06.01-- Abstract No:860
Introspective first person reports constitute the only available source of information about consciousness. Nevertheless, in order to develop and standardize techniques of analysis of subjective reports which are relevant to consciousness research, it is necessary to fulfill four requirements: (1) to demonstrate their reliability and relevance, (2) to establish criteria for selecting or obtaining the most appropriate reports, (3) to develop a system for detecting the items in the text which are indicative of conscious processes and, finally, (4) to develop procedures to represent such items and their structure and dynamics with the aid of suitable formal devices. A 'narratological' method which meets these four requirements and criteria will be presented.
1) Despite their obvious limitations, introspective reports can be considered to yield relevant and reasonably reliable information about consciousness. Since certain introspective reports seem to be more relevant and reliable than others, the question arises of discerning the most reliable reports. The modern novel in the lines developed by Proust and Joyce may constitute the best representation of consciousness available. Despite the fact that it shows the extraordinary capability of language to convey mental states, the interior monologue or the psychonarration of the modern novel are not optimally suitable to infer actual streams of consciousness because they are simulations.
2) In some monologues, journals, autobiographies, and soliloquies the writer expresses conscious mental states directly from his/er awareness eliminating to a large extent the communicative intent. Thus, these narratives retain more authentic traces of experience and they become the most adequate targets for analyses of conscious processes. Carefuly selected excerpts from the journals of Virginia Wolff, Anne Frank, Miguel de Unamuno and others show these characteristics. Other relevant items are constituted by verbatim transcripts of psychotherapeutic or self-experiment sessions. In all cases it can be asserted that these are the most faithful reports of conscious mental states, and they shall be called 'phenomenological texts'
3) Once a suitable phenomenological text is selected or obtained a method to analyze it is required. It can be proposed that the text can be treated with some of the procedures developed by quantitative ethology and which include as a central requirement an inventory of categories and a system of attribution and sampling. Nine mental category terms (sensation, perception, emotion, thought, judgment, reasoning, image, recall, intention) were used either undefined or carefully defined to study the attribution criteria using groups of independent readers and strict inter-observer agreement methods. Trained, but not naive observers, were consistently reliable in segmenting the text and in inferring specific mental states from the segments, making this procedure a form of 'quantitative hermeneutics'.
4) The reliable inter-observer data from these experiments was analyzed with the dynamic system tool called Petri nets. Consistently identified mental contents were plotted as places in a continuous graph with 'time' plotted in the abscissa. Causal connections, independently identified by most observers, were depicted as arcs among the places. Thus, a dynamic model of consciousness streams and processes is obtained for each text which can be analyzed, compaired, or correlated.
Subjective first person reports expressing conscious processes can be treated so they satisfy methodological requirements for relevance, reliability, operational definitions, sampling procedures, inter-observer agreement, quantitative analyses, and formal modelling.
06.01-- Abstract No:1028
Questions about the meaning of life haunt, intrigue, and inspire us as intellectual beings. Through the ages, philosophy, theology, psychology, and other disciplines have sought ways in which such questions can be both hypothetically and theoretically addressed. Some of those explanations are celebrated, embraced by many, while others prove to be less helpful.
In 1975, Anne Sexton's collection of poetry, 'The Awful Rowing Toward God', was offered as a poetic articulation about life. Sexton does not answer those questions to which I refer, but with an understanding of what she expresses within her writing, we her readers are left with a unique and helpful way to participate in the discussion. A reading of Sexton insists upon a recognition of human life as spiritually impulsive, and thus directed toward the supernatural. It is through the examination of these impulses, however, where we are confronted with consciousness and its distinct role within the condition of being human.
My paper presents the poetry of Sexton as an important metaphor for the process of life, with examples of and parallels to Sexton's work from my own experiences of travel (cross-country pilgrimage, beginning with 35$) and apostolic work within different cultural settings. The focus is upon the integrating role of consciousness and spirituality. Writings from theologian Karl Rahner, along with input from other disciplines (philosophy and psychology) , support my presentation of Sexton's message. Also included is the discussion and emphasis upon the tools by which the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is able to befriend, interpret, and utilize the role of consciousness in daily life.
06.01-- Abstract No:1105
We propose to bring a new light on the question of consciousness, especially on its relation with language and silence, from a stylistical and philosophical approach of the work of the French writer J-M. G. Le Clezio. The first part of his work, whose most emblematic text is the novel La Guerre (The war) , is centred on what he calls 'War'; it doesn't mean armed conflict, but ontological violence, and is especially connected with consciousness and language. Language (one kind of language) , with its never ending and noisy flux, tends to confound itself with reality, and imposes its own categories to it. It creates a separation between man and reality, understood as nature, but also as man himself. Although War might be ontological, it might be overcome, first in a paradoxical approach of it.
In the second part of his work, after 1978's L'Inconnu sur la terre (The unknown on earth) , Le Clezio, fed by experiences of living among Indians in Mexico and Panama, tries to overcome War (without ignoring its ontological an necessary side) and to explore a language that could lead to what we call 'the elementary'. This key word to understand Le Clezio's work means the elements, the matter. It also means the elementary man, in his relation to his body and his unconscious, and it finally means the basic relation to reality, before mediation of language and concepts -- a phenomenological relation, in fact. We can consider that the whole work of Le Clezio after these years attends to be a 'way to the elementary' that develops a language and proposes different bodily techniques which could make possible a new contact with the elementary and a broader type of consciousness, and which would lead the reader to it. This way has different forms. It first consist in a language that renews with myths, symbols and pure narration, which, at least according to Le Clezio, can be seized by consciousness, while at the same time consciousness adopts their modalities. In other texts, it consists in a language that only leads to reality without covering it, and that is conceived as a gaze at concrete things, against the French philosophical tradition that consider language prior to experience or as a necessary mediator. The 'way to the elementary' finally consists in different techniques to break with the flux and make silence possible, or to discover the bodily language, though bodily techniques that have a lot to do with oriental philosophies, but never confound itself with these, and through poetic language, in its connections with music, rhythm and breathing.
06.01-- Abstract No:1213
This paper examines how consciousness manifested in subjective engagement in lived experience enables us to create poetic narratives about ourselves in and through the media of meaning and memory This conception is rooted in the movement known as the Romantic. Aspects of the "Romantic Self" as exemplified in a key Romantic text, William Wordsworth's "The Prelude" are explored in relation to several psychologies: Freud, Jung, Cognitive and Humanistic, as well as contemporary neuroscience.
Key elements of Romantic Psychology are delineated, in particular, the rejection of dualistic separations. The Romantics' insight was that of the ultimate unity of all things and their quest was towards union with that oneness within a teleological universe. Particularly relevant is the rejection of the thought/feeling dichotomy, which has been supported in various non-reductive psychologies and in contemporary neuroscience.
Antonio Damasio's studies of people with frontal lobe damage associated with areas implicated in the articulation of feelings brings him to a conclusion startlingly in consonance with Romantic ideas about the self.
"feelings are a powerful influence on reason .... the brain systems required by the former are enmeshed in those needed by the latter" (Damasio 1994)
The argument also rests on a thoroughgoing critique (which might be termed "postmodern" as easily as Romantic) of the rationalist/enlightenment epistemology which strives to a decontextualised notion of truth as abstracted from particular natural, social and cultural contexts.
The implications for cognitive science are explored and the claim made that study in the future must take on a model of the self which regards human beings as unified yet multi-dimensional self reflexive and self creating embodied selves dynamically interacting with the social and natural world.
"It seems to me that the secret of Romanticism is that it confronted the all-too- obvious object of experience with a subject of experience, which it proceeded to objectify thanks to the infinite refractive powers of consciousness. There is a psychology that always has another person or thing for an object - a fairly well- differentiated kind of behaviourism which might be described as "classical". But beside this there is a psychology which is a knowing of the knower and an experiencing of the experiment." (C.G. Jung, 1935)
06.01-- Abstract No:1229
The theory of consciousness Faulkner presents in his novels _The Sound and the Fury_ and particularly _As I Lay Dying_ distinguishes itself from the Jamesian stream-model by asserting: 1) that a subject can enter the same stream of thought twice and 2) that there are always already multiple thought-streams at play within a community, symbolized by the two rivers running through Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Social interaction in a system of "Relation, " as theorized by Edouard Glissant, enables the subject to compare, switch, and synthesize streams of thought -- a process Faulkner illustrates throughout the novel _Absalom, Absalom!_ as Quentin Compson constructs and reconstructs the history of Thomas Sutpen and the Antebellum South through interactions with Jason Compson, Rosa Coldfield, and Shreve MacKenzie. For Glissant, Relation occurs at the moment of contact between differing cultures; it is the interaction and mutual influencing of two or more cultures' various ways of conceptualizing reality. In Faulkner, an individual subjective consciousness apprehends empirical reality uniquely and consistently, but its apprehension of empirical reality can be altered by way of an encounter with another individual subjective consciousness. Consciousness, then, can be both a mode of apprehending the material world and a medium that actively alters the material world.
Furthermore, Faulkner uses Quentin Compson's experience of the day he commits suicide in _The Sound and the Fury_ to show how a single stream of thought acquires perceived events not over time, but within a perpetual present, suggesting the notion of the "remembered present" proposed in G.M. Edelman's biological theory of consciousness. Coupling this belief in a spatially expanding present with a system of Relation permits an individual subjective consciousness to know that something "is" and "is-not" at the same time, as illustrated by Vardaman's and Darl's interior monologues in _As I Lay Dying_. Faulkner's rendering of consciousness in these novels (and many other places in his collected works) reveals to us that any understanding of consciousness must allow for the existence of multiple and even mutually contradictory conscious realities that nonetheless operate either within an individual stream of thought or among plural subjectivities within a community. His theory suggests that we might best benefit from a science of _consciousnesses_ and their relations to one another.
06.01-- Abstract No:1230
As an eighteenth-century English poet, William Blake, who stands up for spiritual vision, has to be set against the research conducted by philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume into human nature and the workings of the mind. Whereas their theories are based on sense perception, he suggests another dimension of reality and another definition of man which point to a new kind of progressive discovery or consciousness of the individual's true self. His visions remind one of Plato's world of ideas and theory of reminiscence, but they explicitly refer to a biblical concept: that of the Comforter.
Hence, in the debate that opposes Locke, who denies the existence of innate ideas, to Descartes, whose philosophy is entirely based on this concept, Blake chooses to side with the second, but in the perspective provided by a new reading of the Gospels. Indeed, just as Husserl appreciates Descartes and exposes the deceptive perspective of the sciences, William Blake rejects empiricism and eventually calls for a process of self-examination, which is neither philosophical (in the Platonist or the Husserlian sense) nor psychoanalytical.
The interesting point is not that Blake can convince anyone of the existence of these innate ideas, but that he confronts his reader with a basic alternative that cannot be decided upon through reason nor perception, and which, nevertheless, determines the implicit principles at work in any kind of research for truth or "real" consciousness, whether we be aware of it or not. The reader realizes that he cannot but make a choice regarding this alternative, or that he has already made one. He understands that every theoretical discourse on life, the universe or man is, in the last analysis, based on such an understated a-priori decision, and that his choice may already reflect at least part of his deep true self.
This perspective questions the traditional conceptions of consciousness, whether they be philosophical or religious. Blake does not claim to state what real consciousness is, but invites his reader on a permanent quest for it. The archetypal theme of life as a vale of tears or the crossing of the desert is developed into an original theory of progression through a series of spiritual states of consciousness. In the end, everything (including perceptions and allegedly rational choices, as David Hume pointed out) is a matter of inner experience. The self is naturally the subject of investigation, but only in order to be overcome and annihilated in the vision of universal brotherhood. Blake thus avoids the accusation of solipsism which is often aimed at Husserl. Nevertheless, a fundamental problem remains: that of the capacity of language to convey the highest degree of consciousness.
06.01-- Abstract No:1240
The necessity for a more expansive--or subjective--epistemology of consciousness (a la W.H. Harman's "Toward a Science of Consciousness: Addressing Two Central Questions") and the inescapable metaphoricity of all models and theories of consciousness points to the fundamentally literary nature of the task of addressing what consciousness is; this effort requires a "science" beyond systematization, beyond cause and effect, beyond Aristotelian logic, to fully engage the question, since "fundamentals" such as these are effects of consciousness. I suggest that literary/metaphorical thought is the essence of the search to locate and define consciousness insofar as it both instantiates and inquires into consciousness simultaneously: in self-reflexive poetries (such as that of Wallace Stevens, for instance) centered on understanding the nature of experience (poetry defined as the most flexible discourse or inquiry imaginable) , we find realized the ultimate form of Harman's "subjective epistemology". This becomes especially important in relation to the "impossible" nature of the "science" or project of consciousness (a la C. McGinn's "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?") and the attempt or need to enunciate what death is, in terms of consciousness, as well.
06.02-- Abstract No:983
While theories of the mind present a paradigmatic representation of consciousness, the history of consciousness shows they often have been accompanied by artistic movements. In this way, art is an important contributor to the evolution of consciousness. The current resurgence of interest in inner-dimensions in the field of consciousness studies has been foreshadowed by spiritual in art, especially by the 'Art of the Mind' (here 'Mind' refers to the Universal Mind) . The art that points towards the exploration of inner-dimensions has been an important vehicle for the exploration and understanding of consciousness.
'Art of the Mind' is not merely illustrative, that is, the literal expression of a particular object, icon, story or event but is an immediate expression of an open mind that gains access to a reality whose portrayal is akin to experience in deep meditation, transpersonal lucid dreaming, waking visions and other ways of introspection.
In this presentation, I will review a selection of twentieth-century paintings that point towards the exploration of consciousness. Then I will discuss a phenomenological study of paintings by modern art artists John Anderson, Richard Bowman, Lee Mullican and Gordon Onslow Ford. Their images were shown to a group of lucid dreamers and meditators who visited the artists' studios. Participants contemplated the paintings and wrote about their experiences. The paintings evoked memory of dreams, waking visions and experiences in altered state of consciousness.
A selection of paintings that were recognized by this group as particularly evocative of the 'spaces of the mind' were chosen to be on an exhibition for public viewing. This art exhibition (entitled Through the Light) also became the occasion for additional phenomenological reports as the viewer were encouraged to contemplate the images and write about their experiences of being in the presence of these paintings. Selected images from this exhibition will be shown through slide presentation and themes of the experience of the observers will be reported.
06.02-- Abstract No:1005
Throughout recorded history there have been several times when art and science created a vector of substantive meaning and quality. Instances such as this enrich our culture and increase our understanding of reality. It became apparent to me that I began laying the foundation for just such a vector when the artform I created was consistent with a theorized property of consciousness. There are many theories which speculate that, "by some means, " a particular process in the brain enables conscious experience to arise. These include views such as by quantum action or by 40-hz oscillations. By further examination I've found that many of these concepts consistently state; "by some means" intrinsic states are coherent throughout the brain. My art is linked closest to those theories which establish "some form" of intrinsic properties as a functional process. The artform I developed utilizes the dualistic properties of light to display differing, yet coherent light forms. This is accomplished with a beam splitting procedure described as an Intrinsic > Information Space, ("I-I" SPACE" patent pending, April 97) . (Note: all of the intrinsic light forms are created by special panels which interfere with the light beam transmitted from a unitary source) . During the projection process the viewer will observe, simultaneously, the dual state of plurality and singularity. The full scope of this project goes on to include; the ability to combine the intrinsic states together to form complex images from a simple point of light. This generates the notion of creating first order images ie. not representations - something from nothing. The combining of intrinsic states gives the appearance of "light alchemy" where by the end result is far greater and different than the initial transmission. Also included is the potential to spotlight/highlight any particular portion (s) of the intrinsic structure (s) without changing the initial light source or adding to it. Also the characteristic features of these"state" shifts, that the transmitted light undergoes, effectively fits the descriptions of a propagating impulse. "Rendering Consciousness" with this methodology lends support to the theory that nature selected "by some means" the coherence of intrinsic states throughout the brain to arrive at a sense of experience. The merits of this artistic experiment at the present time do not point towards any one specific theory. But the ""I-I" SPACE" does form an ideal theatre for characterizing what might be universal among mind/brains. Also it points towards a direction that includes and goes beyond the singularity associated with modernism - that all truths are self evident and the pluralism and co-definition of Postmodernism - that nothing exists until we act upon it. Towards a more bizarre, but I believe a more accurate, picture of our reality today. The ideology I offer consumes both movements and projects a vision that we are beyond our own horizons but at the same time at home with ourselves. Also, this artistic experiment clearly displays the notion that our actions produce our reality. But when we seek more meaning and qualia from our experiences and are able to report it - we can redress the established notion to one that states; we access more of (intrinsic) nature that is already there (and we potentially were even perceiving it priori but just not consciously) .
06.02-- Abstract No:1010
Art As Technology: Reuniting Human Life With Nature is a slide-illustrated paper that chronicles an exploration of large scale geometric designs and their influence on consciousness, phenomenology and the environment.
In 1989 Bill Witherspoon, artist, constructed a Vedic design around a remote high desert dwelling, normally devoid of animal activity. In the next three months several hundred animals of diverse species came into the design and exhibited unusual behavior. After re-creating the design in an art gallery and observing remarkable changes in the behavior and subjective experience of people within the design, Witherspoon began a process of investigation consisting of scholarly research and artistic experimentation.
In 1990 the artist etched a Sri Yantra design into the surface of a remote lake bed in the desert of Eastern Oregon. The design was approximately one quarter mile across and contained over 13 miles of hand plowed furrows. During the next few years the artist and others observed changes in micro- climate, increases in bio-diversity, and increases in the rate of microbial activity and topsoil production in the small valley where the Sri Yantra was drawn, most particularly within the design's 40 acres.
In 1991 & 1992, two larger designs were made in the nearby desert. These explored different geometries and methods of construction, and drew the participation of Native American medicine people and Vedic pundits. EEG coherence research was conducted in conjunction with the 1992 design. Witherspoon also found that blind people were able to detect and identify specific geometric structures by the unique qualia which they generate.
From 1993 to 1996 the artist and his associates (including a Vedic pundit) engaged in several large scale projects involving agricultural sites in the Midwest and sites in urban California. In these projects designs were articulated with plantings (5000 tree seedlings in a forest plantation) and specially prepared art work was buried underground in geometric structures on farm land and elsewhere. This activity resulted in increased agricultural productivity and significant changes in the perception and behavior of those living on the land.
Observations of the influences of his artistic experiments, combined with an understanding of traditional uses for geometric structures drawn principally from Vedic and Native American cultures, have led the artist to propose the following: creating and giving attention to specific, large scale geometric designs generates subtle fields that enliven or amplify fundamental forces and intelligences of nature in a localized area within and around the design. Through the mechanics of resonance and entrainment, these fields directly impact the local environment, the structure and ontology of consciousness, and the life experience of people within that environment. People report a marked increase in the experience of deep silence, an enhanced refinement of the senses, a greater perception of beauty, and more connectedness and intimacy with the whole of nature. These effects suggest that the use of large scale geometry may be a technology that can be applied in the healing arts, architecture, city planning, agriculture, micro-electronics and other areas.
Witherspoon is currently enclosing Sacramento, the geo-political center of the State of California, in a 150 mile diameter design.
06.02-- Abstract No:1016
Theatre is closely related to consciousness in many way: the performer's emotional involvement, processes of writing, the effects of lighting, set, costume or sound on both performers and audience, the reception process in the theatre, and experiences of altered states of consciousness (desirable and undesirable) . The model of consciousness proposed by traditional Indian philosophy in conjunction with the Indian treatise on drama and theatre, the Natyashastra, has proved to be valuable in understanding and explaining the specific relationship of consciousness and theatre. On the basis of that understanding, I propose possibilities of improving the quality of life through intentional effects of theatre on human consciousness. The paper will develop a number of hypotheses and I hope to find colleagues at the conference who are interested in working together with me on further practical research.
06.02-- Abstract No:1061
It may seem strange to assert that consciousness is at the top of the agenda of contemporary art, and perhaps even stranger to add that it is technology which has brought it there. Surely, art has always been centred on conscious experience, and always concerned with sensation, perception, qualia. It has always dealt with what is seen, felt and understood, and has always made objects to be seen, felt and understood. On the other hand it may be difficult to see how technology, apparently cold and alienating, could do anything to advance the subtlety of vision and human sensibility that art demands. However, it is the case that in computer technology and telematic media artists have found the means to work within the domain of consciousness, focusing more on creative processes and systems than on the production of art objects, and to enable the viewer to become interactively involved with transformative systems rather than the more passive reception of artistic meaning, making the experience of art open-ended and negotiable. Art is seen as consisting in dynamic networks of minds, whose nodal points may have both human and artificial attributes, set in unfolding fields of consciousness. This "noetic aesthetic" feeds back into the more established practices of painting and sculpture where increasingly the old western tradition of representation is giving way to a more fluid and inclusive vision.
It is clear that the art of this century has been largely introspective, asking in all its expressionistic and existential modes, the hard questions of being and becoming. At the same time, since the earliest years of the century, there has emerged a tradition in art of valuing concepts in their own right, even to the exclusion of direct visual representations of the external world. This conceptual and constructive tendency in art exerts a huge influence on the strategies that artists adopt today. Similarly, there is a marked provenance in Western art of the spiritual and visionary, of works attempting to transcend their materiality to other planes of experience and awareness. Artists currently look closely at the models of mind that science is providing, while exploring those technologies which may enable them to reframe consciousness, to develop the faculty of 'cyberception', and to assist in the creation of self-aware systems. This is why it can be said that art is moving away from its present preoccupation with the immaterial and screen-based digital realities towards a re-materialisation of art invested in artificial life and the artificial consciousness that may emerge or supervene upon it.
Artists whose practice is invested in networked hypermedia and virtual reality, in their interactions with artificial agents and avatars, know that identity can be endlessly transformed. The immutability and unity of the self, so dearly prized in the European tradition, is giving way to an understanding of how we each can be involved in our own self-creation. In cyberspace, the self is open to tele-differentiation, distribution and planetary dissemination. In consequence, a kind of non-linear identity is emerging. In searching for new frames of consciousness artists are turning as much to ancient practices of the shaman and the psychic as to the mind altering technologies of digital and post-biological systems.
06.02-- Abstract No:1223
One of the compelling facets of consciousness is that we have the pronounced capability to estimate the level of consciousness of others, be they humans or animals of various phyla. This sense of other consciousness is based largely on the region of the eyes, perhaps because they are so mobile and have such a range of expressiveness (as is captured in the familiar phrase: "the eyes are the window to the soul") . This interplay of the transmission of consciousness is one of the highest forms of interaction between individuals. It provides an avenue for investigating the structure of the visual channel for the transmission of consciousness between people.
One vehicle for examining this communication channel is the artistic portrait. For the past 600 years, the main goal of artistic portraiture has been to express the personality of the sitter, the nature of their consciousness. Despite the variety of artistic compositions, a recent discovery of mine shows that there is high consistency in a variable that seems to relate closely to consciousness. In summary, measurements show that artists over the past 6 centuries generally place one eye very close to the center line of the portrait frame, to an accuracy of + 5% of the frame width (which is the about the accuracy to which subject can place a dot at the center if asked) and about 2/3rds of the height of the picture. I have been able to find no mention of this principle in the analytic literature of art, suggesting that the placement is entirely unconscious, rather than being a precept that is passed from generation to generation of artists. Informally, the same tendencies appear in photographs, cinematography, television framing, magazines and so on. A relevant example is the placement of the brain, or center of consciousness, in the poster for Tucson III, exactly where it is predicted by this "transmission of consciousness" hypothesis derived from the portrait study.
This eye-placement principle implies that our awareness of the consciousness of others is one-eyed, or cyclopean. Although virtually everyone we ever meet has two eyes, the implication is that we relate to their consciousness through only one eye, which we like to have at the center of our "visual frame" (perhaps relating to the position of the "third eye" of the Indian culture, and the US $1 bill) .
06.02-- Abstract No:1274
During the activity of viewing--and in memories and anticipations of it, we can experience certain physical sensations of our bodies--our somatosensory responses--as something other than what they are. This is a "strategic misidentification" of our bodily experience, insofar as it serves a specific purpose and does not involve a pathological misperception of bodily states. It is a powerful phenomenon because the body is so closely linked with our sense of identity and personal boundary that altering our sense of the body involves changing something basic to our sense of self. Converging research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and various forms of psychoanalysis provides the grounds for arguing that misidentification of our bodies can enhance our cognitive and affective experience of the visual arts.
Our bodily responses can be misidentified in the following ways. Suppose we are looking at a painting of a river. The water is blue and flowing. Without being explicitly aware of our body or what we are doing, we can strategically misidentify, or "label, " a somatosensory experience. For example, our lungs expanding and contracting might be labeled as a quality of the art work, perhaps, as the "flow of the river." We might thereby have the experience that the "river is flowing through us, " or "We are flowing through the river." Alternatively, this misidentification might involve a loss of ourselves entirely. "River" and "me" might be fused into a single consciousness, an awareness without personal boundaries. All of these experiences involve changes in the boundaries by which we define our personhood. Artistic, literary, and musical experiences are commonly described as having such effects on their audiences. This misinterpretation of our somatosensory experiences is present not only in our relationships to art works but also in other forms of human activity. In spiritual and religious practices a relabeling of the body is integral to an experience of boundary loss and unity between subject and object. Similar boundary shifts, but with negative consequences, are associated with various pathological conditions. Somato-sensory labeling also functions in ordinary, interpersonal interactions to create nuanced relationships of intimacy or distance.
6.02-- Abstract No:1353
A new approach to the scientific study of art is proposed based on solving the central problem that faces anyone trying to explain the consciousness of artists: how is it that each painting is unique, reflecting the creativity of the artist, yet at the same time structured in a particular art historical way, or follows the rules of an identifiable style. Each Jackson Pollock painting is unique and all Pollock's are different from all deKooning's, yet both artists paint within the same rule governed style, Abstract Expressionism. How is this possible? How can artistic consciousness be both creative and governed by the rules of an art historical style at the same time?
The answer lies in turning the study of art history on its head. Instead of the traditional focus upon art styles as descriptive taxonomies they must instead be re- conceptualized as internal mental rules of the mind, constituting something like an art grammar. "We might ask whether the concept of grammar is in some extended sense of this term appropriate in the case of other mental organs as well", Chomsky inquired, and I am convinced the answer is an unqualified yes. The other mental organ I want to focus upon is what I am calling the Art Faculty of Mind, which can be represented by structure dependent rules that constitute a tacit knowledge allowing artistic consciousness to be both creative and rule governed at the same time. If such rule governed creativity is a defining characteristic of linguistic behavior, and if artistic behavior shows the same general property, then I will assume as a working hypothesis that the better known language faculty and this newly identified art faculty have a very good chance of operating in a very similar manner.
The study of style in art has been very similar to the study of language prior to the cognitive revolution that was generative grammar: namely, it was a descriptive enterprise that taxonomically ordered over time similarity and difference in the structure of artistic output (paintings, drawings, sculpture, etc.). This effort at taxonomic description has resulted in the structural description of the principal forms of artistic consciousness: Gothic, Renaissance, Neo- Classical, Cubism, etc. It has also identified the temporal sequence of these patterns of artistic consciousness: High Renaissance to Mannerism to Baroque to Rococo to Neo-Classicism to Romanticism, etc.
In the 1950s a similar descriptive approach to the study of historical structures of language was challenged by Chomsky with his cognitive science idea that the essence of language is found in internal rules of mind rather than the pattern of external linguistic behavior. The focus of study shifted from the structure of extant linguistic behavior to the set of generative mental rules that constitutes the competence which allows the linguistic behavior to be produced in the first place.
My central assertion is that this same revolution in linguistics can now be performed not only in art history, but also in the cognitive science and linguistics research that presently attempts to explain artistic consciousness (Jackendoff, Jackendoff and Lerdahl for music, Pinker, Solso, etc.). These efforts, while immensely important, have by and large concentrated only on the question of vision. Art is visual and studies of how perception and brain interface is obviously important. But it is also clear that such an approach is incapable of deriving the rules that comprise art styles. What separates the artistic consciousness that is the High Renaissance from that which is Mannerism, and that in turn from the patterns of consciousness we call the Baroque, are not the universal principles of vision or sight, nor an understanding the transmission of perceptual information from retina to cortex, but another set of mental principles that allow a finite number of colors, shapes, textures, and volumes to somehow be combined and recombined in a very rule specific way to create the patterns we recognize as the styles of art history.
Neurobiological principles of vision and perception simply do not separate one art historical style from another. What is needed is another level of mental representation if cognitive science approaches to art are ever to explain the specific mental competence that allows artists to generate competent Neo-Classical, Gothic, or any other styles of art. Again the analogy with language. The principles of sound production (phonology) are certainly necessary to understand the structure of language. But the rules of phonology alone are incapable of generating the syntactic structure of language. To understand this another level of mental representation is necessary, the rules of syntax. The same point holds for understanding the structure of art. Without postulating a level of representation that covers the mental rules of art it will remain impossible to move from the logic of vision to the rule governed logic of pictorial structure that is art history.
Each art historical style involves a set of structure dependent recursive mental rules that can generate an infinite number of paintings from what appears to be a finite set of style rules. It is my working hypothesis that our mind/brain provides us with something like a Universal Style Grammar (USG) with allowable parameterizations that, when made, yield the observable styles of art history. Again, the analogy with language. The parameterization of a Universal Grammar (UG) yields the specific languages of history: French, English, Swahili, Navaho, etc., and I argue the parameterization of a Universal Style Grammar yields the specific art styles of history: Gothic, Baroque, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, etc. The study of art, then, need no longer be only the study of historical description--art history--nor the present cognitive science study of vision, optics, perception, etc. If generative syntax can be said to produce the structure of language, then something like a generative stylistics may very will produce the structures of art history.
To carry out this project of transforming art history from an emphasis upon taxonomically ordered styles, to the study of structure dependent mental rules with recursiveness, I have identified four binary sub-systems of the hypothesized Universal Style Grammar. The parameterization of these Style Rules allow for the creation of four base, or core, styles that constitute something like the deep structure of art history. These rules include Composition Rules which deal with the planetric or recessional ordering of forms in pictorial space, Focal Point Rules which deal with how the eye is drawn to the art object in terms of a single or multiple focal points, and Bracket Rules which deal with whether the composition is framed or unframed by symmetrical forms. Different combinations of these rules allow the derivation of four Base Styles, which when combined with historically contingent subject matter and a variety of residuals and extraneous elements, generate the clearly recognized surface styles that make up art history (Post- Impressionism, Romanticism, Rococo, etc.).
In sum, I have been able to create a style structure grammar that allows the derivation of four base styles that underlie the major styles of Western Art history since at least the Renaissance. This new paradigm has profound implications for three areas that try and explain the visual structure of art.
Cognitive Science. The central point here is that studies of vision are simply not enough to understand the structural patterns of art. Again, vision is like phonology. Necessary. But there must also be a grammar or syntax. Language and art are both universal features of all human societies and both are mental rule systems that can be shown to provide accurate structural descriptions for the sentences or paintings within the languages, or styles, in which they are produced. This, though, is but a start. The idea of an Art Faculty of mind will no doubt be controversial and many will want to reduce it to the rules of vision and perception. But I don't think that will be possible, any more than the principles of syntax can be reduced to those of phonology. Like art history, this should generate controversy and stir up the scientific study of artistic behavior.
Art History. This new approach will alter the focus of art history, where there has been virtually no effort at coming to grips with generative mental rules of observed artistic behavior. At present most efforts are directed toward understanding performance constraints (sociology of art) and taxonomic differentiation (art history). What is begun here for the first time is the study of artistic competence in terms of the tacit knowledge artists must possess to create the style structures they do. Also, the identification of the four base styles that serve as something like a deep style structure generating the surface structure of art history, force a rethinking of the very canonical ordering of styles that has been accepted for centuries. For instance, descriptive art history argues 19th century Impressionism is part of the modernist movement of more abstract representation that is continued right through 20th century Abstract Expressionism. But the generative theory of art history proposed here shows that Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism have a very different deep stylistic structure and are not the same at all. The modernist break in style structure that has been assumed throughout this century, then, is only a shift in surface place holders--realist vs. abstract subject matter.
06.03-- Abstract No:913
The first section of the paper is an overview of the chaos theory with a brief history of the development, the major ideas of the model, and new uses of the model in the social sciences and in the business community. The Chaos model is specifically for complex systems that are not easily cataloged or cannot be organized in a linear fashion.
The assumptions of the chaos model are as follows:
1. Within nonlinear systems, an order will establish itself on some level.
2. Extremely minor influences in a system may effect a major change.
3. A system will be changed from within by negative and/or positive feedback.
4. Predicting or interpreting these changes may depend more on intuition rather than traditional methods of inquiry. (Scientist who specialize in chaos theory speak of "developing an intuition for a problem".)
The second section of the paper adapts the choir to the chaos model. It calls on the conductor to recognize the complexity of a rehearsal situation and develop an awareness of both negative and positive feedback. That is, being aware that the choir, individually and collectively, will effect the conductor and his or her musical decisions in an ongoing fashion. The finished performance is really the result of a feedback loop that we call the rehearsal. Concluding this section is a brief discussion of the symbiotic relationship between conductor, choir, and audience and the collective consciousness.
The final section deals with the development of musical intuition to respond to the musical and personal needs of a choir and achieve an outstanding working environment. That a heightened awareness of ones relationship with a particular group of individuals in a working situation can open new avenues of intuitive awareness. While the paper uses a musical model, much of the research on group work and intuition comes from studies done in a business setting and the ideas presented could easily be translated to other group situations.
06.03-- Abstract No:923
In examining the various musical cultures around the world, one is struck by the diversity of musical structures with regard to tonal-temporal configurations. These structures are a result of conscious choice rising from a multitude of physical, socio-cultural-religious, and aesthetic determinants. The Chinese, for example, have a theoretical system of 360 possible pitches, yet rely heavily on a pentatonic scale for their music making. The number of pitches possible of varying frequencies within human aural capacity seems infinitesimal. Yet, Western musical systems have turned toward a quite restricted use of specific pitch models. Even when more musical complexities in pitch have been introduced by such composers as Harry Partch with octaves divided into units numbering up to 37 per octave (compared to the 12 tones usually used) , these have not been accepted in mainstream practice. Time, also as a fundamental component, is exhibited by cultures around the world in varying patterns that resemble each other only superficially. Yet, there are similarities underlying the tonal-temporal aspects of such organization of musical sound.
It is the purpose of this paper to explore both the differences and their similarities, particularly in relation to the conscious construction of musical systems. It is the role that consciousness plays in the ultimate configuration of a culture's music that lies at the base of this investigation.
06.03-- Abstract No:1081
Research in aesthetic experience, for instance as witnessed in the case of poetic language, has never been at the fore-front of cognitive science (CS) . Within the research-field of CS a widespread -- and perhaps not wholly unjustified -- assumption exists to the effect that the study of human cognition should start with more basic faculties than those of aesthetic experience - faculties such as information retrieval, motor control, sensory perception, and so on -- all the way down to the neural underpinnings of cognitive processes. Basically, I agree with this objective. Yet the cognitive mechanisms involved in our interactions with the phenomenon of literary language are not without relevance for the understanding of the cognitive properties of the brain. Many of the aesthetic effects provoked by the poetic functions of language display a host of the so-called 'hard problems' associated with consciousness: vagueness, beauty, the assignment of value in general, analogy-making, etc. Moreover, the act of reading a novel or poem makes use of a wide assortment of the brain's basic cognitive faculties to evoke these aesthetic effects; in this sense a cognitive study of literature may attribute to the crucial investigation of the relation holding between large-scale cognitive patterns and the local neural processes of which the cognitive patterns are constituted. In the present paper, I seek to illuminate the role played by reasoning in the processing of literary language. Reasoning, understood as the capacity of comparing different objects and of establishing relations between them, works at all levels of language comprehension. It takes reasoning, for instance, to see a phonetic sound-pattern as a sign for a particular semantic meaning. In every linguistic utterance we have to compare phonemes to their place in the complete phonetic chain in order to categorize and make sense of them as parts of a larger whole. In order to do this we must perpetually compare morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects of the sentence to determine the right mental patterns intented by the sentence. This type of reasoning is even more intensified when it comes to sentences with a poetic flavour: not only do we here have to consider rhetorical and even pragmatic aspects of the utterance, but the very structure of literary language is such as to organize the relation between parts and whole in a way where the precise meaning is 'undeterminable' (in a sense to be more precisely described in my talk) . Cognitive linguists have suggested to analyze the mental reasoning concerning such undeterminable patterns as mappings in a space of mental imagery. I shall especially use a theory worked out by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner on so-called 'blended' space structures to show how aesthetic effects can emerge from our reasoning concerning the connection between phonetics, morphology, semantics, rhetoric, pragmatics, and so on.
06.03-- Abstract No:1165
An artistic masterpiece can reveal precise aspects of human consciousness with great clarity. A masterpiece of music, for example, may be constructed to focus attention on quality of movement in time, through the skilful arrangement of sound. The structured movement of music, provided that it communicates intelligible meaning to others, demonstrates both the directions in Which its creator's mind is moving and the ways in which we can respond and participate in that meaning. Structured musical movement affects our consciousness in two ways: firstly, it can access non-verbal consciousness and act as a vehicle for the process of articulation: secondly, it can act, through the beauty of an appropriate form, to order the experience of a new mental space that may be ambiguous or otherwise threatening and connect it to existing experience.
Quality of musical movement has been the subject of recent neurological research, which has found that listening to classically structured music subsequently enhances certain cognitive abilities, First studies (Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, 1994) found that the performance of college students on a Stanford-Binet spatial-temporal reasoning task was significantly improved by first listening to Mozart's Sonata for two Pianos K448 for ten minutes. Spatial-temporal reasoning includes the ability to recognise, compare and find relationships among patterns, and often requires mental imaging of parts of a whole and their rotation to complete a unified object. It is a kind of thinking which is also essential to chess, mathematics and science. in subsequent tests by Shaw and other colleagues, the ability of 3-4 year olds to complete a jigsaw puzzle with speed and accuracy was found to be greatly improved after taking piano lessons for six months, an activity which also exercises spatial-temporal reasoning skills. In these and other tests, distinctive neuronal firing patterns have been noted, including firing patterns which correlate to differing styles of music, and analytical and creative firing patterns which differ in their degrees of symmetry and in their parameters. The research suggests that music can increase connections in special neuron groupings and prime them to function more ably.
Some composers have spoken of the imaging which takes place in their minds as they compose.The patterns of movement with which Mozart built the first movement of the Sonata K448 and which constitute its spatial-temporal activity, may be found in more concentrated, concise and developed forms n the music of Stravinsky. Comparison of Mozart's first movement with two brief compositions by Stravinsky --The Flower (1911) and the Prelude to Requiem Canticle (1966) demonstrates the significant development in spatial-ternporal perception which Stravinsky pioneered throughout his creative life. His intuitively-discovered innovations in the formal relating of sounds dramatically alter the shape and movement of the listener's mental space from that promoted by classically structured music, Listening to Stravinsky's moving forms in an appropriate way gives further insight into the organising dynamics of our consciousness and suggests some directions for future research into its correlation with neural activity. It seems possible that studying patterns of movement from both the phenomenological and the physiological perspectives may enable us, in time, to find the link between the mind and the brain.
06.04-- Abstract No:863
The link between religious practice and time is well established in the history of religions. Ritual activity in every religion unfolds within carefully regulated temporal frameworks and, in turn, serves to delimit extra-ritual time. The categories Sacred and Profane depend to a large degree upon conceptions of time defined within a ritual context. They reflect, among other things, the general time consciousness of the historical societies in which they occur.
For millennia, Judaism has nurtured traditions of religious practice integrally dependent upon time. The foundational concept of Sabbath, for example, is a ritual assertion about time and the possibility of its qualitative as well as quantitative differentiation. Fascination with time pervades all the ritual traditions of Judaism.
In the 19th century, a revolution shook Judaism in Europe. Traditions of religious practice which enveloped life for centuries were overthrown in a matter of years. These traditions related Jews to the synagogue and determined the content and form of their activity in it. The 19th century witnessed the birth of modern Jewish prayer.
The sources of this revolution typically have been located in the spheres of law and politics. The 19th century was a period of emancipatory activism in major European states, especially France and Germany. It also was a period of rapid progress in advanced civilizational development. These general sources, however, have not sufficed to explain a particularity: a broad shift in the hermeneutics of Jewish prayer reflected in the redesign of the synagogue ritual. In the early 19th century, Jews in western Europe, especially Germany, adopted a new liturgy which diverged in fundamental ways from the traditional conception of prayer.
Scholars largely agree that this new ritual -- advanced by the Reform Movement -- was modern in spirit. They do not agree on what motivated structured changes to the prayers. Though many of the reformers individually advocated emancipation and progress, there is evidence that the liturgy they adopted as a group was neither unambiguously emancipatory nor progressive. The ritual of the Reform Movement embodied contradictions which suggest it was a transform of the idea of prayer along lines related at best marginally to the historical developments of law and politics which effected Jewish life at this time.
What, then, were the sources of this revolution? This article argues they are to be found in a fundamental change in Jewish consciousness of time. The new liturgy of the Reform Movement--instantiated by the prayerbook of the Hamburg Temple -- reflected a form of time consciousness unlike that simultaneously expressed and formulated in the traditional ritual of the synagogue. The article presents comparative evidence from the Hamburg Temple prayerbook and the Ashkenazi Siddur, the template for religious practice in the synagogue. Finally, it proposes outlines for a social theory of origins in connection with the new conception of sacred time which came to characterize modern German Judaism. It contributes thereby to theorizing the problematics of consciousness by positing social factors in the matrix of demonstrable relations between religious ritual and historical conceptions of time.
06.04-- Abstract No:924
Can computers be conscious? The range of response to this question is immense. Some of the more significant voices in the debate speak, sometimes unknowingly, in the language of mathematical metaphors: The computer thinks, knows, remembers, learns. CompuServe does Windows. Life is a computation. DNA and RNA are natural robots. Your great great . . . grandmother was a robot. We will be to robots as dogs are to humans. We can anticipate silicon life. MAC is Catholic; DOS is Protestant. The Little Church of Walden is a Web site. The human soul is a program run on a computer called the brain. The universe is a computer. God is a universal wave function bounded by an Omega Point Condition. We're dead until the Omega Point resurrects us. Salvation occurs through King Messiah Ultra Computer.
The jury is still out on the question of whether or not computers are (or soon will be) alive, but one thing is certain: we are being "programmed" by the press, by academic scholars, by advertisers, by many mathematicians and perhaps by mathematics itself to accept the likelihood of computer life. Furthermore, much of this "priming" is being done by metaphorical implication. This paper, condensed from the text-in-progress, MATH: THE NEW LANGUAGE OF THEOLOGY, explores how this metaphor of computer consciousness is impacting very old metaphysical issues about the nature and meaning of life.
06.04-- Abstract No:997
Ours is not the first civilization to inquire into the nature of consciousness. Can we find traditional teachings that ask and attempt to answer the same questions as ourselves? The answer is yes.
We aim the spotlight of awareness in various directions in the inner theater. We aim our senses in various directions in the outer world. Even in physics, we specify the quantum state vector as a pointing direction in space.
We specify choice by direction. Our natural pointer is our hand.
Western sacred literature suggests that the human hand -- in itself, as the metaphoric Hand-of-God, and in the abstract -- is the pointer of conscious will that aims the spotlight in the theater of consciousness. The conceptual hand is the tool that points, designates, and carries meaning, in all domains of human endeavor. ·
· Fascination with the movements of its hands and fingers incarnates the neonate's inner feelings in its outer senses. ·
· In lucid dreams, we regain our volition when we see our hand. ·
· We use our hands to point to what our subjective conscious will desires in the objective world. We point, grasp and speak our conscious will to others with our hands. ·
This essay will show how the full counting set of 27- Hebrew, Greek and Arabic letters carries formal meaning that was developed in parallel, but separately from their phonetic values. We will demonstrate how the shape of each (rabbinic) Hebrew letter is the 2-dimensional view of an idealized hand, worn on the hand, while making a gesture with the same meaning as the name of the letter, and how the meaning of Hebrew words can be seen in the hand-gestures that spell the word. We will suggest that the formal meanings of the hand-gesture letters follow a natural, topologically minimal, developmental cycle that corresponds to the 27-lines that solve the general cubic equation associated with a hypersphere (Coxeter.)
· Thus the 27-logical pointing directions can be used to define a base space for the quantum state vector. ·
In the Abrahamic traditions the metaphoric Hand-of-God represents the projection of God's Will in the world. Thus the hand-gesture letters in sacred texts represent articulations of God's Will just as our hand-gestures articulate our will.
Outside the Abrahamic traditions, we suggest that the 27-lines are expressed as the edges of the 9-triangles of the Sri Yantra, the mandala of creation, and we point out that the path of the Philippine Wine dance, the Riemann projection of the general cubic equation, and the Dirac String Trick or 'double-covering' all take the form of a pair of idealized hands.
Whether in the East or in the West, whether as a General Projective Principle, a base space for quantum mechanics, a natural hand-gesture language for human communication, a tool of volition in our dreams, or in our meditation, the idea of the hand represents the will that aims the spotlight that illuminates the world.
06.04-- Abstract No:1011
The word entheogen was coined to denote chemicals and botanicals which engender the experience of god within by altering consciousness. From the early origins of shamanic religions through contemporary indigenous and syncretic religions, entheogens have played a number of roles. Sometimes they were perceived as sacraments, sometimes as gifts of the gods, sometimes as demonic, sometimes as gods themselves. Summarizing the research, Grinspoon and Bakalar conclude, It should not be necessary to supply any more proof that psychedelic drugs produce experiences that those who undergo them regard as religious in the fullest sense. Fascinating and important questions remain to be researched concerning these plants of the gods. When religion meets psychoactive drugs, what problems and questions arise?
Three contextual changes provide a more supportive climate for investigating entheogens than has occurred for many years: (1) the recognition that human behavior and experience occur in many states of consciousness; (2) the growth of transpersonal psychology to consider a spiritual aspect of humanity, ego transcendence, and mystical experiences; and (3) the growing recognition within religious communities that primary religious experience may form an essential foundation for religion.
Derived from his compilation of over 400 books, dissertations, and special issues of journals which consider religious apsects of consciousness-altering plants and chemicals and drawing on his own entheogenic experiences, the author presents pilot studies and research questions which can guide additional entheogenic scholarship. These include: (1) the nature of the human mind, (2) pastoral counseling, (3) experimental mysticism, (4) the dispute over the authenticity of drug-assisted religious experience, (5) entheogenic origins of religion, and (6) policy issues.
References:
Forte, R. (Editor) (1997). Entheogens and the Future of Religion. San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices. (Distributed by Promind Books, Sebastopol, CA.)
Roberts, T. & Hruby, P. (Editors). (1997). Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy. San Francisco: Council on Spiritual Practices. Available online: http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy.
06.04-- Abstract No:1048
In this paper it is our goal to dovetail a scientific/philosophic view of consciousness with religious beliefs. David Bohm's quantum physics alternative is a candidate for a possible broadening of science into that gray area between physics, religion and philosophy. Based on a principle of interconnectedness, it leads to an interpretation of reality and consciousness.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics destroys our classical idea of the ordering of space and time at short (relativistic) distances. Bohm derived a new idea of order from his principles of enfoldment and unfoldment. The electron would not exist as a particle continuously but shift into and out of its particle form. The electron cannot be separated from its surroundings; leading to an interconnected wholeness. Bohm proposed that the fundamental reality is that of the enfolding (into the "implicate") and unfolding (out of the implicate, into the "explicate") , which he calls the "holomovement".
Philosophically, Bohm related matter (as a part of the explicate) and consciousness (as a part of the implicate) by the concept of "meaning". Consciousness is shared by different individuals as they attach the same meaning to an (explicate) observation. A cultural factor in the fragmentation of our perception derives from the nature and use of language and has lead to a fragmentation of society as well as science.
The reality of the holomovement may also yield a common ground for the truths of different religions. In Hinduism, the implicate relates directly to Brahman, the supreme reality and consciousness, the infinite whole. The human self consists of body, personality and Atman-Brahman (hidden self - Godhead, the infinite center of life) . The implicate thus corresponds to a transpersonal view of God and an unreal world, the explicate to the "real" world and personal God (Saguna Brahman) . Whereas these views are generally regarded as contradictory (non-dual vs. dual) , it emerges here that they are not. In Buddhism, the implicate corresponds to nirvana as Godhead. As such, it concurs with the etymological derivation of nirvana as the extinction of all finite boundaries of the self and with the absence of identity (anatta) . Implicately, God is omnipresent in Christianity; God is personal in the tri-unity.
In summary, the holomovement yields an interpretation of consciousness in the implicate and reconciles dual/non-dual views within and/or across different religions. The interconnectedness within the supreme consciousness should give a higher meaning to our existence.
References:
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Publ. Routledge, 1980.
Huston Smith, The World's Religions, Publ. Harper Collins, 1991.
06.04-- Abstract No:1162
'We meditate on that adorable glory of Lord which is ever existent, ever conscious and ever blissful. May he stimulate our vision and mental power'.
(Sama Veda 1.46.2)
The modern concept of consciousness and its various forms in many ways bear a close resemblance ot the ones described in ancient Indian scriptures, especially in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjili (2nd. Century BC) .
Consciousness is nothing but the awareness of ourselves and also of the universe arount us. It is something much higher and more powerful than the mind. It actually watches the mind. It it the self or "I" which is constantly watching the activities of the mind. It is this which is known as "Atman", the innder self. It is this which can be called individual consciousness. It is a part of the universal consciousness dwelling in the individual. In fact it is nothing but a small segment of the cosmic creative energy.
According to yogic philosophy there are four states of consciousness (1) Waking State, (2) Dreaming State, (3) Sleeping State and (4) Turiya State, or state of superconsciousness in which one attains a silent and pure awareness. According to Aurobindo the future evolutionary process of human beings would be marked by the attainment of different degrees of superconsiousness by the individuals.
Philosophy of yoga greatly helps us to have a correct conception of self, atman, or consciousness on which one can gradually meditate and achieve the goal of realizing the unity of the individual and universal consciousness.
Yoga gives a logical and highly thoughtful and synthetic exposition on the concepts and problems related to consciousness. The discoveries of the recent past have culminated in the modern scientific assessment which is highly quantitative, ruthlessly analytical and factual. There has been a trend lately to assess the utility of comprehensive yogic versus highly meticulous scientific methods for the good of humanity. Arthur Deikman in his "Bimodal Consciousness" points to this fact as follows:
"The crises now facing the human race are technically solvable. Controlling population, reducing pollution and eliminating racism and war do not require new inventions. Yet these problems may prove fatally insolvable because what is required is a shift in values, in self-definition and in world view on the part of each individual for it is the individual consciousness that is the problem. Our survival is threatened now because of our great success in manipulating our environment and acting on others. The action mode has ruled our individual lives and our national politics and the I-It relationship that has provided the base for [text unreadable] many obstacles to saving our race. If, however, each person were able to feel an identity with other persons and with his environment to see himself as part of a larger unity, he would have that sense of oneness that supports the selfless actions necessary to regulate population growth, minimise pollution, and end war. The receptive mode, ie the yogic approach is the mode in which the I-Thou relationship exists."
06.04-- Abstract No:1209
The emergence of a holistic and integrative paradigm which allows for the study of consciousness as a scientific pursuit in the Western academy, supports ancient wisdom and is found in the theory of optimal health and well-being developed by Myers (1988) . Psychological theory grounded in a self-knowledge epistemology, Myers research offers another frame of reference for the development of a theory of divine consciousness with practical applications to everyday life in contemporary times. Consistent with the findings from research on a wisdom tradition dating back to 2052 BC in ancient Egypt, optimal theory expands our understanding of the systematic processes of human perfectibility. Recent surveys indicate that introspective and philosophical approaches to the study of consciousness are viewed as essential by many and of value to most (Baruss 1997; Sutherland 1997) . This paper will introduce a theory of optimal human functioning through examination of what are known as the Seven Principles of Tehuti adn the introspective practices of the Ten Cardinal Principles as a means to structure human consciousness toward maximal well-being.
There is some empirical evidence which suggests that the experiences of a particular consciousnss researcher with regard to consciousness may not be universally true (Baruss, 1997) . By exploring the philosophical outcomes of introspective processes dating back from ancient times to the present, a universal model will be proposed for the cognitive restructuring necessary for optimal health and well-being from intrapersonal to interpersonal levels of human interaction. Particular attention will be paid to the implications of such a model for contemporary social problems such as racism, sexism, violence, substance abuse, alienation and ecological disruption. In addition, personal processes such as intuition, revelation and peak experiences will be explored in the context of ethics.
06.04-- Abstract No:1247
In this paper I first explicate the Freudian position concerning religiosity. An advocate of the positive sciences prevalent at the end of the nineteenth-century, Freud views the religious act as illusory, unprovable by scientific evidence and reducible to a Hobbesian "motion about the brain." The "universal obsessional neurosis of humanity" that is the god-illusion arises from a mechanistic/hedonistic world-view and ultimately hinders scientific and anthropological advancement. Consequently for Freud, this "wretched makeshift" must be seen for what it is as delusional and abandoned as the adult abandons a child-like neurosis.
Secondly, I explicate Max Scheler's phenomenological view of the religious act. For Scheler, the religious act has its own object and sphere, setting it apart as essentially different from any other activity. The sphere of the religious act is the highest type of activity correlative to a hierarchy of values found to be present essentially in the objects to which acts are directed. Further, the religious act remains impenetrable to the criticisms of science which seek demonstrative proof and verifyablility. Scheler's claim is that a scientific endeavor such as psychoanalysis is directed toward a "lower" value and can only "look on" the religious act from a second-person perspective. Consequently, psychoanalysis misses the superlative value-quality inherent in the religious act and misnames it as "delusional."
Finally, I offer an assessment which finds worth in both positions. The worth of Scheler's position lies in delineating and defining the paramenters of the religious act within the framework of values that are not reducible to the findings of a positivistic science. In this sense, Freud's endeavor fails to fully account for the spiritual aspect in humanity which recognizes such a system of values, and which places God as the highest value. Further, Freud turns out to be the one involved in a delusional state by denying the existence of such a value as God or the SUMMUM BONUM.
The worth of Freud's position lies in the fact that psychoanalysis is useful as a tool for those who are in process on the way to engagement in the religious act. Considered precisely as a means, psychoanalysis contributes to what Scheler refers to as a "value-ception, " existing as a pre-condition for engagment in the religious act.
06.04-- Abstract No:1249
"Know that the complete secret of prophecy consists for the prophet in that he suddenly sees the shape of his self standing before him and he forgets his [normal] self and it is disengaged from him and he sees the shape of his self before him talking to him and predicting the future" Rabbi Nathan (quoted in Scholem, 1961, p. 142) .
Heautoscopy -- the experience of a vision of oneself -- seems to have been a feature of the prophetic kabbalah taught by the 13th century mystic Abraham Abulafia. The distinctive nature of the practices employed in this school may be considered a specialized case of the more general emphasis on language throughout Jewish mysticism. These practices required the mystic to follow elaborate associations to letters and words, and might be viewed in contemporary psychological terms as shifting the mind to a more focused exploration of what are normally pre-conscious aspects of processing. Idel (1989) rightly asserts that the technique involved deconstructing language as a communicative instrument. It is argued here that, more fundamentally, the technique brought about a deconstruction of self, resulting in various altered experiences of self (one of which was heautoscopy) . In addition to providing an interesting insight into the psychology of mysticism, the psychological analysis of these forms of language mysticism helps clarify the role language and self-referencing may play in the relationship between pre-conscious and conscious processing.
Idel, M. (1989) . Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia. SUNY Press.
Scholem, , G. G. (1961) . Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. Schocken.
06.04-- Abstract No:1315
1) The way we argue depends on the mode of reference we are presupposing. In the religious discourse we often do not argue and draw conclusions from the concept of God, but from the singular perfections like ultimate goodness, endless love, greatest wisdom, etc. These descriptions of perfections are referring under certain conditions to God, despite the fact that "God" does not have the same meaning as "ultimate goodness."
This form of discourse has become normal in inter-religious debates, where the conceptual consciousness about God (whatever is meant by this) is often replaced by its more flexible referential descriptions. The strategy ables to overcome cultural differences and to construe the models of inter-religious discourse in which the equivocal use of "God" has been substituted by its less equivocal and more analogous use of the concepts of good, love or wisdom.
2) There are however abnormal cases, if we have reasons to presuppose, that some culture is not conscious of certain perfection or even several of them. For instance, according to the discoveries made by cognitive linguists, certain tribes of Papuas do not have the concept of love and moral goodness. 1 This fact, stated in linguistics as an empirical one, creates a theoretical problem: Which form of argumentative discourse are relevant, when speaking with Papuas about God as ultimate love?
3) I will state two solutions. First one, can be found implicitly in Prof. A. Wierzbika´s idea of the "set of universal human concepts" and her project to translate Biblical parables into the language of universal human concepts.2 I suggest that this form of discourse lacks (besides its theological and philosophical point) argumentative force. Firstly, because it interprets the empirical facts of linguistics with a too simplified philosophical (Augustinian) idea of how the words have their meaning in language. Secondly, the phrasal equivalents to "love" in the set of universal human concepts are greatly equivocal. An alternative solution, I propose, takes its start from the Wittgensteinian view, according to which speaking the language is participating in a very complicated and rule covered social activity. I rely on analogical theory of referring in order to show how arguing from perfections do not imply equivocation, which would undermine argumentative models.3
1 Wierzbicka, Anna. 1995. Kisses, bows, and handshakes. Semiotica. 103-3/4, 207-252
2 Wierzbicka, Anna. In press. Semantics: primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3 Raukas, Mart. 1996. "La Reference a L' Absolu" - dans la: Penser l' homme et la science; Betrachtungen zum Thema Mensch und Wissenschaft: Essais en honneur du Professeur Evandro Agazzi a l' occasion de ses 60 ans, Edite par Bernard Schumacher/Edgaro Castro, Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, p.323-335 Raukas, Mart. 1996."St. Thomas Aquinas on the Speech of the Angels." - Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, Paulus Verlag 1996, Bd. 43, Heft 1/2, S.30-44; Raukas Mart.1996. "Actualite de la Doctrine de l' Analogie de Saint Thomas d' Aquin." - dans la: Le Sel de La Terre: Intelligence de La Foi, Hiver 1995/1996, N 15, Avrille, Impremerie Nouvelle, p.49-65.
06.04-- Abstract No:1317
Over the centuries, the location of the soul has been an enigmatic concept and difficult to grasp. Its location, throughout the ages has been implicated in various portions of the nervous system and other regions of the body. Beginning with Plato in the fourth century B.C., he divided the soul into three components, with the brain assigned the most important component. Aristotle, a younger contemporary of Plato, wrote extensively on the soul, but never pinpointed its location. Much later in the sixteenth century, Leonardo Da Vinci determined the location of the soul using architectural methods. Shortly after him, Descartes, a French philospher and mathematician forged ahead with a new location of the soul: the pineal gland. From the soul having an exact location, a new concept in modern time emerged, in which Sir John Eccles argued that the mind and soul were the same. He also argued that the mind had an existence that was autonomous of the brain.
The location of the soul, if there is a location, is an enigmatic one. Whether it exist in the brain, or specifically in the pineal gland or somwhere beyond the constraints of the human form is an interesting hypothesis that has endured for centuries and will continue for many more.
06.04-- Abstract No:1319
Buddhism contains a systematic examination of consciousness and reality. Although nominally a religion, Buddhism is fundamentally scientific. The relativity of space, time and causality are recognized by progressive observation, analysis and synthesis. The primacy and function of consciousness is delineated and the paradox of quantum measurement is identified by an analysis of the means of cognition.
06.05-- Abstract No:765
In this paper we review some of the themes which were played out in ancient philosophy in the period from about 300BC to 300AD, focusing attention on what views of human consciousness were expressed. We find that many of the current ideas being discussed (e.g., materialism, functionalism, the nature of mental states) were topics of intense debate during this time as well. By placing these themes in their historical context it becomes possible to contrast the ideas of the ancients with modern discussions of the same themes, thus obtaining some idea of the depth of the questions involved.
06.06-- Abstract No:1356
The talk will discuss different phenomena in films which are experienced as `subjective', as events in minds, not in exterior reality. However, some subjective film sequences depict inner experiences, others depict scenes and events in exterior reality. I will argue that the common denominator for these subjectivity elicitors is not whether they portray real/exterior events or not, but whether or not they support actions or propositions, and whether the experience is focused or unfocused. I will explain this by suggesting that subjective feelings are the way in which blocked or impeded action potentials are represented in the conscious, audiovisual experience of the film sequence. I will further argue that the unfocused form of subjective experiences is often linked to the function of these feelings as reorienting activations of nonconscious cognitive processes. The talk will be illustrated with film clips.
06.07-- Abstract No:820
In the numinous recesses of caves, Paleolithic peoples painted, sketched, and carved animal imagery with remarkable craftsmanship and dream-like clarity. This paper will offer the hypothesis that these images do not represent hunting concerns, but rather reveal the origins of shamanic consciousness, the idea of sacred myth, and art as eidetic representations of consciousness. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that art, myth, and the sacred arose as a unified 'holon' over 30, 000 years ago. Slides and the most recent finds at Chauvet will augment the research.
06.07-- Abstract No:1053
This presentation discusses the relationship between cosmology and healing using the Norse mythology around Freyja, Gullveig, völvas, seidhmenn, disir and norns. Given the contemporary impulse for abstracting and universalizing models of healing: What is the relevance of culturally specific practices and models which we find in contemporary indigenous societies? Rather than focus on the cultural other, the presenters revert their gaze back to their own cultural backgrounds and investigate the seeing process of the Norse seidhur and the associated healing events. Eurocentered healing practices (whether categorized as allopathic, homeopathic, holistic or transpersonal) embody a particular cosmology which oftentimes remains unconscious. This model is contrasted with the cosmology and concomitant healing practices of the Vanir times in Norse mythology. A reading of the Eddic Völuspá is used to develop a discussion of an indigenous Norse understanding of the current time cycle in the mythological terms of Ragnarök. This interpretation allows the identification of the significance of culturally specific models of healing. Its relevance for contemporary personal quests as well as consciousness research are outlined. The presentation is methodologically grounded in the available orignal mythological sources, contemporary literature by indigenous authors, as well as the personal narrative inquiries of the presentators qua dreams, seidhur ceremonies, etc. Valgerdhur Bjarnadottir focuses her presentation on the Norse mythological material and its implications, Jürgen Kremer focuses his presentation on the discussion of differences in eurocentered vs. indigenous healing cosmologies as well as the practical application of the mythological material in ceremonial inquiry.
Sample published accounts relevant to this paper include Bjarnadottir and Kremer (1997) , Kremer (1994, 1996, 1997) .
References:
Bjarnadottir, Valgerdhur and Jürgen Werner Kremer (1997) , 'The cosmology of healing in Vanir Norse mythology, ' in: Holger Kalweit and Stanley Krippner, Das Verhältnis von Kosmologie und Heilung / Yearbook of Cross-Cultural Medicine and Psychotherapy 1998, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung: Mainz, Germany. (In preparation)
Kremer, Jürgen Werner (1994) , 'Seidr or trance?' ReVision, 16 (4) , 183-191
Kremer, Jürgen Werner (1996) The Possibility Of Recovering Indigenous European Perspectives On Native Healing Practices, Ethnopsychologische Mitteilungen , 5 (2) , pp. 149-164.
Kremer, Jürgen Werner (1997) , 'Transforming learning transforming, ' ReVision, 20 (1) , pp. 7-14.
06.10-- Abstract No:976
As the scientific study of consciousness has grown and matured, scholars are recognizing that the pioneering work of "early" thinkers, such as Vygotsky. In the 1920s-1930s, Vygotsky and associates such as Luria investigated the development of consciousness and the sociocultural aspects of its qualia. Vygotsky showed that during the development of the child, consciousness results from a reciprocally determined complex interaction between the maturing child, the social world, and the reality in which each is embedded. Vygotsky's ideas pre-dated the currently popular view of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon which results when the component parts of specific phenomenon such as self-consciousness interact through time (i.e. consciousness as a chaotic dynamic iterated system) . The pattern which emerges develops feedback mechanisms which allows it to monitor and react to itself. Such feedback is then filtered into all areas of the system's components. The highest emergent pattern (i.e. the qualia) has distinct subjective states which are liable to alteration as the component parts and/or their interrelationships are altered. It is from this insight that Vygotsky recognized that emotional consciousness represent the primary qualia of internal system dynamics. The difficulty of studying consciousness lies in the fact that subjective conscious states reflect the emergent pattern of a chaotic system in close interaction with its surrounding environment (i.e. the system is open) . In essence, 'meaning", can be viewed as the recognition of the system (human) of the qualia emergent from the underlying dynamic component system changing through time. The acquisition of signs and other semiotic functions produces a system that, though still open, may create patterns unique and idiosyncratic to its history. Thus, any study of consciousness must be embedded not only in psychology, but in culture. Vygotsky and his associates showed that the conscious experience of the 'world" is largely dependent upon the developmental and cultural history of the individual. He believed that westernized individuals experience a reality via their consciousness in distinctly different ways than do non-westernized individuals and that the introduction of western educational formats into non-westernized societies fundamentally altered their conscious experience. Thus, it is important to look at the role of education and cultural history upon the consciousness of developing children in studying consciousness. South Africa provides an opportunity to apply Vygotsky's work on consciousness to the transformation of the educational system. South Africa's educational context is becoming increasingly westernized via the introduction of formalized instructional methods for critical thinking, problem solving, etc. The clash of western versus traditional conscious experience is resulting in widespread debate displaying a paradigmatic shifting in the fundamental core of 'reality". We suggest this encounter of diverse consciousness will result in a uniquely third form of consciousness which we label 'transformational consciousness'.
06.10-- Abstract No:1064
Paganism is a brand new phenomenon in South Africa, currently presenting itself as a viable and legitimate spiritual option in an impoverished religious morass within the complex, rapidly changing South African milieu. Amidst the massive concomitant psychological and spiritual transition, a collective and new South African consciousness is emerging and relating to an emerging global consciousness, which is evolving as a result of the transformation of its culture, history, music, art, mythologies, ethics, education and politics. South Africa is truly a society in transition, and embedded in, if not a driver of this new consciousness is the reconnection with spiritual roots - a reaching down to the earth and ancient, past wisdoms and traditions, whilst reaching up and into the future, attempting to fashion and fabricate new age wisdoms, beliefs and consciousness in a country hurled onto the threshold of the information age. South Africa is one of the highest per capita of the population users of the Internet and the telecommunications hub for Africa. South Africa is at the crossroads of the east-west and north-south hemispheres of influence, and its culture captures all these influences in its net. There is a physical and conscious connectedness with the rest of the world - a kinship of spirit, a jacking into the 'collective unconscious' and a morphing of the archetypes, so to speak.
The direction that emerging Paganism is taking within this new consciousness leads us to explore what it means to 'come out and 'come home' in the South African context.
To better understand South African neo-Paganism we reflect on the global trends and directions in cultural evolvement and psychosocial adaptation and compare it to the emergent, neophyte sense of belonging and being that mingles with ancient tradition and spiritual past.
The current resurge and revival tendencies in South Africa cannot be seen in isolation of the general new millennia movement. However, the birth of Paganism in South Africa must be seen in the context of a country desperate for meaning, a country giddy with hope and burning with desire to live in a spirit of co-operation.
South Africa is a country whose spiritual identity is emerging out of the ashes. It is a country where Paganism represents the new religious consciousness of the country.
06.10-- Abstract No:1203
Velmans [1990] makes the case that our perceptions of the physical world are constructs of perceptual processing and therefore part of the contents of consciousness, an observation which leads him to reject both dualist and reductionist models of consciousness and to support what he calls a "reflexive" model of the way consciousness relates to the brain and the the physical world. Going beyond this, we can say that evolution has brought about consciousness not for its own sake but because of its high survival value, and it follows that consciousness always involves consciousness of some thing. Perhaps the impetus for consciousness can be derived in the distinction made by Damasio between primary and secondary emotions [1994]: we share with other animals a primary emotional system which, though physically governed by the brain and central nervous system, does not require consciousness for its operation; a few environmental cues and we are fighting or fleeing. The secondary system, however, has to do with our own experience, and Damasio argues that this secondary emotional system exists because it buys an enlarged insurance policy: we can remember particular qualities of a predator or prey which will guarantee our avoidance or capture of them when we meet them next. Out of this secondary emotional system, too, we manage to perceive, try to understand, and interact with the most complex phenomena in our environments, which are our fellow human beings. Our experience of them involves not only the same mechanism by which we engage the rest of the world, in which we assemble, on the fly, a 'version' of the world by responding to a few key cues and filling in the rest, which is analogous to Damasio's primary emotions, but also through our own individual experiences of others.
This experience of the Other-a 'social ontology' -- has been addressed in the continental philosophical tradition in this century by Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Buber, and others. After a very brief perusal of their positions, I will present an approach drawn from both the cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology. I will show that experiencing someone else is indeed a complicated business that involves not 'knowing the other'--though it seems that way to us--but actually having my experience of the other--which is a vastly different entity. My experience of the other other is triggered by attributes of the other--his or her appearance, voice, and the like, but is also made up of my set of expectations about similar people I have experienced in the past. Since we always respond to other people emotionally at some level, it is important to see that, as Cotterill has argued, my experience of someone else is stored in my body; but I will argue that essentially, it begins there as well and is constructed and revised during the course of interaction. Building upon George Kelley's [1956] theory of personal constructs, I will show how we move, in the course of our experiencing another, from the initial physiological cues to the ability to construct, with some accuracy, the constructs of another person.
06.10-- Abstract No:1241
The Russia' society is now under conditions of big structural changes. These effects not only economics and social policy but also the way how people think of and interact with each other. In such transitional period the development of new progressive state policies does not necessarily mean the immediate respond and change in social consciousness. Before "perestroika" people with disabilities were more likely to be isolated from wider society than included in normal social life. Now the state legislation i developing in accordance with principles of international community. The new Act provides equal rights for people with disabilities in political, economic and social spheres. However, what is urgently needed is a change of social consciousness to achieve a balance between political rhetoric and realities. >From this perspective, it is of interest to study the professionals' attitudes towards helping children with disabilities because the professionals represent the state values, on the one hand, and the attitudes of wider society, on the other hand. In our research physicians, nurses, social workers and teachers of special day care centers were interviewed about their understanding of aims and meanings of rehabilitation. The aims and principles of rehabilitation reported by professionals contradict the way in which they actually interact with children with disability and their families. Professionals said they were social inclusion of children with disabilities on the base of developing communicative and occupational skills. At the same time, their interactions with children and families seems to be paternalistic. It might be explained through the following: during long period the state policy was rather paternalistic; cultural traditions set up the values of collectivism and interdependency; people who are inclined to protective style of relationship choose the occupation of "helper" very often. Professionals evaluate very negatively parents' incapacity to provide enough care and treatment for their children. Our respondents describe the parents to have low educational status, lack of skills and knowledge, do not believe in themselves but expected support from the state, physically and emotionally overwhelmed, cannot solve personal problems, feel frustration because of negative social attitudes. Besides, in the professionals' view, the parents are careless as they are "unwilling to cooperate", do not follow professional advice concerning the child. It may be interpreted as parents are labeled as "bad parents" when they do not meet professionals' expectations. Thus, we can conclude that there is a contradiction between conscious and unconscious components of social attitudes towards people with disability. The professional-parents cooperation, in professionals' view, is reduced to parents' compliance. Here the expected social roles become obvious: powerful professionals versus powerless clients without responsibility and autonomy. In other words, in spite of declarations from the top, the paternalistic attitudes towards people with disabilities yet dominate on the micro-level of social practices.
06.11-- Abstract No:770
Reductionist methodologies tend to explain consciousness with reference to mental states that originate in measurable neurophysiological events and fulfill causally identifiable functions. This interpretation of consciousness differs radically from other theories and is still in its early stages of development. A strict application of the Quine-Duhem thesis (cf. Quine 1960) should alert the scientifically minded philosopher that the nature of the current methodological approach in consciousness studies may need revision. There are just too many so-called 'anomalous' phenomena surfacing through the channels of modern information highways. Intercultural philosophy cannot take place within the confines of one dominant methodology. To accept subjective experience as primary data in the study of consciousness is certainly radically empirical in the sense of William James, and is also compatible with Bergson's vision that the union of science and metaphysics will lead the positive sciences to a level far greater than one can imagine. Recent ethnographies suggest that tribal cosmologies address topics of philosophical relevance and offer valuable insights into the nature of perennial philosophical problems. While it has been argued in postmodern and feminist thought that the verification of knowledge is directly related to political interests, this paper demonstrates that there are other vantage points not related to such interests that serve as a valuable measure for acceptance of knowledge. Direct empirical verification of the ontological presuppositions that govern the assessment of anthropos in the context sub species aeternitatis empowers an individual to understand his or her role within one's culture as well. The methodological bounty described in ethnography signals a due process for philosophers to question the categorization of transcendence as merely 'religious experience.' This paper argues that humans may have the capacity both to recognize the divine and to give objective descriptions through symbols and language, which allows for developing methodologies to access that knowledge at will. Intercultural philosophy cannot take place within the confines of one dominant methodology. To accept subjective experience as primary data in the acquisition of knowledge is certainly radically empirical in the sense of William James, and is also compatible with Bergson's vision that the union of science and metaphysics will lead the positive sciences to a level far greater than one can imagine. This capacity may reinstate the role of philosophy as providing valuable insight into the nature of consciousness and utilize the discourse about transcendent states of awareness as a pedagogical measure to educate humanity.
06.11-- Abstract No:795
This paper makes the case that shamanic technology and epistemology served an evolutionary purpose in assisting early humans navigate through an often unpredictable, sometimes hostile environment. Shamanism can be described as a group of techniques by which practitioners enter the'spirit world, ' obtaining power and knowledge that is used to help and heal members of the social group that has given them shamanic status. The shaman's epistemology depended on deliberately accessing information from'spiritual entities' in'upper' worlds, 'lower' worlds, and'middle earth' (i.e., ordinary reality) ; altered states of consciousness helped them to access this information, often in the form of symbols. A useful epistemological perspective has been proposed by Newton (1996) who sees humanity's variegated experiences with reality as a demonstration of the range of specific sensorimotor images and sensations that constitute its direct, ongoing understanding of the environment. Thinking makes use of the same structures involved in sensorimotor activity, structures that take the form of analog models of reality; the resulting images ground humankind's concepts, constructs, and intentions. Newton's position is in accord with the proposal that primoridal people began with the sensual and proceeded to the practical. Hence, mythmaking, a basic propensity of humanity, emerged from bodily functions as well as from immerson in nature. Mithen's (1996) evolutionary schema describes the emergence of general intelligence as well as such specialized cognitive domains as technical intelligence, social intelligence, natural history intelligence, and language. Mithen agrees with Newton that language was originally social and highly adaptive, eventually providing early humans the ability to reflect on their own and other people's mental states. In this way, language began to interact with the other intelligences, and the resulting cognitive fluidity enabled the production of symbolic artifacts and images. For the shaman, the totality of inner and outer reality was fundamentally an immense signal system. Shamanic states of consciousness were the first steps toward deciphering this signal system, and language shifted from a social to a general-purpose function, while consciousness shifted from a means to predict other individuals' behavior to managing a mental data base of information relating to all domains of activity. Shamanic technology yeilded information from a data base consisting of dreams, visions, and intuitons, as well as keen observations of the natural and social world. Homo sapiens was not the only contender for survival, but had an evolutionary advantage over other early humans because of the ability to use symbolism in art and myth, both of which were adaptive because they helped to make sense of one's body, one's peers, and one's environment. Homo sapiens was probably unique among early humans in the ability to symbolize, mythologize, and shamanize. This domination may have been due to the ability to take the life of the senses and use it as a bridge to produce narratives that assured their survival.
06.11-- Abstract No:801
We cannot consider the subject of consciousness apart for the fact that we ourselves are conscious. If we ignore our own consciousness it may seem that we are drawing objective conclusions, but we may merely be caught in our own preconceptions. The features of the world that we take as given may be conditioned by our state of consciousness.
Instead of exploring this possibility, most philosophies of consciousness place consciousness on, in, or associated with some external aspect of the world that is taken as the bearer (or correlate) of consciousness (Chalmers, 1997) . This aspect is taken, a priori, as the basis for consciousness. Often this aspect is the physical brain, or some component or state (s) of the brain.
A hidden assumption of this procedure is that the brain (with its associated processes and states) exists independently of our consciousness as part of the external physical world, whose objective existence is beyond doubt. In exploring this assumption I want to call attention to three dimensions of our daily experience: our multiple states of consciousness; the social construction of knowledge; reality.
Multiple states of consciousness: Philosophers often treat consciousness as if it were a unitary state. But our consciousness is not unitary, it is legion. When we recognize this, the world looks less like an a priori given and more like a multiplicity of potentialities that we instantiate into perceptions through our activity in various states of consciousness. The three most obvious states of consciousness are waking, dreaming and dream-less sleep. The waking state also consists of multiple states through which we move. With each shift in awareness we shift consciousness, at least slightly.
Social construction of knowledge: New knowledge is always produced and evaluated in a specific context, by specific people (Latour 1987, Longino 1990) . In this sense, there no knowledge can be taken as being absolutely true, as privileged knowledge of the True nature of reality.
Reality: If we take the social constructivism seriously, we are forced to the conclusion that all knowledge has meaning only for and in the communities that hold this knowledge to be true. This includes knowledge of the existence of a, supposed, objectively real material world. In contrast to this (Western) view of reality, the Aranda people of Australia believe in (and live in) a 'time-outside-time' that exists in dreams and which is also the time in which their ancestors live (Rheingold, 1988) . To credit this time with reality, the Aranda must approach the world from a different consciousness than we do.
A system of interacting elements emerges from this analysis. This system consists of (1) a state of consciousness; (2) a community that instantiates that state of consciousness; (3) the reality that is the (intentional) content of that consciousness. Thus, physical reality (including the brain) is part of a system that includes the consciousness of the scientist (who takes reality to be physical) , and who participates in a community of like-minded scientists. Other reality/community/consciousness systems are possible, and actually exits in non-Western cultures.
Chalmers, D. J. (1997) , 'Moving forward on the problem of consciousness', Journal of Consciousness Studies 4, pp. 3-46.
Latour, B. (1987) , Science in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) .
Longino, H. E. (1990) , Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) .
06.11-- Abstract No:805
In 'Metaphor, Vibration and Form' I identify a process that I believe underlies all ritual enactments. Whether it is Joseph Campbell's analysis of the Hero's journey (1969) . Victor Turner's theoretical and experiential interest in symbols (1974) , or Charles Laughlin's cycle of meaning (1995) to mention only a few scholars, there is at work a particular kind of behavioural modification system. It begins with the mind and the meanings provided metaphorically for symbols, then proceeds to an intense focus on symbolic sequences in meditation or in ritual dramas so that the metaphor is taken into the body as physical experience. From this physical 'ownership' and experience of the metaphor, the properties associated with it are encouraged, socially and ritually, to come to the surface and be enacted in the form of everyday behaviour. I outline instances where this process works and where it does not.
06.11-- Abstract No:898
As humans, both our growth and development are influenced by myriad patterns. We create social and cultural patterns which serve to liberate, restrain, and protect us. We search for patterns in science as well as our everyday lives in order to give our lives meaning. In fact, our conscious awareness is so intermingled with the perception of patterns that it would be difficult to completely separate the two.
In recent years, more attention has been paid to the detection and significance of patterns in everything from Postmodernism to chaos and complexity theory. The connection between consciousness and patterns, however, is nowhere more evident than in the respective works of Daniel Dennett, Jean Gebser, and Tyler Volk. Dennett, in his theory of the intentional stance, addresses the metaphysical questions surrounding the perception of patterns. His form of "mild realism" ties together the patterns in the mind with the patterns in the world. The German cultural historian Jean Gebser, in his monumental work "The Ever-Present Origin" (Ursprung und Gegenwart) , developed his theory of space-time consciousness structures in which various patterns can be related to different types of dimensional perception. And finally, the American biologist Tyler Volk, in his book "Metapatterns Across Space, Time, and Mind", proposes a basic taxonomy of patterns as well as their corresponding functional characteristics. The implication of these works is that there exists a fundamental relationship between conscious awareness and patterns.
By building on the above works, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the perception of patterns is essential for conscious awareness. By examining literature and findings from anthropological, sociological, psychological, and philosophical studies, we present evidence that the perception of patterns is culturally and historically universal. On the basis of this evidence we present a preliminary phenomenological model of consciousness and patterns. It is our contention that the perception and use of patterns has played an indispensable role in the survival of our species.
06.11-- Abstract No:952
The style of trancing that I will address, commonly found in religious ceremonies world-wide, is often designated as "trance possession" in anthropological writings, even though it does not always involve "possession." The learned aspect of religious trancing is well-known, a kind of gnosis that has been brilliantly described by the 12th century Sufi mystic, Al Ghazzali, who, in his instructions to those who would attain hal, claims that one must begin by pretending, and only slowly does one gain the skill of self-conscious control of trancing. The ability to control trancing seems to me to be parallel to the phenomenon of "lucid" dreaming, in which the dreamer knows that she is dreaming and has some control over what happens in the dream. Today, the ability of experienced trancers to control religious trancing has a special role with the appearance on the international scene of touring groups of religious practitioners whose ceremonies involve spectacular musical performance, dancing, and trancing. These groups are usually not willing to perform sacred rituals for a paying, uncomprehending audience; nor are they willing to forego the considerable financial rewards from such tours. The result is often a de-sacralized ceremony from which trancing has been expunged while the music and dancing remains relatively intact. The particular instance I will address is a troupe of healers from Southwest Sri Lanka with whom I studied in 1996. The ceremonies, called Tovil, involve an all-night ritual in which one of the dancers trances during an extended dance in which he assumes upon himself all the negative forces (the Yakku - commonly translated as "demons") and thus frees the patient from their malign influence. Called the "double-torch" dance from the fact that the dancer grips a torch lighted at both ends between his teeth while dancing, is also a favorite item at Sri Lankan tourist hotels, where it is always advertised as "devil-dancing". Since the trance signifies the cleansing of malignant forces from the patient who is the focus of the dance, trancing would be totally inappropriate for Westerners sipping cocktails at a bar in a five-star hotel paying desultory attention to the dancing taking place. Both trancing and mantras are omitted from the tourist performances. According to the exegesis of the practitioners themselves, trance does not occur because the essential mantras are absent. My explanation is that the trancers consciously control the entering and exiting of their trance, and thus they do not trance during tourist performances. (Video clip of trancer during ritual.)
The line between secular tourist performances and sacred rituals is not, however, as sharp as the above would indicate. Sometimes, performers in tourist rituals do trance; always to the surprise of themselves and their co-performers. The reasons that this happens seems to me the result of neural/somatic habit upon the hearing of certain sounds, particularly the musical envelop of the ritual trance occasion. The mantras may be absent, but the music is still there, powerfully associated with a particular kind of consciousness, and a special kind of activity. Without willing it, their practiced behavior sets in and they exhibit trance symptoms.
The obverse also can happen. In ritual occasions where trancing is expected, even desired, it may not happen. In such cases, the congregation is not likely to know the difference. In an experienced trancer, the distinction so important to us between "faking" trance and "real" trance is not decisive. The ritual is successful if it has been correctly performed and if the result is the desired one. If all the mantras, the drumming, the singing and dancing have been properly performed, and the chief practitioner is a respected healer, the ceremony is valid without trance. The common Western notion that trancing involves a loss of control is not born out by the practices of experienced trancers.
06.11-- Abstract No:975
The "hard problem" of working toward a science of consciousness has been characterized as an explanatory gap between discussions of the nature of the CNS and discussions of everyday life. The problem of consciousness in the West has been dominated by merely the problem of the intentionality of consciousness. The fundamental wonderment about consciousness is the human resistance to dealing with the paramount "reality" for each one of us: one's own interiority. The present discussion treats both the plurality of intentionality and the fluctuations of interiority as conclusions about consciousness that are in search of a premiss.
Interiority embraces what a person thinks and feels about their own life as it has unfolded. Lived-through experience is intimately intertwined with both the cultural transmits that one has come into contact with and the specific events of one's own life. The paramount reality of consciousness is the gradient of feelings of fulfillment-frustration. Traditional religions have been intertwined with what is topically referred to as "healing and curing." A profound indigenous insight is that "emotional weather" can hit the strongest man or women. The crisis of modernity is the nihilistic threat of loss of hope, absence of meaning, and lovelessness.
Much more esoteric than the native categories that shape the intentionality of what people take as reality are the first-person "I feel" comments about one's lived experience of harmony or conflict, good fortune or misfortune, health or illness. All the tribal and supra-national religions of the world have attempted to decipher the problem of the subjectively felt flux of interiority. Although traditional contexts of the decipherment of fluctuations are now seen to be entangled with many "unbelievables, " the problem of the fluctuation in well being is a paramount human experience in the past and in the present.
The unique referential dimension of interiority in the study of consciousness raises the most fundamental hermeneutical problem of application. All the tribal and supranational religions of the world have attempted to decipher the subjectively felt flux of interiority. Although the traditional contexts of the decipherment of fluctuations are now seen to be entangled with many "unbelievables", the subjective reality of the fluctuation in well being is a paramount experience in the past and in the present. The potential narrative function of the literature of consciousness for contemporary life is presented in terms of the interplay of the three leading kinds of perspectives which articulate ourselves with culture as a proposed world: The reactualization of the Same, the recognition of Otherness, and the expansion of the Analogous. The potentiality of the present is guided by imaginative variation under the sign of the analogous.
The relationship of one's own consciousness to the altered states of archaic ecstasy has been discussed in terms of the metaphors of "Doors of Perception" and "Separate Reality". Turner has helped us to better understand the illusion of the "thing" in terms of a double-bubble framework of the highly charged sensory pole and the polysemy of the interpretive ideological pole. Paradoxically, deeper scandals surrounding self-consciousness linger in the illusion of interpreting the distentio animi, the physiology of the subjective inner swelling, as leading to a mental douche. Rather, distentio animi is itself the most profound sensory pole. The threefold space of the Same, the Other and the Analogous leads to the temporality and multivocality of our own progressive self-liberation. The analogous frees us to re-present in our own consciousness beyond the confinements of the original author and audience . . . even when the original author and audience is allegorically oneself.
06.11-- Abstract No:990
Indigenous modes of inquiry present distinctive ways of knowing and has kept connected domains of knowing that in West have been separated and fragmented. It asserts the prevalence of sacredness in all things and the complex relational "texture" of life. Indian science is a participative venture in which the inquirer attempts to emulate, complement and understand his/her relationship to a life-enhancing process. In its most thorough application, systematic observation, ethical thinking, spiritual action (such as prayer) and aesthetics are properly bound as one. Through dialogue, we have identified common aspects associated with inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge that appeared central for Native students in a Traditional Knowledge Graduate program:
1- Anchoring inquiry within proper intentions and cultivating a psycho-spiritual stance where "the researcher must learn to find a quiet place within, to ensure balance." (Indian Association of Alberta)
2-Primacy of direct experience.
3- Approaching social issues in ways that emphasize oral history, people's knowledge, situatedness in a cosmological universe, in the ecological realities, in communal (tribal) concerns.
4- Seeking guidance and validation from Elders.
5- Emphasis on ethical dimensions.
6-Receptivity of knowledge presented in different modes of consciousness, such as dreaming and visions.
This description of Indigenous practices points towards an embeddedness in an experiential paradigm where the relationship between human knowledge and the world is emphasized and where the "object" of observation stems both from inner experience and direct observation. This description of course raised some important epistemological questions. A relational epistemology might presuppose that spiritual (and even material) problems of humankind may be themselves framed in specific epistemological terms. For instance, achieving balance may in itself constitute a state that required a certain level of understanding resulting not only from actions (although we have underlined the special status that actions may have over words) but from a deep knowing that everything in the phenomenal world is in constant dynamic relation, and that humans have a critical role in the maintenance of proper relationships.
Progression in understanding this reality (with the mind and the heart) and the ability to actualize this knowing is linked to the rhythm and movement of revelatory disclosure epitomized in the quest for a vision. This, in turn, implies the recognition of developmental phases in coming-to-know and that one's life is occasion for learning. Thus to approach inquiry from an indigenous perspective means to cultivate indigenous consciousness that fosters a certain kind of learning. This consciousness is meditating both the sensible and the non-sensible worlds.
We have described aspects of Native science and attempted to describe epistemology from the Native point of view. Coming-to-know in a complex living Universe, within aware participation, involves an epistemological stance that takes the quality of inner experience as anchor point. Personal transformation is to be expected from a traditional inquirer as he or she learns to hold the responsibility that comes with coming-to-know.
06.11-- Abstract No:991
Our presentation will focus on Dine (Navajo) consciousness as it has been conceptualized and understood by traditional Dine people and as it has been spiritually articulated for countless generations. Throughout the presentation we will utilize traditional Dine terminology in order to illuminate the complexity of relationships and processes inherent in the understanding of the human consciousness. High spiritual language of the culture will be utilized during the presentation whenever necessary to provide cultural context and illumination of multiple levels of consciousness.
The Dine live in accordance with the natural cosmic order. This is reflected in the culture, the language and the spirituality. Cosmological order that provides the epistemological and ontological context for the cultural and spiritual consciousness will be holistically discussed.
We will discuss the holistic relationship intrinsic to the unity of conscious-ing as it relates to the cosmic whole. The natural negative energies and natural positive energies will be presented in terms of complementarities and dynamic balance within a cyclical system. These energies or forces are sometimes metaphysically articulated as attributes of male and female entities. The attributes are associated with the four directions which in turn are rooted in the natural cosmic order. They can be culturally contextualized as the four parts of the day and the four seasons
Consciousness, unconscousness and conscious-ing as understood by the traditional native mind can best be understood within the cultural context. In accordance with traditional Dine culture, we will discuss multiple levels of consciousness within an intricate hermeneutic process model. Awareness, as it relates to simultaneous levels of consciousness including holistic spiritual consciousness and unconsciousness, will be discussed through use of this traditional process model.
We are speaking from a lifetime of experience within the native culture as well as from a western educational perspective. We are Native Americans who both live on the Navajo Indian Reservation and work with native students in a tribal college.
06.11-- Abstract No:992
Since immigrating to Canada I have had the opportunity to become involved with the Central Alberta Cree in a variety of roles including teacher at three all Native colleges, researcher, writer, and friend. Since my particular area of interest was dreams a natural affinity developed between us and I have been fortunate to have been given a variety of accesses to their personal experiences and traditions. Although I am not Cree I have been able to bring some insight into an understanding of the role that consciousness, especially as expressed in dreams, plays in contemporary Alberta Cree culture.
The first thing that strikes me is that the traditional valuing of dreams is very alive even among the young Cree who have never lived on the reserve and for whom English is NOT their first language. A valuing of the dream is so endemic to them that when they are told that the dominant white culture does not so value dreams and in fact the Cree have a sensitivity to the texture of dreams lacking in the dominant culture, they are often surprised. They know the turf of dreams so well that they don't know that they know. This embracing the dream among the Cree has implications for their understanding and experiencing of other states of consciousness. For instance, they don't consider dreams "local", epiphenomena of brain matter, in origin.
This has been especially brought home to me in my work/friendship with a Cree dream counselor who was identified and trained as a young child as the dreamer for the community. She has often commented to me that before she began our dialogues she just assumed that the experiences she has were as standard in the white community as they are among her own people. After several public presentations by her it became quickly apparent to her that when it came to experiences of dreams/consciousness/spirit the white audience saw her in a light that makes her quite uncomfortable. It is her felt sense of the ordinariness of these states of being which keeps her grounded and authentic.
I was also fortunate to be given fairly open access to the members of her extended family shortly after the death of her sister, CrowWoman. From these hundreds of hours of interviews I wrote a book about "The Traditional Death of CrowWoman". Her broadening of consciousness from clearly local to clearly nonlocal within the context of the traditional teachings of her people as she died constituted not only a lovely tale but also offers an insight into the universal yet relative nature of these supposedly outlyer states of consciousness.t
06.11-- Abstract No:1050
The number of individuals coming into contact with the criminal justice system is rising. The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the "affective significance" (Geertz, 1974) that the criminal justice system has had on the "lived-experience" (Turner, 1985) of individuals that have come into contact with it. At the present rate of incarceration, 504 per 100, 000 (Hagan, 1993) in the United States, it is of paramount importance that anthropology begin to deal with the consciousness of the people who, eventually, will be released.
Qualitative interviews with clients and staff were conducted over a six-month period at a corrections facility in Portland, Oregon. Content analysis and interpretive analysis were methods employed to investigate how impacted individuals consciously perceived 'possibilities of hope' in their present human condition.
06.11-- Abstract No:1051
Where the vastnesses of our planet had not yet been fully peopled, and broad reaches of open territory were still the widespread norm, a liminal type of consciousness evolved among early humankind. Very different from what we see throughout the world today, it spawned a type of consciousness that focused on the ebb and flow of direct sensory experience instead of on abstract symbolic structures logically examined. Fieldwork in several isolated human enclaves show that this more direct experiential approach gives rise to a subtly responsive type of cognition which conjoins human interests and activities within an expansive generalized intuitive rapport. Being integrative, rather than adversarial, such awareness cannot comport with negative emotions, e.g., aggression, possessiveness, and deceit. In the face of sustained contact of such sort, the compassionately flexible preconquest mentality collapses. For the last few millennia, its once vast domain has been steadily appropriated by conquistadorial peoples. Its integrative type of mental evolution has now been almost entirely been replaced by the supraliminally focused consciousness of an emergent adversarial humankind.
06.11-- Abstract No:1204
Background: It is reasonable to assume that a civilization such as our own may encounter some type of communication or message from another civilization or intelligence that is attempting to provide information relating to instruction, warning, and/or knowledge of an event or condition. The message is likely to be constructed in such a way that intention is integrated with design and that the design would appeal directly to a very basic level of instinctual understanding or consciousness. This raises an obvious question. Could these messages already exist in our own time and if so could a flawed approach or lack of understanding hamper our attempts at interpretation?
Methods: In this paper I review Egypt's Giza Complex and England's Stonehenge as messages with specific intent integrated with design. I identify and analyze design parameters that are significant when explored from the viewpoints of Symmetry, Complexity Theory and Consciousness. I pay particular attention to recent developments in physics and the biological sciences particularly relative to non-linear dynamics. I avoid the old scientific, cultural and religious arguments associated with them by staying within this framework.
Results: The review resulted in the identification of significant patterns relative to non-linear dynamics with particular emphasis on Optical Instability. Striking patterns were revealed for optical spectra, the polarization and amplification of light, coherence, acousto optic diffraction, wave propagation and phase locking and laser molecule interaction. Additional patterns may suggest the possibility of phase transition as well as quasi-periodicity with particular emphasis on quasi-crystalline structures. The patterns seem well suited for interpretation through existing grammars of complexity theory such as DOL. They may in and of themselves serve as the basis for a model of complexity.
Conclusions: If Egypt's Giza Complex and England's Stonehenge are messages with specific intent then it is possible that the message they are trying to convey involves an understanding of the relationship between light and matter. Further study including detailed acousto optic simulations based on their design should provide an answer.
06.11-- Abstract No:1219
The purpose of this study is to elaborate and correlate a three phrased, subtle pattern of consciousness as (1) recognized in an analytical comparative study of arts, (2) as found in maturation as the motivational force in cultural change in 60 countries worldwide, and (3) as illustrated in a table of physical/biological analogies. First, we analyzed the arts over several thousand years in major cultures using a logical content analysis which lead to our theory of cultural motivational maturation, featuring an observed consistent sequence of developmental cultural changes. All aspects of people's life changed as a culture matured from one phase to the next. We named these phases: body (physical) , mind and spirit (creative, loving, caring) , in keeping with their major observed characteristics. Second, we factor analyzed 10 demographic variables in two samples for 60 current cultures around the world. Only one factor emerged which we labeled Cultural Maturation in keeping with changes reflected in factor loadings and the above-noted three phases. Third, we constructed a table of several analogies to illustrate, help explain and interpret the three phases in out theory.
The theory states there is a dominant consciousness perceived by the majority of people at any given time in the development of a culture, and that this motivation very slowly changes in the same predictable way across cultures as a given culture develops. This developmental sequence progressively is: Body - physical survival and adapting to the environment, then Mind - understanding everything in the world and thereby structuring/restructuring everything in the world, and finally world and so live in harmony. Note: the word 'spirit' as used here refers to the aspect of people that involves love and caring, creativity, intuition and transcendence; it does not necessarily imply spirituality. This theory of cultural maturation and motivation has been published elsewhere in detail; see Schuster and Schuster (1981, 1987, 1988) .
Consciousness can be defined not only as an awareness of oneself and one's behaviour, but also as an awareness of universal patterns operating within the people, the cells of the culture. The people's awareness feels to them a little like the desire to use either their right or their left hand. Most people have a strong preference and withou knowing why, they use their preferred hand. Similar subtle choices guide the maturation of a culture from its infancy to that of a great civilization. This is the path of consciousness that a maturing culture follows, the development fo the people's physical aspects sequentially followed by the aspects of the mind and then those of the spirit.
References
Schuster, D.H. and Schuster, M.L., Evolution of culture: A new model as seen though the arts. Paper at the American Psychological Association Convention in New York City, NY, Sept. 1979, 20pp.
Schuster, D.H. and Schuster, M.L., Demographic data support a model for cultural change. Iowa State Journal of Research, 62 (1) , 1987, 3-28.
Schuster, D.H. and Schuster, M.L., , Educating the children of changing cultures. Journal of the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching, 13 (1) , 1988, 3-45.
06.11-- Abstract No:1228
The contemporary study of consciousness has been mainly focused on the complex problems of representation of knowledge and experience, and the neurophysiological processes of cognition. Though this has revealed important dimensions of human experience, it has subsequently neglected the highly important role of self transformation of consciousness, and the growth of awareness. The future development of "Science of Consciousness" must include an appreciation for the potential of "false consciousness" and human fallibility. In addition room must be made for the "meta awareness" and "meta cognition" of supernal insight. Such dimensions might be explored and potentially transformed through various technologies of the sacred. This process of transformation reveals a potential unending progressive spiral of consciousness, and thus adds depth and meaning to a future science of consciousness.
Research and practice of Kundalini Yoga among a Sikh community, and my subsequent ethnographic portrait of the experience reveals the absolute necessity of self awareness and self transformation in a science of consciousness. A future science of consciousness would be greatly benefited with a notion of "levels of consciousness" as a core theoretical framework.
A key thinker in this dimension is the highly prolific and talented author Ken Wilbur. Wilbur's notion of a "spectrum of consciousness" will be molded to my own understanding and experience of Kundalini Yoga as a key factor in a future science of consciousness. The role of the scholar/scientist/practitioner is seen as essentially complementarity, and virtually necessary in a domain dealing with the most intimate domain of human experience.
06.11-- Abstract No:1300
For those willing to accept that consciousness is a function of (at least) higher nervous systems, biogenetic structural theory offers certain advantages. For one thing, the theory is an interdisciplinary one, integrating research derived from anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, physics and phenomenology. For another thing, the theory provides a perspective that addresses such issues as the evolution of consciousness, animal consciousness, pre- and perinatal consciousness in human babies, alternative phases of consciousness, cultural conditioning and transcendence of cultural conditioning of consciousness using a single language. A brief summary of the theory is presented, as well as a more lengthy discussion of the utility of investigating the structures of consciousness using an ethnographically informed, neurophenomenological methodology.
06.12-- Abstract No:1034
Surely the Net is going to bring us something more than electronic libraries, rampant online shopping, and chat rooms as a substitute for singles bars. But what? The notion of an emerging global Internet mind consitutes a radical answer to this question. The Net as it exists today is comparable to the mind of a very young child -- a child who has not yet learned to think for herself, or even to distinguish herself from the outside world. What we will see over the next couple decades is the growth and maturity of this infantile mind into a full-fledged, largely autonomous, globally distributed intelligent system.
Whether a non-biological system such as the Internet can be truly conscious is debatable from some perspectives. However, I believe that the most useful perspective for analyzing Internet consciousness is a sophisticated panpsychism: everything is conscious to a certain extent, but some systems have structures that allow this elemental consciousness to be leveraged to greater effect.
In this talk I will argue that the Internet possesses leveraging structures of this kind which are quite similar to those present in the human brain. However, the structure of Internet consciousness will also have many significant differences from that of human consciousness -- for example, it seems, on careful analysis, that the emergent Internet mind will be able to entertain a large number of independent trains of thought at the same time, unlike a human, who becomes confused when trying to answer more than a handful of simultaneous questions.
Finally, I will discuss some novel approaches to Internet software engineering based on the Java programming language and these ideas regarding the structure of emergent network consciousness.
06.12-- Abstract No:1036
"Consciousness" is another way of talking about what Ontology refers to as Being. Being is generally defined as Manifestation and Consciousness a way of talking about the manifestation to the individual or collective psyche. Consciousness is thus a psychological or social interpretation of what has been spoken of under the rubric of "Being" by Metaphysics from time immemorial. In contemporary Continental Philosophy it has been discovered that there are several kinds of Being instead of just one as had been previously thought in the history of metaphysics. This proliferation of kinds of Being must change our conception of consciousness as well.
In this paper to be presented we will consider the nature of cyberspace as a medium for a global consciousness of an embodied global artificial brain made up of artificial intelligent agents which interact socially and exemplify artificial life. The cyberspace medium can be analyzed in terms of the different kinds of Being and this analysis gives us some hint concerning the intrinsic possibilities and constraints on the manifestation of 'consciousness' within any global embodiment of artificial living social intelligent beings.
06.12-- Abstract No:1236
The hypermedium has developed into a very sophisticated information system, one that is populated by a variety of distributed hypermedia source material. These heterogeneous materials are pulled together to create a contemporaneous document of the instant based upon the view of the user applied to the inherent structure in the source material. This view of the user is shaped by the real-world perceptions of the user interacting with the various documents encountered on the way. Because of the power to backtrack and because of inherent branches, it is more than just being shaped by a linear sequence of ideas. If the system is to aid the user in handling this complexity, it is not only to show awareness of its own contents but must also be able to make the required inferences and connections. This is a form of consciousness.
We have concentrated on a theoretical description in terms of category theory of the attributes of this machine consciousness as needed in information systems. Links in hypertext are representable as links in thought by covariant arrows between categories. Taken in dynamic context, the right-exactness of the Heyting implication (say, A implies B) corresponds to inference and the next document in a non-linear trail through hypermedia. Awareness is provided by the dual contravariant arrows with the important special case of the intension-extension relationship. The corresponding left-exactness is the closure limit that invokes consciousness. Further details can be found in: Heather, M A, & Rossiter, B N, Content Self-awareness in Distributed Multimedia Publishing: the Need for a Unifying Theory, in Third International Workshop on Principles of Document Processing (PODP'96) , ed. Nicholas, C, & Wood, D, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, no.1293 Springer-Verlag 35pp (1997) .
This theory shows an equivalence of reasoning between documents and their contents. It seems therefore that this example from constructive mathematics may give us more insight into the concept of human consciousness. The general nature of the categories used in this study suggest that systems like the brain may operate in an analagous alpha* natural transformation.
One certain result is that human consciousness is no less than machine consciousness and any theory of human consciousness must require at least the same capability to cope with concepts of geometric logic and to be able to operate at and across different levels. It is now recognized that a scientific representation of consciousness is needed for a 'Theory of Everything'. Constructive mathematics can perhaps provide an alternative description of consciousness through geometric logic.
06.13-- Abstract No:756
Among most of the ethicists it is a common principle that the dignity of the human person has to be protected. This is particularly true concerning ethical questions in human brain research. But the crucial problem is the question: Is it the brain that makes a human being a person? If the appropriate anthropological answer were 'yes', all invasive research would be unethical, because one would touch the basis of the human essence. Basically, up to now there are two major philosophical paradigms, which offer an answer to the anthropological question about the relation of body / brain and mind / soul: dualism and monism.
In modern dualism (e.g. Popper & Eccles; Linke) body and mind - respective brain and mind -- are two distinct 'res', generally independent, although interactions are possible. The human essence -- the mind or 'res cogitans' -- is principally able to exist without the body -- the 'res extensa'. Here, invasive research on the brain is basically unproblematic, because one is unable to harm the 'res cogitans' per se.
Modern monism (e.g. Bunge) offers a contrary answer. Body and mind are not two 'res', but one. Mental processes / activity of the human mind are actually neuronal activity. The human being is the body; the human mind is the brain -- nothing else. If the human person is to be protected because of its human mind, invasive research on the brain is here generally unethical; it touches the basis of human essence.
Who is right? Which anthropological view shall be the foundation for our ethical question? The problem of these two paradigms is that they understand the human body and the human mind as 'res' -- as things. The explanation of the human being as an interactive unit of body and mind is impossible in both paradigms. The human mind is neither a thing besides the human body nor equal with the human body / brain. A third anthropological view that tries to make that understandable is the often forgotten anthropology of the Hebrew Bible. It doesn't presume the category 'thing' while speaking about humans, it presumes the category 'aspect'. There is no Hebrew word for 'mind' in contrast to 'body' or vice versa. The biblical language only knows terms for the unity of human beings seen under a certain aspect -- his/her vitality, her/his mortality etc.
Here the body and thus the brain is an important and necessary condition for the essence of humanity, but not a sufficient explanation for the human personality.
Invasive research on the human brain is here neither generally forbidden nor tolerated -- one has to demonstrate in every single case whether the planned operation touches regions that are crucial for the personality of the human subject. Thus, because there are many unsolved questions in this field, biomedical and ethical professionals have to work as one team and have to check their preliminary answers frequently.
06.13-- Abstract No:794
It was notable that a number of speakers at Tucson II made comments about the threat posed to science by the rise of religious fundamentalism. It was also notable for the cohort of researchers advocating the idea that human free will was no longer scientifically tenable. Some reflection on these two clusters of opinion ironically shows that despite the anti-fundamentalist stance of some scientists, they have much more in common with religious fanatics than they would like to admit although it appears that religion and science have almost reversed their position regarding the question of free will.
Looking at the institutionalised forms of religious fundamentalism and strong AI research we find that they share many things in common. Each institution has a creation myth which its adherents are expected to follow; each has a God or God-figure overseeing a hierarchy of ministers and other bearers of the Word; each has a dualist message which separates body from mind, function from form. These key similarities, together with those listed in the appended table are discussed in this paper.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of both religious and strong AI congregations is the contempt in which alternative belief systems are held. In the most extreme form of religious fundamentalism this can lead to a holy war or Jihad in which those holding contrary views are literally wiped out. In strong AI fundamentalism we can perceive an intellectual Jihad which characterises the beliefs of opponents as'folk psychology' and seeks to reinstate a strict behaviourist code of practice into science. Whatever the manifestation of the fundamentalism, the effect is the same - once the fundamentalist body of opinion starts to gather pace it will vigorously seek to silence voices of opposition.
Clearly there is a humorous and provocative side to this paper but it also has a serious side. The threat to progress within consciousness studies is not only an external one, it is also an internal threat from those who promote themselves as having a monopoly on the truth.
ONE POINT OF DIVERGENCE : TEN SIMILARITIES
RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS |
STRONG AI FUNDAMENTALISTS |
|
Free will subject to the |
No free will |
|
Only one God |
Only one answer (materialism) |
|
Priests |
Scientists |
|
Dualism (Cartesian) |
Dualism (computer functionalism) |
|
Religious fascism |
Scientific fascism |
|
Faith (in god) |
Faith (in emergence) |
|
Disregard for other faiths |
Disregard for other viewpoints |
|
Have the ultimate truth |
Have the end of knowledge in sight |
|
Disregard evidence |
Disregard evidence |
|
God gave us life |
The algorithm gave us life |
|
Jihad |
Folk psychology must die |
06.13-- Abstract No:857
Psychological Egoism is the thesis that one is motivated by one's own interest or that one acts solely for one's own interest. Such a view holds that altruism, being motivated by the interests of others or acting in the interest of others, is literally impossible. In ethics, this is of critical importance, for if psychological egoism were true, any ethical theory which demanded that we act altruistically would be requiring us to do the impossible.
Of course, many people claim to have non-selfish motives. The psychological egoist must defend against those claims by systematically reinterpreting those first-person reports and judgments of motivation in accordance with egoism. While it might seem as if one were acting unselfishly, the egoist will explain how that act actually has selfish motives. The psychological egoist tells us, for example, that one helps others to make one feel good, to avoid guilt, or to increase one's reputation (or some other selfish motive) , but not for the sake of the other person. Only with such a systematic reinterpretation can psychological egoism escape obvious refutation.
Unfortunately, we can defend other schemes for attribution of motivation in the very same way: simply systematically reinterpret motives a different way. I examine two such strategies: psychological altruism, and a highly simplified Freudean psychology. (I also point to many others, from Marxism to Feminism to patriotism.) They use the very same behavioral data and come to radically different attributions of motivation. This suggests that the fault lies in giving license to reinterpret a subject's judgments of the content of their own mental states, for all these equally unfounded theories are built on this move.
This presents us with a dilemma, which I introduce and discuss, but do not attempt to solve. We have good reason to reject the Cartesian view of the mind, that its contents are clear and incorrigibly accessible to us. People are not infallible judges of their own mental states, and can be mistaken about their own beliefs, desires, and motives. But if we allow unlimited license to reinterpret first-person descriptions of mental states in accordance with whatever theory of the mind we favor, we depend on a highly suspect methodological move. So how much reinterpretation is legitimate, and how much makes our psychological explanations non-empirical? I do not have an answer to this question -- the point of the paper is to present and explain the problem, and invite better solutions that have been given so far.
06.13-- Abstract No:888
Debate concerning the existence and nature of consciousness in non-human animals is as old as the subject of philosophy itself and directly measuring such a phenomenon will, most likely, remain impossible. The law of parsimony, adhered to in the application of the scientific method, dictates that if a simpler explanation can account for an observed phenomenon a more complex explanation should not be invoked. Thus many researchers persist in refuting the existence of consciousness in animals since observed behaviour can often be explained by simpler models. Yet failure to unambiguously identify consciousness in animals should not necessarily lead to the assumption that it does not exist. There are specific methodological difficulties associated with investigating such a phenomenon: (1) it can not be directly measured; (2) animals, unlike humans, can not directly tell us about their conscious experience; (3) experiments which have made comparisons to human consciousness can not detect consciousness of a different form; (4) application of the law of parsimony in science has traditionally lead to the conclusion that it does not exist. A precautionary principle is proposed, borrowed from environmental law, which states that where there is a threat of actual or potential irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to avoid or minimise the damage: a 'better safe than sorry' approach. Applying this principle to the issue of animal consciousness, the following rule is formulated: assume animals do have consciousness in case they do; if they do not it does not matter. Scientists investigating animal welfare should not shy away from addressing the issue of animal consciousness and developing novel methods to allow its study. It is clear that our views on these issues have major implications for our treatment of animals in scientific research, farming and zoos. An open and constructive discussion is therefore essential since the lives of a vast number of non-human animals depend on our attitudes for their survival and welfare.
06.13-- Abstract No:940
Two thousand years ago a cry of the human spirit went out to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Two thousand years later, the motto many follow is to look out for number one. When Jesus set forth what has become known as the golden rule, I suggest he was speaking from a personal sense of connection and union with all. Today, looking out for number one is expressed in widespread lack of consideration for anyone but ones ego-self. An irreverence for life is rampant. It is expressed in violence -- both studied and spontaneous -- against other humans, all forms of life, and the environment. By putting number one first Western society, with the rest of the world following, some fast, some more slowly, the insatiable need for more material goods has set a course that will kill each individual as well as lay waste to the planet.
No one is going to willingly give up looking out for number one. In fact, that attitude may be a necessary step in the evolution of consciousness. It is not wrong to look out for number one. The problem lies in our imperfect awareness of who number one -- the very own self of each one of us -- really is.
At the Exceptional Human Experience Network (EHEN) we suggest that what are generally considered to be anomalous experiences are in fact seed experiences that introduce individuals to the other we all are. Ultimately, these exceptional experiences (EEs) provide firsthand consciousness of ones self as being the self that is all beings and things. These experiences open up consciousness of what it is to be fully human, thus the global term exceptional human experience, or EHE. EHEs spontaneously encourage and develop a personal awareness of the oneness of life. A by-product of this experience is the spontaneous development of reverence for all life. By recognizing, encouraging, sharing, working with, and living from these exceptionally humanizing experiences, as we approach A.D. 2000 we can learn from first-hand knowledge that Number One is all things, and conversely, that everything (even to the limits of the universe) is each one of us. To discover this it is necessary that we really put Number One first by finding and taking/making our own unique paths to the Self we all are. At EHEN, we conduct research on experiences and assist people to discover their own process of finding and living who they are through working with their EEs/EHE.
If we truly look out for the real Number One, violence, aggrandizement, deceit, abuse, vandalism, destruction, and terrorism will be greatly reduced as very few people, if they are truly looking out for Number One, will be willing to harm, abuse, maim, dismember, and kill their very own dear selves. Instead, they will valorize ways that recognize and build upon the connectedness of all forms of life, planet Earth, and every human being. Then feeding everyone and living harmoniously in an ecologically beneficial way would be as self-gratifying as getting a 100% raise is now. May the real Number One become conscious soon!
06.13-- Abstract No:1052
The debate over the nature of consciousness seems punctuated by attempts to discern conscious from non-conscious beings through some form of interrogation. These attempts range from the very private self-questioning of Descartes' introspection, to the more objective but still hypothetical questioning in the Turing test and its derivative, the Chinese Room thought experiment with its plethora of variations, to the more practically set up and executed Loebner Prize competition and the script testing of Schankian programs.
In all of these settings there is a kind of jurisprudential metaphor. The Turing Test itself came with a sample transcript of the sort of dialogue that might evolve out of the interrogation of a computer. Turing models his dialogue on the process called viva voce to determine whether someone truly understands something or has learned it merely by rote. The whole point of the Chinese room is to set up the conditions where an agent can be tested for understanding. This goal is carried out through the process of explicit or implicit interrogation. Many of the variations on the Chinese room include the suggestion that the reader imagine testing the agent in the room for consciousness, in much the same way that the human interrogators in the original Turing Test were to interrogate the computer. Much of the effort to organize the Loebner Prize competition seemed to go into the selection, direction, and monitoring of the judges -- the interrogators, whose job it was to distinguish the real from the apparent conversationalist. They were selected to avoid anyone with a background in computer science, and they were directed in the content and manner of their questioning. The topics for discussion were limited to very specific and focused areas of knowledge and the tenor of the discussion was constrained to avoid conversational moves that made use of trickery and guile.
Given these jurisprudential parallels one can see this process of interrogation as a court room drama. The defendant is the agent accused of being a mindless zombie. The prosecutor is the questioner, seeking to unmask those without true understanding. And the judge/jury is the reader/audience. There are also parallels to jurisprudential procedures. The questions posed to the agents are not just for the sake of gaining truthful information. Questions are also posed to make an assertion, expose inconsistency, or elicit a confession.
In the most neutral sense questions presume some minimal agreement about the existence of something and they admit to some appeal for intercourse with another. From a perspective of rhetorical studies that draws on the models of argumentation of Stephen Toulmin and Chaim Perelman, this paper attempts to examine the techniques of interrogation in these various settings to show that the manner and content of the questions suggest prior philosophical commitments about what is consciousness and how one can discern it. It concludes with suggestions for evaluating questions one might ask of an apparently conscious being.
06.13-- Abstract No:1158
An organic framework of analysis is not a new or postmodern idea. It is a pre-modem idea. There have been several versions of an organic paradigm, but this concept generally refers to some application of a classical Greek understanding of human nature as a composite whole, with physical, social, mental and spiritual dimensions. The organic model of human nature was eventually replaced in philosophy because in its hierarchical Platonic form, as the tripartite soul, it had been used to support similar hierarchical structures in the Church and State. In the last one hundred years the biological sciences and medicine, however, would emphasize more a system of checks and balances for health and well-being. In this context, a modern version of the organic paradigm, and ecological organic paradigm, remains a very useful framework of analysis for understanding the dynamics of moral and political philosophy and it should be reconsidered.
A modern version of the organic paradigm can be based on behavioral ecology, ecology being the study of the inter-relationships between an organism and its environment. The ecological organic paradigm describes four very general human mental functional capacities and loosely associates them to four very general categories of experience with which we have to cope, adapt and inter-relate. The four functional cognitive capacities are described as appetite, social conscience, reason, and an interpretive capacity. The dimensions of experience to which they each primarily, but not exclusively, inter-relate are primal individual needs, society, the natural world in which we live and metaphysics.
The ecological organic paradigm is compatible with both natural and cultural evolution. The framework can accommodate both descriptive and normative concepts of human nature and it can accommodate both the individual and social dimensions of human knowledge and activity. The framework is compatible with what Aristotle described as phronesis or practical wisdom and the categories of folk psychology which are based on introspection and experience.
The framework of analysis with some modifications is compatible with MacLean's triune brain concept of evolutionary development and Piaget's and Kohlberg's categories of psychological mental and moral development related to experience. The framework is also an extension of Leslie Stevenson's framework of analysis for philosophy based on understanding the assumptions being made concerning the nature of man, the nature of society and the nature of the universe. Since the Copernican Revolution, however, assumptions about the nature of the universe have been increasingly divided into assumptions concerning the natural world in which we live and metaphysical assumptions about meaning and purpose that integrate our knowledge and create a narrative in space and time.
The framework gives some coherence to the ethical categories. What is obligatory?, what is good?, what is fitting?, and What is humane? are all included within the framework as valid moral questions. Deontological, normative, communitarian and individual human concerns are all recognized.
The framework is used for an analysis of equality which is the primary moral concept of American constitutional democracy. A second example considers the current issue of abortion.
06.13-- Abstract No:1355
Reductionists have eliminated all choice by claiming our actions are determined physically (Blakemore, 1988) and Dr Libet has put a question mark against free choice by showing conscious decision is preceeded by nonconscious initiation of action (Libet, 1985). Meanwhile all of us continue to experience first-personally the need to make choices for which we hold ourselves (and others also hold us) morally responsible. More than that, zealous campaigners of all kinds make possession of the alleged 'moral high ground' a justification for actions which in other circumstances would themselves be subject to moral censure. This paper draws on Christian moral theology, especially its treatment of 'cases of conscience', to suggest rules for evaluating moral judgments amidst this confusion. The approach is not undermined by current disagreements over determinism, because it deals with the first-person experience of making choices and makes no assumptions about the ontology of freewill.
References
Blakemore, C. (1988), The Mind Machine (London: BBC Books). Libet, B. (1985), 'Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action', BBS, 8, pp. 529-66
06.14-- Abstract No:744
Each investigator of consciousness naturally tends to think her or his own discipline is the most relevant, but we have now become mature enough as a field to realize an interdisciplinary approach is essential, and that the questions are extensive and complex enough to require a new field of consciousness studies. How can we systematically train today's students to become interdisciplinary researchers of consciousness?
When I move to take up my duties as the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies this fall, one of my first tasks will be to invite extensive email commentary from current consciousness researchers on what are (1) essential core aspects of their own disciplines that seem essential for these future researchers to be familiar with, and (2) what other areas they see a need for interdisciplinary training in? I will compile and digest these responses and present a paper on an initial outline for a comprehensive curriculum to train the consciousness researchers of the future.
I see this outcome as also valuable to current researchers as stimulating debate and in clarifying various interdisciplinary aspects of our studies of consciousness.
06.14-- Abstract No:1167
Like no other scientific field, consciousness science reaches across deep disciplinary pockets. The path to eventual understanding of what consciousness is requires that we devote conscious attention to the processes used to get there, namely dialogue and interdisciplinary learning processes.
Current methods of interdisciplinary dialogue are underdeveloped. This may be truly the harder problem of consciousness. Certainly it presents the most significant early difficulty to be overcome in embarking alww the road of consciousness science.
This paper establishes some starting places and grounding for these processes to emerge and offers guidance for critical areas and milestones where views and tolerances need to shift wliile cultivating alternative views that create a heightened potential for new' processes.
The other current challenge which is created by the convergence of disciplinary fields is the need to address an accelerating information stream in science and industrial disciplines and in popular culture; in other words to learn as we speed up. To effectively bridge a burgeoning science and technology industrial culture with a research culture, more active forms of "creagenic leaning" (Source: L.A. Tesolin, Intuita 1997) are needed.
"Creagenic leaning or "genesis learning" is learning which fosters the genesis of novel creations. This paper addresses fundamental requirements of creagenic learning processes and when they can he introduced.
Dialogue is described as a process of exchanging information where participants leave the dialogue with a deeper knowledge level and wider frame of reference than when they approached. It involves the creation of an expandable context. Dialogue is successful to the extent that parties are permanently stretched beyond their opening views. Dialogue is distinct from debate.
Group dialogue presents its own issues. The process becomes more complex and challenging as interests, subtexts, and agendas emerge, submerge, and influence the direction and ability to achieve skilled dialogue. Groups need to learn how to cross these barriers.
The entry into dialogue is mediated by 3 precedents:
1) a viewpoint shift from individual to collective referents
2.) a structure shift from debate to dialogue
3.) capability of participants to identify qualities of productive dialogue, to skillfrilly build dialogue, and to develop sensitivity to emergent fonns of dialogue that evolve
The paper identifies key structures and approaches to dialogue which includes cultivating openness and a shift toward deeper implicit principles as an approach to building comnion ground in various iterative and overlapping stages.
Stage 1; Sharing of tenns and views in a cross-disciplinary context
Stage 2: Relentless excavation of implicit assumptions
Stage 3: Stating new assumptions that arise from collective dialogue, recognizing mindful dialogue
Stage 4: Skillful group dialogue methods, deepening common ground, developing new ideas, recognizing and realizing potential gains.
In summary there is a great deal of room for experimentation and development in these areas that will be needed over the coming years.
06.15-- Abstract No:928
Capitalistic rationality is penetrating into the consciousness of Russian professionals, thus changing previous soviet representations of collective and social justice. In particular, the professional people's consciousness under the conditions of radical changes of economic and social environment at industrial enterprise, is subject to the effect on the part of mass media and new demands of the process of production. These effects come in contradictions with resisted representations and taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of social relations within the organisation. An industrial enterprise was a peculiar social institution during soviet times where an important characteristics was 'non- market' nature of the process of production. The performance of ideological functions, functions of social maintenance, and social control, was the more important party of activity of the soviet enterprise, than gaining of a profit in competitive markets. In order to control such an institute, managers should obta n certain qualities which resulted in formation of specific administrative consciousness. As our previous ethnographic research of the soviet enterprises have shown, the power discourse within that mode of consciousness was transformed to a complex system of interdependence (reciprocity) , known as paternalism.
The decade of 1990s is a point of transition in the development of a new professional's consciousness about management. Soviet paternalism was turned in 1990s in such a form of administrative interaction, in which formal and informal relations between workers and managers were considered as a necessary precondition for the process of production. This peculiar web of formal and informal relations was a basis of organisational culture at industrial enterprise, but gradually eroded nowadays when Russia' societ is experiencing a transition to market economy. Paternalistic consciousness is being diffused and superseded by the market one, however, this process is neither non-uniform nor inconsistent.
A backlash between 'non-market' values of collectivism and social justice, on one hand, and new demands of market economy, on the other, is rather deep. This dilemma is highlighted on the level of middle management, where the contradictions between economic demands of top administration and survival strategies of certain division become sharpest.
The ethnographic research will allow us to look at their self-awareness of the process the transition from paternalistic to radical liberal consciousness. An attempt will be made to see how the ideal models of liberal economic reforms are reflected in consciousness of managers and in their perception of everyday life at industrial enterprise.
06.16-- Abstract No:854
When we say that ideas are 'within' our minds, we express one of the fundamental structures of consciousness: borders. There is no real 'inside' the mind in the way there exists an inside to a building or an eggshell. Nevertheless, the metaphor of real structure applied to the mind is instantly understandable.
The concepts 'in' and 'out' (or 'inside' and 'outside') , although basic to the everyday use of language, are concepts that are clearly more complex than mere names for classes of things, such as 'tree' or 'cat.' What were the roles of basic concepts of borders in the evolution of intelligence? Could such concepts have been related to the invention of the earliest shelters? Apes such as chimps, for example, build temporary beds in trees, but not enclosed shelters. The invention of enclosed shelter would have been a major step, both for survival of early humans and for the concepts by which their minds operated. For example, Giambattista Vico related the origin of law to the protection of property. Are there other connections between physical borders 'out there' in the world (either natural or constructed) and borders 'inside' the mind, such as rules about supported and forbidden behaviors? During human evolution, the concept of a protective border understood as a general functional concept of nature (animal skins, tree bark, rinds of fruit and nuts) , could have served as a template to formulate mental negations and affirmations, as well as deep metaphors, such as ideas being 'inside' the mind. Indeed, borders seem essential to even having a concept such as mind, which implies labeling an invisible process as a noun.
What directions should research take into the relationship between physical borders and those of mind? We should examine archeological evidence for correspondences between constructions (such as shelters and walls) and the more abstract use of borders in laws, myths, and ideas. We should examine language -- how children acquire the use of the concepts 'in' and 'out, ' and how metaphors of limits and the breaking through of limits are employed in advertisements. We should examine our own sense of self, for how the borders of self can ebb and flow to either include or exclude parts of the sensed world, and for how we use borders (in words and images) to explain ourselves to ourselves in introspection.
06.16-- Abstract No:903
In previous studies we had found correlations between the material-transcendental dimension underlying the Western intellectual tradition and the diversity of ideas concerning consciousness. In the course of our work we developed the Beliefs About Consciousness and Reality Questionnaire that could be used for measuring fundamental beliefs about consciousness and reality. A survey of participants at the scientific meeting Toward a Science of Consciousness 1996 "Tucson II" was conducted using this questionnaire. Results from 212 respondents indicated scores substantially in the transcendental direction, both for scales underlying the questionnaire as well as for some of its individual items, relative to a 1986 standardization sample. Having traditional or one's own religious beliefs, interest in phenomenology and culture, lack of interest in neural correlates and age were also all correlated with scale scores in the transcendental direction. Given the diversity of fundamental beliefs about consciousness and reality of listeners at a meeting such as Tucson II, speakers need to find ways to communicate across the spectrum of the material-transcendental dimension.