Russell T. Hurlburt (born c. 1945) is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the founder of the Descriptive Experience Sampling method, which aims to reveal the contents of consciousness over short spans of time. [1]
Russell T. Hurlburt, the son of Richard G. Hurlburt and Ruth (neé Sherrard) Hurlburt, married Roberta Rochkar in 1967. [2] [3] He earned his Bachelors of Science in engineering in aeronautical engineering from Princeton University. He received a M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1967 from the University of New Mexico. [4] [5]
Hurlburt took up the study of psychology while playing trumpet at military funerals during the Vietnam War. [6] He was frustrated by the lack of attention psychology gave to everyday experiences and decided to pursue this. He earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, with an unpublished dissertation titled Self-observation and self-control, at the University of South Dakota. [4] [7]
Hurlburt started developing Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) in the 1970s. [6] In 1973 he invented a beeper capable of delivering random beeps and patented it. [8] Hurlburt's research started with the use of the beeper device in naturalistic settings. Originally he gave participants a questionnaire with a limited range of options. This facilitated quantitative comparison. Hurlburt reportedly grew frustrated at the limitations this placed on unveiling experience. He moved towards more in-depth qualitative interviewing. [9]
DES recommendations for how first-person reports could be more accurately obtained include 1) interrupting a process at the moment it is occurring, 2) alerting subjects to pay careful attention to their cognitive process, and 3) coaching them in introspective procedures. [10]
When refining the method, Hurlburt at first sampled himself extensively for around a year. He then concluded that it would be better not to use himself as a subject. Phenomena that he observed in himself he might more easily attribute to others. For approximately the next 25 years, he declined to participate in DES as a subject until the urgings of his students convinced him to try. [11]
Hurlburt is a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. [6]
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (link)In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream wherein a person that is dreaming realizes that they are dreaming during their dream. The capacity to have lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of volitional control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment, although this control of dream content is not the salient feature of lucid dreaming. An important distinction is that lucid dreaming is a distinct type of dream from other types of dreams such as prelucid dreams and vivid dreams, although prelucid dreams are a precursor to lucid dreams, and lucid dreams are often accompanied with enhanced dream vividness. Lucid dreams are also distinct state from other lucid boundary sleep states such as lucid hypnagogia or lucid hypnopompia.
In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included. These processes can happen internally independent of the sensory organs, unlike perception. But when understood in the widest sense, any mental event may be understood as a form of thinking, including perception and unconscious mental processes. In a slightly different sense, the term thought refers not to the mental processes themselves but to mental states or systems of ideas brought about by these processes.
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality as subjectively lived and experienced. It seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.
Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC), synthetic consciousness or digital consciousness, is the consciousness hypothesized to be possible in artificial intelligence. It is also the corresponding field of study, which draws insights from philosophy of mind, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science and neuroscience. The same terminology can be used with the term "sentience" instead of "consciousness" when specifically designating phenomenal consciousness.
Introspection is the examination of one's own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies on the observation of one's mental state, while in a spiritual context it may refer to the examination of one's soul. Introspection is closely related to human self-reflection and self-discovery and is contrasted with external observation.
Daydreaming is a stream of consciousness that detaches from current external tasks when one's attention becomes focused on a more personal and internal direction.
Neurophenomenology refers to a scientific research program aimed to address the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on the embodied condition of the human mind. The field is very much linked to fields such as neuropsychology, neuroanthropology and behavioral neuroscience and the study of phenomenology in psychology.
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a philosophical methodology that relies mainly on a priori justification, sometimes called "armchair" philosophy, by experimental philosophers. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research.
Mind-wandering is loosely defined as thoughts that are not produced from the current task. Mind-wandering consists of thoughts that are task-unrelated and stimulus-independent. This can be in the form of three different subtypes: positive constructive daydreaming, guilty fear of failure, and poor attentional control.
Phenomenology or phenomenological psychology, a sub-discipline of psychology, is the scientific study of subjective experiences. It is an approach to psychological subject matter that attempts to explain experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their written or spoken words. The approach has its roots in the phenomenological philosophical work of Edmund Husserl.
Dan Zahavi is a Danish philosopher. He is currently a professor of philosophy at University of Copenhagen.
The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while treating others' introspections as unreliable. The illusion has been examined in psychological experiments, and suggested as a basis for biases in how people compare themselves to others. These experiments have been interpreted as suggesting that, rather than offering direct access to the processes underlying mental states, introspection is a process of construction and inference, much as people indirectly infer others' mental states from their behaviour.
Phenomenological description is a method of phenomenology that attempts to depict the structure of first person lived experience, rather than theoretically explain it. This method was first conceived of by Edmund Husserl. It was developed through the latter work of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty — and others. It has also been developed with recent strands of modern psychology and cognitive science.
A personal-event memory is an individual's memory of an event from a certain moment of time. Its defining characteristics are that it is for a specific event; includes vivid multi-sensory elements ; is usually recalled in detail; and is usually believed by the individual to be an accurate representation of the event.
Self-agency, also known as the phenomenal will, is the sense that actions are self-generated. Scientist Benjamin Libet was the first to study it, concluding that brain activity predicts the action before one even has conscious awareness of his or her intention to act upon that action. Daniel Wegner later defined the three criteria of self-agency: priority, exclusivity, and consistency.
Eric Schwitzgebel is an American professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology, philosophy of mind, and the nature of belief, as well as Classical Chinese philosophy. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Alison Gopnik, and John Searle. He has run the online blog The Splintered Mind since 2006.
Maladaptive daydreaming, also called excessive daydreaming, is when an individual experiences excessive daydreaming that interferes with daily life. It is a proposed diagnosis of a disordered form of dissociative absorption, associated with excessive fantasy that is not recognized by any major medical or psychological criteria. Maladaptive daydreaming can result in distress, can replace human interaction and may interfere with normal functioning such as social life or work. Maladaptive daydreaming is not a widely recognized diagnosis and is not found in any major diagnostic manual of psychiatry or medicine. The term was coined in 2002 by Eli Somer of the University of Haifa. Somer's definition of the proposed condition is "extensive fantasy activity that replaces human interaction and/or interferes with academic, interpersonal, or vocational functioning." There has been limited research outside of Somer's.
Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.
Epistemic innocence is a psychological phenomenon that applies to epistemically costly and epistemically beneficial cognition. It determines the relationship between a cognition's psychological and epistemic benefits.
Descriptive Experience Sampling or DES is a method that aims to uncover the contents of a person's consciousness over the course of short intervals. To do this, practitioners use devices that deliver random beeps. Participants hear these beeps as they go about their daily life. After each beep, they jot down what was in their inner experience in the short moment directly before the beep. This could be a thought, feeling, ‘voice in their head’, or whatever else is present. After a certain number of beeps are collected, participants are given an interview following strict guidelines. DES holds that participants must be trained over the course of multiple days in order to faithfully observe what's in their experience. Findings often differ greatly from participant expectations and sometimes even from scientific consensus.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (link)