Language, Belief and Human Beings

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 141-157
Author(s):  
David Cockburn
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material Thing ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Emotion Word ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
The Core ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

We may think of the core of Cartesian dualism as being the thesis that each of us is essentially a non-material mind or soul: ‘non-material’ in the sense that it has no weight, cannot be seen or touched, and could in principle continue to exist independently of the existence of any material thing. That idea was, of course, of enormous importance to Descartes himself, and we may feel that having rejected it, as most philosophers now have, we have rejected what is of greatest philosophical significance in Descartes' conception of the self. That would, I believe, be a mistake. Something akin to the Cartesian mind-body contrast still has a pervasive grip on philosophical thought across a whole range of issues. The contrast is, I believe, reflected in common philosophical versions of the contrasts between mind and body, fact and value, reason and emotion, word and deed, reason and persuasion, and no doubt others. My central concern in this paper is, however, a familiar philosophical understanding of the relation between, on the one hand, belief and its articulation in words and, on the other, action or feeling.

Self within World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Culliney ◽  
David Jones
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Dynamic Flow ◽  
The West ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Constructive Interaction

We describe the foundations of the fractal self in relation to the Chinese notion of personal development and enhancement of adeptness in the world and mutualism with the other. This seeking, described in the codified system of Daoism, is a pathway that may progress to the highest level of achievement of such a self: that which defines a sage. The chapter introduces the view that a sage is a fractal self that achieves a peak of intimacy and constructive interaction with the world. We detail the development of human beings on this pathway, emerging beyond the core embodiments of empathy, sympathy, and rudimentary morality observed in apes. The self for the early Chinese was always a being that was embedded in the world and dynamic flow of forces. This self was defined in intimate terms as adaptable and adept, seeking to be a microcosmic contributor to some holistic macrocosm. In this chapter, Daoism leads our thinking on how the fractal self engages with the world. In turn, this way of understanding selfness and its potential to enrich its system from within resonates with discussions of the interactive self of Buddhism and was also in the minds of Pre-Socratic thinkers in the West.

scholarly journals Public Service Television and Civic Engagement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Jackson
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Main Channel ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Democratic Life ◽  
Elected Representatives

The news media figures prominently in most appraisals of democracy today. This is because it is the main channel of communication between elected representatives and citizens; and the (self-appointed) watchdog of the powerful. While news organisations are sometimes reluctant to accept the responsibility that comes with such power, it is implicit in the core principles of journalistic philosophy, whereby attempts to constrain or censor the news media are seen as threats to democracy itself. However, these normative roles also are surrounded by many tensions that surround the ability of our news media to perform their democratic functions. This chapter discusses four of these tensions: (i) diversity versus commonality; (ii) the information necessary for citizens to participate effectively in democratic life, versus the entertainment-driven focus of an increasingly commercial-oriented media; (iii) the need of the media to treat people as citizens on the one hand and as consumer publics on the other; and (iv) broadcasters' relationship with the press.

The sovereignty of revelation: On Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics of revelation

2021 ◽  
pp. 000842982110448
Author(s):  
Balázs M Mezei
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
The One ◽  
Central Term

In this article I overview Paul Ricœur’s understanding of divine revelation on the basis of some of his relevant writings. I argue that Ricœur’s hermeneutics of revelation has two aspects: on the one hand Ricœur’s explains the complex ways of acquiring and interpreting divine revelation especially with respect to the Bible; on the other hand, he acknowledges that revelation, originating in God’s freedom, is immediately given. In Ricœur’s view, the understanding of this immediacy is tainted by the presence of evil in human understanding which hinders the realization of revelation itself. As a critique of this standpoint I argue that the immediate givenness of revelation is logically and phenomenologically presupposed in our interpretations. Any hermeneutics of revelation entails a phenomenology of revelation. This phenomenology contains both the self-founding of human beings and, at the same time, the recognition of the absoluteness of the divine. Husserl’s phenomenology offers a way to the understanding of the immediacy of revelation through his central term of Eigenheitlichkeit. Ricœur understands this term not as genuine reality but rather as appartenance, ‘belonging to’, and reshapes its meaning in line with a hermeneutical naturalism. This explains his difficulty to conceive properly the sovereignty of revelation and the importance of phenomenology in the understanding of its immediate character.

scholarly journals Values of love: two forms of infinity characteristic of human persons

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-450
Author(s):  
Sara Heinämaa
Keyword(s):  
Personal Values ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Dynamic Character ◽  
Personal Value ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The One ◽  
Organizing Principles

AbstractIn his late reflections on values and forms of life from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl develops the concept of personal value and argues that these values open two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human individuals while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of care. In order to get at the core of the concept, I will explicate Husserl’s discussion of personal values of love by distinguishing between five related features. I demonstrate that values of love (1) are rooted in egoic depts and define who we are as persons, (2) differ from objective values in being absolute and non-comparative, (3) ground vocational lives as organizing principles, (4) are endlessly self-disclosing and self-intensifying, and (5) establish transitive relations of care between human beings. On the basis of my five-partite distinction, I argue that Husserl’s concepts of love and value of love reveal the dynamic character of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

scholarly journals Masculinity and Femininity: Essential to the Identity of the Human Person

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Nancy O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Publishing House ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Masculinity And Femininity ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract The title of this congress begins with the word “identity”. It also includes the word “reciprocity,” which indicates a form of relationship and finally, “gift of self”. This would lead us to conclude that the identity of the human person has something to do with reciprocity and that reciprocity involves giving of oneself to others. This talk will attempt to shed light on how the concept of gender might in some way be incorporated into these three concepts. Defining what constitutes the identity of the human person has been explored, and attempts to define it have been made by every major theorist in the field of psychology. At a previous Psychology and Communion congress one of the talks (Ionata, 2002) spoke of loving and being loved in return as the basic foundation of human identity. In that presentation we find the following observation: “The identity of the human person can be compared to the identity of a book: we know where and when it was printed; but the author is certainly not the publishing house, nor is the typesetter who prepared the text…The same is true for us human beings: we know the time and date of birth. But who is author?” (31). We ask ourselves, therefore: what lies at the core of the identity of this being who is born at a certain time on a certain date? Before proceeding, I think it is important to note that the basic idea regarding the identity of the human person, as we have defined and understood it from the inception of psychology and communion and explored in previous encounters, remains unchanged. I will use a quote of Chiara Lubich here that perhaps many of you know but which can serve the purpose of laying the foundation for what follows: Human beings are “(…) all equal but distinct. To each person [God] gave his own beauty so that they would be desirable and lovable by others; and so that in love (the common substance in which they recognize themselves as one and see themselves in each other) they would be recomposed into the One who had created them with his Light, which is Himself.” Now we ask ourselves: What exactly is this “beauty” that Chiara is speaking of? What are the components, if you will, of our identity that makes us “… desirable and lovable by others…”?

scholarly journals The Significance of Ramana Maharshi's Self-Enquiry for Meditation

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
DAYEONG PARK ◽  
SURESH L. BARNAWAL
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Aspect ◽  
Practical Aspect ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Core ◽  
Crucial Part

Seeking happiness has become a crucial part of human beings due to a consistent rise in anxiety and stress over the passing years. As a result, the importance of Indian meditation practices has risen worldwide. Especially, Ramana Maharshi's Self-enquiry is one of the significant meditation practices found in India. The purpose of this paper is to show that Mokṣa (liberation), where one is free from suffering, can be attained by the practice of Self-enquiry, which is simple but powerful because it immediately pierces to the core, the Self. Ramana is the ancient traditional master in India, and he is also known for using silence in the instruction of his disciples. The essence of Self-enquiry is that it is not to realize something anew but to abide as the Self, in the here and now with aware affirmation "I am already Thou." Ramana's life, the experience of his great awakening, the Self, 'I'-thought, the body, the theoretical aspect of Self-enquiry as meditation by Ramana and the practical aspect of Self-enquiry as meditation by Prof. Kim Kyeungmin are presented to illustrate the significance of this method. It is pointed out that Maharshi's Self-enquiry is more valuable and productive than other meditation techniques.

‘Nothing is what it seems’: Posthumanism and late capitalism in Altered Carbon

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia A. Empey
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Small Disk ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Private Detective ◽  
Mind And Body

This article explores how class politics are interpreted within Altered Carbon, the 2018 television series based on the 2002 book of the same name by Richard K. Morgan. The series follows Takeshi Kovacs, a soldier turned rebel turned private detective, as he awakens after 250 years in stasis. Like all humans in this fictional world, Kovacs’s existence, or essence, has been compressed into a small disk known as a cortical stack. Altered Carbon does not present a liberated or democratic future, instead, it demarcates how our posthuman fantasies can mimic, or fully embody, the class politics we see today in our late-capitalist society. Altered Carbon asks us to consider where the boundaries of the self and the body truly lie and how those boundaries, or lack thereof, are open for exploitation by those with financial means. We must critique how posthumanism has, or has not, taken up class. I believe this issue is most salient when we consider how class mediates our past, present and potential futures. I analyse the cortical stack itself as a posthumanist interpretation of Cartesian dualism and how that mind and body divide is central to maintaining capitalism through the alienation of the worker. Altered Carbon asks us to consider what happens when one’s flesh and one’s identity in and of itself become transferable and never truly one’s own.

scholarly journals Understanding human values: The key to organizational effectiveness

1984 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
J. Raddall
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Organization Management ◽  
Organizational Behaviour ◽  
Human Element ◽  
Interface Theory ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The dichotomy faced by management of finding ways to interface theory and technology on the one hand with the idiosyncracies of human behaviour on the other can be likened to the well known concept of Cartesian dualism - the split of the human being into mind and body. In any organization management is faced by the same problem. Implementation of sound rational ideas is often obfuscated by the apparently irrational human element. This article attempts to find this 'missing link' in the chain between the mind and body of the organization, through an analysis of human values and their influence on personal, interpersonal and organizational behaviour. Several hypotheses relating values to organizational behaviour are considered and a preliminary empirical study undertaken to test these hypotheses is discussed.

Legitimacy of the Modern Age?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Schmitz
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Self ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Hans Blumenberg ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The One

The opposition between religiosity and secularism is the key to both a discourse-historical epochal threshold and the question of the self-understanding of Western modernity. The controversy between Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg constitutes one episode in the long-term, many-faceted debate over secularization. At the core of the controversy is the question of how modern science on the one hand and rational law on the other hand can be differentiated as autonomous realms. At the same time, the anthropological framing conditions for a technologized life world are here at issue. Carl Schmitt began the controversy in the afterword of his last book, which criticized Blumenberg’s Legitimacy of the Modern Age in a basic way. Political Theology II thus also became Schmitt’s testament, in which he formulated instructions about how to read the continuity and identity of his life and work.

Stories and the Self

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel
Keyword(s):  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lower Degree ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.

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