scholarly journals Cartesianism and Intersubjectivity in Paranormal Activity and the Philosophy of Mind

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Steve Jones
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Self ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Combined Model ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
Activity Series

Over the last century within the philosophy of mind, the intersubjective model of self has gained traction as a viable alternative to the oft-criticised Cartesian solipsistic paradigm. These two models are presented as incompatible inasmuch as Cartesians perceive other minds as “a problem” for the self, while intersubjectivists insist that sociality is foundational to selfhood. This essay uses the Paranormal Activity series (2007–2015) to explore this philosophical debate. It is argued that these films simultaneously evoke Cartesian premises (via found-footage camerawork), and intersubjectivity (via an ongoing narrative structure that emphasises connections between the characters, and between each film). The philosophical debates illuminate premises on which the series’ story and horror depends. Moreover, Paranormal Activity also sheds light on the theoretical debate: the series brings those two paradigms together into a coherent whole, thereby suggesting that the two models are potentially compatible. By developing a combined model, scholars working in the philosophy of mind might better account for the different aspects of self-experience these paradigms focus on.

Expressing the Self

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Self ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
First Person ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Person Reference ◽  
De Se ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Cultural Pragmatics

This book addresses different linguistic and philosophical aspects of referring to the self in a wide range of languages from different language families, including Amharic, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Newari (Sino-Tibetan), Polish, Tariana (Arawak), and Thai. In the domain of speaking about oneself, languages use a myriad of expressions that cut across grammatical and semantic categories, as well as a wide variety of constructions. Languages of Southeast and East Asia famously employ a great number of terms for first-person reference to signal honorification. The number and mixed properties of these terms make them debatable candidates for pronounhood, with many grammar-driven classifications opting to classify them with nouns. Some languages make use of egophors or logophors, and many exhibit an interaction between expressing the self and expressing evidentiality qua the epistemic status of information held from the ego perspective. The volume’s focus on expressing the self, however, is not directly motivated by an interest in the grammar or lexicon, but instead stems from philosophical discussions of the special status of thoughts about oneself, known as de se thoughts. It is this interdisciplinary understanding of expressing the self that underlies this volume, comprising philosophy of mind at one end of the spectrum and cross-cultural pragmatics of self-expression at the other. This unprecedented juxtaposition results in a novel method of approaching de se and de se expressions, in which research methods from linguistics and philosophy inform each other. The importance of this interdisciplinary perspective on expressing the self cannot be overemphasized. Crucially, the volume also demonstrates that linguistic research on first-person reference makes a valuable contribution to research on the self tout court, by exploring the ways in which the self is expressed, and thereby adding to the insights gained through philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.

scholarly journals Modelling ourselves: what the free energy principle reveals about our implicit notions of representation

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Sims ◽  
Giovanni Pezzulo
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Structural Content ◽  
Unified View

AbstractPredictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle (FEP)—a normative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., representational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpretations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies (or fails to qualify) as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle (FEP) instrumentally to distinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on organizational, structural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that traditionally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demonstrates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what representations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate.

Wittgenstein on Other Minds

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Kailashkanta Naik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Private Language Argument ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Other Minds Problem ◽  
Problem Of Other Minds

When philosophy of mind goes into every detail in explaining about consciousness and its every aspect, the problem of other minds being its part is not spared. In such context going against the traditional way of giving justification Wittgenstein novel approach to other minds is remarkable and is close to the phenomenological understanding. The analysis of the sensation of pain as one of its important factors in solving the other minds problem is unique and it is this that proves how Wittgenstein dissolves the problem rather than giving a solution. This article focuses Wittgenstein’s two important factors: Private Language Argument and the concept of the sensation of pain in dissolving the issue. And in this I have made an attempt to show how his novelty in approaching this problem gains importance even today.

NIETSCHE'S CONTRIBUTION TO A PHENOMENOLOGY OF INTOXICATION

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-43
Author(s):  
Sonia Sikka
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Description ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Authorial Voice

AbstractThrough a reading of Nietzsche's texts, primarily of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this article develops a phenomenological description of the variety of intoxication exemplified in conditions of drunkenness, or in states of emotional excess. It treats Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a literary expression of such intoxication, arguing against attempts to find a coherent narrative structure and clear authorial voice behind this text's apparent disorder. Having isolated the intoxicated characteristics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra - its hyperbolic rhetoric and emotions, its lack of balance, its injustice, its shifting and conflicting moods, and its self-contradictions - I then offer an interpretation of the work, and by extension of intoxication itself, in terms of Nietzsche's model of the self as a dynamic multiplicity of forces. At the same time, I argue for a multiple and dynamic conception of personality in general.

John Stuart Mill

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-129
Author(s):  
W. J. Mander
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
The Self ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Failed Attempt

This chapter begins with a discussion of Mill’s empiricism and his attitude towards the unknowable which considers in detail the nature of his disagreement with Hamilton and which discusses the various senses in which his position might be described as one of ‘radical empiricism’. Moving on to more specific points, the chapter then discusses Mill’s views regarding space and time, his phenomenalism, his failed attempt to explain our idea of the self, his centre-staging the puzzle of other minds, and his positions respecting causation, free will, and natural law. The chapter concludes with a discussion of his posthumously published views about religion.

The Philosophy of Mind of Kundakunda and Umāsvāti

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Balcerowicz
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Cognitive Faculty ◽  
Actual Application ◽  
Sensory Apparatus ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
The Way

Kundakunda and Umāsvāti are among the first philosophers in Jainism to lay foundations for of Jaina philosophy of mind. A key concept in their philosophy of mind is that of a cognitive faculty, located in and constitutive of the self. Cognitive faculties should be understood as processes or manners through which the self makes use of the physical sensory apparatus, as well as the actual application of the self’s cognitive potential. This chapter discusses the complex structures of cognitive faculties. Kundakunda takes the self, the cognitive subject, to consist in cognition, a claim which influences the way both thinkers classify cognitive faculties and the important distinction between perceptual experience and cognition.

scholarly journals The Four–Seven Debate of Korean Neo-Confucianism and the Moral Psychological and Theistic Turn in Korean Philosophy

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bongrae Seok
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Moral Cultivation ◽  
Fundamental Limitations ◽  
Joseon Dynasty ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Interactive Relation ◽  
The Universe

This paper discusses how Korean Neo-Confucian philosophers in the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) explained the moral nature of the mind and its emotions. Among the philosophical debates of Korean Neo-Confucianism, the author of the paper focuses on the Four–Seven Debate (a philosophical debate about the moral psychological nature of the four moral emotions and the seven morally indiscrete emotions) to analyze its li–qi metaphysics (a philosophical explanation of the universe through the intricate and interactive relation between the two cosmic processes, li and qi) and its conflicting viewpoints on the moral psychological nature of emotion. Because of the ambiguities and inconsistencies in the Neo-Confucian explanation, specifically those of the Cheng–Zhu schools of Neo-Confucianism on the nature and functions of the mind, Korean Neo-Confucians struggled to bring Neo-Confucian li–qi metaphysics to the moral and practical issues of the human mind and moral cultivation. Later in the Joseon dynasty, some Korean Neo-Confucians discussed the fundamental limitations of li–qi metaphysics and developed their explanations for the goodness of the moral mind and the world from an alternative (i.e., theistic) viewpoint.

scholarly journals The American Film Musical and the Place(less)ness of Entertainment: Cabaret’s “International Sensation” and American Identity in Crisis

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Florian Zitzelsberger
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
American Film ◽  
Recent Application ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
National Boundaries

This article looks at cosmopolitanism in the American film musical through the lens of the genre’s self-reflexivity. By incorporating musical numbers into its narrative, the musical mirrors the entertainment industry mise en abyme, and establishes an intrinsic link to America through the act of (cultural) performance. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope and its recent application to the genre of the musical, I read the implicitly spatial backstage/stage duality overlaying narrative and number—the musical’s dual registers—as a means of challenging representations of Americanness, nationhood, and belonging. The incongruities arising from the segmentation into dual registers, realms complying with their own rules, destabilize the narrative structure of the musical and, as such, put the semantic differences between narrative and number into critical focus. A close reading of the 1972 film Cabaret, whose narrative is set in 1931 Berlin, shows that the cosmopolitanism of the American film musical lies in this juxtaposition of non-American and American (at least connotatively) spaces and the self-reflexive interweaving of their associated registers and narrative levels. If metalepsis designates the transgression of (onto)logically separate syntactic units of film, then it also symbolically constitutes a transgression and rejection of national boundaries. In the case of Cabaret, such incongruities and transgressions eventually undermine the notion of a stable American identity, exposing the American Dream as an illusion produced by the inherent heteronormativity of the entertainment industry. The film advocates a cosmopolitan model of cultural hybridity and the plurality of identities by shedding light on the faultlines of nationalist essentialism.

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