Embodied Mind and Cognition

This work outlines a new methodology for film analysis based on the radical materialist thought of Baruch Spinoza, re-evaluating contemporary cognitive media theory and philosophical theories on the emotional and intellectual aspects of film experience.
Sticchi’s exploration of Spinozian philosophy creates an experiential constructive model to blend the affective and intellectual aspects of cognition, and to combine it with different philosophical interpretations of film theory. Spinoza’s embodied philosophy rejected logical and ethical dualisms, and established a perfect parallelism between sensation and reason and provides the opportunity to address negative emotions and sad passions without referring exclusively to traditional notions such as catharsis or sublimation, and to put forth a practical/embodied notion of Film-Philosophy. This new analytical approach is tested on four case studies, films that challenge the viewer’s emotional engagement since they display situations of cosmic failure and depict controversial and damaged characters: A Serious Man (2009); Melancholia (2011); The Act of Killing (2012) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013).

Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value.

Just as a child’s neurodevelopment becomes more sophisticated with life experience, somatic psychotherapy and dance/movement therapy, now in their eighth decade, are approaching a more intricate stage of growth. As each discipline grows in complexity, conflicts have risen regarding the concept of identity. The recent debate of whether dance/movement therapy is one of the somatic psychotherapies or its own discipline is a necessary and exciting “growing pain” in the evolution of embodied psychotherapy practices. This paper provides a historic overview and uses a systems theory framework to compare the disciplines with data derived from original and recent literature. Practices, education, and governance of each discipline are presented as they exist in the United States. Findings illustrate the comparison and offer clarity on the current trend toward integration. Suggestions are made for further critical thinking to develop awareness toward an evolved perspective of embodied psychotherapy practices.

This book argues that thinking is bounded by neither the brain nor the skin of an organism. Cognitive systems function through integration of neural and bodily functions with the functions of representational vehicles. The integrationist position offers a fresh contribution to the emerging embodied and embedded approach to the study of mind.

A comprehensive overview of a gestalt of artificial intelligence (AI) beings collectively referred to as the 'negative aliens' has been presented. It is explicated that these beings comprise a group of utterly ruthless, merciless beings that are totally void of any feelings, compassion, and love without any heart-based intuitive intelligence. Furthermore, they are energetically parasitic-vampiric and highly dependent on the natural energetics of organic solar consciousness beings such as humans to energize their doomsday machinery and survive. In this respect, they resort to violence and wars in search of conquest of organic solar consciousness beings to capture and imprison and subject them to reverse consciousness enslavement using their specially devised artificial intelligence technology. And, in order to be able to perpetually siphon the precious divine energies of the organic solar consciousness beings, they strictly adhere to certain agendas and strategies to maintain in bondage their taken spoils of wars that include (their perceived) conquered planetary resources as well as the solar consciousness inhabitants such as humans they have captured. Being totally arrogant tyrants and utterly narcissistic perceiving themselves as superiors and even 'gods' of their captured victims, their nefarious agendas include blank slating (conscious wiping) of the oppressed subjects of their genetic cellular memories and replacing them through mind sliding AI programming with false-phantom memories, as well as

MIND CONTROL WEAPON
9.september 2008
The term “Mind control” basically means covert attempts to influence the thoughts and behavior of human beings against their will (or without their knowledge), particularly when surveillance of an individual is used as an integral part of such influencing and the term “Psychotronic Torture” comes from psycho (of psychological) and electronic. This is actually a very sophisticated form of remote technological torture that slowly invalidates and incapacitates a person. These invisible and non-traceable technological assaults on human beings are done in order to destroy someone psychologically and physiologically. Actually, as par scientific resources, the human body, much like a computer, contains myriad data processors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electrical activity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signals sent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and the light-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visual activity. We are on the threshold of an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated.

Puts 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' in an historical context and shows hows the concept of 'mimesis' prefigures more recent cognitive interest in the emotional foundations of human knowledge and human interaction. The paper builds bridges between the critical legacy of the Frankfurt School and recent more empirically-oriented work on cognition, using Nietzsche and Winnicott as a bridge. It suggests we shouldn't be too attached to Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectical form of argument, and should focus instead on their early interdisicplinary analyses of embodied forms of knowledge.

The future society may be and most likely
1. A society without human labor
2. A society of free activities and free time
3. A company dreamed of by Heinz von Foerster, Henri Atlan and Ilya Prigogine
Part 1: Development issues of developed countries
1.1 They have already made and updated their industrial revolution, they are:
• A nano computer revolution that will boost the artificial intelligence foundation of automation and robotics (and aggravation of unemployment)
• A biotechnological and genetic revolution
• And to the revolution of the "service economy" where 65% of the active population produces 70% of national wealth (against 29% and 28% for industry and 6% and 2% for agriculture - France). These are the services that pay the most!
1.2 They have new groups - multinationals - and very active and dynamic social networks.
In this case, the future development for these already developed countries will focus on what? Or what is missing - the "almost" - to the development of today's society.
The perception - relatively widespread and fair - of a more technology-centric development - and its legal owners - than on humans feeds this ... but.
To which the question of "what" will bring about the future development of today's society becomes indeed relevant.

Ordering 3D configurations of curves of increasing complexity
Configurations of curves in 3D of increasing complexity
Configurations in 3D:
-- single continuous curves (Group I)
-- interlocking disjoint curves (Group II)
-- animations offering a 3D perspective (Group III)
-- fractional rotation of continuous curves with indication of increased spread (Group IV)
-- animation of curves with indication of increased spread (Group V)
-- animations of toroidal curves with indication of increased spread (Group VI)
Interpretation of knot language?
Psychosocial implications of configurations of curves?
Static description of cycles versus the dynamics of Cyclic experience
Implicit coherence speculatively explored?
Relative interestingness and boringness of forms of coherence
Sustainable dynamics "re-cognized" as knots?
Articulation and complexification of cycles of sustainability
Musical comprehension of unity versus diversity using four geometric parameters?
Imagined potential of circular forms as a pattern language

This report evolved from contributions to the Society of Existential Analysis conference in London " Being and Doing " November, 2015. I briefly describe opening the conference with a guided Focusing session since this practice is fundamental to my report on the other contribution, a Panel Discussion entitled " Being at the Heart of Activism ". I was honoured to be joined on this panel by Alison Playford, Mark Weaver and Luke Flegg, all involved in social/political activism and developments in participatory democracy. What follows is an account of my own interests in this area as an existential psychologist and Focusing therapist. I present Focusing as a source of democratic process that forms an experiential continuity from 'within' each person 'outwards' to interpersonal and community situations. For this publication I have incorporated some references to Eugene Gendlin's (1987) A philosophical critique of the concept of narcissism: the significance of the awareness movement. Keeping with the ethos of the approach described below, this report is presented in first-person language to make it as direct and accessible as possible. Focusing To open the conference I was invited to offer a brief 10-minute Focusing (Gendlin, 1981) session. Focusing is a phenomenological practice of embodied self-awareness whereby a person can access and follow the unfolding of feelings that step-by-step help to clarify our experience of anything we are living through. At professional conferences we typically interact only from the eye-brain-thinking level of human experience. So I wanted to offer a different starting point, an intention to include all the implicit responses that are simultaneously happening at the body level but that we typically don't " drop down inside " and attend to. At that level we can sense more than is easily said and more than is usually included in thoughtful dialogues between colleagues. This is an excerpt from the last minute of the Focusing experience: " So as we begin our day together, just know that this whole responsive world is down there, available to you. Your body will generate all sorts of responses as you listen to people during the day, pause and notice the feelings that come in here-even the subtle feelings-there is creative thinking in the body. If an idea is making you feel a bit constricted inside, or a presentation brings an expansive feeling in your body, consider dropping down again and checking " what is it about this idea or presentation that makes me feel just like this? " Let the answer come from your body. If you can understand something from the feeling, you will usually feel a bit of release inside. Then consider sharing what came to you at some point during the conference, it might also resonate for others. If you speak, you might let words come from the body as you continue to attend to the feeling, sensing with each word " am I saying this right " ? And correcting yourself as you speak, so that what you say resonates bodily. This may be one way of inviting unformed 1

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650) is considered the founder of modern philosophy. Profoundly influenced by the new physics and astronomy of Kepler and Galileo, Descartes was a scientist and mathematician whose most long-lasting contributions in science were the invention of Cartesian coordinates, the application of algebra to geometry, and the discovery of the law of refraction, what we now call Snell’s law. His most important books on philosophy were The discourse on method(1637) and The meditations (1642). Descartes’ writings display an exemplary degree of clarity and an aversion to pedantry. I explore Descartes' break with Aristotle, but also shine a light on the intellectual continuity Descartes had with Aristotle's thought. I also draw attention to some overlooked but interesting possibilities for an experimental test of a dualistic theory of mind.

This is not a book of wisdom teachings, as many of these exist already, nor is it purely a book of scholarly research. It is intended for the broad audience of people across the world who are intrigued by Tibet, its teachers and teachings, and the process of global change brought forth by their diaspora. It is also very much designed for leaders, professors, and consultants in search of new ideas and perhaps even an entirely new paradigm for how leaders could be educated and what may be expected of them.

This paper reviews contemporary interpretations of classical Greek geometry, and offers a Deleuzian, post structural alternative. We emphasize the embodied aspect of Greek mathematical practice, and indicate how it conflicts with ideal linear-modular accounts. Our main theoretic tools are the notions of 'catastrophe' and 'haptic eye' as reconstructed by Deleuze in his analysis of the artistic practices of painter Francis Bacon.

The concept of embodiment, or the lived experience of the body, has become an important focus of scholarly attention across psychology, sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies. Addressing the inherent challenges of researching the lived experience of the body, this edited volume brings together experienced scholars who conduct and teach embodied research to and establish effective strategies for exploring experience through nonverbal communication, subjective sensory and proprioceptive states, and body-centered imagery. It represents a thorough and comprehensive resource for students conducting research using an embodied approach and for instructors that teach embodied inquiry.

For more information visit: www.routledge.com/9781138367081
or
https://www.routledge.com/The-Art-and-Science-of-Embodied-Research-Design-Concepts-Methods-and-Cases/Tantia/p/book/9781138367081

RESUMO: Trata-se aqui de demonstrar a utilização da obra heideggeriana no contexto do surgimento da inteligência artificial assim como encontra-se em Hubert L. Dreyfus. A crítica de Dreyfus se resume em apontar o cognitivismo-paradigma dominante dos primórdios da inteligência artificial-como a aplicação empírica do racionalismo filosófico, isto é, a abordagem cognitivista argumenta que a cognição humana pode ser reproduzida a partir da formalização de determinadas representações rigidamente fixadas que serviriam como fundamento para a efetivação de comportamento inteligente. Em vista disso, apresenta-se o anticartesianismo heideggeriano de Dreyfus como a antítese do cognitivismo. ABSTRACT: It is demonstrated the use of heideggerian philosophy in the context of the arise of artificial intelligence as it is laid out on the work of Hubert L. Dreyfus. Dreyfus' critique can be understood as the indicative of cognitivism-the dominant paradigm of the early days of A.I.-as the empirical application of rationalism, that is, the cognitivist approach argues that human cognition can be reproduced based on the formalization of rigid representations that serve as the fundament for intelligent behavior. Thus, it is presented the heideggerian anticartesianism of Dreyfus as the antithesis of cognitivism.

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

This little·book attempts an ambitious task: to give a bird's eye view of cognitive sciences today. Thus, this essay is like a compact, reasoned tour of an as yet ill-defined multidisciplinary field. Alongside human history of nature there is corresponding history of ideas about human self-knowledge …. Like mirrors to each other, self and nature move in time like partners in a dance. The natural history of self-knowledge in the west remains to be done …. Human mind is the prime source and closest example of cognition and knowledge. From this background, the modern phase of cognitive science represents a remarkable mutation in this parallel history of mind and nature. For the first time science fully recognizes the investigation about knowledge itself, in all its levels, as legitimate.

SUMMARY
The ubiquitous use of digital technology in all aspects of daily life has opened up unprecedented possibilities such as immediate access to information, (tele)presence at any place on the planet, multiplication and modification of identity, as well as rearticulation and reconstruction of embodiment. In cyberpunk literature, new media art practices, cyber theories, SF films and comic books, and scientific research, there is often a tendency to leave the mortal physical body, behind in order to upload the immortal mind into the vast realm of the digital where one can be whatever or whomever s/he wants. In relation to modern technology,
the biological body is often regarded as obsolete for not being “equipped” to cope with the exponential speed of technological development. Hence, it is not surprising that many studies ignore the problem of embodiment by focusing more on the issues of identity, consciousness and disembodiment in digital worlds. Therefore, this book will attempt to highlight those theories that focus on embodiment in technologically mediated environments, thus reintegrating the physical body into discussions of new media phenomena and the ways they affect social reality today. In this book I will start from the hypothesis that without the physical body there is no virtual or real. The aim is to underline the significance of physical body in biotechnological interfaces, and to discuss and analyze the
ways in which the role of body and embodiment changes in ubiquitous virtual environments, as well as to map the ways in which technology alters bodily functions thus affecting ontological survival of humans as biological species.
The issues of constructing identities and identification processes will be observed through an anti-essentialist theoretical framework and mapped through two different but mutually intertwined phases in the evolution of global networks – Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 platforms. While Web 1.0 platforms were based on textual representations and identity play allowing us to become everything we are not
and can never be in the physical reality, Web 2.0 platforms that are specific to social networking delegate identities of physical reality in the virtual domain. However, presumed “real” identities manifest themselves as constructs in a virtual environment since they are based on a selective representation of an idealized self. Through feedback loops, this phenomenon further highlights the question of not only the quality of interpersonal relationships and communication, but also the way that we perceive and define ourselves in the physical environment. Dispersion
of boundaries between real and virtual, private and public, entails a fundamental question that this book will attempt to answer: What does it mean to be human in today’s world of digitalization when the explosion of digital imagery and interactions into the physical environment has so profoundly affected social, cultural and political activities, interventions and subversions, turning both the distinction between “real” and “virtual” spaces and dualistic ways of defining the self into rather obsolete concepts. Is anything at all “virtual” in cyberspace, i.e. can cyberspace be defined as virtual at all when, for example, because of an activity such as posting on Facebook, one can lose a job or has to let corporations dictate and define what is and what is not appropriate in the one’s digitally constructed identity? Nevertheless, we are still comforted by the illusion that our screen as an interface separates the real and the virtual, functioning as the boundary or line marking the end of real and the beginning of virtual. Everything situated on the other side of the screen, like a distorted mirror, allows us to rationalize and simplify the existence of the boundary between what defines us in physical reality and what we are as constructs in online interactions. However, what happens when the screen, that black mirror, breaks into pieces, thus enabling the body as interface to become responsible for the other Self or the digital alter ego? In this regard, special attention will be given to the concept of abandoning the screen and turning to the emerging new interfaces that rearticulate the relation between corporeality and virtuality. Gestural interfaces as a new “mouse” or a new touch screen without a screen will, coupled up with holographic projections that have already found their way into the physical public spaces, open up a multitude of far-reaching questions of psychosomatic nature: If, for example, we are present/telepresent to one another via holograms animated via corporeal gestures, would it mean the differentiation of degree of corporeality in terms of valuation and hierarchy of embodiment? How will we be able to determine what is more valuable, more present and real – projection or materiality of the body? And finally, will there be any difference at all between gesturally manipulated projection and the real body that is already deeply caught in the process of cyborgization? In William Gibson’s words, the future is already here - it is just not very evenly distributed.

In this article I will show that the problem of embodiment goes back to the question of the mind-body split, as this has been established and discussed by the philosophical tradition. With the digital turn and the advent of ubiquitous computing the problem of embodiment has taken new (and far more complicated) forms that have led scholars to introduce the notion of a “new digital Cartesianism.” Subjectivation processes within digital culture have mostly been explained by resorting to what I will call the “E-D-R scheme,” (embodiment-disembodiment-reembodiment scheme) which assumes that a real detachment between the body and the mind really occurs in digital processes. Since—as I will show—this is not actually the case, I will suggest replacing this epistemological scheme with a new one, which I will call the “double-embodiment scheme,” in order to acquire a more fitting epistemological account of the underlying digital ontology. Finally, I will discuss the distinction between bodily ...

Recent experimental research in the field of neurophysiology has led to the discovery of two classes of visuomotor neurons: canonical neurons and mirror neurons. In light of these studies, we propose here an overview of two classical themes in the cognitive science panorama: James Gibson's theory of affordances and Eleanor Rosch's principles of categorization. We discuss how theoretical perspectives and neuroscientific evidence are converging towards the current paradigm of embodied cognition. From this perspective, we discuss the role of action and simulation in cognitive processes, which lead to the perceptual recognition of objects, and actions and to their conceptual categorization.

The objective of this article is twofold. In the first part, I discuss two issues central to any theoretical inquiry into mental imagery: embodiment and consciousness. I do so against the backdrop of second-generation cognitive science, more specifically the increasingly popular research framework of embodied cognition, and I consider two caveats attached to its current exploitation in narrative theory. In the second part, I attempt to cast new light on readerly mental imagery by offering a typology of what I propose to be its four basic varieties. The typology is grounded in the framework of embodied cognition and it is largely compatible with key neuroscientific and other experimental evidence produced within the framework.

What do we see, hear or sense? Do we experience the world around us as structured and rich with meaning or do we perceive it thinly in basic sensorial properties that are grasped and interpreted non-perceptually? Questions of this kind are in the center of the debate about the contents of perceptual experience. This begs a very fundamental yet surprisingly difficult question. What is perceptual experience? How it is to be described? How do these aspects of our experience relate to cognitive processes of our mind? Where is the line drawn between these, or more generally: is there a clear line to be drawn at all?

The Philosophy of Parmenides as a system of idealistic monism (immaterialism). The Pythagorean background of Parmenides' metaphysics. The origin of the mistaken positivist interpretation of Parmenides. Plato's date of Parmenides' birth (circa 515 BC) is a literary fiction, Apollodorus' date (c. 544/541 BC) is to be preferred.

Il cinema possiede una straordinaria capacità di immergerci nelle storie: elimina la distanza fisica tra noi spettatori e gli eventi sullo schermo, ci fa commuovere come se le vicende narrate ci riguardassero in prima persona, addirittura ci fa dimenticare di noi stessi per intervalli di tempo più o meno estesi. Non stupisce il fatto che, fin dall’inizio del Novecento, cineasti e intellettuali abbiano cercato di comprendere il potere del coinvolgimento cinematografico, rivolgendosi soprattutto alle scienze della mente.
Oggi, grazie anche agli sviluppi degli studi sul cervello, il paradossale sentimento di "immersione a distanza" sperimentato dagli spettatori può essere spiegato con riferimento alle nuove scienze cognitive. Questo libro esplora alcune ipotesi in linea con modelli di mente enattivi e incarnati, e si occupa delle interazioni tra le storie che prendono corpo sullo schermo e l’esperienza vissuta dello spettatore. Più in particolare, il libro si concentra sulla natura emozionale di alcuni fondamentali meccanismi dell’interazione schermo-mente. Lo fa assumendo una prospettiva relazionale; il che significa soprattutto che il luogo del film e quello dello spettatore – lo schermo e la mente – non sono considerati come segregati e contrapposti: essi sono, invece, i due poli di un sistema complesso. In questa prospettiva, parafrasando una riflessione di Edgar Morin, il cinema è un sistema che tende a integrare lo spettatore nel flusso del film; ed è, allo stesso tempo, un sistema che tende a integrare il flusso del film nel flusso mentale dello spettatore.

Inspired by Enactivist philosophy yet in dialog with it, we ask what theory of embodied cognition might best serve in articulating implications of Enactivism for mathematics education. We offer a blend of Dynamical Systems Theory and Sociocultural Theory as an analytic lens on micro-processes of action-to-concept evolution. We also illustrate the methodological utility of design-research as an approach to such theory development. Building on constructs from ecological psychology, cultural anthropology, studies of motor-skill acquisition, and somatic awareness practices, we develop the notion of an ‘‘instrumented field of promoted action’’. Children operating in this field first develop environmentally coupled motoraction coordinations. Next, we introduce into the field new artifacts. The children adopt the artifacts as frames of action and reference, yet in so doing they shift into disciplinary semiotic systems. We exemplify our thesis with two selected excerpts from our videography of Grade 4–6 volunteers participating in task-based clinical interviews centered on the Mathematical Imagery Trainer for Proportion.  In particular, we present and analyze cases of either smooth or abrupt transformation in learners’ operatory schemes. We situate our design framework vis-a‘-vis seminal contributions to mathematics education research.