American teachings use the idea of shields to describe how we meet, receive and respond to the world, and I have found some equivalencies in Eastern teachings, as well. I’ll tell you about a few that I’ve learned, and then we’ll expand those ideas to embrace the core ideas of this book.

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

The mythical bronze creature Talos (Greek: Τάλως) was worshiped initially as the god of light or the sun in the Hellenic Island of Crete. He is supposed to have lived in the peak Kouloukona of the Tallaia Mountains in the Gerontospelio cave. His relation towards bronze and fire and his continuous voyage circling the island of Crete most probably introduces the concept of the change of the four seasons. The sun was considered in the area of the South-East Mediterranean nations (...) as just judge, a guardian who monitors and judges from above all the actions of the commoners, a controller for the faithful application of laws in Crete [1]. Hesychios in his Lexicon notes that talos means sun and that the name Tallaios was initially attributed to Zeus [2]. The birth of the Olympian gods forged a new Pantheon and nomenclature forcing some of the old gods to fell into lower deities. This happened to Talos who soon became a mythical hero [1]. According to Apollodorus, the bronze creature was forged by the magnificent constructor Hephaestus as a gift to the mythical King Minoa to help him guard the island [3]. Although the verb “peritrohazo” (Greek: περιτροχαζω) was used, meaning a movement in a steady orbit (track), some depictions image him as a winged being. To protect the island, he was throwing rocks into unknown ships or in the case of a foreign landing he was burning with fire or with his flamed bronze body the intruders. He was holding copper plates with the laws of the island and his circle allowed him to pass all island sores three times daily [1,4-6]. Plato, speaks of him as a real person, suggesting he was the brother of King Rhadamanthys, thus a son of Zeus [5]. Talos may be considered as the token of the Cretan power, a symbol of technological development in the field of metalworking in prehistoric and Minoan times. An animated, programmed gigantic android to enforce its will. A primitive robot for basic actions having a power source, fire and ichor (Greek: ιχώρ) the sacred fluid in the vessels of the gods. The first manufactured being with his individual intelligence, a primary concept of artificial intelligence (AI) [7]. -/- Homer was the first to introduce the term automata (Greek: αυτόματα), to describe ingenious machines built by the supreme blacksmith god of invention and technology, God of metal and fire, Hephaestus, manufactured devices “acting of one’s own will” as the Hellenic word indicates [8]. Eons later, the humanoid automaton the “Automa cavaliere” (English: Automaton knight) appeared in the court of the nobleman and Duke of Milan Ludovico Maria Sforza. It was the year 1495, when Leonardo da Vinci presented his robotic knight, an innovative construction operated by a series of pulleys and cables, presenting though no individual mind. Although it was manufactured by a highly intelligent polymath, it could only be operated through an outer intelligence [9]. Advancements made during the Fourth Industrial Revolution allowed modern technology to manufacture intelligent machines to aid the field of invasive surgery. One of those most sophisticated devises is the da Vince Surgical Tower. -/- Launched in the setting of the 21st century, the DaVinci System is one of the most commonly employed tools/systems, which has prevailed in the field of robotic-assisted surgery [10]. One could claim that it practically reshaped the concept of surgery, providing doctors with immense capabilities, aiming towards the optimal post-operative outcome. Through visual augmentation, high resolution 3D video, enhanced precision and reduced complication rates [11] the DaVinci Si and the latest DaVinci Xi system have been implemented in a variety of surgeries, including but not limited to general, urologic, gynecologic, thoracic and even cardiac procedures; valve and coronary artery bypass graft operations [12,13]. Da Vinci is cleared globally for cardiosurgery and came in vogue to fulfill the dream of cardiac surgeons to operate in closet chest. It offers in patients the same benefits as those that open chest incision surgery procedures do [14]. -/- The more recent DaVinci Xi model was introduced to counteract commonly known drawbacks of the Si system, such as the inability to simultaneously manipulate the different abdominal quadrants [10]. It consists of four boom mounted robotic arms along with a mobile platform and a master console. The latter with the adaptable intraocular distance, the cushioned headrest, the modifiable arm bars and the flexible finger loops, is meticulously designed to meet the surgeon´s “demands” [12]. Every robotic arm has three degrees of freedom, which combined with the EndoWrist technology to imitate the delicate motion of the surgeon´s hand, acquires an extra seven degrees of freedom. Evidently, the combination of the user-friendly interface, the high-quality 3D intraoperative images, the multiple joints and sensors, as well as the surgeon himself, who can learn to handle the DaVinci Xi Surgical System in a relatively short period of time, has established the model in the surgical armamentarium, paving the way towards a continuously progressive future of minimally invasive and robotic surgery (Figure 1) [12]. -/- History testifies that the nomination of the AI surgical tower as da Vinci was wrongfully given to commemorate a majestic historical figure. It is clear that the mythical creature Talos which was fabricated by the ingenious god Hephaestus was the first true automaton in the line of AI origins. (shrink)

When we dream, we feel emotions in response to objects and events that exist only in the dream. One key question is whether these emotions can be said to be “essentially unfitting”, that is, always inappropriate to the evoking scenario. However, how we evaluate dream emotions for fittingness may depend on the model of dreams we adopt: the imagination or the hallucination model. If fittingness requires a match between emotion and evaluative properties of objects or events, it (...) is prima facie plausible that dream emotions could fail to fit under the imagination model because it is unfitting to have an emotion toward an object we do not believe to be real. Under the hallucination model, dream emotions could be unfitting because their objects do not exist but we believe them to be real. More nuance, however, is required. By comparing dream emotions with the emotions we experience while imagining, engaging with fiction, and hallucinating, we conclude that although there are compelling arguments in support of the claim that dream emotions are essentially unfitting, these arguments are not entirely convincing, and it is more plausible that particular dream emotions can be assessed for fittingness under either model of dreaming. (shrink)

As a topic in the philosophy of psychology, dreaming is a fascinating, diverse, and severely underdeveloped area of study. The topic excites intense public interest in its own right, while also challenging our confidence that we know what the words “conscious” and “consciousness” mean. So dreaming should be at the forefront of our interdisciplinary investigations: theories of mind which fail to address the topic are incomplete. This chapter illustrates the tight links between conceptual and empirical issues by highlighting surprisingly deep (...) disagreements among leading dream scientists over what might seem basic aspects of their topic. (shrink)

I argue that dreams can contain perceptual elements in multifarious, heretofore unthought-of ways. I also explain the difference between dreams that contain perceptual elements, perceptual experiences that contain dream elements, and having a dream and a perceptual experience simultaneously. I then discuss two applications of the resulting view. First, I explain how my taxonomy of perception in dreams will allow “dream engineers”—who try to alter the content of people’s dreams—to accurately classify different dreams and explore creating new (...) forms of perception in dreams. Second, I consider the consequences of the view for the role of memory in dreaming and imagination. I argue that not every element of dreams or sensory imaginations must rely on memory. The resultant view of sensory imagination provides a counterexample to Hume’s account of sensory imagination, according to which sensory imagination must be built up from faint copies of sensory impressions stored in memory. (shrink)

Dreams are not real, so when we recount them we prefix an intensional operator like “I dreamed that…”. Linguists will analyze this construction in terms of clausal complementation syntax and possible worlds semantics. But talking about a dream is often more like telling a story, with a potentially complex discourse structure (involving propositional discourse units connected by coherence relations like NARRATION, BACKGROUND, and EXPLANATION) that is hard to fit inside a single syntactically embedded that-clause (or a sequence of independently (...) embedded clauses). I show how we can analyze actual, complex dream report stories using a formal discourse semantics framework. I then explore how to extend this discourse framework to visual dream reporting, like in movies and comics, where it’s not immediately clear that we even have any intensional operators or embeddings to begin with. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

This paper appeals to the phenomenon of dreaming to provide a novel defense against arguments from evil. The thrust of the argument is as follows: when we wake up after a nightmare we are often filled entirely with relief, and do not consider ourselves to have actually suffered very much at all; and since it is epistemically possible that this whole life is simply a dream, it follows that it is epistemically possible that in reality there is very little (...) suffering. This epistemic possibility decisively undermines a key premise of both logical and evidential arguments from evil. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Tabby Cats knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. Later the dreamer herself gave us more information. Of (...) six predictions four were confirmed. The dreamer’s apartment is repeatedly disturbed and, each time, a new cat appears. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF CLASS AVAILABLE: link is on first page of the paper you download from this page. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted 'The Dream of Geese Nesting in Trees' knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been mostly silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Our main predictions were confirmed. Goslings (...) are falling on the dreamer’s head. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper, 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AUDIO RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is at top of paper you can download from this page. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted 'The Dream of the Three Orcas' knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. -/- Our interpretation included nine predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had not been present before our interpretation was complete) to give us more information about the dreamer. Later the dreamer also gave us more information. Our predictions were mostly (...) confirmed. The dreamer is standing on beach when huge orca-like floats appear. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System that Tests Symbolic Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. ONLINE AUDIO RECORD OF ENTIRE ORCAS' CLASS : link is on title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Flaming Sword knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Eight months later the bringer (...) gave us further information from the dreamer. Our predictions were mostly confirmed. In the dream, the dreamer’s identity is repeatedly questioned. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. -/- AUDIO RECORD OF THE CLASS ABOUT THE FLAMING SWORD: link is on the title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

What, if anything, is fanaticism? Philosophers including Locke, Hume, Shaftesbury, and Kant offered an account of fanaticism, analyzing it as (1) unwavering commitment to an ideal, together with (2) unwillingness to subject the ideal (or its premises) to rational critique and (3) the presumption of a non-rational sanction for the ideal. In the first part of the paper, I explain this account and argue that it does not succeed: among other things, it entails that a paradigmatically peaceful and tolerant individual (...) can be a fanatic. The following sections argue that the fanatic is distinguished by four features: (4) the adoption of sacred values; (5) the need to treat these values as unconditional in order to preserve a particular form of psychic unity; (6) the sense that the status of these values is threatened by lack of widespread acceptance; and (7) the identification with a group, where the group is defined by shared commitment to the sacred values. If the account succeeds, it not only reveals the nature of fanaticism, but also uncovers a distinctive form of ethical critique: we can critique a way of understanding values not on the grounds that it is false, but on the grounds that it promotes a particular form of social pathology. (shrink)

I argue that being wide awake is an epistemic virtue which enables me to recognize immediately that I'm wide awake. Also I argue that dreams are imaginings and that the wide awake mind can immediately discern the difference between imaginings and vivid sense experience. Descartes need only pinch himself.

This essay gives an account of how traditional morality is best understood and also why it is worth defending (even if some reform is needed) and how this might be done. Traditional morality is first contrasted with supposedly more enlightened forms of morality, such as utilitarianism and liberal Kantianism (i.e., autonomy-centered ethics). The focus here is on certain sacred values that are central to traditional morality and which highlight this contrast and bring out the attractions of traditional morality. Next, (...) this essay explores and offers support for the convergence thesis to which traditional morality, understood as common morality, is committed. This thesis states that although there are diverse moral traditions, insofar as they are in good order we should expect them to converge upon a common or universal morality, even if there remain some differences in the details. The defense of this thesis provides justification for the validity of traditional morality as it suggests an objective basis. (shrink)

The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng perform a ritual pilgrimage (hajj) to the top of Mount Bawakaraeng (as a sacred space). This ritual is often considered heretical and deviant. These negative assumptions are the result of the monopoly definition of “sacred place” by the world religion paradigm which is only limited to the doctrine of the holy book and is hierarchical-exclusive. Meanwhile, in the indigenous religion paradigm, “sacred place” is closely related tothe surrounding environment (...) (nature) which also gives life to indigenous peoples. The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng construct the sacredness of the mountain, not only as a place for religious rituals but also as a guarantor of their life. There were lacking previous researches discussing “sacred place” through the indigenous religion paradigm approach. This research contributes to that lack. This study examines how the indigenous religion paradigm interprets “sacred place”. The research method used in this research is qualitative. This study argues that there is no better way to understand why indigenous people perform rituals on Mount Bawakaraeng than using the indigenous religion paradigm. This study also shows that the “sacred place” associated with Mount Bawakaraeng is a way for the indigenous people who live around the mountain to preserve the nature around them which has enabled them to live and make a living such as accessing water, gathering medicines from nature, and so on. Eventually, with research that provides a better explanation of what a “sacred place” is in the indigenous religion paradigm, negative assumptions about indigenous people who regard a mountain as sacredplace can be better understood. (shrink)

This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary (...) to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of Mercury knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. The dreamer is instructed to confront a friendship he had abandoned and, when he (...) does so, is frightened by the inner life he discovers. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. AN AUDIO-RECORD OF COMPLETE CLASS: link is given on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)

Sleep and dreaming are important daily phenomena that are receiving growing attention from both the scientific and the philosophical communities. The increasingly popular predictive brain framework within cognitive science aims to give a full account of all aspects of cognition. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical advantages of Predictive Processing (PP, as proposed by Clark 2013, Clark 2016; and Hohwy 2013) in defining sleep and dreaming. After a brief introduction, we overview the state of the (...) art at the intersection between dream research and PP (with particular reference to Hobson and Friston 2012; Hobson et al. 2014). In the following sections we focus on two theoretically promising aspects of the research program. First, we consider the explanations of phenomenal consciousness during sleep (i.e. dreaming) and how it arises from the neural work of the brain. PP provides a good picture of the peculiarity of dreaming but it can’t fully address the problem of how consciousness comes to be in the first place. We propose that Integrated Information Theory (IIT) (Oizumi et al. 2014; Tononi et al. 2016) is a good candidate for this role and we will show its advantages and points of contact with PP. After introducing IIT, we deal with the evolutionary function of sleeping and dreaming. We illustrate that PP fits with contemporary researches on the important adaptive function of sleep and we discuss why IIT can account for sleep mentation (i.e. dreaming) in evolutionary terms (Albantakis et al. 2014). In the final section, we discuss two future avenues for dream research that can fruitfully adopt the perspective offered by PP: (a) the role of bodily predictions in the constitution of the sleeping brain activity and the dreaming experience, and (b) the precise role of the difference stages of sleep (REM (Rapid eye movement), NREM (Non-rapid eye movement) in the constitution and refinement of the predictive machinery. (shrink)

Dreams as Virtual Reality simulations. When David Chalmers wrote “The Virtual and the Real” the argument many focused on the metaphysical and epistemic nature Virtual Reality and how it compares to waking states and dreaming sates. But one interesting segment of the paper is where he defends his thesis by claiming that dreams are not experiences. This is where I take issue and, in my paper, I claim that dreams as much as VR are epistemically similar enough to be called (...) an experience. Exploring my thesis further in how the function of phenomenal and access consciousness play a key role in waking states and dreaming states. Having followed the argument laid out by Chalmers, I first test what would a sufficient answer for my claim look like. Then I chip away at the idea leading to the conclusion that dreams are epistemically rich as waking states. (shrink)

Sacred value attitudes involve a distinctive profile of norm psychology: an absolutist prohibition on transgressing the value, combined with outrage at even hypothetical transgressions. This article considers three mechanisms by which such attitudes may be adaptive, and relates them to central theories regarding the evolution of religion. The first, “deterrence” mechanism functions to dissuade coercive expropriation of valuable resources. This mechanism explains the existence of sacred value attitudes prior to the development of religion and also explains analogues of (...) sacred value in non-human species. The two remaining mechanisms, “assurance” and “coalitional,” are more likely to have been involved in the cultural evolution of specifically religious behavior. In the assurance mechanism, sacred value attitudes increase the cost of ideological commitments, making them more reliable as signals of a cooperative disposition. In the coalitional mechanism, sacred value attitudes make it dangerous for third parties to dissent from a social norm, and thus discourage competitor ideologies. While both these mechanisms are compatible with major accounts of the evolution of religion, different theories suggest a greater or lesser emphasis on one mechanism or the other. (shrink)

Art among Iranian and Islamic philosophers has always been associated with moral, so that many philosophers have considered art to be synonymous with virtue. By examining Farabi's opinions, it is possible to extract his special ideas about art and artist. In Farabi's theory of Virtuous Art, the artist is on the second floor of utopia and carries religious truths and reasonable happiness. Also, the theory of Virtuous Art has all the aesthetic features and artistic creativity, and in fact, all artistic (...) values are the presupposition of being an art of Virtuous Art. By reflecting on Suhrawardi’s numerous works and intellectual foundations, we can also see that he also paid special attention to the virtuous art and the supreme aspects of art; although he did not directly theorize about the basics of art, but by examining his theories, we can infer the basics of Ishraghi's Virtuous Art. Moreover, Suhrawardi has written some of his works in allegorical and artistic language, and this is a manifestation of Suhrawardi’s Illuminating Art. Among contemporary thinkers, Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Titus Burckhardt have presented an approach with the title of Sacred Art, considering the sacred foundations of art and Traditionalism. (shrink)

Knowing someone personally centrally involves engaging in various patterns of affective response. Inasmuch as humans can know God personally, this basic insight about the relationship between personal knowledge and affective response also applies to God: knowing God involves responding to him, and to the world, in various affectively toned ways. In light of this insight, I explore how one particular practice might contribute to human knowledge of God: namely, engaging with sacred music – in particular, sacred music in (...) the Western, classical tradition. In investigating this topic, I tackle an issue at the interface between the philosophy of religion and aesthetics: sacred music’s capacity to arouse religious emotions. I use as a springboard Peter Kivy’s view that ‘music alone’ can only arouse emotions about itself. This view, I argue, has a counterintuitive consequence: the music in sacred works would play no part in arousing emotions with religious objects. In contrast, I develop an account of how music combines with religious factors to arouse religious emotions. I then draw out two consequences for how music can facilitate understanding between religious and non-religious outlooks. The upshot of all this, I suggest, is that by expanding the listener’s religious-emotional landscape, sacred music can enrich her knowledge of God – and that this is possible whether or not the listener subscribes propositionally to God’s reality or to any other religious doctrines. (shrink)

Reducing Being hierarchies down to the physical entities, empirical science having occupied with destroying the sanctity of the universe; does thinking about Sacred architecture suggests a way to release contemporary man from nihilism? The authors’ response is affirmative; therefore, investigating the quality of Sacred disclosure in the religious architecture of Islam and Hinduism, they search for understanding a lost meaning that had been manifesting there. The method of research consists of a comparative study about Islamic mosques and Hindu (...) temples according to phenomenology. Offering existential relation with Sacred architecture by a personal experience for understanding the quality of Sacred manifestation, they criticize semiology and phenomenology methods. (shrink)

In the first two chapters of his 1925 book Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (The Social Frameworks of Memory), the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) develops a sustained comparison between remembering and dreaming. Engaging in detail with large bodies of contemporary research in psychology, physiology, philosophy, and linguistics, he aims to combat what he calls the ‘surprising’ tendency of ‘psychological treatises that deal with memory’ to treat each of us as ‘an isolated being’ (1925/ 1994, vi) 1. In the (...) course of making a case that memory is deeply situated and social, Halbwachs offers a subtle and challenging treatment of dreams. (shrink)

Looks at the development of the sacred after the Sumerians' named the phallus Supreme Creator in 9000 B.C.E. Lists names invented creating belief in Sacred Phallus and names the part male genitals played in supporting the phallus as sacred.

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream (...) scepticism, and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the White House knowing nothing of the dreamer and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of falsifiable predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and was not visible to us) to give us more information about the dreamer. Of 17 predictions 15 were confirmed. The dreamer suffers dislocation and loss (...) until she asks a female manager for help. This record is another iteration of an experiment that will be described more fully in the paper 'The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog: An Experimental System to Test Meaning,' soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. More than any of the other iterations, it details how talk therapy promotes personality reorganization. It then supports these observations with experimental evidence. Because it demonstrates how talk therapy works, this iteration supports talk therapy against pressure from the drug and insurance corporations. AUDIO-RECORDING OF WHOLE CLASS: link provided on first page of the paper you download here. (shrink)

Jennifer Windt’s Dreaming is an enormously rich and thorough book, developing illuminating connections between dreaming, the methodology of psychology, and various philosophical subfields. I’ll focus on two epistemological threads that run through the book. The first has to do with the status of certain assumptions about dreams. Windt argues that the assumptions that dreams involve experiences, and that dream reports are reliable — are methodologically necessary default assumptions, akin to Wittgensteinian hinge propositions. I’ll suggest that Windt is quietly pre-supposing (...) some sceptical assumptions, and that recent literature in epistemic externalism may bear in important ways on her arguments. The second thread involves the perennial sceptical worry that dreaming threatens ordinary knowledge. I’ll suggest again that Windt makes tacit sceptical assumptions one may wish to resist. (shrink)

Dreaming is a communicative activity between the most sensitive archive of the enregistered experience of life on the earth, the brain, and the most plastic medium for the discovery and practice of meaning, the mind or culture. Both love and war have been made on the basis of dreams, not to mention scientific discoveries. In ancient Greece dreams were medicinal parts of curative sleeping or "incubation" rites in the temple of Aesculapius, and many psychoanalytic physicians today still consider dreams as (...) possessing therapeutic potential. The ethnographic literature gives ample testimony to the great significance accorded to dreams by all of the world cultures. Dreams form a rich store of ethnographic evidence, and their indigenous interpretations can often illuminate the central issues and conflicts of a people otherwise hidden from obvious view. Given these facts, plus the physiological facts that the dream process itself involves deeply-rooted material brain functions, and that rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, which is the key indicator of human dreaming, is shared by all mammals, it remains strange how little attention is given to dreaming as a formative aspect of human evolution and culture. -/- This essay addresses dreaming as a formative aspect of human evolution and culture by viewing dreaming as a borderland between biology and culture, a thoroughly social, yet private experience. Dreaming not only highlights the "cultic" roots of culture—the spontaneous impulse to meaning—but also illustrates one of the ways in which the technics of the biosocial human body itself form the primary source of culture. I show why dreaming, although private, is a thoroughly cultural, biological, communicative activity. -/- Culture and biology are often treated by social scientists as though they were oil and water, not to be mixed. I should inform the culture theorist at the start that I am fully aware of the assumed nature-culture dichotomy, and that I reject it. I do so not because I am a sociobiologist, quite the contrary, rather because I am a semiotician, and my studies of signs have led me toward a critical reconstruction of the concepts of nature and culture. In what follows I beg the reader's patience, since I will draw from diverse materials and project some speculative hypotheses in places in order to make my argument. -/- . (shrink)

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present HOT (...) theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

Synthetic biology aims to synthesize novel biological systems or redesign existing ones. The field has raised numerous philosophical questions, but most especially what is novel to this field. In this article I argue for a novel take, since the dominant ways to understand synthetic biology’s specificity each face problems. Inspired by the examination of the work of a number of chemists, I argue that synthetic biology differentiates itself by a new regime of articulation, i.e. a new way of articulating the (...) questions and phenomena it wants to address. Instead of describing actual existing biological systems, the field aims to describe biological possibilities. In the second part I corroborate this hypothesis through a comparison between early research in the field of the origins of life and contemporary synthetic biologists, who are not so much interested in the historical origin of life on Earth, but rather in a universal biology of the possible origins of any life whatsoever. (shrink)

As part of the development of the Symbolic and Sub-symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System, we have implemented a memory store to allow a robot to retain knowledge from previous exp...

Dreaming has been a subject for debate for thousands of years as to what it entails and how it affects daily living. This paper goes into depth about if dreaming holds reality within, and if morality should be taken into consideration.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes argues that one cannot trust one’s senses since they are not a reliable source of obtaining knowledge of the world. One of Descartes’s main contentions to support such an argument is from his explanation of dreams, where one can feel one is awake but instead one is dreaming. Native Americans, however, may argue that the experiences one has in dreams are real and are a source of knowledge of the real world. Although Descartes (...) uses dreams to support his argument, some Native Americans have a different take on dreams. Dreams for Native Americans are a source of knowledge as well as a source for obtaining one’s identity. Gregory Cajete, in American Indian Thought, notes that “Dreams and Visions are a natural means for accessing knowledge and establishing relationship to the world. They are encouraged and facilitated.” In other words, it is through dreams that individuals are guided, destined, and informed. Therefore, dreams as understood by some Native Americans are an extension of reality that anticipate events that will happen or can happen. The focus of this paper is an exploration of the philosophical and religious epistemology pertaining to Native Americans as described in their accounts of dreams. (shrink)

At least since Anaximander’s apeiron, there have been philosophical questions about what, if anything, preceded the gods. But, as far as I know, the precise question that I address in this essay was first explicitly asked by Ronald W. Hepburn, in his essay ‘Restoring the Sacred: Sacred as a Concept of Aesthetics’. In his essay, Hepburn is interested in the actual and potential relationships between religious and aesthetic uses of the concept of the sacred. Which leads him (...) to the question: Does the concept have a valid meaning – an aesthetic meaning, say – that is logically independent of (and therefore might have preceded) the religious one, which seems most strongly associated with the metaphysical belief that God or the gods exist? In other words, is the sacred older than the gods? While he does not provide a definitive answer, Hepburn adumbrates his view on whether this claim is correct. In this essay, I set out my own answer within the guidelines that Hepburn’s sketch has laid out. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore how experiences of social belonging might emerge and be sustained in online communities, drawing from the work on rituals by Randall Collins. I argue that rather than viewing mediated interactions in terms of whether they are suitable substitutes for face-to-face interactions, we should consider mediated encounters in their own right. This allows us to recognize the creative ways that people can create rituals in a mediated setting and thus support and create a sense of belonging (...) with others online. I also highlight how some online platforms not only support online rituals but that they are well-positioned to create and circulate collective symbols (or sacred objects) of groups and, thus, can continue to scaffold and sustain on-going feelings of belonging. (shrink)

De-anthropocentrism is the leitmotif of philosophy in the twenty-first century, encouraging diverse and competing thoughts as to how this goal may be achieved. This article argues that the method by which we may achieve de-anthropocentrism is ethical rather than metaphysical – it must involve a creation of the self, rather than an interpretation of the given human conditions. Through engagements with the thought of Nietzsche, Levinas, and Foucault, and a close reading of Baudelaire’s poem “La Beauté,” I will illustrate three (...) ethical commitments essential to de-anthropocentrism: to abandon the claim to knowledge associated with human reason, to remain in perpetual quest of an object, and to transgress the given perceptual structure through aesthetic experience. In contrast to Kantian philosophy built upon universal human reason, art is the ethical arena where each artist creates their own way to relate to the object, while de-anthropocentrism occurs – this article argues – when the artist includes the self as the field of creation. Object-Oriented Ontology in my assessment is the only branch of philosophy that truly achieves de-anthropocentrism. (shrink)

The psychedelic renaissance did not emerge from a void. While a tremendous upswell of interest in psychedelics can be observed today, there is scant acknowledgment of the current spiritual crisis that has led to this burgeoning enthusiasm. Having lost our sense of the sacred, we have—with disastrous consequences—become alienated from ourselves, others, and the natural environment. Secular psychotherapy and psychiatry have failed to address the myriad mental health problems that are prevalent right now, which has compelled people to desperately (...) look for alternatives to fill the void in their lives. Sacred medicines have been used for millennia in humanity’s traditional cultures as part of their spiritual practices. Now that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAT) is being developed, we must avoid repeating the mistakes of modern psychology, which misguidedly seeks to situate entheogenic therapy on a desacralized foundation of materialism, reductionism, and scientism. Nevertheless, although the full benefit of entheogens can likely be gained only in the context of a sacred tradition, they may still have some measure of therapeutic value even when used in conjunction with secular psychotherapy. This article examines the metaphysical foundations of sacred psychology and argues that entheogenic therapy needs to be grounded on the same basis. The framework employed here is a “transpersonal” perspective that applies the insights found in the world’s great wisdom traditions. It will be argued that the adoption of psychedelics in mental health treatment presupposes a fully integrated psychotherapy that is possible only when it is rooted in a spiritually informed ontology. (shrink)

I offer a novel reading in this dissertation of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) skepticism in his work Meditations on First Philosophy (1641–1642). I specifically aim to answer the following problem: How is Descartes’s skepticism to be read in accordance with the rest of his philosophy? This problem can be divided into two more general questions in Descartes scholarship: How is skepticism utilized in the Meditations, and what are its intentions and relation to the preceding philosophical tradition? -/- I approach the topic (...) from both a historical and a text-based analysis, combining textual and contextual research. I examine Descartes’s skepticism against two main traditions in the historical analysis: philosophical skepticism and Aristotelian Scholasticism. I argue that skepticism in the Meditations is intended to oppose and upheave both Scholasticism and skepticism. The intended results of the work are not merely epistemological but also metaphysical and even ethical. Furthermore, these ambitions cannot be neatly distinguished but merge into each other. -/- The third historical context against which the skeptical meditations are examined is the literary genre of meditative exercises, particularly from the 1500–1600’s, which, while religiously and spiritually oriented, likewise provided the practitioner with an enlightened understanding of self-knowledge and their cognitive place in the world on the way to closer spiritual proximity to God. I argue by this reading that the skepticism of the Meditations is an attentive, meditational cognitive exercise that is not merely instrumental and methodological but is to have a genuine and serious (psychologically real) effect on our thinking. The skeptical meditation is not simply a theoretical thought experiment but is to be seriously practiced as a transformative process of reorienting one’s cognitive framework to discover truth, certainty, and a way to a happy, tranquil, and virtuous life. -/- I offer a close reading in the textual analysis of the first three meditations of the Meditations. I argue that the meditative skepticism employed in the work does not reject the previous beliefs but suspends judgment on them, withdrawing assent until further evidence can be found. I introduce a new term into Descartes scholarship in this analysis, based on the terminology of ancient skepticism: Cartesian epochē (gr. epochē, suspension, withdrawal). Instead of rejecting previous beliefs or assenting to the probably false, the skeptical procedure of the Meditations is argued to emulate in important ways the suspension of judgment on equally balanced reasons in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism. Novel interpretations are presented along the way of the will’s freedom, of the First Meditation’s skeptical scenarios, of the cogito, and of the vindication of metaphysical certainty, as well as a clarification of the Cartesian Circle problem. -/- Reinterpreting the relation of Descartes’s skepticism to the preceding historical and literary traditions leads to a new look at the skeptical method itself. Presenting a new interpretation of skepticism in the Meditations leads at the same time to a new look at its relation to the historical context. The two research questions are, then, intrinsically tied together. -/- My focus in the study is on the Meditations, but I also reference and discuss Descartes’s other philosophical works, as well as his correspondence, when necessary. (shrink)

Freud's account of dreams has a cogent interpretive basis.

Stravinsky considered himself a maker, a Homo faber, an artisan of the past. He confessed that he liked to compose music more than music itself, and argued that expression was not an immanent character of music. With this paper, I intend to discuss Stravinsky’s musical aesthetics (the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given right after the outbreak of WWII –Poétique musicale), depicting and criticising his notion of expression and his view of the musician as mere “executant”. I will also point out (...) some biographical details (the controversial premiere of Le Sacre du printemps and Stravinsky’s antisemitism) while criticising Adorno’s harsh critique of Stravinsky’s music. -/- . (shrink)

There are two leading theories about the ontology of dreams. One holds that dreams involve hallucinations and beliefs. The other holds that dreaming involves sensory and propositional imagining. I highlight two features of dreams which are more easily explained by the imagination theory. One is that certain things seem to be true in our dreams, even though they are not represented sensorily; this is easily explained if dreams involve propositional imagining. The other is that dream narratives can be temporally (...) segmented, involving events which take place across long spans of time; this makes sense if dreams involve sensory imagining, for we often sensorily imagine narratives during wakefulness in the same way. The two considerations are unified by the fact that both highlight forms of content determination characteristic of imagining. (shrink)

Suffering can make sacred, so it may partly be nature, and not culture alone, that leads us to apprehend a sacred aspect in victims of oppression. Those who recognize this sacredness show piety—a special form of respect—toward members of oppressed groups. The result is a system of social constructions often dismissed as “identity politics.” This essay starts with an analysis of the intentionality of piety and sacredness and how they relate to suffering, sacrifice, sanctions, pollution, and purification. It (...) then argues that the sacralization of oppressed groups is an expression of the perennial human disposition to acknowledge sacredness and to respond piously. The essay then analyzes this sacred status as socially constructed. Based on the sacred-making power of suffering, the sacred status elicits piety, gives its bearers special authority, surrounds them with sanctions, and calls for symbolic sacrificial punishments of the impious. By dissecting sacrificial politics as a system of social constructions, we see that, although the oppressed groups are made sacred, certain people in the oppressor groups—“the Pious”—continue to exercise fundamental power. This essay, by displaying the inner logic of this cultural phenomenon, helps us both to sympathize with and to critique the system and then to pose questions about what good or bad the system might be doing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In order to explore what it means to pursue philosophical investigations for theological reasons, this paper argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein continues and corrects Pseudo-Denys’ project in The Divine Names. I first argue that The Divine Names should be interpreted as attempting to render human thought transparent to the divine by relativizing our concepts. The success of this project is compromised because the concept of ‘unity’ is not relativized. I then develop the claim that Wittgenstein does relativize unity in a (...) similar way and for similar religious reasons to Pseudo-Denys. As such, he can be read as continuing and correcting the Pseudo-Dionysian project. I conclude by reflecting on several of this argument’s implications for the relationship between philosophy and Christian systematic theology. (shrink)

The logic of soku-hi is presented as an articulation of a post-Kantian view of reality that embraces the truths of science with the assumption of the transcendental subject. As such, soku-hi represents the philosophical posture of both the secular Zen of the Kyoto School and the new materialists of contemporary continental philosophy. It describes how material reality is not all even though there is nothing else.

This paper takes up Bethesda Game Studios' Starfield (2023) as an aesthetic artefact, carefully attending to the thematics of the game's narrative in their operation as structuring "thought patterns" for the player's experience of the game, thought patterns that give form to the "sensible fabric" of the game and so constitute an imaginary or "distribution of the sensible" that requires critique (Rancière, 2013). Utilizing the aesthetic and material-economic theories of Nicolas Bourriaud, Jacques Rancière, Jussi Parikka, and David Graeber, this paper (...) examines the aesthetics of the techno-ecological imaginary that Starfield institutes, close reading the play of perspectives into which the game invites the player-character, and analysing this play in its problematic orientation to the key dramatic revelation of planetary catastrophe that occurs late in the game's main campaign. If, as climate and games scholar Benjamin Abraham writes (2022), "[b]ringing the climate crisis 'home' to all of our lives, all of our workplaces, all of our hobbies, is the necessary first step in acting to reverse climate action," then illuminating and critiquing Starfield's deployment of such a crisis will help players, scholars, and developers alike take the first step in learning to pay attention to the very "modes of perception" that prevent us from effecting real change in the global technological systems that have brought us to the brink of planetary collapse. (shrink)

I propose a narrative fabrication thesis of dream reports, according to which dream reports are often not accurate representations of experiences that occur during sleep. I begin with an overview of anti-experience theses of Norman Malcolm and Daniel Dennett who reject the received view of dreams, that dreams are experiences we have during sleep which are reported upon waking. Although rejection of the first claim of the received view, that dreams are experiences that occur during sleep, is implausible, (...) I evaluate in more detail the second assumption of the received view, that dream reports are generally accurate. I then propose a “narrative fabrication” view of dreams as an alternative to the received view. Dream reports are often confabulated or fabricated because of poor memory, bizarre dream content, and cognitive deficits. It is well documented that narratives can be altered between initial rapid eye movement sleep awakenings and subsequent reports. I argue that we have reason to suspect that initial reports are prone to inaccuracy. Experiments demonstrate that subjects rationalize strange elements in narratives, leaving out supernatural or bizarre components when reporting waking memories of stories. Inaccuracies in dream reports are exacerbated by rapid memory loss and bizarre dream content. Waking memory is a process of reconstruction and blending of elements, but unlike waking memory, we cannot reality-test for dream memories. Dream experiences involve imaginative elements, and dream content cannot be verified with external evidence. Some dreams may involve wake-like higher cognitive functions, such as lucid dreams. Such dreams are more likely to elicit accurate reports than cognitively deficient dreams. However, dream reports are generally less accurate than waking reports. I then propose methods which could verify the narrative fabrication view, and argue that although the theory cannot be tested with current methods, new techniques and technologies may be able to do so in the future. -/- . (shrink)