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