Ontology of Consciousness

Percipient Action

edited by Helmut Wautischer

A Bradford Book
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
( 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or me-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ontology of consciousness : percipient action / edited by Helmut Wautischer.

p. cm.
‘‘A Bradford book.’’
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-23259-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-262-73184-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Consciousness. 2. Philosophical anthropology. 3. Culture—Philosophy. 4. Neuropsychology—
Philosophy. 5. Mind and body. I. Wautischer, Helmut.
B105.C477O58 2008
126—dc22 2006033823

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contributors

Karim Akerma has lectured on philosophy at the universities of Leipzig and Hamburg.
Recent articles are Hegel’s Silence on Extraterrestrial Intelligence, The End and the Perma-
nence of Mankind in Karl Jaspers’s Philosophy, Wann beginnt ein menschliches Leben?
(When does a Human Life Begin), and Das embryonale Potenzial. Ein ontologischer Fehls-
chluss (The Embryonic Potential: An Ontological Fallacy). His monographs include Der
Gewinn des Symbolischen. Zur Ableitung von Naturtheorie aus dem gesellschaftlichen Sein
in der Tradition kritischer Theorie seit Marx (1992, The Premium of Symbols. Deriving
Natural Theory from Social Existence, in the Tradition of Critical Theory Since Marx),
Soll eine Menschheit sein? Eine fundamentalethische Frage (1995, Ought There Be a Hu-
manity? A Normative Query), Verebben der Menschheit? Neganthropie und Anthropodizee
(2000, Ebbtide for Humanity. Neganthropy and Anthropodicy), Außerirdische Einleitung
in die Philosophie. Extraterrestrier im Denken von Epikur bis Jonas (2002, Alien Introduc-
tion into Philosophy: Extraterrestrials in Philosophical Thought from Epikur to Jonas),
and Lebensende und Lebensbeginn. Philosophische Implikationen und mentalistische Begrün-
dung des Hirn-Todeskriteriums (2006, The End of a Life and the Beginning of a Life: Phi-
losophical Implications and Mentalistic Foundation of the Brain-Death Criterion).
Apart from philosophy, Karim Akerma works as a translator and offers translation ser-
vice (http://www.akerma.de).
Matthijs Cornelissen teaches Integral Psychology at the Sri Aurobindo International
Centre of Education in Pondicherry. A qualified physician, he came to India in 1976
to study the confluence of Yoga and psychotherapy. Together with Neeltje Huppes he
founded in 1981 Mirambika, a research center for integral education in New Delhi.
More recently, together with Huppes he organized three major conferences on Indian
psychology in Pondicherry. Publications include several papers on Indian psychology
and two edited volumes, Consciousness and Its Transformation (2001), and together with
Kireet Joshi, Consciousness, Indian Psychology, and Yoga (2004).
Antoine Courban is a physician and a transdisciplinary humanist. Born in Lebanon, he
received his doctorate in Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery from Liège’s University
594 Contributors

Belgium (1977). He completed his postgraduate specialization in General Surgery in

1983, where he worked with Ernest Schoffeniels on transmembranic ionic exchange
in brain tissue. He participated, as medical coordinator, in humanitarian missions of
‘‘Médecins du Monde.’’ In 1990, he was appointed at University Saint Joseph (USJ) in
Beirut as a lecturer and, in 1994, Associate Professor of Human Anatomy. From 1990 to
2003, he was project chair, on behalf of the Belgian Cooperation Agency, of a national
integrated community-based development program in Lebanon. He is a expert consul-
tant, in health sustainable development, affiliated with many international agencies.
For his achievements in this domain, he was awarded the Honor Medal of the Sover-
eign Order of Malta. In the academic field, he has been a pioneer: in 1991 he imple-
mented a transdisciplinary unit at the Faculty of Medicine of Beirut’s USJ that became
the academic chair of the ‘‘History and Philosophy of Medical Sciences’’ in 2003,
which he currently holds. In 2005, he was nominated Chairman of the Department
of Cultural Sciences. Since 1996, he has also been a permanent member of the Reading
Committee of Travaux et Jours (Beirut–USJ Press). In the history and philosophy of
sciences, he has numerous publications and lectures, mainly in French and some in Ar-
abic, reflecting a transdisciplinary approach. Examples include Ilya Prigogine and the
End of Certitudes (1997), The Aquarian Culture (1998), Bioethics: A New Science or Everlast-
ing Ethics? (1998), Hygiene and Decency in Old Days (1999), From Pain to Ethics (2000),
Bioethics’ Ethics (2002), Urbi et Orbi: The Metaphysical War (2003), Brainless Robot or
Thinking Machine? (2002), From Eden to Hedonism (2003), The Veil and the Mask (2005),
Curing and Healing (2004), The Universal Ground of Medicine (2005), Biology of Passions
(2005), Arabic Medicine and Byzantine Hospitals, and so on. Courban’s main research do-
main covers the development of sciences in the eastern Mediterranean world from late
antiquity until the emergence of modern Western thought. In 1999, he participated,
under the direction of Dominique Lecourt, in writing the Dictionnaire d’Histoire et Phi-
losophie des Sciences (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) that was awarded the spe-
cial price of the Institut de France in 2000 and has been reprinted five times. In 2004
he collaborated, with Dominique Lecourt, in writing of the Dictionnaire de la Pensée
Médicale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). He is a full member of the Scientific
Board of the ‘‘Centre Georges Canguilhem de Philosophie et Histoire des Sciences’’
(Université Paris VII–Denis Diderot) as well as the ‘‘Ferdinand Gonseth Institute’’ (Lau-
sanne, Switzerland), which is also devoted to the transdisciplinary tradition in the phi-
losophy of sciences.

Mario Crocco is a neurobiologist with degrees in several fields. Since 1982 he has been
Director of the Neurobiology Research Centre, Ministry of Health of the Argentine Re-
public. He served the Argentine Federal Government from 1984 to 1986 as chair of the
database of the Economic Felonies Investigative Commission in the Senate House.
Since 1988, he also directs the Laboratory of Electroneurobiological Research at the
Hospital J. T. Borda, funded by the City of Buenos Aires. He has been measuring intri-
Contributors 595

cate inner brain surfaces since the late 1950s, including the finest blood vessels and
brain interstitium or slender passageway amidst the surfaces of brain cells. Having
strobe-filmed the motion of cilia (microbes’ ‘‘hair’’) since childhood, on these results
and with a comparative study between 1964 and 1972 he revindicated the ciliary-
system ancestry of an object-structuring biophysical mechanism involving whole
regions of brain tissue, relating it with the natural selection of intellectual perfor-
mances and conceiving of sensations ( Jakob’s intonations) as the Newtonian force that
deflects the biospheric evolutionary process through animal appetition and violence.
He reconstituted a text by Plato, which had been corrupted by the interpolation of
a nineteenth-century philologist, discovering therein a cogito, which he communicated
in 1979 and which clarified Aristotle’s complex role. With his wife, Alicia Ávila, he has
deepened the studies of the cultural struggle against time’s irrevocable elapse and of
the role of existential violence in biological evolution, elaborating in natural sciences
a notion of persons as respectable.

Christian de Quincey is Professor of Philosophy and Consciousness Studies at John F.

Kennedy University, Director of the Center for Interspecies Research, and Academic
Director for Conscious Evolution at The Graduate Institute. He is also cofounder of
The Visionary Edge, committed to transforming global consciousness by transforming
mass media. De Quincey is author of the award-winning book Radical Nature: Rediscov-
ering the Soul of Matter (2003) and Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness through
Relationship (2005). Samples of his writings on consciousness and cosmology are avail-
able at http://www.deepspirit.com.
Thomas B. Fowler is presently serving in three capacities: he is President of the Xavier
Zubiri Foundation of North America, founded in 1997; he is Adjunct Professor at
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; and he is Principal Scientist at Mitretek
Systems, a nonprofit consulting firm in McLean, Virginia. He received his BA degree
from the University of Maryland in 1969, and his BS degree from the same institution
in 1972. He received an MS degree from Columbia University in 1973, and the ScD de-
gree from the George Washington University in 1986. He has translated two of Xavier
Zubiri’s books, Nature, History, God (1981), and Sentient Intelligence (1999). He has pub-
lished over 100 articles, and is especially interested in Zubiri and modern science and
mathematics. He is doing research in the areas of productivity measurement, and in
systems aspects of genetics and evolution. He is also working on a book on the subject
of causality and Zubiri’s philosophy, and another on the evolution controversies.
He serves as coeditor of The Telecommunications Review and The Xavier Zubiri Review.
He has presented papers and lectures on Zubiri in Europe, the United States, and South
America. He organized and chaired a Zubiri session at the XX World Congress of
Philosophy in Boston in 1998 and has presented papers on Zubiri’s thought at nu-
merous conferences.
596 Contributors

Erlendur Haraldsson is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Iceland in

Reykjavik. He obtained his PhD in psychology at the University of Freiburg in Ger-
many and completed an internship in clinical psychology in the Department of Psy-
chiatry at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Haraldsson has been an active
researcher, has written five books and published numerous articles in psychological
journals, and has been visiting professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Uni-
versity of Virginia in 1983–1984 as well as at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psycho-
logie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg in 1993–1995. Further details at http://www
.hi.is/~erlendur.hygiene.
David J. Hufford is University Professor and Chair of Medical Humanities at Penn State
College of Medicine, the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, in Hershey, Pennsylvania,
with joint appointments in Neural and Behavioral Sciences and Family & Community
Medicine. He also is Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with appoint-
ments in Religious Studies and the Bioethics Master’s Degree Program. He is on the
Governing Board of Metanexus Institute for Religion and Science. Hufford’s work has
focused on the roles of personal experience and reason in spiritual belief. He has lec-
tured and published widely on spiritual belief, and on the conflicted relationships
between such beliefs and the fields of medicine and psychology that have been fre-
quently used to pathologize and ‘‘explain away’’ common spiritual experiences and
beliefs. The basics of Hufford’s ‘‘experience-centered approach’’ are established in his
1982 book, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernat-
ural Assault Traditions, University of Pennsylvania Press (1998, Japanese translation and
edition), which shared the 1983 Chicago Folklore Prize. Hufford is a founding member
of the Editorial Board of the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, of Ex-
plore: The Journal of Science and Healing, and of the Cancer Advisory Panel of the newly
reorganized National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine at NIH. In
1992, he received the Manuel de la Cruz Award from the Mexican Academy of Tradi-
tional Medicine for his research in folk and alternative medicine.
Pavel B. Ivanov is a former Senior Scientist at Troitsk Institute for Innovation and Fu-
sion Research (TRINITI) in Troitsk, Moscow region, Russia, and Information Systems
Manager at the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), Moscow head-
quarters. He studied gravity theories, including quantum gravity, at Moscow State Uni-
versity, and obtained his PhD in atomic physics at the Institute of Spectroscopy of RAS,
exploring collective effects in quantum scattering processes. His recent publications in
physics study the effects of temporal coupling and hierarchical time in quantum pro-
cesses. At the ISTC, he was coordinating efforts to design intelligent computer systems
for corporate knowledge management and project development, using advanced tech-
nologies (hierarchical object models, neural networks, and so on). His research on the
foundations of mathematics and hierarchical logic, originating in physics and com-
Contributors 597

puter science, was also applied to psychology, contributing to a number of formal

models for psychological phenomena, including a mathematical theory of scale forma-
tion in aesthetic perception. Ivanov is IT manager and consultant for several commer-
cial companies, while collaborating with the ISTC in his research. He is participating in
the activities of the International Academy of Informatics related to developing formal
models of artistic creativity, using methods of information theory and quantum
mechanics.

Heinz Kimmerle is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

In 1957, he obtained his PhD with Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg on
the topic of D. E. F. Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutics. From 1970 to 1976 he taught
philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) as a lecturer and professor of
philosophy. In 1976 he was appointed professor of philosophy at Erasmus University
Rotterdam (Netherlands). His special teaching and research topics were the philosophy
of Hegel, the history of dialectical philosophy, and philosophies of difference. From
1979 to 1982 he was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1989 he worked as a visit-
ing professor in philosophy at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and the University of
Ghana at Legon/Accra. During the last five years of his teaching career he held a special
chair for Foundations of Intercultural Philosophy. In 1995 he retired from teaching at
Erasmus University and in 1996 he established the Foundation for Intercultural Philos-
ophy and Art at Zoetermeer in the Netherlands. In 1997 he was a visiting professor in
philosophy at the University of Venda in South Africa. And in 2003, the University of
South Africa at Pretoria conferred on him an honorary doctorate. A great number of his
publications are on the main subjects of his research and teaching. He has published
twenty monographs and edited numerous publications, including the critical edition
of D. E. F. Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutik (1959, 1974); Die Zukunftsbedeutung der Hoff-
nung (1966, 1974), on the philosophy of Ernst Bloch; Das Problem der Abgeschlossenheit
des Denkens (1970, 1982), on Hegel’s philosophy during the first half of his Jena period
(1801–1804); Derrida zur Einführung (1988, 2004), on Derrida as a thinker of difference;
Philosophie in Afrika—Afrikanische Philosophie (1991), one of the first books on African
philosophy in the German language; Die Dimension des Interkulturellen (1994), on the
more general aspects of engaging in dialogue with the philosophies of other cultures;
and Philosophien der Differenz (2000), on the philosophies of Heidegger, Adorno,
Deleuze, Lyotard, Derrida, Irigaray, and Kristeva; and four volumes in the series Inter-
kulturelle Bibliothek: Afrikanische Philosophie im Kontext der Weltphilosophie (2005), Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel interkulturell gelesen (2005), Jacques Derrida interkulturell gelesen
(2005), and Rückkehr ins Eigene: Die interkulturelle Dimension in der Philosophie (2006).
Stanley Krippner is the Alan Watts Professor of Psychology at the Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Center in California. He is a Fellow of four APA divisions, and
former president of two divisions (30 and 32). Formerly, he was director of the Kent
598 Contributors

State University Child Study Center, Kent, OH, and the Maimonides Medical Center
Dream Research Laboratory, Brooklyn, NY. He is author, coauthor, or editor of over
thirty books, including Extraordinary Dreams (2002), Varieties of Anomalous Experience:
Examining the Scientific Evidence (2000), and The Psychological Impact of War on Civilians:
An International Perspective (2003). Krippner has conducted workshops and seminars on
dreams and/or hypnosis in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Cyprus, Ecua-
dor, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, the
Netherlands, Panama, the Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, South Africa,
Spain, Sweden, Venezuela, and at the four congresses of the Interamerican Psycho-
logical Association. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Indian Psy-
chology and Revista Argentina de Psicologia Paranormal, and the advisory board of the
International School for Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Group Leadership (St. Peters-
burg) and the Czech Unitaria (Prague). He holds faculty appointments at the Universi-
dade Holistica Internacional (Brasilia) and the Instituto de Medicina y Tecnologia
Avanzada de la Conducta (Ciudad Juarez). He has given invited addresses at the Chi-
nese Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and the
School for Diplomatic Studies, Montevideo, Uruguay. He is a Fellow of the Society for
the Scientific Study of Religion, and has published cross-cultural studies on spiritual
content in dreams. More information is available at http://www.stanleykrippner.com/.
Armand J. Labbé (1945–2005) worked as a museum anthropologist for over twenty
years as Director of Research and Collections and Chief Curator at the Bowers Museum
of Cultural Art in Orange County, California, and was a Research Associate and An-
thropology Instructor at CSU Fullerton. He published ten books and numerous schol-
arly papers and articles focusing on cultural symbolic systems, neotropical shamanism,
indigenous concepts of the soul, and archaic religious thought. Among his latest books
are Shamans, Gods, and Mythic Beasts, which investigates shamanic themes reflected in
the pre-Hispanic art of Colombia, and Guardians of the Life Stream: Shamans, Art, and
Power in Prehispanic Central Panama, an in-depth, comprehensive examination of neo-
tropical shamanism and its underlying paradigms. Labbé was a Fellow of the American
Anthropological Association, a member of the Society for the Anthropology of Con-
sciousness, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, among other profes-
sional organizations.

James Maffie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. His

research interests include the anthropology of epistemology, pre-Columbian Meso-
american philosophy, contemporary Anglo-American epistemology and philosophy
of science, and comparative world philosophy. His writings are published in Ulti-
mate Reality & Meaning, Social Epistemology, The Nahua Newsletter, Philosophical Forum,
History of the Human Sciences, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, and Philosophy of the Social
Sciences.
Contributors 599

Hubert Markl is a zoologist and humanist with an extensive research record in sensory
physiology, social biology, communication in animals, and environmental protection.
He studied biology, chemistry, and geography at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in
Munich, where he was awarded the degree of Dr. rer. nat. of Zoology in 1962. Research
locations include Harvard University and Rockefeller University, and he received the
Habilitation in Zoology at the University of Frankfurt. From 1968 to 1973 he was Pro-
fessor and Director of the Zoological Institute of the Darmstadt Institute of Technology
(Zoologisches Institut der Technischen Hochschule Darmstadt). Since 1974 he has been
Professor of Biology at the University of Constance (Universität Konstanz), and in the
same year he was elected to the Senate of the German Research Association (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). Markl served as vice president of the DFG from 1977
to 1983. He held the office of president of the DFG between 1986 and 1991. In 1993
he was elected the first president of the newly established Berlin-Brandenburg Acad-
emy of Sciences (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften). In addition,
Markl chaired the board of the Society of German Scientists and Physicians (Gesell-
schaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte). From 1996 to 2002 he was president of
the Max Planck Society. The University of Saarland, the University of Potsdam, and the
University of Dublin conferred honorary doctorates on him in 1992 and 1997, respec-
tively. He also received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary,
New York; from Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv; from Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and
from the Weizman Institute of Science, Rehovot (in 2000, 2001, and 2002). Besides nu-
merous research reports and articles in the sciences and humanities, he is editor of Bio-
physik (1977, 1982; Engl. Biophysics 1983, coed.); Evolution of Social Behavior (1980, ed.);
Natur und Geschichte (1983, coed.); Neuroethology and Behavioral Physiology (1983,
coed.); and author of Evolution, Genetik und menschliches Verhalten (1986); Natur als Kul-
turaufgabe (1986); Wissenschaft: Zur Rede gestellt (1989); Wissenschaft im Widerstreit
(1990); Die Fortschrittsdroge (1992); Wissenschaft gegen Zukunftsangst (1998); and Schöner
neuer Mensch? (2002).
Graham Parkes is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Among the books he has edited, translated, or authored are: Heidegger and Asian
Thought (1987), Nietzsche and Asian Thought (1991), Nishitani Keiji’s The Self-
Overcoming of Nihilism (1990), Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology
(1994), Reinhard May’s Heidegger’s Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on his Work
(1996), and François Berthier’s Reading Zen in the Rocks: The Japanese Dry Landscape Gar-
den (2000), as well as a new translation of Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra (2005). He
is also beginning to present the results of his philosophical research in the medium of
digital video on DVD: Nietzsche’s Thinking Places: From the Alps to the Mediterranean
(2003), and Walter Benjamin’s Paris: Projecting the Arcades (2005).
Michael Polemis is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, and
Guest Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is an executive
600 Contributors

board member of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Philosophie, the Österreichische

Gesellschaft für Religionsphilosophie, and the Philosophische Gesellschaft Klagenfurt.
He is a Fellow of the Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft. His special interests are
the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history.
His recent books include Negativität und Praxis (1972, Negativity and Praxis), Die Byzan-
tinische Philosophie unter Berücksichtigung des Johannes von Damaskos: Versuch einer
Rekonstruktion (1985, Byzantine Philosophy with Consideration about Johannes of
Damascus), and Zum Begriff der Trinität (1993, On the Concept of Trinity).
E Richard Sorenson. In the course of his long-term Study of Child Behavior and Human
Development in Cultural Isolates, Sorenson obtained a PhD in anthropology from
Stanford University; was a guest lecturer for the postgraduate course in pediatrics of
Harvard Medical School; served as a consultant at the Langley-Porter Neuropsychiatric
Institute of the University of California Medical School, San Francisco; was an NIH
scholar and an advisor on film in the Social Sciences for the National Research Council,
Washington DC; was the founding director of the National Human Studies Film Cen-
ter at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; and was a research associate of
many scholarly organizations around the world such as the Micronesian Area Research
Center, University of Guam, Agana; the Museo do Indio, Brazil; and the Institute for
Papua New Guinea Studies, Port Moresby. Important among these were the Library of
Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, India, and Gyudmed Tantric University,
Gurupura, India. Supporting these diverse and widespread studies were grants from
the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, the
National Institutes of Health, the National Geographic Society, the Rachelwood Foun-
dation, the Institute for Intercultural Studies, a specific line-item appropriation from
the United States Congress, and a variety of smaller foundations and private donations.
Principal accomplishments include organizing and directing the production of approx-
imately one million feet of research motion-picture film on vanishing ways of life and
culture in isolated regions worldwide, discovery of a preconquest type of consciousness
common to societies previously unconquered by aliens, uncovering a transformation
in basic consciousness as traditional Tibetan monasteries were modernized, and devel-
oping a methodology for preserving data from nonrecurring events for scientific study.
The study of consciousness development in traditional Tibetan monasteries included
in-depth personal instruction in Buddhist Tantric philosophy and practices at
Gyudmed Tantric University from four of its successive Abbots for a month or two a
year over a period of twenty years. That instruction is the basis of the chapter pre-
sented here. The chapter has been reviewed word by word by the last of these Abbot-
teachers, the venerable Losang Nawang Khensur, and approved by him for publication.
The most important translators were Geshe (Lharampa) Tashi Gyaltsen, of Gaden Uni-
versity of Tibet, Tenzin Yangdak of Zongkar Choede monestary, and later, Sanskrit
Contributors 601

scholar Chosang Phunrab, from the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Vara-
nasi, India.
Mircea Steriade (1924–2006) was Professor of Neuroscience at the Faculty of Medicine,
Laval University, Québec, Canada, since 1969. After earning an MD and DSc in Neuro-
science (in 1952 and 1955), he carried out postdoctoral studies with Frédéric Bremer in
Brussels. In 1968 he was a visiting professor at the University of Montreal. For 35 years,
his research was funded by the Medical Research Council (now the Canadian Institutes
for Health Research). He was supported by the National Science and Engineering Re-
search of Canada, the Human Frontier Science Program, and the U.S. National Institute
of Health. He was actively involved in the education of PhD students and postdoctoral
fellows; many of those collaborators now have positions as professors and researchers
in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan. Steriade published more than 340
articles, book chapters, edited books, and monographs. Since 1990, he was the coau-
thor or single author of five monographs, Thalamic Oscillations and Signaling (1990),
Brainstem Control of Wakefulness and Sleep (1990), The Visual Thalamocortical System
and Its Modulation by the Brain Stem Core (1990), Thalamus (1997), and The Intact and
Sliced Brain (2001). Steriade was a member of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy
of Sciences). He was editor-in-chief of the journal Thalamus & Related Systems, pub-
lished by Elsevier, and was a member of other editorial boards.

Thomas Szasz AB, MD, DSc (Hon.), LHD (Hon.), is Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at
the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is
the author of 31 books, among them the classic, The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), and
The Meaning of Mind: Language, Morality, and Neuroscience (1996). His most recent book
is Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry (2007). Szasz is widely recognized as
the world’s foremost critic of psychiatric coercions and excuses. He maintains that
just as we reject using theological assertions about people’s (deviant) religious states of
mind (heresy) as a justification for depriving individuals of liberty, so we should also
reject using medical assertions about people’s (deviant) psychiatric states of mind
(mental illness) as a justification for depriving individuals of liberty and/or excusing
them of crimes (and incarcerating them in ‘‘mental hospitals’’). Szasz has received
many awards for his defense of individual liberty and responsibility threatened by this
modern form of tyranny masquerading as therapy (which he has termed the ‘‘Thera-
peutic State’’). A frequent and popular lecturer, he has addressed professional and
lay groups, and has appeared on radio and television, in North, Central, and South
America as well as in Australia, Europe, Japan, and South Africa. His books have been
translated into every major language.
Mariela Szirko is a neuropharmacologist with degrees in pharmacy and biochemistry
who has also had a teaching career in neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. She
is head of the Neurophysiology Department at the Centre of Neurobiological Research,
602 Contributors

Ministry of Health of the Argentine Republic, Full Professor of Neurophysiology in the

Department of Neuroscience, and researcher in charge of projects in the Laboratory of
Electroneurobiological Research of the Neuropsychiatric Hospital J. T. Borda, Buenos
Aires City Government. She has also worked in several CONICET (Argentinian Council
of Scientific Investigations) research projects for the Laboratory of Sensory Research
and the Physiology Department of the Pharmacy and Biochemistry Faculty, University
of Buenos Aires, and is editor of the journal Electroneurobiology. The central focus of her
work is investigating brain biophysics and neurochemical microprocesses in relativistic
perspective.
Robert A. F. Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies
in the Department of Religion at Columbia University; President of the Tibet House
U.S., a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan
civilization; and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a nonprofit
affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated
to the publication of translations of important texts from the Tibetan Tanjur. Thurman
also translates important Tibetan and Sanskrit philosophical writings and lectures and
writes on Buddhism (particularly Tibetan Buddhism), on Asian history (particularly
the history of the monastic institution in Asian civilization), and on critical philoso-
phy, with a focus on the dialogue between the material and inner sciences of the
world’s religious traditions. His translations and writings of both scholarly and popular
works include Tsong Khapa’s Speech of Gold: Reason and Enlightenment in the Central Phi-
losophy of Tibet (1990), The Central Philosophy of Tibet (1991), The Tibetan Book of the
Dead (1993), Anger, The Seven Deadly Sins (2004), and his most recent, The Jewel Tree of
Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism (2005). He is credited with being at
the forefront of making Tibetan art accessible and understandable in the West and,
with distinguished art historians, he collaborated in curating several important travel-
ing exhibitions, including ‘‘Wisdom and Compassion,’’ ‘‘Mandala,’’ and ‘‘Worlds of
Transformation,’’ which set a standard in the art world. For more information, go to
http://www.bobthurman.com/.
Edith L. B. Turner is a member of the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Virginia, specializing in symbolism, ritual, and aspects of consciousness
including shamanism. She has done fieldwork among such diverse peoples as the
Ndembu of Zambia, the Iñupiat, the Yupiit Eskimos of Eastern Siberia, the Bagisu of
Uganda, and in Mexico, Europe, Brazil, Israel, and elsewhere. She has participated in
rituals in Africa in which she sighted a spirit form, and in northern Alaska she studied
Eskimo healing and its relationship to shamanism. She has also lectured on aspects of
her fieldwork and on the general principles derived from it. Among her publications
are From Shamans to Healers: The Survival of an Iñupiat Eskimo Skill (1989), The Whale
Decides: Eskimos’ and Ethnographers’ Shared Consciousness on the Ice (1990), Psychology,
Contributors 603

Metaphor, or Actuality? A Probe into Iñupiat Healing (1992), The Reality of Spirits: A
Tabooed or Permitted Field of Study? (1992), Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of Af-
rican Healing (1992), The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence among a Northern Alas-
kan People (1996), Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing around the
World (2005), and Heart of Lightness: The Life Story of an Anthropologist (2005). She is
also the editor of the journal Anthropology and Humanism.
Julia Watkin (1944–2005) was an honorary research associate in philosophy (2003) at
the University of Tasmania and a Kierkegaard specialist. She obtained her BA at the
University of Bristol, from which she also received her doctorate on Kierkegaard. Her
work includes several Kierkegaard books: A Key to Kierkegaard’s Abbreviations and
Spelling/ Nøgle til Kierkegaards Forkortelser og Stavemåde (1981); Kierkegaard’s book on
Adler, Nutidens religieuse Forvirring (1984); translation of the first volume of Kierke-
gaard’s Writings: Early Polemical Writings (1990); Kierkegaard (1997); and Historical
Dictionary of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy (2001). Watkin also published over a hundred
articles and papers on Kierkegaard in a number of languages and in many countries.
She contributed to publications such as Kierkegaardiana, the Journal of the History of
European Ideas, and International Kierkegaard Commentary. In 1979 she established the
ongoing International Kierkegaard Newsletter (and in 1994 the website International Kier-
kegaard Information). In 1991 she became a member of the International Advisory
Board of the American series International Kierkegaard Commentary (editor Robert L. Per-
kins). She was on the team of the American translation project ‘‘Kierkegaard’s Writ-
ings’’ for fourteen years and was Assistant Director of the Department of Kierkegaard
Research at Copenhagen University. She was lecturer and then senior lecturer in phi-
losophy at the University of Tasmania, where she directed the Søren Kierkegaard Re-
search Unit. She was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1969), and a member
of the Danish Kierkegaard Society. She taught and supervised students from many
countries. Her latest book, God and the Modern World, was published in 2005.
Helmut Wautischer is Senior Lecturer in philosophy at California State University,
Sonoma. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Graz, Austria.
Trained as an analytic philosopher, he has a fascination with ‘‘first-person’’ ways of
knowing. His primary research interests are in philosophical anthropology and con-
sciousness studies. He is the author of several papers, guest editor of a special issue on
dreaming in the Anthropology of Consciousness (1994), and editor of Tribal Epistemolo-
gies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology (1998). He has presented papers at different
venues such as the American Anthropological Association and the World Congress of
Philosophy, chaired and organized many sessions in conjunction with the Annual
Meetings of the American Philosophical Association, and is coeditor of the online jour-
nal Existenz, at http://www.bu.edu/paiedeia.