Joshua Clingo
Hello!
I used to be a Software Engineer until I gazed into the endless abyss of death and decided I'd take a more scenic route to the River Styx. Now I'm doing Philosophy (MSc) and Cognitive Science (PhD) and writing about it all. Just a fledgling for now and perhaps forever--but we're on the scenic route.
My main area of research is meaning, as in meaning in life (not to be confused with meaning *of* life, which I consider to be a red herring). For all its ubiquity in human experience, this space has been almost entirely overlooked.
I started Meaningful Minds (meaningful-minds.com) to help get the scientific ball rolling on that one.
Supervisors: Jeffrey Yoshimi
I used to be a Software Engineer until I gazed into the endless abyss of death and decided I'd take a more scenic route to the River Styx. Now I'm doing Philosophy (MSc) and Cognitive Science (PhD) and writing about it all. Just a fledgling for now and perhaps forever--but we're on the scenic route.
My main area of research is meaning, as in meaning in life (not to be confused with meaning *of* life, which I consider to be a red herring). For all its ubiquity in human experience, this space has been almost entirely overlooked.
I started Meaningful Minds (meaningful-minds.com) to help get the scientific ball rolling on that one.
Supervisors: Jeffrey Yoshimi
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Papers by Joshua Clingo
and behaviors rely on slow and steady methods focused on structure and
narrative. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that slow and steady methods
are only weakly effective—the rate of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other forms
of pathological canalization are only increasing, despite our many medical advances.
Traditional therapies ameliorate symptoms, but these symptoms invariably return as
soon as active treatment ceases. Lasting change requires major neurophysiological
and environmental shifts into non-ordinary states. As the mind and world are pulled
apart, this opens the door to reconstructing the way you engage with the world. I
call this process ‘disintegration-reintegration’. We create critical dynamics to leverage
the brain’s ability to learn and relearn.
The leading therapies—psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, focused TMS and ultrasound, EMDR, and emerging solutions like VR-assisted, therapeutic dissociation
are demonstrating that creating critical states and breaking patterns is key to fomenting psychological transformation.
On the other end of disintegration is the equally necessary practice of reintegration.
After pulling the world apart, we must mindfully work to put it back together.
Many reintegrative practices have been independently identified and systematized.
Meditation, yoga, breathwork, dance, tai chi, group therapy, and other somatic and
social practices allow us to reconstruct our mind through the body.
I identify the disintegration-reintegration dynamic and propose that it is underexplored.
Once we begin to understand the scientific basis for the mechanism, we can
and should develop means to exploit this phenomenon. I explore this in a series of
experiments designed to pare away the superfluous bits.
Beyond this, I build a model to demonstrate the foundational effectiveness of
intentionally disintegrating ourselves and our perception of the world around us. This
agent-based model creates a simulated world in which an agent trained to minimize
its homeostatic deviation has its world suddenly decanalized—broken apart, causing
it to take new pathways throughout its world. This results in better performance,
demonstrating at a low level that—counter-intuitively—chaotic disruptions can lead
to long-term stability.
Finally, I propose a broader theory of meaning dynamics. Every experience we
have is colored and shaped by meaning, both of the underlying goal-driven purpose
that drives us and of the meaningfulness that accompanies the beautiful world in
which we find ourselves. The intention is to further inspire an understanding of
the scientifically and evolutionarily grounded forces that make the world appear so
wondrous to us.
'Eudaemonic feelings' are existential feelings with a felt sense of meaning and significance. They are both attended to and are accompanied by a sense of agency. To have a eudaemonic experience is to have an experience of reality that feels both significant and causal. These experiences can be altered through altering the experiential landscape (the 'horizon'). And all experiences can be made to be eudaemonic.
Eudaemonic feelings of course presuppose the validity of existential feelings. I briefly reestablish the case for these, through positive and negative examples of each, leaning on Matthew Ratcliffe's existential feelings theory.
Later, I explore eudemonic feelings as a special subset of existential feelings which are both attended to and elicit a sense of agency. Such feelings are experienced directly but can be controlled by controlling the horizon. By controlling the horizon, the felt background of possibilities, we can also control the space that eudaemonic feelings occupy. In doing so, these feelings can themselves be controlled.
My overall intention is to introduce a new way of thinking about experiences that feel significant so that these feelings do not continue go underlooked and underappreciated. Experience and consciousness have yet to find a safe and established theoretical home-to get there, we will have to first understand the depth and breadth of experience. Recognizing and exploring eudaemonic feelings could be a small part of achieving this greater ambition.