Representation, enaction, religion : different models of cognition and thei implications for the cognitive study of religions

The aim of the paper is to consider the implications of applying the enactive approach to cognition within the study of religions. This approach is discussed as an alternative to the classical, cognitivist stance predominant among the proponents of cognitive science of religion (CSR). The most popular model within CSR is that of cognition as manipulation of concepts. The key assumptions of this model limit the understanding of religion to a system of beliefs. Applying an alternative model - of cognition as enaction - may contribute to creating a more comprehensive model of religion, taking into consideration its pre-conceptual origins. Using the category of representation as the departure point, the author juxtaposes the cognitivist and the enactive stance, showing how substituting the former with the latter necessarily changes the construal of religious activity and thinking

Afro-Brazilian Religions and the Prospects for a Philosophy of Religious Practice

In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack’s admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists have studied these primarily orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. Still, they involve practices, such as offering and sacrifice as well as spirit possession and mediumship, that have yet to receive attention from philosophers. We argue that this is not an accident: philosophers have had a highly restricted diet of examples, have not looked at ethnography as source material, and thus still need to put together a methodology to tackle such practices. After elucidating Schilbrack’s suggestions to adopt an embodiment paradigm and apply conceptual metaphor theory and the extended mind thesis to consider religious practices as thoughtful, we offer criticism of the specifics of his threefold solution. First, it assumes language is linear; second, it takes a problematic view of the body; and third, it abides by a misleading view of the “levels” of cognition. We conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices as cognitive enterprises

In Theory, There\u27s Hope: Queer Co-(m)motions of Science and Subjectivity

Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, which, therefore, needs to be interrupted at its foundational roots. Thirdly, the scaffolding that supports this subjectivity draws on Newtonian science and neo-Darwinian narratives deemed to be natural law and, therefore, ontological, immutable reality. Contrary to modernist thinking, I premise that these two strains, subjectivity and science, are neither autonomous nor ontological, but that they are materially and contingently integral. Finally, this thesis presumes that different and life-affirming trajectories are, in fact, desired. An integral framing of science and subjectivity provides a productive method of feminist science studies analysis and theorization. Observing the capitalist Western social imaginary through this lens reveals its philosophical and scientific infrastructures to be outdated and crumbling. Observing how emerging scientific narratives in quantum physics and systems-biology intersect with marginalized theories in process-philosophy and subjectivity reveals a life-affirming imaginary of difference, one that arrests nihilism and sets ethical trajectories in motion. Certain, though not all, percepts of feminist new materialism engage twentieth and twenty-first century sciences successfully to show that ethicality matters. Though many questions remain, this points auspiciously towards the possibility for a transformed politics of justice

TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY, SCIENCE, AND THE SUPERNATURAL

ABSTRACT: This article critically discusses the scientific status of transpersonal psychology and its relation to so-called supernatural claims. In particular, analysis focuses o

Integral In-Dwelling: A Prepositional Theology of Religions

The concept of generalized co-presence is a central one in the gram- mar of Bhaskar’s metaRealist metaphysics. As a term denoting the radical relationality and mutual indwelling of beings in the cosmos, generalized co- presence finds analogues in the holographic principle of Morin’s Complex Thought, Wilber’s nondual inflection of holarchy, as well as multiple religious archetypes of divine interindependence. In this paper, I will explore the potential of this concept for framing a “deep participatory,” Complex Integral Realist model of interreligious relationship that can amplify the integrative potential of the metaRealist, Integral, and participatory approaches to this topic that have been articulated to date. To facilitate this inquiry, and to situate it in a context that I believe will be most fruitful, I will first broadly outline the contours of two related metaphysical projects which I believe are highly relevant for integral metatheoriz- ing: prepositional philosophy and theology

Art as a Generator of New Mental Patterns: From an epistemological perspective of Modern Physics, Neuroscience and the Buddhist system of thought.

This thesis draws upon research in Eastern philosophy and neuroscience to argue that art is capable of metabolizing and embodying different levels of reality, and therefore functions as an instrument that can generate states of consciousness. The research and writing that went into this text has provided the critical and conceptual foundation for a new artwork, which I present in the last chapter. Historically, art changes in tandem with the paradigm shifts of a given era. This thesis argues that our contemporary paradigm shift has introduced new ways of considering the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. Such categories no longer conform to a Cartesian paradigm, which insists on considering them separately, and instead more closely resembles the context of quantum physics, which establishes an entanglement of subjectivity and objectivity. Neuroscientists and philosophers of mind contend that consciousness is a special information process in which new knowledge is generated. My thesis conflates consciousness and creativity, arguing that contemporary art is a privileged field in which this human ability is concretely developed, and in doing so, preserves individuals and society at-large from the danger of repetitive and automatic thought. (McLuhan, 1968). To outline this argument, I draw upon notions like Damasio’s “neural patterns”, Chalmer’s “information spaces” and the “ego tunnel model” defined by Metzinger. Attempting to interpret the interdependence between subject and object, it can be taken out the existence of a gap between complex, abstract scientific discoveries and their ability to be metabolized on individual level, a gap that Francisco Varela attempts to resolve through his invocation of the need for an embodied knowledge, which he explores by bridging studies in cognitive science and Buddhist mindfulness practices. The present research adopts the position that an analogous process of embodied knowledge exists in the artistic field, thanks to art’s ability to reconnect observations of how the outer world is experienced on a subjective level, creating a circularity—a bond—between subject and object, between art work and viewer, which is never fixed but always mutually changing and evolving

The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact (A philosophical reflection for graphic design)

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact Current discourses within cultural studies are re-iterating the limitations of language to adequately describe the affective domains of corporeality and materiality in the study of cultural artefacts. Within the discourse of graphic design, however, there remains an enduring focus placed upon models of language and communication to understand the meaning of designed materials. Rather than upholding a focus upon language, this thesis undertakes a theoretical investigation to extend the literature available to the discourse of graphic design to better understand how visual materials ‘come to mean’ within the experience of an embodied subject coupled to an affective environment. This thesis proposes an ontology of images that is emergent as a part of what, within the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, is describes as a mind-body-world system through which the ‘meaning’ of visual materials should be grounded. This thesis asks not ‘what’ visual materials mean but rather ‘how’ visual materials come to mean in terms of a complex relationship involving the embodied perceptual experience of the maker and the viewer that is immersed within an affective environment, what the thesis terms the multidimensional depth of the image. A phenomenological theory of art is extended to include a range of materials of popular visual culture to frame a study of how form and style come to mean qua the gestures of an embodied experience as coupled to an environment — a meaning that reciprocally emerges through the embodied experience of the work by the viewer. The environmental processes of which an embodied subject’s movements are coupled are brought into focus through enactive conceptions of mind within the cognitive sciences, describing how mind and meaning are emergent within an autopoietic organism-environment system. This provides a framework in which the affective dimensions of matter can be more fully understood as having a cognitive efficacy. Within this context, Material Engagement Theory (an approach within cognitive archaeology) is utilized to include a more focussed discussion of the affective domains of materials, objects, and artefacts and their role in the emergence of mind and meaning.HER

MINDFULNESS AS COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE INTERVENTION A phenomenological enquiry on chronic patients' worldviews

The presented study evaluates the effect of Buddhist spirituality with respect to resilience and coping mechanisms, addressing the application of mindfulness as a decontextualized adaptation of Buddhist teachings. Through a participant-phenomenological approach, the current study investigates the relationship between two different clinical conditions along with mindfulness-meditation in both clinical and non-clinical contexts. To guide the research process, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with: 10 oncologic patients following the MBSR program in early palliative care; 7 epileptic patients following an MBSR adapted program; 10 mindfulness trainers engaged in the conduction of the program within clinical environments; 15 expert practitioners experiencing pain-elicitation in experimental conditions; 4 Buddhist teachers. The analysis scrutinizes the relationship between mindfulness and the following areas: reception of the hospital proposal, autobiographical-self, transition in worldviews, social identity and ethical perspectives, embodiment. The results of this thesis prompt a whole spectrum of coping strategies in facing both psychological suffering and physical pain, as life reorganization, present-centered nonreactivity, embodied recentering, spiritual reconnection, social support and reintegration. These strategies raise questions on some common underlying mechanisms. Limited to the Italian and French milieu, findings show how mindfulness in novices, still claiming a formal derivation from Buddhism, is producing a new phenomenon with uncertain tendencies, independent from Buddhist ethics, philosophy and soteriology

The Tragedy of the Self:Lectures on Global Hermeneutics

Why do human beings interpret their overall experience in terms of selfhood? How was the notion and sense of self shaped at different times and in different cultures? What sort of problems or paradoxes did these constructions face? These lectures address these and related questions by sketching a roadmap of possible theoretical avenues for conceiving of the self, bringing to the foreground its soteriological implications, while also testing this theoretical outlook against insights offered by various disciplines. Exploring the crosscultural spectrum of possible ways of conceiving of the self invites the more existential question of whether any of these possibilities might offer resources for dealing with the tragedies of today’s world, or maybe even saving it from some of them