The book “The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind” of Julian Jaynes provides, not only a fascinating scenario about the evolution of modern consciousness from the consciousness of bicameral stone age man, but also a holistic view about schizophrenic consciousness. In fact, Jaynes regards schizophrenic as a bicameral man receiving commands of “God” as auditory and visu...

Recent studies have demonstrated an overlap between the neural substrate of resting-state activity and self-related processing in the cortical midline structures (CMS). However, the neural and psychological mechanisms mediating this so-called "rest-self overlap" remain unclear. To investigate the neural mechanisms, we estimated the temporal structure of spontaneous/resting-state activity, e.g. ...

The previously proposed cybernetic definition of a living (biological) individual and the cybernetic model of a psychical individual (a self endowed with subjective consciousness) are extended and compared, and their formal similarities are isolated and highlighted. It is argued that the emergence of the biological level of reality from the physical level and of the psychical level from the bio...

Many recent developments in technological design are aimed towards the ‘humanisation’ of technology, that is, making technology behave in a way that is more 'intuitive', 'friendly' or 'usable'. This assumes that technology is not in itself human but rather some external antagonistic force or object we are in perpetual conflict with. Contrary to this, I will defend the suggestion that technology...

The early 1980s were a time for rebuilding the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) after a few difficult years in the 1970s. Basic administrative functions were needed, and a series of annual, national conferences was resumed. Intellectual direction was provided by Heinz von Foerster and his idea of second-order cybernetics. Whereas other societies focused on technical aspects of cybernetics...

Distinctions between quantitative and qualitative social science misrepresent the actual choices confronting analysts of observations concerning social processes. Analysts regularly (if not always self-consciously) choose between adopting and avoiding formal representations of social processes. Despite widespread prejudices to the contrary, formalisms are available and helpful for all sorts of ...

The problem of freedom in modern philosophy has three basic components: (i) what is freedom, or what would it be to act freely? (ii) Is it possible so to act? (iii) And how important is leading a free life?1 Hegel proposed unprecedented and highly controversial answers to these questions. (i) What we want to be able to explain when we ask ‘what is freedom?’ are the conditions that must be fulfi...

In this experiment, a confederate was asked to mimic the posture and movements of participants who, subsequently, completed the French version (Pelletier & Vallerand, 1990) of the Scheier and Carver (1985) Self-consciousness Scale. Results showed that mimicry was associated with increased private and public self-consciousness and decreased social anxiety. Such data confirmed that mimicry is ass...

The current research examines whether self-consciousness subscales have prognostic value in the relationship between perceived norms and drinking and if that differs among college men and women. Results indicate that self-consciousness moderates gender differences in the relationship between perceived social norms and drinking. A strong positive relationship was found between perceived norms (d...

This study explored the relationships among dispositional self-consciousness, situationally induced-states of self-awareness, ego-mvolvement, and intrinsic motivation Cognitive evaluation theory, as applied to both the interpersonal and intrapersonal spheres, was used as the basis for making predictions about the effects of various types of self-focus Public selfconsciousness, social anxiety, v...