Oxford University Press eBooks
January 4, 2019
Douglas S. Duckworth
16 citations
This book offers an engaging philosophical overview of Tibetan Buddhist thought. It shows the way that Buddhist theory informs Buddhist practice across various Tibetan traditions in ways that integrate competing and complimentary perspectives on the nature of mind and reality. The book draws upon a contrast between phenomenology and ontology to highlight distinct starting points of inquiries...
Oxford University Press eBooks
November 22, 2018
Eitan P. Fishbane
11 citations
This book studies the Zohar as a work of literature. While the Zohar has long been recognized as a signal achievement of mystical theology, myth, and exegesis, this monograph presents a poetics of zoharic narrative, a morphology of mystical storytelling. Topics examined include mysticism and literature; fiction and pseudepigraphy; diaspora and exile; dramatic monologue and the representation of...
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 9, 2018
Somogy Varga
1 citation
Abstract A particular branch of the embodied cognition (EC) research program explicates abstract concepts and metaphors as grounded in particular domains of bodily experience. This chapter explores conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and some recent behavioral and neuroscientific research that appears to offer some support for it. While this research indicates that bodily states exert...
Oxford University Press eBooks
September 13, 2018
1,340 citations
Abstract The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition provides a systematic overview of the state of the art in the field of 4E cognition: it includes chapters on hotly debated topics, for example, on the nature of cognition and the relation between cognition, perception and action; it discusses recent trends such as Bayesian inference and predictive coding; it presents new insights and findings...
Oxford University Press eBooks
May 24, 2018
Christopher Partridge
34 citations
For a number of complex reasons, humans are fascinated by drugs and altered states. Even if only momentarily, psychoactive substances lift people out of the ennui and pain of their everyday lives and, in some cases, introduce them to new visions of reality. It is no surprise, therefore, that the use of recreational drugs is rising. While, sadly, this also means that levels of addiction are...
Oxford University Press eBooks
May 24, 2018
Martin Fortier
8 citations
Hallucinations possess two main components: (i) a sensory content; (ii) a sense that the sensory content is real. Influential models of schizophrenic hallucination claim that both the sensory content and the sense of reality can be explained in terms of metacognitive dysfunction. This chapter assesses whether such a claim holds for schizophrenic and drug-induced hallucinations; it further...
Oxford University Press eBooks
May 24, 2018
Christopher Partridge
2 citations
The final chapter discusses a number of post-1960s developments, focusing particularly on the ideas of two influential thinkers who were shaped in different ways by the psychedelic revolution, Carlos Castaneda and Terence McKenna. Central to the thought of both of them was the significance of shamanism. The chapter also discusses the emergence of interest in constructing contemporary indigenous...
Oxford University Press eBooks
April 19, 2018
Daniel Maria Klimek
Cognitive sciences like neuroscience have been used to study more common, cultivated, or induced religious experiences like states of meditation or prayer; however, in Medjugorje, it is the first time that spontaneous and extraordinary mystical experiences, such as visionary experiences in the form of Marian apparitions, have been studied by neuroscience as they are transpiring: pointing to...
Oxford University Press eBooks
April 5, 2018
Michael Lifshitz, Eli Oda Sheiner, Laurence J. Kirmayer
22 citations
This chapter explores psychedelics as catalysts of spontaneous thought. Classic serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca can induce potent alterations in cognition and perception. The chapter reviews research on these substances through the lens of cultural neurophenomenology, which aims to trace how neurobiology and sociocultural factors interact to shape experience....
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 26, 2017
Susan Blackmore
112 citations
Consciousness is ‘the last great mystery for science’. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing these debates, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers....
Oxford University Press eBooks
September 14, 2017
Susan Blackmore
What is consciousness? What does it do? Could we have evolved without it? ‘Why the mystery?’ considers the definition of consciousness and how psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers have tried to explain it. From the Cartesian dualism of René Descartes to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, a phrase coined in 1994 by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers, and the question ‘What...
Oxford University Press eBooks
March 30, 2017
Murray Smith
Aesthetic experience is a variety of consciousness, and the exploration of consciousness has exploded in the last thirty years. How does aesthetic experience fit into the larger picture? The chapter reviews the fortunes of consciousness as an object of study across the past century; various contemporary perspectives on consciousness; and the different dimensions and levels of consciousness. The...
Oxford University Press eBooks
March 23, 2017
Paul Verhaeghen
1 citation
This chapter defines mindfulness, describes reasons to be mindful, and looks at how mindfulness can be trained through meditation (viz., focused attention meditation, open awareness meditation, and heart practices such as loving-kindness meditation) and through formal mindfulness training programs. It also describes the methodology for investigating the effects of mindfulness, putting an...
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 20, 2016
Yujin Nagasawa, Khai Wager
79 citations
This chapter explicates a version of holistic panpsychism, “priority cosmopsychism,” which is understood as a holistic alternative to classical micropanpsychism. Priority cosmopsychism inherits the idea that there is—ontologically speaking—the whole as well as its respective parts from Schafferian priority monism. Despite this quasi-realistic concept of the respective parts, priority monists...
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 20, 2016
Roger R. Jackson
1 citation
Roger Jackson summarizes the state of scholarship on the writings and thought of great and historically important Mahāyāna philosopher Nāgārjuna. The chapter moves through historical issues on the philosopher and the literary and legendary sources bearing on his historical location; it turns to an exhaustive overview of writings attributed to him, with special focus on the analysis of the...
Oxford University Press eBooks
August 1, 2016
15 citations
Abstract Chapter 15 of Addiction Medicine covers hallucinogens and dissociative drugs. Hallucinogens are a large and diverse group of substances, some of which occur in fungi and plants and some which are chemically synthesized. Psychostimulants described in this chapter include psilocybin, mescaline, ayahuasca, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and NBOMes and tryptamines. Dissociative drugs...
Oxford University Press eBooks
April 21, 2016
Kelly Bulkeley
This chapter examines the cross-cultural religious phenomenon of prophetic visions in dreams. The widespread occurrence of these kinds of visually intense, future-oriented dreams has prompted both positive and negative attention from religious authorities throughout history. This chapter looks at prophetic vision in the context of scientific research on big dreams. The discussion includes a...
Oxford University Press eBooks
April 21, 2016
Kelly Bulkeley
Abstract This chapter examines the cross-cultural religious phenomenon of ritual healing in and through dreaming. The widespread practice of healing-oriented rituals involving dreams has always involved a religious framework in which the process unfolds. This chapter looks at ritual healing in the context of scientific research on big dreams. The discussion includes a detailed case study...
Oxford University Press eBooks
2016
Vidyamala Burch
2 citations
This chapter discusses the beneficial role meditation can play in the management of chronic pain and illness. It contains a review of the prevalence of pain within society and the high costs borne by both the individual and health systems. It then goes on to explore how meditation and awareness training can reduce the individual’s suffering with a review of the evidence base. The Breathworks’...
Oxford University Press eBooks
June 9, 2015
Robin Michel Wright
Abstract This article is an in-depth study of the cosmology and practices of assault sorcerers. While it concentrates mostly on indigenous Amazonian societies, comparisons are drawn from other ethnographic areas of the world. It shows that assault sorcery is an integral part of a nexus of religious knowledge and power, in which primordial spirits of sickness and sorcery are embodied in all...
Oxford University Press eBooks
July 10, 2014
Ted Honderich
Abstract There are reasons to look at two existing kinds of theories of consciousness, including the need to elicit criteria by which to judge any theory of consciousness. One kind is dualism, still persisting, and the other is functionalism, dominant in the sciences of mind and consciousness. They are treated differently, wrongly. Dualisms are taken to be to the effect that consciousness is...
Oxford University Press eBooks
June 18, 2014
164 citations
This book discusses how Amerindian epistemology and ontology, related to certain indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon, spread to Western societies, and how indigenous, mestizo, and cosmopolitan cultures have dialogued with and transformed these forest traditions. Special attention is given to the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca. Chapters reflect on how displaced indigenous people and rubber...
Oxford University Press eBooks
June 18, 2014
Beatriz Caiuby Labate
16 citations
Abstract This chapter charts the expansion, diversification, and internationalization of Peruvian vegetalismo. Outsiders traveling to Peru in search of ayahuasca, gringos who themselves became curanderos, and Peruvian ayahuasqueros who travel to hold workshops for urban middle-class clients abroad are considered. The study identifies contours of transnational networks and the circuits that...
Oxford University Press eBooks
June 18, 2014
Evgenia Fotiou
16 citations
Abstract This chapter examines the cultural constructions of ayahuasca and shamanism, their manifestations in the Western imagination and experience, and their localized experience in the city of Iquitos, Peru, in the context of the phenomenon of shamanic tourism. The chapter argues that shamanic tourism is not an anomaly but is consistent with the nature of shamanism, which has historically...
Oxford University Press eBooks
June 18, 2014
Daniela M. Peluso
13 citations
This chapter provides an overview of the predicaments of ayahuasca tourism in Puerto Maldonado, a regional Amazonian capital (Peru) and its environs, as a contribution toward understanding how ayahuasca tourism affects the localities in which such encounters take place. Through an analysis of local and global narratives, the chapter engages with Amerindian epistemologies and perspectivism to...