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Anthropological Neurophenomenology: What is it?

Brain, Symbol, and Experience begins with the statement that it is about "consciousness." It goes on to say that it will study the nature of consciousness by assessing the role of "symbols in the neurocognitive operations mediating consciousness." The symbols will be assessed anthropologically, even though "it is evident to students familiar with the history of anthropology that current ethnological theory is virtually moribund." To the rescue come the neurosciences and phenomenology: "the burgeoning neurosciences produce almost daily information and insights of direct relevance of the explanation of . .. behaviors," and "a phenomenological perspective within ethnology provides the broadest range of human experience and the data base for recognizing many of the universal aspects of experience." Is consciousness explained? Is anthropology saved? In the first third of the book, Laughlin, McManus, and d'Aquili review basic neurology with a twist. Most biologists are "bottom-up" theoreticians, that is, we take neurons, nerve nets, localized neural tracts, and nuclei and try to explain the highest, global functions in terms of the lower units. Laughlin et al. reverse the process. They take global functions and attribute them to the lower units. Thus, neurons themselves are "purposive," local neuronal circuits are "pleasure"-seeking or "punishment"-avoiding, and networks are "neurognotic," that is, they learn and are "cognitive." Interconnected cognitive networks react "consciously," hence the explanation of "consciousness." Symbols play a role in consciousness because "sense receptors . . . deliver evocative information from the operational environ-