Embodied/Virtual Environments

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Perception ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Virtual Design ◽  
Religion And Ecology ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Bodily Knowledge ◽  
Virtual Experiences

This article by no means serves to account for theories on virtual technologies or virtual design but, rather, offers a distinct exploration on the role of the body in virtual experiences and spaces. Selected works account for embodiment literature and emergent considerations of the body in what may be considered a post-body, or post-human, era of technology, connectivity, and communications. This list includes work that researches, discusses, or questions notions of virtual with regard to landscapes of experience and that looks to discourses on the role of the body in human perception. With implications for larger questions regarding the human mind, and apart from dualistic conversations on mind-body connections, embodiment theories view the body as a tool for participation in lifeworlds. Embodiment is inherently a social concept, and one that rests on foundational understandings of human evolution and adaptation as well as human sociability and socialization, sometimes explored as ecosocial phenomena. Conjuring many inquiries in biology, cognition, psychology, ethics, philosophy, religion, and ecology, this collection is composed mostly of work in the humanities and social sciences and is skewed by traditions in anthropology. It is generally well accepted that cultural perspectives inform human knowledge, but theories in embodiment ask how social and cultural conditions inform not only perspectives, but also experiences or felt senses (or both). Questions of materiality give way to attention on the physical, earthly environment to which humans have evolved and with which humans have coadapted. Scholars have referred to this era as the Anthropocene, which ultimately points to human dilemma, since human behavior is defined by progressively more destructive behavior that yields an earth on which humans cannot rely for resources. Simultaneously, media, entertainment, and design technology have moved into virtual reality and augmented experiences that either transcend, mimic, or escape earthly realms or physical limitations. Simulated or virtual experiences make use of what we know about human perception to create new forms of reality. Theories of being and knowing, inherent to the anthropological canon, pose examination of bodily knowledge and bring about inquiry in medicine, disability studies, cognition, and health, to name a few. Mediated and augmented experiences have all manner of applications and implications, including overriding biology and genetics, posing questions for the future of the human condition. This article includes new work from science journals and popular media to illustrate how new human adaptations, ecologies, and virtual perceptions interface with embodiment.

scholarly journals The role of fragrance and self-esteem in perception of body odors and impressions of others

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0258773
Author(s):  
Ilja Croijmans ◽  
Daniel Beetsma ◽  
Henk Aarts ◽  
Ilse Gortemaker ◽  
Monique Smeets
Keyword(s):  
Social Communication ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Body ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Body Odor ◽  
Communication Signal ◽  
Person Characteristics ◽  
Body Odors

Human sweat odor serves as social communication signal for a person’s traits and emotional states. This study explored whether body odors can also communicate information about one’s self-esteem, and the role of applied fragrance in this relationship. Female participants were asked to rate self-esteem and attractiveness of different male contestants of a dating show, while being exposed to male participant’s body odors differing in self-esteem. High self-esteem sweat was rated more pleasant and less intense than low self-esteem sweat. However, there was no difference in perceived self-esteem and attractiveness of male contestants in videos, hence explicit differences in body odor did not transfer to judgments of related person characteristics. When the body odor was fragranced using a fragranced body spray, male contestants were rated as having higher self-esteem and being more attractive. The finding that body odors from male participants differing in self-esteem are rated differently and can be discriminated suggests self-esteem has distinct perceivable olfactory features, but the remaining findings imply that only fragrance affect the psychological impression someone makes. These findings are discussed in the context of the role of body odor and fragrance in human perception and social communication.

scholarly journals Phenomenological classification of cultural heritage: role of virtual reality

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (16) ◽  
pp. 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyuk-Jin Lee
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
New Classification ◽  
Built Heritage ◽  
Virtual Experiences

Human consciousness is always the consciousness toward some thing and our perception of cultural heritage is no exception. Thus, understanding human cognition is closely related to understanding how the perceptible objects are classified in human mind. The perceptible objects include both physical and virtual experiences and thoughts, and it is important and necessary to analyze the types and the effective levels of those objects. With the emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in cultural heritage field, it is necessary to understand how and why different cognitive media such as realor visual reality including VR, are differently recognized by people. This study suggests the philosophical and theoretical frame for the usage of phenomenological classfication and analysis. By using this new classification with the case of Korean built heritage, the role of VR is explained in cultural discourse of the community.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN STRESS MANAGEMENT

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1SE) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Anuradha Awasthi
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Stress Management ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Physiological Mechanisms ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Unique Power

Stress management refers to the development of certain psychological and physiological mechanisms that can be learned to reduce the side effects of human body and mind. According to Richard Lazarus and Susan Folk Men, when a person has few resources to reach a goal and the work to be done is too much, then he gets stressed. Research by Walter Cannon and Hans Salleay found that stress has negative effects on the body and mind. It is necessary for every human being to learn the techniques of stress management in order to live a satisfying, balanced and happy life. One of these techniques is the use of music. According to Jain Collingwood, music has such unique power that it reduces stress by affecting us emotionally. The melody of music makes the human mind happy, the lyrics of the song inspire the person and the heart likes the rhythm. Music affects all humans. The tradition of singing and dancing with different instruments in different languages ​​and dialects has been found in all the societies of the world, that is, music provides universal joy. तनाव प्रबंधन का अर्थ कुछ ऐसी मनेावैज्ञानिक और शारीरिक क्रियाआंे की प्रणाली विकसित करने से है जिन्हें सीख कर मनुष्य के शरीर और मन पर पडने वाले दुष्प्रभावोें को कम किया जा सकता है। रिचर्ड लज़ारस तथा सुसैन फोक मेन के अनुसार जब मनुष्य के पास किसी लक्ष्य तक पहुंचने के लिए संसाधन कम होते है और पूरे किये जाने वाले काम बहुत अधिक होते है तो उसे तनाव होता है। वाॅल्टर कैनन तथा हैन्स सेल्ये ने मनुष्यों तथा प्राणियों पर किये गये शोध मे पाया कि तनाव शरीर और मन पर नकारात्मक प्रभाव डालता है। प्रत्येक मनुष्य के लिए यह आवश्यक है कि वह संतोषप्रद, संतुलित और सुखी जीवन जीने के लिये तनाव प्रबंधन की तकनीके सीखे। इन्हीं तकनीको मे से एक है संगीत का उपयोग। जैन कालिंगवुड के अनुसार संगीत मे एैसी अनोखी शक्ति होती है जो कि हमें भावनात्मक रूप से प्रभावित कर तनाव को कम करती है। संगीत की स्वर लहरियाँ मनुष्य के मन को आनंदित करती हैं गीत के बोल व्यक्ति को प्रेरित करते हैं तथा लय मन को अच्छी लगती है। सभी मनुष्यों को संगीत प्रभावित करता है। विश्व के सभी समाजों मंे भिन्न - भिन्न भाषाओं और बोलियों में विभिन्न वाद्यों के साथ गाने तथा नृत्य करने की परंपरा पाई गई है अर्थात् संगीत सार्वभौमिक रूप से आनन्द प्रदान करता है।

Attention in Augustine

Rhizomata ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-270
Author(s):  
Lenka Karfíková
Keyword(s):  
Sense Organ ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
External Object ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Will ◽  
With Memory

Abstract The article treats the role of attention (intentio or attentio) in Augustine’s analysis of sense perception, the notion of time, and the Trinitarian structure of the human mind. The term intentio covers a broad range of meanings in Augustine’s usage. Its most fundamental meaning is the life-giving presence of the soul in the body, intensified in attention’s being concentrated on a particular thing or experience; Augustine also uses the term attentio in this latter sense. According to his analysis of time, by way of attention (intentio or attentio), the soul fixes the present in which the future passes into the past. Due to the intention of the soul, the form abstracted from an external object is both imprinted into the sense organ and retained in the memory in order to be, by intention again, recalled before the sight of mind. As “the intention of the will” or just “the will”, attention connects intellectual understanding with memory. In Augustine’s eyes, attention has a different quality depending on the object it is oriented to, and a different intensity, ranging from inattentive distraction (distentio) to concentrated effort (intentio).

Malleable Anatomies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Dacome
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Anatomical Models ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Anatomical Knowledge ◽  
Bodily Knowledge

Malleable Anatomies examines the early stages of the practice of anatomical modelling. It investigates the ‘mania’ for anatomical displays that swept the Italian peninsula in the mid-eighteenth century, and traces the fashioning of anatomical models as important social, cultural, and political as well as medical tools. Anatomical models offered special insights into the inner body. Being coloured, soft, and malleable, they fostered anatomical knowledge in delightful ways. But how did anatomical models inscribe and mediate bodily knowledge? How did they change the way in which anatomical knowledge was created and communicated? And how did they affect the lives of those involved in their production, display, viewing, and handling? Examining the circumstances surrounding the making and early viewing of anatomical displays in Bologna, Naples, and Palermo, Malleable Anatomies addresses these questions by reconstructing how anatomical modelling developed at the intersection of medical knowledge, religious ritual, antiquarian and artistic cultures, and Grand Tour display. While doing so, it investigates the development of anatomical modelling in the context of the diverse visual and material practices that characterized the representation and display of the body. Drawing attention to the artisanal dimension of anatomical practice, and the role of women as both makers and users, it considers how anatomical models lay at the centre of a composite world of social interactions that led to the fashioning of modellers as anatomical celebrities. Moreover, it examines how anatomical displays transformed the proverbially gruesome practice of anatomy into an enthralling experience that engaged audiences’ senses and affects.

The Maiden on the Battlefield: War and Estrangement in Southey’s Joan Of Arc1

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Addison
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
The Body ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Military Leader ◽  
Joan Of Arc ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Point Of Reference

Abstract Critical opinion on Southey’s Joan of Arc has tended to focus on the poem’s political function. This article acknowledges Joan’s symbolic connection with Charlotte Corday and revolutionary France, but sees the poem’s principle function as belonging to a wider context. Throughout the text, Southey’s Maid is pitted not simply against the misguided English enemy but against warfare per se. The article argues that she performs this main function by being out of place, as a young woman, on a battlefield—especially in the role of military leader. It does this by invoking Shklovsky’s theory that unfamiliarity revives human perception, whereas “habitualization” erodes it. In Joan of Arc, the Maid’s unfamiliarity, or perceived inappropriateness in context, is constantly emphasized. The reader is never allowed to forget Joan’s gender, inexperience and supernatural strangeness, for they are the cause of recurrent wonder and disgust in other characters. She is routinely named as a miracle or freak of nature and her presence hence throws everything in the largely military narrative into relief, highlighting war’s cruelties and absurdities. Joan, moreover, functions not only as a passive point of reference. She is frequently the narrator’s focalizer, her estranged viewpoint inviting the reader to substitute her spontaneous horror and compassion for epic’s usual triumphalism. The narrative is full of nauseating physical details of wounding and dismemberment, as well as exhaustive accounts of the progress of grief and starvation. In fact, as the article claims, this poem strives throughout to undo the strategies that Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain sees everywhere working to make war’s purpose of injuring disappear. Joan, unlike more “habitualized” soldiers and leaders, never loses sight of injury in any of its forms and thus her vision forces the reader to consider all the repercussions of war, both physical and psychological.

scholarly journals Aesthetic dimension of technology: dynamo as technological Sublime at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
N.V. Nikiforova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Technological Sublime ◽  
Xix Century

In the second half of the XIX century technology saturated urban space and transformed fac­tory production around the world. Reception of technologies in everyday life was connected with aesthetic comprehension. Besides, perception of new technologies was a complex emo­tional experience that fostered reflections on possibilities of human mind and of man-made power, on historical role of technology and its future development. This article is devoted to the aesthetic characteristics of interaction with technology as an affective aesthetic expe­rience of the technological sublime. As an example, the representation and reception of the dynamo in the public discourse at the turn XX century will be considered. The concept of the technological sublime develops the classical category of the sublime, which was inter­preted as an extreme degree of tension of the senses when meeting objects and phenomena that exceed the possibilities of human perception. In the XVIII century, the aesthetics of the sublime was discovered in nature, and in the XIX century new machines and technolo­gies began to claim the role of objects of the sublime aesthetic experience. Technological sublime can be regarded as a transgressive experience (collision with the limits of human perception and limits of possibilities) and as existential experience (human awareness of the finitude of being).

scholarly journals Philosophy of Mind and Body in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 357-375
Author(s):  
Vladimir Tumanov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Animal Suffering ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Status

Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris (1972) is studied through the lens of philosophy of mind. The question of memory and personhood, as developed by John Locke and then expanded by Derek Parfit, is applied to the status of Hari – the copy of the protagonist's deceased wife. The key question addressed by this paper is on what basis Hari can (or should?) be considered human. Hari's personhood is further analyzed in the context of Cartesian dualism, the response to Descartes by reductionism and the rebuttal of reductionism by the functionalist theories of Hilary Putnam. Descartes' thoughts on animal suffering and the bête-machine are pitted against Hari's experience in Solaris. The key question is whether Hari can be reduced to her alien structure or should be considered in terms of her behavior. The moral implications of these questions are extended to human sociality, human emotional response and the role of the body in the human condition.

Thinking Colours and/or Machines

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 39-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Kittler
Keyword(s):  
Human Perception ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Life World ◽  
Universal Machine ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Mind

The article attempts to locate the role of the computer in the long-standing conflict between the humanities on one side and the hard sciences and mathematics on the other. The state-sponsored promotion of philosophy and its subsequent demotion of scientific explanations provoked a scientific counter-attack, in the course of which psychophysical research subjected the human perception apparatus to rigorous investigations that all but mechanized the faculties of human understanding that were so central to the aspirations of philosophers. The latter retaliated either by creating realms such as Husserl’s phenomenological ‘life-world’ that preceded, and hence were immune to, psychophysical explanations of sensation and perception, or by universalizing the faculty of understanding in such a way as to ensure the importance and competence of philosophy (e.g., in the work of the early Heidegger). This ongoing antagonism was also present in the ways in which the parties treated media technology: Philosophy tried to constrain media by conceptualizing them as obedient instruments tools at the beck and call of their users, whereas psychophysical research modeled the human mind on the very media that were indispensable for accessing this mind in the first place. The former saw media as ‘handy’ tools, the latter proceeded to make them the very measure of man. Alan Turing’s universal machine puts an end to this struggle: Not only does it blur the distinction between instructions and data, it converts the materials of the real world, the mechanisms of the mind, and the principal bastion of philosophy, natural languages, into numbers.

scholarly journals ЗАПЕРЕЧЕННЯ НА ПОЗНАЧЕННЯ КОНЦЕПТУ РІВНОВАГА В СУЧАСНИХ АМЕРИКАНСЬКИХ ОПОВІДАННЯХ

2020 ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Bagatska O.V. ◽  
Kozlova V.V.
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
General Context ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Value Conflict ◽  
Social Perspectives ◽  
Loss Of Balance ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Balance Loss

The purpose of the article is to study the role of negation in the representation of the concept BALANCE in the modern American stories. The methods of component, contextual-interpretative and conceptual analysis are employed.Results. It was found out that the linguistic reflection of the concept BALANCE is determined by one’s sensorimotor experience, which includes pre-conceptual ideas about the balance of the body, and can be represented by lexical and grammatical means, one of which is negation. It was revealed that the negation reflects a certain value conflict in the mind of the characters in the stories studied, the inconsistency of the obtained information to the system of knowledge about the world they acquired. Regarding the fact that the loss of balance is the result of force, which disrupts the stability of the human condition, we correlated the negations with force gestalts, which were used to model the personages’ balance loss. The result of balance loss is a deviation from the VERTICAL, which is correlated with the deviation from the norm, because, firstly, any violation is considered as non-compliance with a certain norm, and secondly, having a general context of opposition as a basis, negation signals about non-compliance with the expected real. Thus, the role of negation as a means of expression of the studied concept is to reveal the physical, psychological and social perspectives of the image of the character in the modern American stories.Conclusions. Negations are correlated with the description of the physiological, emotional states of the characters and their social status, which determines the type of the lost balance. Negative adjectives in parallel with nouns are the skeleton elements of the text, which we interpret as the main carriers of information about balance loss of the characters in the stories analyzed. The convergence of negations as a means of balance loss representation in small passages of the stories creates the effect of a gradual, however, total loss of balance and characterizes the described situation as desperate. Thus, the concept BALANCE in the studied prose is actualized in dynamics, due to the development of the personages’ images, which are characterized by the initial balance and its loss. Метою статті є дослідження ролі заперечення в репрезентації концепту РІВНОВАГА в сучасних американських оповіда-ннях, здійснене за допомогою методів компонентного, контекстуально-інтерпретативного та концептуального аналізу.Результати. Виявлено, що мовне відображення концепту РІВНОВАГА детермінується сенсомоторним досвідом людини, який включає передконцептуальні уявлення про рівновагу тіла, і полягає в його позначенні лексичними та граматичними засобами, одним із яких є заперечення. З’ясовано, що заперечення відображає певний ціннісний конфлікт у свідомості персо-нажа, невідповідність отриманої інформації системі знання про світ, що пов’язано з ментальними уявленнями про істину, які є частиною ядерних понять про власне місце й роль у природі та суспільстві. З огляду на те, що втрата рівноваги є результатом силового впливу, який порушує стабільність стану людини, ми співвіднесли заперечення із силовими гештальтами, за допо-могою яких змоделювали порушення рівноваги персонажів. Результатом утрати рівноваги є відхилення від ВЕРТИКАЛІ, яке співвідноситься з відхиленням від норми, оскільки, по-перше, будь-яке порушення розглядаємо як невідповідність певній нормі, а по-друге, маючи загальний контекст протиставлення як підґрунтя, заперечення сигналізує про невідповідність очі-куваного реальному. Отже, роль заперечення як засобу вираження досліджуваного концепту полягає в розкритті фізичного, психічного та соціального ракурсів образу персонажа в сучасних американських оповіданнях.Висновки. Заперечення співвідносяться з описом фізіологічних, емоційних станів персонажів та їхнього соціального ста-тусу, що зумовлює різновид втраченої рівноваги. Заперечні прикметники паралельно з іменниками є опорними елементами тексту, які ми тлумачимо як головні носії інформації про порушення рівноваги. Конвергенція заперечень як засобу позна-чення дисбалансу в невеликих за обсягом уривках оповідань створює ефект поступової, проте тотальної утрати рівноваги, а також характеризує описану ситуацію як безнадійну. Таким чином, концепт РІВНОВАГА представлений у досліджуваній прозі в динаміці внаслідок розвитку образів персонажів, яким властиві початкова рівновага та її порушення.

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