scholarly journals A Biosemiotic Modeling of the Body-“Self” Synechism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Asuncion L. Magsino

As a counterargument to the Cartesian split that has impacted both speculative and practical fields of knowledge and culture, we propose Peirce’s doctrine of synechism to show the continuity in the semiotic activity that moves from the body as an Interpretant to the emergence of another Interpretant called the “self.” Biosemiotics, a nascent field of interdisciplinary research that tackles inquiries about signs, communication, and information involving living organisms is used as the framework in the discussion. The main question of whether a non-material “self” can emerge from a material body is tackled in many stages. First, the biosemiotic continuum is established in the natural biological processes that takes place in the body. These processes can be taken as an autonomous semiotic system generating the “language” of the body or the Primary Modeling System (PMS). Second, synechism is also observed in the relationship between the mind and the body and this is evident in any physician’s clinical practice. The patient creates a Secondary Modeling System (SMS) of how she perceives what the body communicates to her regarding its state or condition. Finally, the question about whether the emergence of “self” is synechistic as well is tackled. There is one organ from which emerges an Interpretant that is capable of generating a dialog between a Subject, that is the “self,” with its Object, and that is the brain. It is the primordial seat of specifically human activities like thought and language. The recent theory on quantum consciousness supports the doctrine synechism between the body as Interpretant to the “self” as Interpretant. This synechism is crucial for the creation of Secondary Models of “reality” that will, in turn, determine the creation of Tertiary Models more familiarly called culture.

Romantik ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Veliki Domines Martina

This essay takes as its point of departure the idea that we usually experience ourselves in relation to place. The conception of human identity as bound up with the sense of place is not a specifically romantic phenomenon. However, in romanticism place acquires a new significance: it is linked through memory to the events experienced by the self. Thus the romantic self is constituted not only through memory understood as a temporal category but also as a spatial category. Such reading of the chosen romantic texts is contrary to the well-established readings, which prioritize the mind of the writer over the material world. However paradoxical it may seem to regard Rousseau and Wordsworth as ‘bodily writers’, acutely aware of the significance of place, Reveries of a Solitary Walker and The Excursion reveal writers aware of man as a physical being and of his capacity to remember through the body. Therefore, through phenomenological readings of the afore-mentioned texts (drawing on Bachelard, Casey, and Malpas) I will explore the relationship between the mind and the place through such concepts as ‘body memory’, localization of memory, and intersubjective memory.


Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.


2000 ◽  
Vol 86 (3_part_2) ◽  
pp. 1149-1154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandy S. Wegner ◽  
Anita M. Hartmann ◽  
C. R. Geist

The purpose of this study was to assess the immediate influence of brief exposure to images taken from print media on the general self-consciousness and body self-consciousness of 67 college women. After viewing photographs of either thin female models or control photographs, the women completed the Self-consciousness Scale and the Body Self-consciousness Questionnaire. Although a was .45, the college women who looked at images of thin female models gave immediate ratings significantly ( p < .001) higher on both general Self-consciousness and Body Self-consciousness than those who looked at control images.


2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Brytek-Matera ◽  
Anna Kozieł

Abstract The purposes of the present study were to explore the relationship between body awareness and negative body attitude, interoceptive body awareness and physical self in women practicing fitness as well as to analyze the determinants of body awareness. The Body Awareness Questionnaire, the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, the Physical Self-Description Questionnaire and the Body Attitude Test were applied to 43 women practicing fitness and 32 non-fitness practitioners. Bodily self-awareness was connected with greater fitness practitioners’ interoceptive body awareness and greater physical self. Noticing and global esteem predicted body awareness in women practicing fitness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Surjo Soekadar ◽  
Jennifer Chandler ◽  
Marcello Ienca ◽  
Christoph Bublitz

Recent advances in neurotechnology allow for an increasingly tight integration of the human brain and mind with artificial cognitive systems, blending persons with technologies and creating an assemblage that we call a hybrid mind. In some ways the mind has always been a hybrid, emerging from the interaction of biology, culture (including technological artifacts) and the natural environment. However, with the emergence of neurotechnologies enabling bidirectional flows of information between the brain and AI-enabled devices, integrated into mutually adaptive assemblages, we have arrived at a point where the specific examination of this new instantiation of the hybrid mind is essential. Among the critical questions raised by this development are the effects of these devices on the user’s perception of the self, and on the user’s experience of their own mental contents. Questions arise related to the boundaries of the mind and body and whether the hardware and software that are functionally integrated with the body and mind are to be viewed as parts of the person or separate artifacts subject to different legal treatment. Other questions relate to how to attribute responsibility for actions taken as a result of the operations of a hybrid mind, as well as how to settle questions of the privacy and security of information generated and retained within a hybrid mind.


REPERTÓRIO ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 298
Author(s):  
Regina Miranda

<p class="p1">Resumo:</p><p class="p2">Ao tomar como contexto teórico as pesquisas em Harmonias Espaciais desenvolvidas pelo teórico de movimento Rudolf Laban na primeira metade do século XX, este artigo considera o longo predomínio da visão de um <em>alguém</em> que habitava um <em>espaço vazio </em>separado do corpo e aponta perspectivas contemporâneas, que<em> </em>tornaram o<em> </em>espaço entre/em ambos mais fluido e plástico. A contribuição teórica aqui apresentada indicou a necessidade da inclusão de configurações geométricas mais instáveis no campo Labaniano e também a criação de percursos para a encarnação de conceitos, que pudessem representar essas novas interações. Como um dos territórios da pesquisa artística que fundamenta esta narrativa, o encontro com a tecnologia foi explorado, inicialmente, como uma forma de ampliar a experiência corpo-espacial dos atuantes formais e informais de uma performance, oferecendo a possibilidade de um desenho cênico que incluía a articulação entre espaços físicos e virtuais e de conexões espaciais de livre escolha. Mais recentemente, a relação se ampliou em uma experiência interdisciplinar de criação cênica e coreográfica em interatividade com processos computacionais. Nos exemplos apontados, o que rege a escolha das tecnologias é o interesse artístico e conceitual de investigar como cada tecnologia pode colaborar na criação, deslocamento e distorção de espaços performáticos.</p><p class="p3"><span class="s1">Palavras-chave: </span>Arte e tecnologia. Artes cênicas. Campo labaniano. Corpo-espaço. Performance imersiva.</p><p class="p3"> </p><p>SHIFTING SPACES: POETICS OF INTERACTION BETWEEN ART AND TECHNOLOGY</p><p class="p1"><em>Abstract:</em></p><p class="p5"><em>Embracing as theoretical context the Space Harmonies’ research developed by movement theorist Rudolf Laban during the first half of the 20th century, this paper considers the long predominance of the vision of someone who inhabited an empty space separated from the body, and points toward contemporary perspectives, which have made the space between/in both more fluid and plastic. The theoretical contribution presented here indicated the need to include more unstable geometric configurations in the Labanian field and the creation of paths for the incarnation of concepts, which could represent these new interactions. As one of the areas of artistic research that underlies this narrative, the encounter with technology was initially explored as a way to broaden the body-space experience of the formal and informal participants of a performance. It offered the possibility of a scenic design that included the articulation between physical and virtual spaces and free-choice spatial connections. More recently, the relationship expanded in an interdisciplinary experience of scenic and choreographic creation in interactivity with computational processes. In the mentioned examples, what defines the choice of the technologies is the artistic and conceptual interest to investigate how each technology can collaborate in the creation, displacement and distortion of performative spaces.</em></p><p class="p3"><span class="s1"><em>Keywords: </em></span><em>Art and technology. Performing arts. Labanian field. Body-space. Immersive performance.</em></p>


1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 742-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin O'Connor

In 1866, theAtlantic Monthlypublished a fictional case study of an army surgeon who had lost all of his limbs during the Civil War. Written anonymously by American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, “The Case of George Dedlow” describes not only the series of wounds and infections which led to the amputation of all four of the soldier's arms and legs but also the after-effects of amputation. Reduced to what he terms “a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than anything of human shape,” Dedlow finds that in disarticulating his body, amputation articulates anatomical norms. His observation of his own uniquely altered state qualifies him to speak in universal terms about the relationship between sentience and selfhood: “I have dictated these pages,” he says, “not to shock my readers, but to possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the body” (1866:5). As such, the story explores the meaning of embodiment, finding in a fragmented anatomy the opportunity to piece together a more complete understanding of how the body functions—physically and metaphysically—as a whole.


2020 ◽  
pp. 115-148
Author(s):  
Joel P. Christensen

This chapter explores the creation of narrative agency by examining Odysseus's lies in the second half of the Odyssey from a perspective informed by correspondence and coherence in memory. The lying tales offer a continuing although coded probing of the relationship between the self, internal motivation, external action, and an evaluation of consequences. Odysseus's storytelling changes from reflective of his own experiences to manipulative of his addressees and, finally, in addresses to the suitors in particular, predictive of future actions. In an important way, this pattern continues the process of Narrative Therapy, as Odysseus continues to re-author his past in order to predict and act in the future. But this process also entails a complex negotiation between the correspondence of narrative details, which may be shared by a community, and the agent's need for coherence. The chapter's reading of the lies echoes what others have said — that they are instruments by which he achieves his psychological homecoming — but also argues that they have other functions as well in helping to distinguish Odysseus's character further and in providing insights for the Homeric understanding of the interdependence between storytelling and the working of human minds.


Humanities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Alberto Tondello

In Agency and Embodiment, Carrie Noland describes gesture as “a type of inscription, a parsing of the body into signifying and operational units”, considering it as a means to read and decode the human body. Through an analysis of James Joyce’s collection of Epiphanies, my paper will examine how gesture, as a mode of expression of the body, can be transcribed on the written page. Written and collected to record a “spiritual manifestation” shining through “in the vulgarity of speech or gesture, or in a memorable phase of the mind itself”, Joyce’s Epiphanies can be considered as the first step in his sustained attempt to develop an art of gesture-as-rhythm. These short pieces appear as the site in which the author seeks, through the medium of writing, to negotiate and redefine the boundaries of the physical human body. Moving towards a mapping of body and mind through the concept of rhythm, and pointing to a collaboration and mutual influence between interiority and exteriority, the Epiphanies open up a space for the reformulation of the relationship between the human body and its environment. Unpacking the ideas that sit at the heart of the concept of epiphany, the paper will shed light on how this particular mode of writing produces a rhythmic art of gesture, fixing and simultaneously liberating human and nonhuman bodies on the written page.


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