Brain, Symbol & Experience: Toward a Neurophenomenology of Human Consciousness

by Charles D. Laughlin

This study describes the relationships of the brain, consciousness and symbolic culture in an effort to synthesize various theories of consciousness. The mental and physical aspects of consciousness... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231081391
• ISBN13: 9780231081399
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 403 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Neurocognitive Epistemology - Starting a New Cosmology?

This is an incredible, fascinating book. I can only recommend to read it, and to read all chapters. INTERDISCIPLINARY In a world where knowledge is exploding exponentially and by this science is driven into more and more specialized subjects it is a real danger to loose the general view. More than ever we need a sufficient integration of the multitude of specialized aspects into a more general framework enabling understanding of the possible 'whole' of the experiential world. For me the book 'Brain, Symbol & Experience' is in this sense a very rare book. Bringing together disciplines like anthropology, brain sciences, psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive sciences, phenomenology as part of epistemology, as well as transpersonalism, this book reveals in a scientific manner how known phenomena of our daily experienced world can and must be seen in an interrelated, connected way, enabling what we know as 'human culture'. MAIN TOPIC: CONSCIOUSNESS REVISITED The main topic of the book is the relationship between brain, consciousness, and symbolic culture. While the subject 'consciousness' since 1990 has gained momentum not only in the brain-sciences but even in engineering ('artificial consciousness') there is still a serious 'gap' between the scientific concept of consciousness and the abounding richness of phenomena available within individual and cultural experience. For the authors is the talk about 'brain' and 'consciousness' a non-dualistic talk about the 'same' thing, looked at from different points of view, and is always embedded within anthropology as a scientific discipline. There concept of 'scientific' integrates many decades of discussion of what is a 'truly scientific' method and they use the insights about the inevitable subjective roots of every kind of scientific measurement and theory to 'open' the view to reality by explicitly including documented subjective experiences mediated by behavior and cultural meanings. Investigating the primary data of consciousness the authors review thoroughly the phenomenological tradition of philosophy, especially Edmund Husserl, as well as some buddhistic traditions like the Abhidharma. But, again, they use the richness of cultural experiences not 'separated' from the neurosciences but try to connect the procedural knowledge of the brain with data from subjective and cultural experience. NEURAL MACHINERY AND CONSCIOUSNESS To be able to refer conscious phenomena to the neural machinery the authors develop an impressive picture of the development of neural structures with their functions dedicated to the goal of the biological systems 'to survive' and --as important property of survival-- to improve cooperation between the members of a population. Consciousness as a function of the brain presupposes some parts of the overall neural network providing the phenomenal experiences. Thus, everything which is 'in' the consciousness has a correlate in the neural machinery, but not vice versa. And,

Understanding Culture, Society, and Consciousness

Laughlin et. al. have done a masterful job in bringing together a broad synthesis of the disciplines necessary to develop a comprehensive and far reaching understanding of the symbolic aspects of consciousness. This book is transformative for the novice and may prove to be quite a suprise for those who are familiar with the literature on the consciousness and the developmental and brain mechanisms that underly it. An excellent melding of development, evolution, neuroscience, physical/cultural anthropology, and psychology (to name only a few of the disciplines covered).While some of the material may be subject to revisal or correction, the basic aim and structure of the book presents a powerful approach to understanding the nature of human consciousness. In particular the symbolic aspects of cognition.To balance the "hardwired" picture created by the authors' use of concepts like "neurognostic structures", I recommend the work of Gerald Edelman (Neural Darwinism, Remembered Present, etc...) as a counterpoint. This would help provide a balance relation between genetic and epigenetic aspects. Somewhere between the two sets of ideas a rich scientific and biologically meaningful framework emerges.If you are interested in the biological nature of consciousness and it's relation to culture, this is a must read book.

A must read! Connects ethnographic and neurological issues.

Drawing upon extensive ethnographic and anthropological research, the authors draw clear connections between cross cultural reports of transpersonal experiences and the neurological bases which give rise to them. Especially compelling is the authors treatment of symbols and their associated grounding in the cosmology of a culture. This book comes highly recommended, I only wish the publishers would reprint a hardback edition!