User blogs
How Unconditioned Consciousness, Infinite Information, Potential Energy, and Time Created Our Universe (by Leon H. Maurer)
Abstract: Since the cause and nature of consciousness and its derivation from the universe have never been satisfactorily explained by conventional reductive science, I offer here a rationally imaginative basis for a new scientific paradigm. This new view not only explains the origin of the physical universe, but also that potential consciousness, time, mass/energy and infinite holographic information are rooted in original spin momentum of unconditioned pre-cosmic (empty) space (see appendix) – the absolute source of all relative phenomenal existence. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/85
Whitehead & the Elusive Present: Process Philosophy’s Creative Core (by Gregory M. Nixon)
Abstract: Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) – all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In doing so, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination and if this relates to doing science. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/86
Phenomenal Time and its Biological Correlates (by Ram L. P. Vimal, Christopher J. Davia)
Abstract: Our goal is to investigate the biological correlates of the first-person experience of time or phenomenal time. ‘Time’ differs in various domains, such as (i) physical time (e.g., clock time), (ii) biological time, such as the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and (iii) the perceptual rate of time. One psychophysical-measure of the perceptual rate is the critical flicker frequency (CFF), in which a flashing light is perceived as unchanging. Focusing on the inability to detect change, as in CFF, may give us insight into phenomenal time. CFF varies from 24 Hz for dim light and 60 Hz in bright light and is lower for colored lights. We propose that problem of the phenomenal time can be addressed using two contrasting but complementary approaches (inability to detect changes vs. ability to detect changes): (1) The soliton-catalytic model that entails invariant quantum coherent state for temporal frequencies (TFs) >= CFF, where flickering light is perceived as unchanging, similar to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). (2) Temporal frequency tuned mechanisms model, which starts with ability to detect changes for TFs < CFF and then their sensitivities decreases to zero at CFF. For a subject who has CFF of 60 Hz, the duration of one cycle or time-period of the flickering light is approximately 16.7 ms. Phenomenal time may be quantized into ‘subjective occasions of experience’ (SE), which arise out of the interaction of the individual with situation (environment). Pioneering work examining the complex interaction of neurons suggests the possibility that macroscopic quantum states similar to a BEC may also occur in the brain (Davia, 2006; Freeman & Vitiello, 2006; Georgiev, 2004; Vimal & Davia, 2008). http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/81
Time and its Relationship to Consciousness: An Overview (by Mansoor Malik, Maria Hipolito)
Abstract: Time is one of the most fascinating and fundamental concepts in human life. Yet the physical meaning of time is far from understood. Subjective experience of time is equally intriguing and mysterious. Time may be considered an illusion according to modern physics, but its psychological impact cannot be denied. This current paper explores the conception of time in many diverse contemporary fields such as physics, psychology, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and anthropology. Disorders of time perception and neurophysiology of time is discussed. The idea of time as the creation of conscious mind is considered. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/82
Time, Consciousness and the Foundations of Science (by Stephen Deiss)
Abstract: For the reasons discussed herein, it makes sense to treat consciousness as a process pervasive in nature, at all levels of complexity. It can be seen as having a type of self-similarity. Recall that time supervenes on change, change requires contrast, and the contrast has to be detected. Whatever systems are changing are sensing and recording their reaction to the contrast in their behavior and in their state change. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/83
Why Time Flies When You're Having Fun (by William A. Adams)
Abstract: This paper distinguishes scientific and psychological time, and suggests how cycles of mentality define units of psychological time. This explanation explains the elasticity of psychological time and gives a broad account of the relationship between consciousness (mental activity) and time. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/73
Liberation and its Constraints: A Philosophical Analysis of Key Issues in Psychiatry (by Steven Bindeman)
Abstract: There can be no question that we are living in a post-Husserlian and post-Freudian world. Their modernist dream, consistent with Enlightenment ideals, was to create a perfectible science of consciousness that would ultimately have the power to liberate people from their confused and conflicted selves. But we can’t seem to get past the distortions that surround us. We are incessantly exposed to all sorts of images containing signifiers that we are unable to ignore. If in consequence we tend to internalize and become consumed by an increasingly large number of signified impressions that are uncontrollable and insatiable, then the limits of any science of consciousness become increasingly clear, and the insights made possible by hermeneutical interpretation must be included in our ongoing efforts to liberate ourselves from them. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/77
Now (by Gordon Globus)
Abstract: The Now is not of time but of Being, dis-closure. Time is continually stretched (Heidegger’s temporal ekstases) whereas Now is a match “between-two.” The now is unfolded anew in the dual mode match of each segmented Moment. There is no universal creative Now, as Nixon (2010) suggests, but unique fragmented Nows, monadological Nows, discreet dis-closures of Being within scattered monads of sufficient complexity. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/78
‘Landscapes’ of Mentality, Consciousness and Time (by Chris Nunn)
Abstract: This paper describes ‘mentality’ in terms of the contents of dynamic state spaces, then goes on to explore how consciousness-associated features of these contents, termed ‘ruling attractors’, could ‘map’ onto neural states. A fractal mapping, its links with memory mediated by the protein CaMKll, is pictured; it’s a view that, with minor differences of emphasis, turns out to have a lot in common with Stuart Hameroff’s ‘conscious pilot’ as far as the neural (though not quantum computational) picture is concerned. Finally, it is proposed that consciousness itself may be a local field, supervenient on fractally mapped ‘ruling attractors’and due to time-related symmetry breaking. Lines of evidence that may prove relevant to these ideas are indicated. I thus argue that consciousness can be described as a succession of ‘ruling attractors’ in the brain; it is based on fractal patterns of calcium waves, interacting with EEG fields and recorded by changes in protein (CaMKll) activation, while it may turn out to be a modulated ‘temporal field’. http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/79
