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Author: Roger Bartra
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452972249
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151
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Book Description
A profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence. Charting the extensive history of the placebo effect through medieval healing, shamanism, and early psychoanalytic practices, Bartra posits that consciousness is not simply the province of the mind but something equally shaped by external systems and objects. He finds evidence of this “exocerebrum”—the extension of our brains outside the body—in the shamanistic concept of the placebo, in which external objects heal our bodies, and in modern technical devices like prostheses or robots, whose development of a mechanical consciousness would have to mimic, and in turn elucidate, the processes involved in the creation of consciousness in humans. Through this radical concept, he analyzes digital media’s relationship to the functions of the human brain and probes the possibility of artificial consciousness. Both a look at the human body’s potential to restore itself and a profound reflection on the curative power of symbolic structures, Shamans and Robots explores how our technologies increasingly serve as extensions of our cognitive selves.
Author: Roger Bartra
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452972249
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151
Get Book Here
Book Description
A profound exploration of the external influences that shape human consciousness, from healing rituals to digital devices In this voyage through thousands of years of psychosomatic healing, distinguished anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra examines the placebo effect as a key to our understanding of human consciousness. Shamans and Robots demonstrates how biology and technology become intertwined within human culture by using the various histories of ritual and symbolic healing to speculate about future developments in artificial intelligence. Charting the extensive history of the placebo effect through medieval healing, shamanism, and early psychoanalytic practices, Bartra posits that consciousness is not simply the province of the mind but something equally shaped by external systems and objects. He finds evidence of this “exocerebrum”—the extension of our brains outside the body—in the shamanistic concept of the placebo, in which external objects heal our bodies, and in modern technical devices like prostheses or robots, whose development of a mechanical consciousness would have to mimic, and in turn elucidate, the processes involved in the creation of consciousness in humans. Through this radical concept, he analyzes digital media’s relationship to the functions of the human brain and probes the possibility of artificial consciousness. Both a look at the human body’s potential to restore itself and a profound reflection on the curative power of symbolic structures, Shamans and Robots explores how our technologies increasingly serve as extensions of our cognitive selves.
Author: Manduhai Buyandelger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226086550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
The collapse of socialism at the end of the twentieth century brought devastating changes to Mongolia. Economic shock therapy—an immediate liberalization of trade and privatization of publicly owned assets—quickly led to impoverishment, especially in rural parts of the country, where Tragic Spirits takes place. Following the travels of the nomadic Buryats, Manduhai Buyandelger tells a story not only of economic devastation but also a remarkable Buryat response to it—the revival of shamanic practices after decades of socialist suppression. Attributing their current misfortunes to returning ancestral spirits who are vengeful over being abandoned under socialism, the Buryats are now at once trying to appease their ancestors and recover the history of their people through shamanic practice. Thoroughly documenting this process, Buyandelger situates it as part of a global phenomenon, comparing the rise of shamanism in liberalized Mongolia to its similar rise in Africa and Indonesia. In doing so, she offers a sophisticated analysis of the way economics, politics, gender, and other factors influence the spirit world and the crucial workings of cultural memory.
Author: Miguel Ángel Hernández-Presa
Publisher: WeebleBooks
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
Do children know where the medicines that we take when we are ill come from? How do we know that they make us better? Who made it possible for them to be in our medicine cabinet at home? Shaman, the witch child, and his grandfather, the Great Sorcerer, shall answer these questions through their story, a jungle adventure full of fabulous plants, new friends and time travel. Committed to health education, WeebleBooks has collaborated with the biomedical company Pfizer, selecting the story as a priceless educational tool for explaining to children the long and complicated scientific process which makes it possible for us to have medicines which can cure some diseases or relieve the symptoms. Recommended age: +6
Author: Joseph Polimeni
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1300430915
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
Schizophrenia is one of the most enigmatic human experiences. While it can cause terrible distress, it doesn't fit the mold of a classic medical disease. In Shamans Among Us, Joseph Polimeni shows that today's schizophrenia patients are no less than the modern manifestation of tribal shamans, people vital to the success of early human cultures. Spanning human history and including discussions of evolution, the definition of disease, and the nature of psychosis, Shamans Among Us is the most detailed and comprehensive evolutionary theory yet assembled to explain a specific psychiatric diagnosis. "Joseph Polimeni's scholarly book challenges several traditional concepts of both evolutionary biology and medicine. I strongly recommend it to all those who dare to think outside the box." - Martin Brüne, MD, author of Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry.
Author: Piers Vitebsky
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806133287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
From the snowscapes of Siberia to the jungles of the Amazon, this book explores the role of the shaman as a healer mediating between the world of the living and the world of the spirits. 250 illustrations, many in color. 25 maps.
Author: Francesca Aran Murphy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 056768055X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
This book provides a creative and highly imaginative critical theological genealogy of modern secular reason and the nature of modernity more generally. Francesca Murphy offers a critical perspective that shapes the exploration of modernity, driven by Catholic traditions and sources. Murphy's method is unique: she uses artificial intelligence as her framing parable, analyzing the nature and limits of the robotic 'reasoning' of several AI characters (Pistis, Gnosis and Cultus). This enables her to develop several interrelated themes, with further didactic chapters offering a mytho-poetic retelling of human history. Her reflections on the absence of creativity and any meaningful relation to 'time' further renders an acute critique of the limits of technological rationality. The end result is an unusual and compelling exploration of rationality and fundamental theological anthropology.
Author: Webb Keane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691270937
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
A mind-expanding exploration of the ethical bonds we share with the nonhuman Moral relationships saturate the living world, and the line between the human and nonhuman is blurrier than we might think. Animals, Robots, Gods provides a bold new vision of ethics defined less by our minds or society and more by our interactions with those around us, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in, or the machines we endow with life. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork around the globe by some of today’s leading researchers, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane invites us to expand our moral imagination. We learn about the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, cowboys, and Japanese robot fanciers. We meet a hunter in the Yukon who explains to a bear why it must come out of hibernation and generously give itself up to him, a cancer sufferer in Thailand who sees his tumor as a reincarnated ox, and a computer that persuades users to confess their anxieties as if they were patients on a psychiatrist’s couch. Through these and other stories, Keane challenges us to rethink our most basic ideas about who—and what—we deem worthy of moral consideration. Brimming with charm, wit, and insight, Animals, Robots, Gods reveals how centuries of conversations between us and nonhumans inform our conceptions of morality and will continue to guide us in the age of AI and beyond.
Author: Davi Kopenawa
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674292138
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 649
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Book Description
Anthropologist Bruce Albert captures the poetic voice of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon, in this unique reading experience—a coming-of-age story, historical account, and shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest.
Author: Roger Bartra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113995279X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness. Placing culture at the centre of his analysis, Bartra brings together findings from anthropology and cognitive science and offers an original vision of the continuity between the brain and its symbolic environment. The book is essential reading for neurologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists alike.
Author: Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
"Gomez-Pena is a performance artist, a self-termed border artist who has performed extensively in both the United States and Mexico. For him, crossing the border is a way of life and a way of art--the border culture is his medium. This book is a collection of poems, essays, and radio and video scripts. The text is predominately in English, but it is interspersed with Spanish and the occasional Nahuatl..."--Library Journal, www.amazon.com.
