Life Itself Research Articles

Responding to Life Itself: A Proposed Understanding of Domain, Goal and Interventions for Chaplaincy in a Secular Age.

Processes of secularization have impacted the chaplaincy profession regarding at least three features: its domain, goals and interventions. Traditional religious understandings of those features no longer reflect the diverse worldviews of chaplains and their clients. In this article, we present a comprehensive and coherent generic model of chaplaincy that encompasses different religion- and worldview-based types of chaplaincy. We propose to understand the domain of chaplaincy as the process of 'responding to life itself'. The corresponding goal of chaplaincy care is well-being with regard to that process, which may be called 'existential well-being'. Existential well-being can be achieved along the lines of 'The Ritual Bath Model'. By formulating this overarching model, we hope to contribute to discussions among chaplains on their collective professional self-understanding, and to support them in confidently accounting for their professional activities within secular contexts.

Application of Modified Passive Insulation Monitors for Selective Earth Fault Location in Live Low Voltage AC IT Circuits

In the publication there are presented most popular passive methods of continuous insulation monitoring in live low voltage unearthed AC networks. There are given formulas for determination of insulation equivalent resistance for multi-phase networks sources with both symmetrical and asymmetrical voltages. Novel solution of elimination of the most popular measuring scheme’s shortcomings is proposed. New methods of insulation resistance measurement and earth fault location based on supervision

Exploring My Life Path by Asking 600 People What They Love about Theirs

A young man with Down syndrome and an early adopter of self-managed supports wanted to have a great life, but he needed to be sure what a great life was for him. He decided to ask successful people, “What do you love about your life?”, which he felt was a question that gets right to the heart of the matter. In this paper the young man and his father will outline their journey as co-researchers in collecting/filming 600 stories across ten countries, with some interviews prearranged but many occurring spontaneously at music, film, and arts festivals. The initial findings of “what people loved about their lives” fall into the following categories: Family, Work, Home, Travel, Health, Pets, and Life Itself. Positive side effects for the young man covered: self-confidence, ability to connect with people, opportunities, working relationships, and ongoing friendship. The implications of taking a social journalism approach to collecting stories will be discussed in line with the question “What makes for good inclusive research”? The journey of the co-researchers speaks to the outcome that it is worthwhile to research your life path, accessing elders’ wisdom. The tools of inclusive research are powerful when applied to a citizen’s life questions. Each person values their life in unique ways, yet there are many commonalities.

“Worth More Than Life Itself”: Military Honour and the Birth of Its Courts in Spain (1810–1870)

ABSTRACT This article deals with military honour in nineteenth-century Spain, after first examining how the meaning of this term evolved from the revolutionary Napoleonic wars onwards. This highly important moral value was learnt from the moment someone joined the army, and even before then, through education and common public military demonstrations. It related to individual behaviour, while also maintaining a high collective and corporative aspect, and it varied depending on gender or class and on the identity of the social group. It was part of the political thought of most relevant Spanish generals, and consequently it influenced the political dynamics of Spain. The Court of Honour, an institution in Spain that was not regulated until 1811, controlled honour compliance. The last section of this article focuses on how and why these institutions were born and explains their early legislative evolution. Spanish political and military development are inevitably bound together to the extent that an understanding of the nature of honour and its effects on the army and civilian ethics provides us with a deep socio-political and ethical analysis of the country during the nineteenth century.

Supporting Digital Inclusion and Web Accessibility for People with Cognitive Disabilities.

The topic of digital inclusion and web accessibility for People with Cognitive Disabilities has increased over the COVID-19 pandemic times. The LIVE IT project is attempting to shed some light into this. This piece of work uses insights gained from focus groups and interviews that were held to assess the needs analysis and the existing knowledge gap of this societal problem. To this end, preliminary results of user engagement with digital tools and web services as well as their evaluation are presented herein.

Something as Essential as Life Itself

Abstract Classic trauma theory has been criticized for ignoring the possibility of healing and growth for the traumatized, especially in a non-Western context. This reading of Ghassān Kanafānī’s Returning to Haifa tries to overcome such limitations by employing a framework that articulates Ibn Khaldūn’s thought on group feeling with Pierre Janet’s theory of trauma. Accordingly, the novel construes the Nakbah as a traumatic event that, despite its subjective meaning having long remained elusive, has never stopped affecting refugees’ consciousness. It then proposes that the Arab defeat of 1967 offered an opportunity for collective engagement and historical change to the Nakbah generation because it enabled them to reconcile their traumatic memories with their lives, inspiring their support for the Palestinian resistance. Such a parable of trauma integration counters the essentialist positions that Kanafānī attributed to some Zionist literature and points to the reversal of the schemes aimed at humiliating the Palestinians.

Life Itself: An Essay on the Sensory and the (Potential) End of Heritage Making

The expansion from material heritage – pleasing sight and to a lesser extent touch (for very often material heritage may be touched only within limits) – to the realm of the intangible indicates an increase in the reflexive consideration of the full sensorium. With the ratification of the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, we have turned to select for heritage status cultural practices and perceptions entailing the body and the senses more fully: music and dance, as well as craft traditions exemplifying the knowledge in hands and the skill of touch.The new French sensory heritage law could be a significant marker in the changing dynamic of valorizing selected aspects of culture.

Christof Koch: The Feeling of Life Itself: Why consciousness is widespread but can’t be computed

Book review.

Jon Lieff. The Secret Language of Cells: What Biological Conversations Tell Us About the Brain-Body Connection, the Future of Medicine, and Life Itself

Jon Lieff. The Secret Language of Cells: What Biological Conversations Tell Us About the Brain-Body Connection, the Future of Medicine, and Life Itself

Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Life Itself: A Review of Reviews

Kill the Corporation Before it Kills Life Itself: A Review of Reviews

РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА КН. : КОХ К. ЧУВСТВО САМОЙ ЖИЗНИ: ПОЧЕМУ СОЗНАНИЕ ВСТРЕЧАЕТСЯ ПОВСЕМЕСТНО, НО НЕ СВОДИТСЯ К ВЫЧИСЛЕНИЮ

In his new book «The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread, But Can’t Be Computed» C. Koch develops the account of the phenomenon of consciousness from the standpoint of the theory of integrated information proposed by the Italian neuroscientist G. Tononi. The starting point of this theory is the attempt to single out the most important properties of the consciousness itself and, on this basis, to determine what kind of physical systems are capable of having experience. According to the proponents of the theory of integrated information, the key properties of experience include its intrinsic existence, its composition, information, integration, and exclusion. From the statements describing the properties of consciousness, called axioms, the theory derives the statements about the properties of the physical substrate of experience, which are called postulates. The theory of integrated information claims to develop a conceptual apparatus for an exact quantitative assessment of the level of possible experience in any system. This theory formulates several interesting predictions, including the possibility of merging many individual experiences into a single experience, if with the help of some future technology an information bridge is established between the substrates that implement them, and also that consciousness cannot be obtained as a result of simulation on a digital computer.

‘Valuing Life Itself’: On Radical Environmental Activists’ Post-Anthropocentric Worldviews

The present era of biological annihilation lends significant urgency to the need to radically reconfigure human–animal–nature relations along more ethical lines and sustainable trajectories. This article engages with largely post-humanist scholarship to offer up an in-depth qualitative analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews, conducted in August 2017–2018 with 26 radical environmental activists (REAs) from a variety of movements. These activists are posited as contemporary manifestations of the ‘post-anthropocentric paradigm shifts’ that challenge traditional notions of human separateness from – and superiority to – the nonhuman world. However, despite being broadly categorised as post-humanist or post-anthropocentric in their efforts to deconstruct hierarchical and dualistic constructions of the human–animal–nature relationship, considerable variations abound in terms of who and what REAs value and on what basis. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the nature of REAs’ post-anthropocentric sensibilities and mobilisations, and considers implications for the development of more ethical modes of human– animal–nature relationality that value and respect the irreducible alterity of nonhuman others.

The Integrated Information Theory: Important Insights But not a Complete Theory of Consciousness

Book Review| December 01 2020 The Integrated Information Theory: Important Insights But not a Complete Theory of Consciousness The Feelings of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can’t Be Computed, By Christof Koch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019. 241 pp. Paper, $19.95. Philip Goff Philip Goff Department of Philosophy, Durham University, 50 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN, E-mail: Philip.a.goff@durham.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The American Journal of Psychology (2020) 133 (4): 523–526. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.133.4.0523 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Philip Goff; The Integrated Information Theory: Important Insights But not a Complete Theory of Consciousness. The American Journal of Psychology 1 January 2020; 133 (4): 523–526. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.133.4.0523 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe American Journal of Psychology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Aretaic Shift in Biopolitical Governance

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s ‘The Politics of Life Itself’ (2001) there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This article uses what Rose terms ‘molecular politics’, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question ‘What, then, of biopolitics today?’ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that, taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not ‘life itself’ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of (self-)governance.

Conscious Matter and Matters of Conscience

In recent decades consciousness science has become a prominent field of research. This essay analyzes the most recent book by a leading pioneer in the scientific study of consciousness. In the The Feeling of Life Itself Christof Koch presents the integrated information theory and applies it to multiple pressing topics in consciousness studies. This essay considers the philosophical basis of the theory and Koch’s application of it from neurobiology to animal ethics.

Is Metabolic Epigenetics as Ancient as Life Itself? Of Memory that Might Pre‐Date RNA and DNA

Is Metabolic Epigenetics as Ancient as Life Itself? Of Memory that Might Pre‐Date RNA and DNA

Emotional Intelligence: Is It about Life – or Life Itself?

Emotional Intelligence: Is It about Life – or Life Itself?

An industrial evaluation of an Industry 4.0 reference architecture demonstrating the need for the inclusion of security and human components

The research presented in this paper looks at evaluating RAMI4.0, a Research Architecture (RA) designed for Industry 4.0, through the representation of an existing Cyber-Physical System’s (CPSs) key functionality. The use case represented is that of a UK firm refurbishing End of Life (EoL) IT devices for business clients. EoL refurbishment is a domain with many complexities due to an inherent business model which results in varying quantities, types and conditions of received devices. These uncertainties can generally not be addressed until the devices have arrived in the facility and are inspected. RAs are an important tool used in system development to represent functionality, this representation should be high level and allow the easy communication of key concepts for not only client-to-developers and developer-to-developer but also either to an audience. An appropriate RA will help industrialists to understand what Industry 4.0 means to them (i.e. increased flexibility and control) and the functionality of any system potentially being invested in. The results of this research included two proposals for the extension of RAMI4.0 regarding the representation of security and humans within the systems. While Industry 4.0 focusses on CPSs this work also makes a further recommendation that the focus of modelling should be shifted to Cyber-Physical Human Systems (CPHSs) to ensure correct consideration of the humans within the system.

The Unsayable in Arts-Based Research: On the Praxis of Life Itself

Arts-based research (ABR) provokes different ways of thinking about how art relates to knowledge in research. There are few authors, however, who explicate their view on aesthetics in the context of ABR and the type of knowledge that it generates. Accordingly, this article clarifies an aesthetic view in the context of a phenomenological approach to ABR. Ample arts-based researchers explore questions that touch upon the liminal nature and complexities of our lived experiences. Phenomenology is about that exactly: It leans into the unsayable dimensions of our reality and is interested in poetic and apophatic knowing. Apophatic knowing is a negating approach to understanding the unsayable, that is, a way of “nonknowing.” It can be practiced as a silent receptiveness. Consequently, we propose a Gadamerian approach to aesthetics that perceives ABR as an event. We argue for a poetics of research that is about being open and responsive to the movements of the artwork that ABR generates. Thus, by being receptive to movement, the enigma of phenomenality or life itself becomes the heart of ABR.

Managing technological uncertainty in science incubation: a prospective sensemaking perspective

This paper focuses on the adaption challenge that confronts the top management team (TMT) of science incubators in situations of substantial technological uncertainty. To do that, we draw on the three‐year longitudinal analysis of a major bioscience catalyst in the United Kingdom. Through the lens of ‘prospective sensemaking’, we follow the TMT as they work with stakeholders in their ecosystem to make sense of a significant technological shift: the convergence of life sciences, IT and other sciences in the health care environment. Our analysis reveals how prospective sensemaking resulted in the launch of a new strategy to exploit these emerging opportunities. However, stakeholders’ increasingly fragmented interpretation of the term convergence and the anticipation of legitimacy challenges in the wider ecosystem resulted in the repositioning of the incubator. Our findings contribute to extant research on science incubation. In particular, the paper sheds light on the complex interactions of incubator TMT’s with stakeholders in situations of technological change and uncertainty. Moreover, responding to technological change does not only affect the structural conditions of an incubator. Rather, it may also require changes to the positioning of the incubator in order to maintain legitimacy in the wider ecosystem. The paper also suggests managerial as well as policy‐level implications.