Parens, E., Sahakian, B. & Wolpe, P.R. (2004). Neurocognitive enhancement: what can we do and what should we do? Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5(5): 421-425. Farah, M.J. (2005). Neuroethics: the practical and the philosophical. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(1): 34-40. Fregni, F. & Pascual-Leone, A. (2005). Transcranial magnetic stimulation for the treatment of depression in neurologic disorders. Current Psychiatry Reports 7(5): 381-490. Gazzaniga, M.S. (2005). The Ethical Brain. Dana Press. Gobbi, G., Slater, S., Boucher, N., Debonnel, G. & Blier, P. (2003). Neurochemical and psychotropic effects of bupropion in healthy male subjects. Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 23(3): 233-239. Lynch, G. (2002). Memory enhancement: the search for mechanism-based drugs. Nature Neuroscience Supplement: 1035-1038. Sandel, M. (2004). The case against perfection. The Atlantic Monthly 293(3): 51-62. Turner, D.C., Robbins, T.W., Clark, L., Aron, A.R., Dowson, J. & Sahakian, B.J. (2003). Cognitive enhancing effects of modafinil in healthy volunteers. Psychopharmacology 165(3): 260-269.   C20

@H2 = [06.10]  Education

310  The use of different states of consciousness in social work training  Liora Birnbaum <birnbauml@yosh.ac.il> (College of Judea and Samaria Ariel, kfar yona, Israel)
    Although mindfulness has evolved lately as an efficient therapeutic technique in psychology and psychiatry, there is almost no reference to its use in social work literature. This paper describes a unique technique of training social work students: using different states of consciousness in order to create a broader and richer learning experience. In a year-long exploratory project, mindfulness was first introduced in a methodology intervention course and relevant questions were integrated into students' term papers. As a result, a group of students initiated a mindfulness meditation group that met for seven weeks with the purpose being experiencing different states of consciousness, enhancing self awareness and gaining emotional support in handling field and academic stressors. Findings show students were able to alter between 3 states of consciousness: ordinary, transitional –informal mindfullness, and a meditative (formal mindfulnees) state. While informal mindfulness was identified as mainly cognitive base, formal mindfulness was observed as primarily emotional based. Transpersonal phenomena such as collective unconscious and access to intuitive knowledge, synchronicity and reveling hidden life stories, were observed within the group. Relevance and implementation to social work training are discussed.  P11

311  Levels of awareness: greater alteration of self and self efficacy through directed interactive experiential learning in the writing classroom  Katherine Schmidt, Joel Alexander <schmidtk@wou.edu> (Western Oregon University, Monmouth, OR)
    An often overlooked approach to the examination of the explanatory gap between first- person and third-person accounts of human experience is the examination of the development of a sense of self and self-efficacy through successful skill acquisition and increase expressive ability in writing skills. Some writers argue that the explanation of consciousness largely consists of the correlations between the structure of conscious experience and the sub straights that give rise to such experience. Our position is that progress in the study of consciousness will depend upon the development of skills for expressing in the first person a conscious understanding of the first person and its relationship to the third person We documented the changes in self and self-efficacy experienced by three students of low, moderate, and advanced writing abilities who were exposed to the same writing-skills intervention over a ten-week period. The intervention involved repeated directed interactive experiential communities of practice (Mullet) with the goal of heightening pre-reflexive thought (Merleau-Ponty). Dynamic interactions between learners and the situation embodied writing-related skills actions in contextual settings. We found that the student who possessed the lowest-level writing skills responded most dramatically with a substantial enhancement of self and self-efficacy (measured both quantitatively and qualitatively) in relation to past knowledge, present challenges, and future possibilities for growth and mastery. This finding is in line with neurolinguistic programming (which values structure and process over content in order to transcend the traditional third-person perspective without losing the methodological rigor) and neurophenomenology (which stresses human conscious experience). A key component to this success appeared to be greater emotional reaction (Damasio) and, thus, engendered both short- and long-term frameworks for proactive self-reflection and self-improvement. These findings further support the need for the immediate application of science of consciousness praxis in the classroom setting, although we may be far from understanding the nature of the hard problem (Chalmers).   P6

@H2 = [06.11]  Miscellaneous

312  Science of acting and consciousness: Discoveries in consciousness from the laboratory of the rehearsal room.  Helen Kogan, Sam Kogan, Alex Dower <helenkogan@yahoo.co.uk> (Academy of the Science of Acting and Directing, London, UK)
    At the roots of most acting techniques is the work of Konstantin Stanislavski who believed that only when an actor could incarnate the life of the character would theatre progress. As a school founded by a second-generation pupil of Stanislavski we have been able to explore what the psychology of the time only allowed Stanislavski to sit on the edge of. By creating characters, themselves each a consciousness, everyday in the rehearsal room we have identified some simple but vital components of consciousness. Have you noticed doing things that you regret – eating chocolate, being late, having certain thoughts about yourself, people or things. These are just some visible clues to the existence of thinking we can’t see but which runs our lives. As we grow up we slowly form complexes – how to tie shoelaces, how to cook rice, how I react when I get rejected. Complexes are what make each person unique, and what makes it very hard to change behaviour. In particular, these unobserved thoughts and complexes form generalisations about life, people, myself, etc. which have slowly evolved as a result of experience. In Russia many people seem to have the thought 'Life is hard', while in Britain, more common is 'Life is a waste'. Another example is thoughts about people such as 'People don’t care' and 'People are bastards' (the language of the mind is not polite). Here is a list of some of the most important elements of a person’s mind. Altogether we have found 70 elements, and the entire set we call Mindprint (consider the term Event to mean generalised impression): Life Events – What I think life is. E.g.: Life is hard; a waste; unfair; shit; short; fascinating; a game. People Events – What I think people, men and women are. E.g.: People are bastards; stupid; selfish; don’t care; have lives; fascinating E.g.: Men are unattainable; competition; pathetic. E.g.: Women are whores; devious; humiliating; stupid; care Self Events – What I think I am. E.g.: I am special; shit; lonely; a failure; a fake; abused. Birth Event – Thoughts that result from thinking about my birth and its circumstances. E.g.: Mother tells you, 'I almost died giving birth' your Birth Event could be 'I owe her my life' Name Event – Thoughts that resulted from my name and the purposes my parents had when they gave it to me. E.g.: Your name is Bob Smith, your Name Event could be 'I’m boring' Purposes – What I think will make me happy. E.g.: Happiness is always being successful; belonging; taking revenge; being abused; suffering. So, the mind is made up of important generalised invisible thoughts – important because they think themselves irrespective of circumstances and generalised because they are making judgments on the present and future based on past experiences. The unique combination of the elements of the Mind and their associated complexes give rise to my visible thoughts, moods etc. and make Hamlet different from Superman and me different from you.   P6