I was a bit puzzled by this email, as the 3 paragraphs below do not
even mention the book that is under review. I was even more amazed
when I followed the link and read the whole thing: it is an impressive
erratic exercise in which we learn something about Colleridge's opium
taking habits but almost nothing about Shanon's book.

Anyway, let us forget this pseudo-review and focus on the merits of Benny
Shanon's work on Ayahuasca, which certainly deserves our good attention.

Miguel Farias

------
Jesus College, Oxford


> There is one message totalling 88 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
>   1. Ayahuasca Variations
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date:    Thu, 1 May 2003 13:14:21 +0100
> From:    Human Nature Review <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Ayahuasca Variations
>
> Human Nature Review  2003 Volume 3: 239-251 ( 1 May )
> URL of this document http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/shanon.html
>
> Essay Review
>
> Ayahuasca Variations
> by
> William L. Benzon
>
> Review of The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the
> Ayahuasca Experience
> by Benny Shanon
> Oxford University Press, 2002; ISBN: 0199252920
>
> What the Brain Does
>
> Sometime within the past two or three years I came upon a paper by Eleanor
> Rosch (1997) in which she observed that "William James speculated about the
> stream of consciousness at the turn of the century, and the portrayal of
> stream of consciousness has had various literary vogues, but experimental
> psychology has remained mute on this point, the very building block of
> phenomenological awareness." My impression is that much the same could be
> said about the recent flood of consciousness studies. The authors of this
> work tend to treat consciousness as a homogenous metaphysical substance.
> They are quite interested in the relationship between this substance and the
> brain but show little interest in the varieties of conscious experience, in
> how consciousness evolves from one moment to the next.
>
> How is it possible, for example, that I may simultaneously prepare breakfast
> while thinking about consciousness? Even as I break an egg into a mixing
> bowl, add some pancake mix, pour in some milk, and begin beating the
> mixture, I am also thinking about Shanon's book, Walter Freeman's
> neurodynamic theories, Coleridge's drug-inspired "Kubla Khan" - and then! I
> look out the window and notice how bright and sunny it is. I have little
> subjective sense of doing this, then thinking about that, and then back to
> doing this, and so forth. These seem to be simultaneous streams of
> attention, like two or three interacting contrapuntal voices in a Bach
> fugue. If "the mind is what the brain does" (Kosslyn and Koenig 1995, p. 4)
> then the conscious mind flits from one thing to another in a most
> interesting way.
>
> Walter Freeman (1999a, pp. 156-158; cf. Varela 1999) speculates that
> consciousness arises as discontinuous whole-hemisphere states succeeding one
> another at a "frame rate" of 6 Hz to 10 Hz. Each attention stream would thus
> consist of a set of discontinuous macroscopic brain states interleaved with
> the states for the other streams. As an analogy, imagine cutting three
> different films into short segments of no more that a half dozen or so
> frames per segment. Join the segments together so that each second or two of
> projected film contains segments from all three films. Now watch this
> intercut film. Your mind automatically assigns each short segment to the
> appropriate stream so that you experience three non-interfering movies
> more-or-less at once. La Strada, Seven Samurai, and Toy Story, as it were,
> unfold in your mind each in its own context.
>
> Full text
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/shanon.html
> The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the
> Ayahuasca Experience by Benny Shanon
> http://human-nature.com/r/03/shanon.html
>
> The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca
> Experience
> by Benny Shanon
> Paperback: 480 pages
> Publisher: Oxford University Press; (January 2003) ISBN: 0199252939 AMAZON -
> US
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199252939/darwinanddarwini AMAZON -
> UK
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199252939/humannaturecom
>
> Book Description
>
> This is a pioneering cognitive psychological study of Ayahuasca, a
> plant-based Amazonian psychotropic brew. The author presents a comprehensive
> charting of the various facets of the special state of mind induced by
> Ayahuasca, and analyzes them from a cognitive psychological perspective. In
> addition to its being the most thorough study of the Ayahuasca experience to
> date, this book lays the theoretical foundations for the psychological study
> of non-ordinary states of consciousness in general.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of COG-SCI-REL-L Digest - 31 Mar 2003 to 1 May 2003 (#2003-7)
> *****************************************************************