The Spirituality of Human Consciousness: A Catholic Evaluation of Some Current Neuro-Scientific Interpretations

Catholic theology??s traditional understanding of the spiritual nature of the human person begins with the idea of a rational soul and human mind that is made manifest in free will??the spiritual experience of the act of consciousness and cause of all human arts. The rationale for this religion-based idea of personhood is key to understanding ethical dilemmas posed by modern research that applies a more empirical methodology in its interpretations about the cause of human consciousness. Applications of these beliefs about the body/soul composite to the theory of evolution and to discoveries in neuroscience, paleoanthropology, as well as to recent animal intelligence studies, can be interpreted from this religious and philosophical perspective, which argues for the human soul as the unifying cause of the person??s unique abilities. Free will and consciousness are at the nexus of the mutual influence of body and soul upon one another in the traditional Catholic view, that argues for a spiritual dimension to personality that is on a par with the physical metabolic processes at play. Therapies that affect consciousness are ethically problematic, because of their implications for free will and human dignity. Studies of resilience, as an example, argue for the greater, albeit limited, role of the soul??s conscious choices in healing as opposed to metabolic or physical changes to the brain alone.     

What Does It Mean to Be Human? A Personal and Catholic Perspective

A philosopher-poet-theologian ponders the implications of the multimillion-year biogenetic process that produced Homo sapiens and is beginning to reveal itself ever more clearly as evolution of the mind and consciousness. As meaning trappers and makers, called to actualize the divine image imprinted upon us, we are now facing biological and cultural evolution with deliberate human input as well as the evolution of evolution. As communicating animals that are becoming ever more aware of our adaptive behavior, we have the potential of affecting our own destiny by listening to the spirit within and nurturing the genes and memes that give rise to physical, intellectual, creative, and moral excellence. In the matrix of cyberspace we have the opportunity to heal the two-culture split, to reinvent ourselves, to incubate/weave the emergent religions of the future, and to create our multiple "Ways" appropriate to the dawning Age of Global Dialogue.     

Dynamics of mental activity

Motivated by neuronal modeling, our development of the mathematical foundations of consciousness in [W. Miranker, G. Zuckerman, Mathematical Foundations of Consciousness, J. Appl. Logic (2009)] (M-Z) was characterized by an axiomatic theory for consciousness operators that acted on the collection of all sets. Consciousness itself was modeled as emanating from the action of such operators on the labeled decoration of a graph, the latter set theoretic construct given the characterization of experience. Since mental activity (conscious and unconscious) is a time dependent process, we herein develop a discrete time dependent version of the theory. Specification of the relevant mental dynamics illuminates and expands the development of the mathematical framework in (M-Z) upon which our study of consciousness rests. This framework is an abstraction of neural net modeling.We review the Aczel theory for decorating labeled graphs, in particular that theory's application to the (M-Z) foundations. The relevant neuronal modeling concepts and terminology are also reviewed. A number of examples are presented. Then an extension of our considerations from graphs to multigraphs is made, since the latter represent a more accurate model of neuronal circuit connectivity. The dynamics are crafted for non-well-founded constructs by development of a hierarchy of systems, starting with the McCulloch–Pitts neuronal voltage input–output relations and building to a dynamics for the cognitive notions of memes and themata; these latter corresponding to aspects of decorations of labeled graphs associated with neural networks. We conclude with a summary and discussion of the semantics of the cognitive features of our development: memes, themata, qualia, consciousness operators, awareness field.     

Value systems in a changing culture

Conclusion We may be experiencing the last gasps of a once brilliant culture that is worn out and dying. Indeed, it seems to have a subconscious death wish, but the end is nowhere in sight. We may have to spend a little more time in this transitional period before the dominant sensate culture is balanced by a culture that will not disavow sensory truth, but that will rediscover the truth of faith with God as the center. Then and only then will the new day come to birth. Call it Idealistic (Sorokin) or the Age of Aquarius, or whatever you will; it will be a time of spiritual perception and a time when destructive aggression will be changed to creative assertion for the good of all mankind.     

Immortality and religious discourse

The future of humanity on this planet is not assured: we have reached a critical juncture in our history. Persistence in classical modes of thinking and acting will lead to growing problems and mounting crises; a new way of thinking is needed, joined with a new ethics and a new ethos. This presupposes a fundamental change in the way we perceive ourselves and our environment—a shift in the dominant consciousness of our time. The evolution of a “planetary consciousness” has become an objective precondition of approaching the future with confidence as well as responsibility. The Club of Budapest has been founded to promote this evolution through the insight and creativity of the artists, writers, spiritual leaders and young people who are its members and affiliates.     

Spirituality and Post‐Modernism: A Classroom Perspective

The question of the place of experience within spiritual development has been a vexed one. Believers in a spirituality unbounded by limitations of culture and religion advocate education into the experience of one's “true self” whereas believers in a communal notion of spirituality encourage educators to embed their programs of spiritual development within the myths and archetypes of society.

I aim to show, with reference to an action research project, that spiritual development is best facilitated via these commonly appreciated myths, legends and stories and that the affective dimension is insufficient on its own.

Nevertheless, I take issue with the charge that experiential methods are based on a kind of post‐modernist romanticism and are necessarily solipsistic or relativistic. The post‐modernism of our times repudiates romanticism and the assumption of a unitary consciousness. Spiritual development, in the final instance is to do with recognising a consciousness which is shared.     

States of Spiritual Awareness by Time,Activity, and Social Interaction

We explore how people experience the sacred in their everyday lives using a recently developed research technique—smartphone‐based experience sampling method (S‐ESM). The primary goal of our experience‐driven approach is to explore the contours and variations of spiritual awareness within people's day‐to‐day lives. We seek to better understand when and where spiritual awareness is likely to arise, and the contexts in which it is rare. Our smartphone‐based data allow us to track the many contexts in which an awareness of the sacred occurs, as reported in real time during people's normal daily activities. We parse out how immediate contextual factors and how people's more habitual behaviors are related to their spiritual experiences. This illuminates a wide range of factors that influence spiritual experiences that have not received much scholarly attention, and enables us to connect cutting‐edge quantitative methods with qualitative scholarship on spirituality. We hope this will open the door to the development of new theories of situated spiritual experience.     

The Spiritual,the Earthly and the Decadent

Under this somewhat grandiose title I want to consider a basic picture that dominates our thinking and feeling in many areas; to show why this picture is inadequate; and to suggest an alternative. I will consider how the embodied self, as both earthly and spiritual, conceptualises and gives meaning to all experience. It is not objects as such but our use of them that determines their 'purity'. Purity consists in being true to, and not corrupting, a desirable form of life. We need to distinguish between what is undesirable because it is corrupt and what is undesirable because it falls into the category of the partial, displaying only one aspect of a desirable form of life. I then consider the notion of decadence and how its cycle can be broken. The human self is not simply a mixture of instincts and regulations for control, but a blend, a state of consciousness in which rules and norms may be pleasurably followed. Good teachers will initiate their pupils into those forms of life that do justice to both these elements.     

Religion/Technology, Not Theology/Science, as the Defining Dichotomy

Science and religion are incommensurable: one cannot use centimeters to measure volume. Science's proper cognate is theology. Science and theology are human activities that are basically conceptual (partly fallible) frameworks for explaining experience. Religion and technology, by contrast, involve and control or limit human practice and experience : they involve "sensate" reality—people and things. The study of the interaction of these four terms (or any two) must use the terms more precisely.
Science as practiced today has become scientism , another theology. Technology is, without any doubt, the world's most powerful and fastest growing religion.
Minor squabbles among theologies, including science, must continue, but it is the tensions between technology and the established religions that will define this century. Battles on three fronts are already clear: the environment, globalization, and economic gaps. But whole–person healing, the replacement for high–tech reductionist modern medicine, is the most significant, because it will undermine science, which has hitched its wagon to this falling star.
The end of fundamental science is upon us, because it has been so successful. Science will be increasingly applications–driven, and it will be judged by results. Here, it has met its nemesis in wholeperson healing that incorporates integrative medicine. Scientists must now reconsider their role in society. It will not be easy to accept a humbler position. Moreover, the vague allusions to spirituality by scientists need a more authentic commitment to praxis in lifestyle.     

The Structure and Function of Near-Death Experiences: An Algorithmic Reincarnation Hypothesis

Hypothesizes that a near-death experience (NDE) is the subjective experience of having the state of consciousness in which a person experiences the last moment of his or her life being turned, in stages, into the state of consciousness experienced as the point of no return. The life review this, as is interpreted as a review of the states of consciousness experienced during our lives. Our responses to reviewing our own behaviors while in specific states reinforces and classifies them into those to repeat in future lives and those to avoid. We examine a modification of the traditional doctrine of reincarnation that takes into account biological and cultural evolution. This allows an understanding of how the attributes of NDEs could have undergone selection even though all opportunities for mating have already passed at the time of death.     

Sketch this: extended mind and consciousness extension

This paper will defend the claim that, under certain circumstances, the material vehicles responsible for an agent’s conscious experience can be partly constituted by processes outside the agent’s body. In other words, the consciousness of the agent can extend. This claim will be supported by the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT) example of the artist and their sketchpad (Clark 2001, 2003). It will be argued that if this example is one of EMT, then this example also supports an argument for consciousness extension. Clark (2009) rejects claims of consciousness extension. This paper will challenge Clark and argue that he fails to show that the material vehicles responsible for consciousness must be internal to the agent.     

Near-Death Experience,Consciousness, and the Brain: A New Concept about the Continuity of Our Consciousness Based on Recent Scientific Research on Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest

In this article first some general aspects of near-death experience will be discussed, followed by questions about consciousness and its relation to brain function. Details will be described from our prospective study on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest in the Netherlands, which was published in the Lancet in 2001. In this study it could not be shown that physiological, psychological, or pharmacological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest. Neurophysiology in cardiac arrest and in a normal functioning brain will be explained. Finally, implications for consciousness studies will be discussed, and how it could be possible to explain the continuity of our consciousness. Scientific study of NDE pushes us to the limits of our medical and neurophysiologic ideas about the range of human consciousness and mind–brain relation.     

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION AS THE AWAKENING OF GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS: A DIMENSIONAL SHIFT IN THE TECHNOLOGY OF MIND

Abstract. Great spiritual and philosophical traditions through the ages have sought to tap and articulate the grammar or logic of the fundamental unified field that is the common generative ground of our diverse worldviews, religions, cultures, ideologies, and disciplinary languages. I suggest that we are in the midst of a profound dimensional shift in our rational capacity to process reality, and I seek to articulate the implications of this evolutionary shift to global reason and awakened consciousness for all aspects of our human and rational enterprise. It is clear that we are in the midst of an unprecedented shift in the human condition—a global renaissance that affects every aspect of our cultural lives, self‐understanding, experience, and world making. This evolutionary transformation, when seen through the dilated global lens, has been emerging through the ages on a global scale. I suggest that this advance in our technology of mind is of an order of magnitude that is so radical and comprehensive that the very concept of a person, of what it means to be human, of our encounter with Reality, and of all our hermeneutical arts including the sciences are likewise taken to a higher, global, dimension. I explore this emergent grammar of spiritual transformation to global, dialogic, integral, and holistic consciousness, the global awakening of reason, scientific knowing, and the holistic worldview.     

Evolutionary pressures and a stable world for animals and robots: a commentary on Merker

In his article on The Liabilities of Mobility, asserts that "Consciousness presents us with a stable arena for our actions-the world ..." and argues for this property as providing evolutionary pressure for the evolution of consciousness. In this commentary, I will explore the implications of Merker's ideas for consciousness in artificial agents as well as animals, and also meet some possible objections to his evolutionary pressure claim.     

Consciousness: The transcendentalist manifesto

Phenomenal consciousness, what it is like to have or undergo an experience, is typically understood as an empirical item – an actual or possible object of consciousness. Accordingly, the problem posed by phenomenal consciousness for materialist accounts of the mind is usually understood as an empirical problem: a problem of showing how one sort of empirical item – a conscious state – is produced or constituted by another – a neural process. The development of this problem, therefore, has usually consisted in the articulation of an intuition: no matter how much we know about the brain, this will not allow us to see how it produces or constitutes phenomenal consciousness. Developing a theme first explored by Kant, and then later by Sartre, this paper argues that the real problem posed by phenomenal consciousness is quite different. Consciousness, it will be argued, is not an empirical but a transcendental feature of the world. That is, what it is like to have an experience is not something of which we are aware in the having of that experience, but an item in virtue of which the genuine (non-phenomenal) objects of our consciousness are revealed as being the way they are. Phenomenal consciousness, that is, is not an empirical object of awareness but a transcendental condition of the possibility of there being empirical objects of awareness.     

In defence of the concept of ‘spiritual education’: a reply to Roger Marples

In a paper published in Volume 11, no. 2, of this journal, Roger Marples argued that the term ‘spiritual education’ is at most superfluous and at worst entirely meaningless. He suggested that the use of the term is unhelpful and will continue to be so unless and until we can identify some body of spiritual knowledge and understanding, linked to experience, which is distinct from, and in some sense ‘beyond’, those of moral, aesthetic and other forms of experience.

This paper critique's Marples's thesis. It examines his ploy of admitting only certain forms of knowledge and understanding, and of privileging certain languages, when determining the rules of engagement with the concept of ‘the spiritual’. It is further argued that to require some empirical evidence in the form of personal experience before the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘spiritual education’ can be meaningful is fundamentally misguided. In conclusion, it is suggested that a willingness to embrace the spiritual as concept, experience and awareness is essential to the education of the child as a whole person.     

Digital play as a spiritually formative activity

The ubiquitous presence of technology in children’s lives and the likelihood that technology will remain a significant part of young people’s culture means that scholars and practitioners need to ask how digital play may exert a positive spiritual influence on children and youth. This essay therefore explores four spiritually nurturing aspects of digital participation: (1) connections between the polyphonic nature of digital identity and the ideal of a spiritual disciple open to divine influence and change through new experiences and habituating practices; (2) ways in which young people’s empowerment as producers of the self and communities may transfer to ‘real’-world transformation efforts; (3) theories suggesting that the relational nature of social networking and gaming encourages and reinforces relational consciousness and increases young people’s conscious participation in relationship building; and (4) links between the imaginative elements of digital play and the facilitation of ritual experience and spiritual self-knowledge. The essay also attends to some of the dangers that lurk in the digital world and suggests how we might discern when young people’s digital play is spiritually healthy and when it veers into spiritual desolation.     

Consciousness and identity: who do we think we are?

This article proposes that the epistemological concerns raised by the inherent incoherence of thought requires a dialogical approach to understanding consciousness and identity. It is argued that such an approach leads to (a) a fundamentally spiritual view of self, (b) a radical view of consciousness as a non-local field that shapes the limits of our perception, and (c) a determination of the degree of gap between reality and thought's representation of it. A method of measuring this kind of consciousness is examined, and examples of insights gained through this methodology are provided. Implications of this perspective are explored, and conclusions arising from this inquiry are presented.     

The Convergence of Cultures and Religions in Light of the Evolution of Conciousness

This article describes a challenge to the cultures and religions of the world that the author believes is the greatest challenge that has confronted the human race in its entire history. Modernity's search for unity and postmodernity's affirmation of pluralism reflect aspects of our current situation, but more needs to be recognized. We must acknowledge that East and West must face the current challenges together. Multiculturalism and unity encompass all world cultures, and we cannot be content to read our present history only through the lens of western developments. Karl Jaspers's theory of the First Axial period of history, 800-200 B.C.E ., in which all the present world religions have their roots, is useful. It reveals that our present flowering of culture and spirit in the Western world, including our science, is not so much a product of the Western Renaissance and Enlightenment, as it is rooted in cultural events that belong to East and West equally. We are now in the Second Axial Period, which challenges the world religions to allow their energies to move toward convergence, just as in the previous millennia they moved toward differentiation. Teilhard de Chardin's thought is a guide for us, in his vision of a complex convergence of consciousness, in which differences will not be abolished but will be transformed in their coming together. This convergent perspective will also join with the perspective of rediscovering our roots in the earth, and it will repossess the spirituality of the primal peoples, in its understanding of the entire human race to be one tribe. The world religions are faced with the task, therefore, of encountering each other in "dialogic dialogue," and channeling their spiritual resources toward the solution of real-world global problems.