Humans
February 17, 2024
Charles D. Laughlin
1 citation
Anthropology has long resisted becoming a nomothetic science, thus repeatedly missing opportunities to build upon empirical theoretical constructs, choosing instead to back away into a kind of natural history of sociocultural differences. What is required are methods that focus the ethnographic gaze upon the essential structures of perception as well as sociocultural differences. The...
Anthropology of Consciousness
August 7, 2023
Charles D. Laughlin
6 citations
In complexity theory, both the brain and consciousness are understood as trophic systems—they consume metabolic energy when they function. Complex systems are dynamic and nonlinear and comprise diverse entities that are interdependent and interconnected in such a way that information is shared and that entities adapt to one another. Some natural complex systems are complex adaptive systems...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2023
Charles D. Laughlin
1 citation
AbstractOur species of hominin, Homo sapiens, is an extremely social animal. We are born with social brains. The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl is a methodological approach to social consciousness that offers significant advantages in terms of uncovering and describing the essential structures of our social perceptions and actions. This is especially true in this period of post‐neuro‐turn...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2021
Charles D. Laughlin, Adam J. Rock
Although phenomenologist Edmund Husserl’s project was not directed at transpersonal experiences, his methods are nevertheless applicable in a profound and effective way. We explore Husserl’s project and its methods for their relevance to transpersonal studies. Husserl laid out the proposition that science, including psychology, must be grounded in the study of perception, which after all is the...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2020
Charles D. Laughlin, Melanie Takahashi
AbstractThe authors, both anthropologists who study alternative states of consciousness (ASC), explore the psychodynamics of mystical experience (ME). An affect that is a key factor for and integral to the phenomenology of ME is what they term “mystical love.” In many respects, ME refers to ASC that is diametrically opposite to everyday ego‐centered, materialist consciousness. In this article...
Transpersonal Psychology Review
2020
Charles D. Laughlin, Adam J. Rock
This essay provides an anthropological account of a neuroepistemological account of mystical experience. We commence by outlining the various qualities of mystical experience (e.g. time-consciousness and space-consciousness distortion). Subsequently, we analyse the epistemology of mystical experience with special reference to the constructivist versus decontextualist debate. Next, we formulate...
Time and Mind
July 3, 2018
Charles D. Laughlin
7 citations
While discussions of meditation by psychologists tend to focus upon various forms of East Asian yogic practice, other systems of meditation occur across cultures. Meditation is defined in neuropsychological terms that allow the phenomenon to be examined in ethnographic situations. Anthropologists have found that meditation on culturally salient symbols is widespread among the world’s spiritual...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 2017
Charles D. Laughlin
27 citations
AbstractAs anthropology becomes more interested in consciousness and its numerous states, and with a slowly increasing appeal to neuroscience for insights and explanations of consciousness, there is an understandable interest in the components of consciousness and how they combine into alternative states in different sociocultural settings. One of those components should be the complexity of...
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
2013
Charles D. Laughlin
5 citations
In what sense is dreaming real to people of different cultures? How do they come to conclude that dreaming is real, and how do they use dreams to expand their knowledge and control of real events? The reader is introduced to dream anthropology and shown that there are universal patterns to how dreams are experienced, expressed, and used by societies. The distinction between monophasic and...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2012
Charles D. Laughlin, Vincenza A. Tiberia
34 citations
AbstractIt is very curious that C.G. Jung has had so little influence upon the anthropology of consciousness. In this paper, the reasons for this oversight are given. The archetypal psychology of Jung is summarized and shown to be more complex and useful than extreme constructivist accounts would acknowledge. Jung's thinking about consciousness fits very well with a modern neuroscience view of...
Time and Mind
2011
Charles D. Laughlin
16 citations
The most common alternative state of consciousness among human beings is dreaming. All normal humans sleep, and during sleep they dream. Still, dreaming is a phenomenon of mystery and confusion for many Westerners, and of fascination to scientists wishing to understand how the mind works, both in terms of neuropsychology and within the context of culture. The neuropsychology of dreaming is...
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 2009
Charles D. Laughlin, C. Jason Throop
45 citations
ABSTRACTMost of us would agree that the world of our experience is different than the extramental reality of which we are a part. Indeed, the evidence pertaining to cultural cosmologies around the globe suggests that virtually all peoples recognize this distinction—hence the focus upon the “hidden” forces behind everyday events. That said, the struggle to comprehend the relationship between our...
Time and Mind
2008
Charles D. Laughlin, C. Jason Throop
54 citations
The neurophenomenology of time-consciousness is presented. This lays a foundation for exploring the ways that society and culture influence the experience and interpretation of time without losing sight of the embodied, neurophysiological and universal aspects of time-consciousness. The neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) are summarized as they relate to temporal perception and cognition....
Culture & Psychology
September 1, 2006
Charles D. Laughlin, C. Jason Throop
21 citations
Anthropologists and psychologists have long debated the relative importance of nature and nurture in human affairs. By and large anthropologists have opted for what might be called the ‘naïve culturological position’ that when our species developed culture, it left its biological roots behind. Psychologists, on the other hand, until relatively recently, have largely ignored the impact of...
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
2004
Charles D. Laughlin
5 citations
Most traditional art forms around the planet are an expression of the spiritual dimension of a culture’s cosmology and the spiritual experiences of individuals. Religious art and iconography often reveal the hidden aspects of spirit as glimpsed through the filter of cultural significance. Moreover, traditional art, although often highly abstract, may actually describe sensory experiences...
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
2003
Charles D. Laughlin, Jason Throop
27 citations
The majority of the world’s cultures encourage or require members to enter alternative states of consciousness (ASC) while involved in religious rituals. The question is, why? This paper suggests an explanation for the culturally prescribed ASC from the view of Fisher information. It argues from the position, first put forward by Emile Durkheim in his magnum opus, The Elementary Forms of the...
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies
2001
Charles D. Laughlin
2 citations
ICRL
Anthropology of Consciousness
September 1, 1995
Charles D. Laughlin, John Mcmanus
12 citations
William James is usually associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and with his interest in religious experiences. But James also developed a methodology which has received far less attention. James called this methodology "radical empiricism," an approach that requires that (1) all of the ideas and theories in science be grounded in direct experience, and (2) no experience be excluded from...
Anthropology & Humanism
December 1, 1994
Charles D. Laughlin
5 citations
This article introduces and evaluates the problem of apodicticity raised by Edmund Husserl, that is, the problem of how to access and interpret scientifically the quality of absolute necessity and certainty of insight that frequently accompanies transpersonal experiences and intuitions in contemplation. An important distinction is drawn between pure and relative apodicticity, and the common...
Zygon®
June 2, 1993
Charles D. Laughlin, John Mcmanus, Eugene G. D’Aquili
7 citations
Abstract. This chapter extends biogenetic structural theory to a consideration of the biopsychological principles underlying higher phases of consciousness, particularly those attained by the systematic exploration of consciousness called contemplation. The concepts of psychic energy, flow, centeredness, energy circulation, and dreambody are explored as presented in various mystical traditions,...
Anthropology of Consciousness
July 1, 1992
Charles D. Laughlin
6 citations
The purposes of this paper are twofold: first, I wish to correct a systematic bias in Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. This bias is in favor of intuition of essences of meaning and against the intuition of essences of sensation. This bias is explained as a product of Husserl's mind‐body dualism. Second, I suggest the possibility of a neurophenomenology from a biogenetic structural point...
Anthropology of Consciousness
March 1, 1992
Charles D. Laughlin
39 citations
Biogenetic structural theory takes an entrainment view of the nature of consciousness. Human consciousness is a function of the brain and is mediated by networks of living neural cells that develop from initial, neurognostic models of self and world. Models interact or "entrain" as a constantly changing field of experience. The entire population of neural models that may potentially entrain...
Zygon®
March 1, 1989
G. Macdonald, John L. Cove, Charles D. Laughlin et al.
30 citations
. A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross-culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.)....