Embodied Mind and Cognition

This paper critically reviews the current status of the concept of distance in human geography in order to argue that recent experimentally-driven work in construal-level theory offers ample opportunities for recasting distance as a key geographical trope. After analysing the four entangled dimensions of distance revealed by construal-level theory (spatial distance; temporal distance; social distance; and hypothetical distance), the paper articulates this research program from experimental psychology with geographical work on non-representational theory, geographical imaginations/imaginative geographies, learning as a geographical process, TimeSpace theorizing, and ontogenetic understandings of space. It is argued that the subjective understanding of distance afforded by construal-level theory can rescue distance from its entrenched association with positivistic geography and spatial analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.018

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

Carl Jung describes how the human unconscious is the hidden cosmological archetypal dimension of our being in the world. There is the personal unconscious that reflects personal history and experience either forgotten or foreclosed. There is another unconscious that is more primary, pre-reflective and cosmological in origin. In the language of the ancient Phenomenological Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, this existential dimension of archetypal manifestation is called the Sambogakaya realm of experience. This is the subtle realm of lucid forms of light and energy and vortices. These forms of light and energy field configurations become everything and anything. The Sambogakaya dimension manifests the Nirmanakaya dimension. The Nirmanakaya dimension is the actual experience of our self in contextual situations, unfolding through time and space as well as our unfolding of our personal psychological experience. Nirmanakaya is the dimension of our ordinary life world. Nirmanakaya is our being in the world. There is one more dimension. This dimension is the primordial foundational ground of everything and anything. In the ancient tradition of Dzogchen this is named as the Dharmakaya. Dharmakaya is the existential dimension of pure potentiality, pure creativity from which everything and anything manifests. Dharmakaya manifests the Sambogakaya. Dharmakaya is ground awareness, the ground of being. Dharmakaya is Being. Being is not a being but Being manifesting being as infinite numbers of numerous beings. All beings are the manifestation of Being. Dharmakaya is not an entity but manifests infinite numbers of entities.

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

"Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from this work, there appear to be a
variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the
narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life."

Once the positivistic/escapist interpretation that human consciousness is epiphenomenal, i.e., accidental, is dismissed there are two possible approaches to the scientific study of consciousness. Bottom-up consciousness, from the individual organism or being to the universe, and Consciousness from the top-down, from the universe to the individual. These two approaches mark the outer boundaries of the present scientific search for a theoretical model of consciousness, even though Consciousness goes beyond science and moves into the realm of metaphysics. In any case, everything in between these two approaches is seriously muddled and clouded with speculations and metatheories that cannot be possible, which is common to the period preceding a scientific revolution. Some of those speculations and metatheories sound rather esoteric and even spiritual, which allows them to appeal to many people, but they would normally be considered non-scientific by definition if they were expressed for anything other than consciousness, which in itself presents a total mystery to science and the scientists who are willing to attempt to explain consciousness. On the other hand, what little concrete information science has at its disposal about consciousness does seem to match ideas in eastern mystical thought and in some cases earlier western ideas in Natural Philosophy that have been rejected by science, which further muddles the scientific quest for understanding consciousness. These ideas and concepts fit the qualitative aspects of mind that science normally associates with consciousness even better as well as the direct characteristics of consciousness, at least to the extent that such characteristics are known. Science needs to find a balance between them so it can maximize the effect of the next scientific revolution as well as the corresponding evolutionary leap in consciousness that is coming, but physics must simultaneously develop a working unified field theory to better define the universe in which consciousness of any kind, shape or form can and has developed.

The phenomenology of the unfolding elaboration of our capacity to know Being directly and as well as our experience to know Being through beings is the focus of this paper. I will focus on the phenomenological elaboration of our knowing of mind; the phenomenological knowing of direct awareness and the consequent simultaneous intertwining of knowing through mind and through awareness. This union of our mind and our awareness allows the knowing of Being through beings and knowing the indivisibleness of beings and Being. As the Dakini said to Dudjom Lingpa " You and I are indivisible. " Our paper begins with a phenomenological elaboration of the Two Ways of Knowing. This is a necessary and a most useful distinction for our knowing of both beings and Being simultaneously. The Two Ways of Knowing: Mind Knowing Form and Awareness Knowing Being Mind Knows Form! Our mind knows forms, and things, both subtle and gross. Our mind knows beings and things. Our mind knows subject and our mind knows otherness. Our mind knows dualities .Our mind knows me and you, us and them and this and that. Mind knows time. Our mind knows the sense of the past, the sense of present and a sense of the future. The mind knows entities. Our mind knows difference. Our mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through images, the mind senses sensation and the mind has memory. The mind always knows dualistically. Our mind thinks and knows through thoughts, our mind feels and knows through feelings, our mind has sensations, knows through sensation and our mind has fantasy and knows through imagination. The knowledge of our mind is mediated through conceptualization and representational thinking. Our mind can even know the mind of others. However, our mind cannot know Being and our mind cannot know the Being-ness of beings. Our mind cannot experience Being. Our mind cannot know Being directly. Awareness Knows Being! Our awareness directly knows Being and our awareness can directly know the Being-ness of beings. Being itself is not a being and Being manifests beings, infinite numbers of beings. Being manifests Being within beings as their own being. Being itself is not an entity and Being is not a being. Being is not a thing. Being is non-duality. Being knows the non-duality of everything and anything. Being is oneness and pervasiveness. Being is openness, and Being self-manifests as radiant light. Being is compassionate creative resonance. Being manifests presence. Our awareness can know the indivisible presence of the Being-ness of beings within beings and between beings. Being manifests duality, although Being is completely non-dual. By becoming aware of awareness, we experience primordial awareness which is the ground of being, which is Being itself. Awareness is Being. Awareness is Being knowing Being. Being knows Being and is the Being-ness of all the beings. Awareness can be timeless as well as awareness can be in time. Awareness can be timelessness and in time simultaneously.

RESUMEN:
La psicología analítica es la obra de Carl Gustav Jung y sus seguidores. También conocida como psicología de los complejos, el término aparece oficialmente en 1913 para designar una ampliación del psicoanálisis, razón por la cual se la tiene tanto por una escuela de psicoanálisis como por una tendencia de la psicología profunda, según la expresión de Bleuler para caracterizar a toda psicología que parta de la hipótesis de la existencia de una psique inconsciente.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) era un joven psiquiatra ya reconocido por la profesión cuando asumió la defensa de la obra de Freud, tanto en los foros psiquiátricos como en su propia obra, iniciada en 1902. Su estrecha colaboración desde 1907 se rompería en 1913 a instancias de Freud, para quien los desarrollos Junguianos del psicoanálisis no resultaban acordes con su propia teoría. Atrás quedarán los años en los que Jung fue el presidente de la Asociación Psicoanalítica Internacional desde su fundación en 1910 hasta el inicio de la primera Guerra Mundial. Una época en la que se constituye y alcanza una dimensión internacional (Europa y Estados Unidos) el movimiento psicoanalítico nacido en Viena alrededor de Freud a partir de 1900.
Entre el inmenso legado de Carl Jung, aquel que ha pasado a la historia por sus teorías y métodos revolucionarios en el mundo de la psicología, hay un tema que sobresale y ha sido su herencia más duradera: La Teoría de los Arquetipos.
Jung busca e investiga a los arquetipos en las doctrinas de las tribus primitivas, en las doctrinas secretas esotéricas, en las religiones, en los mitos y leyendas, en los símbolos del Tarot, en las imágenes de la Alquimia y muy especialmente en los sueños, en los que se apoya para la psicoterapia.
Hay que empezar por decir que Jung pensaba que no venimos al mundo como una tabula rasa, no venimos ‘en blanco’ como planteaba Freud, el ser humano según Jung, ya nace con información y ciertas creencias: “no existe una sola idea o concepción esencial que no posea antecedentes históricos”. Estos antecedentes históricos llegan a nosotros inconscientemente, y otros los vamos aprendiendo por medio de mitos, leyendas y la experiencia.
Es fácil identificar diferentes tipos de patrones de conducta en los mitos y leyendas de las culturas antiguas, todas tienden a tener un mismo héroe y trama, tienden, básicamente, a repetirse. Esta continua repetición de historias con los mismos personajes y el mismo guión es lo que llamamos Arquetipos.
Dr. ADOLFO VÁSQUEZ ROCCA

Resumen:
El presente artículo se propone dar cuenta del elusivo fenómeno de la conciencia desde la original perspectiva de la neurofenomenología de Francisco Varela, quien a partir de nociones tales como neuroplasticidad, enacción y emergencia, explica, cómo ocurren los procesos cerebrales que fundan la conciencia y la “unidad” de la vivencia. Describiendo como la conciencia aparece en el vivir encarnado: en la regulación con el cuerpo entero; en sus relaciones sensorio-motoras con el mundo y en una red ínter-subjetiva de acciones y de lenguaje.
Palabras clave: Neurociencias, biología cultural, ciencias cognitivas, cuerpo, mundo, ética, enacción, saber-cómo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

"Michel Weber and Will Desmond, (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008. (695 p. + 726 p. ; ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 ; 398 €)
Gathering 115 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought aims at interpreting Whitehead secundum Whitehead, at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary development.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Aesthetics
II. Anthropology
III. Ecology
IV. Economy
V. Education
VI. Ethics
VII. Gender Studies
VIII. History
IX. Language
X. Mathematics and Logic
XI. Metaphysics
XII. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind
XIII. Public Policy
XIV. Science
XV. Sociology of Science
XVI. Theology and Religion
XVII. Theory of Knowledge
XVIII. Urbanism & Architecture
XIX. Biographical entries
XX. Critical Apparatus

Authors : A Sister of St-John, Adam Scarfe , Albert C. Lewis, Alessandro Sardi, Alix Parmentier, Andrew Dawson, Annamaria Miranda, Arran Gare, Barbara Muraca, Berit Brogaard, Beth Lord, Brian G. Henning, Bruce Duncan MacQueen, Bruce G. Epperly, Carol F. Johnston, Carol P. Christ, Claude de Jonckheere, Claus Michael Ringel, Clifford Cobb, Craig Eisendrath, Daniel A. Dombrowski, David G. Butt, David Ray Griffin, Dominic J. Balestra, Donald Wayne Viney, Donna Bowman, Douglas R. Anderson, Elias L. Khalil, Elie During, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Franck Robert, Gao Shan, Gary A. Cook, George Allan, Giangiacomo Gerla , Gottfried Heinemann, Graham Bird, Granville C. Henry, jr., Gudmund Smith, Guillaume Durand, Howard Woodhouse, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Jaime Nubiola, James Connelly, James Williams, Jean-Pascal Alcantara, Johanna Seibt, John B. Cobb, Jr., John H. Buchanan, John Quiring , John W. Lango, Jonathan Delafield-Butt, Jorge Luis Nobo, Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Joseph E. Earley, Sr., Joseph Grange, Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas, Judith Jones, Julie A. Nelson, Kipton Jensen, Leemon McHenry, Les Muray, Lieven Decock, Liliana Albertazzi, Luca Gaeta, Luca Vanzago, Manuel Bächtold, Marc Maesschalck, Maria Pachalska , Mark Modak-Truran, Mark R. Dibben, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Max Velmans, Michael Epperson, Michael Fortescue, Michel Weber, Murray Code, Mustafa Ruezgar, Norman Sieroka, Patrick J. Coppock, Paul Custodio Bube, Peter Hare, Peter Simons, Pierfrancesco Basile, Les Muray, Randall E. Auxier, Richard Feist, Robert Castiglione, Robert J.Valenza, Ronny Desmet , Ross L. Stein, Rudolf Windeln, Stephen T. Franklin, Sylviane R. Schwer, T. L. S. Sprigge, Thomas A. F. Kelly, Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C., Timothy E. Eastman, Vincent Shen, Volker Peckhaus, William Jay Garland, William T. Myers"

The first part of the paper develops the argument that geographers should learn to decompose human memory into its constituent parts because then and then alone will we become attuned to the full range of ways in which we incorporate places into our beings. The second part of the paper articulates Stephen Hill's comments on episodic memory with my recent work on wisdom.

What would the Merleau-Ponty of Phenomenology of Perception have thought of the use of his phenomenology in the cognitive sciences? This question raises the issue of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the relationship between the sciences and philosophy, and of what he took the philosophical significance of his phenomenology to be. In this article I suggest an answer to this question through a discussion of certain claims made in connection to the “post-cognitivist” approach to cognitive science by Hubert Dreyfus, Shaun Gallagher and Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch. I suggest that these claims are indicative of an appropriation of Merleau-Ponty’s thought that he would have welcomed as innovative science. Despite this, I argue that he would have viewed this use of his work as potentially occluding the full philosophical significance that he believed his phenomenological investigations to contain.

This is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatures, with animal bodies and animal desires and appetites. Equally clearly, we are conscious beings with interiority, able to think of ourselves as ourselves. Two influential depictions of our humanity have increasingly come to seem unworkable: the scientistic picture, that we are nothing but especially complex networks of neural firings; and the Abrahamic picture, that we are immaterial souls associated with but separable from our animal bodies. Do the Indians, who thought long and hard about the question of what it is to be a human being, have any alternative advice? I believe so. The answer I will offer arises out of my reflection upon their discussion, but is not the view of any single participant within it. My proposal will draw from Buddhist analyses of subjectivity and self-consciousness, and on other Indian theories of emergence, subconscious mechanisms, embodiment, and the emotions. What will gradually emerge from this exercise in conceptual retrieval from historical sources is a philosophical explanation of the compatibility of naturalism with the first-person stance, within the parameters of a new conception of self. Selves, embodied subjects of consciousness, come into view from the standpoint of a liberal naturalism.

"Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. Even if one is not enamored of the idea of selves that are distinct from persons—as I am not—one will flnd this book a creative contribution to the discussion of persons. Although I lack the competence to judge Ganeri's interpretation of Indian texts, I highly recommend this book for its rich discussion as well as its complex account of the self. Ganeri's holistic, nonscientistic, and nonreductive approach to our mental lives will be highly congenial to those who appreciate the richness of mental life, including its flrst-personal aspects."
—Lynne Rudder Baker, Review of Metaphysics 2013

"Ganeri manages the amazing feat of writing for two different audiences at once. One is Western-trained philosophers looking for answers to the puzzling questions the various properties of the self. They will find a thorough and sophisticated discussion that at the same time introduces them to a stunning set of intellectual gems from India's philosophical history. The second audience consists of scholars working on Ancient Indian materials dealing with the relation of body, mind, and self. Even though the discussion is going to be considerably more hard-going for this audience, they will find new insights into ways of thinking about the Ancient Indian discussion and the interrelation between various philosophical traditions on almost every page. The ease with which Ganeri manages to keep both audiences on board without sacrificing either philosophical sophistication, or distorting the nuances of the historical discussion by broad- brush generalizations found in less accomplished works on cross-cultural philosophical debates is nothing less than astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources."
—Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013

"Emergence is but one of the many important issues tackled in a book whose scope extends over a large range of philosophical puzzles about the self. There are intriguing taxonomies of theories of the mind, ancient and modern, and an abundance of critical discus- sion, including an acute critique of the Buddhist view of the self. Both because of the clarity of its grasp of the contemporary landscape in analytic philosophy of mind, and because of the special slant given by the author’s knowledge of Indian philosophy, the work has a lot to offer. While it would be unrealistic to expect from this (or perhaps any) book definitive solutions to the intractable problems of mind and body, Ganeri’s understanding of what it means to ap- proach these problems from a broadly naturalist perspective seems to me to be a good deal more nuanced, and more philosophically in- teresting, than much of the contemporary literature in the philosophy of mind."
—John Cottingham, Philosophy, 2013

The fundamental claim of this thesis is that music perception and cognition are embodied activities. This means that they depend crucially on the physical constraints and enablings of our sensorimotor apparatus, and also on the sociocultural environment in which our music-listening and -producing capacities come into being. This claim shows a strong similarity to that of John Blacking (1973), who wrote, "Music is a synthesis of cognitive processes which are present in culture and in the human body: the forms it takes, and the effects it has on people, are generated by the social experiences of human bodies in different cultural environments." (Blacking 1973: 89) I shall present some further evidence in its support, by showing how exemplary rhythms of certain kinds of music may relate to such embodied processes. I shall argue that rhythm perception and production involve a complex, whole-body experience, and that much of the structure found in music incorporates an awareness of the embodied, situated role of the participant. The claim that music perception and cognition are embodied activities also means that they are actively constructed by the listener, rather than passively transferred from performer to listener. In particular, the discernment of entities such as pulse and meter from a given piece of music are not perceptual inevitabilities for any human being, but are strongly dependent on the person's culturally contingent listening strategies. In addition, I argue that certain kinds of rhythmic expression in what I shall call groove-based music are directly related not only to the role of the body in music- making, but also to certain cultural aesthetics that privilege this role.

(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. 1998)

audio examples can be found here: https://app.box.com/shared/22oskj0t95

This paper crosses the borders of human geography to bring back two related bodies of work from experimental psychology that investigate, in an unusual and refreshingly precise way, long-standing human geographical concerns with tem-porality, place and subject formations, meaning-making and well-being. It is argued that the traffic of ideas and empirical findings between human geography and experimental psychology can be mutually profitable if, and only to the extent that, it encompasses a sustained epistemological, methodological and political critique of the disciplinary practices that have yielded those ideas and findings.

The felt sense of whoness is not a me-ness…me is self-fixation and in fact the sense of whoness can free us from objectified self-fixation. The sense of me often replaces the sense of who. When the experiential nonconceptual felt sense of who is not known or experienced, the felt sense of me-ness arises desperately. The sense of who is unfixatedness and this innate sense of no-thingness can be found and even experienced as ongoing timeless awareness in time. Innermost awareness in its manifestation can be experienced as whoness, no-thingness and open knowingness. The sense of me-ness is self-fixated, self-referencing and this me-ness can obscure the experiential arising of whoness. The sense of me-ness reflects the being in mind alone, and the sense of whoness reflects being deeply within the awareness field. Whoness manifests most directly as pause and within the pause. The pause is unbound in betweeness…the space in between..transitional spaciousness. When the spaciousness of the breathless breath opens whoness can be felt as uncontained and unbound. Whoness is experiential openness….openess without a name or prior to name. We may say openness prior to mind. Dasein to use Heideggarian language. When the breathless breath manifests the experience is always mysterious. What does breathless breath mean? Breathless means no breath, there is no breath. The word breath here, in this context signifies that there is no breath but there is respiration. There is this inner most experience of no breath, no inhaling or exhaling of air and yet there is respiration. There is a respiration without breath and beyond breath. For instance, in the Kechari mudra this breathless breath experience takes place. The breath stops and yet there is an inner sense of breathless respiration. This experience of respiration without breath is described in various traditions of eastern philosophy. In the Dzogchen tradition Longchenpa describes the experience in his great text Words and Meaning. This

The first part of the book delineates the recent emergence
of characteristic psychopathologies of cognitive capitalism,
which have resulted from the unique concatenation of socialpolitical-
psychological-economic relations that have produced
distinct stresses and forms of derangement upon the factory
of the brain. This leads to the second stream, referred to as
“the cognitive turn” in cognitive capitalism. For example, as
a result of the necessity for an efficient brain-mind to labor
in the advanced and constantly accelerating conditions of
the knowledge economy highly sophisticated and nuanced
forms of attention have become compulsory well beyond what
was considered essential in the older regimes of the modern.
As such new dispositifs of normalization and governmentalization
have arisen to, on the one hand, diffuse the attention
necessary for multi-tasking, and on the other, to enhance the
production of a hyper-attention. It is upon these and other
similar conditions that this book concentrates. It calls for the
identification of the causative factors of these psychopathologies
as well as attempting to invent the counter conditions with
which to thwart their emergence. Contributors include Ina Blom, Arne De Boever, Pascal Gielen, Sanford Kwinter, Maurizio Lazzarato, Karl Lyden, Yann Moulier Boutang, Matteo Pasquinelli, Alexie Penzin, Patricia Reed, John Roberts, Liss C. Werner, Charles T. Wolfe

The body is both the subject and object of intentionality: qua Leib, it experiences worldly things and qua Körper, it is experienced as a thing in the world. This phenomenological differentiation forms the basis for Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological theory of the mediated or eccentric nature of human embodiment, that is, simultaneously we both are a body and have a body. Here, I want to focus on the extent to which this double aspect of embodiment (qua Leib and Körper) relates to our experience of temporality. Indeed, to question, does this double bodily relation correspond to a twofold temporality of embodied intentionality? In the first part of this paper, I differentiate between the intentional temporality of being a body and the temporal experience of having a body . To further my argument, in the second part, I present examples of specific pathologies, as well as liminal cases of bodily experiences, wherein these temporal dimensions, which otherwise go hand-in-hand, become dissociated. Phenomenologically, I want to argue that Husserl’ s differentiation between Leib and Körper corresponds to two genetic forms of intentionality – operative and act (or object) intentionality
– and that these are, in turn, characterized by different temporalities. Anthropologically, I want to argue that having a body – what occurs as an inherent break to human embodiment–is the presupposition for the experience of a stable and object-like time. I will conclude that the double aspect of human embodiment and in particular the thematic experience of having a body enables both the experience of a past, which is remembered, and a future that is planned.

This article provides an analysis of the problematic of foresight in traditional Chinese thought, articulating it with current developments in the epistemology of futures studies, planning theory, and strategic management. It is argued that in Chinese thought the answer to the question " Can the future be predicted? " depends on the forecasting horizon: whereas the immediate future can be sensed and taken advantage of by immersing oneself in the evolving situation, the remote future is fundamentally unpredictable. These dual answers are entrenched in discussions of what constitutes wisdom, opening up productive spaces of encounter between the problematic of foresight and the problematic of wisdom. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.2018.22(3).00A35

Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be conceived of as fundamentally embodied, because sensory information is a fundamental component of experience as it is stored in long-term memory, and because bodily responses and intuitions often precede reflexive or strategic thought. I argue that the challenge of embodied knowledge for cultural sociology is threefold: to develop cultural theories of motivation; to specify the ways in which the body structures discourses endogenously; and to specify how embodied motivations and embodied discourses interact.

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.

This paper makes use of a passage from novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to illustrate Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the lived body and to consider what the related phenomenological concepts of place, environmental embodiment, and immersion-in-world might offer research in situated cognition.

ABSTRACT
The introduction presents merely roughly‭ (‬as they undergo change all the time‭) ‬the contemporary,‭ ‬insular,‭ ‬Anglo-Phone speculations‭ (‬supposedly by means of the discourse of philosophy and the socio-cultural practice of philosophizing‭) ‬about notions of consciousness and mind.

These,‭ ‬almost epistemological solipsistic,‭ ‬self-centered and anthropo-centered,‭  ‬restricted speculations about the notions of mind and consciousness are made by means of cognitively biased metaphysical,‭ ‬ontological,‭ ‬epistemological and methodological assumptions and selective interpretations of the nature and the doing of philosophy.‭ ‬Individuals or groups of them uttering those speculations form part of the professional academe and subscribe to the principles,‭ ‬attitudes,‭ ‬values and norms of a particular school,‭ ‬movement and community of Western academic philosophers.

The next sections situate the individuals who utter these pronouncements and/‭ ‬or argue for them by reasoning,‭ ‬logic and argumentation in the wider context of the multiverse,‭ ‬the universe,‭ ‬planet earth and our species as merely one type of contingent,‭ ‬living organism inhabiting and restricted to a certain eon,‭ ‬era,‭ ‬period,‭ ‬epoch,‭ ‬civilization,‭ ‬historical period and culture‭ (‬or time and place‭) ‬of this planet.‭ ‬In spite of this absolute restriction by place and time individuals try to depict from this restricted point of view an all-inclusive,‭ ‬god-like explanation of the nature,‭ ‬origin,‭ ‬meaning and functioning of every thing.‭

I suggest that because of conceptual misuse mental objects such as the mind and consciousness are imagined and thought to exist.‭ ‬Such misleading notions lead to the creation of unnecessary‭ ‘‬philosophical‭’ ‬problems such as the mind-body problem and notions about things such as‭ ‘‬qualia‭’‬.‭ ‬It is advisable to restrict any‭  ‬experiments to an investigation of particular senses and‭ ‘‬acts‭’ ‬of cognition and identify the areas in the body and brain that play a part in them‭ ‬-‭ ‬and to leave such research to experts of the specialized cognitive and‭  ‬neuroscientific fields and related disciplines,‭ ‬instead of trying to speculate about them or by the use of thought experiments,‭ ‬imaginary cases and simulations,‭ ‬fictional accounts and reasoning or arguments.

I focus on what
phenomenology has contributed to our understanding of embodied cognition.  I start by looking at some of the
historical resources that define the phenomenology of the body. I then consider how phenomenology, as a methodology, relates to scientific investigations of embodied cognition, and
finally go on to identify some of the insights about embodied cognition that phenomenology provides.

My concern in this essay is to address some fundamental questions about how best to understand the contemporary enactivist proposals about the nature of experiencing. Ultimately, I propose that the most viable versions of enactivism are radical, non-representationalist and non-cognitivist renderings. In what follows I demonstrate why this is so by firstly, saying a word about the driving insights behind all enactivist approaches (section two); secondly, reviewing the particularities of Noë’s conservative version of enactivism about experience and identifying certain problems that attend it (section three); and, thirdly and finally, by showing why, if we are to adequately overcome those problems, we should adopt a more radical form of enactivism. Thankfully, I believe this is not only a possible, but a wholly compelling option (section four).

RESUMEN:
BIOLOGÍA CULTURAL, CONTINGENCIA DEL LENGUAJE Y ONTOLOGÍA DEL EXPLICAR.
La Emoción en la Construcción de la Teoría; Crítica a la pretensión de objetividad en el conocimiento. Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Rorty y Humberto Maturana.
En el presente artículo se esbozan controversias en torno a los sistemas de convivencia y dominios explicativos, la relación del lenguaje con la realidad, el rol constructivo del “observador”, la importancia de la experiencia estética, la reivindicación del emocionar humano y la constitución de lo patológico.
El fundamento de la biología del conocer está en el reconocimiento  del observador como constitutivo de lo observado–. Desde esta perspectiva epistémica unitaria vivir es conocer –y mientras mayor sea la plasticidad estructural de un organismo, mayor será su capacidad de conducta inteligente en la interacción con otros–.La ponencia se constituye como un espacio de investigación y experimentación a partir de preguntas que dan cuenta del desarrollo continuo de los ámbitos epistemológicos, comprensivos y explicativos que se generan a partir de abstracciones de las coherencias del vivir en los ámbitos generados por la Autopoiesis, la Deriva Natural, la Biología del Conocer, la Biología del Amar, el Conversar liberador y el habitar biológico-cultural en las Organizaciones y Comunidades Humanas.
    Se exponen los fundamentos de la teoría del conocimiento de Humberto Maturana, que surgen de tres preguntas: ¿Cuál es la organización del ser vivo? ¿Cuál es la organización del sistema nervioso? ¿Cuál es la organización del sistema social? Maturana desarrolla una teoría sobre la organización de los seres vivientes y la naturaleza del fenómeno del conocer basada en la autonomía operacional del ser vivo, proponiendo una descripción del operar cognoscitivo del ser vivo sin referencia a una realidad externa. Se esbozan controversias en torno a los sistemas de convivencia y dominios explicativos, la relación del lenguaje con la realidad, el rol constructivo del ‘observador’, la importancia de la experiencia estética, la reivindicación del emocionar humano y la constitución de lo patológico.
Espacio psíquico.  Co-inspiración (Richard Rorty)

1.- Una cultura surge como una red cerrada de conversaciones. Una nación o una época, por ejemplo, tiene una cultura particular con una red cerrada de conversaciones que uno conserva de manera consciente o inconsciente. Una familia tiene su propia cultura con una red cerrada de conversaciones que se conservan en el ejercicio de vivir. Entonces, cuando revelas esa red de conversaciones puedes orientarla de manera distinta.

Como señala  Richard Rorty[4]:

–  El mundo no habla. Sólo nosotros lo hacemos. El mundo una vez que nos hemos ajustado al programa de un lenguaje, puede hacer que sostengamos determinadas creencias.
La verdad no puede estar ahí afuera -no puede existir independientemente de la mente humana- porque as proposiciones no pueden tener esa existencia, estar ahí afuera. El mundo está ahí afuera, pero las descripciones del mundo no. Sólo las descripciones del mundo pueden ser verdaderas o falsas. El mundo de por sí –sin el auxilio de las actividades descriptivas de los seres humanos- no puede serlo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca         
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

While the psychical sciences and parapsychology have languished over the decades and failed to produce a viable theoretical basis for their observations, great strides have been made in the neurosciences especially in the areas of neurophysiology and neurophysics. The object of these researches goes beyond just discovering how the brain functions, but to actually discover the neural correlates of mind and consciousness. Understanding how brain and consciousness relate to one another has opened a new door to understanding psi and how consciousness survives death. The new physical model of consciousness presented below goes a long way toward explaining the paradoxical nature of mind and consciousness that psi and survival present.

Cognitive science, until recently, has neglected affectivity and subjectivity which is partly due to dualistic conceptions of the cognizing subject. The present work aims to further expand the scope of the mind sciences with a phenomenological treatment of affectivity. More specifically, it discusses Daniel Stern’s notion of vitality affects (1985), employing an interdisciplinary approach with an emphasis on ontogenetic perspectives.

Formulating a critique on the current stance of embodied views, it is argued that they presuppose a dualist ontology, hence the “embodied” notion of affectivity lacks phenomenological depth and accuracy. Instead, the enactive approach is advocated that puts affectivity on central stage in explaining the “deep continuity of life and mind” (Thompson 2007 p. ix). Following Thompson and Sheets-Johnstone (2011b), I ground the concept of the body in the life–mind continuum, then following Aristotle and Colombetti (2014), I ground affectivity in the body–life–world continuum.

Stern’s model of the early organisation of the self helps to gain a more refined understanding of the developmental and clinical aspects of those cultural splits between body and mind that appear as a result of the Cartesian dualism. Along this developmental model focusing on vitality affects, two major ontogenetic events are identified in the infant’s
experience which I call body-mind splits – where an objectification of the self occurs. Describing the phenomenological nature of the splits, Ratcliffe’s & Colombetti’s taxonomy of bodily feelings is adopted (2012). In identifying the splits in the infants’ experience, I connect Stern’s theory with phenomenology (Husserl 1960; Merleau-Ponty 2010b; Vermes 2006), psychoanalytic views (Lacan 2001), and enactivism (Thompson 2007).

My hope is that this thesis is a step towards a mutually informed discussion on the fundamental role of vitality affects in intersubjectivity between enactive cognitive science, phenomenology, affective science, as well as developmental psychology. This step expectantly helps gaining a deeper understanding on the nature and genesis of various splits between body and mind, which can consequently facilitate the success of somatic psychotherapies.

Despite the recent increase of interest in the work of Merleau-Ponty there is still a persistent tendency to overlook the uniqueness of the philosophical position he advances in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article I present a reading of Merleau-Ponty's account of the phenomenological reduction that explains how it is original. I do this by contrasting his presentation of the reduction with that of the early Husserl, highlighting how his emphasis on the phenomenology of the 'perceived world' leads him to reject Husserl's conception of phenomenology as a 'philosophical science,' and the Kantian language in which this account is framed. I go on to critically discuss the interpretations of the reduction advanced by Stephen Priest and Joel Smith as examples of readings that fail to fully grasp Merleau-Ponty's account of the 'natural attitude' as resting on the inherent objectivizing structure that is built into perception itself. The way that these authors misinterpret Merleau-Ponty helps to make maximally clear the profound philosophical significance that he places on the phenomenology of the 'perceived world'.

In this paper, I present an informational approach to the nature of personal identity. In ‘‘Plato and the problem of the chariot’’, I use Plato’s famous metaphor of the chariot to introduce a specific problem regarding the nature of the self as an informational multiagent system: what keeps the self together as a whole and coherent unity? In ‘‘Egology and its two branches’’ and ‘‘Egology as synchronic individualisation’’, I outline two branches of the theory of the self: one concerning the individualisation of the self as an entity, the other concerning the identification of such entity. I argue that both presuppose an informational approach, defend the view that the individualisation of the self is logically prior to its identification, and suggest that such individualisation can be provided in informational terms. Hence, in ‘‘A reconciling hypothesis: the three membranes model’’, I offer an informational individualisation of the self, based on a tripartite model, which can help to solve the problem of the chariot. Once this model of the self is outlined, in ‘‘ICTs as technologies of the self’’ I use it to show how ICTs may be interpreted as technologies of the self. In ‘‘The logic of realisation’’, I introduce the concept of ‘‘realization’’ (Aristotle’s anagnorisis) and support the rather Spinozian view according to which, from the perspective of informational structural realism, selves are the final stage in the development of informational structures. The final ‘‘Conclusion: from the egology to the ecology of the self’’ briefly concludes the article with a reference to the purposeful shaping of the self, in a shift from egology to ecology.

Recent philosophy of mind has seen an increase of interest in theories of intentionality in offering a functional account of mental states. The standard intentionalist view holds that mental states can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of their representational contents. An alternative view proposed by Tim Crane, called impure intentionalism, specifies mental states in terms of intentional content, mode, and object. This view is also suggested to hold for states of sensory awareness. This paper primarily develops an alternative to the impure intentionalist account of states of sensory awareness. On the basis of Husserl's phenomenological work, I argue that a focus on intentionality at the level of sensory awareness is phenomenologically implausible. The final part offers an alternative functional account of sensory awareness based on what Husserl called 'immanent association'.

Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra’s seminal article on the relation between embodied simulation and Film Studies mentions ‘at least three types of embodiment related to cinema: i) film style as embodiment; ii) acting style as embodiment; iii) viewer’s responses to filmed bodies and objects as embodiment’ (206). I would like to extend Gallese and Guerra’s typology with another domain through which embodied cognition relates to cinema. By revealing some of the physiological, psychological, and environmental constraints and constituents of viewers’ meaning making processes in film, this chapter brings narrative theories and embodied cognitive approaches into collaboration, exposing the relation between film narrative and embodied cognition. Generally, the following chapter addresses the question ‘how the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the minimal embodied and ecologically embedded self give rise to [film] narratives’ (Menary Embodied Narratives 75). Specifically, my contribution aims to unravel the initial, pre-cognitive part of a complex process that guides one’s narrative meaning making activity. While I will touch upon the theory of cognitive mental models and their relation to the invocation of narrative models, the main focus will be on embodied image schemas, as dynamic patterns of our shared bodily interactions, and their formative role in the initiation of elementary narrative schemas, as deeply embodied, internally organized formal gestalts.
The present chapter consists of five parts. Following an introduction and a concise overview of the relevant aspects of (1) embodied cognition and (2) image schemas, I present a working definition of (3) narrative form that corresponds with the introduced theoretical approach. Narrowing down my focus to viewers’ meaning making processes of organizing information into intelligible forms (4), the chapter offers an attempt at connecting embodied and cognitive (that is embodied-cognitive) approaches with narrative theories, supporting a general explanatory model of understanding narrative film. Lastly, (5) the presented theoretical arguments will be illustrated through examples that elucidate the reliance of various narrative forms on embodied cognition. In order to confine theoretical redundancy among the chapters of this volume to the minimum, I have kept the overview of embodied cognition brief, and have chosen to concentrate on its specific relevance to the construction and comprehension of narrative forms.