Human Self Research Articles

The \u2018We\u2019 in \u2018Me\u2019: An Account of Minimal Relational Selfhood

Many philosophers contend that selfhood involves a uniquely first-personal experiential dimension, which precedes any form of socially dependent selfhood. In this paper, I do not wish to deny the notion of such a “minimal” experiential dimension as encapsulating the very givenness of experience as for a certain subject, such that experiences are accessible to this subject in a way that they are not for others. However, I do wish to deny any temptation to view minimal experiential selfhood as ontogenetically more primitive than socially constituted selfhood. That is, the ‘thinnest’ construal of minimal experiential selfhood fails to properly account for characteristics that are essential to human selfhood; namely, the intimate, embodied interactions that unfold at the incipient moments of human life. I argue that taking the ontogenesis of embodied human existence seriously involves accepting the de facto equiprimordiality of minimal experientialiasm with a ‘minimal’ form of relational selfhood, i.e. the co-constitution of experience through engagements with others.

THE “DURABLE HOMOPHOBIA” OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

Psychoanalysis is at once a system of thought, a toolkit for cultural diagnosis and criticism, and a therapeutic practice. In Dagmar Herzog's exciting new book Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes, psychoanalysis is among the most transformative intellectual events of the twentieth century and is itself transformed by that century's roiling forces, shaping and profoundly shaped by politics and culture. Foregrounding the historicity of psychoanalysis requires Herzog to wrest psychoanalysis from its own claims to historical transcendence. “While psychoanalysis is often taken to be ahistorical in its view of human nature,” Herzog writes, “the opposite is the case” (2). After Freud's death, during the heyday of psychoanalysis in the 1940s and 1950s, through challenges to its authority in the 1960s and 1970s, to what Herzog calls its “second golden age” in the 1980s, the analytic frame offered by psychoanalysis (and the debates it generated) helped people grapple with the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War and offered novel ways of thinking about the most important questions of the postwar decades: about aggression, guilt, trauma, the capacity for violence, indeed about “the very nature of the human self and its motivations” (1).

How is the Human Self Formed? : From Dewey's Concept of Self and Qualitative Thinking

서지반출 국문초록 이 논문의 목적은 듀이의 자아개념과 자아형성 과정을 탐구하고 자아형성 과정에 있어서 질성적 사고의 역할을 규명하고자 하는 것이다. 인간은 다양한 종류의 본능적 경향성을 가지고 태어나며, 다 른 동물에 비해서 그 경향성을 삶 속에서 실현시키는 데에 많은 시간과 노력이 소요된다. 인간의 자 아형성 과정은 인간의 본능적 경향성을 삶 속에서 실현시키는 과정과 밀접하게 관련되어 있다. 어떠 한 환경이 제공되는가에 따라서 개인의 본능적 경향성은 다른 방식으로 구현된다. 그리고 개인의 움 직이는 정체성(moving identity)으로서의 관심(interest)은 개인과 환경과의 조우에 있어서 개인으로 하여금 수동적으로 환경의 영향을 수용하도록 하는 것이 아니라, 적극적으로 개인의 결핍을 해소할 수 있는 대상을 찾아 나서도록 해준다. 이처럼 개인의 자아형성 과정은 개인의 개별적 경향성과 그 (녀)에게 주어진 독특한 환경과의 고유한 조합의 과정이다. 자아형성 과정에 있어서 질성적 사고는 특별히 매우 중요한 역할을 수행한다. 듀이 경험 개념에 따르면, 질성적 사고는 인지적 사고의 이전과 이후에 등장한다. 인지적 사고 이전에 등장하는 질성적 사고는 개인으로 하여금 문제적인 감(sense)을 갖도록 함으로써 새로운 자아형성 과정을 착수하도록 해주며, 인지적 사고 이후에 등장하는 질성적 사고는 우리의 행위를 이상(ideals)에 비추어 검토하도 록 함으로써 우리의 자아형성 과정이 연속성을 갖도록 해준다. 이처럼 질성적 사고의 순간은 인간의 자아형성 과정에 있어서 결정적인 역할을 수행하며, 질성적 사고의 순간의 발생이 없이는 계속적인 자아형성이 불가능하다.The purpose of this article is to explore Dewey s concept of self and process of self-formation and to identify the role of qualitative thinking in the process of self-formation. Humans are born with various kinds of instinctive tendencies, and it takes much time and effort to realize the tendency in life compared to other animals. The process of human self-formation is closely related to the process of realizing human instinctive tendencies in life. Depending on what environment is provided, the instinctive tendency of the individual is materialized in a different way. In encountering environment, interest as a moving identity of an individual does not allow an individual to accept the influence of the environment unconditionally but rather makes her or him to actively find the object which fills the individual s deficiency. Thus, the process of self-formation of the individual is a process of unique combination of the individual and environment. Qualitative thinking plays a particularly important role in the process of self-formation. According to the Dewey s concept of experience, qualitative thinking emerges before and after cognitive thinking. The qualitative thinking that emerges before the cognitive thinking allows the individual to have a problematic sense to start a new process of self-formation, and the qualitative thinking that emerges after the cognitive thinking maintains the continuity of self-formation by making the individual to reflect current experience in the light of ideals. Thus, the moment of qualitative thinking plays a crucial role in the process of human self-formation, and without the occurrence of the moment of qualitative thinking, continuous self-formation is not possible.

Application of Human Cognitive Self Regulating Particle Swarm Optimization and Stochastic Resonance in Bearing Fault Diagnosis

This paper presents a bearing fault diagnosis algorithm based on human self regulating particle swarm optimization and stochastic resonance. The algorithm first sets up the objective function according to the stochastic resonance structural parameters a and b. Then the self regulating particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the objective function, and the optimized optimal values a and b are substituted into the system of variable scale stochastic resonance. Finally, the measured bearing vibration signal to noise reduction and spectrum analysis to find the bearing fault characteristic frequency. Experimental results show that this method is effective in bearing fault diagnosis.

Embodiment, sociality, and the life shaping thesis

What Kyselo calls the “body-social problem” concerns whether to individuate the human self in terms of its bodily aspects or social aspects. In her view, either approach risks privileging one dimension while reducing the other to a mere contextual element. However, she proposes that principles from enactivism can help us to find a middle ground and solve the body-social problem. Here Kyselo looks to the notions of “needful freedom” and "individuation through and from a world" and extends them from the realm of biological individuation to an individuation in terms of social interactions. However, I will argue that because Kyselo’s solution to the body-social problem downplays the role of the living body, it actually is in tension with the enactivist framework. First, while enactivism places the living body at the center of selfhood and subjectivity, Kyselo’s account treats the living body as mere means and mediator. Second, her claim that the self is socially enacted and individuated is in tension with the enactivist conception of autonomous agency, which centers on the autonomous organization of the living body. However, suppose we grant Kyselo’s claim that we are necessarily social beings, but claim that the mind of a minded human animal constitutively extends to the limits of its living organismic body, but no further. My proposed “life shaping” thesis says that the self is not just essentially embodied, but also partially causally determined or shaped by social interactions, and thoroughly influenced by social norms and values. The life shaping thesis can explain how the self is individuated biologically, in terms of the autonomous organization of the living body, but nonetheless deeply embedded in the social world.

Human Self as Information Agent: Functioning in a Social Environment Based on Shared Meanings

A neglected aspect of human selfhood is that people are information agents. That is, much human social activity involves communicating and discussing information. This occurs in the context of incompletely shared information—but also a group's store of collective knowledge and shared understanding. This article elucidates a preliminary theory of self as information agent, proposing that human evolution instilled both abilities and motivations for the various requisite functions. These basic functions include (a) seeking and acquiring information, (b) communicating one's thoughts to others, (c) circulating information through the group, (d) operating on information to improve it, such as by correcting mistakes, and (e) constructing a shared understanding of reality. Sophisticated information agents exhibit additional features, such as sometimes selectively withholding information or disseminating false information for self-serving reasons, cultivating a reputation as a credible source of information, and cooperating with others to shape the shared worldview in a way that favors one's subgroup. Meaningful information is thus more than a resource for individual action: It also provides the context, medium, and content within which the individual self interacts with its social environment.

Found time: Kairos in A Visit from the Goon Squad

ABSTRACTA Visit from the Goon Squad conceives of time as a brutalizing force. Passing years ravage characters who wonder where time went. Time is central to the story and to the nonlinear way Jennifer Egan tells it, with thirteen chapters alternating perspectives and shifting between past, present, and future. Much of the scholarship on the book to date addresses its negative treatment of time. However, this essay argues that time is not always rough in Goon Squad. Hopeful opportunities emerge during disruptions to linear narrative and challenges to measurable clock time. Approaching the novel through the lens of kairos time—Paul Tillich’s term for the possibility of the eternal—uncovers opportunities for wholeness and healing in a work frequently characterized as hopeless and near dystopian. Kairos fosters human connections, links younger and older selves, and offers possibility to characters who fear time is running out.

Li Zehou's notion of subjectality as a new conception of the human self

AbstractLi Zehou stands among the most influential Chinese philosophers in the post‐Mao era. His notion of subjectality (zhutixing 主体性) is of paramount importance for current developments in contemporary Chinese philosophy. It belongs to the central concepts in Li's theoretical framework, around which his entire philosophical system is constructed. With his elaboration of this concept, Li expanded the problem of the self in post‐revolutionary modernism. The present article analyzes the theoretical bases of this concept, exposes its importance in the scope of contemporary Chinese theory and shows why and how it represents a call for a new humanism. Through a multidimensional comparative perspective, the author also explains why the human subject, which is based upon Li's notion of subjectality, has the potential not only to transform (post‐)modern alienation into a real “human condition,” that is, into spiritually fulfilled society of autonomous individuals but also to fill up the prevailing “vacuum of values.”

‘He is ruler over all’ – Man and ‘his’ universe at the 1539 Ghent refreynen contest

AbstractIn 1539, nineteen chambers of rhetoric presented their refereynen int vroede at the famous rhetorician's contest of Ghent. Taken together, these poems, printed that same year, provide a series of closely related perspectives on humankind, human nature, and the world and its wonders. In general they consider man to be the most powerful of all creatures, as only he (interestingly, in some cases more specifically she) is able to overcome any worldly danger, temptation, or challenge. However, true dominance over the world is only possible if man meets specific conditions, set by God and nature – above all: rationality, piety, and a readiness to subdue one's inner world of desires and self‐conceit. Thus, the poems present various ideal types of the human self. This contribution analyzes those perspectives on humankind and the way in which the basic theme of human mastery of the world is integrated into the content as well as the structure of the refreynen. The essay also situates these refreynen in the broader context of vernacular philosophy and vernacular learning in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries.

Carrying the torch by merging the meta: a how-to guide to using the new system-behind-the-System and the actor’s GRAFT to inform practice today

I have previously proposed that there is another system concealed beneath Stanislavski’s System that reframes the original as a means to manage attention within deliberately constructed generative relational attention fields for the purpose of truthful acting. In turn this repositions the training outlined in An Actor’s Work as an incremental and ingeniously designed encounter with both individual and human selfhood that situates the work of the actor within the wider context. Universal and plural, by addressing what it is to be human this training potentiates individual response, allowing us to create our own idiosyncratic methodologies: to ‘make up something that will work’ for us, as he instructed Joshua Logan in 1931 (Logan in foreword to Moore, The Stanislavski System, no page number given.). The current article will suggest how the underlying system might affect and be used in our own work as already experienced acting practitioners, teachers, and directors. By explaining the hidden principles, showing how they reveal the deep learning in a sequence of exercises from An Actor’s Work (Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work.), and suggesting potential refinements to familiar exercises, it is hoped to show how this perspective might inform our constant development and re-invention of Stanislavski’s work as we make it our own today. It is emphasized that the intention is not to change practice but to inform it, and to render some of the previously unconscious aspects of the work conscious in an accessible, practical and usable way. This paper shows how to merge the meta level of Stanislavski’s System with our own developing methodologies.

Etika Bimbingan dan Konseling dalam Pendekatan Filsafat Ilmu

ETHICS OF GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE APPROACH. In philosophy view, ethic was a valueable and evaluation about a good and bad things in the human self. Ethic is also call moral philosophy as a apart of axiology in science philosophy. In every science has an axiology that purpose of utilization for prosperity of a human life. Guidance and counseling is a science full of values, that because of it’s a multidicipliner science. This based of four field guidance which of personal, learning, social and career. This field has make a counselor must understand and proficiency with sociology, antrophology, psychology, and eduation science. That will lead a counseling as multidicipliner science has a full of values to covering the process of counseling practice. However the axiology of counseling make little complex to discuss in philosophy foundation, also in psychology, sociology, antrophology and education. In this article will describe and discuss an ethics in counseling as a multidicipliner science in the view point of philosophy, psychology, and education. Also an ethics in counseling profession as applicative science.

Deliberate One-sidedness as a Method of Doing Philosophy: Reflections on Rosemont’s View of the Person

As one of the most influential comparative philosophers of our time, Henry Rosemont, Jr. is known for his unrelenting criticisms against Western libertarian ideas, and for advocating ideas derived from classic Confucian thought. One of the criticisms against him is that his views are one-sided, and hence unfair to Western libertarian ideas. In this paper, I argue that Rosemont’s one-sidedness is deliberate. His theory is not intended to be a balanced account. I will illustrate that Rosemont’s way of conceiving the human self is not peculiar to him, but characteristic of those who take philosophy as a way of life, such as Mencius and Sartre. I shall argue that their practices suggest a gong-fu perspective, with which we evaluate philosophical theories according to their functions in shaping people’s behaviors and with consideration of the context of their uses.

Tristano’s Reichian Theory of Improvisation: Jazz of the Unconscious Mind

ABSTRACTControversial pianist and pedagogue Lennie Tristano (1919–1978) stands out as one of jazz’s most polarizing figures. His color-blind artistic ideology, Eurological improvisatory approach, and repeated condemnations of established African American artists problematizes jazz’s Afrocentric narrative while undermining his own canonic relevance. Time and again he challenged the idiomatic importance of figures like Coleman, Davis, Rollins, and Coltrane, unconvinced of their musics’ value and skeptical of their abilities to engage in “honest” music-making. These criticisms were informed, I argue, by unorthodox interpretive criteria largely overlooked by Tristano scholars to date. Here I assert that Tristano’s critical toolkit was comprised of analytical devices inspired by Neo-Freudian psychoanalytic theories of neurotic human selfhood. I also propose that his improvisational philosophy was informed by Freudian psychoanalytic concepts; and his students’ by the works of Neo-Freudian bio-psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. To do so, I identify public statements, published writings, interview responses, and criticisms by and from members of the Tristano School that indicate a collective familiarity with Freudian psychoanalytic theory, an interest in its musico-improvisational implications, and evidence of active attempts to incorporate it into their own improvisational approaches.

Discussion on the Rise of the Self in a Conscious System

What is human self? Some argue that there is no such thing as self. However, the subjective feeling that “I am writing these words” makes it hard to deny the existence of the self. We assume that as long as there is the term “self,” there must be some collection of neural networks that represents the concept of the term. Although the whole picture is still a mystery, we have taken a step forward to unraveling the mystery by introducing the idea that “the emergence of a new behavior that prioritizes the body underlies the rise of the self.” When performing imitation behavior, a person can encounter a situation in which he feels pain and tries to avoid it. In this instance, the person engages in two types of behavior almost simultaneously, which are in conflict with each other. Also in this instance, it is assumed that the person gives priority to the safety of his own body and reflexively chooses to respond with avoidance behavior. However, as the imitation behavior continues, the process of imitation and avoidance is repeated many times, making it increasingly difficult to ensure the safety of the body. To address this scenario, we have come up with an idea that enables a conscious system to generate a new rational behavior—that is, voluntarily stop the imitation behavior. We consider that the generation of this new behavior is a significant process that can explain the first step for the development of the self.

Algorithmen, Bots und virtuelle Realitäten

The digitally generated worlds of the virtual are not antagonistic to the usual reality, but increasingly develop into homologous alternatives within ordinary reality. The use of technopractices such as virtual reality and communication with algorithm-based virtual entities, which are more and more turning into a (proto-)social element of our society, not only makes the contingency of our world apparent, but also allows us to observe the reflexivity of our own observation of this contingency. Hence, acting and experiencing in virtual worlds and with virtual communication partners does not necessarily imply a loss of reality, but on the contrary, it may bring us multifarious enrichments of reality. However, the cultural process of digitalization also brings in its wake a new narcissistic insult to mankind: Reflected by self-learning machines that reproduce human intelligence to an unimagined degree, we painfully learn that the human self is always merely socially formatted and can operate only within the confines, and by the standards, of habituation and socialization

Critical reflections on the fall narrative of communism

The paper critically addresses the fall narrative of the narrative of the failure of the communist experiment. By doing so it makes a conviction that the great fall may have had laid down communism’s burial but had not closed the spirit of revolution and emancipation. More than being loathsome to the violence the fall narrative hangs on to liberal-capitalist-democracy’s hatred for equality and justice. The paper commits to the claim that if the idea of “return to socialism” makes no sense, equally is senseless the triumphalism debate of liberal-capitalism. Saying so the commitment is for “return to the human self” whose even distant possibility lies in socialism only. DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2018.00010.9

The Culture of Wine in Ukrainian Baroque Poetry

The article represents the results of the culturological analysis of Ukrainian baroque poetry with ‘wine’ for the prominent image. Just as the conceit of wine was never researched profoundly by culturologists and linguists, this article is an attempt to conceptualize the imagery of wine and culture of its consumption in Ukrainian literary criticism and cultural studies. Upon researching Ukrainian baroque poetry, the author of this article revealed some new connotations of the image of wine. First of them is a symbol of reproach declared to the authorities of either sacral or secular power (the conceptual pattern of it are the writings by Ukrainian polemist Ivan Vyshensky). However, even the strongest judgements sounded hopefully thanks to stylization in the mood of Christian liturgy. Secondly, wine was a reflection of joy of life, love, or friendship in Epicurean style. Thirdly, it was set up as a philosophical image of the human self as the most precious thing in the world. This idea was also supported staunchly by H. Skovoroda. Henceforth, wine in baroque poetry is not only an image of something material within the framework of the everyday life and rituals; it is a factor of reconciliation of Christian and Pantheistic worldview in the Ukrainians. Further researches of ‘wine’ conceit in Ukrainian poetry (and Ukrainian culture as a whole) would allow confirming anew the vision of a human-within-the-world as the world-within-a-human.

T. S. Eliot’s Modernist Techniques in ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

This paper explores T. S. Eliot’s modernist techniques in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) acclaimed as the first poem in Modernism constructed upon Baudelaire’s concept of modernity. The representative modernist poet Eliot is incomparably different from the Romantic or Victorian poets, influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis which classifies the human self into the Id, the Ego and the Super-ego, and by Jamesian “stream of consciousness.” Through the “interior monologue” or daydream of the prudent and indecisive Prufrock, Eliot remarkably presents “alienation” in urban life, a theme of Modernism by describing the incommunicative speaker who is unable to have a rendezvous with the sensual women in his unconsciousness. Furthermore, the poet superbly depicts psychological time in Prufrock’s consciousness rather than mechanical or chronological time under the influence of the Bergsonian concept of time. Eliot’s modernist technique also is obviously displayed through the peculiar metaphor, simile, metonymy, symbol, and the more complex conceit than the conceit of the metaphysical poets. In conclusion, Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” projecting the speaker’s vacillating (un)consciousness or subconsciousness is indeed the first innovative modernist poem bridging the chasm between his conventional Harvard juvenilia and the modernist masterpiece The Waste Land.

Corporate social responsibility disclosure index of Malaysian Shariah – compliant companies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of Maqasid Al-Shariah corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of public listed companies of Shariah-compliant companies in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachContent analysis was used to construct the Maqasid Al-Shariah CSR disclosure index. Furthermore, the study used a checklist that covered four themes of CSR, namely environment, community involvement, human resource and product, and five elements of Maqasid Al-Shariah, namely, faith, human self, intellect, posterity and wealth.FindingsThe findings of the study show that the level of Maqasid Al-Shariah CSR disclosure index is generally low. The study found that Shariah-compliant companies revealed more community-related theme and an intellect element in their annual reports for the year of the survey.Originality/valueThis paper is one of few papers that has developed the Maqasid Al-Shariah CSR disclosure index that used the aforementioned four themes of CSR and five Maqasid Al-Shariah elements.

The grieving animal: Grief as a foundational emotion

This article introduces the notion of foundational emotions, using grief as a central example. Unlike so-called basic emotions, some of which humans share with other animals, foundational emotions are constitutive of human selfhood and subjectivity. First, anxiety, shame, and guilt are presented as emotions that have been singled out as foundational emotions in philosophical and biblical texts. Second, grief is introduced as a foundational human emotion in the sense that it connects the human being to existential issues of love and death that are uniquely important for us. Some general implications are discussed that follow from the notion of foundational emotions.