Shamans and Robots

Shamans and Robots
Author: Roger Bartra
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2024-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452972249

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.

Animals, Robots, Gods

Animals, Robots, Gods
Author: Webb Keane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2025-02-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691270937

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.

Shamans Among Us: Schizophrenia, Shamanism and the Evolutionary Origins of Religion

Shamans Among Us: Schizophrenia, Shamanism and the Evolutionary Origins of Religion
Author: Joseph Polimeni
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2012-12-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1300430915

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.

Tranceformers Shamans of the 21st Century

Tranceformers Shamans of the 21st Century
Author: John Jay Harper
Publisher: Reality Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2009
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1934588407

Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century is the true story of this author's contact with a "dead" optics physicist colleague and the telepathic communication that sent him searching for scientific answrs to his spiritual questions. Harper draws from this deep well of wisdom: astrology, biology, near-death experiences, paranormal psycholgy, quantum physics as well as Egyptian and Mayan cosmology overall. He does an excellent job of synthesizing massive amounts of information, making this shift of the ages comprehensible to the general reader. Clearly this is a necessary primer to understand the coming apocalypse of biblical proportions in consciousness, climate, culture, and civilization. However, the theme of this book is that by learning to use trance- the techniques employed by mystics, prophets, and shamans- one can unlock the mysteries of existence for themselves. Indeed this is the big idea behind the Eternal Return of the Sun of God in 2012: Self-Empowerment.

Shamanism

Shamanism
Author: Piers Vitebsky
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780806133287

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.

Tiger Lung

Tiger Lung
Author: Simon Roy
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 93
Release: 2014-12-16
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1616555432

Thirty-five thousand years ago, the world was a dangerous place to be human. It was an age ruled by ancient gods and wild beasts, where death lay only a spear-thrust away. But for the scattered tribes of Paleolithic Europe, hope lay in the shaman-warriors who stood between their people and the unknown. Tiger Lung follows the struggle of one of these shamans to keep his people--and himself--alive in an unknowably vast and hostile universe. Collecting the three-part Dark Horse Presents "Beneath the Ice" tale by Simon Roy (Prophet) and Jason Wordie, with two all-new adventures and bonus materials!

Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds

Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds
Author: Stefano Franchi
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 558
Release: 2005
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262562065

Researchers in artificial intelligence and scholars in the humanities consider the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Robot Ethics

Robot Ethics
Author: Patrick Lin
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 026252600X

Prominent experts from science and the humanities explore issues in robot ethics that range from sex to war. Robots today serve in many roles, from entertainer to educator to executioner. As robotics technology advances, ethical concerns become more pressing: Should robots be programmed to follow a code of ethics, if this is even possible? Are there risks in forming emotional bonds with robots? How might society—and ethics—change with robotics? This volume is the first book to bring together prominent scholars and experts from both science and the humanities to explore these and other questions in this emerging field. Starting with an overview of the issues and relevant ethical theories, the topics flow naturally from the possibility of programming robot ethics to the ethical use of military robots in war to legal and policy questions, including liability and privacy concerns. The contributors then turn to human-robot emotional relationships, examining the ethical implications of robots as sexual partners, caregivers, and servants. Finally, they explore the possibility that robots, whether biological-computational hybrids or pure machines, should be given rights or moral consideration. Ethics is often slow to catch up with technological developments. This authoritative and accessible volume fills a gap in both scholarly literature and policy discussion, offering an impressive collection of expert analyses of the most crucial topics in this increasingly important field.

Flight From the Ages And Other Stories

Flight From the Ages And Other Stories
Author: Derek Künsken
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2022-12-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1786187299

From the clouds of Venus to the origins of the time gates, this collection of novellas and short fiction visits many favourite worlds of the Quantum Evolution universe, as well as some new to the series. With two 20,000 plus novellas and four long short stories, this collection is a stunning showcase of talent. Collecting: “Persephone Descending”, “Schools of Clay”, “Beneath Sunlit Shallows”, “Flight From the Ages”, Pollen From a Future Harvest and Tool Use By Humans of Danzhai County, this is a must for all fans of forward-thinking science fiction.

Technoshamans

Technoshamans
Author: Carlo Pizzati
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2012-02-15
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1468538454

Technoshamans is a humorous, illuminating narrative non-fiction book in which the author roams the world searching for places where technology and spirituality intersect. The driving force of the book is the narrators quest for relief for a bad back which has tortured him for twenty years. Armed with his notebook and an open heart and mind, Carlo Pizzati embarks on a spiritual and medical quest taking him from a medical office in Northern Italy, where a posturologist glues tiny white dots to his front teeth, to the mountains of Boulder, Colorado, where he tries Rolfing massage and yoga. From there, its only a hop and a skip to California, where he is hooked up to the cutting-edge of computer diagnostics: a fancy high-tech toy which uses tiny energy pulses to read his orthopedic problem. The diagnosis, fittingly for California, is a karmic social crime committed in 1685 by a prior incarnation. Thus begins the second movement of Technoshamans. He flies back to the mountains above Portofino to attend several trance music raves designed to induce visions through electronic music. In Argentina, he experiences the famed indigenous shamans, but also aura-photographing computers and miscellaneous high-tech channeling gadgets. No mystical question would be complete without a passage to India. Whether hes in an ashram in Tamil Nadu, practicing Ashtanga in Mysore, meeting the Big Enema ayurvedic doctor in Kovalam or chanting mantras at dusk, or on the beaches of the experimental township of Auroville, being led through a tearful, explosive revelation about his past lives, he continues to dwell on his fundamental themes: Can spirituality coexist with the Machine? Are we going to download ourselves into androids? Will spirituality and technology do away with humanity? Technoshamans, through a compelling and closely observed first person narration, asks these questions and more.