Salon - You are not your brain

Great interview with Alva Noe from Gordy Slack at Salon. This article has been getting a lot of coverage on the web, so I am a bit late to the party. This is an anti-reductionism argument that I suspect many of us are in agreement on - we ARE more than the firing of neurons.

Main point: the brain is necessary, but not sufficient, for consciousness to occur. I agree - but I am not convinced Noe gets it in the bigger sense - he wants science to take over the questions of consciousness, but modern science is based on exteriors, while consciousness is a matter of interiors - two different but interconnected domains.

You are not your brain

We have become too reductive in understanding ourselves, argues philosopher Alva Noe. Our thoughts and desires are shaped by more than neurons firing inside our heads.

By Gordy Slack

March 25, 2009 | For a decade or so, brain studies have seemed on the brink of answering questions about the nature of consciousness, the self, thought and experience. But they never do, argues University of California at Berkeley philosopher Alva Noë, because these things are not found solely in the brain itself.

In his new book, "Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness," Noë attacks the brave new world of neuroscience and its claims that brain mechanics can explain consciousness. Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Francis Crick wrote, "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." While Noë credits Crick for drawing popular and scientific attention to the question of consciousness, he thinks Crick's conclusions are dead wrong and dangerous.

Noe's conversational style is gentle, attentive and easygoing. But, in true philosopher fashion, he also picks his words deliberately, as if stepping off the path of right thinking would result in some tragic plummet into the abyss of illogic

In San Francisco there's a brain gym where members exercise their brains with "neurobic" software. A sign outside the place reads: "You Are Your Brain!" It has become almost a mainstream notion now. But the subtitle of your book begins "Why you are not your brain." What's wrong with the "You are your brain" view?

It's one thing to say you wouldn't be you if not for your brain, that your brain is critical to what you are. But I could say that about your upbringing and your culture, too. It's another thing entirely to say that you are your brain.

I don't reject the idea that the brain is necessary for consciousness; but I do reject the argument that it is sufficient. That's just a fancy, contemporary version of the old philosophical idea that our true selves are interior, cut off from the outside world, only accidentally situated in the world. The view I'm attacking claims that neural activity is enough to explain consciousness, that you could have consciousness in a petri dish. It supposes that consciousness happens inside the brain the way digestion occurs inside the GI tract. But consciousness is not like digestion; it doesn't happen inside of us. It is something we do, something we achieve. It's more like dance than it is like digestion.

Even if we had a perfect way of observing exactly what a brain was doing, we would never be able to understand how it made us have the kinds of experiences we do. The experiences just aren't happening inside our skulls. Trying to understand consciousness in neural terms alone is like trying to understand a car driving down the road only in terms of its engine. It's bad philosophy masquerading as science.

Maybe I'm naive but it seems kind of obvious that the brain is the mechanism that -- in the context of a person's life and environment -- gives rise to consciousness. That's not to say it is the same as consciousness, but that it is the mechanism from which consciousness emerges.

The brain is necessary for consciousness. Of course! Just as an engine is necessary in a car. But an engine doesn't "give rise" to driving; driving isn't something that happens inside the engine. The engine contributes to the car's ability to drive. Consciousness is more like driving than our philosophical tradition leads us to expect. To be conscious is to have a world. The fact is, you and I don't have what it takes to make a world on our own. We find the world, we don't make it in our brains.

The brain is essential for our lives, physiology, health and experience. But the idea that it is the whole story, or even the key to understanding the story, is not a scientific conclusion. It's a prejudice. Consciousness requires the joint operation of the brain, the body and the world.

In fact, neuroscience is probably not in the best position to answer questions of consciousness and mind and experience. When we look for who and what we are in the brain alone, we lose the phenomena that interest us most.

Imagine that we find the Holy Grail of neurobiology, the patterns of neural activation that correlate perfectly with different events in our mental lives. We would still never understand or make sense of why those correlations exist. There is no intrinsic relationship between the experience and the neural substrates of the experience. We always need to look at what factors bring the two together. The environment, other people, our needs and desires -- all these things exist outside the brain and have to be seen as essential parts of our selves and consciousness. So we aren't just our brains, we're not locked inside our craniums; we extend beyond our skulls, beyond our skin, into the world we occupy.

Francis Crick did us a major service by taking seriously and publicizing the problem of consciousness. But in the journal Nature he wrote, "Scientists need no longer stand by listening to the tedious arguments of philosophers perpetually disagreeing with each other. The problem of consciousness is now a scientific problem."

I say, "Bravo!" Consciousness is a scientific problem! But Crick framed the problem in terms of an unquestioned set of philosophical dogmas; namely that the key to consciousness will be found in the brain, that that's literally where experience and thought take place. My book is not anti-science; it's a challenge to science to get serious. It's deluded to think we're free of philosophy.

Is your battle a turf war between philosophy and neuroscience?

Not at all. I think these are scientific questions. I want to help science take them over. But I think science is in philosophically troubled waters here and it's just not ready yet to go it alone.

You're arguing that all we'll learn about by studying the brain is the brain. We'll never learn from the brain what love is? Or what religion is? Or consciousness?

Right. And that the radically reductionist view is not only unfounded, but it's also ugly. And dangerous.

Dangerous, how?

There are practical dangers, like raising expectations too high for specific scientific programs. The motivation for proceeding along some line, or justification for funding it, may be based on the assumption that it will find the place where consciousness is happening.

Second, the question of consciousness is a problem for all of us -- not just for science. We all want to know how to understand humans and think about ourselves. And claiming that neuroscience is going to explain us to ourselves is false advertising. It's important that we not believe it.

But the view that the self and consciousness can be explained in terms of the brain, that the real us is found inside our skulls, isn't just misleading and wrong, it's ugly. In that view, each of us is trapped in the caverns of his own skull and the world is just a sort of shared figment. Everything is made interior, private, rational and computational. That may not pose a practical danger, but it presents a kind of spiritual danger.

In that view, each of us is an island of intellect, alone. When you think of us as just interior neurological mechanisms, you see us as alienated from the world around us. The world shows up for us as bits of information that we decipher, like linguistic relics of an ancient culture that we have to interpret. Like when Mr. Spock says, "What is this strange kissing custom?" The danger is alienation, plain and simple. We're strangers in a strange land.

I find this a very sad and ugly picture of our circumstance. Now contrast that view with a sense of ourselves as engaged in the flow, responsive to the things going on around us, part of the world. It's a very different picture.

The late David Brower, conservationist and founder of Friends of the Earth, said that a California condor is only 5 percent feathers and blood and 95 percent its environment.

Exactly.

There's a kind of temporal lobe epilepsy that causes people to experience deeply religious feelings. Couldn't the relevance of that association tell us something about, say, the roots or essence of religious experience?

I'm pessimistic. A lot is context; things always happen in a setting. Imagine how you feel after a run. Out of breath, rapid heartbeat, sweaty? Now imagine you just woke up feeling like that. It would be terrifying. But after a run it makes sense and it feels good. Meaning is not intrinsic, it's relational. It's only in context that an intense feeling means one thing or the other. Again, we need to look outside neuroscience to understand what that significance is.

If someone had a seizure that caused a sensation like they imagine they might have if they were meeting God, that would be very confusing. But it would be a mistake to conclude from that that religious experience is only a brain state.

I'm not a religious person. And putting aside the fact I don't believe in God, I don't think the impulse of religion can be thought of as a kind of biological feature of us, or that there's something about our brains that makes us apt for that. I think of religions as communal and as literary traditions, both things existing outside the brain. I don't think of religious belief as something we can understand individualistically. When someone says they believe in God, you've got to understand the practices, customs, backgrounds and social realities that are part of that. None of it is going to reduce to anything individual inside of that person's brain.

People like Sam Harris, who worry about the irrationality of religious customs and practices, are right to be concerned. I agree that religion can be dangerous. But I don't think neuroscience is the way to understand it at all.

Why are so many smart people these days looking at the brain as the key to understanding consciousness? Is it just irrational exuberance about the new imaging techniques and other technological advances that give us peeks inside the functioning brain?

Yes, but there's something else, too. For a long time now, going back at least to Descartes and Galileo, we've liked to be told that things are not what they seem. When we go to a magic show, there's a feeling of delicious pleasure when the wool has been pulled over our eyes. Similarly, to be told that the love you feel is actually just a chemical reaction, or that your depression is just a malfunctioning of your brain, is surprising and in some paradoxical way satisfying. There's a modern pleasure in the unmasking of our everyday experience. We feel like we're seeing behind the curtain, seeing how the trick is done.

It validates our suspicion that the world is different than it looks?

Yes. Galileo said that the apple in your hand is colorless, odorless and flavorless. That color and so on are effects that the apple has on you, comparable to the sensation of the prick of a pin. The flavor of the apple, he said, is no more in the apple than the prickliness is in the pin. The taste and the prickliness are in you. Galileo thought we were radically deceived by the world around us. The contemporary neuroscientists simply extend this even further -- this idea that the world is a kind of grand illusion that the brain creates.

Sure, it's an important fact that the perception of colors depends on the physics of light and the nature of the nervous system. If our physiology were different, our ability to detect colors would be different. But none of that speaks to the unreality of color, any more than saying that I can't see anything in my room if I turn the lights off speaks to the unreality of my desk. We've almost made a fetish of this desire to be told that things are not what they seem. We get a thrill from the paradox.

OK, if our brains aren't going to explain thought and consciousness, then how should we study these things?

Consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in its environmental context. And to really understand it, you'd have to study it that way.

Suppose we ask ourselves: What makes certain patterns of neural activity visual? What I have proposed -- building on work with collaborators -- is that to answer that question, we need to look to the behavioral and environmental context. I think we can make progress toward explaining the character of experience, but only by looking at the way the neural activity arises in and indeed enables a certain kind of dynamic exchange with the world.

Seeing is a certain way of relating to the world around you; the brain plays a critical role in supporting that relation. It's not revealing something about the cells themselves -- or the way they are firing -- that does the explanatory work. Rather, it's understanding the way the cells participate in a larger interaction with the world that will shed light on what it is to see. This is a whole new way of approaching the problem. The "it's all in your brain" approach doesn't work. If we expand our idea of the machinery of mind to include the body and the world, whole new ways of thinking about and explaining consciousness come into view.

The study of consciousness should be a cross-disciplinary field: behavioral science, math, linguistics, robotics, artificial intelligence and philosophy -- these all make contributions. Brain studies, too. But you can't reduce the study of human life to the study of things happening inside a person's brain. You have to look at a person's active life in its context.

Evolutionary biology is one good example of the way to proceed. We don't look at an organism as a collection of cells or molecules or atoms. We look at it as a creature with interests and needs. We take an ecological approach that has the organism as an actor facing problems and struggling to survive and reproduce. We view all of that as the natural backdrop against which to carry on our investigations. I think it's that organism-centered approach, where you look at the animal in its environmental situation, that's the appropriate way to approach and study consciousness and the human mind.

Now, neuroscience can look for meaningful correlations between what's going on in the brain and experience, or the ways brain functions contribute to our ability to have the kinds of experience we have. It makes sense to use brain-imaging techniques like fMRI that way. Studying the brain is part of the picture, but only a limited part. The important point is not to think we're somehow catching the mind in action by stop-motion photography; that's not what we're doing with fMRI at all.

What role do you think the brain does play in consciousness?

Instead of asking how the brain makes us conscious, we should ask, How does the brain support the kind of involvement with the world in which our consciousness consists? This is what the best neuroscientists do. The brain is not the author of our experience. If we want to understand the role of the brain, we should ask, How does the brain enable us to interact with and keep track of the world as we do? What makes a certain pattern of brain activity a conscious perceptual experience has nothing to do with the cells themselves, or with the way they are firing, but rather with the way the cells' activity is responsive to and helps us regulate our engagement with the world around us. There's a lot to learn about the way the brain does this and this work is important.

At the end of your book you say that we occupy "Home sweet home." What do you mean by that?

The dominant view in neuroscience today represents us as if we were strangers in an alien environment. It says that we go about gathering information, building up representations, performing calculations and making choices based on that data. But in reality, when we get up in the morning we put our feet on the floor and start to walk. We take the floor for granted and the world supports us, houses us, facilitates us and enables us to carry on whatever our tasks might be. That kind of fluency, that kind of flow, is, I think, a fundamental feature of our lives. Our fitting into the world is not an illusion created by our brains, it's a fundamental truth about our nature. That's what I mean by home sweet home.

Tags: consciousness, Science, Psychology, brain, Alva Noe, Gordy Slack, Salon, Out of Our Heads, Why You Are Not Your Brain, Other Lessons From the Biology of Consciousness, neuroscience, philosophy

Elizabeth Gudrais - Our Psychotropic Lives

This article from Harvard Review is actually a book review - Daniel Lord Smail's On Deep History and the Brain. Interesting stuff.

Our Psychotropic Lives

by Elizabeth Gudrais

We like to think that as humans, we are somehow above biology—capable of self-restraint and subverting base urges. But professor of history Daniel Lord Smail argues that for humans and animals, life is by and large a quest to feel good. We may be responding to biological urges that are complex and sophisticated, but they are biological urges all the same.

In his most recent book, On Deep History and the Brain (University of California Press), Smail posits a new view of human history in which physiology and culture evolve symbiotically in a process driven by brain chemistry and psychotropic effects. Seen from his perspective, we are all hooked on the hormones and neurotransmitters that signal pleasure and relieve stress.

In popular usage, the term psychotropic refers to drugs—prescription or recreational—that radically alter consciousness. But the technical definition includes all substances that act on the central nervous system—including caffeine, alcohol, and anesthesia. Smail has coined an even wider definition, referring to psychotropic “mechanisms”—not only substances that we ingest, but also actions that affect the balance of hormones and neurotransmitters in our bodies. The list includes exercise, sex, gossip, even skydiving.

He argues that the way we define addiction is arbitrary and artificial. We stigmatize addicts, considering them on the wrong side of a fallacious dividing line that changes location from one culture and one epoch to the next. Why do we wholeheartedly endorse pursuit of a “runner’s high,” equivocate about caffeine and alcohol, and condemn cocaine use? In eighteenth-century Europe, Smail points out, the list of addictive substances to be used with caution included books. With the rise of the novel and the spread of literacy, a new fear of “reading mania” gripped the populace. He quotes one scholar’s account that young women were seen as particularly vulnerable, because they might “grow addicted to the pleasures induced by novels…have their passions awakened, and form false expectations about life.”

Perhaps, then, what differentiates humans from animals is the very ability to intentionally self-medicate? Not so fast, says Smail, who notes multiple examples of animals doing the same thing, including birds that “get drunk” by gorging on fruit that has begun to ferment as it decays. He argues that evolution pays attention to psychotropy, noting that in breeding dogs to enjoy human contact, we have created a class of animals “addicted” to petting, in the sense that they crave and seek out the hormonal response it generates.

Evolution attaches pleasing chemical signatures to behaviors that confer advantages in survival and reproduction; it is obvious enough why sex and eating would be pleasurable. But when we find ways to trip the same circuits with other activities (for instance, by activating the exhilaration of the fight-or-flight response through skydiving), those behaviors have their own evolutionary and historical consequences. Smail does not think it mere coincidence that the increasing accessibility and popularization of products such as coffee and spirits in Europe (the proliferation of coffeehouses, the influx of rum from the Caribbean and Brazil, the gin craze of the mid-eighteenth century) coincided with declining attendance at religious services, and in some places, transitions from monarchical states to democracy. “Where individuals once relied on religion and ritual as sources of dopamine and other chemical messengers,” he writes, “they turned increasingly to items of consumption, giving up God in favor of Mammon.”

He divides psychotropic mechanisms into two categories: autotropic (altering one’s own mood) and teletropic (altering someone else’s mood). In eighteenth-century Europe, he writes, there was “a tectonic shift away from teletropic mechanisms manipulated by ruling elites toward a new order in which the teletropies of dominance were replaced by the growing range of autotropic mechanisms available on an increasingly unregulated market.” Here he sees the seeds of our modern consumerism: the coffee, chocolate, and spirits habits of earlier centuries stemmed from the same ethos as today’s “retail therapy.”

To support his argument that pre-modern societies’ rigid class structure, as oppressive as it might have been, was also soothing, Smail draws evidence from evolutionary biology: researchers have found that baboons feel less stress (as measured by their hormone levels) when they live in groups with clearly delineated rank order. If rank order is less clear, the rules that govern interactions—such as which one should step out of the way when two baboons cross paths—require constant negotiation, and the uncertainty seems to induce anxiety.

The book is less a thorough exposition of ideas than an open invitation to consider them. Smail (a medievalist by training) began writing it as the introduction to another book—a “deep history” of humanity, on which he is now working. Both projects grew out of his frustration with perceived shortcomings in the way history is taught and studied. Historians, he complains, tend to act as though history begins with the first written texts. He aims to write an authoritative, unified history that reaches all the way back to the Paleolithic era and integrates evidence from anthropology and evolutionary biology. And it isn’t a one-way street: Smail, who also teaches a course on the history of emotion, believes biologists might gain insights from analyzing the descriptions of emotional states found in ancient texts—traditionally historians’ domain.

In this scholarly space where disciplines merge, “we can finally dispense with the idea, once favored by some historians, that biology gave way to culture with the advent of civilization,” he writes. “Civilization did not bring an end to biology. Civilization enabled important aspects of human biology.”

Tags: books, Psychology, consciousness, evolution, Daniel Lord Smail's On Deep History and the Brain, Elizabeth Gudrais, Harvard Review

A.H. Almaas - Love & Emptiness

This is a very cool series of videos. Periodically, I get interested in the work of Almaas, but I have never really spent enough time with all his many books to get his full project. What I have read, however, is pretty cool.

Love & Emptiness

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Tags: Buddhism, Psychology, personal growth, A.H. Almaas, Love & Emptiness, philosophy

Buddhist Geeks Episode 114: Different Types of Jhana: Sutta, Vishudimagga, & Vipassana

A very cool episode of the Buddhist Geeks, as usual.

Episode 114: Different Types of Jhana: Sutta, Vishudimagga, & Vipassana

We continue our discussion with insight meditation teacher and author, Richard Shankman. In this episode we continue to dissect the different kinds of samadhi and their respective fruits--what in the Theravada tradition are called jhana (or "meditative absorption"). According to Shankman there are two ways of approaching the attainment of jhana, one as was taught in the original canonical texts of the Theravada, the Pali Suttas, and the other from the later commentaries on the Buddha's teachings, the Vishudimagga. As a result we get two different forms of jhana--one called Sutta jhana and the other Vishudimagga jhana. This two-fold understanding, though geeky, shines light on the different methods of practicing both samadhi and vipassana meditation and offers a unitary model for understanding the two together.

We also briefly touch on a term called "vipassana jhana," which is used by notable Burmese and American insight meditation teachers, and relate the development of insight (via vipassana) to these two jhana systems. For those folks who have experience practicing or studying in the Theravada tradition you will likely find your understanding of the tradition deeply enriched. For those in other traditions you will almost certainly find this an interesting glimpse into the detailed intricacies of a one of the oldest Buddhist traditions of meditation.

This is part 2 of a two-part series. Listen to part 1, The Power of Samadhi.

Related Links:

• Support Buddhist Geeks with a Donation
• Free AudioBook Offer for Buddhist Geeks Listeners
• The Visuddhimagga
• The Pali Suttas
• RichardShankman.org
• The Experience of Samadhi: An In-depth Exploration of Buddhist Meditation

Tags: Buddhist Geeks, Episode 114, Different Types of Jhana, Sutta, Vishudimagga, Vipassana, Buddhism, meditation

Life's Cognitive Edge: The Role of the Mind & What it Means

A cool little lecture from the U of Arizona collection. Yes, it's evolutionary biology, a field under attack from the more "hard" science folks, but it's still interesting.

Life's Cognitive Edge: The Role of the Mind & What it Means

On February 13, 2008, Dr. Anna Dornhaus, Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, gave lecture at the College of Science The Edges of Life Lecture Series: "Life's Cognitive Edge: The Role of the Mind and What it Means to be Human." Dr. Dornhaus says " Our human mind distinguishes us from other animal life-or does it? Recent research has revealed culture and social learning, tool use, complex communication, self-recognition, and planning for the future are not unique to the human experience. With these new findings, science is finally getting closer to understanding exactly what makes us human."

Unfortunately, I can't embed the video, but you can watch it in large form at YouTube.

Tags: Life's Cognitive Edge, The Role of the Mind, What it Means, brain, evolution, consciousness, Dr. Anna Dornhaus, evolutionary biology

Venerable Phra Dhamma Theerarach Mahamuni - Sixteen Stages of Insight

~C4Chaos mentioned this link someplace, and I enjoyed it so I am passing it on.

There are a variety of maps of the enlightenment process, so this is only one, but it seems to me a good one, from what little I know of the process. Others who are more advanced on the path can let me know how accurate this map is.

This article is the work of the late Venerable Phra Dhamma Theerarach Mahamuni, one of the most renowned vipassana teachers of his time. The original booklet was produced in 1961 by the Division of Vipassana Dhura at Mahadhatu Monastery, Bangkok, and translated by Helen and Vorasak Jandamit. A revised English version was reprinted in 1988. It is also presented, with commentary, in the book, Insight Meditation: Practical Steps to Ultimate Truth, by Achan Sobin S. Namto (Sopako Bodhi Bhikkhu). In a few places the text has been edited and augmented by the Vipassana Dhura staff.

Contents

Note To The Reader
The Sixteen Stages of Insight
1 - Namarupa Pariccheda Nana
2 - Paccaya Pariggaha Nana
3 - Sammasana Nana
4 - Udayabbaya Nana
5 - Bhanga Nana
6 - Bhaya Nana
7 - Adinava Nana
8 - Nibbida Nana
9 - Muncitukamayata Nana
10 - Patisankha Nana
11 - Sankharupekha Nana
12 - Anuloma Nana
13 - Gotrabhu Nana
14 - Magga Nana
15 - Phala Nana
16 - Paccavekkhana Nana

Note to the reader: Some meditation teachers feel that the following information should not be made available to the general public. That isn't because these teachings are for members of a select group, must be specially transmitted, or are in any sense esoteric; but because, due to the tricky nature of the mind, learning about these insights before acquiring personal meditation experience might cause you to anticipate results, thereby slowing your progress. That's why Mahási Sayádaw wrote, "It is not good for a pupil who meditates under the guidance of a teacher to get acquainted with these stages before meditation begins" (Practical Insight Meditation, p. 35).

Nevertheless, the Sayadaw agreed to the publication of his own book, The Progress of Insight, that deals with these stages. He acknowledged that the information may be helpful for many students who practice in isolation. So we decided to follow a middle path by publishing the present essay, but including a cautionary note as the Sayadaw did.

Generally speaking, we do not recommend that beginners read this article. We offer the following descriptions for those students who have no access to an instructor and are trying to make sense of a meditation experience they have had, or for those who have already reached a fairly advanced stage of insight.

Although it is natural to want to know what level you have reached and what will happen next in meditation, it is quite difficult to evaluate your own experience, even with a written guideline. You should always be aware that, no matter what you come to believe as a result of reading this article, your self-assessment may be incorrect. Besides, the mind likes to play tricks. If you cling to something you've read about, wanting it to happen, the mind may subconsciously try to mimic the experience. Without a teacher you may not be able to tell the difference between the illusion and the real thing. In order to avoid the trap of self-deception it is important to use the information given here intelligently, with continuous self-examination and scrupulous honesty.

If you are reading this because you are wondering if you have reached enlightenment, please realize that you probably haven't, although you may have reached an earlier stage of insight-knowledge. Achan Sopako Bodhi explains that when the first level of enlightenment is reached there can be no doubt about it. You would not need to ask if you'd attained it. In the words of another bhikkhu, "It cannot be missed."

The Sixteen Stages of Insight: A Manual for Checking Vipassana Progress

This manual is intended for advanced students or vipassana teachers rather than beginners. It is not meant to substitute for the personal guidance of a meditation teacher.

There are sixteen levels of vipassana-knowledge or nana ("nana," pronounced "yah-nuh," is a Pali word for "knowledge.") In each level the student realizes a more advanced insight. This knowledge is a direct vision, not a matter of thinking. The meditator who undergoes an intensive meditation retreat will usually progress through the stages more or less in order, sometimes falling back to an earlier stage, or going back and forth between several levels before passing on to the next. A student may sometimes get stuck at a certain stage, at which time the help of a competent teacher is invaluable.

The meditator does not stay at each level for an equal period of time. Some stages may last days, weeks, months or longer, others mere hours. Some of the higher stages take only a few mind-moments, or even one moment, to pass – less than one second of time. Not every student will undergo all the experiences described here, nor in the exact order presented.

As you read these pages remember that, without exception, no matter what stage has been reached or what new phenomenon has been experienced, this tenet of insight meditation applies across the board: just go on with the work of noticing mental and material phenomena as they appear, without evaluating or naming those things; then let them go. Don't cling to any experience. Whatever happens, don't be swayed or impressed by it, no matter how blissful or terrible. This advice is pertinent even to those who have reached the first level of enlightenment. If you honestly follow this rule and don't let the mind talk you into making exceptions, you can be assured your practice will be correct and you will reach the end of the path as soon as possible.

The Sixteen Stages of Vipassana Knowledge

1. Knowledge to distinguish mental and physical states (namarupa pariccheda nana).
2. Knowledge of the cause-and-effect relationship between mental and physical states (paccaya pariggaha nana).
3. Knowledge of mental and physical processes as impermanent, unsatisfactory and nonself (sammasana nana).
4. Knowledge of arising and passing away (udayabbaya nana).
5. Knowledge of the dissolution of formations (bhanga nana).
6. Knowledge of the fearful nature of mental and physical states (bhaya nana).
7. Knowledge of mental and physical states as unsatisfactory (adinava nana).
8. Knowledge of disenchantment (nibbida nana).
9. Knowledge of the desire to abandon the worldly state (muncitukamayata nana).
10. Knowledge which investigates the path to deliverance and instills a decision to practice further (patisankha nana).
11. Knowledge which regards mental and physical states with equanimity (sankharupekha nana).
12. Knowledge which conforms to the Four Noble Truths (anuloma nana).
13. Knowledge of deliverance from the worldly condition (gotrabhu nana).
14. Knowledge by which defilements are abandoned and are overcome by destruction (magga nana).
15. Knowledge which realizes the fruit of the path and has nibbana as object (phala nana).
16. Knowledge which reviews the defilements still remaining (paccavekkhana nana).

Read the whole article.

Tags: Buddhism, meditation, insight, Venerable Phra Dhamma Theerarach Mahamuni, Theravada, Vipassana, Sixteen Stages of Vipassana Knowledge

The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw - The Progress of Insight

Another cool article today on the Vipassana approach to meditation - not my own practice, but the original practice (or am I wrong?) from the Theravada tradition.

(Visuddhiñana-katha)
A Modern Treatise on Buddhist Satipatthana Meditation
by The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw

Translated from the Pali with Notes by Nyanaponika Thera

For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted and redistributed in any medium. However, any such republication and redistribution is to be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and translations and other derivative works are to be clearly marked as such.

Contents

• Translator's Foreword
• Introduction
• I. Purification of Conduct (sila-visuddhi)
• The Method of Insight in Brief
• II. Purification of Mind (citta-visuddhi)
• III. Purification of View (ditthi-visuddhi)
• 1. Analytical Knowledge of Body and Mind (nama-rupa-pariccheda-ñana)
• IV. Purification by Overcoming Doubt (kankha-vitarana-visuddhi)
• 2. Knowledge by Discerning Conditionality (paccaya-pariggaha-ñana)
• 3. Knowledge by Comprehension (sammasana-ñana)
• 4. Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away (udayabbaya-ñana) in its weak stage, involving the Ten Corruptions of Insight
• V. Purification by Knowledge and Vision of What Is Path and Not Path (maggamagga-ñanadassana-visuddhi)
• VI. Purification by Knowledge and Vision of the Course of Practice (patipada-ñanadassana-visuddhi) (including mature Knowledge of Arising and Passing Away)
• 5. Knowledge of Dissolution (bhanga-ñana)
• 6. Awareness of Fearfulness (bhayatupatthana-ñana)
• 7. Knowledge of Misery (adinava-ñana)
• 8. Knowledge of Disgust (nibbida-ñana)
• 9. Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance (muncitu-kamyata-ñana)
• 10. Knowledge of Re-observation (patisankhanupassana-ñana)
• 11. Knowledge of Equanimity about Formations (sankhar'upekkha-ñana)
• 12. Insight Leading to emergence (vutthanagamini-vipassana-ñana)
• 13. Knowledge of Adaptation (anuloma-ñana)
• 14. Maturity Knowledge (gotrabhu-ñana)
• VII. Purification by Knowledge and Vision (ñanadassana-visuddhi)
• 15. Path Knowledge (magga-ñana)
• 16. Fruition Knowledge (phala-ñana)
• 17. Knowledge of Reviewing (paccavekkhana-ñana)
• 18. Attainment of Fruition (phalasamapatti)
• 19. The Higher Paths and Fruitions
• Conclusion
• Notes
• The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw

Translator's Foreward

To present to the reading public a treatise on Buddhist meditation needs no word of apology today. In wide circles of the West, Buddhist meditation is no longer regarded as a matter of purely academic or exotic interest. Under the stress and complexity of modern life the need for mental and spiritual regeneration is now widely felt, and in the field of the mind's methodical development the value of Buddhist meditation has been recognized and tested by many.

It is, in particular, the Buddha's Way of Mindfulness (satipatthana) that has been found invaluable because it is adaptable to, and beneficial in, widely different conditions of life. The present treatise is based on this method of cultivating mindfulness and awareness, which ultimately aims at the mind's final liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion.

The author of this treatise, the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw (U Sobhana Mahathera), is a Buddhist monk of contemporary Burma and an eminent meditation master. A brief sketch of his life is included in this volume. The path of meditation described in these pages was, and still is, taught by him in his meditation center called Thathana Yeiktha, in Rangoon, and is also set forth in his lectures and books in the Burmese language.

The framework of the treatise is provided by the classical "seven stages of purification" (satta-visuddhi), just as in Acariya Buddhaghosa's famous Visuddhimagga. On gradually reaching these stages, various phases of insight knowledge (ñana) are developed, leading on to the stages of ultimate liberation. The approach followed is that of "bare insight" (sukkha-vipassana) where, by direct observation, one's own bodily and mental processes are seen with increasing clarity as being impermanent, liable to suffering, and without a self or soul. The meditational practice begins with a few selected subjects of body-contemplation, which are retained up to the very end of the road. With the gradually increasing strength of mindfulness and concentration the range widens and the vision deepens until the insight knowledges unfold themselves in due order, as a natural outcome of the practice. This approach to the ultimate goal of Buddhist meditation is called bare insight because insight into the three characteristics of existence is made use of exclusively here, dispensing with the prior development of full concentrative absorption (jhana). Nevertheless, and it hardly needs mention, here too a high degree of mental concentration is required for perseverance in the practice, for attaining to insight knowledge, and for reaping its fruits.

As stated in the treatise itself (p.5), it is not the author's purpose to give a detailed introduction to the practice for the use of beginners. The foremost concern in this work is with a stage where, after diligent preliminary practice, the insight knowledges have begun to emerge, leading up to the highest crest of spiritual achievement, arahantship. Of the basic exercises, the treatise gives only a brief indication, at the beginning of Chapter I. Detailed instruction about these may be gathered by the student from the author's Practical Insight Meditation or the translator's book The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. Also a knowledge of the Buddha's original "Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness" (Satipatthana Sutta) will be indispensable.

This treatise was first written in the Burmese language and later, in 1950, a Pali version of it was composed by the author. As the treatise deals chiefly with the advanced stages of the practice, it was originally not intended for publication. Handwritten or typed copies of the Burmese or Pali version were given only to those who, with some measure of success, had concluded a strict course of practice at the meditation center. For the use of meditators from foreign countries, only a few cyclostyled sheets in English, briefly describing the phases of insight knowledge, were issued instead of the treatise itself. This was done to enable the meditator to identify his personal experience with one or other of the stages described, so that he might direct his further progress accordingly, without being diverted or misled by any secondary phenomena that may have appeared during his practice.

In 1954 the Venerable Author agreed to a printed edition of the Pali version in Burmese script, and after this first publication he also permitted, at the translator's request, the issue of an English version. He had the great kindness to go carefully through the draft translation and the Notes, with the linguistic help of an experienced Burmese lay meditator, U Pe Thin, who for many years had ably served as an interpreter for meditators from foreign countries. The translator's gratitude is due to both his Venerable Meditation Master, the author, and to U Pe Thin.

— Nyanaponika Thera

Forest Hermitage
Kandy, Ceylon,
On the Full-moon Day of June (Poson) 1965.

Introduction

Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Fully Enlightened One

Homage to Him, the Great Omniscient Sage, Who spread the net of rays of His Good Law! These rays of His Good Law — His very message true — Long may they shed their radiance o'er the world!

This treatise explains the progress of insight,¹ together with the corresponding stages of purification.² It has been written in brief for the benefit of meditators who have obtained distinctive results in their practice, so that they may more easily understand their experience. It is meant for those who, in their practice of insight, have taken up as their main subject either the tactile bodily process of motion,³ evident in the rising and falling movement of the abdomen,⁴ or the tactile bodily process based on three of the primary elements of matter⁵ evident in the sensation of touch (bodily impact). It is meant for those who, by attending to these exercises, have gained progressive insight as well into the whole body-and-mind process arising at the six sense doors,⁶ and have finally come to see the Dhamma, to attain to the Dhamma, to understand the Dhamma, to penetrate the Dhamma, who have passed beyond doubt, freed themselves from uncertainty, obtained assurance, and achieved independence of others in the Master's dispensation.⁷

Read the whole article.

Tags: The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, The Progress of Insight, Buddha's Way of Mindfulness, satipatthana, Modern Treatise, Buddhist, Satipatthana Meditation, Buddhism, meditation, insight meditation, Vipassana, Theravada

Jack Wellman - Jesus and His-Story

[image source]

This article from Ovi Magazine claims to be a look at the secular evidence for the existence of Jesus and what it might tell us about who he really was, aside from the dogma-generated stories in the Gospels. I'm doubtful that this is any more accurate than the Gospel stories based on what I have read - this material seems cherry-picked to support a Christian point of view.

Jesus and His-Story
by Jack Wellman

Perhaps most people don’t believe in Jesus Christ because they think that the only written record of His life is restricted to the Bible and many people see scriptures as less than 100% convincing. In fact, some go so far as to say that He never even existed! This is hard to believe, since even the non-religious or other world religions have heard of Him. And there are enormous amounts of secular history from secular Historians who were contemporaries’ of Jesus and that go into great detail in writing about Him that are most convincing. And these Historians included almost every culture in the world at that time. Here is what they wrote.

Thallus is perhaps the earliest secular writer to mention Jesus in his writings….even though his writings are so ancient, that no copies exist but those of Julius Africanus, who writing around 221AD quotes Thallus. Thallus and Africanus both explain mention a strange darkness that occurred at the point of Jesus’ crucifixion. And these stories of a “strange darkness” were written about far and wide on the earth. They all coincided with around 32-33AD.

Africanus writes that “Thallus in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun…” This record of Thallus, confirms that Jesus lived, and was crucified and that something highly unusual and unexplainable happened on that day. There were many reports of various earthquakes, destruction, and a “strange darkness”.

Africanus also mentions a historian named Phlegon who wrote a chronological history around 140AD. In this history, Phlegon also mentions the darkness surrounding the crucifixion in an effort to explain it, but even more interestingly, he mentions Jesus’ ability to foresee the future in describing the life of our Savior.

Josephus (AD 37 – c. 100), born of a priestly and royal ancestry, survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 [*]…and he was a prodigy. At age 13, he was already a consultant for the Jewish rabbis, by 16 he became a Galilean military commander and a Roman Citizen. And being under the rule of roman emperor Vespasian, he was allowed to write a first-century history of the Jews. Being a devout Jew and Roman Citizen, Josephus could hardly be described as a hostile witness. He wrote more about Kings the Messiah’s, but Josephus makes references to the Sadducees, the names of Jewish High Priests of the time, the Pharisees and the Essenes, the Herodian Temple, Quirinius' census and the Zealots. He also writes of such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and to Jesus. He even describes the death of John the Baptist, mentions the execution of James. All of which are described in the New Testament.

People, groups, times and events written about are corroborated in the New Testament by Josephus’ history. He describes the death of John the Baptist, and calls James the brother of “Jesus the Christ“. In his final passage he writes that Jesus was a wise man and the Messiah, and there is a retelling the resurrection story! All of which is described as such in the Bible. Josephus writes in his Antiquities of the Jews (18.63-64; 3.3).

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

The interesting thing is that the Historian Origen states that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ" [1.] "he did not accept Jesus as Christ" [2.], but Josephus’ declares in the Jesus to be Christ (in the Testimonium). The manuscript evidence in support of the iron-clad, "pre-accretions" reference to Jesus in Josephus is very strong and accepted by the great majority of professional historians [of which I am one]. Between the New Testament and Jospheus, there is no serious reason whatsoever to doubt the historical 'existence' of the Jesus of Nazareth behind those references.

All the relevant non-Jewish historical sources of the time mention Jesus! It is nearly universal. Not just in the books, but common knowledge of Jesus life and death among the people. This was not done under cover, but out in the open as much as could be possible. The Crucifixion was done on a hill, and always by a man thoroughfare, for all to see, far and wide. The list is enormous: Tacitus (Annals, AD 115-120), Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, AD 125), Lucian (mid-2nd century), Galen (AD 150; De pulsuum differentiis 2.4; 3.3) Celsus (True Discourse, AD 170), Mara Bar Serapion (pre AD-200?), Jewish Talmudic References (AD 300).

Jesus historicity and story became known from the Mediterranean to Africa to Asia-Minor, and into most of the known world at the time. One example was around 70AD, when a Syrian philosopher named Mara Bar-Serapion, writing to encourage his son, compares the life and persecution of Jesus with that of other philosophers who were persecuted for their ideas. He used Him as an example of being persecuted for your belief. The fact that Jesus is known to be a real person with this kind of influence is important. It should not surprise us that Mara Bar-Serapion refers to Jesus as the “Wise King” and was held in high esteem but most of the known-world religions, save Judaism.

Additionally, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Eusebius of Caesarea, who was a third century theologian who used the library in Caesarea for much of his research. Tertullian wrote about Christian worship and persecution that is consistent with New Testament accounts. Justin Martyr, a Gentile who lived in Palestine and later became a Christian records the many doctrines of the church, like the Sacraments, Salvation, etc. “Resources for Philo of Alexandria” who was a Jewish philosopher and historian that lived in the first century.

I have a BA in History from the highest accredited institution ( at least at the time) in the state from[Cardinal] Newman University, in Wichita, Kansas, and I myself have seen great numbers of historical accounts, one after the other, throughout ancient historical references and authors. During my course-work, book after book have returned to the account of this Great One of History. A thread intricately woven throughout the following 2,000 years of human history (from AD32). And, as we have seen and read, and I have seen with my own eyes in a multiplicity of sources, Jesus is historically indisputable. What more can be said, other than He did live, He did many wonders, He did die from crucifixion for the Redemption, (John 3:16), He did rise again, He was known as The Messiah, and as The Christ. This man and His story….is History, incontrovertibly.

1. Origen, Against Celsus, i:47
2. Origen, Commentary on Matthew, x:17
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

Here is a very good comment on the article:

Emanuel Paparella

2009-03-22 18:28:27

Indeed Jack, your article makes the valid point that to doubt the historical existence of the man from Palestine called Jesus is quite erroneous. It is usually attempted by pseudo-scholars whose interest is in transforming the historical record into a myth of sort and therefore a fraud. Of course to do that you need to have an abysmal view of what a myth is all about, given that there may be more truth in a myth than an historical event. That having been said, we still need to explain the mosaic figure of Christ on the Basilica of St. Vitale in Ravenna which shows an unbearded Christ as a shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders. Even more scandalous is the figure of Christ judging the world on the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The figure hardly reminds one of the historical Christ with a beard going around in Palestine doing good; to the contrary it reminds one of a Greek Apollo, almost naked and without a beard. To any Christian of any denomination those figures ought to theologically suggest that while it is true that there was an historical Christ who came into the world at a particular time, in a particular place, from a particular people, it is also true that there was also Christ as the second person of the Trinity which John calls the Word. The two are not distinct or contradictory but emblematic of the Divine and human nature of this unique historical personage within time and space. The doctrine is called the Incarnation and, as Chesterton points out in his “The Everlasting Man” Christianity is unique in postulating it on an historical basis, albeit there are myths that talk of gods coming into the world and resurrecting after death. When Caligula declared himself a god everybody understood that he was crazy. Nobody, even atheists have ever branded Christ a crazy lunatic.

Tags: Religion, culture, history, Jesus, Jack Wellman, Ovi Magazine, Emanuel Paparella, Gospels, secular

SciAm Mind - Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts

Scientific American Mind posted this article a week or two ago, but I'm just getting around to posting it.

Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts

A psychologist probes how altruism, Darwinism and neurobiology mean that we can succeed by not being cutthroat.

Dacher Keltneer

Why do people do good things? Is kindness hard-wired into the brain, or does this tendency arise via experience? Or is goodness some combination of nature and nurture?

Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, investigates these questions from multiple angles, and often generates results that are both surprising and challenging. In his new book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Keltner weaves together scientific findings with personal narrative to uncover the innate power of human emotion to connect people with each other, which he argues is the path to living the good life. Keltner was kind enough to take some time out to discuss altruism, Darwinism, neurobiology and practical applications of his findings with David DiSalvo.

DISALVO: You have a book that was just released called Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. What in a nutshell does the term “born to be good” mean to you, and what are you hoping people learn from reading the book?

KELTNER: “Born to be good” for me means that our mammalian and hominid evolution have crafted a species—us—with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution—survival, gene replication and smooth functioning groups. These tendencies are felt in the wonderful realm of emotion—emotions such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment and mirth. These emotions were of interest to Darwin, and Darwin-inspired studies have revealed that our capacity for caring, for play, for reverence and modesty are built into our brains, bodies, genes and social practices. My hopes for potential readers are numerous. I hope they learn about the remarkable wisdom of Darwin and the wonders of the study of emotion. I hope they come to look at human nature in a new light, one that is more hopeful and sanguine. I hope they may see the profoundly cooperative nature of much of our daily social living.

DISALVO: You’ve said that one of the inspirations for your work was Charles Darwin’s insights into human goodness. Because most people equate his name with “survival of the fittest,” it’ll probably be surprising to many that Darwin focused on goodness at all. What were a few of your take aways from Darwin’s work that really inspired you?

KELTNER: What an important question. We so often assume both in the scientific community, and in our culture at large, that Darwin thought humans were violent and competitive and self-interested in their natural state. That is a misrepresentation of what Darwin actually believed, and where the evolutionary study of human goodness is going.

My take aways from Darwin are twofold, and as you suggest above, I was surprised as well in arriving at an understanding of Darwin’s view of human nature. The first take away is found in Descent of Man, where Darwin argues that we are a profoundly social and caring species. This idea is reflected in the two quotes below, where Darwin argues that our tendencies toward sympathy are instinctual and evolved (and not some cultural construct as so many have assumed), and even stronger (or perhaps more ethical—see his observation about the “timid man” below) than the instinct for self-preservation:

“For firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of his fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. … Such actions as the above appear to be the simple result of the greater strength of the social or maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive; for they are performed too instantaneously for reflection, or for pleasure or even misery might be felt. In a timid man, on the other hand, the instinct of self-preservation might be so strong, that he would be unable to force himself to run any such risk, perhaps not even for his own child.”

The second take away comes from close study of Darwin’s Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, published one year after Descent of Man. There, Darwin details descriptions of emotions such as reverence, love, tenderness, laughter, embarrassment and the conceptual tools to document the evolutionary origins of these emotions. That led me to my own work on the physiology and display of these remarkable emotions, and to the science-based conclusion that these emotions lie at the core of our capacities for virtue and cooperation.

DISALVO: You recently wrote an article with the provocative title “In Defense of Teasing.” Because we’re ostensibly a society set against teasing in any form (school, workplace, and so on), what do you think teasing has to offer that we might be missing?

KELTNER: Teasing is the art of playful provocation, of using our playful voices and bodies to provoke others to avoid inappropriate behaviors. Marc Bekoff, a biologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has found in remarkable work with coyotes that they sort out leaders from aggressive types in their rough-and-tumble biting. The coyotes that bite too hard in such provocative play are relegated to low status positions. We likewise accomplish so much with the right kind of teasing.

Teasing (in the right way, which is what most people do) offers so much. It is a way to play and express affection. It is a way of negotiating conflicts at work and in the family. Teasing exchanges teach children how to use their voices in innumerable ways—such an important medium of communication. In teasing, children learn boundaries between harm and play. And children learn empathy in teasing, and how to appreciate others’ feelings (for example, in going too far). And in teasing we have fun. All of this benefit is accomplished in this remarkable modality of play.

DISALVO: Your team at U.C. Berkley has done a lot of interesting research on the vagus nerve and its association with altruistic feelings. Tell us a bit about this research and its implications for better understanding the nature of altruism.

KELTNER: The vagus nerve is part of the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system. It is a bundle of nerves that originates in the top of the spinal cord, it activates different organs throughout the body (heart, lungs, liver, digestive organs). When active, it is likely to produce that feeling of warm expansion in the chest, for example when we are moved by someone’s goodness or when we appreciate a beautiful piece of music. University of Illinois, Chicago, psychiatrist Steve Porges long ago argued that the vagus nerve is a care-taking organ in the body (of course, it serves many other functions as well). Several reasons justify this claim. The vagus nerve is thought to stimulate certain muscles in the vocal chamber, enabling communication. It reduces heart rate. Very new science suggests that it may be closely connected to oxytocin receptor networks. And it is unique to mammals.

Our research and that of other scientists suggests that the vagus nerve may be a physiological system that supports caretaking and altruism. We have found that activation of the vagus nerve is associated with feelings of compassion and the ethical intuition that humans from different social groups (even adversarial ones) share a common humanity. People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism—compassion, gratitude, love, happiness. Arizona State University psychologist Nancy Eisenberg has found that children with elevated vagal tone (high baseline vagus nerve activity) are more cooperative and likely to give. This area of study is the beginning of a fascinating new argument about altruism—that a branch of our nervous system evolved to support such behavior.

DISALVO: Oftentimes we learn about intriguing academic work being done on emotions, morality and related areas, but are left asking, “OK, but how do we do any of this? Is there anything we can make actual use of here?” Looking down the road, what do you want the impact of your work to be out in the world?

KELTNER: I have always felt that our science is only as good as the truthful rendition of reality that it provides and the good that it brings to our species. In summarizing the new science of emotion in Born To Be Good, I was struck by how useful this science is. The ancient approaches to ethics and virtue—for example, found in Aristotle or Confucius—privileged things such as compassion, gratitude and reverence. A new science of virtue and morality is suggesting that our capacities for virtue and cooperation and our moral sense are old in evolutionary terms, and found in emotions that I write about in Born To Be Good.

And a new science of happiness is finding that these emotions can be readily cultivated in familiar ways, bringing out the good in others and in oneself. Here are some recent empirical examples:

Meditating on a compassionate approach to others shifts resting brain activation to the left hemisphere, a region associated with happiness, and boosts immune functions.

Talking about areas of gratitude, in classrooms, at the dinner table or in the diary, boosts happiness and social well-being and health.

Experiences of reverence in nature or around morally inspiring others improves people’s sense of connection to others and sense of purpose.

Laughing and playing in the face of trauma gives the person perspective upon life’s inevitable difficulties, and improves resilience and adjustment.

Devoting resources to others, rather than indulging a materialist desire, brings about lasting well being.

This kind of science gives me many hopes for the future. At the broadest level, I hope that our culture shifts from a consumption-based, materialist culture to one that privileges the social joys (play, caring, touch, mirth) that are our older (in the evolutionary sense) sources of the good life. In more specific terms, I see this new science informing practices in almost every realm of life. Here again are some well-founded examples. Medical doctors are now receiving training in the tools of compassion—empathetic listening, warm touch—that almost certainly improve basic health outcomes. Teachers now regularly teach the tools of empathy and respect. Executives are learning the wisdom around the country of emotional intelligence—respect, building trust—that there is more to a company’s thriving than profit or the bottom line. In prisons and juvenile detention centers, meditation is being taught.

Are you a scientist? Have you recently read a peer-reviewed paper that you want to write about? Then contact Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the blog The Frontal Cortex and the book Proust Was a Neuroscientist. His latest book is How We Decide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
David DiSalvo is the science, technology and culture writer behind the blog Neuronarrative.

Tags: altruism, evolution, Psychology, culture, David DiSalvo, Scientific American Mind, Dacher Keltner, Forget Survival of the Fittest, It Is Kindness That Counts, Darwinism, neurobiology

'Consciousness signature' discovered spanning the brain

Very interesting what gets discovered when people are looking for something else. Consciousness is more than the sum of its parts, spread over the whole brain. The PLoS link at the end of the article links to the whole study, which is very cool.

'Consciousness signature' discovered spanning the brain

• 00:00 17 March 2009 by Anil Ananthaswamy

Electrodes implanted in the brains of people with epilepsy might have resolved an ancient question about consciousness.

Signals from the electrodes seem to show that consciousness arises from the coordinated activity of the entire brain. The signals also take us closer to finding an objective "consciousness signature" that could be used to probe the process in animals and people with brain damage without inserting electrodes.

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world, or whether consciousness was the result of concerted activity across the whole brain.

Probing the process has been a challenge, as non-invasive techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging and EEG give either spatial or temporal information but not both. The best way to get both simultaneously is to implant electrodes deep inside the skull, but it is difficult to justify this in healthy people for ethical reasons.

Brainy opportunity

Now neuroscientist Raphaël Gaillard of INSERM in Gif sur Yvette, France, and colleagues have taken advantage of a unique opportunity. They have probed consciousness in 10 people who had intercranial electrodes implanted for treating drug-resistant epilepsy.

While monitoring signals from these electrodes, Gaillard's team flashed words in front of the volunteers for just 29 milliseconds. The words were either threatening (kill, anger) or emotionally neutral (cousin, see).

The words were preceded and followed by visual "masks", which block the words from being consciously processed, or the masks following the words weren't used, meaning the words could be consciously processed. The volunteers had to press a button to indicate the nature of the word, allowing the researchers to confirm whether the volunteer was conscious of it or not.

Between the 10 volunteers, the researchers received information from a total of 176 electrodes, which covered almost the whole brain. During the first 300 milliseconds of the experiment, brain activity during both the non-conscious and conscious tasks was very similar, indicating that the process of consciousness had not kicked in. But after that, there were several types of brain activity that only occurred in the individuals who were aware of the words.

Lost seat

First, there was an increase in the voltage levels of the signals in their brains. Second, the frequency and phase of neurons firing in different parts of the brain seemed to synchronise. Then some of these synchronised signals appeared to be triggering others. For example, activity in the occipital lobe seemed to cause activity in the frontal lobe.

Because this activity only occurred in volunteers when they were aware of the words, Gaillard's team argue that it constitutes a consciousness signature. As much of this activity was spread across the brain, they say that consciousness has no single "seat". "Consciousness is more a question of dynamics, than of a local activity," says Gaillard.

Bernard Baars of the Neuroscience Institute in San Diego, California, who proposed a "global access" theory of consciousness in 1983 agrees: "I'm thrilled by these results."

He says they provide the "first really solid, direct evidence" for his own theory. He also says that having such a signature will make it easier to look for signs of consciousness in people with brain damage, infants and animals with the help of non-invasive techniques such as EEG.

Journal reference: PLoS Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000061

Tags: brain, consciousness, Psychology, Consciousness signature, spans the brain, Anil Ananthaswamy, Raphaël Gaillard, neuroscience, epilepsy, intercranial electrodes, Bernard Baars, global access

A. C. Grayling - Brain science and the search for the self

A cool article from New Scientist. Here is a brief synopsis of the book in review here: "Our sense of self is a virtual simulation within a larger simulation of an external reality which is larger still. This idea is cashed out in the rather forgettable metaphor of the ego tunnel."

Sounds pretty interesting, and like more than the usual neuroscience BS that passes for a study of mind. This vision includes the perceived world as the host of an embedded consciousness - with the Buddhist idea that the self does not exist. The reviewer is dismayed that the author seeks to use metaphor to suggest what science can only intuit - but the book sounds interesting. I'll have to read it to know for sure.

Brain science and the search for the self

• 20 March 2009 by A C Grayling

AFTER John Locke published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1690, he sent copies to various savants of his acquaintance, asking for comments and in particular for advice on whether he had left out anything essential - for if so, he could add it to a second edition. His correspondent William Molyneaux of Dublin replied that Locke needed to say something about personal identity: that is, what makes a person the same person throughout their life.

Belief in the idea of a substantial soul - a "you" that is separate from your body - was waning. In the absence of this metaphysical entity as a convenience for underpinning personal identity, what, asked Molyneaux, makes the retired general continuous with the eager subaltern of 40 years before, and he with the red-cheeked baby in his nurse's arms 20 years before that? In response, Locke added a chapter to his second edition which instantly caused a storm of controversy and has been famous ever since in the annals of philosophy.

In that chapter Locke argued that a person's identity over time resides in their consciousness (he coined this term, and here introduced it to the English language) of being the same self at a later time as at an earlier, and that the mechanism that makes this possible is memory. Whereas a stone is the same stone over time because it is the very same lump of matter - or almost, allowing for erosion - and an oak tree is identical with its originating acorn because it is the same continuous organisation of matter, a person is only the same through time if he or she is self-aware of being so. Memory loss interrupts identity, and complete loss of memory is therefore loss of the self.

The divines, represented by Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, took umbrage and attacked Locke for ignoring the immortal soul. In 1712 The Spectator magazine ran a front-cover demand that "the wits of Kingdom" should get together in conference to settle the matter of personal identity and selfhood, because the controversy was getting out of control. In 1739, when David Hume published the first volume of his Treatise on Human Nature, he stated that there is no such thing as the self, for if one conducts the empirical inquiry of introspecting - looking within oneself - to see what there is apart from current sensations, feelings, desires and thoughts, one does not find an extra something, a "self", over and above these things, which owns them and endures beyond them.

Thus in 50 years the unreflective idea that each individual has an immortal soul as the basis of their selfhood had changed utterly. For millennia before Locke, no one had so much as raised the question. But it was no surprise that the question should suddenly become urgent as the Enlightenment dawned, with its central idea of the autonomous individual who is a bearer of rights and responsible for his or her own moral outlook; such an idea needs a robust idea of selfhood, and the philosophers eagerly tried to make sense of it.

Hume's sceptical view did not prevail. Kant argued that logic requires a concept-imposing self to make experience possible, and the Romantics made the self the centre of each individual's universe: "I am that which began," wrote Swinburne in Hertha, "Out of me the years roll, out of me God and Man." Without a deep idea of the self there could be no Freud or psychoanalysis.

So fundamental is the idea of the self to modern human consciousness that one would expect developments in neuroscience to have a direct bearing on it. And as Thomas Metzinger argues in his stimulating new book The Ego Tunnel, reviewed on page 44 of this issue, that is exactly what is happening - with surprising and often disconcerting results.

A C Grayling is a philosopher at Birkbeck, University of London

With that excellent introduction, here is the review of the book, which is now on my wish list at Amazon.

• Book information
• The Ego Tunnel: The science of the mind and the myth of the self by Thomas Metzinger
• Published by: Basic Books
• Price: $27.50
• ISBN:

WHAT is the self? One answer is that it is the diamond in the rough that is you, the unique, immutable and indestructible jewel that makes each person who they are, the being amidst the becoming, the unfluxable within the flux. Kant called it the Transcendental Ego, which stands behind experience as the condition of its possibility. An alternative view endorsed by Buddha, Heraclitus, John Locke, David Hume and William James is that the self does not exist.

Naturalists tend to agree - we each have our own and only our own experiences thanks to the way organisms are designed. The consensus among contemporary philosophers and mind scientists is that the self is a forensic concept, not a scientific one, and therefore not a member of the ontological table of elements.

Surely, though, there is the experience of psychological continuity and first person-ness that makes me feel like I have a special relationship with myself. What lies behind this selfy feeling? In The Ego Tunnel, Thomas Metzinger offers this explanation: "The phenomenal Ego is not some mysterious thing or little man inside the head but the content of an inner image... By placing the self-model within the world-model, a center is created. That center is what we experience as ourselves, the Ego." Our sense of self is a virtual simulation within a larger simulation of an external reality which is larger still. This idea is cashed out in the rather forgettable metaphor of the ego tunnel. "What we see and hear, or what we feel and smell and taste, is only a small fraction of what actually exists out there... The ongoing process of conscious experience is not so much an image of reality as a tunnel through reality." All of this is created behind the scenes by the brain. If you think you have a self, Metzinger says, it is because you are tricked by your psycho-biology, which keeps track of your states, preferences, memories and so on.

This is pretty much the whole theory, "a stunningly original exploration of human consciousness", according to the book jacket. Given the consensus among scientists and philosophers that there is no self, one wonders why Metzinger applauds his own view as radical (authors approve book jackets). He adds that coming to terms with the non-existence of the self is required if we are to solve the philosophical problem of consciousness. This makes it sound as if consciousness researchers are in the grip of the self illusion - they are not.

Even if there are people who still believe in the existence of a self, I doubt they believe in the dopey idea that the self is an actual homunculus, the straw man in the skull whom Metzinger relentlessly targets. More widespread than the self illusion is the view that humans have souls, but Metzinger does nothing to explain how belief in personal immortality may or may not be tied to views about the self.

The best parts of The Ego Tunnel are those where Metzinger surmises about where and how our virtual realities are created in the brain. The worst are when he makes vague yet grandiose statements, weaving metaphor upon metaphor, then decorating it with an acronym or two.

Grandiose philosophy is so 19th-century, and it is particularly unbecoming at a time when the problem of consciousness requires the efforts of many worker bees, what Locke called "underlabourers". There is no need for a "stunningly original" theory for now, especially one that isn't the slightest bit original. Nothing is gained. Trees are harmed. And all for the sake of offing that little man in the mind who hasn't been spotted since the publication of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind back in 1949. Pitching the idea that "we are self-less ego machines" gets Kant off Metzinger's back, but the rest of us were already content with the notion that there is no transcendental ghost in our heads.

Owen Flanagan is a professor of philosophy and neurobiology at Duke University in North Carolina

Tags: consciousness, brain, Psychology, Philosophy, A C Grayling, John Locke, The Ego Tunnel, The science of the mind, myth of the self, Thomas Metzinger, New Scientist, Owen Flanagan

In Washington D.C.

[image source]

I'm in the capital city for a week, or more precisely, I'm in Maryland right now (very beautiful!) and spending time in DC this week, then at a conference in DC on Thursday through Sunday.

Anyway, being social, as is not my tendency, precludes much blogging for now - so I'll post when I can.

Cheers!

Tags: travel, blogging, Washington D.C.