On my good days, I find that I am often generous with my species. I let the driver in the Hummer merge into my lane with a wave, pick up litter, open doors for stragglers, and give loose change to beggars. On my bad days, I too easily curse (quietly) at the rude and the clueless, keep my hands in my pockets, my head down, and my shoulders hunched. My gait becomes slightly simian. That I can swing with graceful agility from one orientation to the other (often without anyone actually knowing) used to disturb me. I suppose I grew up believing I had to be one kind of person or the other. Not anymore. Perhaps I'm finally reconciled to the fact that I am human; that is, a creature with a consciousness, a being of sometimes-exhausting contradictions, a repository of living memories, an almost-virtuous and curious animal. I've landed, finally, in gray territory, which is where, as it turns out, I always hoped I would. The personal essays in this thesis explore this fluid nature of my (our) creatureliness. As a Catholic priest and a writer, my intention was to use the sacraments of the Catholic Church (Baptism, Eucharist, Confession, Confirmation, Holy Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick) as points of departure, and to allow each sacrament to provide me a lens and a perch through which (and from which) I might see our species anew. Aware that these seven sacraments mark the life--from birth to death--of a Catholic, I saw them as a useful and invisible thread that would give these essays thematic cohesion. Recognizing that this exploration was going to be more spelunking than mountain climbing, this sacramental thread became a rope with which I could jump down into some fascinating dark places without getting lost or stranded. In the end, these seven essays attempt to get at a few questions that have haunted me for years: Why have I not given up on my species yet? Why do I still believe in the innate goodness of human creatures? From where do I draw the strength to go spelunking into the darkest warrens of the human heart? These essays eschew the easy answers. They rather delight instead in dark places, illuminated, for a second, by one shaky candle.

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a four-week seminar which emphasized the principles of Agentive Theory. This theory, which is compatible with theories of a phenomenological/ existential perspective, was first developed by C. T. Warner, an American philosopher. Agentive Theorists/Therapists emphasize that our negative emotions, ie., depression, anger, etc. , are assertions or judgments we make and not merely feelings we are responsible for controlling or expressing. Forty-eight outpatients who sought help with personal/emotional problems from a department of behavioral medicine were assigned to either a treatment or waiting-list control Group. Following a four-week treatment phase, the treatment group was shown to have made significantly greater improvement than the waiting-list control group with respect to general mental health, somatization, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, psychoticism, anger, and guilt.

This thesis investigates the acute phenomenology of altered states of consciousness induced through psychedelics and various Zen practices through the lens of comparative mysticism. Through inductive reasoning, tentative conclusions are drawn regarding how the acute phenomenological qualities of these states compare to one another. This topic had not been meaningfully studied, so the data from which these conclusions were drawn is limited. Though these findings are tentative, they have important implications for the study of comparative mysticism involving psychedelics, and for policy decisions regarding the credentialing of newly trained psychedelic therapists. Further research is required to draw more definitive conclusions on whether psychedelics users and Zen practitioners are having the same sorts of experiences, and this thesis identifies some of the theoretical challenges that can be expected with such research, particularly with regards to the reliability of qualitative data collection methods. To address these challenges, a novel theoretical approach to the study of comparative mysticism involving psychedelic and non-psychedelic altered states of consciousness has been developed.

Traditionally, the concept of cognition has been tied to the brain or the nervous system. Recent work in various noncomputational cognitive sciences has enlarged the category of “cognitive phenomena” to include the organism and its environment, distributed cognition across networks of actors, and basic cellular functions. The meaning, scope, and limits of ‘cognition’ are no longer clear or well-defined. In order to properly delimit the purview of the cognitive sciences, there is a strong need for a clarification of the definition of cognition. This paper will consider the outer bounds of that definition. Not all cognitive behaviors of a given organism are amenable to an analysis at the organismic or organism-environment level. In some cases, emergent cognition in collective biological and human social systems arises that is irreducible to the sum cognitions of their constituent entities. The group and social systems under consideration are more extensive and inclusive than those considered in studies of distributed cognition to date. The implications for this ultimately expand the purview of the cognitive sciences and bring back a renewed relevance for anthropology and introduce sociology on the traditional six-pronged interdisciplinary wheel of the cognitive sciences.

This work examines the relationship between Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy and the nonlinear dynamical systems framework for studying cognition. I argue that the nonlinear dynamical systems approach to cognitive science presupposes many key elements of his process philosophy. The process philosophical interpretation of nature posits events and the dynamic relations between events as the fundamental substrate of reality, as opposed to static physical substances. I present a brief history of the development of substance thought before describing Whitehead’s characterization of nature as a process. In following, I will examine the both the computational and nonlinear dynamical systems frameworks for investigating cognition. I will show that the computational paradigm is subject to many of the same criticisms as substance. Conversely, I will show that nonlinear dynamical cognitive science avoids these criticisms and is congenial to Whitehead’s philosophy insofar as it is suitable for describing emergent processes. To conclude, I suggest that the nonlinear dynamical cognitive science confirms and validates Whitehead’s philosophy. Furthermore, I argue that process philosophy is an appropriate characterization of nature for guiding inquiry in cognitive science.

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<p>What I shall consider in this thesis is the degree to which language structure and usage must be considered if we wish to grasp the nature of that being we term the 'self' - the subject that I am, and that others presumably are. Stated in its strongest terms, the view I wish to explore is not simply that the medium of our understanding of the self is language, but the further and more control controversial claim that this self is constituted in and through language usage~ and More particularly through self-narration.</p> <p>The thesis is intended as an elucidation and integration of various 20th century reactions to the modernist, and essentially Cartesian, conceptions of the self, self-understanding, and personal identity. At this level of analysis the thesis will be fairly eclectic, ranging through phenomenology, literary theory, deconstruction, semiotics and psychoanalysis. The goal and systematic aim of this survey, however, is to develop on the basis of these investigations what I take to be a properly hermeneutic view of the self and self identity.</p> <p>The contribution to knowledge afforded by the present enterprise lies in its synthesizing of the disparate trends in contemporary thought into a plausible and provocative account of the human subject in relation to language.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Late 18th Britain was experiencing the beginnings of social unrest fueled in part by the American and French Revolutions. The established two class social system was being challenged by the emergence of a middle class seeking something more than traditional agricultural work. While they subscribed to very different philosophies of mind, both Stewart and Mill saw the solution to potential social chaos in a revised educational system that would open the doors to a peaceful development of that middle class. What the new educational system should look like was a direct function of the theory of mind held by the two protagonists. Employing an enlarged Foucaultian framework, this dissertation examines the various forces at work in transforming British society as it prepares for the unanticipated forthcoming industrial revolution. / Ph. D.

La présente thèse de doctorat s'est fixée pour objectif de retracer l'histoire du concept de conscience mentale à travers les langages de spécialité (la philosophie et la psychologie principalement), et ce au cours de la période qui va de l'Antiquité (avec l’aristotélisme) jusqu'à notre époque (avec la philosophie de l’esprit). Ce travail nous a, tout d'abord, amené à redéfinir la conscience sous un jour nouveau, aussi bien en tant que concept pur et dur (dimension déjà présente chez Aristote et chez les penseurs pré-modernes) qu'en tant qu'outil de diverses philosophies chargées de fonder la connaissance et les sciences (dimension opérante à partir de Descartes), puis en tant que philosophie (nous pensons principalement à la philosophie de l'esprit). Une telle entreprise nous a ainsi permis de proposer une définition inédite de la conscience mentale, qui se nourrit des différents paradigmes étudiés tout au long de son histoire. Plus spécifiquement, le "méta-paradigme conscientiel" ainsi généré (aussi nommé "paradigme de type 1") propose une définition en intension, une définition en extension (à savoir une typologie), ainsi qu'un cadre onto-épistémologique servant de toile de fond. Dans le même temps, nous avons été amené à élaborer une épistémologie générale capable d'analyser les différents "paradigmes de type 0" que nous avons rencontrés - et qui se présentent sous diverses formes (des doctrines et des théories philosophiques, des théories scientifiques, des dogmatismes). Cette épistémologie - sous-tendue par quatre critères qui permettent de distinguer les paradigmes entre eux, et dont rend compte notre méta-paradigme - s'avère en outre pensée dans la perfectibilité et dans la complexité, étant ouverte aux futurs paliers d'une échelle de la conscience qui n'a pas fini de s'écrire. De cette manière, nous évitons, avec Donald Davidson, l'écueil qui consiste à voir le "conscientiel" (la conscience comme les productions de l'esprit) comme le simple prolongement du matériel – ce qui nous interdirait, par exemple, de nous interroger sur la "possibilité d'une conscience" au-delà même du vivant./The aim of this thesis was to trace the history of consciousness through philosophy and psychology, from Antiquity (Aristotelianism) to our time (Philosophy of Mind). In a first time, this work led us to define consciousness in a new light, as well as concept (which already appears in Aristotle and in medieval thinkers) and as a tool for various philosophies that try to found knowledge and sciences (this dimension will be born from Descartes), then as a philosophy (we think about the philosophy of mind). This also allowed us to propose a new definition of consciousness, which is inspired by different paradigms studied throughout its history. More specifically, our “metaparadigm” (or "type 1 paradigm") contains a definition and a typology of consciousness, and is underpinned by an onto-epistemological framework. At the same time, we tried to develop a general epistemology able to analyze “type 0 paradigms” we met (these paradigms can be philosophical doctrines, philosophical theories, scientific theories or dogmas). Open to future levels of consciousness’scale that is not finished, this epistemology - underlied by four criteria that distinguish them paradigms, and which are constitutive of our “metaparadigm” - is also favorable to the perfectibility and the complexity. In this way, we especially avoid, with Donald Davidson, the mistake of considering consciousness and all products of mind, thought or cultur just as an extension of material reality - which would prevent us, for example, to wonder about the possibility that consciousness might exist in “non-living beings”. / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished