This paper juxtaposes Asian spiritual narratives on meditation alongside medical and scientific narratives that emphasize meditation's efficacy in mitigating distress and increasing well-being. After proposing a working definition of meditation that enables it usefully to be distinguished from categories of similar practices such as prayer, I examine meditation's role in Mind/Body medicine in the West. Here, I survey a number of scientific studies of meditation, including the work of Dr. Herbert Benson and his colleagues who examine a meditational variant they (...) call the ‘Relaxation Response', to examine the breadth of efficacy claims made on behalf of the complex and multidimensional grouping of diverse practices we have come to as ‘meditation'. Among other positive outcomes, meditation has been credited with reducing blood pressure, anxiety, addiction, and stress, while Relaxation Response has been shown to decrease sympathetic nervous system activity, metabolism, pain, anxiety, depression, hostility, and stress. I conclude the paper by suggesting that findings from cognitive neuroscience on the subject of visual imagery can be used to elucidate genres of meditative practice that focus on internal visualization sequences, and I use practices from the Rnying ma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism to illustrate why certain integral aspects of meditation forever will remain beyond scientific grasp. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on one of Nietzsche's greatest challenges to our understanding of perception and cognition: his “falsification thesis.” I argue that despite several innovative and insightful attempts to understand Nietzsche's claims about falsification, they have failed because they have not made an adequate connection between Nietzsche's falsification claims and his naturalistic account of the development of human cognition. Nietzsche's most important insight is that the basic falsifications and simplifications of sensation and language are not only often quite useful (...) but are also the cornerstone of knowledge and science. The central implications that follow are that cognition can succeed without correspondence between mind and world and that the standard assumption thought to be absolutely indispensable for science, that the world is fundamentally ordered, or a cosmos, is unnecessary. That is, Nietzsche's naturalism explains how we may have knowledge and successfully pursue science without avoiding falsification altogether. (shrink)

How the Study of Consciousness and Mapping Spiritual Experiences Can Reshape Religious Methodology This special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies throws down a methodological challenge to the field of Religious Studies. Over the last half century, the academic study of religion has developed a variety of angles and approaches: structuralist, Eliadian, Marxist, feminist, and so on. Recently, approaches popular in many institutions and departments have centred on linguistic and cultural analysis, notably the postmodern and deconstructivist approaches championed by (...) Derrida and others. With the dawn of the interdisciplinary field of the study of human consciousness, and with this issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, we challenge this prevailing approach by presenting readers with articles analysing religion, spirituality, and spiritual experience, not solely as cultural phenomena, but as phenomena that can be related to human physiology, and a kind of pan-human technology of human spiritual development. (shrink)

We expect that consensus meetings, where researchers come together to discuss their theoretical viewpoints, prioritize the factors they agree are important to study, standardize their measures, and determine a smallest effect size of interest, will prove to be a more efficient solution to the lack of coordination and integration of claims in science than integrative experiments.

Recent reports of the discovery of a “God module” in the human brain derive from the fact that epileptic seizures in the left temporal lobe are associated with ecstatic feelings sometimes described as an experience of the presence of God. The brain area involved has been described as either (a) the seat of an innate human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions.In fact, religious experience is extremely various and involves many parts of the brain, (...) including some that are prehuman in their evolutionary history and some that are characteristically human. In the continuing integration of such experiences, spiritual formation takes place. Thus the entire human brain might be described as a “God module.”Such a process is only possible because of the brain's complexity. The human brain is the most complex entity for its size that we know of. As used here, complexity is a specialized term denoting the presence of a web of interlinked and significant connections—the more intricate the web, the more complex the entity. Complex systems develop only in a milieu that provides both lawfulness and freedom, and they tend to be self‐organizing, becoming more complex and more effective as a result of both inward and outward experience. The evidence suggests that both personal growth and spiritual growth are processes of complexification of character, and of the brain itself. This thesis is tested in light of the work of William James and James W. Fowler. (shrink)

Throws down a challenge to religious studies, offering a multidisciplinary approach - including developmental psychology, neuropsychology, philosophy of mind, and anthropology.

The human visual system is capable of learning both abstract and specific mappings to underlie shape recognition. How could dissimilar shapes be mapped to the same location in visual representation space, yet similar shapes be mapped to different locations? Without fundamental changes, Chorus, like other single-system models, could not accomplish both mappings in a manner that accounts for recent evidence.

ABSTRACT I argue that Dennett's indulgence in anthropomorphism in his accounts of evolution and agency has costs that we are better off not paying. To that end, I examine Dennett's algorithmic analysis of evolution by natural selection, paying attention to the status and role of anthropomorphism in his account of the nature of human agency and the order and rationality of the natural world. I argue that Dennett's embrace of the design and intentional stances leads him not only to an (...) untenable conception of agency, but to an account of natural selection that obliterates the distinction between theory and phenomenon. Finally, I show how Nietzsche's perspectival naturalism serves to harness Dennett's unbridled anthropomorphism for more insightful accounts of agency and the natural world. (shrink)

The paper argues that an adequate account of Nietzsche's conception of value must take into consideration the complex interaction of intrahuman forces, such as drives and affects, and interhuman cultural forces which together give rise to values. The paper goes on to confront three major interpretive tendencies in Nietzsche scholarship which stem, I argue, from overly reductive accounts of value. The tendencies, exemplified by Richard Schacht, Maudmarie Clark, and Alexander Nehamas respectively claim: that value is or should be objective in (...) character, that value claims are reliant on consistent with truth claims, and that value is realized most highly in individual lives. On the basis of the conception of value articulated, the paper ultimately defends the view that value, for Nietzsche, is intra- and intersubjective in its origins, non-cognitive in character, and realized most importantly as the cultural, rather than individual, level.Im Beitrag wird gezeigt, dass eine angemessene Darstellung von Nietzsches Wertkonzept die komplexe Wechselwirkung von solchen Kräften, die im Menschen selbst zu finden sind, wie Triebe und Affekte, und zwischenmenschlichen kulturellen Kräften, die im Menschen selbst zu finden sind, wie Triebe und Affekte, und zwishcenmenschlichen kulturellen Kräften, die im Menschen selbst zu finden sind, wie Triebe und Affekte, und zwischenmenschlichen kulturellen Kräften berücksichtigen muss. Es werdent drei einflussreiche Interpertationslinien in der gegenwärtigen Nietzscheforschung, vertreten durch Richard Schacht, Maudmarie Clark und Alexander Nehamas, gegenübergestellt, die, wie ich meine, von einem allzu reduzierten Ansatz hinsichtlich des Wertes ausgehen, indem behaptet wirt: dass Werte objektiv sind oder sein sollen, dass Wertansprüche abhängig sind von oder konsistent sind mit Warheitsansprüchen, dass Werte vor allem im individuellen Leben realisiert werden. Der Beitrag stellt dagegen, dass Werte für Nietzsche ihrem Ursprung nach intra- und intersubjektiv sind, ihrem Charakter nach nonkognitiv und eher auf der kulturellen als der individuellen Ebene realisiert werden. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that Dennett's indulgence in anthropomorphism in his accounts of evolution and agency has costs that we are better off not paying. To that end, I examine Dennett's algorithmic analysis of evolution by natural selection, paying attention to the status and role of anthropomorphism in his account of the nature of human agency and the order and rationality of the natural world. I argue that Dennett's embrace of the design and intentional stances leads him not only to an (...) untenable conception of agency, but to an account of natural selection that obliterates the distinction between theory and phenomenon. Finally, I show how Nietzsche's perspectival naturalism serves to harness Dennett's unbridled anthropomorphism for more insightful accounts of agency and the natural world. (shrink)

Seline's edited volume relevates non‐Western interaction between religious and scientific domains of human intellectual history. Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Chinese thinkers have played central roles in pursuing intellectual inquiry into topics of broad human concern. Although copious and nuanced literary collections in Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan languages document non‐Western contributions, these primary sources often are inaccessible to Western scholars, creating the false illusion that members of non‐Western cultures have offered only marginal contributions to the rigorous investigation of the (...) natural world. This illusion is dispelled thoroughly by a number of excellent articles contained in Seline's volume. (shrink)

This essay clarifies Nietzsche's early views on truth and falsity by giving a systematic reading of On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense. Contrary to the prevailing view in recent Nietzsche scholarship, I argue that Nietzsche, in TL, affirms neither truth as correspondence nor the inevitable falsification of the world by cognition. I show that where Nietzsche appears to affirm falsification, he is in fact giving a reductio ad absurdum of truth as correspondence and the notion of objectivity on (...) which it relies. Though I limit my discussion to TL, I engage the more general debate around falsification by showing that more than one sense of falsification is at work in Nietzsche's discussions of truth and cognition. I argue that by criticizing illusory conceptions of truth, essence, and objective knowledge, Nietzsche develops a conception of cognition that prefigures his later naturalistic and perspectival accounts of knowledge. Because of the clear links between the views sketched in the early essay and Nietzsche's later philosophical project, I conclude that TL sets out positions and a project that Nietzsche continues to develop and experiment with throughout his "mature" work.Dieser Aufsatz erläutert Nietzsches frühes Verständnis von Warheit und Fälschung durch eine systematische Auslegung von Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne. Im Gegensatz zu einer voherrschenden Ansicht der heutigen Nietzsche-Forschung wird hier argumentiert, dass Nietzsche in Wahrheit und Lüge weder Wahrheit im Sinne von adacquatio versteht, noch sich für eine These von der unvermeidlichen Fälschung der Welt durch den Erkenntnisvorgang einsetzt. Die Textstellen, in denen Nietzsche von einer der Erkenntnis innewohnenden Fälschung zu sprechen scheint, kann man viel besser verstehen, wenn man diese Stellen als eine reductio ad absurdum von Warheit asl adaquatio liest, einschliesslich des Begriffs der Objektivität, dem sic entspricht. Im folgenden wird die Auslegung auf Nietzsches Verständnis von Fälschung auf den frühen Aufsatz Warheit aund Lüge begrenzt; dennoch werden die Schlüsse, die von diesem Aufsatz gewonnen werden, in die weitere Diskussion von Nietzsches Verständnis von Fälschung einbezogen. In diesem Sinne wird gezeigt, dass meberere Anischten zum Thema Fälschung in Nietzsches Texten verkommen, und folglich dass in Bezug auf Nietzsches Verständnis von Warheit und Erkenntnis Fälschung nur in dieser Vielfalt in Betracht gezogen werden kann. Ich vertete die Ansicht, dass Nietzsche eine Vorstellung von Erkenntnis entwickelt, die seine spätere naturalistische und perspektivische Auffassung von Erkenntnis ankündigt Wegen der klaren verbindung zwischen den im frühen Aufsatz skizzierten Ansichten und Nietzsches späterem philosophischen Vorhaben, komme ich zu dem Schluss, dass Warheit und Lüge philosophische Denkweisen darlegt, die Nietzsche nach und nach entwickelt und mit denen er in seinen späteren Werken experimentiert. (shrink)

Carl Andresen (1909-1985) widmete sich seit seiner bahnbrechenden Studie Logos und Nomos (1955) dem Verhältnis von Antike und Christentum. Die gesammelten Studien leuchten dieses Feld der Begegnung in vielfältigen Facetten aus, von der Zuordnung von Theologie und Philosophie in den Debatten über die Trinität über Fragen der Ethik und Seelsorge bis zur Verteidigung des Wahrheitsanspruchs der Bibel gegenüber der philosophischen, besonders der platonischen Tradition. Die Apologeten der frühen Kirche sowie Augustin als integrale Gestalt der Spätantike stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt. Andresen (...) zeigt, dass und wie die Wahrheit der christlichen Botschaft sich im Horizont antiker Geistigkeit bewährte. Möglich war dies nur durch Anknüpfung und Kritik zugleich. Jenseits der Frage nach einer einlinigen Hellenisierung des Christentums macht Andresen deutlich, wie die Rezeption der Antike nicht nur Kirche und Theologie, sondern auch die Antike selbst neu gestaltete. (shrink)

Studies with humans have failed to produce evidence that any direct causal relation exists between the asymmetry of one function in an individual and the asymmetry of a different function in that individual. Without such evidence, factors external to an individual's nervous system, such as social interactions, may play crucial roles in explaining the directions of all asymmetries at all levels.

Iconographic imagery in the Indo‐Tibetan Buddhist Tantric (i.e., Vajrayāna) tradition is replete with polymorphic symbolic forms. Tantric texts themselves are multivalent, addressing astronomy, astrology, cosmology, history, embryology, physiology, pharmacology, alchemy, botany, philosophy, and sexuality. The Sr? Kaālacakra, a medieval Indo‐Tibetan manuscript of great import, de‐scribes ritual visualization sequences in whichpractitioners visualize elaborate manidialadesigns and deified yab‐yum (father‐mother) consort couples. The Kālacakra system is the preeminent conduit for the globalization of Tibetan Buddhism, and contemporary enactments of its initiation ceremony incorporate a (...) variety of aesthetic genres, including sand manidiala construction and ritual dance. (shrink)