Heidegger’s notion of ‘handiness’ combines two meanings, which in my view should be separated. They both refer to ways of characterizing tools in a given culture. Every culture uses tools, and they are all used so they are ‘handy’. The question is: Handy with regard to what? Two answers come to mind. The first one suggests that handiness is typical of the aims achieved in a given culture, which are linked with that culture’s system of values. Having been fulfilled, the (...) aims seem to disappear, but new ones emerge and the cultural values are all the time appreciated. The aims and values constitute a part of the vision of the world accepted by the members of a given cultural community. In such a context, we can understand the handiness of tools as their optimum quality in facilitating the achievement of the aims which maintain the current cultural values, and so the existence of a given culture. The second answer links handiness with fulfilling the requirements of the human body. When considering the body in terms of its biological categories (as an organism) we can bear in mind its universal characteristics such as limbs, height, differences in body measurements, etc. In such a context, Martin Heidegger’s handiness can be understood pragmatically, as the features of a tool when adjusting it to the human body. In this paper, I propose a thesis that contemporary design loses handiness of the first type, while concentrating on making tools more and more comfortable for the human body. The cultural aims and values traditionally recognized in a given culture lose their priority, or seem to be ignored. At the same time, every tool user is given a chance to develop handiness of the first type. Whether we use this opportunity or not is another problem. (shrink)

Starting from the observation of the binary character YES/NOT of our decisions in relation to the information received from the environment, determining both our life and specie evolution by adaptation, it is defined the info-creational field and thought as an information operator on this field, allowing to describe the individual EGO as a receiver and producer information system, based on an operational and a programmed informational subsystem. Consciousness appears thus be an integrated information system which allows the adaptation to the (...) environment and survival of specie, supported by informed matter (physical body) to maintain functionality of the whole. On this basis, there were identified two main informational circuits of the human body controlled by the consciousness: (i) the attitude as a short-time reaction circuit allowing the immediate adaptation to the environment; (ii) the informational genetic transmission as a large-time process assuring both the evolution by the transference of the new adaptation characteristics to the next generations and the survival of the specie. Observing the anti-entropic nature of the information activity mobilized to support the living structure, there were identified the anti-entropic, antigravitational and reverse temporal arrow features that the thought could access under special focusing conditions, similar to those of antimatter, explaining the paranormal capacities like premonition, psychotherapy, telekinesis and levitation, particularly the cloud dissipation, induced/supported by the mind power. (shrink)

The theory of information and Cybernetics allowed the transcendence of the material substrata of the human being by thinking it in terms of information units. The whole material world is reduced to information flows, which are encoded in various forms and which, by means of algorithms can be processed and reconfigured with a view to multiple simulation of the physical reality we live in. By applying these codes, communication and information technologies open the possibility of multidimensional reconstruction of the (...) body in the virtual environment. With the assistance of technology, the body becomes a communication interface between the real and the virtual world. As a communication interface, the body‟s structure is broken down to the core functions and then telematically reconstructed in the virtual reality as tele-perception, telepresence, tele-kinaesthesia, etc. The virtual reconstruction of the body not only involves the transformation of its functions, but also the transformation of the approach of the human being which now is at the intersection between the real world and the various virtual worlds generated by technology. The conception of subject centred on selfconsciousness is thus cancelled, instead appearing the idea of the fluid, unstable subject who lacks a centre being diffused in a network. (shrink)

The human body is a system made of systems. The body is divided into bodily systems proper, such as the endocrine and circulatory systems, which are subdivided into many sub-systems at a variety of levels, whereby all systems and subsystems engage in massive causal interaction with each other and with their surrounding environments. Here we offer an explicit definition of bodily system and provide a framework for understanding their causal interactions. Medical sciences provide at best informal accounts (...) of basic notions such as system, process, and function, and while such informality is acceptable in documentation created for human beings, it falls short of what is needed for computer representations. In our analysis we will accordingly provide the framework for a formal definition of bodily system and of associated notions. (shrink)

The human body has always been one of the most important subjects for European artists. But the way it is displayed in art has varied in different epochs. In ancient Greece, a canon was constituted that proclaimed an ideal vision of the body, derived from the rules governing the universe. This idealization of the human body, neglected in the Middle Ages, was re‑established in Renaissance and Classicist art. However, Renaissance artists also created another image of (...) the human body by borrowing from patterns mainly found in nature, and started to depict their models not in an ideal but rather in a more natural shape. The new non‑ideal forms of art that appeared in Mannerist art made the artists develop a much wider artistic language, which brought into being a variety of individually interpreted artistic representations of the human body. It preceded similar phenomena which became widespread in the twentieth century. Thus, the human body was not always displayed in art as strong, healthy and beautiful. On the contrary, the martyred bodies of Christ and the saints, as well as the depictions of aged, tired or ill people, also carried enormous artistic expression. A distinct problem has occurred with the ways in which corpses have been presented in art. The review concludes with a reference to the contemporary trend called Body‑Art that involves various artistic activities, such as happenings and performances, where the human body is itself used as a significant work of art. (shrink)

Medical science conceives the human body as a system comprised of many subsystems at a variety of levels. At the highest level are bodily systems proper, such as the endocrine system, which are central to our understanding of human anatomy, and play a key role in diagnosis and in dynamic modeling as well as in medical pedagogy and computer visualization. But there is no explicit definition of what a bodily system is; such informality is acceptable in documentation (...) created for human beings, but falls short of what is needed for computer representations. Our analysis is intended as a first step towards filling this gap. (shrink)

This article addresses a debate in Descartes scholarship over the mind-dependence or -independence of time by turning to Merleau-Ponty’s "Nature" and "The Visible and the Invisible." In doing so, it shows that both sides of the debate ignore that time for Descartes is a measure of duration in general. The consequences to remembering what time is are that the future is shown to be the invisible of an intertwining of past and future, and that historicity is the invisible of God.

I argue in this paper that philosophers have not clearly introduced the concept of a body in terms of which the problem of other minds and its solutions have been traditionally stated; that one can raise fatal objections to attempts to introduce this concept; and that the particular form of the problem of other minds which is stated in terms of the concept is confused and requires no solution. The concept of a "body" which may or may not (...) be the body of a person, which is required to state the traditional problem, is, on close examination, incoherent and cannot be introduced into a reasonable philosophical discussion. Also published in The Philosophy of the Body, Rejections of Cartesian Dualism, ed. Stuart F. Spicker. (shrink)

Descartes argued that the passions of the soul were immediately felt in the body, as the animal spirits, affected by the movement of the pineal gland, spread through the body. In Leibniz the effect of emotions in the body is a different question as he did not allow the direct interaction between the mind and the body, although maintaining a psychophysical parallelism between them. -/- In general, he avoids discussing emotions in bodily terms, saying that general (...) inclinations, passions, pleasures and pains belong only to the mind or to the soul (NE II, xxi, §72). He is also keen to point out that our passions derive mostly from our bodies. However, like Spinoza (Ethics III, prop. XI, Scholium) he thought that some emotions such as joy can produce pleasures which can be described also in bodily terms. For example, in a short memoir Felicity he says that music can be a pleasure for the ears and symmetry can be a pleasure for the eyes. These more intellectual emotions are actions in the sense that they represent perfection emanating from their source, the absolutely perfect being, that is, God. The feeling of perfection may produce a state of well-being which concerns both the soul and the body. -/- In my paper I will trace instances of Leibniz’s remarks on how these kind of emotions affect the body. I will also discuss the different ways the body gives rise to passions in the soul. My primary source is Nouveaux essais, book II, chapter xx and xxi, but I will also discuss various other writings by Leibniz. (shrink)

Review of Nils Hoppe book, Bioequity--Property in the Body.

In this paper, we aim at rethinking the concept of obesity in a way that better captures the connection between underlying medical aspects, on the one hand, and an individual’s developmental history, on the other. Our proposal rests on the idea that obesity is not to be understood as a phenotypic trait or character; rather, obesity represents one of the many possible states of a more complex phenotypic trait that we call ‘energy metabolism.’ We argue that this apparently simple conceptual (...) shift can help solve important theoretical misconceptions regarding the genetics, epigenetics, and development of obesity. In addition, we show that our proposal can be fruitfully paired with the concept of developmental channeling of a trait, which connects to the study of the plasticity and canalization of complex traits. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of our approach on the assessment, treatment, and social narratives of obesity. (shrink)

In this paper we assess two sides of the debate concerning biomedical enhancement. First, the idea that biomedical enhancement should be prohibited on the grounds that it degrades human nature; second, that biomedical enhancement can in principle remove the source of moral evil. In so doing, we will propose a different notion of human nature, what we shall call the agato-teleological idea of human nature, and its implications for a philosophical understanding of the human body. (...) Also, we will point out why it seems unreasonable to think that bodily enhancement is sufficient to guarantee moral progress. Finally, we will propose the idea that our technological societies are in need of a new moral virtue, what we shall call the virtue of non-conservative bodily integrity. (shrink)

In an earlier paper in Theoria, I discussed an argument based on the idea of “soul-switching” that attempted to undermine the immaterialist account of human beings. The present paper deals with a parity argument against that argument in which the idea of “body-switching” plays a pivotal role. I call these two arguments, that have been reported by Razi (d. 1210), respectively “the soul-switching argument” and “the body-switching argument”. After some introductory remarks, section 2 of the paper describes (...) the structure of the latter argument. Section 3 considers some philosophical discussions in the ancient, modern, and contemporary eras in which the idea of body-switching (or some similar conception) plays a major role. In the following section 4, some criticisms of the argument are discussed and a general response that is meant to cover a broad range of objections is considered. This paper shows that the body-switching argument reported by Razi is a methodological antecedent of several contemporary arguments in defence of substance dualism. (shrink)

Much mischief concerning the concept of a human body is generated by the failure of philosophers to distinguish various important senses of the term 'body.' I discuss three of those senses and illustrate the issues they can generate by discussing the concept of a Lockean exchange of bodies as well as the brain-body switch.

In this paper it is analyzed from the informational perspective the relation between mind and body, an ancient philosophic issue defined as a problem, which still did not receive up to date an adequate solution. By introducing/using the concept of information, it is shown that this concept includes two facets, one of them referring to the common communications and another one referring to a hidden/structuring matter-related information, effectively acting in the human body and in the living systems, (...) which determines the dynamic inter-change of information between specific structures of the organism by electric/electronic/chemical agents and genetic/epigenetic processes. It is shown that the maintenance of body, permanently and obligatory depending on the external matter (foods, air, water) resources, needed to provide both the structuring/restructuring basic material and energy, determines the necessary existence of an info-managing system, administrating the internal mechano-chemical/physical processes. As a natural consequence, such a system should organize and assure own survival by an effective informational operability to detect the external food resources, to select the appropriate interest information and to decide as a function of circumstances. One important component in such an informational system is memory, allowing to dispose of the reference informational data for analysis/comparison and the selection between good and bad binary possible decisions. The memory receives and stores therefore signals from external reality and from the body itself, referring to the emotional reaction, digestion status, creation, and inherited predilections, within specific info-neural communication circuits between the brain and body execution/sensitive organs, the human body appearing as an integrated info-matter self-managed dynamic system. The specific body components memorize information with different degrees of info-integration: short/long-term integration, emotive/action reaction, info-abilities, culminating with the integration in the chromosomal structures by epigenetic processes. The new acquired information is transgenerationally transmissible, and is manifested as new traits, showing the adaptation capability of the human and close relation between mind and body. Analyzing the results of such a mind-body informational model in comparison with the earlier assumed/proposed/asserted archaic, Greek and Occidental philosophies, which represent only partial aspects of this relation, it is shown that this informational model, elaborated in terms of information on the basis of scientific reasons and arguments, constitutes a general, realist, and coherent model of the mind-body relation, able to integrate and/or explain most of the others. (shrink)

We describe the rationale for an application ontology covering the domain of human body fluids that is designed to facilitate representation, reuse, sharing and integration of diagnostic, physiological, and biochemical data, We briefly review the Blood Ontology (BLO), Saliva Ontology (SALO) and Kidney and Urinary Pathway Ontology (KUPO) initiatives. We discuss the methods employed in each, and address the project of using them as starting point for a unified body fluids ontology resource. We conclude with a description (...) of how the body fluids ontology initiative may provide support to basic and translational science. (shrink)

The current issue of Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal (2015, vol. 5, no. 1) provides a platform for cross‑cultural studies of the human body, the embodied mind, agency, intentionality, and various axiological aspects of the human psychophysical identity. Out of the twenty articles that compose this issue, thirteen original papers address the leading theme, namely Psychophysical integrity of the human self. Comparative approach: philosophy, literature and art. The multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives include references to Western and eastern (...) cultural traditions, as well as juxtaposing a variety of views on human corporeality and the mind‑body relationship, discussed from the perspectives of philosophical theories (Venieri, Jakubczak, Kamińska, Kołdrzak, King, Wachowski), literary works (Kamińska, Milewska) and visual artefacts (King, Staniszewska, Wałek, Popczyk, Romanowicz, Lipowicz). (shrink)

In An Inquiry into the Human Mind and in Essays on Intellectual Powers, Thomas Reid discusses what kinds of things perceivers are related to in perception. Are these things qualities of bodies, the bodies themselves, or both? This question places him in a long tradition of philosophers concerned with understanding how human perception works in connecting us with the external world. It is still an open question in the philosophy of perception whether the human perceptual system is (...) providing us with representations as of bodies, or only as of their properties. My project in this article is to explain how, on Reid's view, we can have perceptual representations as of bodies. This, in turn, enables him to argue that we have a robust understanding of the world around us, an understanding that would be missing if our perceptual system only supplied us with representations as of free-floating properties of bodies. (shrink)

Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds is an eye-opening and thought- provoking book that sets out a much-needed contribution to the study of the relationship between animals, cognition and the environment. The volume provides remarkable new insights into how to understand animal (including human) behavior, raises interesting questions about the role of environmental affordances in the emergence of complex cognitive processes and provides the reader with a refreshing break from the wearisome (...) excess of brain-centric literature that still pervades much of the debate surrounding evolutionary psychology. In embracing the theoretical framework endorsed by proponents of embodied cognition, Barrett adopts an ecological approach to psychology that aims at challenging any attempt to describe complex thinking and flexible behavior as mere by-products of internal cognitive activity. (shrink)

This paper takes a new look at an old question: what is the human self? It offers a proposal for theorizing the self from an enactive perspective as an autonomous system that is constituted through interpersonal relations. It addresses a prevalent issue in the philosophy of cognitive science: the body-social problem. Embodied and social approaches to cognitive identity are in mutual tension. On the one hand, embodied cognitive science risks a new form of methodological individualism, implying a dichotomy (...) not between the outside world of objects and the brain-bound individual but rather between body-bound individuals and the outside social world. On the other hand, approaches that emphasize the constitutive relevance of social interaction processes for cognitive identity run the risk of losing the individual in the interaction dynamics and of downplaying the role of embodiment. This paper adopts a middle way and outlines an enactive approach to individuation that is neither individualistic nor disembodied but integrates both approaches. Elaborating on Jonas’ notion of needful freedom it outlines an enactive proposal to understanding the self as co-generated in interactions and relations with others. I argue that the human self is a social existence that is organized in terms of a back and forth between social distinction and participation processes. On this view, the body, rather than being identical with the social self, becomes its mediator. (shrink)

History can be understood as involving a problematic interplay between the long-term legacy of human evolution, still tempered into the human body today, and the shorter-term heritage of civilization from its beginnings to the present. Each of us lives in a tension between our indigenous bodies and our civilized selves, between the philosophy of the earth and that which I characterize as “the philosophy of escape from the earth.” The standard story of civilization is one of linear (...) upward progress, a story that I contest with an alternative philosophy of history, picturing history instead as a set of concentric circles. I have devised a new philosophy of history with a three-part approach to understanding human development, taking civilization not as a linear advance of progress, but rather as a progress in precision, paradoxically counteracted by a regression in mind: history as a contraction of mind. I describe three stages in the contraction of mind: 1) animate mind as the evolved outlook of foraging life; 2) anthropocentric mind as representing the contracting transformation of consciousness produced by agriculturally-based civilization; 3) mechanico-centric mind as representing a further contraction from human-centered to a machine-centered consciousness, produced by the rise of modern civilization and the mechanical scientific worldview. Hence, this progressive contraction is marked by a turn from original practical and reverential attunement to the living earth in hunting and gathering societies, or animate mind, to a narrower focus of anthropocentric mind beginning with the development of early civilizations, where the human element became central and the wild devalued. And it moves to an even more narrow focus of mechanico-centric mind, expanding out of late medieval Europe and the development of modern science, where the machine became model of the ultimate, the objectivist filter through which the world is to be understood and made to fit. Far from controlling nature, humans have been consuming it in an unsustainable Malthusian-like trajectory whose limits are being reached in our time. (shrink)

For those who find Dreyfus’s critique of AI compelling, the prospects for producing true artificial human intelligence are bleak. An important question thus becomes, what are the prospects for producing artificial non-human intelligence? Applying Dreyfus’s work to this question is difficult, however, because his work is so thoroughly human-centered. Granting Dreyfus that the body is fundamental to intelligence, how are we to conceive of non-human bodies? In this paper, I argue that bringing Dreyfus’s work into (...) conversation with the work of Mark Bickhard offers a way of answering this question, and I try to suggest what doing so means for AI research. (shrink)

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature focusing on Anton Wilhelm Amo’s account of the mind-body relation. The first aim of this paper is to provide an overview of that literature, bringing together several interpretations of Amo’s account of the mind-body relation and providing a comprehensive overview of where the debate stands so far. Doing so reveals that commentary is split between those who take Amo to adopt a Leibnizian account of pre-established harmony between mind (...) and body (Smith 2015, Emma-Adamah 2015) and those who argue that Amo adopts a theory of occasional causation (Meyns 2019, Walsh 2019). Both views deny that the body is the efficient cause of the mind’s ideas but while the Leibnizian account holds that ideas exist innately in the mind, the occasional causation account maintains that the body is their occasional cause. That is, on this reading of Amo, sensations in the body are the ‘occasion’ on which the mind efficiently causes its own ideas. The second aim of this paper – which promises to take this interpretative debate in a new direction – is to demonstrate that we should in fact attribute to Amo a specific version of occasional causation known as 'concurrentism'. Concurrentism is the view that, while the mind does efficiently cause its own ideas, it can only do so with the assistance (or ‘concurrence’) of God. In other words, on this view, God makes possible the efficient causal activity of the human mind in generating ideas, in response to ‘occasions’ in the body. (shrink)

Mind-body parallelism is the view that mind and body stand in the same “order and connection,” as Spinoza put it, or that corresponding mental and physical states have corresponding causal explanations in terms of other mental and physical states. This dissertation investigates the nature and role of mind-body parallelism, as well as other forms of parallelism, in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind. In doing so, it also considers how Spinoza’s views relate to current discussions. In present-day philosophy of (...) mind, mind-body parallelism is almost never defended. It is seen as a historical dead-end with insurmountable problems. By contrast, I argue that parallelism powerfully responds to the post-Cartesian mind-body problem (which remains with us today) and that it points a way forward in current debates. The dissertation contains five independent chapters. After an introduction that situates parallelism in relation to both Spinoza’s time and to present discussions, Chapter 1 presents an argument for parallelism aimed at a present-day audience. Chapter 2 discusses Spinoza’s own arguments for parallelism. Both chapters help to clarify what parallelism is, in part by distinguishing between several versions of the view. Chapter 3 discusses what is often considered parallelism’s most problematic feature, its rejection of mind-body interaction. I argue that by distinguishing between the post-Cartesian context in which Spinoza wrote and present-day discussions, we can see that parallelism is compatible with mental causation. Chapters 4 and 5, finally, discuss specific ways in which parallelism is at work in Spinoza’s view of the mind. In Chapter 4, I argue that parallelism is at work in Spinoza’s interesting and distinctive positions on the nature of agency and motivation. In Chapter 5, I show the role of parallelism in his representationalist theory of consciousness. A guiding thread throughout the dissertation is that parallelism presents a distinctive and interesting way to combine realism, non-reductionism and naturalism in relation to those features of human self-understanding that seem difficult to fit into a naturalistic worldview. (shrink)

Se propone un examen crítico de la última obra de J.-L. Marion titulada, dedicada a la unión de alma y cuerpo, y cuya tesis principal es: los problemas que esta unión suscita confunden dos términos, cuerpo y mi cuerpo. Esta confusión lleva a que se apliquen al primero categorías propias del segundo. Se examinan las "paradojas ónticas" que mi cuerpo (la carne) inaugura (a); se despeja la tesis de dos interpretaciones de las meditaciones primera y sexta (b); se discute la (...) "excepción a la metafísica" instaurada por el conocimiento de mi cuerpo (c); se arriesga, siguiendo una indicación del autor, la apertura a una dimensión ética que exige examinar ya no la unión de cuerpo y alma, sino la unión por el amor a un semejante y a la comunidad de semejantes (d). -/- The article carries out a critical examination of J.-L. Marion's latest work, "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", whose main thesis is that the problems posed by the union of body and soul confuse two terms: body and my body. This confusion leads to the application to the former of categories inherent to the latter. The paper examines the "ontic paradoxes" that my body (the flesh) gives rise to (a); it clarifies the thesis of two interpretations of the First and Sixth Meditations (b); it discusses the "exception to metaphysics" established by the knowledge of my body (c); and, following an indication by the author, it proposes an opening to the ethical dimension, which demands an examination of the union, through love, with a fellow human being and with the community of human beings, rather than of the union of body and soul (d). -/- Neste artigo, propõe-se um exame crítico da última obra de J.-L. Marion, intitulada "Sur la pensée passive de Descartes", dedicada à união de alma e corpo, e cuja tese principal é: os problemas que essa união suscita confundem dois termos, corpo e meu corpo. Essa confusão leva a que se apliquem ao primeiro categorias próprias do segundo. Examinam-se os "paradoxos ônticos" que meu corpo (a carne) inaugura; a tese de duas interpretações das medita ccedil;ões primeira e sexta é esclarecida; arrisca-se, seguindo uma indicação do autor, a abertura a uma dimensão ética que exige examinar já não a união de corpo e alma, mas sim a união pelo amor a um semelhante e à comunidade de semelhantes. (shrink)

In recent years, questions regarding the ontological status of the human have been raised with renewed interest and imagination within various fields of critical thought. In the face of biotechnological findings and increasingly advanced technologies that connect as well as disturb settled boundaries, whether geographical or bodily, not to mention philosophical questionings of traditional western humanism, the boundaries of the human subject have been contested. The human body, traditionally imagined as closed and autonomous, has been opened (...) up to a world of forces and agencies that are strange, other and often deeply disturbing when viewed from an anthropocentric standpoint. Rather than close down anxieties concerning such boundary transgressions and ontological uncertainties, scholars – not least within areas such as feminist, posthumanist and queer theory – have argued that here lie possibilities as well as an ethical urgency to rethink the human subject, its world(s) and its others. Indeed, what might it mean to view the world from positions that do not take the pure and autonomous human form as its starting point? And what ethical considerations does such a viewpoint demand of us? (shrink)

Defenders of evolutionary medicine claim that medical professionals and public health officials would do well to consider the role of evolutionary biology with respect to the teaching, research, and judgments pertaining to medical theory and practice. An integral part of their argument is that the human body should be understood as a bundle of evolutionary compromises. Such an appreciation, which includes a proper understanding of biological function and physiological homeostasis, would provide a crucial perspective regarding the understanding and (...) securing of human health needs currently lacking in the medical arena. (shrink)

'An alarming and illuminating book. The story of how we have allowed private corporations to patent genes, to stockpile human tissue, and in short to make profits out of what many people feel ought to be common goods is a shocking one. No one with any interest at all in medicine and society and how they interact should miss this book, and it should be required reading for every medical student,'--Philip Pullman.

Aesthetic evaluations of human bodies have important implications for moral recognition and for individuals’ access to social and material goods. Unfortunately, there is a widespread aesthetic disregard for non-white bodies. Aesthetic evaluations depend on the aesthetic properties we regard objects as having. And it is widely agreed that aesthetic properties are directly accessed in our experience of aesthetic objects. How, then, might we explain aesthetic evaluations that systematically favour features associated with white identity? Critical race philosophers, like Alia Al-Saji, (...) Mariana Ortega, Paul C. Taylor, and George Yancy, argue that this is because the perception of racialized bodies is affected by the social structures in which they are appreciated. The aim of this paper is to propose how social structures can affect aesthetic perception. I argue that mental imagery acquired through the interaction with aesthetic phenomena structures the perception of non-aesthetic properties of bodies, so that aesthetic properties consistent with racist stereotypes are attributed to individuals. (shrink)

In his Meditations Descartes concludes that he is a res cogitans, an unextended entity whose essence is to be conscious. His reasoning in support of the conclusion that he exists entirely distinct from his body has seemed unconvincing to his critics. I attempt to show that the reasoning which he offers in support of his conclusion. although mistaken, is more plausible and his mistakes more interesting than his critics have acknowledged.

Dancers and dance philosophers report on experiences of a certain form of sense making and bodily thinking through the dancing body. Yet, discussions on expertise and consciousness are often framed within canonical philosophical world-views that make it difficult to fully recognize, verbalize, and value the full variety of embodied and affective facets of subjectivity. Using qualitative interviews with five professional dancers and choreographers, I make an attempt to disclose the characteristics of what I consider to be a largely overseen (...) state of consciousness: embodied reflection. Dancers are familiar with this attentive bodily presence, which constitutes their work mode and heightens their abilities as experts. Detailed descriptions of their daily work at the theatre help us grasp the qualities and understand the enigmas of the absorbed state of bodily thinking. Husserl’s theories on reflection and Merleau-Ponty’s work on motoricity support our understanding of the structures behind embodied reflection. I believe it is a common human resource, and that whether we are experts or not, we all have the ability to reflect non-conceptually through bodily and/or affective activity. (shrink)

Some animal defenders are committed to complete abstinence from animal products. However the strongest arguments for adopting veganism only seem to require that one avoid using animal products, where use or procurement of these products will harm sentient animals. As such, there is seemingly a gap between our intuition and our argument. In this article I attempt to defend the more comprehensive claim that we have a moral reason to avoid using animal products, regardless of the method of procurement. I (...) argue that animal bodies give rise to properties which grant sentient animals’ moral status and in light of this, animal bodies possess final value in themselves. This final value gives us a moral reason not to commodify animal bodies, which means we have a defeasible reason to abstain from using animal products in almost all circumstances. (shrink)

From the perspective of the Informational Model of Consciousness elaborated and reported recently on the basis of the last discoveries of the quantum mechanics and astrophysics, the meeting horizon between some ancient coherent empirical models of the humanity and our modern scientific results is analyzed. These results are discussed in terms of information, as a central axis relating the universe, the human and inter-humanity connections, and consciousness as an informational tool for the exploration of the reality. Bringing into discussion (...) the relevant recent discoveries of quantum mechanics (Higgs’ boson, disembodiment of information from the physical particles), and matter/information properties near the black holes, it is reinforced the concept of information as one of the fundamental constituent of matter and of our universe, showing that information is actually the base fabric of matter structures, living structures and universe. The huge quantity of dynamic information engaged in the living structures, particularly in the human organism, necessary to maintain the life’s functions and to allow the adaptation requirements, differentiates the living from non-living entities. It is shown that consciousness, human and universe cannot be really understood if it is not introduced on the panoramic scene a new player – dark matter, with more than 20% contribution, besides more than 70% dark energy and only 5% observable matter from the matter total quantity. It is shown also that the Informational Model of Consciousness, consisting in an architecture of seven cognitive centers, converges with the ancient models of chakras, of etheric body and aura concepts, with dual Taoist concepts of universe and human body, contributing with answers to the “mind-body”, “nature or nurture” problems and even to Qualia “hard” problem, and supporting the Jung’s concepts on the mind. Finally, some questions are addressed to the quantum mechanics, concerning the retro-causal effect and non-locality principle. (shrink)

Can the persistence of a human being's soul at death and prior to the bodily resurrection be sufficient to guarantee that the resurrected human being is numerically identical to the human being who died? According to Thomas Aquinas, it can. Yet, given that Aquinas holds that the human being is identical to the composite of soul and body and ceases to exist at death, it's difficult to see how he can maintain this view. In this (...) paper, I address Aquinas's response to this objection . After making a crucial clarification concerning the nature of the non-repeatability principle on which the objection relies, I argue that the contemporary notion of immanent causal relations provides us with a way of understanding Aquinas's defence that renders it both highly interesting and philosophically plausible. (shrink)

Architectural space has some triggers for unique experiences and one of them is its atmosphere. The atmosphere has an unstable structure so that it is difficult to define clearly. We are capable of immediate appreciation, such as being inside or outside. Thus, the threshold between bodily experiences and mental emergence becomes a blurred one, like a haze. It is sensed in bodily presence by human beings. The boundaries, such as subject and object, are transgressed through the atmosphere. The subject (...) appears as a body and its movement in this discussion. Recognition of the existence of the body in space plays a significant role throughout the architectural design process. Theatrical dance or dance theatre (Tanztheater) practices provide new horizons for understanding the presence of the body in the space. Pina Bausch, as a choreographer, is one of the pioneers of this genre. The aim of the study is to point out the relations of body, space and atmosphere in Pina movie (2011). This study identifies choreographies with different aspects as follows: (1) In the atmospheric aspect; subject, object and their role in the atmosphere of choreographies by Pina Bausch were observed. (2) In the fictional space aspect; various spaces were examined in the sense of body-object-atmosphere interaction. (3) In the bodily aspect; space which is produced by the body and vice versa in dance theatre was investigated in the volumetric reflections of the body. This research contributes to bridging performative arts and architecture as understanding the space. It can be a guide for an architectural design studio to understand the role of the body through dance theatre. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have criticized the scientific understanding of the human body. Instead of presenting the body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, it is regarded as a complex mechanism and described in quasi-mechanistic terms. In a phenomenological approach, a more intimate experience of the body is presented. This approach, however, is questioned by Jacques Lacan. According to Lacan, three basic possibilities of experiencing the body are to be distinguished: the symbolical (or scientific) (...) body, the imaginary (or ideal) body and the real body. Whereas the symbolical body is increasingly objectified (and even digitalized) by medical science, the phenomenological perception amounts to an idealization of the body. The real body cannot be perceived immediately. Rather, it emerges in the folds and margins of our efforts to symbolize or idealize the body, which are bound to remain incomplete and fragile. In the first part of the article (1-3), Lacan's conceptual distinction between the symbolical, the imaginary and the real body will be explained. In the second part (4-5), this distinction will be further clarified by relying on crucial chapters in the history of anatomy (notably Mundinus, Vesalius, Da Vinci and Descartes). (shrink)

In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will (...) offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides support for physicalism. (shrink)

In one vision of human success, future human evolution lies in enhancing our bodies and especially our minds in order to achieve new levels of cooperation, morality, and well-being. In unadulterated form, this vision combines a pessimism in the human evolutionary heritage with an optimism in what technological enhancement can offer. This chapter points to a crucial blind spot: the role the social and cultural environment has played and continues to play in human evolution. In particular, (...) the chapter emphasizes how enhancement technologies are co-opted in the competition for social status. When this is taken into consideration, the vision of techno-libertarian success seems both less appealing and less plausible. Two desiderata for the concept of human success in the future are identified. (shrink)

The mind-body problem is a perennial philosophical problem that seeks to uncover the relationship or causal interaction that exists between the corporeal and incorporeal aspects of the human person. It thrives under the assumption that the human person is made up of two distinct entities, that is, mind and body, which explains their assumed causal relation. As attractive as this may seem, not all philosophers agree to this feigned idea of interaction and bifurcation of the (...) class='Hi'>human person. One philosopher of note, who sorts to address this problem in the 17th century, is René Descartes. For Descartes, minds and bodies are distinct kinds of substance, where bodies are spatially extended substances (a res extensa) and minds are unexpended substances characterised primarily by thought (a res cogitans). But, if minds and bodies are radically dissimilar, how could they causally interact? This paper therefore attempts to examine the philosophical foundations of Cartesian dualism. It also articulates the major arguments adopted by Descartes through his methodic doubts to address the mind-body problem. The paper concludes by highlighting some fundamental criticisms of Cartesian Interactionism in the light of recent trends in parapsychology and neuro-scientific research. (shrink)

The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) is the claim that the mind can and does extend beyond the human body. Adams and Aizawa (A&A) contend that arguments for EMH commit a ‘coupling constitution fallacy’. We deny that the master argument for EMH commits such a fallacy. But we think that there is an important question lurking behind A&A's allegation: under what conditions is cognition spread across a tightly coupled system? Building on some suggestions from Haugeland, we contend that the (...) system must exhibit a distinctive sort of semantic activity, semantic activity that the system as a whole takes responsibility for. (shrink)

The ability of videos to serve as evidence of racial injustice is complex and contested. This essay argues that scrutiny of the Black body has come to play a key role in how videos of police violence are mined for evidence, following a long history of racialized surveillance and attributions of threat and superhuman powers to Black bodies. Using videos to combat injustice requires incorporating humanizing narratives and cultivating resistant modes of looking.

In Chapter 1 I discuss the basic problem which made me undertake the issue of human death. That problem was the dualism in the depiction of human nature which has not been fully overcome yet, the dualism which leads to the emergence of new difficulties in contemporary attempts at adequately solving the problem of human death. They include the separation of soul from the body in the moment of death, and the borderline between the moment of (...) death and the moment of resurrection. Chapter 2 is devoted to the presentation of a new anthropological perspective, of an anthropology build “from the bottom up”, that is “from foundations”, and taking into account man’s rooting in the biological environment, and thus also in the genetic heritage taken over from our pre-human ancestors. That anthropology brings new aspects into traditional anthropology by extending it to include new ways of explaining the genesis of the human body and spirit, and new depictions of man’s death. In Chapter 2 I will also present the concept of evolution proposed by P.T. de Chardin, which I appreciate for its comprehensive evolutionary perception of the world. This concept has provoked various responses, but it certainly provides a creative inspiration for further attempts at applying the idea of evolution to various issues. The general framework of the evolutionary model proposed by the French researcher turns out to be useful also when applied to the evolutionary understanding of human death. Chapter 3 contains a discussion of the principal premises of the evolutionary concept of human death taken from analyses carried out by T. Wojciechowski concerning the issue of time, space, and the structure of variable material beings. A being is variable because it has a temporal structure, and the changes that occur are the derivatives of that structure. The temporal structure may be seen as endless, in which a being, even though its existence had a beginning, will exist for ever. Material substance should not be seen statically, but in dynamic and evolutionary terms. In evolution, time becomes a driver of development, an element shaping and directing the evolution of the entire cosmos. Man’s substance has been made capable of two levels of being and acting: the spatial and temporal level, and the endless and immanent level. Together, they form the one essence of man. Thus, the human person is partially immersed in the material cosmos, and partially elevated above it. Chapter 4 presents the evolutionary approach to the moment of man’s death. The views of T. Wojciechowski will be presented in which the moment of death is seen as a moment of transformation and perfection of the structure of the essence of human existence. Furthermore, the issue of the relationship existing, according to T. Wojciechowski, between man’s death and resurrection will be discussed. Understood in evolutionary terms, the moment of death is the time when the structure of human existence is transformed. Death transfers man fully into eternity and enables his life on a higher level of existential being. The element of flesh is retained, but changes its nature. Such view of death allows it to be understood as the moment of resurrection and the culmination of the evolutionary process of life. Death is therefore an “invention” of the evolution and should be seen as a natural and positive phenomenon. At this point, I also propose a solution to the question about reconciliation between temporal and endless existence. In Chapter 5 I take up the issue of consequences flowing from the postulated understanding of human death. They have been pointed to by T. Wojciechowski, but need to be further developed and clarified. He believed two lines in man’s development need to be recognized: that of natural and that of supernatural evolution. Both have the same direction, while occurring on different planes. In each of these lines, death is a natural element of life, pre-planned and, so to say, “encoded” in the cosmic matter. Therefore, the treatment of biological death as the consequence of sin is not only contrary to the evolutionary understanding of life, but in addition artificially combines that which is natural with that which is supernatural. Man’s authentic experience of his own present is a condition of his achieving full existential perfection in the moment of this death. Full engagement in the present is, in a way, a harbinger of the future; thus, the life “here” and “there” may not be inherently inconsistent. In the light of the evolutionary concept, death is not a punishment, but the most positive experience of man’s life in that it enables him to achieve full existential perfection. Chapter 6 is devoted to a substantiation of the possibility of evolutionary transformation of the structure of human existence in the moment of death. An adequate cause needs to be identified which could substantiate that transformation and achievement of perfection. I believe an appropriate substantiation can be found in God’s creative act, interpreted in evolutionary terms. The process of evolution, with its subsequent stages, is only a necessary condition for that “transformation” and “elevation”. The sufficient condition is fulfilled by the continuous creative intervention of God. The concept of God’s creative activity in the moment of man’s death finds its continuation in Chapter 7, where I present a detailed analysis of God’s activity at the time of man’s death. The concept of God’s creative activity extended over the entire process of evolution makes it possible to consider the moment of death as the moment of man’s resurrection. The moment of death is thus a moment of creation in evolutionary terms. Thus, as long as man is related to temporal and spatial elements, his development, or creation, continues. Death is only the completion of the final stage of creation, which may be painful and evoke fear, but in fact should give hope, for it involves resurrection. I also propose that the creative act in the moment of man’s death-resurrection be considered a basic action of God, which explains the manner in which God’s activity is contained within the framework of the creative act, encompassing also the moment of death-resurrection. The final Chapter 8 describes a didactic model illustrating the concept proposed here. I use the analogy of white light dispersion effect in the prism, and compare the incident ray to the creative act, and the dispersed rays going through the prism to the line of man’s natural and supernatural evolution. This model also shows the difference in the perspectives from which the phenomenon of death is seen by God and by man. (shrink)

Social work has long been concerned with the respective roles of the social work profession and the social welfare system in addressing human needs. Social workers engage in needs assessment together with client systems. They provide and advocate for the needs of clients, as well enabling and empowering clients and communities to address their needs. They also advocate for social welfare benefits and services and overall social policies that take human needs into account. However, explicit ethical content was (...) not present in earlier Codes of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Furthermore, until very recently, little published literature in peer-reviewed journals has human needs theories to guide models of social work practice or inform social work research. Universalistic assumptions about human needs have long been found within social work’s literature on human development (see Jani and Reisch 2011, under General Overviews). However, these assumptions were often inexplicit. They did not fully utilize theories of human need, which have long recognized that although human needs may be universal, they are addressed in culturally and environmentally specific manners. Also, in practice, social workers have often conflated human needs with the need for the services or benefits available at any one time. This bibliography will explore the history and evolution of the interdisciplinary body of human needs theory and research on which social work has drawn historically, with special attention to the recent surge in interest in human needs theories. In doing so, the entry will discuss a number of key debates that have arisen regarding needs, including whether they are universal or specific to particular cultures; what the relationship is between human needs, human rights, and social justice; and how to reconcile theories of human needs and of human capabilities. (shrink)

Human mind and human body have been separated from each other as belonging to familiar different categories. But what if we are supposed to admit a category of bodily posture? This is a paper to advance a thesis that mental content in bodily posture is a basis to integrate mind and body. First, what is the basis to claim that there is such a thing as a bodily posture? We humans all communicate each other not only (...) through an ordinary language but also through human postures. Often human postures are much more efficient ways of expressing of ourselves and of understanding each other. Affirmation of this is more natural than its denial. -/- Second, human postures have a mental content. Nodding expresses an agreement to what is suggested where turning indicates disapproval or ignorance. Nodding and turning are physical acts. And so far as they are acts they carry mental contents. But it is important that we do correctly understand the mental contents in such acts. Often mental acts have been taken to be subjective or solipsistic. But contemporary discussions on mental content indicate that mental content carries a wide context rather than a narrow one. If so, this would help us to see how body and mind integrate themselves in the human conception of ourselves. (shrink)

This paper represents an attempt to correlate the concept of hope with the notion of human longevity and reflects the actual debates around the problem of life extension. Our analysis combines ideas from philosophy, sociology, bioethics, and religion to illustrate the problem of longevity in the context of biomedical and technological progress, and - at the same time - to show the (possible) consequences of prolonging life over the human body limits. Extending human life through emerging (...) technologies is much closer to us than we might think and is a particularly challenging topic. (shrink)

New developments in biotechnology radically alter our relationship with our bodies. Body tissues can now be used for commercial purposes, while external objects, such as pacemakers, can become part of the body. Property in the Body: Feminist Perspectives transcends the everyday responses to such developments, suggesting that what we most fear is the feminisation of the body. We fear our bodies are becoming objects of property, turning us into things rather than persons. This book evaluates how (...) well-grounded this fear is, and suggests innovative models of regulating what has been called 'the new Gold Rush' in human tissue. This is an up-to-date and wide-ranging synthesis of market developments in body tissue, bringing together bioethics, feminist theory and lessons from countries that have resisted commercialisation of the body, in a theoretically sophisticated and practically significant approach. (shrink)

—One of the promising applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is monitoring of the human body for health concerns. For this purpose, a large number of small sensors are implanted in the human body. These sensors altogether provide a network of wireless sensors (WBANs) and monitor the vital signs and signals of the human body; these sensors will then send this information to the doctor. The most important application of the WBAN is the implementation (...) of the monitoring network for patient safety in the hospital environment. In this case, supporting patients’ mobility is one of the basic needs, which has been underestimated in recent studies. The problem that involves providing the required energy for the units used in this type of network is challenging; for this reason, sent/ received units with very low power consumption and with a very small radius are used in order to save energy. The resulting small sending range, leads to the lack of support for patients' mobility. In this paper, the AD HOC mode is suggested for use to establish a network and a multi-path routing algorithm, for the purpose of importing patients’ mobility in hospital setting. The results of the simulation show that in addition to supporting patients' mobility, the use of the proposed idea instead of previously presented protocols, reduces delays in data transmission and energy consumption; and it also increases the delivery rate depending on the destination and the lifetime of the network, while on the other hand, it increases routing overhead. (shrink)

Discusses the differences between the metaphysical subject of the Meditations and the subject of Descartes' morale par provision, which is the embodied human being.