In this essay, the authors explore the phenomenon of utterance we find in speech and teaching. Jean-Luc Marion’s third phenomenological reduction serves as a methodological foundation for this exploration which moves through Biblical literature and autobiography – both centred on the story of the election of Samuel – before leading into a meditation on the Call of and Response to the Other. The...
In this paper, I use a comparative analysis of mysticism in Zen and the Abrahamic faiths to formulate a phenomenological account of mysticism “as such.” I argue that, while Zen Buddhism is distinct from other forms of mystical experience in important ways, it can still be fit into a general phenomenological category of mystical experience. First, I explicate the phenomenological accounts of...
This work seeks to study the beneficial properties that an autonomous agent can obtain by imitating a cognitive architecture similar to that of conscious beings. Throughout this document, a cognitive model of an autonomous agent-based in a global workspace architecture is presented. We hypothesize that consciousness is an evolutionary advantage, so if our autonomous agent can be potentially...
Husserl’s “noema” and “noesis” are main concepts in phenomenology able to represent its originality. Following the trace of a recent paper, its formal and philosophical approach is extended to both correlative notions, in the present article. They are able to reveal the genesis of the world from consciousness in a transcendental method relevant to Husserl, but furthermore described formally as...
Enactivism is a major research programme in the philosophy of perception. Yet its metaphysical status is unclear, since it is claimed to avoid both idealism and realism yet still has aspects of both within it. One attempt to solve this conundrum is based on the fusion of enactivism with phenomenology and the mathematical concept of symmetry breaking (Moss Brender, 2013). I suggest this is not...
Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings (SSAs) are subjective experiences characterised by a sudden sense of direct contact, union, or complete nondual merging (experience of oneness) with a perceived ultimate reality, the universe, “God,” or the divine. These profound transformative experiences have scarcely been researched, despite extensive anecdotal evidence suggesting their potential to catalyse...
In the flagship journal Science, Melloni et al. recently claimed to offer a way of making the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness easier. In fact, in their chosen analytical setting, the hard problem is impossible, and their claims simply further muddy the already-opaque waters in the mainstream field of conscious-experiential science.
‘The phenomenology of psychedelic therapy’ provides a selective overview of experiences commonly reported by those who take psychedelics in controlled and structured settings, such as clinical trials and religious rituals. The first half of this chapter reviews a variety of typical changes to perception and the sense of self. The second half reviews qualitative evidence concerning patients’...
Anesthetic manipulations provide much-needed causal evidence for neural correlates of consciousness, but non-specific drug effects complicate their interpretation. Evidence suggests that thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) can either increase or decrease consciousness, depending on the stimulation target and parameters. The putative role of the central lateral thalamus (CL) in consciousness...
Comparative TheologyJuly 12, 2021Alireza Khajehgir, Susan Izadi Dastenaei, Parvin Forouzandeh
Abstract The issue of religion has been very important in humans’ life from the beginning until now in such a way that it has played a special role even in their individual and social life. In this regard, theorists have studied this issue with different approaches and have offered different definitions of religion. One of these theorists is Mircea Eliade, who is a great researcher in the field...