Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will -- those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

Medicinal plants in Mexico: healers' consensus and cultural importance.

This paper describes a new, simple, quantitative technique for evaluating the relative usefulness of plants to people. The technique is then compared to the quantitative approaches in ethnobotany that have been developed recently. Our technique is used to calculate the importance of over 600 species of woody plants to non-indigenous mestizo people in Tambopata, Amazonian Peru. Two general classes of hypotheses are formulated and tested statistically, concerning (1) the relative importance of different species, and (2) the importance of different families. The plant families are compared with respect to all uses, and with respect to five broad groups of uses. Palms, Annonaceae, and Lauraceae were found to be the most useful woody plant families. On average, the 20 largest woody plant families are most important to mestizos for subsistence construction materials, followed in descending order by commercial, edible, technological, and medicinal uses.

The useful plants of Tambopata, Peru: I. Statistical hypotheses tests with a new quantitative technique

Cultural Importance Indices: A Comparative Analysis Based on the Useful Wild Plants of Southern Cantabria (Northern Spain) This paper compares four indices based on informant consensus Each index aims to assess the cultural significance of plant species and is suitable for statistical testing of different hypotheses For the comparison, we used data concerning plants traditionally used in the Campoo area of southern Cantabria in northern Spain Our results show a positive and significant correlation between the number of uses (NU) and the frequency of citation (FC) of the species It seems to be a general rule that the more versatile a plant, the more widespread its usefulness In addition, NU is highly influenced by the number of use-categories in the study Consequently, an objective index must rely on FC more than NU We propose the use of the cultural importance index (CI), which is defined as the summation of the informants’ proportions that mention each of the uses of the species The CI index is highly correlated with FC and, although it also considers diversity of use, each use-category is conveniently weighted by the number of informants mentioning it Despite the use of cultural significance indices being questioned, we believe that indices based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews are still very useful for compilation studies of passive knowledge, such as most ethnobotanical works conducted in the last three decades in Europe

Cultural Importance Indices: A Comparative Analysis Based on the Useful Wild Plants of Southern Cantabria (Northern Spain)1

http://www.ethnopharmacologia.org/prelude/pdf/bibio-hg-23-giday.pdf

Medicinal plants of the Meinit ethnic group of Ethiopia: an ethnobotanical study.

The anthropological study of medicinal botany has numerous objectives, one of which is to identify ethnomedically important species that warrant chemical analysis and testing for biological activity. This chapter suggests that intra- and intergroup similarities in the use of medicinal plants have arisen and persist because particular remedies produce reactions that are both predictable and considered to be desirable. It argues that ethnomedical systems contain an anticipated, and perhaps even predictable, level of variation in the use of available remedies. Anthropologists and other researchers have used a variety of approaches to identify potentially effective plant based remedies. However, most of these approaches necessitate investigations that range over broad geographic regions, through extensive periods of time, or across multiple cultures. Patterning in the use of medicinal plants, whether seen among Mexican Americans or other societies, reflects a fundamental human condition—adaptation to a complex web of socioenvironmeiital challenges including, of course, sickness and the maintenance of health.

Informant Consensus: A New Approach for Identifying Potentially Effective Medicinal Plants

Part five: Anthropological research on the hot‐cold theory of disease: Some methodological suggestions

https://oak.ucc.nau.edu/rtt/pdf%20format%20pubs/Trotter%201980s%20pdf%20Pubs/Journal%20of%20Ethnopharmacology%201983.pdf

Ethnography and bioassay: combined methods for a preliminary screen of home remedies for potential pharmacological activity

Fallen fontanelle in the American Southwest: its origin, epidemiology, and possible organic causes.

The folk‐illness of susto has long captured the interest of anthropologists. A review of the literature reveals a multitude of competing ideas as to its biological basis, its epidemiological patterning, and why it persists as it does. The present essay offers not only a summation of much of the research done on fright‐sickness to date, but also suggests a number of new lines of inquiry that, when completed, will advance our understanding of this widely spread, yet still to be fully understood, ethnomedical disease category.

Michael H. Logan

Papers

Informant Consensus: A New Approach for Identifying Potentially Effective Medicinal Plants

Part five: Anthropological research on the hot‐cold theory of disease: Some methodological suggestions

Ethnography and bioassay: combined methods for a preliminary screen of home remedies for potential pharmacological activity

Fallen fontanelle in the American Southwest: its origin, epidemiology, and possible organic causes.

New lines of inquiry on the illness of susto.