Imperfect Cognitions

This week's blogpost is from Browyn Finnigan, associate professor at Australian National University, on her recent publication  Self-related processing removal or revision? The Buddhist theory of no-self and the mechanisms of mindfulness  in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.  Browyn Finnigan There is strong evidence that mindfulness helps reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. But scientists are less certain about the mechanisms behind these effects. Inspired by the Buddhist idea of anattā, or no-self, some suggest that mindfulness works by attenuating or reducing all senses of self. Proponents argue that mindfulness fosters disidentification from one’s experience and reduces rumination, which plays a significant role in anxiety and depression. They infer that the benefits of mindfulness arise from decreasing rumination through a reduction in all kinds of ‘self-related processing’ (SRP). Drawing on the research of Britton and Lindahl, I argue that there is little...

Today's post is by  Victor Lange (University of Copenhagen) and Thor Grünbaum (University of Copenhagen) on their recent paper, " Transparency and the mindfulness opacity hypothesis " ( The Philosophical Quarterly, 2023)  Victor Lange Imagine that you are standing in front of Delacroix’s famous painting, Liberty Leading the People . In one situation, you might perceive the lines and colours as objects and properties of objects. The yellowness appear as the woman’s dress and the thin light blueness appear as the sky above her. In such a case, we say that these properties appear as representational properties.  In another situation, you might perceive the lines and colours as merely paint on the canvas. Say that you are interested in Delacroix’s technique, so you move closer to examine his brush strokes. Here, the yellowness and light blue do not appear as objects or properties of objects. Instead, they appear as features of the painting itself. In such case, we say that...

Today's post is by Dan Reardon who is currently an MSc student at the Institute for Mental Health , University of Birmingham. Dan is a medical doctor and an entrepreneur who has founded multiple fitness and nutrition companies, including venture capital funded FitnessGenes. He has been featured in InStyle, The New York Times, Men’s Fitness, Inc, Well+Good, Livestrong and on Fox News, ABC News, Inside Edition, Today, BBC News, and “The Doctors.” Dan has a keen interest in the demedicalization of young people, digital wellbeing and resilience. Dan Reardon I have a long-held belief that mental illness is far from something that is “real” in the disease sense, and yet the rate of growth of mental disorders, both the number of potential diagnoses (described by Foucault as being an invention of 19th century reformers), and the number of people suffering, is exponential. I’ve read countless accounts of mental illness being a choice of those that “suffer”, but I’ve realised the statement ...

Today's post is by Elliot Aronson (pictured below), Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz, and author of The Social Animal and Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) , with Carol Tavris. Social psychologists define hypocrisy as behaving contrary to one’s values or beliefs; in common vernacular, it can be defined as the failure to practice what one preaches. I think that just about everybody wants to see themselves as a person of integrity. It is a very powerful desire that transcends individual differences due to age, gender, race, socio-economic status, and nationality. This quest to maintain a self-image of integrity is quite touching; at the same time, it often distorts our memory or causes us to stretch to find justifications for actions that might appear hypocritical. Thus, it is far easier to see hypocrisy in others than it is to see it in oneself. If there are individual differences they lie not in the ability to behave hypo...