Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. This research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of mindfulness in psychological well-being. The development and psychometric properties of the dispositional Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) are described. Correlational, quasi-experimental, and laboratory studies then show that the MAAS measures a unique quality of consciousness that is related to a variety of well-being constructs, that differentiates mindfulness practitioners from others, and that is associated with enhanced selfawareness. An experience-sampling study shows that both dispositional and state mindfulness predict self-regulated behavior and positive emotional states. Finally, a clinical intervention study with cancer patients demonstrates that increases in mindfulness over time relate to declines in mood disturbance and stress. Many philosophical, spiritual, and psychological traditions emphasize the importance of the quality of consciousness for the maintenance and enhancement of well-being (Wilber, 2000). Despite this, it is easy to overlook the importance of consciousness in human well-being because almost everyone exercises its primary capacities, that is, attention and awareness. Indeed, the relation between qualities of consciousness and well-being has received little empirical attention. One attribute of consciousness that has been much-discussed in relation to well-being is mindfulness. The concept of mindfulness has roots in Buddhist and other contemplative traditions where conscious attention and awareness are actively cultivated. It is most commonly defined as the state of being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present. For example, Nyanaponika Thera (1972) called mindfulness “the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception” (p. 5). Hanh (1976) similarly defined mindfulness as “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality” (p. 11). Recent research has shown that the enhancement of mindfulness through training facilitates a variety of well-being outcomes (e.g., Kabat-Zinn, 1990). To date, however, there has been little work examining this attribute as a naturally occurring characteristic. Recognizing that most everyone has the capacity to attend and to be aware, we nonetheless assume (a) that individuals differ in their propensity or willingness to be aware and to sustain attention to what is occurring in the present and (b) that this mindful capacity varies within persons, because it can be sharpened or dulled by a variety of factors. The intent of the present research is to reliably identify these inter- and intrapersonal variations in mindfulness, establish their relations to other relevant psychological constructs, and demonstrate their importance to a variety of forms of psychological well-being.

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The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being

Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I. PRELIMINARIES 1. Two Concepts of Mind 2. Supervenience and Explanation II. THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 3. Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained? 4. Naturalistic Dualism 5. The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment III. TOWARD A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 6. The Coherence between Consciousness and Cognition 7. Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia 8. Consciousness and Information: Some Speculation IV. APPLICATIONS 9. Strong Artificial Intelligence 10. The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Notes Bibliography

The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory

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The concept of mind

Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science

Many philosophers are impressed by the progress achieved by physical sciences. This has had an especially deep effect on their ontological views: it has made many of them physicalists. Physicalists believe that everything is physical: more precisely, that all entities, properties, relations, and facts are those which are studied by physics or other physical sciences. They may not all agree with the spirit of Rutherford's quoted remark that 'there is physics; and there is stamp-collecting',' but they all grant physical science a unique ontological authority: the authority to tell us what there is. Physicalism is now almost orthodox in much philosophy, notably in much recent philosophy of mind. But although often invoked, it is rarely explicitly defined. It should be. The claim that everything is physical is not as clear as it seems. In this paper, we examine a number of proposed definitions of physicalism and reasons for being a physicalist. We will argue both that physicalism lacks a clear and credible definition, and that in no non-vacuous interpretation is it true. We are concerned here only with physicalism as a doctrine about the empirical world. In particular, it should not be confused with nominalism, the doctrine that there are no universals.2 Nominalism and physicalism are quite independent doctrines. Believers in universals may as consistently assert as deny that the only properties and relations are those studied by physical science. And nominalists may with equal consistency assert or deny that physical science could provide enough predicates to describe the world. That is the question which concerns physicalists, not whether physical predicates name real universals. (We will for brevity write as if they do, but we do not need that assumption.) As we will understand it, then, physicalism is not a doctrine about universals or other abstract objects, but about the empirical world, and specifically about minds. It says that mental entities, properties, relations and facts are all really physical. The mental is physicalism's chief target; but one we think it does not hit. Physicalism is a kind of monism, opposing the dualist's distinction between two kinds of substance: matter and mind. As such, it is descended

/pdf/there-is-no-question-of-physicalism-4v5ogc0bk1.pdf

There is No Question of Physicalism

It is widely agreed that perceptual experience is a form of intentionality, i.e., that it has representational content. Many philosophers take this to mean that like belief, experience has propositional content, that it can be true or false. I accept that perceptual experience has intentionality; but I dispute the claim that it has propositional content. This claim does not follow from the fact that experience is intentional, nor does it follow from the fact that experiences are accurate or inaccurate. I end by considering the relationship between this question and the question of whether experience has non-conceptual content.

Is Perception a Propositional Attitude

Concepts and perceptual experience To what extent do our beliefs about the world affect what we see? Our beliefs certainly affect where we choose to look, but do they affect what we see when we look there? Some have claimed that people with very different beliefs literally see the world differently. Thus Thomas Kuhn: ‘what a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual–conceptual experience has taught him to see’ (Kuhn 1970, p. 113). This view – call it ‘Perceptual Relativism’ – entails that a scientist and a child may look at a cathode ray tube and, in a sense, the first will see it while the second won't. The claim is not, of course, that the child's experience is ‘empty’; but that, unlike the scientist, it does not see the tube as a cathode ray tube. One way of supporting this claim is to say that one cannot see something as an F unless one has the concept F . Since the child plainly lacks the concept of a cathode ray tube, it cannot see it as a cathode ray tube. Although Perceptual Relativism is hard to believe, this supporting suggestion is not so implausible. After all, when we see (and more generally, perceive) the world, the world is presented to us in a particular way; so how can we see it as being that way unless we have some idea or conception of the way it is presented?

The Nonconceptual Content of Experience

Elements of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

1 Introduction, Tim Crane and Sarah Patterson 2 The Musical, the Magical and the Mathematical Soul, Rae Langton 3 The Soul's Relation to the Body: Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant and the Parisian debate on Monopsychism, MWFStone 4 How Cartesian was Descartes?, Sarah Patterson 5 The Emergence of the Cartesian Mind, Susan James 6 Intentionality or Phenomenology? Descartes on the Objects of Thought, John Cottingham 7 'A tumbling-ground for whimsies'? The History and Contemporary role of the Conscious/Unconscious Contrast, Neil Manson 8 The Origins of Qualia, Tim Crane 9 Beyond Dispute: Sense-Datea, Intentionality and the Mind-Body Problem, MGFMartin

History of the Mind-Body Problem

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