Explaining How Psychotherapy Affects the Brain Can Increase the Perceived Effectiveness of Psychotherapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Past studies repeatedly found that biological explanations of mental disorders cause laypeople and clinicians to doubt the effectiveness of psychotherapy. This could be clinically detrimental, as combined pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy is often optimal. The distrust of psychotherapy is theorized to stem from dualistic reasoning that psychotherapy, perceived as occurring in the mind, does not necessarily affect the brain. The current study aims to mitigate this belief in a randomized controlled trial. Participants (individuals with symptoms of depression (n = 262), the general public (n = 374), and mental health clinicians (n = 607)) rated the efficacy of psychotherapy for a depression case before and after learning that the case was biologically caused. Participants also received either an intervention passage describing how psychotherapy results in brain-level changes, an active control passage emphasizing the effectiveness of psychotherapy without explaining the underlying biological mechanisms, or no intervention. Unlike the active control and no-intervention control conditions, the intervention caused participants to judge psychotherapy as significantly more effective than at baseline even though they learned that depression was biologically caused. An intervention counteracting dualism can mitigate the belief that psychotherapy is less effective for biologically caused depression. Future research should examine the durability of this intervention in clinical settings.

Emerging collaboration amid the COVID-19 within the context of traditional-state dualism governance in Bali.

Collaboration between government and communities in disaster management has been demonstrated to create disaster risk reduction initiatives. However, implementing such collaboration poses challenges within regions characterised by dualism in governance. This study aims to investigate the disaster management system for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the context of dualism governance, where the state holds administrative control. Traditional authority (Adat) simultaneously regulates various facets of human life in Bali, Indonesia. The study used a qualitative approach, and data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 10 informants, 3 rounds of focus group discussions, and participant observations. The findings reveal that the dualism governance in Bali is manifested through responses to vulnerabilities within the community, Adat versus state laws, and the communication systems established between state administrative and traditional authorities during the COVID-19 response. Contribution: This study highlights the significant role of traditional governance in enhancing community resilience amid the limitations of state capacity in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite conflicting interests with the state, traditional government plays a crucial role in fostering collective community action to address vulnerabilities. The study underscores the importance of greater involvement of Adat actors in disaster management within the context of dualism in governance, spanning from mitigation planning to preparedness, response and recovery. This involvement has the potential to bolster community resilience.

The Human Body is the Collective Unconscious: Archetypal Images as Innate Embodied Metaphors.

For a significant part of its history, archetype theory has been undermined by criticisms containing unexamined Cartesian assumptions. Such assumptions treat all cognition as disembodied, consisting of mere manipulation of abstract, inherently meaningless signs mimicked from verbal instruction or cultural learning. Since the 1980s, due to the results of many independent disciplines, however, this view is being replaced with one of embodied cognition. This shift has important consequences for archetype theory, allowing us to provide a non-reductive biological anchor that explains many characteristics of the archetypal image.

Pendant une partie importante de son histoire, la théorie des archétypes a été discréditée par des critiques contenant des hypothèses cartésiennes qui n'étaient pas remises en question. De telles hypothèses considèrent que toute capacité cognitive est désincarnée et consiste en une simple manipulation de signes abstraits et intrinsèquement dépourvus de sens, imités à partir d'instructions verbales ou d'apprentissage culturel. Néanmoins depuis les années 1980, du fait de résultats provenant de plusieurs disciplines indépendantes, cette façon de voir est remplacée par une autre: celle de la capacité cognitive incarnée. Ce déplacement a des conséquences importantes pour la théorie des archétypes, nous permettant de fournir un ancrage biologique non­réducteur qui explique un grand nombre de caractéristiques de l'image archétypale.

Durante una parte significativa de su historia, la teoría de los arquetipos se ha visto afectada por críticas que contenían supuestos cartesianos no examinados. Dichos supuestos dan cuenta de toda cognición como incorpórea, consistiendo en la mera manipulación de signos abstractos e intrínsecamente carentes de significado, imitados a partir de la instrucción verbal o el aprendizaje cultural. Sin embargo, desde la década de 1980, gracias a los resultados de muchas disciplinas independientes, este punto de vista se está sustituyendo por el de la cognición encarnada. Este cambio tiene importantes consecuencias para la teoría de los arquetipos, ya que nos permite ofrecer un anclaje biológico no reductivo que explica muchas características de la imagen arquetípica.

Consciousness isn't "hard"-it's human psychology that makes it so!

Consciousness arguably presents a "hard problem" for scholars. An influential position asserts that the "problem" is rooted in ontology-it arises because consciousness "is" distinct from the physical. "Problem intuitions" are routinely taken as evidence for this view. In so doing, it is assumed that (i) people do not consider consciousness as physical and (ii) their intuitions faithfully reflect what exists (or else, intuitions would not constitute evidence). New experimental results challenge both claims. First, in some scenarios, people demonstrably view consciousness as a physical affair that registers in the body (brain). Second, "problem intuitions" are linked to psychological biases, so they cannot be trusted to reflect what consciousness is. I conclude that the roots of the "hard problem" are partly psychological. Accordingly, its resolution requires careful characterization of the psychological mechanisms that engender "problem intuitions."

Davinci the Dualist: The Mind-Body Divide in Large Language Models and in Human Learners.

A large literature suggests that people are intuitive Dualists-they consider the mind ethereal, distinct from the body. Furthermore, Dualism emerges, in part, via learning (e.g., Barlev & Shtulman, 2021). Human learners, however, are also endowed with innate systems of core knowledge, and recent results suggest that core knowledge begets Dualism (Berent, 2023a; Berent et al., 2022). The resulting question, then, is whether the acquisition of Dualism requires core knowledge, or whether Dualism is learnable from experience alone, via domain-general mechanism. Since human learners are equipped with both systems, the evidence from humans cannot decide this question. Accordingly, here, we probe for a mind-body divide in Davinci-a large language model (LLM) that is devoid of core knowledge. We show that Davinci still leans towards Dualism, and that this bias increases systematically with the learner's inductive potential. Thus, davinci (which forms part of the GPT-3 suite) exhibits mild Dualist tendencies, whereas its descendent, text-davinci-003 (a GPT-3.5 model), shows a stronger bias. It selectively considers thoughts (epistemic states) as disembodied-as unlikely to show up in the body (in the brain). Unlike humans, GPT 3.5 categorically rejected the persistence of the psyche after death. Still, when probed about life, GPT 3.5 showed robust Dualist tendencies. These results demonstrate that the mind-body divide is partly learnable from experience. While results from LLMs cannot fully determine how humans acquire Dualism, they do place a higher burden of proof on nativist theories that trace Dualism to innate core cognition (Berent, 2023a; Berent et al., 2022).

From secularisations to political religions.

In European culture the sacred and the secular have existed in a dialectical relationship. Prodi sees the fifteenth-century crisis of Christianity as opening up three paths that eroded this dualism and tended towards modernity: civic-republican religion, sacred monarchy, and the territorial churches. Important counter-forces, which sought to maintain dualism, included the Roman-Tridentine Compromise, and those forms of Radical Christianity which rejected confessionalisation outright. During the Eighteenth Century, all these phenomena tended to contribute to one of two tendencies: towards civic religion, or towards political religion. The former preserved a distinction between conscience and law; the latter comprised a state religion which sought to perfect all of human nature. It was civic religion which become embodied in the early USA, alienating God from worldly power, but leaving him as the guarantor of agreements between humans. Back in Europe, Prodi tracks the relationship between the Catholic Church and the new national states. He then turns to the political religions of the Twentieth Century. Prodi concludes by emphasising that this dualism of sacred and secular power lay at the centre of Western modernity, and expresses his fears about the collapse of civic religion into political religion, especially in the USA.

An evolutionary analysis of the applicability and utility of the clinico-pathological method in psychiatry.

Unlike other medical specialties, psychiatry has not been involved in the theoretical shift that replaced the syndromal approach with the clinico-pathological method, which consists in explaining clinical manifestations by reference to morbid anatomical and physiological changes. Past and present discussions on the applicability of the clinico-pathological method in psychiatry are based on a pre-Darwinian concept of biology as the study of proximate causation. Distinguishing between mediating mechanisms and evolved functions, an evolutionary perspective offers an original contribution to the debate by overcoming the opposite views of dualism (i.e., the clinico-pathological method is not applicable to disorders of the mind) and neuroessentialism (i.e., the definitive way of explaining psychiatric disorders is by reference to the brain and its activity). An evolutionary perspective offers original insights on the utility of the clinico-pathological method to solve critical questions of psychiatric research and clinical practice, including the distinction between mental health and illness, a better understanding of the etiology and pathophysiology, the classification and differential diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, and the development of more efficacious psychiatric treatments.

A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications.

Diverse explanations or theories of consciousness are arrayed on a roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist landscape of essences and mechanisms. Categories: Materialism Theories (philosophical, neurobiological, electromagnetic field, computational and informational, homeostatic and affective, embodied and enactive, relational, representational, language, phylogenetic evolution); Non-Reductive Physicalism; Quantum Theories; Integrated Information Theory; Panpsychisms; Monisms; Dualisms; Idealisms; Anomalous and Altered States Theories; Challenge Theories. There are many subcategories, especially for Materialism Theories. Each explanation is self-described by its adherents, critique is minimal and only for clarification, and there is no attempt to adjudicate among theories. The implications of consciousness explanations or theories are assessed with respect to: meaning/purpose/value (if any); AI consciousness; virtual immortality; and survival beyond death. A Landscape of Consciousness, I suggest, offers perspective.

It Is Belief in Dualism, and Not Free Will, That Best Predicts Helping: A Conceptual Replication and Extension of Baumeister et al. (2009).

Previous research found that experimentally reducing people's belief in free will affects social behaviors. However, more recent investigations could not replicate several findings in this literature. An explanation for the mixed findings is that free will beliefs are related to social behaviors on a correlational level, but experimental manipulations are not able to detect this relation. To test this interpretation, we conceptually replicated and extended a landmark study in the free will belief literature originally conducted by Baumeister et al. In five studies (total N = 1,467), we investigated whether belief in free will predicts helping behavior in comparison to other beliefs related to free will. Overall, our results support the original findings, as belief in free will correlated with helping behavior. However, the results also show that the best predictor of helping behavior is not belief in free will but belief in dualism. Theoretical implications are discussed.

An evidence-based critical review of the mind-brain identity theory.

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a 'loss-of-function lesion premise,' according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon.

Perceptual Phenomena Cannot Be Approached from a Single Perspective.

This article explores the relationship between neurophysiology and phenomenology in the context of ambiguous figures. Divided into three parts, the study investigates new forms of stimulus and experience errors that arise from ambiguous figures. Part 1 discusses the limitations of a single-disciplinary approach and cautions against relying only on neurophysiological explanations for perceptions. A sole reliance on neurophysiological explanations can lead to stimulus and experience errors, as well as to the development of an unfounded mind/body dualism. Part 2 focusses on the stimulus error associated with ambiguous figures. It also shows how the Mona Lisa's ambiguous expression can cause the experience error. Unlike other forms of ambiguous figures, different expressions of Mona Lisa are perceived when seen in different definitions. It is shown how assigning a higher ontological status to one of the expressions because it aligns with our knowledge of the nervous system, as conjectured by some authors, gives rise to the experience error. Part 3 emphasises the importance of complementing neurophysiological interpretations with phenomenological ones for a better understanding of perceptual phenomena. Phenomenology provides constraints and corrections to neurophysiology, whereas neurophysiology informs phenomenology through empirical findings. The theory of levels of reality is introduced as a framework to underlie the connections and dependencies between different perspectives. Using both neurophysiological and phenomenological approaches, a comprehensive understanding of perceptual phenomena emerges, surpassing the limitations of each discipline. This method encourages a holistic view of perception, where neurophysiology and phenomenology coexist, complementing and enriching each other's insights.

How to Tell a Dualist?

People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the emergence of psychological traits in either a replica of one's body, or in the afterlife-after the body's demise. In line with Dualism, epistemic (i.e., disembodied) traits (e.g., knowing the contrast between good/bad) were considered more likely to emerge (relative to sensorimotor/affective traits) only in the afterlife. However, so were innate traits (in line with Essentialism). To further gauge Essentialism, Experiment 2 presented the same traits to innateness judgments. Here, sensorimotor/affective (i.e., embodied) traits were considered more likely to be innate, suggesting that innateness intuitions are informed by embodiment. Moreover, innateness judgments (in Experiment 2) and embodiment intuitions (in Experiment 1) correlated. These results suggest that Dualism tacitly constrains reasoning about one's innate origins and its persistence after death. But since Dualism is "soft" and interacts with Essentialism, supernatural intuitions are chimeric, not purely ethereal.

Community-Based Work and Participatory Budgeting.

Participatory budgeting (PB) works best if this activity is viewed to be part of a trend that is referred to as community-based work. But this connection is not often made. As a result, many PB projects tend to drift away from their home communities. Although working in communities is thought to be a very practical endeavor, philosophy should not be ignored, particularly if the aim is to be community-based. Some examples are supplied in this paper that illustrate how this community-based philosophy alters, and improves, some traditional phases of PB projects. The overall result is to keep these budgeting projects informed by local knowledge and under community control.

Mental Causation and Motivation: The Motivational Congruence Theory's Perspective.

Mental causation is a deep-rooted debate in the philosophy and psychology literature. It relates to the causal role of mind on the physical world and is tightly linked with the Descartes' dualistic approach towards mind-body interaction. While the role of mental properties might seem obvious in our everyday interaction with the world, there are many arguments that make mental causation inefficacious or redundant within the physical world. In the motivation literature, the issue of mental causation is pivotal. It substantiates the causal role of intrinsic motivation on human behavior. However, the main theoretical streams in the motivation literature take a dualistic approach by dichotomizing different types of motivation into extrinsic and intrinsic ones. This creates a fundamental challenge on the possibility of mental causation in the relationship between motivation and behavior. The three main theoretical streams in the motivation literature consider intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as distinct and independent types of motivation and give a higher weight to one type over the other. This approach makes the role of intrinsic motivation as a mental factor on behavior difficult to interpret. Motivational congruence theory resolves this issue by taking a contextualist and dialectical stance on the relationship between intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and the context. In a dynamic interaction with each other and the context, the two distinct yet intertwined types of motivation (i.e., intrinsic and extrinsic ones) produce overall motivation which in turn induces behavior. The theory resolves the issue of mental causation both at the surface and deep levels.

A case of schizophrenia refuting mind-body dualism.

Introduction: The case report depicts the complex interplay between mental and physical illness and contests the notion of mind-body dualism in medicine. It emphasises the importance of holistic management of patients and the misnomer of schizophrenia as a purely mental illness. Patient presentation: Mr S is a 35-year-old male who presented to a South African specialist psychiatric hospital via the forensic system. He had multiple physical symptoms involving the abdominal, haematological, dermatological and neurological systems, in addition to an eight year duration of untreated psychosis with a marked decline in cognition and functioning. Management and outcome: An extensive medical examination during his admission excluded conditions such as early onset dementia, Huntington's disease, pellagra, Wilson's disease, autoimmune encephalitis and substance-related complications. A definitive diagnosis of schizophrenia was made, and both physical and psychiatric symptoms responded well to the administration of an antipsychotic resulting in an eventual discharge from the hospital. Conclusion: Mind-body dualism can result in a delayed diagnosis of schizophrenia and subsequent increased duration of untreated psychosis and other complications. Contribution: This case emphasises the flaws of mind-body dualism, and the interplay of mental and physical illness.

The "Hard Problem of Consciousness" Arises from Human Psychology.

Consciousness presents a "hard problem" to scholars. At stake is how the physical body gives rise to subjective experience. Why consciousness is "hard", however, is uncertain. One possibility is that the challenge arises from ontology-because consciousness is a special property/substance that is irreducible to the physical. Here, I show how the "hard problem" emerges from two intuitive biases that lie deep within human psychology: Essentialism and Dualism. To determine whether a subjective experience is transformative, people judge whether the experience pertains to one's essence, and per Essentialism, one's essence lies within one's body. Psychological states that seem embodied (e.g., "color vision" ∼ eyes) can thus give rise to transformative experience. Per intuitive Dualism, however, the mind is distinct from the body, and epistemic states (knowledge and beliefs) seem particularly ethereal. It follows that conscious perception (e.g., "seeing color") ought to seem more transformative than conscious knowledge (e.g., knowledge of how color vision works). Critically, the transformation arises precisely because the conscious perceptual experience seems readily embodied (rather than distinct from the physical body, as the ontological account suggests). In line with this proposal, five experiments show that, in laypeople's view (a) experience is transformative only when it seems anchored in the human body; (b) gaining a transformative experience effects a bodily change; and (c) the magnitude of the transformation correlates with both (i) the perceived embodiment of that experience, and (ii) with Dualist intuitions, generally. These results cannot solve the ontological question of whether consciousness is distinct from the physical. But they do suggest that the roots of the "hard problem" are partly psychological.

Motivational Congruence Theory: Beyond the Dualistic Approach to Human Motivation.

Dualism has long been part of human sciences, including psychology and its sub-discipline of motivation. In psychology, such dualism is reflected in the rationalism-empiricism dichotomy. This dichotomy has resulted in two seemingly contradictory perspectives, including empiricism and rationalism. From empiricism perspective, the primary contact between subject and object is the passive reception of inputs from the environment. From rationalism perspective, the primary contact is through the match between conceptual forms and empirical observations. Relying on the notion of "being-in-the-world", activity theories reconcile these discrepancies by stressing the role of individual's activity in the contact between individual and the world. Similarly, in the motivation literature, such duality is highlighted by the dissection of motivation into intrinsic and extrinsic categories. It has resulted in three contrasting streams on the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The first stream by reinforcement theories argues that these two motivational mechanisms act in an additive way. The second stream by undermining theories posits that they interact in a negative way. Yet, the third stream by contingency theories postulates that the simultaneous effect of these motivational mechanisms depends on reward salience. These theoretical streams either implicitly or explicitly give priority to one type of motivation over the other. Emphasizing a dialectical stance, motivational congruence theory gives equal weight to both types of motivation. It stipulates that the perceived congruence between motivational mechanisms and context determines overall motivation and performance. The theory goes beyond the dualistic approach in motivation and resolves discrepancies that have long afflicted the literature.

Talking about chronic pain: Misalignment in discussions of the body, mind and social aspects in pain clinic consultations.

In Western societies, human existence and illness are mostly constructed from the perspective of mind-body dualism: body and mind are considered to function independently, and the body/the physical as primary and more real. Research shows, however, that mind-body dualism is no longer tenable, especially in healthcare contexts. This led to the rise the biopsychosocial model, in which bodily experiences, including illness, are seen an interplay of the physical and the psychological, and the social. This model is the current gold standard for treating chronic pain. As these perspectives on the body and illness are potentially conflicting, and discursively constructed, this paper examines whether they are a source of misalignment in interactions between chronic pain patients and their doctors in a pain clinic. The analysis shows these perspectives indeed lead to misalignment, for instance when discussing the relevance of psychotherapy, and lead to intricate uses of argumentative resources to account for the differing perspectives on (the treatment of) pain.

Mind-Body dualism and medical student attitudes toward mental illness in Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND: Philosophical beliefs regarding the origin of mental illness may underlie resistance to psychiatric treatment and affect attitudes toward the mentally ill. AIM: The present study sought to: (1) identify characteristics of medical students who hold mind-brain dualism (MBD) beliefs and (2) determine relationships between MBD beliefs and perceptions of mental illnesses. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study that asked medical students questions about mind-brain beliefs and religiosity. Three fictitious vignettes (schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder [APD], and depression) were presented and then students asked about how much participants felt the patients in these scenarios bore responsibility for their illness. A MBD score was calculated to measure MBD beliefs, and a total responsibility score (RS) was used to measure patient blameworthiness. Mediation analysis was used to examine whether MBD beliefs explained the relationship between religiosity and perceived patient responsibility for their illness, and whether this was moderated by gender. RESULTS: The questionnaire was completed by 106 Saudi medical students. The average RS was highest for the APD scenario and lowest for schizophrenia, whereas depression fell intermediate between those two (ANOVA F (1.82, 219.83) = 27.21, P < .001). Religiosity was positively correlated with RS, a relationship that was mediated by MBD in all three vignettes. CONCLUSION: Mind-brain dualism beliefs among medical students in Saudi Arabia were associated with greater perceptions of self-infliction, preventability, controllability, and blameworthiness for patients with mental illness, moderated by gender. Greater emphasis on the neurobiological aspects of psychiatric disorders might help to change this attitude.

Trusting social robots.

In this paper, I argue that we need a more robust account of our ability and willingness to trust social robots. I motivate my argument by demonstrating that existing accounts of trust and of trusting social robots are inadequate. I identify that it is the feature of a façade or deception inherent in our engagement with social robots that both facilitates, and is in danger of undermining, trust. Finally, I utilise the fictional dualism model of social robots to clarify that trust in social robots, unlike trust in humans, must rely on an independent judgement of product reliability.