Download or read book Emergence and Embodiment written by Bruce Clarke and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics—the study of communication and control systems—was mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence and computer science and taken up by the social sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. In Emergence and Embodiment, Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen focus on cybernetic developments that stem from the second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics’ attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis in embodied and metabiotic systems. The collection opens with an interview with von Foerster and then traces the lines of neocybernetic thought that have followed from his work. In response to the apparent dissolution of boundaries at work in the contemporary technosciences of emergence, neocybernetics observes that cognitive systems are operationally bounded, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order systems theory stresses the recursive complexities of observation, mediation, and communication. Focused on the neocybernetic contributions of von Foerster, Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann, this collection advances theoretical debates about the cultural, philosophical, and literary uses of their ideas. In addition to the interview with von Foerster, Emergence and Embodiment includes essays by Varela and Luhmann. It engages with Humberto Maturana’s and Varela’s creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela’s later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann’s adaptations of autopoiesis to social systems theory. Taken together, these essays illuminate the shared commitments uniting the broader discourse of neocybernetics. Contributors. Linda Brigham, Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Edgar Landgraf, Ira Livingston, Niklas Luhmann, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe

Download or read book Embodiment Enaction and Culture written by Christoph Durt and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first interdisciplinary investigation of the cultural context of enactive embodiment, offering perspectives that range from the neurophilosophical to the anthropological. Recent accounts of cognition attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional cognitive science by reconceiving cognition as enactive and the cognizer as an embodied being who is embedded in biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. Cultural forms of sense-making constitute the shared world, which in turn is the origin and place of cognition. This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection on the cultural context of embodiment, offering perspectives that range from the neurophilosophical to the anthropological. The book brings together new contributions by some of the most renowned scholars in the field and the latest results from up-and-coming researchers. The contributors explore conceptual foundations, drawing on work by Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, and respond to recent critiques. They consider whether there is something in the self that precedes intersubjectivity and inquire into the relation between culture and consciousness, the nature of shared meaning and social understanding, the social dimension of shame, and the nature of joint affordances. They apply the notion of radical enactive cognition to evolutionary anthropology, and examine the concept of the body in relation to culture in light of studies in such fields as phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and psychopathology. Through such investigations, the book breaks ground for the study of the interplay of embodiment, enaction, and culture. Contributors Mark Bickhard, Ingar Brinck, Anna Ciaunica, Hanne De Jaegher, Nicolas de Warren, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Christoph Durt, John Z. Elias, Joerg Fingerhut, Aikaterini Fotopoulou, Thomas Fuchs, Shaun Gallagher, Vittorio Gallese, Duilio Garofoli, Katrin Heimann, Peter Henningsen, Daniel D. Hutto, Laurence J. Kirmayer, Alba Montes Sánchez, Dermot Moran, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead, Matthew Ratcliffe, Vasudevi Reddy, Zuzanna Rucińska, Alessandro Salice, Glenda Satne, Heribert Sattel, Christian Tewes, Dan Zahavi

Download or read book Neocybernetics and Narrative written by Bruce Clarke and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neocybernetics and Narrative opens a new chapter in Bruce Clarke’s project of rethinking narrative and media through systems theory. Reconceiving interrelations among subjects, media, significations, and the social, this study demonstrates second-order systems theory’s potential to provide fresh insights into the familiar topics of media studies and narrative theory. A pioneer of systems narratology, Clarke offers readers a synthesis of the neocybernetic theories of cognition formulated by biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, incubated by cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, and cultivated in Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. From this foundation, he interrogates media theory and narrative theory through a critique of information theory in favor of autopoietic conceptions of cognition. Clarke’s purview includes examinations of novels (Mrs. Dalloway and Mind of My Mind), movies (Avatar, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and even Aramis, Bruno Latour’s idiosyncratic meditation on a failed plan for an automated subway. Clarke declares the era of the cyborg to have ended, laid to rest as the ontology of technical objects is brought into differential coordination with operations of living, psychic, and social systems. The second-order discourse of cognition destabilizes the usual sense of cognition as conscious awareness, revealing the possibility of nonconscious and nonhuman forms of sentience.

Download or read book Evolvability Environments Embodiment Emergence in Robotics written by John H. Long and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodied and evolving systems — biological or robotic — are interacting networks of structure, function, information, and behavior. Understanding these complex systems is the goal of the research presented in this book. We address different questions and hypotheses about four essential topics in complex systems: evolvability, environments, embodiment, and emergence. Using a variety of approaches, we provide different perspectives on an overarching, unifying question: How can embodied and evolutionary robotics illuminate (1) principles underlying biological evolving systems and (2) general analytical frameworks for studying embodied evolving systems? The answer — model biological processes to operate, develop, and evolve situated, embodied robots.

Download or read book Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment written by Niva Piran and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For five decades, negative body image has been a major focus of study due to its association with psychological and social morbidity, including eating disorders. However, more recently the body image construct has broadened to include positive ways of living in the body, enabling greater understanding of embodied well-being, as well as protective factors and interventions to guide the prevention and treatment of eating disorders. Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment is the first comprehensive, research-based resource to address the breadth of innovative theoretical concepts and related practices concerning positive ways of living in the body, including positive body image and embodiment. Presenting 37 chapters by world-renowned experts in body image and eating behaviors, this state-of-the-art collection delineates constructs of positive body image and embodiment, as well as social environments (such as families, peers, schools, media, and the Internet) and therapeutic processes that can enhance them. Constructs examined include positive embodiment, body appreciation, body functionality, body image flexibility, broad conceptualization of beauty, intuitive eating, and attuned sexuality. Also discussed are protective factors, such as environments that promote body acceptance, personal safety, diversity, and activism, and a resistant stance towards objectification, media images, and restrictive feminine ideals. The handbook also explores how therapeutic interventions (including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Dissonance, and many more) and public health and policy initiatives can inform scholarly, clinical, and prevention-based work in the field of eating disorders.

Download or read book Situated Embodiment written by Jordan Zlatev and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book How We Became Posthuman written by N. Katherine Hayles and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-05-15 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age. Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman." Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems. Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.

Download or read book Emergence of Mind written by David Herman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology that traces the representation of consciousness and mind creation in English literature from 700 to the present.

Download or read book Interactive Art and Embodiment written by Nathaniel Stern and published by Gylphi Limited. This book was released on 2013-08-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is interactive art? Is this a genre? A medium? An art movement? Must a work be physically active to be classified as such, or do we interact when we sense and make sense? Is a switch-throw or link-click enough - I do this, and that happens - or must subjects and objects be confused over time? Is interaction multiple in its engagements (relational), or a one-to-one reaction (programmed)? Are interactive designs somehow more democratic and individualized than others, or is that merely a commercial strategy to sell products and ideas? This book argues that interactive art frames moving-thinking-feeling as embodiment; the body is addressed as it is formed, and in relation. Interactive installations amplify how the body's inscriptions, meanings, and matters unfold out, while the world's sensations, concepts, and matters enfold in. Interactive artwork creates situations that enhance, disrupt, and alter experience and action in ways that call attention to our varied relationships with and as both structure and matter. Nathaniel Stern's inspirational book, Interactive Art and Embodiment, outlines how new media has the ability to intervene in, and challenge, not only the construction of bodies and identities, but also the ongoing and emergent processes of embodiment, as they happen. It includes immersive descriptions of a significant number of interactive artworks and over 40 colour images. The theorists, artists, practitioners and curators discussed in this text include Brian Massumi, Christiane Paul, Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham, Kelli Fuery, Theodore Watson, William Kentridge, Char Davies, Stelarc, Janet Cardiff, Carlo Zanni, Tero Saarinen, Karen Barad, Daniel Rozin, Richard Schechner, Nicole Ridgway, Rebecca Schneider, Annie Sprinkle, Karen Finley, VALIE EXPORT, The Guerrilla Girls, Tegan Bristow, Brian Knep, Anna Munster, Zach Lieberman, Golan Levin, Simon Penny, Camille Utterback, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Millefiore Effect, Nick Crossley, Mathieu Briand, Scott Snibbe, David Rokeby, José Gil, Erin Manning, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Norah Zuniga Shaw Contents Acknowledgments Series Foreword Introduction: Art Philosophy Chapter 1: Digital is as Digital Does Chapter 2: The Implicit Body as Performance Chapter 3: A Critical Framework for Interactive Art Chapter 4: Body-Language Chapter 5: Social-Anatomies Chapter 6: Flesh-Space Chapter 7: Implicating Art Works In Production: Companion Chapter Bibliography Index

Download or read book Journeys of Embodiment at the Intersection of Body and Culture written by Niva Piran and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journeys of Embodiment at the Intersection of Body and Culture: The Developmental Theory of Embodiment describes an innovative developmental and feminist theory—understanding embodiment—to provide a new perspective on the interactions between the social environment of girls and young women of different social locations and their embodied experience of engagement with the world around them. The book proposes that the multitude of social experiences described by girls and women shape their body experiences via three core pathways: experiences in the physical domain, experiences in the mental domain and experiences related directly to social power. The book is structured around each developmental stage in the body journey of girls and young women, as influenced by their experience of embodiment. The theory builds on the emergent constructs of ‘embodiment’ and ‘body journey,’ and the key social experiences which shape embodiment throughout development and adolescence—from agency, functionality and passion during early childhood to restriction, shame and varied expressions of self-harm during and following puberty. By addressing not only adverse experiences at the intersection of gender, social class, ethnocultural grouping, resilience and facilitative social factors, the theory outlines constructive pathways toward transformation. It contends that both protective and risk factors are organized along these three pathways, with the positive and negative aspects conceptualized as Physical Freedom (vs. Corseting), Mental Freedom (vs. Corseting), and Social Power (vs. Disempowerment and Disconnection). Examines the construct of embodiment and its theoretical development Explores the social experiences that shape girls throughout development Recognizes the importance of the body and sexuality Includes narratives by girls and young women on how they inhabit their bodies Invites scholars and health professionals to critically reflect on the body journeys of diverse girls and women Addresses the advancement of feminist, social critical and psychological theory, as well as implications to practice—both therapy and health promotion

Download or read book The Next Step in Developmental Embodiment Research Integrating Concepts and Methods written by Melanie Krüger and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2022-12-12 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Culture Mind and Brain written by Laurence J. Kirmayer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent neuroscience research makes it clear that human biology is cultural biology - we develop and live our lives in socially constructed worlds that vary widely in their structure values, and institutions. This integrative volume brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from the human, social, and biological sciences to explore culture, mind, and brain interactions and their impact on personal and societal issues. Contributors provide a fresh look at emerging concepts, models, and applications of the co-constitution of culture, mind, and brain. Chapters survey the latest theoretical and methodological insights alongside the challenges in this area, and describe how these new ideas are being applied in the sciences, humanities, arts, mental health, and everyday life. Readers will gain new appreciation of the ways in which our unique biology and cultural diversity shape behavior and experience, and our ongoing adaptation to a constantly changing world.

Download or read book Intersex Embodiment written by Fae Garland and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the divergent medical, political and legal constructions of intersex. The authors use empirical data to explore how intersex people are embodied through these frameworks which in turn influence their lived experiences. Through their analysis, the authors reveal the factors that motivate and influence the way in which policy makers and legislators approach the area of intersex rights. They reflect on the limitations of law as the primary vehicle in challenging healthcare’s framing of intersex as a ‘disorder’ in need of fixing. Finally, they offer a more holistic account of intersex justice which is underpinned by psychosocial support and bodily integrity.

Download or read book Linguistic Bodies written by Ezequiel A. Di Paolo and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy.

Download or read book Integrative Governance Generating Sustainable Responses to Global Crises written by Margaret Stout and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominant governance theories are drawn primarily from Euro-American sources, including emergent theories of network and collaborative governance. The authors contest this narrow view and seek a more globally inclusive and transdisciplinary perspective, arguing such an approach is more fruitful in addressing the wicked problems of sustainability—including social, economic, and environmental crises. This book thus offers and affirms an innovative governance approach that may hold more promise as a "universal" framework that is not colonizing in nature due to its grounding in relational process assumptions and practices. Using a comprehensive Governance Typology that encompasses ontological assumptions, psychosocial theory, epistemological concepts, belief systems, ethical concepts, political theory, economic theory, and administrative theory, the authors delve deeply into underlying philosophical commitments and carry them into practice through an approach they call Integrative Governance. The authors consider ways this approach to radical self-governance is already being implemented in the prefigurative politics of contemporary social movements, and they invite scholars and activists to: imagine governance in contexts of social, economic, and environmental interconnectedness; to use the ideal-type as an evaluative tool against which to measure practice; and to pursue paradigmatic change through collaborative praxis.

Download or read book Architectures of Embodiment written by Alex Arteaga and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Self made Men written by Henry Rubin and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Self-Made Men, Henry Rubin explores the production of male identities in the lives of twenty-two FTM transsexuals--people who have changed their sex from female to male. The author relates the compelling personal narratives of his subjects to the historical emergence of FTM as an identity category. In the interviews that form the heart of the book, the FTMs speak about their struggles to define themselves and their diverse experiences, from the pressures of gender conformity in adolescence to being mistaken for "butch lesbians," from hormone treatments and surgeries to relationships with families, partners, and acquaintances. Their stories of feeling betrayed by their bodies and of undergoing a "second puberty" are vivid and thought-provoking. Throughout the interviews, the subjects' claims to having "core male identities" are remarkably consistent and thus challenge anti-essentialist assumptions in current theories of gender, embodiment, and identity. Rubin uses two key methods to analyze and interpret his findings. Adapting Foucault's notions of genealogy, he highlights the social construction of gender categories and identities. His account of the history of endocrinology and medical technologies for transforming bodies demonstrates that the "family resemblance" between transsexuals and intersexuals was a necessary postulate for medical intervention into the lives of the emerging FTMs. The book also explores the historical emergence of the category of FTM transsexual as distinguished from the category of lesbian woman and the resultant "border disputes" over identity between the two groups. Rubin complements this approach with phenomenological concepts that stress the importance of lived experience and the individual's capacity for knowledge and action. An important contribution to several fields, including sociology of the body, gender and masculinity, human development, and the history of science, Self-Made Me will be of interest to anyone who has seriously pondered what it means to be a man and how men become men.