Affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought Fox, Kieran C.R.; Andrews‐Hanna, Jessica R.; Mills, Caitlin ...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
August 2018, Letnik:
1426, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Despite increasing scientific interest in self‐generated thought—mental content largely independent of the immediate environment—there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective ...experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self‐generated thought—normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep. In synthesizing existing literature on this topic, we reveal consistent findings pertaining to the prevalence, valence, and variability of emotion in self‐generated thought, and highlight how these factors might interact with self‐generated thought to influence general well‐being. We integrate these psychological findings with recent neuroimaging research, bringing attention to the neural correlates of affect in self‐generated thought. We show that affect in self‐generated thought is prevalent, positively biased, highly variable (both within and across individuals), and consistently recruits many brain areas implicated in emotional processing, including the orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal cortex. Many factors modulate these typical psychological and neural patterns, however; the emerging affective neuroscience of self‐generated thought must endeavor to link brain function and subjective experience in both everyday self‐generated thought as well as its dysfunctions in mental illness.
Despite increasing scientific interest in self‐generated thought – mental content largely independent of the immediate environment – there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. This review aims to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self‐generated thought – normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in sleep.
"Every practice is a mode of thought, already in the act. To dance: a thinking in movement. To paint: a thinking through color. To perceive in the everyday: a thinking of the world's varied ways of ...affording itself." -fromThought in the ActCombining philosophy and aesthetics,Thought in the Actis a unique exploration of creative practice as a form of thinking. Challenging the common opposition between the conceptual and the aesthetic, Erin Manning and Brian Massumi "think through" a wide range of creative practices in the process of their making, revealing how thinking and artfulness are intimately, creatively, and inseparably intertwined. They rediscover this intertwining at the heart of everyday perception and investigate its potential for new forms of activism at the crossroads of politics and art.
Emerging from active collaborations, the book analyzes the experiential work of the architects and conceptual artists Arakawa and Gins, the improvisational choreographic techniques of William Forsythe, the recent painting practice of Bracha Ettinger, as well as autistic writers' self-descriptions of their perceptual world and the experimental event making of the SenseLab collective. Drawing from the idiosyncratic vocabularies of each creative practice, and building on the vocabulary of process philosophy, the book reactivates rather than merely describes the artistic processes it examines. The result is a thinking-with and a writing-in-collaboration-with these processes and a demonstration of how philosophy co-composes with the act in the making.Thought in the Actenacts a collaborative mode of thinking in the act at the intersection of art, philosophy, and politics.
People who experience unwanted, intrusive, or frightening thoughts often suffer shamefully and struggle silently for fear of what the thoughts might mean about them. In this powerful book, two ...anxiety disorder experts offer powerful and proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills to help readers get unstuck from disturbing thoughts, overcome intense shame, and reduce anxiety.
Starting with the hypothesis that not only human intelligence but also its antithesis 'intellectual disability' are nothing more than historical contingencies, C.F. Goodey's paradigm-shifting study ...traces the rich interplay between labelled human types and the radically changing characteristics attributed to them. From the twelfth-century beginnings of European social administration to the onset of formal human science disciplines in the modern era, A History of Intelligence and 'Intellectual Disability' reconstructs the socio-political and religious contexts of intellectual ability and disability, and demonstrates how these concepts became part of psychology, medicine and biology. Goodey examines a wide array of classical, late medieval and Renaissance texts, from popular guides on conduct and behavior to medical treatises and from religious and philosophical works to poetry and drama. Focusing especially on the period between the Protestant Reformation and 1700, Goodey challenges the accepted wisdom that would have us believe that 'intelligence' and 'disability' describe natural, trans-historical realities. Instead, Goodey argues for a model that views intellectual disability and indeed the intellectually disabled person as recent cultural creations. His book is destined to become a standard resource for scholars interested in the history of psychology and medicine, the social origins of human self-representation, and current ethical debates about the genetics of intelligence.
The waking mind is often occupied with mental contents that are minimally constrained by events in the here and now. These self-generated thoughts-e.g., mind-wandering or daydreaming-interfere with ...external task performance and can be a marker for unhappiness and even psychiatric problems. They also occupy our thoughts for upwards of half of the time, and under non-demanding conditions they (i) allow us to connect our past and future selves together, (ii) help us make successful long-term plans and (iii) can provide a source of creative inspiration. The lengths that the mind goes to self-generate thought, coupled with its apparent functionality, suggest that the mind places a higher priority on such cognition than on many other mental acts. Although mind-wandering may be unpleasant for the individual who experiences it and disruptive to the tasks of the moment, self-generated thought allows consciousness freedom from the here and now and so reflects a key evolutionary adaptation for the mind. Here we synthesize recent literature from cognitive and clinical psychology and propose two formal hypotheses that (1) highlight task context and thought content as critical factors that constrain the costs and benefits of self-generated thought and (2) provide direction on ways to investigate the costs and benefits from an impartial perspective.
Abstract
The paper presents both the key arguments and the historical context of the socialist economic calculation debate. I argue that Oskar Lange presented the most developed strategy to deal with ...bourgeois economics, decisively helping to create the scientific consensus that rational economic calculation under socialism is possible. Lange’s arguments based on standard economic theory reveal that the most ardent defenders of capitalism cannot reject socialism on technical terms and that, as a consequence, the Austrian School was left with no choice but to diverge from mainstream economics in its search to develop a framework that could support its political position. This shows that Mises’ challenge from 1920 was solved and has been replaced by a political posture developed by Hayek and leading Austrians economists, who have been struggling since the 1980s to revise the standard interpretation of the socialist economic calculation debate. I argue that this revision should not be uncritically accepted and conclude that socialism cannot be scientifically rejected; it can only be politically rejected, by those whose economic interests it opposes.
•The vast majority of research currently defines mind wandering as off-task thought.•Freedom of movement in thought is introduced as a new dimension of mind wandering.•Freedom of movement in thought ...is only weakly correlated to being off-task.•40% of thoughts were misclassified if off-task thought is assumed to be freely-moving.
Mind wandering is frequently defined as task-unrelated or perceptually decoupled thought. However, these definitions may not capture the dynamic features of a wandering mind, such as its tendency to ‘move freely’. Here we test the relationship between three theoretically dissociable dimensions of thought: freedom of movement in thought, task-relatedness, and perceptual decoupling (i.e., lack of awareness of surroundings). Using everyday life experience sampling, thought probes were randomly delivered to participants’ phones for ten days. Results revealed weak intra-individual correlations between freedom of movement in thought and task-unrelatedness, as well as perceptual decoupling. Within our dataset, over 40% of thoughts would have been misclassified under the assumption that off-task thought is inherently freely moving. Overall, freedom of movement appears to be an independent dimension of thought that is not captured by the two most common measures of mind wandering. Future work focusing on the dynamics of thought may be crucial for improving our understanding of the wandering mind.
Abstract
We undertake a comprehensive descriptive and comparative ontology of capital in the history of economic thought post-1870. Beginning with the pioneering contributions of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, ...Clark and Knight, we reassess the familiar dualistic ontology of capital that contrasts ‘materialist’ and ‘fundist’ approaches. Advancing beyond this dualism, we find that the ontology of capital is an evolving mosaic presenting many nuances and overlapping with other ontologies concerning notions of time and atomism. There is no substitute for examining the diverse theories, causal explanations and conceptual systems in which capital is embedded. In episodic capital controversies, economists have employed distinctive metaphors of capital revealing hidden presuppositions that imply specific functional and dispositional properties of capital. Ontological comparison can uncover implicit ideas about capital, as evidenced in the metaphors used by Böhm-Bawerk, Hayek and Robinson. The benefits of a descriptive and comparative approach are further illustrated in our critical appraisal of the modern monetary ontology of capital associated with Piketty, business finance and growth accounting. Differentiated by their specific ontologies, each explanation of capital in market economies should be regarded as at best a very partial account, though our assessment shows that some explanations are relatively more fragmentary and impoverished than others.
A smart and accessible introduction to the most important works of ancient Chinese philosophy-
the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, andHan Feizi
This book provides ...an unmatched introduction to eight of the most important works of classical Chinese philosophy-theAnalects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, andHan Feizi. Combining accessibility with the latest scholarship, Paul Goldin, one of the world's leading authorities on the history of Chinese philosophy, places these works in rich context as he explains the origin and meaning of their compelling ideas.
Because none of these classics was written in its current form by the author to whom it is attributed, the book begins by asking, "What are we reading?" and showing that understanding the textual history of the works enriches our appreciation of them. A chapter is devoted to each of the eight works, and the chapters are organized into three sections: "Philosophy of Heaven," which looks at how theAnalects, Mozi, and Mencius discuss, often skeptically, Heaven (tian) as a source of philosophical values; "Philosophy of the Way," which addresses howLaozi, Zhuangzi, and Sunzi introduce the new concept of the Way (dao) to transcend the older paradigms; and "Two Titans at the End of an Age," which examines howXunzi and Han Feizi adapt the best ideas of the earlier thinkers for a coming imperial age.
In addition, the book presents clear and insightful explanations of the protean and frequently misunderstood concept ofqi-and of a crucial characteristic of Chinese philosophy, nondeductive reasoning. The result is an invaluable account of an endlessly fascinating and influential philosophical tradition.
Abstract
We comment on a recent article by Lopes (2021), whose argument regarding the writing of the history of the socialist calculation debate is unfortunately burdened by a misconception of both ...the substance and nature of the argument that ignited the debate. Bringing additional sources from this time to scholars’ attention, we show that there is much more to the Austrian interpretation than standard interpretations of the debate admit. In fact, our findings indicate that Lange’s famous response to Mises’s challenge constitutes a rebuttal of a straw man.
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