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METAGEUM '07
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Conference presentation: The Entheogenic Origins of Religion
Book now for whole or part of the Metageum event. |
About Benny Shanon
Benny Shanon is Professor of Psychology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and holder of the Mandel Chair in Cognitive Psychology and Education.
Benny Shanon was born in Tel Aviv, 1948. After studying philosophy and linguistics in Israel, he completed his doctorate in experimental psychology at Stanford University in 1974. His work concerning consciousness deals both with ordinary states and non-ordinary ones. In particular, for the past decade he has been investigating the special state of mind induced by ayahuasca, conducting the first systematic investigation of the effects of this brew from a cognitive psychological perspective. Professor Shanon's major contribution to the study of ayahuasca, Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience (Oxford University Press, 2002) has been widely acclaimed. The research presented in this book is based both on extensive firsthand experiences with ayahuasca and on the interviewing of a large number of individuals from different locales and cultural contexts. In addition to numerous articles published in scientific journals, in 1993 he published The Representational and the Presentational, a monograph criticizing the establishment paradigms in contemporary cognitive science
His previous positions have included: Lecturer at MIT; Visiting Professor at Cornell University and Swarthmore College; Visiting Fellow at Princeton and Harvard Universities; Visiting Scholar at the Centre de l'Autonomie et Epistemology and the INSERM in Paris, and at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Visiting Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center and at the Zentrum fur interdisiciplinarische Forschung at Bielefeld.
He obtained his PhD in Psychology and MA in Linguistics, both at Stanford University (1974), and his BA in Philosophy and Linguistics at Tel Aviv University (1971).
Professor Shanon's research interests include the conceptual foundations of cognitive science, the philosophy of psychology, the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, thought processes and creativity, the phenomenology of human consciousness, altered states of consciousness, and ayahuasca.
See Dr Shanon's home page at the University of Jerusalem web site.
Professor Shanon at Metageum 07
Professor Shanon will be giving two presentations at the Metageum 07 conference:
- On the broader religious and cultural aspects and ramifications of his study of ayahuasca - this will include ideas pertaining to the form constants (and other visual materials) and the origin of artistic creation.
- On his biblical entheogenic hypothesis.
A paper by Professor Shanon will appear in the first issue (March 2008) of a new peer-reviewed journal, Time & Mind - The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, www.bergpublishers.com.