Bionoetics: Life and Mind; Religion/Spirituality and Science

Authors

  • Sean O Nuallain stanford

Keywords:

Bionoetics, University, Consciousness, Transcendent, Noetic, Numinous

Abstract

Science deals with "knowing that", third person knowledge which can be presented to the individual consciousness and verified.. It is argued here that science becomes more veridical once it reflects ontology -  differences in levels of being-  in its methodology. Skills learning deals with "knowing how", and often we practice to make skilled movements unconscious. The arts follow science in the schema here in what is fundamentally an attempt for Being to know itself through us, but the means are more various and less precise. Above all, the scheme here eschews the  facile reductionism inherent in subjectivism and  aesthetic,  moral and epistemological relativism

There is also a third category of experience, relating to social processes in which we are objects as well as subjects and  a fourth i.e. biological processes that secure our continued existence, and both of these are exigent in that they demand we consider ourselves as objects. It is argued here that  treatment of these  categories of experience should be part of the true content of religion considered as the exaltation of humanity by immersion in the sacred.

No attempt is made to supersede the sacraments like confirmation/bar mitzvah that introduce  the neophyte to a new level of participation in the community.  These are steeped in  useful algorithmic compressions of folk psychology applied to a particular culture. It is argued that a new chapter in humanity's dialogue with the cosmos can be opened with this reconstrued science, arts, and religion.

To summarize in two sentences; It is argued that our experience oscillates between "alienated" and "centered" movements and that we should try and live in the "centered" process. This distinction is explored at the levels of sensorimotor experience, mentation, emotion, conviviality, power, and spirituality.

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Published

11-10-2016

How to Cite

O Nuallain, S. (2016). Bionoetics: Life and Mind; Religion/Spirituality and Science. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 12(2), 301–329. Retrieved from https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/559