External Reality Research Articles

Pilgrims or project managers: premodern challenges for contemporary students

Presenting an alternative to the prevailing emphasis on what constitutes knowledge – knowledge as the fruit of scientific method, something that is objective and detached from the self – I argue for a critical retrieval of premodern approaches to knowledge that were promoted within the Eastern and Western Christian tradition, approaches that are spiritual in nature. I propose that spiritual modes of knowing should be considered alongside other forms of knowing, in service of a richer, more holistic approach to higher education, one that does justice to the multidimensional aspects of human nature, development, formation and flourishing. While not denying the necessity and value of many current forms of knowledge, I propose that students should also be offered opportunities to become familiar with complementary modes of knowing that are likely to extend the repertoire of the ways they read and respond to the world, other people and their experience of life. Such premodern Christian approaches privileged self-giving and self-control, rather than mastery over or control of what was investigated. Their epistemology viewed intellectual, moral and spiritual virtues as intimately interconnected. They considered knowledge to be something revealed and given rather than constructed or exposed by our methodology. The paper considers the educational potential for students today of learning from the premodern emphasis on knowledge as dependent on both ascetic training and affective formation, as entailing capacitation (being attuned to or fitted for external reality), and as promoting self-knowledge and transformation. I contrast premodern and contemporary approaches to knowledge through the metaphors of pilgrim and project manager.

Discussion of Mustafa Çevrim’s “Vulture in the room”

ABSTRACT In the historical development of psychoanalysis, the solitude of the patient in the session room has evolved over time in the direction that the mind cannot be considered separately from one’s story and external reality. While I was working on writing a discussion paper on Mustafa’s case, I was under the devastating effect of the earthquake disaster that occurred in my country. Therefore, my discussion paper is shaped by my associations of the vulture in Mustafa and Eva’s room and the context in Turkey.

Pseudoreality and Technology: Smartphone-Related Factors Impacting Mental Health.

This article explores the intricate relationship between smartphone usage and mental health and the unintended consequences of the rapid integration of this technology into daily life. It explores the ways in which smartphones disrupt opportunities for introspection and self-reflection, decrease engagement in external reality, increase engagement with realities of the virtual world, precipitate ego destabilization, and interfere with sleep and dreaming. The author explores ways in which the split between the real self and the ideal self is impacted by social media. The influence of smartphones on mental health is a complex and evolving issue, demanding ongoing research, understanding, and a heightened awareness of the potentially deleterious consequences of overusing technology in our ever-changing world.

Generic reasoning: A programmatic sketch

Abstract A single significant instance may support general conclusions, with possible exceptions being tolerated. This is the case in practical human reasoning (e.g. moral and legal normativity: general rules tolerating exceptions), in theoretical human reasoning engaging with external reality (e.g. empirical and social sciences: the use of case studies and model organisms) and in abstract domains (possibly mind-unrelated, e.g. pure mathematics: the use of arbitrary objects). While this has been recognized in modern times, such a process is not captured by current models of supporting general conclusions. This paper articulates the thesis that there is a kind of reasoning, generic reasoning, previously unrecognized as an independent type of reasoning. A theory of generic reasoning explains how a single significant instance may support general conclusions, with possible exceptions being tolerated. This paper will adopt, as a working hypothesis, that generic reasoning is irreducible to currently recognized kinds of ‘pure’ reasoning. The aim is to understand generic reasoning, both theoretically and in its applications.

TRANSITIONAL AREAS OF DIGITAL GAME ART

Digital games, which constitute a part of new media studies, offer different reality experiences and new expressive environments to a player with multimodal interactions and hybrid reality practices offered by game engines. The alternative environments offered by digital game art create a kind of ‘transitional space’ in the participant’s experience process with ambiguous structures such as reality-fiction. The phenomenon of the transitional area, discussed by Donald W. Winnicott, is the cultural manoeuvring space in which the subject experiences both internal and external reality while constructing the initial fiction of the self, and is closely related to Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulation in which fiction and reality are mixed. In contemporary art, where the artistic image becomes a virtual reality, phantasmagoria, in which meaning and reality are reconstructed and staged in new media works referencing digital game practices, takes place in the transitional areas that Winnicott sees as a dynamic and experiential playground. This research focuses on digital game art works of different artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Hesam Jalili, Theo Triantafyllidis, Ian Cheng, and Joon Yong Moon, who create a transitional space in their work with practices such as ‘gamification of space’ and ‘counter gaming’.

Imagini și conștiință la Ludwig Klages

One of the thinkers who, in the wake of Nietzsche, criticized reason in the name of Life, Soul, and emotions, Ludwig Klages is not only a very analytical thinker able to approach critically, in a systematic manner, topics of phenomenology, ontology, or even science but also a creative thinker who proposes a metaphysical view that endeavours to overcome the post-Kantian bracketing of the world. A representative himself of Lebensphilosophie, Klages considers that the static structure of consciousness – which he calls „Spirit,” and which corresponds to what we usually call „concept” – is what has created the worldview that has led the Western human being into the present profound rift with reality, and with himself too. In the following paper we discuss first some of Klages’ arguments concerning the misconceptions that made possible such an overvaluation of concepts as fundamental instruments of the human mind. Secondly, we present his response to this rationalist bias and prejudice, namely his theory about the „reality of images.” The latter are not conceived of as mirror-like reflections of external reality but as highly significant „expressions” of this reality, allowing us a specific metaphysical knowledge of it. What is more, as such „expressions,” images do not inform us – this is the role of the concept – but rather, they „build” us (somewhat in the classical sense of the German Bildung and also Bildungsroman) and are the real profound source of our (changing) truths. On this point, Klages abandons the classical view of truth as correspondence that we inherited from Aristotle, proposing a theory in which, although the human being is receptive towards the external world, he is not conceived of as immutable or endowed with an intellectual grid that passes unchanged through the ages.

Working through multiple crises: the experience of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in Lebanon

IntroductionThis research explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychotherapists' practices and their ability to maintain a framework despite a shared reality with their patients. The specific focus in this article is on the Lebanese context, which is characterized by a series of crises including economic collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Beirut blast. The objective of this study was to examine how the destabilization of the meta-frame due to crises necessitates adaptations in theoretical knowledge, practice, and setting.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study among a population consisting of mental health professionals, which were recruited in Lebanon through associations and societies of psychologists, psychotherapists, and psychoanalysts. Data was collected using semi-structured individual interviews. The interviews were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), which allowed for a dynamic exploration of the participants' experiences.ResultsOur study revealed four superordinate themes: (1) The strained frontiers; (2) The cumulative traumatic reality and its impact; (3) A challenged professional identity; (4) The creativity stemming from collective trauma.ConclusionsOur results highlight the insecurity caused by external reality infiltrating the therapeutic setting. Online therapy allowed for continued work, but uncertainty about the online environment's impact on therapeutic relationships was observed. The study underscores the importance of adaptability, containment, and support for therapists navigating crises, particularly in the online setting.

Digital poesis impulse: A methodology of creative coding with GPT as co-pilot

Any poem can be digitalised, but under what conditions might the poet desire a digital incarnation of their creative output? And for a writer with hobbyist coding skills, might ChatGPT be a suitable partner for creative coding? Faced with three digital poetry commissions and the terror of the blank screen, the author explores questions of poetry and desire, artificial intelligence and authorship, and the tools which enable her digital writing practice. As Irina Paperno (2004) notes, “scholars do not know what to do with diaries” (p. 565). Where the author’s research asks what can be done with journals-as-archives the experimental, multimodal approach of digital poesis breaks open the notion that static containers such as memoir or biography are the best ways into literary archives. The author discovers the coding container as a playful place to enact modes of relationality between text and medium, mother and daughter, archive and archon. Much like Winnicott’s (2005) mother-child play space enables an infant to test the limits of their inner world and external reality, a source-code editor offers unlimited combinatory potential for enacting a relational and material archival response. Through exploring practice-based research, this article tracks the methodology of the three digital poems from ideation to execution and publication, offering exegetical insights along with a detailed accounting of the tools and processes used in the making.

Psychedelic Mysticism and Christian Spirituality: From Science to Love

The scientific claim that psychedelic drugs like psilocybin reliably occasion mystical experiences was justified using the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (the MEQ), a survey first developed in the 1960s by Walter Pahnke using W.T. Stace’s Mysticism and Philosophy. Scholars in Christian mysticism reject the adequacy of Stace’s work for Western theistic mysticism, especially Christianity. One objection is that Stace follows William James in focusing on intense and unusual moments of mystical experience rather than the somewhat more ordinary mystical life. A greater concern is that Stace more adequately reflects non-Western traditions than Western theistic traditions like Christianity. For Stace, mysticism centers on the concept of union with external reality or with the absolute, a union in which the human creature is absorbed or fused. Christian mysticism, by contrast, involves a sense of presence rather than union, experienced in a most intimate relationship as a felt loving closeness with the divine, but not as fusion or absorption into the divine. While love of God is central to the Christian view, it is ignored in Stace and the MEQ30. Finally for Christianity, mysticism is not found in the momentary experience, but in the lifelong interpretation that leads to transformation.

The emergence of identity, agency and consciousness from the temporal dynamics of neural elaboration.

Identity-differentiating self from external reality-and agency-being the author of one's acts-are generally considered intrinsic properties of awareness and looked at as mental constructs generated by consciousness. Here a different view is proposed. All physiological systems display complex time-dependent regulations to adapt or anticipate external changes. To interact with rapid changes, an animal needs a nervous system capable of modelling and predicting (not simply representing) it. Different algorithms must be employed to predict the momentary location of an object based on sensory information (received with a delay), or to design in advance and direct the trajectory of movement. Thus, the temporal dynamics of external events and action must be handled in differential ways, thereby generating the distinction between self and non-self ("identity") as an intrinsic computational construct in neuronal elaboration. Handling time is not what neurons are designed for. Neuronal circuits are based on parallel processing: each bit of information diverges on many neurons, each of which combines it with many other data. Spike firing reports the likelihood that the specific pattern the neuron is designed to respond to is present in the incoming data. This organization seems designed to process synchronous datasets. However, since neural networks can introduce delays in processing, time sequences can be transformed into simultaneous patterns and analysed as such. This way predictive algorithms can be implemented, and continually improved through neuronal plasticity. To successfully interact with the external reality, the nervous system must model and predict, but also differentially handle perceptual functions or motor activity, by putting in register information that becomes available at different time moments. Also, to learn through positive/negative reinforcement, modelling must establish a causal relation between motor control and its consequences: the contrast between phase lag in perception and phase lead (and control) in motor programming produces the emergence of identity (discerning self from surrounding) and agency (control on actions) as necessary computational constructs to model reality. This does not require any form of awareness. In a brain, capable of producing awareness, these constructs may evolve from mere computational requirements into mental (conscious) constructs.

Schrödinger’s cat goes online: Exploring the psychopathology of digital life

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic forced therapists to embrace online sessions, creating a sudden shift in the therapeutic environment. However, the integration of technology into therapy was already underway, prompting the need to explore how the online environment impacts clients and the therapeutic process. Drawing upon Heidegger’s philosophy of technology and Whitehead’s process philosophy, this article argues that our environment and technologies shape our consciousness and subjectivity, and that both the therapist and the client are partly a product of the media ecologies of the digital age. This paper explores the concept of transitionality as proposed by Winnicott, which refers to the dynamic process through which individuals navigate between inner subjective experiences and external reality. It also examines Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of faciality and the social construction of subjectivity through the screen/face as a territorializing force. By integrating these theoretical perspectives, this study seeks to shed light on the intricate relationship between individual subjectivity and online environments in shaping our experiences and identities on the screen. Overall, the article raises some questions about the use of technology in therapy and the implications for understanding the human psyche. It highlights the need to approach online therapy with awareness of the potential limitations and disturbances that may arise.

NEKE PRIMEDBE O INDIVIDUALNOM PROCESU OSLOBAĐANJA KOD SPINOZE

A central theme of Spinoza’s Ethica is the description of the individual’s exposition to the emergence of passions: the individual’s mind is constitutively liable to being passive in relation to the influences exercised on the mind by reality since the mind is a part of nature. As regards the individual’s condition, being passive means having passions: passions bring the individual to a condition of mental enslavement due to the influence coming from the external reality.
 Spinoza tries to find a way out of the passions: through the analysis of the structure of reality and of the individual’s mind, Spinoza shows that the development of knowledge of reality in the mind is the solution for the process of liberation of the mind. The power of the individual’s mind consists in the knowledge of reality: therefore, the possibility, for the individual, to reach an authentic power of mind consists in the acquisition of the knowledge of reality. This acquisition comes about exclusively through the appropriate education. Through the knowledge, the individual becomes able to counteract his being acted on by the external reality: he can lead his life instead of being steadily led by the influences coming from outside.
 We base our inquiry on Spinoza’s Ethica.

A Critique of Positivism: Human Nature and Anarchy

Positivism and post positivism are two paradigms within the field of international relations (IR) that differ in their approaches to ontology (the nature of reality) and epistemology (how knowledge is acquired) in the study of international politics. Ontologically, positivists are objectivists, meaning that they believe there are objective facts (for example, selfish human nature) and laws (for example, anarchy leads to chaos) in international politics. Positivists apply common rationality and value-neutrality as epistemological tools to discover and analyze such claims regarding external and objective social reality. In this paper, I make two points. First, positivism (realism and liberalism) has a natural propensity to reify social concepts into trans historical essence to generate causal theories. However, in reality, human nature is complex and the meaning of social realities such as human nature and anarchy is conceptual and constitutive. Second, the adoption of common rationality and value-neutrality as epistemological building blocks lead positivism to a rigid and ahistorical view of human nature and anarchy. In contrast, post positivism (critical theory and constructivism) can generate a relatively nuanced and complete picture of international politics.

Paul Feyerabend’s Contribution: The Anarchic Sunset of the Philosophy of Science

Abstract: The author places Feyerabend's contribution within a line of thought on science that ideally opens with the Wienerkreis, and which in some way ends with Feyerabend. This trend has always been based on a series of demarcations, ranging from the opposition between meaningful and meaningless statements (the Vienna Circle), or between scientific and non-scientific statements (Popper), or between normal and extraordinary science (Kuhn), to the demarcation between progressive and regressive research programs (Lakatos) — up until Feyerabend, the former student of Popper, who puts an end to the perspicuity of every demarcation. The conclusion that “anything goes” when it comes to doing rigorous science marks the clearly unsuccessful conclusion of this large-scale historical trend. Philosophical attention thus shifts from descriptions of the scientific method to an analysis of the concrete historical production of scientific ideas and discoveries, in a movement that rehabilitates a Hegelian, historical approach in the empirical sciences.
 The author outlines the contemporary approach that no longer sees the whole of knowledge and scientific practice as a series of methodologies aimed at faithfully mirroring nature, construing it instead as a thought-constituted organism subject to Darwinian criteria of selection and mutation. The biological metaphor of the organism that survives by adapting to external reality replaces the claim to foundational scientific validity on the basis of a priori paradigms.

UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERNISM THROUGH THE THEORIES OF LYOTARD AND BAUDRILLARD

This article studies the profound transformations ushered in by postmodernism in the mid-20th century, focusing on its impact on culture, truth, representation, and the traditional understanding of knowledge. Contrary to the view of postmodernism as a linear progression from modernism, we explore the perspectives of Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, presenting it as a cyclical moment within the continuous innovation of high modernism. Lyotard redefines the role of postmodern artists and writers as akin to philosophers, liberated from pre-established norms and engaged in a perpetual quest fornew rules within their works. Baudrillard’s insights into the evolution of science fiction reflect a broader postmodern reevaluation of reality as fragmented and simulacral. Furthermore, we address the so-called crisis of representation identified by Lyotard, challenging the realistic epistemology that views knowledge and art as mirrors of an external reality. By examining fragmented narration in literature, we propose a more inclusive approach to representing the multifaceted nature of reality. This article contributes to the understanding of postmodernism, highlighting its significance in redefining cultural expressions and our approach to knowledge and representation.

The intimate viewfinder: poetic ekphrasis of photographs and the illusion of the real

ABSTRACT As digital photography proliferates in the contemporary world, theorists and creative writers continue to debate what photographs signify and how the poetic ekphrasis of photographs should be understood. This has become a pressing issue in an age when new technologies allow the easy manipulation of digital images – which, depending on the context in which they are viewed, are increasingly being characterised as creative, imaginative, unreliable or deceptive. Yet nineteenth- and early to mid-twentieth-century theorists tended to assume that photographs had a direct, if complex, relationship to observable, external reality, something reiterated by Susan Sontag as late as 1977. This paper discusses how ekphrastic poems by Thomas Hardy and Philip Larkin enshrine assumptions about photography that are now shifting, and how contemporary ekphrastic poems about photographs increasingly challenge, sometimes subversively, photography’s link to the ‘real’. Such poetry continues to emphasise the way photographs connote a ‘chasm’ or ‘thickening’ of time but are more troubled than earlier authors by the idea that photographs may not represent anything clear or knowable. Eve Joseph’s and Leslie Scalapino’s poetry demonstrates ways in which photographs tend to juxtapose a sense of transience with a new sense of photography’s sometimes obdurate problematics.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The Lighthouse at the End of the World and the Boy who Searched for the Light

Defining the word "trauma" is a delicate and difficult challenge, but I think it is very important to include the word trauma in our vocabulary. Generally, when we think of the word trauma, most of us associate it with a catastrophic event. However, it can apper into our lives and disrupt the proper functioning of our mind, body and soul generated by even "smaller" events. The difference is made by everyone's degree of resistance to stress.
 
 It is also very important to use the word trauma in a way that is as conscious as possible, but also correct.
 The studies tell us very clearly, starting from Sigmund Freud’s Era, that you cannot overcome, you cannot improve, you cannot heal something that you cannot express in words. Trauma is the effect or the produced by an event or an experience in our inner universe. It is a form of disconnection from one's own person, from one's own story and most often from one's own body.
 While the causes and symptoms of trauma are various, there are some basic signs. People who have been through traumatic events will often appear shaken and disoriented and may often seem withdrawn or absent even when speaking.
 Another clear sign of trauma is the anxiety (night terrors, nervousness, irritability, poor concentration and mood swings).
 Trauma often manifests itself both emotionally and physically.
 The emotion motion is one of the most common ways trauma manifests itself. Some common emotional symptoms of trauma include denial, anger, sadness, and emotional outbursts , anxiety or panic attacks.
 Some common physical signs are: paleness, lethargy, exhaustion, poor concentration, and rapid heartbeats.
 The effects of trauma can occur either in a short period of time after the event has taken place or in weeks or even years. The earlier the trauma is addressed, the more successful the person will be in the recovery process.
 We all go through scary situations at some point, but we all react differently. If a person cannot get over the traumatic event and his feelings about the experience remain present or worsen as time goes on, he might suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
 Sometimes when we go through an extremely terrifying or chronically stressful experience, the brain overestimates the danger and our stress systems malfunction.
 When this happens, different areas of the brain begin to make mistakes as they interpret the world around them and tell the rest of the body how to respond.
 PTSD is associated with problems in the brain structures and neurotransmitters (the brain's chemical messengers) that are responsible with the way we respond to fear and stress.
 The word trauma can really scare us, but there is also healing.
 But healing is not guaranteed, according to Gabor Matte,but it is available and it depends only on our freedom to choose what we do next.
 What does trauma recovery mean?
 It's about reclaiming our healthy parts, reclaiming the external reality as a benchmark and reclaiming our ability to acknowledge the pain from the past, allowing it the right to exist in present context.

The cognitive reality monitoring network and theories of consciousness

Theories of consciousness abound. However, it is difficult to arbitrate reliably among competing theories because they target different levels of neural and cognitive processing or anatomical loci, and only some were developed with computational models in mind. In particular, theories of consciousness need to fully address the three levels of understanding of the brain proposed by David Marr: computational theory, algorithms and hardware. Most major theories refer to only one or two levels, often indirectly. The cognitive reality monitoring network (CRMN) model is derived from computational theories of mixture-of-experts architecture, hierarchical reinforcement learning and generative/inference computing modules, addressing all three levels of understanding. A central feature of the CRMN is the mapping of a gating network onto the prefrontal cortex, making it a prime coding circuit involved in monitoring the accuracy of one's mental states and distinguishing them from external reality. Because the CRMN builds on the hierarchical and layer structure of the cerebral cortex, it may connect research and findings across species, further enabling concrete computational models of consciousness with new, explicitly testable hypotheses. In sum, we discuss how the CRMN model can help further our understanding of the nature and function of consciousness.

Lighthouse keeper syndrome: update.

A few years ago, with the expression "lighthouse keeper syndrome", we identified those who showed exceptional attention to the control of eating and body weight. Recently the same term was used to describe, at the end of the lockdown, the feeling of living with fear the encounter with external reality, which for many weeks remained confined outside our homes. We are of the opinion that the lighthouse keeper syndrome includes all those behaviors characterized by voluntary, even if often unconscious, social isolation and by the exasperated search for absolute dominion over a single aspect of our being. There are two types of social isolation, the static one typical of those who spend their time closed at home (hikikomori) and the dynamic one characteristic of those who go out, walk but do not interact with other individuals. The radicalization of some food trends can lead to convivial group social isolation. The changes in the characteristic clinical manifestations of lighthouse keeper syndrome demonstrate the impact of society and culture on the individual psychopathology.

Calling the tune in maladaptive daydreaming: The impact of music on the experience of compulsive fantasizing

This study aimed to shed light on the role of music in maladaptive daydreaming (MD), a psychological condition characterized by excessive, immersive daydreaming that interferes with well-being and functioning. Forty-one individuals with probable MD participated in asynchronous in-depth email interviews. A thematic analysis yielded three themes describing the role of music in MD. Two homogeneous themes pertained to outlier experiences: Music necessary and Music not desired. The third theme, Music enhances the MD experience, encompassed most of the data retrieved in this study and was further divided into five subthemes: Music avoided in “low energy” daydreaming scenes, Music as white noise, Music enhances MD creativity, Music as an MD trigger compromises the sense of agency; and Music as a powerful immerser that sets MD’s emotional “soundtrack.” This study adds to the sparse knowledge of complex visual narratives and identifies the essential role of music in inducing and formatting MD. The results led to the conclusion that music might be instrumental in MD by distancing the person from the external reality, triggering complex visual storylines, deepening the altered state of consciousness, and intensifying the vividness of the daydreamed plot by invoking an emotional response. Furthermore, hypothesis-driven controlled research was recommended.