Noospheric Consciousness: What Might That Be? How Can We Study It? Roundtable Discussion

Michael Jacob, Ilia Delio, Terrence Deacon & Francis Heylighen

N2 Conference 2023

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Transdisciplinary Language for Noospheric Consciousness: Neuroscience, Music, Mysticism

Presented by Michael Jacob

N2 Conference 2023

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The study of noospheric consciousness demands a radical transdisciplinary approach. Given the major themes of the N2 conference: science, philosophy, politics, theology, and education - what ties them together? Can these disciplines contribute to a coherent ‘metascience’ to understand the meaning of noospheric consciousness?

This session will begin with an introductory presentation on the language of consciousness, using neuroscience as a case-study for a transdisciplinary approach. Following this presentation, we will discuss this topic with scholars who have bridged science, the humanities and religion to come to a new understanding of noospheric consciousness.

In the introductory presentation I will consider how terms such as ‘consciousness’ and ‘collective consciousness’ define both the what it feels like aspect of human experience and the creation of meaning from experience itself. Next, I will briefly explore the relevance of transdisciplinary approaches to neuroscience, generally considered the scientific launchpad for consciousness research. In the brain, meaning emerges from the collective communicative capacity of billions of electrochemically interacting neurons. It is not contained in any neuron or network, and must be understood as an emergent whole, like a piece of music. This approach reveals how consciousness research in neuroscience needs dialogue with the humanities, and also offers an entree into a transdisciplinary approach to the study of noospheric consciousness. While an individual neuron may only have the vaguest possible sense of their collective participation in the music of the brain, humans are drawn to experiences greater than any one individual. This perspective on noospheric metascience evokes the etymology of religion, as that which binds us, and mysticism, in that both the sciences and humanities are necessary to explore the mystery of life, consciousness and the cosmos.

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Toward an Evolutionary Ecology of the Noosphere

Presented by Jacob Foster as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley


In this talk, I will explore the noosphere by close analogy with the biosphere -- in other words, I will advance concepts and methods for investigating the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of the noosphere. Drawing on ideas from cultural evolution, cognitive science, cognitive anthropology, cognitive sociology, and evolutionary biology, I will argue that the noosphere is populated with cultural lineages that compete for human attention and memory. Like biological organisms, these cultural organisms can also interact mutualistically. Most obviously, the introduction of novel categories of cultural lineage can increase the overall cultural carrying capacity. In other words, human creativity can lead to niche construction of the noosphere. I illustrate these theoretical ideas with an empirical example--the history of metal music—showing that this story is dominated by a series of key innovations in which new genres add to the overall carrying capacity and themselves incubate a combinatorial exploration of aesthetic possibilities. This perspective also sheds distinct light on the relationship between humans and the ongoing growth of the noosphere. On the one hand, individual humans can be viewed as commensal organisms whose culturally-mediated cognition is profoundly shaped by a population of noospheric symbionts. On the other hand, they can also be viewed as critical ecosystem engineers who shape the noosphere as a niche through their creativity. I also compare and contrast this view of individual and collective human intelligence with the view implicit in contemporary artificial intelligence, particularly when it comes to questions of meaning.


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Noospheric Experience

Presented by Brian Thomas Swimme and Wolfgang Leidhold at Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley.

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How Right Was Teilhard? (from a scientific point of view)

Presented by Robert Wright as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023 at the University of California, Berkeley

Teilhard de Chardin’s conception of the noosphere was shaped by his Christian faith and, more generically, by a philosophical orientation that was fundamentally religious and spiritual. This orientation helps account for several features of his conception of the noosphere that have been criticized and sometimes characterized as inconsistent with a scientific world view:

1. Teleology: The noosphere, Teilhard believed, served a larger purpose, and its evolution was bringing that purpose closer to realization, moving humankind toward the “omega point”.

2. Moral directionality: Teilhard believed that, as the noosphere evolved, and came more and more to resemble a global brain, there would be a corresponding unification of humankind, facilitated by the further moral development of our species (including a growth in brotherly love that he considered a critical part of our movement toward omega).

3. The “interiority” of consciousness: Teilhard believed that all matter—even inanimate matter—had a “psychic” aspect in its “interior” corresponding to its physical “exterior.”

It’s true that some of Teilhard’s characterizations of these ideas are hard to reconcile with a modern scientific world view. But it’s also true that there are alternative formulations that preserve essential parts of these ideas and are easier to reconcile with a modern scientific world view. In this talk I’ll try to convey the broad outlines of these alternative formulations.

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The Noospheric Frame of Mind

Presented by Marta Lenartowicz as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023

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The psychologist Christopher Bollas claims that democracy is not merely a political arrangement: it is a theory of the mind. If my inner life is an authoritarian dominion that never relinquishes control and prohibits internal dissent, can I ever truly value the irreducible difference brought in by the existence of others? The way we conduct our minds spills over into our social relations. And if the ability to constructively partake in a group of people is already a sophisticated disposition which may remain underdeveloped, how does the challenge of relating well extend in the context of the entire noosphere?

Compared to a small assembly in which all voices are present and may be heard, the noosphere is filled with unknowns. It is unfathomable, ever more complex, internally inconsistent, ungoverned, always incomplete. The 'noospheric frame of mind,' able to relate to such complexity, demands a vast openness. The authoritarian need for closure doesn't do.

In my talk, I build a parallel between Bollas' democratic frame of mind and what I believe to be the necessary ingredients to the ability of adopting the noosphere as a meaningful context for living. Since the notion of the noosphere encompasses processes that exceed the biosphere, while all biological processes are already processes of cognition, I argue that it is possible for a human individual to fail at adopting the noospheric frame of mind entirely. Instead, one might operate psychologically and socially in an autopoietic manner, simply safeguarding an identity.

The noospheric mindset is not a given, it needs to be adopted, and the curriculum is not always comfortable. It includes relaxing psychological, conceptual, and operational closures, appreciating and advancing complexity, befriending the unknown, and learning to trust and let go!

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Shaping Noospheric Adults with Montessori Cosmic Education

Presented by Jennifer Morgan

N2 Conference 2023

Montessori schools worldwide are daily shaping Noospheric adults of tomorrow through Montessori Cosmic Education, one of the first curricula to situate all learning inside the larger arc of cosmic evolution. Montessori Cosmic Education centers on: enthusing students to their inmost core, nested Great Stories, a pedagogical scaffolding that connects all subjects inside the cosmic story, and a deep understanding of planes of development. It was developed by Maria Montessori and her son Mario Montessori in the 1940s. Linking Montessori Cosmic Education with the Teilhard lineage (Berry, Swimme, Tucker, etc.), Big History (Christian, Spier, etc.), Gaia Systems Theory (Margulis, Lovelock, etc.), and others can help nurture Noospheric consciousness. The Montessori lineage has massive reach through Montessori schools worldwide and is a significant force today in the goal of developing the Noosphere.

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Collective Emotions: Distortions and Belief Traps

Presented by Johan Bollen as part of Human Energy's N2 Conference 2023

Large-scale social media data may provide a window into the language, emotions, cognition, and behavior of millions of individuals. In my talk I will discuss the notion of collective emotions and how they can be observed in real-time from large-scale social media data.

I will furthermore discuss a possible connection between the notion of cognitive distortions, unrealistic and overly dichotomous patterns of thought that are associated with internalizing disorders such as depression and anxiety, and social phenomena such as polarization and extremism.

Watch this presentation on our YouTube channel.

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