scholarly journals A strawberry, an animal cry and a human subject: Where existential semiotics, biosemiotics and relational metaphysics seem to meet one another

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3/4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Machtyl
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common Space ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Common

The article discus ses some semiotic approaches to the relation between nature and culture. Starting with outlining the structuralistic approach to this issue, especially the ideas of Juri Lotman and Algirdas Julien Greimas, the author finds parallels between different views on the relation between the natural world and human beings. First, the juxtaposition of Eero Tarasti’s existential semiotics with selected concepts of biosemiotics is discussed. The following part of the paper is dedicated to Bruno Latour’s ideas on nature–culture relation, hybrids and mediations. Then the author refers to Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere as the common space for all living and inanimate elements. Closing the paper with a return to biosemiotics, the author comes back to Tarasti’s ideas and compares these with some ideas in biosemiotics, paying special attention to the concepts of unpredictability, choice and dynamics. The comparison shows that some intuitions, assumptions and theses of these different scholars turn out to be surprisingly convergent. The author believes that the outlined parallels between Tarasti’s view, Latour’s and Lotman’s concepts, and biosemiotics may be promising for further research, inviting detailed study.

scholarly journals Forms of a Posthuman Fantastic in Mia Gallagher’s Shift

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Hedwig Schwall ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Individual Entity ◽  
The Individual

In posthuman philosophy the human subject is not regarded as an entity but a relational process. Yet the historical construct of “the individual” remains the (unconscious) reference point in human perception, feeding ego- and anthropocentrism. This article will argue that in their call to revise the static ideal of the individual entity posthuman philosophers find “allies” in fiction. More specifically, the fantastic is a genre which offers great possibilities to drastically reshuffle basic tenets of perception. Mia Gallagher’s Shift offers a spectrum of fantastic stories in which protagonists relate to human and nonhuman agents such as animals, minerals, air and water. But, in this posthuman theory and fiction, not only human beings are deconstructed into relational nodes; the categories that constitute them are no independent concepts either, but mere interactional factors. This article’s analysis of Gallagher’s short stories focuses on the ways in which self and other, nature and culture, life and death, feminine and masculine, interior and exterior worlds interact.

scholarly journals TRANSINDIVIDUAL-TRANSVERSAL SUBJECTIVITY FOR THE POSTHUMAN SOCIETY

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (137) ◽  
pp. 391-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae-Hee Kim
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Control Society ◽  
The Common ◽  
High Degree

ABSTRACT The problem that the "posthuman" must cope with is complex: how can one embrace both anti-humanistic problematization and deconstruction of the human subject by post-structuralism and, at the same time, link the capacity of techno-science for de-humanization with the possibility for inventing posthuman subjectivity? Consideration of the posthumanization of the human must expand further from the cyborgization based on the strengthening of human individuals' capacity, and there is need of a paradigm shift for us to rethink and reconceptualize the posthuman within the ontological and sociopolitical relational networking beyond the opposition of technocentric determinism and humancentric instrumentalism. Human beings were produced in the disciplinary society in the form of self-disciplined "individuals" and have been produced in the control society in the form of de-individualized "dividuals," respectively. If so, then what will the form of human beings be in the posthuman society outside or after the control society, which has yet to arrive? In this paper, pointing out the limitations of discussions on cyborgization and examining Deleuze's diagnosis of the control society based on digital technology, I argue that we can find a new possibility for posthuman subjectivity in Simondon's "transindividual relationship" complemented by Guattari's "transversality." I propose that it will be possible for posthuman society to be produced when the transindividual relationships based on the transductive operation of technological invention realizing the common natural potentiality are realized, and a high degree of transversal communication that prevents the subjugation of this collectivity is maintained.

Current issues in aesthetics and beyond: Revisiting lookism

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Peter Takáč
Keyword(s):  
Plastic Surgery ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common View ◽  
Aesthetic Medicine ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Public Status ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

AbstractLookism is a term used to describe discrimination based on the physical appearance of a person. We suppose that the social impact of lookism is a philosophical issue, because, from this perspective, attractive people have an advantage over others. The first line of our argumentation involves the issue of lookism as a global ethical and aesthetical phenomenon. A person’s attractiveness has a significant impact on the social and public status of this individual. The common view in society is that it is good to be more attractive and healthier. This concept generates several ethical questions about human aesthetical identity, health, authenticity, and integrity in society. It seems that this unequal treatment causes discrimination, diminishes self-confidence, and lowers the chance of a job or social enforcement for many human beings. Currently, aesthetic improvements are being made through plastic surgery. There is no place on the human body that we cannot improve with plastic surgery or aesthetic medicine. We should not forget that it may result in the problem of elitism, in dividing people into primary and secondary categories. The second line of our argumentation involves a particular case of lookism: Melanie Gaydos. A woman that is considered to be a model with a unique look.

Interpersonal Communication

1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-246
Author(s):  
Mohammad A. Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common Object ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Basic Social Process

IntroductionCommunication today is increasingly seen as a process through whichthe exchange and sharing of meaning is made possible. Commtinication asa subject of scientific inquiry is not unique to the field of mass communication.Mathematicians, engineers, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists,anthropologists, and speech communicators have been taking an interest inthe study of communication. This is not surprising because communicationis the basic social process of human beings. Although communication hasgrown into a well developed field of study, Muslim scholars have rdrely hcusedon the study of communication. Thus, a brief introduction to the widely usedcommunication concepts and a framework for the study of communicationwithin the context of this paper is provided.In 1909, Charles Cooley defined communication from a sociologicalperspective as:The mechanism through which human relations exist and develop -all the symbols of mind, together with the means of conveyingthem through space and preserving them in time. It includes theexpression of the face, attitude and gesture, the tones of the voice,words, writing, printing, railways, telegraph, and whatever elsemay be the latest achievement in the conquest of space and time.In 1949, two engineers, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, definedcommunication in a broader sense to include all procedures:By which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involvesnot only written and oral speeches, but also music, the pictorialarts, the theater, the ballet, and, in kct, all human behavior.Harold Lasswell, a political scientist, defines communication simply as:A convenient way to describe the act of communication is to answerthe following question: Who, says what, in which channel, towhom, with what effect?S.S. Stevens, a behavioral psychologist, defines the act of communication as:Communication occurs when some environmental disturbance (thestimulus) impinges on an organism and the organism doessomething about it (makes a discriminatory response) . . . Themessage that gets no response is not a commnication.Social psychologist Theodore Newcomb assumes that:In any communication situation, at least two persons will becommunicating about a common object or topic. A major functionof communication is to enable them to maintain simultaneousorientation toward one another and toward the common object ofcommunication.Wilbur Schramm, a pioneer in American mass communication research,provides this definition:When we communicate we are trying to share information, anidea, or an attitude. Communication always requires threeelements-the source, the message, and the destination (thereceiver).

The Measure of Greatness

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Nature ◽  
Complex Trajectory ◽  
The Many ◽  
Human Excellence ◽  
Ethical Perspectives

Magnanimity is a virtue that has led many lives. Foregrounded early on by Plato as the philosophical virtue par excellence, it became one of the crown jewels in Aristotle’s account of human excellence and was accorded an equally salient place by other ancient thinkers. One of the most distinctive elements of the ancient tradition to filter into the medieval Islamic and Christian worlds, it sparked important intellectual engagements there and went on to carve deep tracks through several later philosophies that inherited from this tradition. Under changing names, under reworked forms, it continued to breathe in the thought of Descartes and Hume, Kant and Nietzsche, and their successors. Its many lives have been joined by important continuities. Yet they have also been fragmented by discontinuities—discontinuities reflecting larger shifts in ethical perspectives and competing answers to questions about the nature of the good life, the moral nature of human beings, and their relationship to the social and natural world they inhabit. They have also been punctuated by moments of controversy in which the greatness of this vision of human greatness has itself been called into doubt. This volume provides a window to the complex trajectory of a virtue whose glitter has at times been as heady as it has been divisive. By exploring the many lives it has lived, we will be in a better position to decide whether and why this is a virtue we might still want to make central to our own ethical lives.

scholarly journals Widening the common space to reduce the gap between climate science and decision-making in industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 100237
Author(s):  
Luise J. Fischer ◽  
Heini Wernli ◽  
David N. Bresch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Common Space ◽  
The Common

Nature and the Sublime

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sandy
Keyword(s):  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Percy Bysshe Shelley ◽  
John Keats ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
John Clare ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Mind

An account of Edmund Burke’s central ideas about the Sublime and the Beautiful shows how the emphasis Burke gave to terror helped to shape the Gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley. Focusing on examples from the poetry of William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Charlotte Smith, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and John Clare, the remainder of this essay explores the ways in which Romantic poets both thought about and attempted to represent those elements of the sublime that were instigated by their encounters with the natural world. What emerges as defining about these interactions between the mind and world is how imaginative impulses towards a sense of the sublime often led to a renewed sense of the material world and the very contingencies of existence they sought to transcend. Even Wordsworth’s more reverential response to the natural world as sacrosanct recognises the ‘awe’ of the sublime can be as much consoling as it is disturbing. These disturbing aspects of natural process and the sublime are self-consciously explored in the poetry of Shelley, who subjects notions of transcendence and idealism to sceptical scrutiny. With varying degrees of emphases, the poetry of Byron, Smith, and Clare elide distinctions between nature and culture to acknowledge a sublime more explicitly shaped by temporal and material processes. Finally, a key episode in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale is read as exemplifying the many difficulties and complexities of the Romantic imagination’s encounter with, and its attempts, to represent transcendence and the sublime.

Catholic Social Teaching

2015 ◽  
pp. 442-456
Author(s):  
David Matzko McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mutual Cooperation ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Rerum Novarum ◽  
The Common

This essay considers the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching (CST). CST finds its roots in the biblical, patristic, and medieval periods, but was inaugurated in particular by Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and has been sustained by a range of papal encyclicals and conciliar documents since. The documents of CST emphasize that human beings are created for mutual cooperation and a pursuit of common good in social, economic, and political life. The essay considers first CST’s developing account of how social relations may be governed by Christian charity. It then considers the nature of property within economic relations as conceived within CST. The final section considers CST’s reflections on political life, which is understood as primarily personal and dependent on relations of mutual rights and responsibilities that are directed to the common good.

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