Dualism + psychology

Consciousness arguably presents a "hard problem" for scholars. An influential position asserts that the "problem" is rooted in ontology-it arises because consciousness "is" distinct from the physical. "Problem intuitions" are routinely taken as evidence for this view. In so doing, it is assumed that (i) people do not consider consciousness as physical and (ii) their intuitions faithfully reflect what exists (or else, intuitions would not constitute evidence). New experimental results challenge both claims. First, in some scenarios, people demonstrably view consciousness as a physical affair that registers in the body (brain)...

The understudied bodily harm women experience after commercial sex (CS) may be partially explained by the prominence of Cartesian mind-body dualism in psychological science. Accordingly, we qualitatively explored the mind-body relationship among 79 female sex trafficking survivors. Survivors reported long-term negative alterations in feelings about the body, sex, and physical touch posttrafficking and these negative outcomes did not differ across women who self-perceived as consenting and women who self-perceived as forced...

Humans have asked themselves the question "who am I" from ancient times. Vedic, upanishadic and buddhist philosophers have pointed out over millennia the illusive nature of the individual self, and posit either a no-self, or a universal Self. Vedantic scholars also posit the illusory nature of the universe (Maya) and suggest that the only reality is the knower (Brahman), a view resonating with modern concepts in quantum theory. On the other hand, western philosophers, notably influenced by the Cartesian dualism, have pursued an individualist view of the self...

Treatment of psychiatric disorders with psychedelic substances represents one of the most promising current treatment approaches in psychiatry. Since its inception in the 1950s, therapy with psychedelics has been conceptualised as psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy-ie, a form of psychotherapy that uses the profound biological effects of this class of substances as a catalyst for changing thinking, emotions, and behaviour. In this view, the psychotherapy component of the treatment is considered as being of the utmost importance for both the safety and efficacy of the therapy...

People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the emergence of psychological traits in either a replica of one's body, or in the afterlife-after the body's demise. In line with Dualism, epistemic (i.e., disembodied) traits (e.g., knowing the contrast between good/bad) were considered more likely to emerge (relative to sensorimotor/affective traits) only in the afterlife...

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a 'loss-of-function lesion premise,' according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity...

UNLABELLED: To understand the influence of positive thinking ideology on cancer representations among physicians in the city of Medellín. METHODS: This qualitative study was conducted on the basis of the theoretical and methodological elements of Corbin and Strauss's grounded theory. Fourteen physicians were included and selected according to the criteria of maximum variation for education, years of study, and personal and family history of cancer. The information was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed with open, axial, and selective coding...

Mental causation is a deep-rooted debate in the philosophy and psychology literature. It relates to the causal role of mind on the physical world and is tightly linked with the Descartes' dualistic approach towards mind-body interaction. While the role of mental properties might seem obvious in our everyday interaction with the world, there are many arguments that make mental causation inefficacious or redundant within the physical world. In the motivation literature, the issue of mental causation is pivotal...

Consciousness presents a "hard problem" to scholars. At stake is how the physical body gives rise to subjective experience. Why consciousness is "hard", however, is uncertain. One possibility is that the challenge arises from ontology-because consciousness is a special property/substance that is irreducible to the physical. Here, I show how the "hard problem" emerges from two intuitive biases that lie deep within human psychology: Essentialism and Dualism. To determine whether a subjective experience is transformative, people judge whether the experience pertains to one's essence, and per Essentialism, one's essence lies within one's body...

Psychiatric practice faces many challenges in the first quarter of 21st century. Society has transformed, as have training requirements and patient expectations, underlining an urgent need to look at educational programmes. Meanwhile, awareness has grown around psychiatric disorders and there are evolving workforce trends, with more women going to medical school and specialising in psychiatry. Trainee psychiatrists carry different expectations for work-life balance and are increasingly becoming conscious of their own mental health...

Dualism has long been part of human sciences, including psychology and its sub-discipline of motivation. In psychology, such dualism is reflected in the rationalism-empiricism dichotomy. This dichotomy has resulted in two seemingly contradictory perspectives, including empiricism and rationalism. From empiricism perspective, the primary contact between subject and object is the passive reception of inputs from the environment. From rationalism perspective, the primary contact is through the match between conceptual forms and empirical observations...

Do you persist as the same person over time because you keep the same mind or because you keep the same body? Philosophers have long investigated this question of personal identity with thought experiments. Cognitive scientists have joined this tradition by assessing lay intuitions about those cases. Much of this work has focused on judgments of identity continuity. But identity also has practical significance: obligations are tagged to one's identity over time. Understanding how someone persists as the same person over time could provide insight into how and why moral and legal obligations persist...

The research shows that a very important part of initial teacher education is to reformulate the beliefs that student teachers bring with them from their school experience. These beliefs, which are intuitive in nature, deal with different educational topics and one area that is currently of great importance, due to the emotional turn that the educational system is experiencing, are the beliefs that student teachers hold about the role of emotions in educational processes. In a world full of views that portray emotions as discrete states that are separate from cognitive processes, it is a priority for initial teacher development to train future teachers to hold conceptions that consider the deep emotional-cognitive integration that exists in the human brain...

A large literature suggests that people are intuitive Dualists-they tend to perceive the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body. Here, we ask whether Dualism emanates from within the human psyche, guided, in part, by theory of mind (ToM). Past research has shown that males are poorer mind-readers than females. If ToM begets Dualism, then males should exhibit weaker Dualism, and instead, lean towards Physicalism (i.e., they should view bodies and minds alike). Experiments 1-2 show that males indeed perceive the psyche as more embodied-as more likely to emerge in a replica of one's body, and less likely to persist in its absence (after life)...

BACKGROUND: In the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), chronic pain was not represented adequately. Pain was left undefined and not recognized as a biopsychosocial phenomenon. Instead, a flawed dualism between psychological and somatic factors was implied. Individual diagnoses were ill-defined and scattered randomly through different chapters. Many patients received diagnoses in remainder categories devoid of meaningful clinical information...

Previous research found that experimentally reducing people's belief in free will affects social behaviors. However, more recent investigations could not replicate several findings in this literature. An explanation for the mixed findings is that free will beliefs are related to social behaviors on a correlational level, but experimental manipulations are not able to detect this relation. To test this interpretation, we conceptually replicated and extended a landmark study in the free will belief literature originally conducted by Baumeister et al...

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People are intuitive Dualists-they tacitly consider the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body. Here we ask whether Dualism emerges naturally from the conflicting core principles that guide reasoning about objects, on the one hand, and about the minds of agents (theory of mind, ToM), on the other. To address this question, we explore Dualist reasoning in autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-a congenital disorder known to compromise ToM. If Dualism arises from ToM, then ASD ought to attenuate Dualism and promote Physicalism...

The aim of the present study was to describe the experiences of young adults living with cleft lip and palate (CLP) and to explore potential gender differences. A descriptive qualitative study was designed involving semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, as described by Graneheim and Lundman. A total of 9 women and 8 men, aged 22 to 26 years with UCLP. The main theme identified was: the duality of living with a cleft-being normal yet different, and 2 subcategories: "My cleft and me" and "My cleft and the World...

Previous research suggests that belief in free will correlates with intentionality attribution. However, whether belief in free will is also related to more basic social processes is unknown. Based on evidence that biological motion contains intentionality cues that observers spontaneously extract, we investigate whether people who believe more in free will, or in related constructs, such as dualism and determinism, would be better at picking up such cues and therefore at detecting biological agents hidden in noise, or would be more inclined to detect intentionality cues and therefore to detect biological agents even when there are none...