Representational pull, enactive escape velocity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo ◽  
Thomas Buhrmann ◽  
Xabier E. Barandiaran
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Escape Velocity ◽  
Autonomous Robotics ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Sensorimotor Approach

Two different paths have been taken by researchers who argue that embodiment is crucial for understanding the mind. The first path is embodied functionalism, essentially the claim that traditional cognitivism needs to take into account the lessons of cognitive linguistics, dynamical systems explanations, and autonomous robotics seriously, so as to include bodily structures and processes in accounts of cognition. However, what it means to be a cognitive system remains unchanged and ruled by the computer metaphor. The other path rejects this metaphor and proposes that the self-organizing living body is constitutive of what it is to be a mind. This path, represented by enactivism, is not committed to a representational view of the mind, but rather understands it as an emergent, relational, world-involving phenomenon. The sensorimotor approach to perception may be interpreted in these terms; however, this approach requires a nonrepresentational account of sensorimotor mastery and a theory of agency.

The Solution

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

This chapter examines two general strands in Buddhism: philosophy and practice. Philosophy involves understanding the nature of the world and the mind. It involves careful examination, reasoning, and analysis of the world in general and the self in particular. Meanwhile, practice involves specific techniques to bring about a change in how we respond to the world. It aims at changing mental habits and ways of experiencing the world. These two aspects can, and often are, discussed separately. This is no surprise given how monumental each task is; people sometimes devote their entire lives to only one philosophical question or Buddhist practice. Nevertheless, these two aspects do inform each other. Philosophy helps to establish the aim of practice. Practice, on the other hand, can help one to have certain experiences which can, in turn, inform ideas about how the world works.

scholarly journals Remarkable Reframing

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Mental Structure ◽  
International Mediation ◽  
The World ◽  
National University ◽  
Mind Set ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Negative Sentiment

This paper arises from a presentation at the International Mediation and Restorative Practice Conference held at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth on 5th September 2014. The topic is the technique known as reframing. To reframe is to bring about a change in someone’s mental perspective by altering their tacit underlying viewpoint to create different meaning. It is an attempt to release the parties from a blame and counter-blame cycle, and to focus on more useful ways of viewing the conflict. It is not about over-looking or evading some negative sentiment - this needs to be included to maintain the context. What reframing does, however, is to introduce new meaning, co-existent with the negative perspective, which shifts the mind-set towards a more constructive future. A ‘frame’ is a cognitive shortcut that people use to make sense of the world. It is a complex mental structure of unquestioned beliefs, values and ideas that is used to simplify our understanding of the world around us and thus to infer meaning. If a part of that frame is changed – for example through self-reflection, education or reframing - then the inferred meaning may also change. When parties are in conflict their frames help them to interpret what has happened, what the intentions of the other party are, and their own role in what has taken place. This is usually positively disposed to the self and negatively disposed to the other. This lens, or frame, provides meaning for the conflict. Reframing upsets this frame and introduces a different, and potentially more helpful way to look at the conflict so that the parties will work on resolution rather than being stuck on set, negative, unproductive or toxic ways of viewing matters, or being defensive and closed-minded.

How Sense-phenomenal Theory of Personal Identity Might Legitimize Racism

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Maduka Enyimba ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Features

The major concern of the problem of personal identity gravitates around the question of whether a person’s identity is located in the mind or in the body. Scholars have developed different theories such as survivalist and physicalist criteria among others in response to this question. In this paper, I engage with the theory of sense-phenomenalism as an aspect of the physicalist criterion of personal identity to show how it might legitimize racism and colour-branding. Sense-phenomenalism is a body-only model of personal identity that holds that an individual’s identity is determined by the physical features sensually perceptible by other humans in the society. I argue that sense-phenomenalism by reposing a person’s identity on his/her bodily traits might foster social discrimination, deepen the dichotomy between the self and the other and enhance the fabrication of justifications for the denial of individual’s rights.

Compassionate Reasoning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Gopin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Compassionate Care ◽  
Emotional Skills ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

This book presents the case for Compassionate Reasoning as a moral and psychosocial skill for the positive transformation of individuals and societies. It has been developed from a reservoir of moral philosophical, cultural, and religious wisdom traditions over the centuries, combined with compassion neuroscience, contemporary approaches to conflict resolution, public health methodologies, and positive psychological approaches to social change. There is an urgent need for human civilization to invest in the broad-based cultivation of compassionate thoughts, feelings, and especially habits. This skill is then combined with moral reasoning to move the self and others toward less anger and fear, more joy and care in the pursuit of reasonable policies that build peaceful families, communities, and societies. There are many people who work for the sake of others, and tend to be kinder, more reasonable, more self-controlled, and more goal-oriented to peace. They are united by a set of moral values and the emotional skills to put those values into practice. The aim of this book is to articulate the best combination of those values and skills that lead to personal and communal sustainability, not burnout and self-destruction. The book pivots on the observable difference in the mind—and proven in neuroscience imaging experiments—between destructive empathic distress on the one hand, and on the other, joyful, constructive, compassionate care. Facing existential threats to life on the planet, humans can and must make such skills universally sustainable and ingrained.

Imagining Space and Time in Kenneth Slessor’s “Dutch Seacoast” and Joan Blaeu’s Town Atlas of The Netherlands: Maps and Mapping in Kenneth Slessor’s Poetic Sequence The Atlas, Part Three

2014 ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Adele J. Haft
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Idealistic View

“Dutch Seacoast” by the acclaimed Australian poet Kenneth Slessor (1901–1971) is thecenterpiece of The Atlas the five-poem sequence opening his 1932 collection Cuckooz Contrey. Like the other four poems, “Dutch Seacoast” pays tribute to cartography’s “Golden Age,” Toonneel der Steden van de vereenighde Nederlanden being the poem’s epigraph and the title that Joan Blaeu gave to one of two volumes comprising his Town Atlas of the Netherlands (1649). While focusing on Blaeu’s exquisitely ordered map of Amsterdam, Slessor suggests that he is gazing at the map described by his poem and invites us to consider how poets and cartographers represent space and time.An intensely visual poet, Slessor was also attracted to lyrical descriptions of objects: his inspiration for “Dutch Seacoast” was a particularly poetic, but sparsely illustrated, catalogue of maps and atlases. After reprinting the poem and describing its reception, my paper traces the birth of “Dutch Seacoast” (and The Atlas generally) in Slessor’s poetry notebook, the evolution of the poem’s placement within the sequence, and the complex relationships between the poem, the catalogue, and Blaeu’s spectacular atlas. Comparing Blaeu’s idealistic view of Amsterdam with that city’s dominance during the Dutch“Golden Century,” Slessor’s darker obsessions with the poem’s ending, and his “other countries of the mind” with his native Australia, we come to understand why “Dutch Seacoast” remained for the self-deprecating poet one of his eight “least unsuccessful” poems.

One Conscience or More: Is the Actor more than one at a Time?

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
Tudor Lucanu
Keyword(s):  
Creative Process ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Lee Strasberg ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Jerzy Grotowski

"This paper approaches an important theme in the study of actors work: the multiplication of the consciousness, from the perspective of the actor’s training correlated to psychology and neuroscience. We will refer to some of the best known works used in the training of the actor or which have as object of study the art of the actor, namely K. Stanislavsky - An Actor Prepares; Michael Chekhov - To the Actor: On the technique of acting, Lee Strasberg - Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Jerzy Grotowski - Towards a Poor Theatre, Bertolt Brecht - Brecht on Theatre, Denis Diderot - Paradox of the Actor. Conversations on The Natural Son on one hand, and Antonio Damasio’s studies on the self, on the other hand, noting that theories about the cognitive functions of the human brain provide a valuable perspective on the art of the actor, especially by how it applies to the conscious and subconscious of the actor on stage. What happens to the actor while performing? How does the actor process different stimuli to build a character, and then an entire artistic act? What are the roles of the mind and body in the creative process? These are just a few questions that I will try to find answers to, while examining the actor’s multiplication of consciousness. Keywords: consciousness, actor, character, emotions, images, brain."

scholarly journals Desire for the other and the Iterable Identity in the Social Context: A Postmodern Reading of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-97
Author(s):  
Noorbakhsh Hooti ◽  
Ali Salehi
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Tennessee Williams ◽  
Multiple Features ◽  
The Social ◽  
Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
A Streetcar Named Desire ◽  
The Mind

Abstract In postmodern outlook, the boundary between the different divisions made inside the mind is blurred. It is the Other of one’s self that indirectly defines the identity of a character or makes it abject. The purpose of this study is to recognize the adjustment identity of Blanche in “The Streetcar Named Desire” in diverse social contexts. The identity of Blanche is under surveillance through some key elements in the postmodern bedrock. The chains of signifiers that are produced by the considered character distinguish the mayhem of the mind that is trying to find a new identity in the altered social context. The study aims to unravel the desire for the Other or the hidden alter that is trying to adapt itself to the new environment while the character is unraveled as abject for the others in the special context. The dangling state of Blanche’s mind is exposed through multiple features of the concepts to embody the blurring border between the Other and the self.

Providing Freshmen with a Good “Starting-Block”

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikaël De Clercq ◽  
Charlotte Michel ◽  
Sophie Remy ◽  
Benoît Galand
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Student Adjustment ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Pivotal Phase ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Study Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Belonging ◽  
Intention To Persist

Abstract. Grounded in social-psychological literature, this experimental study assessed the effects of two so-called “wise” interventions implemented in a student study program. The interventions took place during the very first week at university, a presumed pivotal phase of transition. A group of 375 freshmen in psychology were randomly assigned to three conditions: control, social belonging, and self-affirmation. Following the intervention, students in the social-belonging condition expressed less social apprehension, a higher social integration, and a stronger intention to persist one month later than the other participants. They also relied more on peers as a source of support when confronted with a study task. Students in the self-affirmation condition felt more self-affirmed at the end of the intervention but didn’t benefit from other lasting effects. The results suggest that some well-timed and well-targeted “wise” interventions could provide lasting positive consequences for student adjustment. The respective merits of social-belonging and self-affirmation interventions are also discussed.

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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