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Etzel Cardeña abstract
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Consciousness and Emotions as Interpersonal and Transpersonal Systems
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Allan Combs & Stanley Krippner abstract
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Collective Consciousness and the Social Brain
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Imants Barušs abstract
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Beliefs about Consciousness and Reality: Clarification of the Confusion
Concerning Consciousness
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Index full text
Michael J. Apter
Reversal Theory, Victor Turner and the Experience of Ritual
Abstract: The extraordinary parallel between the psychological theory of
reversals (Apter, 1982) and the anthropological theory of anti-structure
(Turner, 1982) — both derived independently and almost simultaneously from
entirely different kinds of evidence and research — would seem to point
to something profound and universal in human experience which has been
curiously neglected in the behavioural sciences and entirely ignored in
consciousness studies. What I will do here is to introduce reversal theory,
show how it applies to ritual, and then compare it with Victor Turner’s
well-known approach to the very same topic.
Reversal theory has in fact been used to elucidate many diverse social
phenomena, for example criminal violence, military combat, sexual behaviour,
family relationships, soccer hooliganism, organizational culture, leadership,
team sports, social advocacy and classroom management (see review in Apter,
2001a). The present paper extends these ideas to ritual for the first time,
and makes reference especially to the work of Turner and his idea of cultural
inversions (Turner, 1969). Reversal theory is also about inversions, but
the inversions in this case (i.e. reversals) occur at the level of individual
psychology and are identified initially as experiential rather than behavioural
or social. This paper will explore the relationship between these two kinds
of reversal, psychological and anthropological.
Correspondence: mjapter@aol.com
Imants Barušs
Beliefs about Consciousness and Reality: Clarification of the Confusion
Concerning Consciousness
Abstract: There is considerable confusion surrounding the notion of consciousness.
This confusion can be partially resolved by clarifying the referents of
the word ‘consciousness’. Doing so, however, reveals a more insidious problem,
namely, the role played by personal beliefs in understanding consciousness.
In particular, as revealed by a comprehensive survey, such beliefs range
along a material-transcendent dimension, with the choice of notions of
consciousness corresponding to materialist, conservatively transcendent,
or extraordinarily transcendent positions. Further empirical research has
revealed that those with more transcendent beliefs tend to have a more
rational and curious approach to the world than those with more materialist
beliefs. And, indeed, transcendent beliefs are also associated with greater
intelligence. Although the possibility of a developmental sequence from
materialist to transcendent beliefs is suggested, given the nature of fundamental
beliefs, it does not appear that reconciliation between them is possible.
Thus, although the confusion surrounding the study of consciousness can
be clarified, the situation giving rise to the confusion cannot be eliminated.
Correspondence: Imants Barušs, Kings University College, 266 Epworth
Ave., London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 2M3. Email: baruss@uwo.ca
Lucy A. Bates,1 Phyllis C. Lee, Norah Njiraini,2 Joyce
H. Poole, Katito Sayialel,2 Soila Sayialel, Cynthia J. Moss2 and Richard
W. Byrne
Do Elephants Show Empathy?
Abstract: Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number
of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five
year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs
of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering
of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and ‘babysitting’ calves,
aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and
removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate
that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and goal directedness,
and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and
intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic
understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities,
and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other
non-primate species.
Correspondence: Richard W. Byrne, School of Psychology, University of
St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JP, UK. Email: rwb@st-andrews.ac.uk
Etzel Cardeña
Consciousness and Emotions as Interpersonal and Transpersonal Systems
Abstract: Emotions and consciousness are intimately linked and often conceived
from a purely intrapersonal perspective. This paper explores the implications
of considering emotions as not only intrapersonal but also as interpersonal
and transpersonal heterarchical (i.e., every component has potentially
equal importance) systems. It is telling that in contemplative traditions
and contemporary research on hypnotic experience, deep ‘inner’ experience
is pregnant with interpersonal and transpersonal meanings. Similarly, the
propensity to have porous conscious experiences is paralleled by the tendency
to be affected by the emotion of others. Anecdotal and experimental evidence
on anomalous events clearly suggests that strong emotions can have non-local
effects. That consciousness and emotions are embedded within interpersonal
and transpersonal fields has important epistemological and ethical implications.
Correspondence: Etzel.Cardena@psychology.lu.se
Joan Y. Chiao, Zhang Li, Tokiko Harada
Cultural Neuroscience of Consciousness: From Visual Perception to Self-Awareness
Abstract: Philosophical inquiries into the nature of consciousness have
long been intrinsically tied to questions regarding the nature of the self.
Although philosophers of mind seldom make reference to the role of cultural
context in shaping consciousness, since antiquity culture has played a
notable role in philosophical conceptions of the self. Western philosophers,
from Plato to Locke, have emphasized an individualistic view of the self
that is autonomous and consistent across situations, while Eastern philosophers,
such as Lao Tzu and Confucius, have argued for a collectivistic view of
the self, one that is interconnected to others and embedded within specific
social contexts and situations. Here we argue that a comprehensive theory
of consciousness needs to account for the role of cultural context and
its bidirectional interaction with neural and genetic mechanisms in shaping
a variety of conscious phenomena, from visual perception to self-awareness.
We review recent evidence of cultural variation in neurobiological mechanisms
underlying these phenomena and discuss the implications of these cultural
neuroscience findings for the study of consciousness.
Correspondence: Joan Y. Chiao, Department of Psychology, Northwestern
University, Email: jchiao@northwestern.edu
Allan Combs and Stanley Krippner
Collective Consciousness and the Social Brain
Abstract: This paper discusses supportive neurological and social evidence
for ‘collective consciousness’, here understood as a shared sense of being
together with others in a single or unified experience. Mirror neurons
in the premotor and posterior parietal cortices respond to the intentions
as well as the actions of other individuals. There are also mirror neurons
in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortices which have been
implicated in empathy. Many authors have considered the likely role of
such mirror systems in the development of uniquely human aspects of sociality
including language. Though not without criticism, Menant has made the case
that mirror-neuron assisted exchanges aided the original advent of self-consciousness
and intersubjectivity. Combining these ideas with social mirror theory
it is not difficult to imagine the creation of similar dynamical patterns
in the emotional and even cognitive neuronal activity of individuals in
human groups, creating a feeling in which the participating members experience
a unified sense of consciousness. Such instances pose a kind of ‘binding
problem’ in which participating individuals exhibit a degree of ‘entanglement’.
Correspondence:
Allan Combs, Transformative Studies Program, CIIS, 1453 Mission Street,
San Francisco, CA 94103, USA. Email: allan@sourceintegralis.org
Stanley Krippner, Saybrook Graduate School, 747 Front Street, San Francisco,
CA 94111-1920, USA. Email: SKrippner@saybrook.edu
Maya Gratier and Colwyn Trevarthen
Musical Narrative and Motives for Culture in Mother–Infant Vocal Interaction
This paper is concerned with the forms of meaningful engagement that emerge
in vocal interactions with preverbal infants, in particular with the narrative
organisation of coordinated expression in time. We relate culture and meaning
in preverbal exchange to an ‘implicit knowing’ involving nonconscious habits,
procedures and patterns (Gratier, 2001; Stern, 2004) derived from direct
perception of the purposeful and coordinated body mouvements of self and
other, or what Stein Bråten (1988; 1998) has termed ‘felt immediacy’.
Shared focus and affective involvement with the expressions of another
in observable interpersonal interaction attest to the unique intersubjective
awareness that leads infants to participate in the activity of culture.
With Jerome Bruner (1990) we believe that narrative is a fundamental mode
of human collective thinking — and acting — and that its basic function
is the production of meaning or ‘world making’.
We first attempt to redefine the boundaries of the term ‘narrative’
to include ‘narratives without words’ based on processes of temporal organisation
in language and music. In the second section of the paper, we describe
what we take to be indices of a narrative organisation in live mother–infant
interaction based on its ‘communicative musicality’. The third section
presents the speculative claim that the interactions between young infants
and adults are not only narrative in form but also present a narrative
content of ‘common sense’ based on what we call a ‘proto-habitus’. In the
fourth and fifth sections we present some empirical evidence for the narrative
organisation of both spontaneous mother-infant vocal interaction and interaction
based on singing for and with infants.
Correspondence: mgratier@u-paris10.fr, gratier@gmail.com, c.trevarthen@ed.ac.uk
Charles Whitehead
The Human Revolution: Editorial Introduction to ‘Honest Fakes and Language
Origins’ by Chris Knight
Knight has previously presented his own anthropological, biological, and
archaeological arguments for a big bang origin of human culture and language
(e.g. 1991; 1998; 1999; 2000; 2008a,b; Knight et al., 1995). In particular
he has argued that the wide range of apparently ‘anti-biological’ phenomena
which characterise human culture – such as the worldwide provenance of
rule-of-women myths and of secret rituals in which men claim to menstruate
— can only be explained by a revolutionary inversion of biological signals
and disruption of a typical primate social order. His present paper makes
no mention of all this previous work. Here he presents a philosophical
argument to show that the very idea of language emerging by genetic point
mutations, and the concept of a ‘digital mind’, are logically incoherent.
Hopefully this will drive the final nail into the coffin of pseudo-biological
macro- or micro-mutational theories of language origins, as espoused by
evolutionary psychologists such as Pinker (1994), palaeoanthropologists
like Mithen (1996a,b), and linguisticians such as Chomsky (2005).
This introduction is intended as a ‘red carpet’ welcoming Professor
Knight to the pages of JCS. Of course, according to Knight’s theory — and
a noteworthy Dogon myth quoted by Knight (1991, pp. 424–5) — red carpets
are red, as are the robes of kings and cardinals, because of the numinous
power originally ascribed to menstrual blood.
Correspondence: drcwhitehead@aol.com
Chris Knight
‘Honest Fakes’ and Language Origins
If ‘a part of the mind is digital’, how did it ever get to be that way?
Under what Darwinian selection pressures and by what conceivable mechanisms
might a digital computational module become installed in an otherwise analog
primate brain? Can natural selection acting on an analog precursor transform
it incrementally into a digital one? Is such an idea even logically coherent?
Correspondence: School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies,
University of East London, Docklands Campus, London E16 2RD
Corrado Sinigaglia
Mirror Neurons: This is the Question
Abstract: Despite the impressive body of evidence supporting the existence
of a mirror neuron (MN) system for action, the original claim regarding
its crucial role in action understanding remains controversial. Emma Borg
has recently launched a sharp attack on this claim, with the aim of demonstrating
that neither the original version nor the subsequent revisions of the MN
hypothesis tell us very much about how intentional attribution actually
works. In this article I take up the challenge she issues in the title
of her paper (If Mirror Neurons are the Answer, What was the Question?)
and argue that what MNs offer is not as Borg claims ‘an extremely limited’
picture of action understanding but rather an enriched picture that brings
to light aspects of social cognition hitherto ignored in the mind-reading
literature, showing how intentional motor components of action can shape
social cognition prior to and apart from any forms of deliberate mentalizing.
Correspondence: Corrado Sinigaglia, Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università
di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7, 1-20122 Milano, Italy.
corrado.sinigaglia@unimi.it
Robert Turner and Charles Whitehead
How Collective Representations Can Change the Structure of the Brain
Abstract: Culture not only influences human psychology and perceptions
of self, others and reality, it also, in certain contexts, influences the
quality and degree of consciousness itself. If the brain gives shape to
consciousness, then we would expect culture to have a corresponding impact
on the functional anatomy and microstructure of the brain. The concept
of ‘collective representations’, as developed by Durkheim, refers to the
often crucial components of human life that have meaningful existence only
because we agree that they do — such as customs, money, religion, cosmology,
language, games, laws, power structures and artistic genres. We present
recent imaging research which illuminates the feedback relationship between
these two types of representation — the collective and the cortical — and
which demonstrates that collective representations can have well-defined
cortical representations.
Correspondence: turner@cbs.mpg.de
Max Weisbuch and Nalini Ambady
Non-Conscious Routes to Building Culture: Nonverbal Components of Socialization
Abstract: Gesture and elaborate forms of nonverbal behaviour have been
posited as necessary antecedents to language and shared conceptual understanding.
Here we argue that subtle and largely unintentional nonverbal behaviours
play a key role in building consensual beliefs within culture. We propose
a model that focuses on the subtle and automatic nonverbal transmission
of attitudes, beliefs and cultural ideals. Specifically, people extract
attitudes and beliefs from nonverbal behaviour — such extraction is both
ubiquitous and efficient. The extracted attitudes and beliefs become individual
beliefs if encountered frequently enough. Consequently, people may come
to adopt the same attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in the absence of verbal
communication. Finally, one’s own nonverbal behaviour reflects the extracted
attitudes, beliefs and ideals of those of one’s group, serving as a means
for transmitting culture. The implication is that subtle nonverbal behaviour
is important for the creation and maintenance of culture.
Correspondence: nalani.ambady@tufts.edu maxweisbuch@gmail.com
Charles Whitehead
The Neural Correlates of Work and Play
What Brain Imaging Research and Animal Cartoons can tell us about Social
Displays, Self-Consciousness, and the Evolution of the Human Brain
Abstract: Children seem to have a profound implicit knowledge of human
behaviour, because they laugh at Bugs Bunny cartoons where much of the
humour depends on animals behaving like humans and our intuitive recognition
that this is absurd. Scientists, on the other hand, have problems defining
what this ‘human difference’ is. I suggest these problems are of cultural
origin. For example, the industrial revolution and the protestant work
ethic have created a world in which work is valued over play, object intelligence
over social intelligence, and science and technology over the arts. This
may explain why we have so many imaging studies of tool-use and object
manipulation, but only four studies of dance, two of pretend play, and
one of role-play.
Yet in order to understand child development, the evolution of
the brain, and the emergence of human self-consciousness, we need to look
at social displays — such as dance, song, image-making and role-play —
which underpin human culture, cooperation and the arts. I will discuss
recent brain imaging research on playful versus instrumental behaviour
and show how, in conjunction with archaeological data, we can use this
to make sense of human evolution.
Correspondence: drcwhitehead@aol.com
