Fakulta filozofická; Katedra románských jazyků

Mgr. Marek Havlík, Ph.D. (NUDZ, Praha) - Personality Features and Mind-Body Problem & How can Strange Creatures Help Us with the Other Side of Consciousness. Personality Features and Mind-Body Problem. The elusive relationship between the mental domain and the physical brain, known as the mind-body problem, is still a hot topic of discussion among philosophers and neuroscientists. However, this discussion is still without clear or universally accepted answers. Rather than offering new philosophical theory, which would provide another possible solution, our study focused on the question whether personality features could influence intuitions of the mind-body problem. To test our hypothesis, we developed a questionnaire, which employed several theories of analytic philosophy of the mind and used well-known Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Our data show that the personality dimension of self-transcendence correlates with intuitive inclination toward reductive materialism or dualism. How can Strange Creatures Help Us with the Other Side of Consciousness. Theories of consciousness are based mostly upon the perceptual domains of consciousness. However, there is another side of consciousness, the intrinsic side of self-generated conscious experiences, now collectively referred to as mind-wandering. Even though the intrinsic side of consciousness represents almost 50 percent of our conscious experiences, it is still largely neglected in conscious studies. We assume there are two reasons for this. Firstly, the field of intrinsic conscious experiences is far more problematic than any other. Secondly, specific paradigms for capturing the correlates of intrinsic conscious experiences are almost non-existent. Nevertheless, we expect the intrinsic side of consciousness to soon take its place in conscious studies, but first a new paradigm will have to be devised, which would be of a similar design to the paradigms used in perceptual conscious studies. In this talk I will propose such a paradigm and I will present the preliminary data of our EEG and fMRI studies.