Altruism as an Aspect of Relational Consciousness and How Culture Inhibits It
David Hay
Origins of Altruism and Cooperation 2011 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-9520-9_21 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mystical experience |
| Keywords | Religious belief Church attendance Religious experience Spiritual experience |
| Key points | Argues that the concept of relational consciousness arose from investigating whether Darwinian natural selection underlies religion, a conjecture originating with Sir Alister Hardy, and proposes a connection between relational consciousness and altruism. |
Abstract
The concept of relational consciousness emerged during an investigation of the plausibility of the hypothesis that Darwinian natural selection underlies the cultural phenomenon of religion. This conjecture originated with Sir Alister Hardy FRS, who was the Head of the Zoology Department in Oxford University between 1946 and 1961 and founder in 1969 of the Religious Experience Research Unit, originally based in Manchester College Oxford. Hardy’s initiative is not well known in the United States, so I will begin with some background information as a preliminary to clarifying my own hypothesis about the connection of relational consciousness with altruism.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mystical experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death | 1969 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Vectorial Cerebral Hemisphericity as Differential Sources for the Sensed Presence, Mystical Experiences and Religious Conversions | 1993 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The epistemic innocence of psychedelic states. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mystical Experience and Religious Doctrine | 1982 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |