Introduction: Anthropologies of Consciousness

Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture

Introduction: Anthropologies of Consciousness

Volume 3—Issue 2 July 2010 pp. 125–134

The issue of what are the “anthropologies of consciousness” is complicated by both the many subfields of anthropology and the diversity of perspectives regarding consciousness. This introduction provides a systems perspective on the elements of consciousness to provide a context for addressing explicit and implicit anthropologies of consciousness.

DOI 10.2752/175169610X12632240392677

Reprints available directly from the publishers Photocopying permitted by licence only © Berg 2010

Consciousness as a Neuroepistemological System Linguistic and etymological perspectives illustrate that the term “consciousness” is used to refer to a wide range of phenomena (Winkelman 1993, 1994, 2000). Definitions of being conscious include: not asleep; awake; awareness of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts, and environment; subjectively known; capable of complex response to the environment; intentionally conceived or done; deliberate. The ancient Indo-European roots provide a broader view of consciousness’ original meanings and connotations. These meanings of consciousness are based upon the Latin root conscius, which means “knowing something with others.” The roots of the Latin conscius include scire (to know) and con (with). The conventional interpretation is that the IndoEuropean root of consciousness is expressed in skei, the extended root of sek, which means to cut, split, or divide, implying knowing by making differentiations. The meaning of “con” in consciousness has been generally interpreted as referring to the communal dimension, as socially shared knowledge, reflected in the Latin meanings of con- “with” and “jointly.” The communal dimension of consciousness is illustrated in the alternative form conscience, which shares a common origin in the IndoEuropean root skei. The making of a differentiation is also implied by conscience—the faculty of knowing the difference between right and wrong. This communal dimension creates the context suggested by the meaning of consciousness as critical awareness of one’s own identity and situation. Consciousness has its basis in the relationship between individual and community. The fundamental social dimension Time and Mind Volume 3—Issue 2—July 2010, pp. 125–134

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of consciousness reflects the fact that human survival and coordination necessitated intensive social behavior and the ability to attribute meaning and intentionality to others, to be able to predict their mental states and future behavior, and to role-play. Con also has additional root meanings of general ability, skill, and power for action, learning, and memory. The English root of can and con is gene, gno, or gen, with meanings of “to know,” “to beget,” “to be able mentally,” “to commit to memory,” with a common original meaning of “to know”—gnosis. The meanings associated with the roots and definitions of consciousness indicate a broad semantic domain, ranging from biologically based abilities and interactional potentials for awareness, experience, and learning, to culturally derived emotional, personal, social, and mental awareness and activities which create relationships with and understandings of the environment and self. These include: awake, aware, feelings, thoughts, capacity or power, capable of complex intentional responses, self-awareness, internal knowledge or conviction, communal knowledge, social awareness/conscience, to know, to learn, to teach, skill, and knowledge. These meanings, as well as a range of other uses of the term consciousness in the cognitive, artificial intelligence, philosophical, and other scientific traditions, indicate that the concept of consciousness refers to a large number of interrelated behaviors characteristic of complex systems which respond to their environment. There is not one consciousness, but many kind of consciousness. A communality underlying the diverse meanings of “consciousness” as constituting

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“knowing systems” is explicit in the etymological roots. The many meanings of consciousness are all fundamentally concerned with an informational relationship between an organism and its environment. Consciousness involves the interaction between knower and known, making epistemology—the study of the nature and processes of knowing—an essential aspect of the science of consciousness. Laughlin et al. (1992) have suggested that the dependence of consciousness upon both brain and experience necessitates a neurophenomenological epistemology.

Genetic Epistemology as a Neurophenomenological Approach to Consciousness The genetic epistemology approaches to consciousness integrate scientific knowledge and phenomenal experience (see Winkelman 1996, 2000, 2004; Laughlin 1992a, b). This genetic epistemological approach shows consciousness to be the property of relations within a system. Concepts of consciousness are essential to epistemology, with both concerned with the nature of knowing. This genetic epistemology approach to consciousness is exemplified in Piaget’s concern with the study of the nature, origin, evolution, and validation of knowledge and knowing. Piaget viewed cognition, knowledge, and consciousness as having a common basis in the epistemic relationships constructed by the knower with the known. Knowledge, cognition, and consciousness are possible because of the necessary epistemic structures which the subject constructs. Piaget characterizes consciousness as being constructed in the interaction between subject and object, a relationship established

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by the knowing subject with that which is known through epistemic structures which contribute to the nature of the object known. A number of structures and processes mediate the organism’s relationship to the environment. Social relations play a fundamental role in blocking the individual’s personal goals, a frustration which forces a reflective process to understand the source of the blockage. Reflective abstraction, involving operation on and differentiation from the preceding level, provides for the emergence of a higher stage, mediated by symbolic structures that transform the mode of consciousness. Consciousness requires a conceptualization or representation mediated by concepts operating on a higher level than the experience. The self plays a central role in this process, identifying with that new emergent form of consciousness, and dis-identifying with the previous structure, permitting transcendence of the structure and the ability to operate upon it. These different selves mediate epistemic relationships of the knower with the reality known, including physical, psychological, emotional, and social dimensions. This dependence of consciousness upon the brain, self, social experience, and goals requires a systems approach to articulate their interrelations. Consciousness can be understood from an epistemological perspective as a “Knowing System,” entailing relationship between knower and known, a construct mediated self-object relationship. Some of the most fundamental characteristics of consciousness as a “Knowing System” involve (Winkelman 2005): Awareness, a capacity to process meaningful information;

Relations with environment; Representations in perceptions, thoughts and memories that provide a template for information; Reference to the minds and values of others; and Self—an organism’s identity and awareness as knower. These elements reflect a minimalist approach to essential elements of a system that has consciousness, as other systems posit dozens of elements involved in consciousness. This perspective provides us with a framework for understanding the diversity of forms of consciousness which we must address in an effort to provide a comprehensive framework for the interactions between our inherited potentials and the sociocultural context in the formation of our collective and common and individually unique aspects of self and experience. It also provides a system within which we can characterize the differences among forms of consciousness, particularly the differences with respect to those forms called trance, altered states, etc. Their features in terms of these minimalist elements include principal concerns with: • Awareness of internally derived information, a symbolic internal environment which is interpreted as relations with a spiritual or transcendental world; • Representations in visual presentational symbolism with • Reference to the minds and values of spiritual others, and with respect to



• Self identities related to spirits, archetypal representations and animals. This engages an evaluation and development of the self with respect to the social “others” provided by animals and mythological systems of interpretation. These are used for activation of memories of central emotional significance to self, particularly repressed emotional desires, identities, and complexes; and reprogramming neurognostic structures of the self with spirit information from mythological interpretative systems (Winkelman 2010).

Anthropologies of Consciousness Anthropological approaches to consciousness address various processes of knowing that are embedded in a wide range of interdisciplinary concerns with human nature and cognitive capacities, including memory, representation, self, and others. This interdisciplinary and multifaceted systemic nature of consciousness involves both explicit and implicit anthropologies of consciousness. The explicit approach is directly concerned with consciousness studies and, often, some concept of altered states of consciousness in particular. The implicit approach addresses concerns relevant to consciousness in other terms (perception, cognition, thought, worldview, etc.) without an awareness or consideration of the relationship of these elements to broader questions of consciousness (e.g. separate investigations of self, emotions, memory). An “occult” anthropology of consciousness has explicitly focused upon aspects of consciousness related to the transpersonal and spiritual dimensions, while a mainstream anthropology of perception,

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learning, memory, cognition, identity, and self has engaged indirectly in the study of aspects of consciousness, neglecting consciousness as a paradigm, but addressing key aspects of consciousness. This more direct engagement with consciousness is addressed by Throop and Laughlin (2007). There is a long history of anthropological engagement with consciousness in concerns with cultural influences on perception, cognition, learning, and memory, as well as more recent concerns with political, social, ethnic, cultural, and other forms of identity-based consciousness. Questions regarding the biological bases of altered states of consciousness associated with religious rituals and their adaptive effects (Winkelman 2000, 2010) has straddled the occult and conventional anthropologies of consciousness.

A Mainstream Anthropology of Consciousness Throop and Laughlin (2007) detail a mainstream anthropology of consciousness across more than a century, including Adolf Bastian’s engagement with the psychic unity of mankind; Franz Boas’ study of culture and perception; Emile Durkheim’s understandings of the elementary forms of consciousness; Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s notion of different modes of consciousness; Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf ’s linguistic relativity hypothesis; and Irving Hallowell’s concern with the behavioral environment and cultural construction of perception. More recent concerns are also found in Clifford Geertz’s interpretivist approach, Pierre Bourdieu’s concerns with consciousness in terms of embodiment and habitus; and Victor and Edith Turner’s focus on the anthropology of experience. In addition,


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a wide range of concerns in cognitive anthropology, psychological anthropology, and transpersonal anthropology also address consciousness under the guise of cognition, thought, perception, and other elements necessary for consciousness. The anthropology of consciousness is also about the ways in which the social context drives our development of consciousness, providing the social forces that drive our awareness. As illustrated by the contributors to Bronson and Fields (2009) So What? Now What? The Anthropology of Consciousness Responds to a World in Crisis, an anthropology of consciousness is also an anthropology of conscience. This reflects an awareness of the numerous effects of our engagement with the planet, one in which we need to take responsibility for collective well-being. Clearly anthropologists of many backgrounds have been leaders in this process of “conscientization” that leads us to a sense of personal and collective responsibility for the planet on which we live. This collective conscience is heightened by the millennial transition through which we are passing which has made us more aware of the voices and consciousness of the ancient, nonwestern “others.”

of studies of occult traditions, providing a deep basis for the anthropological opening to the basic assumptions of the worldview of the non-Western “other” by engaging in experiential studies of consciousness alteration. These practices have remained at the margins of anthropology because a materialist bias interferes with appropriate interpretations of non-Western religions. These rationalist influences are quite different from the views of religion found across human history. All too often the Western perspective discounts the claims and statements made by religious practitioners as non-factual, irrational, and deluded. The anthropological encounter with the epistemology of the “other” demands an acceptance of animism, a mentality of causality that is automatically excluded in the materialist ethos of Western science. Whether conceptualized as spirit, mana, or magic, the “other” has persistent sets of assumptions about causal actors and forces that fall outside of the domains of scientific theory. Winkelman and Peek (2004) explore divination as alternative epistemological systems regarding the nature of knowledge. Concepts of the spirit world and psi/psychic powers claimed as aspects of reality in much of the world are still generally neglected—even tabooed—in mainstream considerations of interpretation of the behaviors of the past.

The Implications of an Occult Anthropology of Consciousness Different, ancestral ways of knowing have provided a virtually separate subdiscipline of the anthropology of consciousness involving the study of occult phenomena. These included experiential approaches to mystical, spiritualist, and psychic phenomena that long predated Carlos Castaneda infamy. Early anthropologists such as Andrew Lang and W.Y. Evans-Wentz (1967) engaged in a variety

Ethnographic, Ethnological and Biological Approaches to Interpretation of the Past Interpretation of the past has been hampered by Western biases inherent to the archaeological enterprise. As Fogelin (2007) notes in the Annual Review of Anthropology,



archaeologists’ approach to interpretation of religious beliefs of the past often has been in terms of the assumption that a set of myths and beliefs were to be explained. In contrast many religions emphasize the importance of some incredible altered experience involving an engagement with mythical and spiritual powers. The religions of our own complex societies have been the inevitable model for inquiry into the unknown, but this has been fraught with many problems. Cultural variation in religious beliefs—even with constant forms—should make us cautions about interpreting beliefs of those in the past with reference to our own practices. Where religion has an arbitrary cultural aspect, it may mislead our interpretation. Interpretation of apparent religious behaviors of those in the past has generally been based on ethnographic analogies. This analogy poses some parallels between those practices presumed to have occurred in the past and those of some directly known near-contemporary culture. This approach is embodied in the use of hunter-gatherer societies as a general model for human life in the past. But the application of the hunter-gatherer model has often been more based on intuition than on crosscultural data on the actual similarities in such societies. Valid interpretations of the past cannot be justified on selective cultural examples; rather, it requires an ethnological model based in empirically determined cross-cultural patterns, as illustrated in the Winkelman article in this issue on shamanism. Ethnological analogies, based on the patterns revealed by cross-cultural research, provide sounder bases for interpretation.

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Biological Approaches to Religion The nature of religion has been misunderstood by archaeologists in part because of the presumed incompatibly of religion’s ideological nature with the materialist approaches to explanation characteristic of archaeology. Assuming that religion was an arbitrary mental phenomenon, archaeologists have been slow to give attention to materialist approaches to religion, specifically the biologically based approaches to religion as a natural phenomenon. Yet the universality of many aspects of our religious impulses leads us to the inevitable conclusion that it is part of our biological nature and evolved characteristics. The concept of an evolved religious capacity with a biological basis has taken several different foci, including the behavioral bases of religion in ritual and in the cognitive aspects of religious belief and experience, particularly altered states of consciousness. Here we find a new model in which evolution and religion are not irreconcilable alternatives, but rather partners in a coevolutionary process linking the mental and the material (Winkelman and Baker 2008). These biological approaches have emphasized cognitive interpretations based on the assumption of inherent psychophysiological aspects of the human brain that provide a neurological paradigm for interpreting the past. These approaches include concerns with the stages of evolution of human consciousness which cross-cut the subdisciplines of anthropology and a vast interdisciplinary field that grapples with the ability of the human brain and mind to understand their own origins. Key questions include the different forms of consciousness across the animal kingdom, and how our own


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human past led to the evolution of uniquely human forms of consciousness. A central feature about interpretation of religion in the past involves a biological capacity for altered states of consciousness associated with religious rituals and their adaptive effects (Winkelman 2000, 2010). These cognitive approaches also include a significant focus on the specific aspects in the evolution of our uniquely human consciousness, a concern with the evolutionary stages in the emergence of our modern consciousness.

the phenomenological nature of spiritual experiences reflects the dynamics of functional biological systems that support overall consciousness. As biology and brain processes develop in interaction with cultural factors, both universal patterns and social patterns emerge in the structuring of human consciousness. These reciprocal relationships between biology and experience are at the basis of the neurophenomenological approaches which attempt to explain the regularities in spiritual and mystical experiences in terms of the underlying biological structures. The methodologies of the biogenetic and neurophenomenological approaches are deliberately interdisciplinary, not merely engaging biology and culture, body and mind, but also other comparative perspectives based in phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and sociogenetic development (Laughlin et al. 1992). These comparative approaches examining cross-species, cross-cultural, and developmental regularities help to establish the neurognostic paradigm of consciousness (Winkelman 1996, 2000, 2010). Consciousness encompasses a wide range of subsystems that together manage organisms’ relationships with the environment through epistemological and self systems. The multiple aspects of the systems underlying the production of consciousness permit a multiplicity of forms of consciousness. These include developmental levels, cross-cultural differences, and phasic differences, such as spontaneous and deliberate entry into alternate mental states. Explaining these diverse manifestations of consciousness requires a systems perspective based in the approaches of genetic epistemology. This

Biogenetic Structuralism and Neurophenomenology Prominent biological approaches in the anthropology of consciousness are based on biogenetic structuralism (Laughlin and d’Aquili 1974; d’Aquili et al. 1979; Laughlin et al. 1992; Winkelman 2000; Winkelman and Baker 2008). Laughlin and Loubser’s article here in this issue illustrates the deep scientific and intellectual basis for addressing consciousness in biological terms. The behavioral approaches exemplified in biogenetic structuralism examine human ritual dynamics in the relationship to the broader functions of ritualized displays in the animal world. This reveals a common dynamic of ritual across all species, the coordination of social groups for common good. This biological and functional dynamic of ritual is complemented in the domains of experience, where a neurophenomenological approach examines the ways in which neurological foundations of knowing— neurognosis—are the basis for a variety of cross-cultural patterns of shamanic and mystical and shamanic experiences. The neurophenomenological approach illustrates how cross-cultural uniformity to



approach provides a general theoretical framework for consciousness that reveals the biological bases of diverse phenomenological experiences associated with the anthropologies of consciousness.

Altered States and the Past These biological and cognitive approaches to the past of religion have a perennial concern with the nature of the altered consciousness that is central to shamanism, possession, and mystical phenomena. A central feature of understanding altered states of consciousness is the shaman. Variously conceptualized, the shaman represents a complex of ancient human institutions that engaged in ritual alterations of consciousness. A growing recognition of this common primordial form of human spirituality and consciousness has come from many disciplines. This notion of a crossculturally valid concept of the shaman is well grounded in cross-cultural (Winkelman 1986, 1990, 1992), psychobiological (Winkelman 2000, 2002; Winkelman and Baker 2008), and evolutionary findings (Winkelman 2009, 2010). This implicit shamanic paradigm has been a central feature of the works of Clottes’s, Dawson’s, Lewis-Williams’s and Whitley’s numerous publications on shamanism. The roles of shamanism in interpreting human consciousness and the past are addressed in this issue in the articles by Winkelman and Loubser. Winkelman outlines the shamanic paradigm as a biopsychosocial framework for understanding the nature, origins, and functions of shamanism, while Loubser considers the use of such frameworks to interpret religious activities in African and aboriginal America.

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A “Five-field” Anthropology of Consciousness A comprehensive view of the anthropology of consciousness must take a “fivefield” perspective of the discipline of anthropology, explicitly examining the roles of consciousness within the fields of paleontology, archaeology, and linguistic, cultural, and applied anthropology. A set of primary concerns as well as a diversity of topics exists within each of the subfields: Paleontology: the evolution of consciousness in general, and human consciousness in particular; stages in the evolution of consciousness; changes in consciousness across hominid evolution; and factors in the emergence of uniquely human consciousness Linguistic: the role of language in the evolution of consciousness, the role of language in the formation of experience, perception, and consciousness Archaeology: different forms of consciousness in the past of modern humans; the role of an etic concept of shamanism in guiding interpretation of the human past Cultural: explaining the cultural roles of shamanistic traditions for altering consciousness; ethnic, social, class, political, historical, and other variant forms of consciousness; and the nature of consciousness Applied: using ethnographic knowledge of technologies for altering consciousness to address modern problems, such as the



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therapeutic applications of psychedelics and the potential roles of shamanic ritual in addressing drug addiction, contemporary soul loss, and other modern conditions All that can be done within the space limits of one issue of this journal is to offer a preliminary exploration of some of the explicit aspects of the anthropologies of consciousness. As the topics listed above illustrate, there is a much broader set of concerns about consciousness within anthropology. These topics generally are not recognized as explicitly concerned with consciousness because of the lack of a paradigm for linking these disparate areas together. This shortcoming of the anthropologies of consciousness can be addressed with an explicit paradigmatic approach based in biogenetic structuralist and neurophenomenological approaches. Michael Winkelman

References Bronson, M. and Fields, T. (eds), 2009. So What? Now What? The Anthropology of Consciousness Responds to a World in Crisis. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. d’Aquili, E., Laughlin, C., and McManus, J. (eds), 1979. The Spectrum of Ritual. New York: Columbia University Press. Evans-Wentz, W.Y., 1967. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. New York : Oxford University Press.

Laughlin, C., 1992b. Scientific Explanation and the Lifeworld. A Biogenetic Structural Theory of Meaning and Causation. Sausalito, CA: Institute of Noetic Sciences. Laughlin, C. and d’Aquili, E., 1974. Biogenetic Structuralism. New York: Columbia University Press. Laughlin, C., McManus, J., and d’Aquili, E., 1992. Brain, Symbol, and Experience Toward a Neurophenomenology of Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press. Throop, C. and Laughlin, C., 2007. “Anthropology of Consciousness.” in P. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch and E. Thompson (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 631–69. Winkelman, M., 1986. “Magico-religious Practitioner Types and Socioeconomic Analysis.” Behavior Science Research 20(1–4): 17–46. Winkelman, M., 1990. “Shaman and Other ‘Magicoreligious Healers:’ A Cross-cultural Study of their Origins, Nature, and Social Transformation.” Ethos 18(3): 308–52. Winkelman, M., 1992. “Shamans, Priests, and Witches. A Cross-cultural Study of Magico-religious Practitioners.” Anthropological Research Papers No. 44. Arizona State University. Winkelman, M., 1993. “The Evolution of Consciousness: Transpersonal Theories in Light of Cultural Relativism.” Anthropology of Consciousness 4(3): 3–9. Winkelman, M., 1994. “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Consciousness.” Anthropology of Consciousness 5(2): 16–25. Winkelman, M., 1996. “Neurophenomenology and Genetic Epistemology as a Basis for the Study of Consciousness.” Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 19(3): 217–36.

Fogelin, L., 2007. “The Archaeology of Religious Ritual.” Annual Reviews of Anthropology 36: 55–71.

Winkelman, M., 2000. Shamanism the Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport: Bergin and Garvey.

Laughlin, C., 1992a. “Consciousness in Biogenetic Structural Theory.” Anthropology of Consciousness 3(1 and 2): 17–22.

Winkelman, M., 2002. “Shamanism and Cognitive Evolution.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 12(1): 71–101.



Winkelman, M., 2004. “Spirits as Human Nature and the Fundamental Structures of Consciousness.” in J. Houran (ed.), From Shaman to Scientist: Essays on Humanity’s Search for Spirits. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Winkelman, M., 2005. “Understanding Consciousness Using Systems Approaches and Lexical Universals.” Anthropology of Consciousness 15(2): 24–38. Winkelman, M., 2009. “Shamanism and the Origins of Spirituality and Ritual Healing.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (forthcoming). Winkelman, M., 2010. Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing. Oxford: ABC CLIO (forthcoming). Winkelman, M. and Baker, J., 2008. Supernatural as Natural: A Biocultural Theory of Religion. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

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Winkelman, M. and Peek, P. (eds), 2004. Divination and Healing: Potent Vision. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Winkelman, M., and White, D., 1987. “A Cross-cultural Study of Magico-religious Practitioners and Trance States: Data Base.” in D. Levinson and R. Wagner (eds), Human Relations Area Files Research Series in Quantitative Cross-cultural Data, Vol. 3. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.

This is a Special Issue of Time & Mind, edited by Michael Winkelman, focusing on the theme of “Anthropologies of Consciousness,” a comprehensive overview of which has yet to be written.
