creators_name: Evola, Vito
type: confpaper
datestamp: 2005-10-20
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:56:11
metadata_visibility: show
title: A Hermeneutic Model of Sacred Literature and Everyday Revelation
ispublished: unpub
subjects: ling-compara
full_text_status: public
keywords: religion, literature, interpretation, cognitive linguistics, blending theory
abstract: Why do some people have life-changing experiences when reading sacred texts, and what makes them so differently significant readings as opposed to reading the newspaper or any kind of book? Exploring a set of metaphors used in the literature of mysticism, and in particular in the canonical literature of world religions, I use the instruments provided by conceptual integration and empirical data of the neurosciences to offer a hermeneutic model of the higher level understanding construed during on-line reading by devotees of their respective sacred literature. Constructivists of the past two decades have considered the mystical experience as a form of "reconditioning of consciousness," (the concepts condition a priori the experience), arguing that there are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences. I believe cognitive science helps prove that the description of the experience is contingent and not necessary; the language used in devotional literature to describe mystical experience influences the way of living the experience, but it is also motivated by its representing reality. Ultimately I will look at the model of erotic relationship in mystical literature and how it serves as evidence of non-reductive physicalism, seeing the human being as a multilevel psychosomatic unity.
date: 2003
date_type: published
refereed: TRUE
referencetext: Zaehner

Parrinder

Boyer, 2001

D’Aquili and Newberg, 1999

Damasio, 1994


citation:   Evola, Vito  (2003) A Hermeneutic Model of Sacred Literature and Everyday Revelation.  [Conference Paper]    (Unpublished)  
document_url: http://cogprints.org/4556/1/ev.pdf