Orienting Social Epistemology

Philosophy

Comparison of Steve Fuller's and Alvin Goldman's social epistemologies.

Remedios, Francis. 2013. "Orienting Social Epistemology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (8): 54-59. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-T5 54 Orienting Social Epistemology 1 Francis Remedios, Independent Researcher, SERRC Because Fuller's and Goldman's social epistemologies differ from each other in many respects, it is difficult to compare the two.2 The points of difference concern the goals, the conceptions of knowledge, and the scope of study for each of them. The goal of Fuller's social epistemology is to democratize cognitive authority in terms of science policy and install a constitution of science: How should the pursuit of knowledge be organized, given that under normal circumstances knowledge is pursued by many human beings, each working on a more or less well-defined body of knowledge and each equipped with roughly the same imperfect cognitive capacities, albeit with varying degrees of access to one another's activities (Fuller 1988, 3)? The goal of Goldman's social epistemology is to evaluate social practices in terms of whether they promote or impede epistemically valuable states, such as knowledge. Fuller's conception of knowledge is in terms of products of normatively appropriate institutions of inquiry, while Goldman's conception of knowledge is based on the acquisition of true belief, which is what he calls W-knowledge, or knowledge in a weak sense. S-knowledge, or knowledge in the strong sense, consists of true belief, plus some additional element or elements (Goldman 1999, 23). The scope of study of Fuller's social epistemology is science, while the scope of study of Goldman's social epistemology is all forms of social interaction that produce knowledge. Analytic social epistemology (ASE) is the "conceptual and normative study of the relevance of social relations, roles, interests, and institutions to knowledge" (Schmitt, 1994, 1). ASE can be divided into three branches: the role of social factors in the justification of individual knowledge; the organization of the cognitive labor of individuals and groups of individuals; and the nature of collective knowledge. Goldman's Knowledge in a Social World (1999) (KSW) is a general theory of social knowledge that involves all three branches of ASE. KSW is a companion to Goldman's earlier pioneering study, Epistemology and Cognition (1986), which concerns individual primary epistemology (Remedios 2000). Goldman's project concerning social knowledge is 1 The following revised excerpt comes from pages 106-110 of Francis Remedios' Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller`s Social Epistemology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. 2 In the new introduction to the second edition of Social Epistemology (2002), Fuller characterizes dialectical and geometrical social epistemologies. For dialectical social epistemology, which Fuller ascribes to his own social epistemology, social epistemology's concepts and principles "are developed and justified in the actual contexts of knowledge production that concern the social epistemologist" (Fuller 2002, xv). For geometrical social epistemology, which Fuller ascribes to Goldman's social epistemology, social epistemology's concepts and principles "are developed and justified in a 'pure' philosophical setting, that is, by a combination of intuition, logic, and some stylized examples that acquire rhetorical force from their basis in empirical settings, but which function philosophically as paradigm cases for a very broad class of phenomena" (Fuller 2002b, xv). Remedios, Francis. 2013. "Orienting Social Epistemology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (8): 54-59. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-T5 55 veritistic social epistemology (Goldman 1999, 100). Veritistic social epistemology is "a discipline that evaluates intellectual practices by their causal contributions to knowledge or error" (Goldman 1999, 69). For him, there are two main categories of human knowledge: individual and social (group). The objects of epistemic evaluation for individual primary epistemology are cognitive processes, structures, and mechanisms, which bear on the acquisition of true belief. Goldman's social epistemology is concerned with the evaluation of social institutional practices in terms of their acquisition of truth - how they affect the level of true and false beliefs and ignorance within a group.3 Social institutional practices include speech and communicational activities, plus organizational rules and practices that influence the transmission and exchange of information. Goldman's naturalism is described terms of reliabilism and its goal is true belief, which is normative. 4 The domain over which Goldman's social epistemology ranges is the social knowledge of multiple agents. Goldman writes concerning the notion of the "social": More traditional approaches retain individuals as the agents or subjects of belief and knowledge, while emphasizing the massive effect of an individual's relations to other agents in the acquisition of knowledge. As we have seen, this is the core of Kitcher's approach in The Advancement of Science, and also my approach in Knowledge in a Social World (Goldman 2002a, 195). Fuller notes that Goldman assumes a presociological sense of the "social," in which the social is an aggregation of individuals. Social life is then the observable interaction among individuals. "Individuals are deemed to have clearly identifiable psychological and biological properties before they interact with others," Fuller notes (Fuller 2000, 575). Goldman admits to methodological individualism in which "all activities of groups, institutions, or social systems arise from the actions of individuals" (Goldman 2002b, 222). Goldman does not preclude the existence of group properties in the causal or explanatory story of doxastic states. Goldman holds that social "epistemology can be built on social relations among individuals without committing itself to collective or socialized agents that bear epistemic properties" (Goldman 2002a, 195).5 3 Goldman does not define an individual, though he clearly separates individual epistemics from social epistemics. See Goldman's "Foundations of Social Epistemics" (1987). See also Goldman's "Social Epistemics and Social Psychology" (1991, 122). Kitcher admits to a methodological individualism in the Advancement of Science (1993b), 303, n. 1. 4 Goldman describes his naturalism as both substantive epistemic naturalism and methodological naturalism. An exemplar of substantive epistemic naturalism is a reliabilist account of knowledge or justification. Methodological naturalism holds that epistemology should be either empirical science (Quine) or should be informed by the results of scientific disciplines (Goldman). For Goldman, science "should (help) determine the goals, values, or general criteria associated with epistemic norms" (Goldman 1994, 30). 5 Kusch (2001) argues that Goldman's Knowledge in a Social World (1999) does not provide a systematic defense of "epistemological dualism," the claim that epistemology can be divided into individual and social epistemology. Remedios, Francis. 2013. "Orienting Social Epistemology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (8): 54-59. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-T5 56 The goal of Goldman's social epistemology is true belief. Goldman notes that his approach is not descriptive but normative: In contrast to the descriptive approach, normative veritism would not confine itself to social practices actually used by the community, but would equally concern itself with practices that could be adopted. (Goldman 2002a 199) Fuller's criticism of Goldman's goal of social epistemology is that Goldman emphasizes the efficient production of reliable knowledge at the expense of those who actually participate in the process and the community that sustains the epistemic practice. In effect, Fuller argues that Goldman holds to an epistemic paternalism that justifies censorship and deception if the dissemination of the truth is likely to lead to social unrest. Fuller notes that Goldman's epistemic paternalism allows a few elite inquirers to manipulate those who find the truth hard to accept (Fuller 2000, 575). Is Goldman an epistemic paternalist? The answer is yes. Goldman writes: In any event, I shall construe epistemic paternalism in a broad sense. I shall think of communication controllers as exercising epistemic paternalism whenever they interpose their judgment rather than allow the audience to exercise theirs (all with an eye to the audience's epistemic prospects) (Goldman 1991, 119). Goldman's rationale for his epistemic paternalism is that it is justified so that it allows people to avoid error and get to truth. In KSW, Goldman examines several social practices that use epistemic paternalism. These practices are: (1) based on rules of evidence, the courts refuse to admit certain types of evidence for trial, hence juries are denied from hearing that evidence, for example, hearsay evidence; (2) the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has rules that keep advertisers from false advertisements; (3) school systems that have a curriculum that do not teach some viewpoints, for example, creationism; (4) scientific journals that have editors and referees who select some papers and not others and hence deny publication to some people's submissions. In chapter 7 of KSW, Goldman tries to find a veritistic justification to accepting Mill's notion of a free market of ideas, but Goldman is unsuccessful. Hence, there should be regulation of free speech in order to acquire knowledge. On the issue of epistemic paternalism, Goldman notes: It could be argued that successful pursuit of epistemic ends depends not only on "deregulation" at the highest level, but on wise regulation at the lowest levels (Goldman 1991, 131). Hence, Goldman's epistemic paternalism is officially in the service of truth. Fuller opposes Goldman's epistemic paternalism, which Fuller considers to be the manipulation of most of the population by the few elite inquirers, because Fuller's social epistemology's overarching goal is the democratization of the distribution of knowledge. Remedios, Francis. 2013. "Orienting Social Epistemology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (8): 54-59. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-T5 57 Whether Fuller and Goldman have a genuine disagreement here depends on whether the democratization of knowledge has anything to do with true belief. Where Fuller and Goldman meet on this issue is that Fuller addresses the issue of manipulation with the notion of a constitution of science, and while Goldman does not address the issue of manipulation by a few elite inquirers in KSW, Goldman notes that his veritistic epistemology is not an "all things considered" evaluation. Goldman would not endorse a practice in which a few elite inquirers would manipulate others though it would be veritistically good. Moral and political considerations can trump the V-goodness of a social practice. Goldman notes that there is no need to prioritize plural values: As long as multiple things are valued, a sensible division of labor will ordain special fields of study, each dedicated to variables that augment or diminish the incidence of a selected type of good or bad. Veritistic epistemology is such a special field, where the selected good is knowledge and the selected bads are error and ignorance (Goldman 1999, 6). I suggest that Goldman needs an account of how extra-epistemic considerations can trump epistemic considerations and not introduce censorship and manipulation because some people may prioritize authoritarianism more highly than democracy and hence deny access to true belief. Here is where Fuller's use of a constitution of science addresses the issue of how extraepistemic considerations can trump epistemic considerations better than Goldman in terms of manipulation. Fuller's solution to the charge of paternalism is to introduce the notion of a civic republican constitution of science, where criticism is the order of the day. Goldman includes Fuller in his charges of veriphobia. Goldman claims that Fuller and other veriphobes bracket truth and falsity in their discussions of knowledge and end up talking about belief or institutional belief, a practice that Goldman classifies as social doxology (Goldman 1999, 7). Fuller's response to Goldman is that Fuller does not hold to the importance of the truth condition in helping to explain the acceptance of an epistemic practice. Fuller also notes that truth plays no role in terms of his advice about improving an epistemic practice, since the advice would be about either the practice itself or the practice's environment (Fuller 2002, ix-xxiv). Though Goldman does not provide advice on how to improve an epistemic practice, he disagrees with Fuller on the role of truth, for Goldman holds that true belief operates normatively (Goldman 2001, 2002a). Goldman's aim is the evaluation of social practices in terms of whether they promote or impede epistemically valuable states such as true belief. Fuller's reply to Goldman is that Fuller's goal of social epistemology aims to provide policy advice on how to improve epistemic practices and not to evaluate whether social practices promote epistemically valuable states. Fuller writes: I generally regard knowledge as a means to other human ends (which themselves may be epistemic), but one's participation in the knowledge process is usually confined to meta-level inquiry, that is, the design and evaluation of knowledge production regimes that others carry out (Fuller 2002, xvi). Remedios, Francis. 2013. "Orienting Social Epistemology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (8): 54-59. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-T5 58 Here is the nub of disagreement between Fuller and Goldman and also Miller, Brown and Goldberg. For Fuller, social epistemology operates on the meta-level to design and evaluate knowledge production regimes. These regimes have other human ends, which are non-epistemic such as to improve humanity. For Goldman, social epistemology operates at the base level to evaluate whether social practices promote true belief. 6 Contact details: email@example.com References Fuller, Steve 1988. Social Epistemology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fuller, Steve 2000. "Social Epistemology: A Philosophy for Sociology or a Sociology of Philosophy?" Sociology 34 (3): 573-78. Fuller, Steve 2002. Social Epistemology 2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Goldman, Alvin. 1991. "Epistemic Paternalism: Communication Control in Law and Society." Journal of Philosophy 88:113-131. Goldman, Alvin. 1994. "Naturalistic Epistemology and Reliabilism." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Vol. 19 of Philosophical Naturalism, edited by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling and Howard K. Wettstein, 301-320. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Goldman, Alvin 1999. Knowledge in a Social World. New York: Oxford University Press. Goldman, Alvin. 2001. "Social Epistemology." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social Goldman, Alvin 2002a. "What Is Social Epistemology? A Smorgasbord of Projects." In Pathways to Knowledge, edited by Alvin Goldman, 182-204. Oxford: Oxford University Press Goldman, Alvin.2002b. "Reply to Commentators." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (1): 215-27. Kusch, Martin. 2001. "'A General Theory of Societal Knowledge'? Aspirations and Shortcomings of Alvin Goldman's Social Epistemology." Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. 32 (1):183-92. Remedios, Francis 2000. "Preview to special issue on Alvin Goldman's Knowledge in a Social World." Social Epistemology 14 (4): 235-38. 6 This paper shows that Thomas Uebel in his 2005 review of my 2003 book fails to understand Fuller's social epistemology and my book. Uebel's criticism is that Fuller's social epistemology is an epistemology in name only because it is not concerned with truth. My point is that epistemology does not have to concern itself only with truth. Epistemology can have extra epistemic considerations such as humanity. If the starting point of social epistemology such as Goldman's is to evaluate whether social practices promote true belief, then that social epistemology's only concern is truth. If the starting point of a social epistemology such as Fuller's is to evaluate actual social epistemic practices and to provide policy advice on how to increase knowledge production, then that social epistemology's concern is not only truth. Miller, Brown, Khalifa have pointed out that ASE works with a thin concept of the social and do not care about socially situated cases of knowledge. Goldberg seems to have conceded that point. Remedios, Francis. 2013. "Orienting Social Epistemology." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (8): 54-59. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-T5 59 Remedios, Francis 2003. Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller`s Social Epistemology. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Schmitt, Frederick F. 1994. "Socializing Epistemology: An Introduction through Two Samples Issues." In Socializing Epistemology, edited by Frederick F. Schmitt, 128. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Uebel, Thomas. 2005. "Review of Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller's Social Epistemology." In Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24412-legitimizing-scientific-knowledge-an-introductionto-steve-fuller-s-social-epistemology/


Switching to the rubber hand

Philosophy

ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 12 December 2017 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02172 Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Edited by: Michael Banissy, Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom Reviewed by: Michał Wierzchon, Jagiellonian University, Poland Hong-Yan Bi, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China *Correspondence: Su-Ling Yeh email@example.com Timothy Joseph Lane email@example.com † These authors have contributed equally to this work. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognitive Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 18 June 2017 Accepted: 29 November 2017 Published: 12 December 2017 Citation: Yeh S-L, Lane TJ, Chang A-Y and Chien S-E (2017) Switching to the Rubber Hand. Front. Psychol. 8:2172. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02172 Switching to the Rubber Hand Su-Ling Yeh 1, 2, 3*†, Timothy Joseph Lane 4, 5, 6, 7, 8*†, An-Yi Chang 1, 4, 5 and Sung-En Chien 1 1Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 3Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 4Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, 5 Research Center of Brain and Consciousness, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan, 6 Shuang Ho Hospital, Taipei Medical University, New Taipei City, Taiwan, 7 Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 8 Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan Inducing the rubber hand illusion (RHI) requires that participants look at an imitation hand while it is stroked in synchrony with their occluded biological hand. Previous explanations of the RHI have emphasized multisensory integration, and excluded higher cognitive functions. We investigated the relationship between the RHI and higher cognitive functions by experimentally testing task switch (as measured by switch cost) and mind wandering (as measured by SART score); we also included a questionnaire for attentional control that comprises two subscales, attention-shift and attention-focus. To assess experience of RHI, the Botvinick and Cohen (1998) questionnaire was used and illusion onset time was recorded. Our results indicate that rapidity of onset reliably indicates illusion strength. Regression analysis revealed that participants evincing less switch cost and higher attention-shift scores had faster RHI onset times, and that those with higher attention-shift scores experienced the RHI more vividly. These results suggest that the multi-sensory hypothesis is not sufficient to explain the illusion: higher cognitive functions should be taken into account when explaining variation in the experience of ownership for the rubber hand. Keywords: rubber hand illusion, task switch, attention control, executive functions, body ownership INTRODUCTION Plasticity of bodily experience, once a subject suited only to fictional characterization (Melzack, 1992) and philosophical speculation (de Vignemont, 2011a), has become a focus of intense experimental research. Tastevin (1937) laid the groundwork for this research with an observation concerning "visual capture": the simple act of seeing a plastic finger that protrudes from a piece of cloth is sufficient to cause one to feel illusory sensations on one's concealed biological hand. This illusion seems to be caused by visual dominance over other sensory modalities. Botvinick and Cohen (1998) expanded upon Tastevin's finding by developing an experimental paradigm in which a participant's occluded biological hand is stroked in synchrony with a visible rubber hand. This induction procedure evokes what has been dubbed the "rubber hand illusion" (RHI)-among other things, tactile sensations seem to occur on the rubber hand and the rubber hand seems to belong to self (Botvinick, 2004). The most commonly invoked explanation for the RHI, the Multi-Sensory Hypothesis (MSH) emphasizes multisensory integration among visual, somatosensory, proprioceptive, and other signals that operate within a body-centered coordinate system (Makin et al., 2008; Grivaz et al., 2017). Although the precise roles played by sensory signals like proprioception (Rohde et al., 2011; Abdulkarim and Ehrsson, 2016) and by peripersonal space (Makin et al., 2008) are contested, that Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand the body's sensory signals are referenced to the body's position is widely accepted (e.g., Durgin et al., 2007). In other words, sensory information from both the body and the space adjacent to the body are integrated in such a way as to distinguish between what belongs to self and what belongs to the external world. Indeed, parts of that which is external to the body, the peripersonal, can be experienced as belonging to self. It is in virtue of this ongoing, dynamic process that body parts are felt to be owned by or belong to the self. Indeed, Ehrsson (2012, p. 788) avers that MSH is sufficient to explain body ownership, and thatMSH has the added beauty of being parsimonious because it "does not require the inclusion of higher cognitive functions." Despite acknowledging that multisensory processing might be the main cause of the RHI, Tsakiris disputes the sufficiency claim (Tsakiris, 2010, 2011, 2017): First, he observes that visual form and anatomical congruency matter-i.e., the shape of a rubber hand must resemble an actual hand for it to be experienced as belonging to self (Armel and Ramachandran, 2003). Second, posture and spatial boundaries matter too: if the postures of rubber and biological hands are incongruent (Constantini and Haggard, 2007) or the distance between the two exceeds 30 cm (Lloyd, 2007), the illusion either disappears or is diluted. In other words, a pre-existing, normative model of the body constrains the RHI. Third, he adduces evidence to show that the "filtering" mechanism whereby an object is "tested" to see whether it coheres with the pre-existing model is independent of multisensory processing (e.g., Tsakiris et al., 2008). And, fourth, exteroceptive signals like vision and touch, must be integrated with interoceptive signals like those that emanate from the cardiovascular system (Tsakiris, 2011, 2017; Moseley et al., 2012). This integral relationship between exteroceptive and interoceptive signals is evinced in many other respects as well, including discovery that histamine reactivity increases in the biological hand, correlating with disownership experiences (Barnsley et al., 2011). It seems clear that multi-sensory processes alone are not sufficient to explain the RHI, and that a normative body model as well as interoceptive processing need also be taken into account. Of course achieving a more complete explanation will require greater nuance as, for example, simple distance probably does not constrain in the way described above; a more complex model that limns the interplay of spatial and temporal parameters is needed (Zopf et al., 2010; Constantini et al., 2016). But these additions do contribute to explanatory adequacy, while at the same time being broadly consistent with Ehrsson's desideratum that the explanation be parsimonious, because like MSH neither of these additions involve higher cognitive functions. Adequate scientific explanations, however, should do more than merely explain what happens; they should also explain why, under like circumstances, there is variability, even the failure to occur (Lipton, 2004). Evidence from multiple investigations-evidence that is consistent with our findings-shows that when standardized induction procedures for the RHI are employed, variability is the norm (e.g., Botvinick, 2004; Kanayama et al., 2009; Marotta et al., 2016), even to the extent that approximately one-third of participants fail to experience the illusion (e.g., Ehrsson et al., 2004; Durgin et al., 2007; Lloyd, 2007). No doubt to some degree this variability is explainable by multi-sensory processes, duly complemented by a normative model of the body and by integration with interoceptive processes. Ehrsson (2012, p. 783), however, acknowledges that currently we are unable to explain variability within or "immunity" to the illusion, and conjectures that these phenomena might be understood with respect to differences in the degree to which people rely on proprioceptive information. But multiple studies suggest that proprioception does not strongly correlate with the illusion (e.g., Zopf et al., 2010; Rohde et al., 2011) or, to that extent that the two do correlate, it is the illusion-the conscious experience-that causally affects proprioception, not the reverse (Abdulkarim and Ehrsson, 2016). This renders implausible the suggestion that greater reliance upon proprioception could play the conjectured role. Of course some further tweaking of the MSH might enhance its explanatory adequacy, but the problem may reside elsewhere, perhaps with the disinclination to consider a possible role played by higher cognitive functions. Although the received view of multisensory integration is that it is automatic and pre-attentive, a variety of theoretical considerations and recent experimental findings suggest that top-down attention can interact with integrative processes so as to enhance clarity, reduce ambiguity, facilitate feature-binding, and so forth (Talsma et al., 2012). Indeed, an association between bimodal integration and attention has been demonstrated already by several studies (Spence and Driver, 1997; Gondan et al., 2011). Especially noteworthy are investigations of audiovisual integrative processing: Talsma et al. (2007) discovered that full attention to both modalities is necessary for successful integration. And, not only has the Talsma et al. finding been reconfirmed, attention has also been shown to play a role in modulating the activation of bimodal and unimodal regions- e.g., the superior temporal sulcus and the extrastriate cortex (Morís Fernández et al., 2015). In contrast, with the exception of Wahn and König (2015), far less scrutiny has been given to how attention or other higher cognitive functions might affect integration of touch and vision, to say nothing of proprioception. Accordingly, in view of the explanatory failings encountered when higher cognitive functions are neglected as well as findings concerning the influence of top-down attention, we determined to investigate the possibility that executive functions are modulating the RHI. Among various executive functions, attention-related constructs like mind wandering and task switching appear to be especially relevant to the RHI. Mind wandering occurs when executive components of attention shift away from external tasks to internal thoughts and feelings (Smallwood and Schooler, 2006, 2015). It signals a failure of executive control to block the interference of those internal thoughts on a primary external task (McVay and Kane, 2010) and, at the same time, it signals a redirection of those executive resources to endogenously generated mental contents (Christoff et al., 2009). Task switching, on the other hand, which is taken to be at the very "nexus" of executive control (Schneider and Logan, 2009), enables people to redirect their attention away from the endogenous and back to the external (Hofmann et al., 2012). Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand Conceptually, there might be some resistance to treating the RHI as involving a task, especially since the focus here is only on experienced ownership of a body part, not an action, which are distinct types of belonging experience (Tsakiris et al., 2010a,b; Lane, 2014). But task switching can be thought of as an indicator of cognitive flexibility (Diamond, 2013), and on some accounts the RHI self-reported questionnaires are taken to be measurements more of judged rather than experienced ownership (de Vignemont, 2011b). If we allow that judgment plays some role in the RHI, then we have opened the door to higher cognitive functions, and flexibility of function is an important part of enabling a subject to report that a rubber hand belongs to self. Yet, to our knowledge, no study has examined directly the degree to which these executive functions might influence multisensory integration. Hence, the present study is designed to do just that, to investigate the relationship among the RHI, task switch, and mind wandering. We conjecture that a role of executive functions in the RHI is to refocus participants' attention to external task-related stimuli, resulting in stronger RHI experiences. On the other hand, we conjecture that it is less likely for mind wanderers to experience the rubber hand belonging to self. We further conjecture that people who are better at task switching might be more efficient at refocusing attention onto the illusory experience, which may in turn enhance the vividness and quicken the onset time of the RHI. To complement task switch andmindwandering experiments, because top-down attention plays a significant role in audiovisual integration, we added an Attentional Control Scale, in order to determine whether persons who are better at attentional control would also have a more pronounced RHI experience. Attentional Control Scale items comprise two parts: attentionfocus and attention-shift. As the terms suggest, attention-focus items are used to estimate participants' capacity to stay engaged, and attention-shift items are used to estimate participants' aptitude for shifting attention. Based on our conjecture that higher executive function enables individuals to refocus their attention to the external task-related stimuli-stroking of the rubber and biological hands-we expected that participants with better attentional control would also evince early onset and robust experience of the RHI. It should be born inmind that the purpose of our investigation is to provide a sufficient explanation of a particular type of conscious experience-the sensation that a rubber hand belongs to self. The role that we suggest is being played by topdown attentional mechanisms is consistent with the role played by top-down attention in more comprehensive theories of conscious experience, such as the global neuronal workspace hypothesis (e.g., Dehaene et al., 2006; Tsakiris et al., 2010b): that is, top-down attention seems to be a necessary condition that enables preconscious or subliminal processes to become consciously reportable. Although we are agnostic as to whether this hypothesis succeeds as a general theory of consciousness, it does seem applicable to the RHI. Our hypothesis is that the role of executive function in RHI is to refocus cognitive resources from internal thoughts to external, task-related stimuli. Participants with higher mind wandering rates should respond to the RHI more slowly and experience it less robustly, as a result of their inclination to attend to internal thoughts rather than the external stimuli. In shifting attention to the external stimuli, there should be switch costs that accompany the shift. By hypothesis, participants with less switch cost are expected to respond to RHI faster. Moreover, the strength of the RHI correlates with whether participants are able to shift attention to external stimuli. METHODS Participants Thirty-six adults, including students and members of the general public, were recruited from the National Taiwan University and surrounding neighborhoods. All gave informed consent, had normal or suitably corrected-vision, were compensated for their participation, and were naïve to the purpose of RHI experiment. The study followed Human Subject Ethics Guidelines and was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Department of Psychology at the National Taiwan University. Stimuli and Apparatus Rubber Hand Illusion All participants were tested individually in a small and quiet room. Since earlier work suggests a right hemispheric dominance for body ownership experience (Ocklenburg et al., 2011), our current experiment was administered only to each participant's left hand and a corresponding rubber hand was employed. The experimenter stood in front of each seated participant who was asked to extend both arms on the table with palms facing down. Then, each participant inserted his/her actual left hand into a black cardboard tube so the left hand would be out of sight, from the participant's perspective. The rubber hand was placed next to the hidden real hand, within the participant's field of vision. A blanket was placed over the tube such that it covered each participant's elbow and forearm, as well as the space separating the rubber hand from his/her torso. Finally, the experimenter used two paintbrushes to stroke both the actual and the rubber hand. Each participant was exposed to two conditions with order counterbalanced: synchronous and asynchronous. In both conditions, the experimenter stroked the participant's real hand and the rubber hand from thumb to little finger and back, at a pace of approximately once per 2 s, for 3min. In the synchronous condition, the experimenter stroked both the real hand and the rubber hand simultaneously. In the asynchronous condition, the experimenter alternated between the real hand and the rubber hand. Botvinick and Cohen (1998) found that participants reported an experience of ownership for the rubber hand when strokes were applied in synchrony. Because the ownership experience does not occur when stokes are applied in an asynchronous manner, it seems that synchronization of visual and tactile information is essential for the RHI (cf. Constantini et al., 2016). Therefore, we follow the convention in the RHI literature to use the asynchronous condition as the baseline to ensure that the RHI is indeed induced by the Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 3 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand synchronous strokes, and not by visual or tactile sensations alone (or both). Two foot-pedals placed under the participant's feet were connected to a computer in order to measure the onset time of subjective ownership or belonging, which is the specific aspect of the RHI that we investigated. Participants were instructed to step on the left pedal as soon as the stroking began and to step on the right pedal as soon as they began to experience the rubber hand as part of self. Touch referral is, arguably, the most distinctive perceptual event associated with the illusion, but the RHI can be induced even when participants cannot see the hand, and the experience of ownership has a richer phenomenology (Ehrsson, 2012). Accordingly, we concerned ourselves with ownership, the respect in which the rubber hand is experienced as belonging to self (Lane, 2012, 2015). Unfortunately, several studies have raised doubts about the reliability of proprioceptive drift, a commonly used behavioral proxy, as an indicator of the ownership experience for the rubber hand (e.g., Ehrsson et al., 2004; Kammers et al., 2009; Zopf et al., 2010; Rohde et al., 2011). Indeed, it even seems to be the case that when drift and ownership experience are positively correlated, it is the conscious experience that causes drift, not the reverse (Abdulkarim and Ehrsson, 2016). Accordingly, for the purpose of investigating the ownership experience, we developed a new, online proxy. We discovered that asking participants to indicate the moment they begin to experience the rubber hand as belonging to self is a highly reliable measure of illusion strength (Lane et al., 2017). This technique enabled us to investigate the RHI's temporal dynamics, providing in-the-moment rather than only retrospective data, thereby introducing a new methodological approach. In fact, despite the highly suggestive environment of the RHI induction, many participants, nevertheless, reported no sensation whatsoever, showing that this technique is a useful tool for measuring variation with the RHI. Moreover, we have previously established that onset time can be effectively employed in concert with questionnaires (Lane et al., 2017), such as the nine-item questionnaire created by Botvinick and Cohen (1998). As indicated by Botvinick and Cohen (1998), only items one to three exhibited statistical significance in production of affirmative responses. Therefore, for this study we measured the strength or intensity of the RHI (Morgan et al., 2011) by only taking the mean of items one to three in the Botvinick and Cohen questionnaire. Also, just as in Botvinick and Cohen (1998), each item is rated from−3 to 3. Mind Wandering In order to determine individual variation in mind wandering- the degree to which minds wander from the current task to private thoughts or feelings (Smallwood and Schooler, 2006)-we used a modified version of the Robertson et al. (1997) Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). It is a continuous "Go" or "No-go" task that requires participants to respond to all nontargets (letters of the alphabet, except C) by pressing down on the space bar as quickly as possible. When the target, the letter "C," appears, participants were required to inhibit response (viz., perform no action). The target to non-target ratio was 1:19. During the administration of SART, 30 thought probes were inserted pseudo-randomly. These probes comprised three options, all pertaining to what participants were thinking about immediately prior to the probe. Participants were required to indicate whether their thoughts concerned (a) the task, (b) task performance, or (c) matters irrelevant to the task. Thus, mind wandering is defined as the degree to which participants' thoughts prior to the probe are irrelevant to the task, and the degree of mind wandering was calculated as the ratio of taskirrelevant responses for the 30 thought probes. Task Switching Similar to the standard task switch paradigm, participants were asked to make binary judgments. They had to decide (1) whether digits that appeared on the screen were odd or even (when they appeared on the upper field), or (2) whether they were greater than or less than five (when they appeared on the lower field). Ability to switch between the two tasks was assessed by comparing the reaction times (RTs) in task-switch trials (switching from one task to another) and task-repetition trials (consecutive performance of the same task). See Figure 1 for details (adapted from Erickson et al., 2008). We predicted that task-switch trials would prolong RT relative to task-repetition trials. Thus, adeptness at switching could be determined by calculating the average RT delay for all participants-individuals with shorter delay would be more proficient at switching. Participants were first given one practice block of 30 trials. Next, we gave them a total of four blocks, each of which comprised 60 trials. We then measured the RTs of the taskrepetition and task-switch trials, and calculated the switch cost (i.e., the difference between mean RTs of task-switch trials and task-repetition trials). Attentional Control Scale The Attentional Control Scale (see Appendix) is designed to explore distinct aspects of attentional control (Derryberry and Reed, 2002): items one to nine concern the ability to attentionfocus; items 10–20 concern the ability to attention-shift. Attention-focus items are subjective reports of a participant's capacity to stay engaged (e.g., "When trying to focus my attention on something, I have difficulty blocking out distracting thoughts"). On the other hand, attention-shift items are subjective reports of a participant's aptitude for shifting attention from one task to another (e.g., "It takes me a while to get really involved in a new task"). After completing the experiment, two scores were calculated: the average for attention-focus and the average for attention-shift. Design and Procedure Administration order of the RHI, Mind Wandering, and Task Switch were counterbalanced across participants. The Attentional Control Scale was administered after the first three had been completed. RESULTS Rubber Hand Illusion To analyze the RHI questionnaire ratings, a t-test was performed in order to test the difference between the mean of items one to Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 4 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand FIGURE 1 | An example of the task switch procedure. A fixation cross is situated at the center of a screen and a series of digits (1–4, 6–9) appear in the surrounding quadrants. Participants were asked to press key "A" on a standard qwerty keyboard when digits were odd and on the upper field, or when digits were greater than five and on the lower field; participants were asked to press key ";" on the same standard qwerty keyboard when digits were even and on the upper field, or less than five and on the lower field. Consecutive tasks that require the same type of judgment-e.g., deciding whether upper field digits are odd–count as task-repetition trials. Consecutive tasks that require different types of judgment-e.g., first deciding whether a lower field digit is greater than five, then deciding whether an upper field digit is odd–count as task-switch trials. three under the synchronous and the asynchronous conditions (Figure 2A). The main effect, reflecting this difference, was significant [t(35) = 7.3944, p < 0.001]. This finding suggests that participant's RHI experience was stronger or more intense when stroking was synchronous than when it was asynchronous. For the onset time data, the t-test that concerned the difference between synchronous and asynchronous stroking (Figure 2B) showed that the main effect, reflecting this difference, was significant [t(35) = −6.3785, p < 0.001]. This result suggests that participants experienced the illusion (viz., feeling the rubber hand belongs to self) quicker when stroking was synchronous than when it was asynchronous. Additionally, we discovered a correlation between mean RHI, as indicated by onset time for ownership, and RHI strength, as indicated by the mean of items one to three (r = −0.74, p < 0.001, Figure 2C), when the asynchronous condition was subtracted from the synchronous condition. The RHI strength was calculated in this manner because we took the score in the asynchronous conditions as the baseline. This correlation implies that the more vivid or the stronger the experience of the RHI, the earlier is the onset of experienced ownership for the rubber hand. These findings concerning the relationship between questionnaire and onset time ratings are consistent with our previous findings (Lane et al., 2017). Hierarchical Regression Analyses To investigate how the RHI experience was affected by different aspects of executive function, we conducted two hierarchical regressions with the onset time of the RHI and the RHI questionnaire ratings as dependent variables respectively. The regression analysis of the RHI onset time could reveal how executive functions affect the temporal dynamics of experiencing the RHI, whereas the regression analysis of the RHI questionnaire ratings could reveal how executive functions affect the intensity of the RHI. Based on the hypothesis mentioned in the Introduction section, we entered executive function predictors in the following order: (1) the SART score in the mind wandering task, (2) the attention-shift rating in the attentional control scale, (3) the switch cost in the task switching task, and (4) the attention-focus rating in the attentional control scale. Hierarchical Regression of the Onset Time of RHI The results of the hierarchical regression on the RHI onset time are shown in Table 1. These results showed that the increased R2 between Model 2 and Model 1 [F(1, 33) = 6.7606, p < 0.05], and the increased R2 between Model 3 and Model 2 [F(1, 32) = 4.7496, p < 0.05] were both significant, but the increased R2 between Model 3 and Model 4 was not significant [F(1, 31) = 0.8113, p = 0.3747]. That is, Model 3 explains the onset time of the RHI better thanModel 2 andModel 1; however, Model 4 does not explain the onset time better than Model 3. Therefore, we chose Model 3 to explain the results of the RHI onset time, since Model 3 could explain the variance of the onset time with fewer predictors. In Model 3, the attention-shift ratings were negatively related to the onset time of the RHI [t(32) = −2.243, p < 0.05], while the switch costs were positively related to the onset time of the RHI [t(32) = 2.186, p < 0.05]. This suggests that participants who could shift their attention from one task to another with less switch cost could respond more quickly to the RHI experience (Figure 3). Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 5 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand FIGURE 2 | (A) The difference in RHI questionnaire ratings between synchronous and asynchronous conditions (B) The difference in onset time between synchronous and asynchronous conditions. The error bars in both (A) and (B) represent standard errors (SE) of the mean. (C) Correlation between RHI strength-the difference in mean for items one to three, as rated by RHI questionnaire between synchronous and asynchronous conditions-and onset time for RHI. TABLE 1 | Results of the hierarchical regression analysis of the RHI onset time. Predictor Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Mind wandering (SART score) 31.17 −8.926 −7.172 −8.925 Attention-shift rating −64.849* −56.449* −45.156* Task switch (switch cost) 101.699* 106.271 Attention-focus rating −28.467 R2 0.0145 0.1683 0.2764 0.2948 ∆R2 0.1538 0.1081 0.0184 F 0.502 3.34* 4.074* 3.24* F of increased R2 6.7606* 4.7496* 0.8113 *p < 0.05. Hierarchical Regression of the RHI Questionnaire Ratings The results of the hierarchical regression of the RHI questionnaire ratings are shown in Table 2. These results showed that only the difference of R2 between Model 1 and Model 2 was significant [F(1, 33) = 3.346, p < 0.05]. This finding suggests that Model 2 explains the variance of RHI questionnaire ratings better than Model 1. However, Model 3 and 4 do not explain the RHI questionnaire ratings better than Model 2. In Model 2, the attention-shift ratings were positively related to the RHI questionnaire ratings [t(31) = 2.510, p < 0.05], suggesting that the participants with higher attention-shift ratings have stronger RHI experience (Figure 4). In short, the results suggest that participants who are more adept at shifting attention to the new task with less switch cost would respond to the RHI faster (as indicated by the RHI onset time), and the participants with higher attention-shift ratings would experience stronger RHI (as indicated by the questionnaire ratings). Together, our results suggest that cognitive flexibility is a key factor for the RHI. The ability of shifting attention toward external visual-tactile stimulation affects both the RHI onset time and strength. GENERAL DISCUSSION Previously it has been supposed that MSH, when appropriately supplemented, could provide sufficient explanations for the RHI (Ehrsson, 2012). Partially in the interest of parsimony, and partially because the additions made to MSH (e.g., Tsakiris, 2011, 2017; Moseley et al., 2012) seemed up to the Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 6 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand FIGURE 3 | Correlations between the RHI onset time and (A) Attention-Shift Aptitude (B) Switch Cost (s) in Model 3. TABLE 2 | Results of hierarchical regression analysis of The RHI questionnaire rating. Predictor Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Mind wandering (SART score) −0.6511 0.3788 0.3499 0.4056 Attention-shift rating 1.6658* 1.5274 1.1686 Task switch (switch cost) −1.6758 −1.8210 Attention-focus rating 0.9044 R2 0.0099 0.1686 0.2145 0.2436 ∆R2 0.1587 0.0459 0.0291 F 0.341 3.346* 2.912 2.496 F of increased R2 6.5029* 1.8800 1.1937 *p < 0.05. task of increasing MSH's explanatory adequacy and scope, higher cognitive functions were neglected. The intent of our investigations has not been to suggest that multisensory integration is inessential to experience of the RHI, nor indeed to suggest that a pre-existing body model or interoception do not contribute importantly to solving the explanatory puzzles of embodiment. Instead, our intent has been to suggest that an adequate explanation of the variable experiences of those who undergo the RHI induction procedure will need to take into account another factor-executive and other higher cognitive functions. Discussion of executive function's role in this respect may be counter-intuitive, since all healthy participants know that a detached rubber hand could not belong to self. One might even be inclined to think there is a need to inhibit executive functions in order to experience the RHI, given the patent absurdity of bodies adopting disconnected parts. But our findings suggest that FIGURE 4 | Correlations between the RHI questionnaire rating and attention-shift aptitude in Model 2. adequate explanation of the presence of the illusion intensity variation that is so often reported (e.g., Durgin et al., 2007; Kanayama et al., 2009) might require inclusion of executive functions playing specific roles. Foremost among these are attention-involving executive functions, including task switch and attention shift. Both seem to be playing a modulatory role. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 7 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand Indeed, it might be that a certain degree of the cognitive flexibility that these contribute to our cognitive economy is a prerequisite for the having of such an illusory experience. Filippetti and Tsakiris (2017) recently showed that participants' accuracy on reporting their heartbeats, a performance index of the ability to perceive internal bodily signals, was improved after experiencing the RHI. Improvement of interoceptive awareness, however, was only observed for participants who exhibited relatively low accuracy before the RHI experience. The authors suggest that body-ownership is a hierarchical construct that is dependent upon multisensory signals, and that synchronous visual-tactile stimulation can improve the performance of participants on tasks of interoceptive awareness. Their finding is consistent with previous findings that attention to exteroceptive bodily signals enhances processing of self-related information (Tsakiris et al., 2007, 2011; Ainley et al., 2012; Maister and Tsakiris, 2014). These findings seem to be compatible with ours, in the following way: if task switch and attention shift are understood as indicators of cognitive flexibility that are trainable, which appears to be the case (Karbach and Kray, 2009; Diamond, 2013), then the improvement of interoceptive awareness might be best understood as a result of the RHI "training" sessions, sessions that promote the ability to attend, flexibly, to sensory signals. In this study, participants always filled in the Attentional Control Scale after they completed all RHI, mind wandering, and task switch experiments. One might wonder whether this sequence biased participants' responses. But items in the Attentional Control Scale are not directly related to those tasks; instead, they measure one's attention capability, in general. Therefore the observed effects in the present study should not be influenced by the fixed order of the tasks and questionnaire. One of the limitations of this study is that it concerns body image representations, and is silent as regards body schema representations. The standard RHI protocol, the one employed here, comprises passive tactile stimulation and subjective report; hence, it seems only to inform about body image, not body schema, which typically involves sensorimotor coordination (de Vignemont, 2010). In principle image and schema can dissociate, but since our experiment involved no reaching, grasping, or pointing, we leave for future studies to determine whether executive functions can similarly modulate body schema representations. A second, further line of investigation suggested by our findings concerns cognitive flexibility. In our effort to explain variability of illusion experience, we have suggested that higher cognitive functions are playing a modulatory role and that a degree of cognitive flexibility might be a prerequisite for the having of illusory conscious experiences of the sort on display in the RHI. Because task switch and attention shift seem to be trainable, we conjecture that relevant training, by promoting the ability to attend, flexibly, to sensory signals, should enhance performance on the RHI. In the history of science, parsimony is widely regarded as a pragmatic virtue, sometimes even as an epistemic virtue (Quine, 1966). But premature ambitions to parsimony can inhibit the development of science, resulting in theories of limited explanatory scope. 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(2007). Neural signatures of body ownership: a sensory network for bodily self-consciousness. Cereb. Cortex 17, 2235–2244. doi: 10.1093/cercor/ bhl131 Tsakiris, M., Longo, M. R., and Haggard, P. (2010b). Having a body versus moving your body: neural signatures of agency and body-ownership. Neuropsychologia 48, 2740–2274. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010. 05.021 Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 9 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand Tsakiris, M., Tajadura-Jiménez, A., and Constantini, M. (2011). Just a heartbeat away from one's body: interoceptive sensitivity predicts malleability of body-representation. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 278, 2470–2476. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2547 Wahn, B., and König, P. (2015). Vision and haptics share spatial attentional resources and visuotactile integration is not affected by high attentional load. Multisens. Res. 28, 371–392. doi: 10.1163/22134808-00002482 Zopf, R., Savage, G., andWilliams,M. A. (2010). Crossmodal congruencymeasures lateral distance effects on the rubber hand illusion. Neuropsychologia 48, 713–725. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.10.028 Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Copyright © 2017 Yeh, Lane, Chang and Chien. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 10 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 2172 Yeh et al. Switching to the Rubber Hand APPENDIX Attentional Control Scale. Items 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16, and 20 were coded inversely, consistent with the method employed by Derryberry and Reed (2002). Focus attention 1. It's very hard for me to concentrate on a difficult task when there are noises around. 2. When I need to concentrate and solve a problem, I have trouble focusing my attention 3. When I am working hard on something, I still get distracted by events around me. 4. My concentration is good even if there is music in the room around me. 5. When concentrating, I can focus my attention so that I become unaware of what's going on in the room around me. 6. When I am reading or studying, I am easily distracted if there are people talking in the same room 7. When trying to focus my attention on something, I have difficulty blocking out distracting thoughts. 8. I have a hard time concentrating when I'm excited about something. 9. When concentrating, I ignore feelings of hunger or thirst. Shift attention 10. I can quickly switch from one task to another. 11. It takes me a while to get really involved in a new task. 12. It is difficult for me to coordinate my attention between listening and writing required when taking notes during lectures. 13. I can become interested in a new topic very quickly when I need to. 14. It is easy for me to read or write while I'm also talking on the phone. 15. I have trouble carrying on two conversations at once. 16. I have a hard time coming up with new ideas quickly. 17. After being interrupted or distracted, I can easily shift my attention back to what I was doing before. 18. When a distracting thought comes to mind, it is easy for me to shift my attention away from it. 19. It is easy for me to alternate between two different tasks. 20. It is hard for me to break from one way of thinking about something and look at it from another point of view. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 11 December 2017 | Volume 8 | Article


the consciousness experiment

Philosophy

NeuroQuantology	|	February	2022	|	Volume	20	|	Issue	2	|	Page	165-167	|	doi:	10.14704/nq.2022.20.2.NQ22085 Juan	Arellano	Vega	/	The	Consciousness	Experiment eISSN	1303-5150 www.neuroquantology.com 165 The	Consciousness	Experiment Juan	Arellano	Vega1* Abstract Since	John	Von	Neumann's	proposition	in	1932	of	a	relationship	between	quantum	mechanics	and	the	brain,	different perspectives	and	proposals	have	evolved	(Tarlaci,	2010).	Hu	&	Wu	(2006)	point	out	that	the	seat	of	consciousness would	be the spin	within the	membranes	of	neurons and	proteins in the	brain. Sieb (2016) applied the theory	of relativity to spatiotemporal consciousness and found correlations with aspects of brain functioning. Another suggestion	is	that	consciousness	emerges	because	of	the	Orchestrated	Objective	Reduction	in	microtubules	(Hameroff &	Penrose,	2003).	However,	few	studies	about	the	psychological	implications	of	the	relationship	between	quantum mechanics	and	the	brain	and	its	application	to	individual	psychology	exist. Key	Words:	Quantum	Mechanics,	Consciousness,	Psychology. DOI	Number:	10.14704/nq.2022.20.2.NQ22085 NeuroQuantology	2022;	20(2):165-167 Introduction Karl Jaspers (1913) defined consciousness as the momentary	whole,	that	is,	everything	that	occurs	in the experience of a given moment, as the background against	which	psychic life takes place. This	psychic	experience	in	the	consciousness	has	the same reality as the explorable (objectifiable) exterior. According to such definition, a model of consciousness is elaborated that relates aspects of people's lives to the direct experience using a hypothetical	consciousness	experiment.	The	aim	of this	paper	is	to	describe	the	theory	of	the	states	of consciousness	as	a	new	understanding	to	explain	the consciousness	experience. The	Consciousness	Experiment By using an analogy of our consciousness	with an statistical experiment, the States of Consciousness (SC) is defined as all the possibilities of consciousness at a given moment; hence, the experiment	is	to	know	which	possibilities	express	in the consciousness at a given moment. To know which	of	them	is	most	likely	to	occur,	one	can	apply a stochastic view and think as one would reason when calculating a probability of an event in any experiment,	in	this	case,	it	would	be	the	probability that one of the possibilities for a consciousness occurs	at	a	given	moment	(Ψ).	Thus,	the	SC	(state	of consciousness) would have a solution for the present	moment. The purpose is to determine the probability	of	a	consciousness	possibility.	Using	the logic of a statistical experiment, we define the sample	space	of	a	SC,	given	that	the	SC	is	determined by	two	large	sets	of	variables	or	realities	of	being.	On the	one	hand,	the	possibilities	to	which	an	individual consciousness	has	access	are	delimited	by	its	frame of	reference	(ω),	everything	that	the	person	knows and	can	express	in	words.	The	reference	framework refers	explicitly	to	the	definition	of	the	world	that	a person makes in terms of a particular cultural knowledge	expressed	with	its	nuances. On the other hand, the state of consciousness is delimited	by	the	person's	position	in	the	world	(α). It begins in the body and explicitly the place our physical	body	occupies	in	space	and	time.	No	one	in the	world	can	occupy	the	same	space	and	time	that one	body,	and	no	matter	how	close	another	person may	be at any given time, it can	never occupy the same	space	and	time	as	others. Corresponding	author:	Juan	Arellano	Vega Address:	1*Chiguayante,	Chile. 1*E-mail:	firstname.lastname@example.com Relevant	conflicts	of	interest/financial	disclosures:	The	authors	declare	that	the	research	was	conducted	in	the	absence	of any	commercial	or	financial	relationships	that	could	be	construed	as	a	potential	conflict	of	interest. Received:	31	December	2021	Accepted:	28	January	2022 NeuroQuantology	|	February	2022	|	Volume	20	|	Issue	2	|	Page	165-167	|	doi:	10.14704/nq.2022.20.2.NQ22085 Juan	Arellano	Vega	/	The	Consciousness	Experiment eISSN	1303-5150 www.neuroquantology.com 166 The	above	means that	no two	SCs	are the	same	or comparable, and therefore, it is not possible from any point of view to categorise these states to establish groupings that facilitate the work of diagnosis	and	therapeutic	intervention.	Similarly,	it includes the whole body trough its sensations, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and bioenergy. Second,	the	position	in	the	world	involves	the	roles that	the	person	has	concerning	others	so	that	we	can be children, parents, siblings, friends, partners, merchants, artists, engineers, or others. Our definition of ourselves regarding what we do concerning others includes our position in the world. This helps configure the search for the probability of the emergence of a possibility of consciousness in each SC (	Ρ Ψ ). The latter is represented	in	the	following	formula: Ρ Ψi = Ψi( ∗ * And	the	SC	definition	is	as	follows: +, = Ψ1 + Ψ2 + ⋯Ψn( ∗ * According to the current level of knowledge in society,	it	is	not	possible	to	find	Ρ	(Ψi)	aprioristically. However,	following	the	logic	above,	any	expression that	takes	the	present	experience	of	an	individual	for a	given	moment	possesses	the	highest	probability	of occurrence concerning its sample space. Thus, the multiple	possible	interactions	between	a	position	in the	world	and	the	subject's	referential	frame. This	definition	of	a	SC	is	exclusively	applicable	to	a given time of the momentary whole of an individual's	life	experience.	However,	life	itself	takes place in present times that inexorably perpetually follow one after the other until life ceases with death. In this way, this formula is extended to a moment	1,	moment	2,...,	moment	n. SC(Ψ456	78	9) = Ψ46 ( ∗ * , Ψ4; ( ∗ *... , Ψ49 ( ∗ * An extensive form of the definition of SC is then expressed,	which	involves	the	temporal	evolution	of SC. Under psychologically and psychiatrically normal conditions, later SCs are part of the development	of	an	earlier	SC.	In	other	words,	a	later SC	is	already	contained	in	an	earlier	SC.	Thus,	the	SC allows for the experience of continuity of consciousness, even though it is, in fact, discontinuous, as the model indicates. Since, in general, both our frame of reference and our position	in	the	world	remain	stable,	there	is	stability in	the	solution	of	the	consciousness	experiment,	i.e., in the subject's experience. However, drastic changes of a state of consciousness, i.e., an abrupt alteration	of	both	the	position	in	the	world	and	the frame	of reference, can trigger a radical change in the	access	to	possibilities	of	consciousness. Consequently, one might say that a traumatic experience is characterised and explained by such consciousness changes. For example, if someone who	believes that	ET life is	possible and that such civilisations visit us happens to	meet an	ET in the middle	of	the	street	one	day,	such	an	experience	will be less traumatic than for a person	who does not believe	in	ET	life.	This	prediction	bases	on	the	model of states of consciousness	mentioned. Believing or not in	something	can	be	considered	a	solution in	a consciousness	experiment,	that	is	Ψ.	At	some	point, the	person	came	to	the	idea	that	ET	life	is	real	and visited	the	planet. On the other hand, the other person came to the opposite	conclusion.	Let	us	call	the	believer	person A	and	the	non-believer,	person	Z.	For	A	to	meet	an ET	in	the	street,	although	unexpected,	is	a	possibility given	its	beliefs.	For	Z,	meeting	an	ET	in	the	street	is not	possible.	The	reason	A	and	Z	sustain	their	beliefs is the definition of their sample spaces of consciousness: their position in the world and interaction	with	their	reference	frame.	Therefore,	if both meet an ET in the street, Z will suffer more severe	psychiatric	consequences	than	A.	It	does	not mean	that	A	cannot	suffer	psychiatric	consequences, but the intensity of these consequences should be less.	It	is	always	in	the	hypothetical	exercise	where both	A	and	Z	have	the	same	experience	with	this	ET, which	is	certainly	unlikely. Up	to	this	point,	the	only	focus	has	been	one	model of	consciousness	and	its	evolution	for	an	individual, but	it	would	be	interesting	analysing	the	example	of two	people	who	share	a	moment.	Assume	that	two persons interact.	Whatever the situation, the	SC	of both changes as the other is sensed through the person's	senses	(sight,	touch,	hearing,	smell,	taste). That immediately alters that person's SC by transforming (α). The position in the world is transformed	because	the	senses	perceive	the	other person,	that	is,	the	body,	and	this	alters	the	sample space where the possible possibilities of consciousness reside for a given moment. Thus, being	alone	implies	a	state	of	consciousness	that	is very different from being accompanied. Perhaps that is why mystics of all ages and approaches recommend spending time alone in spiritual practices	daily. In the example, from this theory	of consciousness, one	might	say	that	a	joint	state	of	consciousness	can be defined between the two persons. Let us call NeuroQuantology	|	February	2022	|	Volume	20	|	Issue	2	|	Page	165-167	|	doi:	10.14704/nq.2022.20.2.NQ22085 Juan	Arellano	Vega	/	The	Consciousness	Experiment eISSN	1303-5150 www.neuroquantology.com 167 subject one and subject two both persons in the example. Once they interact, the joint state of consciousness	can	be	defined	as: +,1,2 = Ψ1... Ψn(1 ∗ *1 ∩ Ψ1... Ψy (2 ∗ *2 That means is that the most likely events for the solution	of the joint consciousness experiment are those where the possible possibilities of consciousness are shared. In other words, two people interacting spontaneously in a nonstructured	way do it based on	what they share of their perception of the present situation they are both	experiencing	and	the	elements	of	their	frame	of reference	and	their	position	in	the	world	shared	by both states of consciousness. This interaction pattern is observed frequently. It is most easily distinguishable when observing the interaction of two strangers because they do not know each other's world configuration; the interactions are often	based	on	the	present	situation.	For	example,	if two	people	are	standing	in	line	at	a	bank	waiting	and interacting based on the slowness of attention or something	else.	This	same	exercise	can	be	extended to	any	number	of	people	so	that	this	theory	allows for	comparative	analysis	of	states	of	consciousness between	societies	or	even	different	civilisations.	The latter	would	express	as: +,?@ABC = Ψ1... Ψn(1 ∗ *1 ∩ Ψ1... Ψy (2 ∗ *2 ∩ ... Ψ1... Ψx (E ∗ *F There	is	also	a	historical	level	of	analysis	about	the evolution of the states of consciousness of human groups. Thus, one might compare the state of consciousness of prehistoric humans with current humans.	A	simple	example	will	suffice	to	show	that this is possible. While prehistoric society did not know	about	automobiles,	they	are	an	integral	part	of everyday life today. What was the probability of occurrence of the automobile idea in the consciousness	of	prehistoric	society?	The	answer	is zero because it was not part of the frame of reference	at	the	time	since	it	had	not	been	invented. If	we	were	to	transport	a	prehistoric	person	to	New York Times Square during a hectic day, we could predict	that	its	reaction	would	be	traumatic	because its world would abruptly be shattered by an unfamiliar sensory experience (Position in the world), triggering a response in consciousness for which his biology is unprepared. The formulas herein give deductive support to the principle of coherence	of	mind. Discussion On	the	one	hand,	mathematical	language	is	used	to describe a particular understanding of consciousness.	Its	expression	is	nothing	other	than applying	the	probability	theory	to	an	understanding of consciousness as a momentary whole. Nevertheless, it is essential to clarify that this definition of probability can be replaced by any probability	distribution	that	works	adequately	with the distribution of the contents emerging empirically in the consciousness	of individuals.	On the other hand, the proposal does not state the nature	of	the	variables	presented.	Although	clearly, it is referring to the contents that emerge in an individual's	consciousness,	it	is	not	clear	how	these contents take the form or are represented in quantitative variables. In this respect, the author proposes that the variables should be conceptualised as discrete variables but with a distribution that	goes from	the least infinite to the most infinite and whose values only become relevant	as	univocal identifiers	of	psychic	contents on an individual level. From one individual to another, these values cannot be used again. The development	or	application	of	such	variables	to	the presented	model	is	part	of	the	suggested	future	lines of	research. Finally,	the	model	could	be	compared	with	empirical research	if	each	variable	of	the	consciousness	model is conceptualised as a set of latent or observed variables	that	represent	the	phenomenon	described as	the	position	in	the	world	and	frame	of	reference. It could then be correlated with the research participants' internal experience in terms of a phenomenological report of the experience. Furthermore, the model's determination of conscious	experience	has	application	in	the	clinical setting by structuring individual differences. Therefore, it	would	be	possible to explain a stable personality theory and different disorders in the clinical	domain,	just	as	the	model	is	consistent	with a	processual	conceptualisation	of	the	self. References Tarlaci	S.,	A	historical	view	of	the	relation	between	quantum	mechanics and the brain. NeuroQuantology, June 2010, Vol 8, Issue 2, Page	120-136. Hu and Wu, Thinking outside the box: story of spin-mediated consciousness	theory.	NeuroQuantology,	2006,	Issue	1,	pages	5-16. Sieb R., Human conscious experience is for dimensional. NeuroQuantology, December 2016, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page	630-644.	DOI:	10.14704/nq.2016.14.3.983 Hameroff &Penrose. Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections.	NeuroQuantology	2003;	1:	10-35. Karl Jaspers	(1913).	Psicopatología	General.	México:	Fondo	de	Cultura Económica.


Appeal to the court of experience

Philosophy

Geoffrey Stokes's introduction to Karl Popper's work portrays it as an evolving system of ideas and aims to explore the little-understood intricate logical relationships between Popper's work on scientific method and his philosophy of politics. It is one of the few books to cover the debate between Popper and the Frankfurt School.  Characteristic of many of Stokes's "criticisms" is that they are presented as Popper "admitting" or "granting" them - as if Popper was not the one who originally raised and dealt with them in the systematic elaboration of his philosophy. A refreshing exception is that Stokes acknowledges (but only in a footnote) that the idea that Popper was originally a "dogmatic falsificationist" is merely a Lakatosian myth.

Times Higher Education. May 28, 1999. Appeal to the court of experience Ray Scott Percival Review of: Popper: Philosophy, Politics and Scientific Method. By Geoffrey Stokes. Geoffrey Stokes's introduction to Karl Popper's work portrays it as an evolving system of ideas and aims to explore the littleunderstood intricate logical relationships between Popper's work on scientific method and his philosophy of politics. It is one of the few books to cover the debate between Popper and the Frankfurt School. The dogma of justificationism, that one should accept all and only those positions that can be justified, is an ideological juggernaut that will require decades of argument just to show that it is debatable. In contrast, Popper argued that knowledge can grow only through conjecture and refutation. This means justification is not only a waste of time but also impossible. Many commentators present it as simply a variant of the orthodoxy or ignore it in the hope it will go away. Stokes is one of the former. Stokes skips over what Popper regarded as William Bartley's important generalisation of his method, comprehensively critical rationalism (CCR). All positions are in principle potentially criticisable, without fear of circularity, infinite regress or dogmatism. Because he sees CCR through the spectacles of justificationism, Stokes deploys an argument against CCR that actually applies only to justificationism. Stokes places Popper's work and that of the Vienna Circle far too close together. True, both thought experience was an important court of appeal and science an astounding example of its use. But apart from agreeing on the value of the territory, they wanted to carve it up in incompatible ways. For Stokes, the Native Americans and European whites must have had very similar projects! For the Vienna Circle, a statement was scientific if and only if it was verifiable; otherwise, it was either a tautology or meaningless. For Popper a statement was scientific if it was refutable. While the circle banned metaphysics from science as strictly meaningless, Popper acknowledged metaphysics as deeply inspirational and integral to science. Characteristic of many of Stokes's "criticisms" is that they are presented as Popper "admitting" or "granting" them as if Popper was not the one who originally raised and dealt with them in the systematic elaboration of his philosophy. A refreshing exception is that Stokes acknowledges (but only in a footnote) that the idea that Popper was originally a "dogmatic falsificationist" is merely a Lakatosian myth. Popper: Philosophy, Politics and Scientific Method. First Edition Author Geoffrey Stokes ISBN 0 7456 0321 1 and 0322 X Publisher Polity