I often wonder why these normal human emotions and feelings — which admittedly may be difficult to attain in the modern world, are glossed as “spiritual.”  I have these emotions and feelings more often than not but do not consider them spiritual.  This state of being, at least for me, flows from the way I have arranged my life and what I decide to do (or not do) on a daily basis.  Moreover, I do not derive my sense of meaning, orientation, or purpose — all of which I have — from any form of spirituality.

A sense of mystery, connection, and tranquility — when combined, often passes for “spiritual.”  This is most frequently reported by those who meditate, which is a deliberate exercise that can focus the mind on something (or nothing) and clear it of the clutter or chatter which is characteristic of wakeful consciousness.  The geneticist Dean Hamer, author of the excellent but unfortunately named book The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes, calls this ability and feeling “self-transcendence.”  Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili studied this meditative phenomenon in their book Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.

Fluctuations and alterations of consciousness are, however, a normal part of cognition.  David Lewis-Williams contends that these fluctuations give rise to belief in the supernatural and a sense of the spiritual.  Those who meditate, in particular, often report that their sense of self dissolves and that the boundaries between the individual and the world disappear.  In this state, they experience an ethereal connection to something larger and more mysterious than themselves.  Others use intoxicants, isolation, and deprivation to induce this state, which in popular discourse is sometimes called “cosmic consciousness” and in academic parlance is referred to as “absolute unitary being.”

Unless such exercises result in contact with “spirits” or imaginary agents, I am not sure why these states or feelings would be called “spiritual.”  Deliberately altering normal, day-to-day and wakeful consciousness to experience a different kind of consciousness seems like a sensible thing to do if it increases one’s sense of contentment, connection, and calm.  This does not make the experience, however, “spiritual.”  It is a brain (and body) state.  No spirits necessary.

The first article (“Ministry of Truth”) is here and the second (“Removable Truths”) is here.  Saletan will be posting several more installments over the coming days.  They should be required reading for anyone interested in the human mind and understanding human experience.

As is apparent from Saletan’s articles, human memory is highly imperfect.  It is also highly labile — we are able to conjure experiences of things that never happened and environmental cues, including deliberate memory implants, can create false “memories.”  In his first article, Saletan covers an experiment run by Slate on its presumably educated and literate readers.  Using fabricated images of political events that never occurred, Slate asked its readers if they remembered these events.  Here are the startling results:

[T]he fake images were effective. Through random distribution, each fabricated scene was viewed by a subsample of more than 1,000 people. Fifteen percent of the Bush subsample (those who were shown the composite photo of Bush with Clemens) said they remembered seeing that incident at the time. Fifteen percent of the Lieberman subsample (those who were shown the altered screen shot of his impeachment vote) said they had seen it. For Obama meeting Ahmadinejad, the number who remembered seeing it was 26 percent. For the Hillary Clinton ad, the number was 36 percent. For the Edwards-Cheney confrontation, it was 42 percent.

When we pooled these subjects with those who remembered the false events but didn’t specifically remember seeing them, the numbers nearly doubled. For Bush, the percentage who remembered the false event was 31. For Lieberman, it was 41. For Obama, it was 47. For Cheney, it was 65. For Hillary Clinton, it was 68.

These figures match previous findings. In memory-implanting experiments, the average rate of false memories is about 30 percent. But when visual images are used to substantiate the bogus memory, the number can increase. Several years ago, researchers using doctored photos persuaded 10 of 20 college students that they had gone up in hot-air balloons as children. Seeing is believing, even when what you’re seeing is fabricated.

All well and good but the best (or worst, depending on one’s perspective) is yet to come:

But that isn’t the scary part. The scary part is that your memories have already been altered. Much of what you recall about your life never happened, or it happened in a very different way. Sometimes our false memories have done terrible things. They have sent innocent people to jail.  They have ruined families with accusations of sexual abuse.

These are the tragedies that drive the work of Dr. [Elizabeth] Loftus, whose research inspired our experiment. To understand our minds and how they can be manipulated, she plants memories.

Saletan is hitting on some major issues here — the flaws and falsification of memories, the suggestibility of experience, the human tendency to confabulate, the ways in which history can be altered, and the power of the imagination.  Although he is discussing these issues in the context of politics and law, the relevance and applicability of these findings to “spiritual” and religious experiences is obvious.  I will touch on the most obvious today and some of the less obvious in coming days.

I have several friends who believe in reincarnation.  They are sincerely convinced they have memories of past lives, and are somewhat incredulous that I don’t have such memories also.  The source of their incredulity is my intense interest in Native American history and Native Americans generally.

Walk into my home and that interest is immediately apparent in the form of pictures, artifacts, books, etc.  My reading in Native American history is extensive, and I often talk about that history.  This has led my reincarnation friends to the conclusion that in a past life, I was a Native American.  I do not of course have any such memories, but I do have substantial knowledge of Native American histories and lifeways.  Armed with this knowledge, I am confident that I could — if I believed in reincarnation — create an imaginary world and past life as a Native American that would be exceptionally vivid.

These kinds of constructions are not limited to reincarnation.  I have no doubt that when most people report spiritual or religious experiences, they are sincere and non-delusional.  I doubt, however, that these experiences are being generated by a spiritual world, agents, or forces.  The mind is a powerful conjurer.

When Lewis-Williams confines himself to explaining the origins of supernatural thinking, his primary contention is that such thinking arises from the fluctuations of consciousness.  It is a human universal linked to neurological states.  Because consciousness is central to his argument, I thought it would be helpful to preface my review (which will appear over the next few days), with a short discussion of consciousness.

There are those who argue, with some force, that we really do not know much about consciousness and cannot say much about it.  In his famous essay “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” (1974), the philosopher Thomas Nagel makes just such a case.  There are those (including myself), however, who think that Nagel is a bit too pessimistic and contend we can say something substantive about consciousness.  For those who prefer a book length treatment, I recommend Merlin Donald’s A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness.  Donald makes a persuasive case for understanding consciousness and treating it seriously (unlike evolutionary psychologists who relegate consciousness to mere background).

The Conscious Brain

In many respects, the human brain is most remarkable for its conscious properties.  Precisely what consciousness is defies easy description or explanation.  For humans, it is often associated with attention, focus, and awareness.  Francis Crick likens consciousness to a searchlight that deals with current tasks and conditions.   Purposive intentionality, goal states, future planning, and voluntary decision-making are all aspects of consciousness.  Given our Homo-centric view of the world, many assume that consciousness is a uniquely human attribute.  This view is mistaken.  While humans possess a type of consciousness that is different, there is no reason to think that other animals are not conscious.  Consciousness, in other words, exists along a phylogenetic continuum.

Whether consciousness itself is a direct product of selection or is an emergent feature of neural evolution remains a mystery.  We know, however, that mobile organisms face special challenges as they operate in multi-dimensional environments.  Sensory inputs must be coordinated with motor outputs in a stable arena of action.  For smaller, slower, and less complex organisms, this coordination does not even require a brain, let alone something akin to consciousness.  For these organisms, widely distributed basal ganglia are sufficient.  For larger, faster, and more complex organisms, a brain – and some form of consciousness – appears to be necessary.  If this is the case, it is not unreasonable to suggest that reptiles are minimally conscious and that mammals are moderately conscious.  Conscious organisms are aware of the immediate environment, and depending on sensory feedback, are able to adjust behaviors.  In this sense, consciousness is a form of error correction and action modulation, and its adaptive utility is obvious.  The ability to react rapidly to constantly and rapidly changing environments is critical to survival.

Many researchers refer to “primary consciousness,” which is most often noted in mammals and birds, and “higher order consciousness,” which is typically associated with humans (and may be minimally present in some apes, elephants, and cetaceans).  Primary consciousness revolves around a remembered present and involves episodic memory.  Its activation requires an external or environmental stimulus.  Higher order consciousness entails introspection and involves both short and long term memory.  It is self-cueing and does not require external or environmental activation, though this often occurs.  Higher order consciousness also entails causation and subjectivity, which is an awareness of self associated with agency.  For most humans, this aspect of consciousness is self-evident and usually manifests as a stable identity.  For other species, its presence may be indicated by self-recognition in mirror tests.  Chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins all appear to recognize themselves when presented with mirrors.

Given the central role that consciousness plays in our waking lives, it is not surprising that many researchers locate it in a central part of the brain: the thalamocortical system.  The thalamus is medially situated to integrate sensory inputs and motor outputs.  It appears to be a kind of switching center, with massive numbers of reciprocal relay cells engaged in recursive and parallel signaling.  Gerald Edelman calls these relay signals “re-entrant interactions” that take place in the thalamocortical “dynamic core.”  Significantly, brain wave activity in this core fluctuates in accordance with attention.  Because the thalamus is centrally situated, it mediates between subcortical and neocortical processes.  Its location, therefore, probably serves as an integrating area for the normally stable platform we call “consciousness.”

When we sleep, we are not conscious.  This does not mean, however, that being awake ensures “full” consciousness.  While awake, we can experience major fluctuations in consciousness, ranging from reverie (day-dreaming) to delusion.  The latter can be caused by pyschotropic drugs or pathology (e.g., schizophrenia).  Meditation can result in altered states of consciousness, as can fasting, other forms of deprivation, and physical activities or exertions.  There are many ways to induce such fluctuations.

Lewis-Williams argues that these fluctuations (“altered states of consciousness”) give rise to the supernatural thinking on which all religions are built.  I will be evaluating his claim — and others in his book — in the next few posts.

Just as evolutionary theory predicts for this period in time, these new fossils have some traits that are more like our predecessors the australopithecines and some traits that are more human-like.  You can find a huge number of links to articles on the new fossils here, and a nice discussion of the “missing link” myth here.  There are no missing links in the hominid fossil record — we have a nice collection of transitional forms dating from 6 million years ago to the present.

In light of the occasion, it seems appropriate to note that the archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, whose work on rock art and shamanism I previously discussed in this post, has published a new book titled Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion.  Over at the New Statesman, AC Grayling has posted a short review and this excerpt:

Religion is one possible explanation, not for natural phenomena, but for highly complex experiences that the human brain generates. It does so in such a way that a whole range of further explanations (for natural events, death and so forth) becomes available. Moreover, religion makes possible powerful social and political hierarchies not based on sex or brute strength. The persistence of the neurology of the brain through time ensures that the “origin” of religion is always with us.

Because I have often discussed the cognitive origins of supernatural thinking in this blog, it would be appropriate to provide a short list of the brain-based cognitive mechanisms that result in supernatural beliefs.  Without further ado, these are:

• Cause and Effect Sequencing and Causal Attribution
• Pattern Imposition
• Agency Detection and Agency Attribution
• Theory of Mind (“Knowing that Others Think and Thinking about What They Think”)
• Conscious Subjectivity leading to Commonsense Dualism
• Narrative Necessity Linked to Language
• Affects of Curiosity, Wonder, and Awe

Each of these cognitive mechanisms evolved for a reason or reasons having nothing to do with the supernatural or religion.  When combined, however, they inevitably result in supernatural beliefs.  This is why religion is a human universal.  We all possess brains with these attributes, and it requires considerable effort to parse these mechanisms and understand how they work.  Those who do this parsing eventually come to an understanding that is non-supernatural.

This list is neither exhaustive nor exclusive.  During the coming year, I will be covering each of these cognitive mechanisms in much more detail.  In the meantime, you might read Lewis-Williams’ new book.  The excerpt above appears to be spot on.