Bioaffect:Current events - Revision history

Choisukc: /* IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media */

2011-04-22T22:26:08Z

‎IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media

Choisukc: /* IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media */

2011-04-22T22:25:02Z

‎IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media

Choisukc: /* IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media */

2011-04-22T22:22:35Z

‎IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media

Choisukc: /* IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media */

2011-04-22T22:21:07Z

‎IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media

Choisukc: /* IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media */

2011-04-22T22:18:58Z

‎IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media

Bhasting at 18:38, 20 April 2011

2011-04-20T18:38:53Z

Bhasting at 18:37, 20 April 2011

2011-04-20T18:37:09Z

Bhasting at 17:30, 20 April 2011

2011-04-20T17:30:07Z

Kvidyart at 17:58, 19 April 2011

2011-04-19T17:58:55Z

Mna31: /* IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media */

2011-04-18T18:17:05Z

‎IAT881: BioAffective Computing & Interactive Media

@@ Line 923: / Line 923: @@
 ''summary:''
 Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, Walter Benjamin (from a German text Gesammelte Schriften, which translates in google as ‘Writings’), and briefly, Kafka, are connected in this rapid literary shock of awakening that is stylistically, poetically, and philosophically fascinating.
 ''notes:''
 .RE-awakening
 Having us first awake as giant bugs, Kafka leads off this poetic essay on the transliminal sensation of awakening, which Heller-Roazen next captures in an amazing sensorial passage from Proust,
 “…in a second, I passed through centuries of civilization, and the image confusedly glimpsed of oil lamps, then of wing-cellar shirts, gradually recomposed the original features of myself.”
@@ Line 974: / Line 977: @@
 Leibniz replaces the Cartesian opposition between the “thinking being” and the “extended being” with a threefold hierarchy of substances; three varieties of Monad: Simple monads reflect without awareness, and perceive without apperception. The next distinguishing monad is one in which sensation becomes more distinct and is accompanied by memory (animals), and the next contains the knowledge of eternal and necessary truths, the capacity to reason, and is what is termed ‘consciousness’.
 At what point Leibniz places his ‘threshold’ of apperception however is unclear - somewhere between the sharp thorns of awareness and the attendant forgetfulness of the passage.
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:''  Of Flying Creatures... (Ch. 21) Jay

@@ Line 920: / Line 920: @@
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:''  Awakening... (Ch 7)  Suk Kyoung
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:''  The Unnamed King (CH 14) D'Arcy & Mark
@@ Line 925: / Line 938: @@
 In other books written by the great Arabic philosophers, it states that the five senses can be thought of as Servants, each reporting a different kind of information to the Master, the overseer of the human mamlakat : an Arabic and Persian word for kingdom. The Master or Malik (King) rules over these senses (advisors/servants) and holds the power of translation and perception, the key to our soul. And without this "unnamed King" the animal soul would not exist.  (Mark Nazemi)
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Thorns (Ch 19) Suk Kyoung
-''summary''
+''summary:''
 In this essay, Heller-Roazen describes the linguistic and philosophical foundations of Leibniz’ theory of a continuum of consciousness, passing  from the reflective unawareness of Liebniz’ basic soul-particle, the Monad, called perception, to reflexive awareness, called apperception or consciousness.  The arousal of consciousness is then the affective response to infinitely small sensations passing a threshold of unease.
-''notes''
+''notes:''
 Leibniz - Basic unit of universe is Monad, a soul-particle of infinitely small sensation ‘unaccompanied by awareness or reflection’,  “a living mirror representing the universe according to its point of view, and above all with respect to its body.”
 L. argues that ‘small sensations’ (those just at the ‘threshold’ of perception) are the metaphysical elements that form the relationship between the mind and body.  Leibniz sees only 3 possible relationships:

@@ Line 928: / Line 928: @@
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Thorns (Ch 19) Suk Kyoung
-[[summary]]
+''summary''
 In this essay, Heller-Roazen describes the linguistic and philosophical foundations of Leibniz’ theory of a continuum of consciousness, passing  from the reflective unawareness of Liebniz’ basic soul-particle, the Monad, called perception, to reflexive awareness, called apperception or consciousness.  The arousal of consciousness is then the affective response to infinitely small sensations passing a threshold of unease.
-[[notes]]
+''notes''
 Leibniz - Basic unit of universe is Monad, a soul-particle of infinitely small sensation ‘unaccompanied by awareness or reflection’,  “a living mirror representing the universe according to its point of view, and above all with respect to its body.”
 L. argues that ‘small sensations’ (those just at the ‘threshold’ of perception) are the metaphysical elements that form the relationship between the mind and body.  Leibniz sees only 3 possible relationships:
 . Descartes. The “thinking thing” that is mind somehow connected to “extended thing” (body): “the influence of one on the other.”
 . Malebranche. Devine mediation. What happens in one is represented in the other by an external mediator (no direct interaction), “occasional causes.”
 . Leibniz. Harmonious independent interaction between body and soul (players in orchestra analogy).

@@ Line 927: / Line 927: @@
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Thorns (Ch 19) Suk Kyoung
-'''summary'''
 In this essay, Heller-Roazen describes the linguistic and philosophical foundations of Leibniz’ theory of a continuum of consciousness, passing  from the reflective unawareness of Liebniz’ basic soul-particle, the Monad, called perception, to reflexive awareness, called apperception or consciousness.  The arousal of consciousness is then the affective response to infinitely small sensations passing a threshold of unease.
-'''notes'''
 Leibniz - Basic unit of universe is Monad, a soul-particle of infinitely small sensation ‘unaccompanied by awareness or reflection’,  “a living mirror representing the universe according to its point of view, and above all with respect to its body.”
 L. argues that ‘small sensations’ (those just at the ‘threshold’ of perception) are the metaphysical elements that form the relationship between the mind and body.  Leibniz sees only 3 possible relationships:
 . Descartes. The “thinking thing” that is mind somehow connected to “extended thing” (body): “the influence of one on the other.”
 . Malebranche. Devine mediation. What happens in one is represented in the other by an external mediator (no direct interaction), “occasional causes.”
 . Leibniz. Harmonious independent interaction between body and soul (players in orchestra analogy).

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:18, 22 April 2011
Line 927:		Line 927:

	'''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Thorns (Ch 19) Suk Kyoung		'''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Thorns (Ch 19) Suk Kyoung
		+	'''summary'''
		+	In this essay, Heller-Roazen describes the linguistic and philosophical foundations of Leibniz’ theory of a continuum of consciousness, passing from the reflective unawareness of Liebniz’ basic soul-particle, the Monad, called perception, to reflexive awareness, called apperception or consciousness. The arousal of consciousness is then the affective response to infinitely small sensations passing a threshold of unease.
		+
		+	'''notes'''
		+	Leibniz - Basic unit of universe is Monad, a soul-particle of infinitely small sensation ‘unaccompanied by awareness or reflection’, “a living mirror representing the universe according to its point of view, and above all with respect to its body.”
		+	L. argues that ‘small sensations’ (those just at the ‘threshold’ of perception) are the metaphysical elements that form the relationship between the mind and body. Leibniz sees only 3 possible relationships:
		+
		+	1. Descartes. The “thinking thing” that is mind somehow connected to “extended thing” (body): “the influence of one on the other.”
		+	2. Malebranche. Devine mediation. What happens in one is represented in the other by an external mediator (no direct interaction), “occasional causes.”
		+	3. Leibniz. Harmonious independent interaction between body and soul (players in orchestra analogy).
		+
		+
		+	The concomitance of substances constitutes the metaphysical foundation of small perceptions.
		+	Therefore, “given the exact and constant harmony between the body and the soul, such corporeal events must employ corresponding affections of the psyche” (p. 194) as any other relationship suggests that there are definable limits on the union of the soul and body, which is untenable with the concept of an incorporeal soul, as there ‘can be no proportion between incorporeal substance and the modification of matter.’
		+	Therefore, nothing that takes place in corporeal substance can be too small to be felt – every change must have a correlate, affective even if imperceptible.
		+	Leibniz argues (in the analogy of a dog struck by surprise by its master) that if the soul is “a living mirror representing the universe according to its point of view, and above all with respect to its body” that the movement of the approaching body (presence) is reflected in the body and soul and represented with continuously increasing clarity – a single continuum from pleasure to pain that is incessant.
		+	Locke# – discussing the determination of Will, states that the motive for continuing in the same State or Action is the present satisfaction in it; in the motive to change there is always some uneasiness.
		+	Therefore, Will is not a property of the greater good but one of a reaction to uneasiness, whether that pain is of the body or ‘disquiet’ in the mind (pain and desire, both states of this uneasiness, are hardly distinguishable).
		+	From Locke’s term ‘uneasiness’ Leibniz draws out the meaning of ‘unrest/disquietude’, which suggests more clearly a sense of continuum between pain and desire, a continuum which provokes a perpetual oscillation of an upsetting of balance that results in an attempt to return to a best possible state.
		+	‘Uneasiness’ – unrest, disquietude – is then “the natural state of a substance that represents the created world in its totality, but only indistinctly … the state of the soul perpetually affected by the countless ‘”small perceptions” and “the infinity of affections that form the indistinct background of every conscious perception.” (p. 198)
		+	Leibniz builds on Locke’s idea of ‘uneasiness as the spur to action’ to state that it is this multitude of ‘little unconscious points’ that define the ‘happiness of creatures’; without all these ‘thorns of desire’ consciousness would lapse into the insensible and stupid (unchanging might be another useful adjective.)
		+	Heller-Roazen reminds us that the distinction between that of which we are aware and that which we are not is itself a ‘thorn’ of philosophy. Between the conscious and the unconscious Leibniz sees only degrees of difference, a continuum from one to the other which he called the ‘Law of Continuity’, meaning that ‘one always passes from the small to the large through the intermediary.’ Therefore, the ‘noticeable’ arises from the ‘unnoticeable’.
		+	Leibniz draws from this the idea of a threshold of sensation, which crossed gives rise to an awareness of the sensation and of being aware of noticing. This arousing of consciousness, Leibniz terms “apperception” – distinguished from the ‘reflective’ state of perception.
		+	Kant however shifted the content of this term on Western philosophy to become more referent to a ‘unity’ of consciousness: the ‘self consciousness that produces the representation I think’ (thus placing perception and apperception into one field discontinuous from any thing that does not think.)
		+	Leibniz however was clear that his meaning is that perception is ‘the inner state of the Monad representing external things’ and apperception is the ‘reflexive knowledge of this inner state of the monad’, and that only apperception is ‘consciousness.’ Leibniz thus maintains an ontological state of “perception” with no awareness but in which there never cease to be “small perceptions of which one is not aware” distinguished from the awareness of “apperception.”
		+	This however constitutes a state which the Cartesian philosophers cannot admit; to accept Leibniz’ definition of apperception is to ‘accept its constitutive relation of difference from, not opposition, to “perception”’ – to accept the notion of continuity, that consciousness may include’ lesser beings’, other awareness residing as yet unknown within the ‘noble thing called consciousness.’ In other words, consciousness only intermittently emerges from and always returns to the unconscious.
		+	This position however is not popular with Cartesian dualism’s doctrine that ‘only man truly has a soul’ as it leads from the perception of animals by continuity to the souls (arising of consciousness) in beings other than man. Leibniz states he does not understand “why men find it so repugnant to accord the bodies of other organic creatures immaterial imperishable substances.”
		+	Leibniz replaces the Cartesian opposition between the “thinking being” and the “extended being” with a threefold hierarchy of substances; three varieties of Monad: Simple monads reflect without awareness, and perceive without apperception. The next distinguishing monad is one in which sensation becomes more distinct and is accompanied by memory (animals), and the next contains the knowledge of eternal and necessary truths, the capacity to reason, and is what is termed ‘consciousness’.
		+	At what point Leibniz places his ‘threshold’ of apperception however is unclear - somewhere between the sharp thorns of awareness and the attendant forgetfulness of the passage.

	'''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Of Flying Creatures... (Ch. 21) Jay		'''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Of Flying Creatures... (Ch. 21) Jay

@@ Line 417: / Line 417: @@
 Springgay: Fantastical Body[[Media:Fatastical_body_small.pdf]] Lonnie
 Noe: Out of our Heads[[Media:Out_of_our_heads2.pdf]] D'Arcy
@@ Line 565: / Line 566: @@
 Springgay: ''Fantastical Body''
 [[Media:Fatastical_body_small.pdf]] Lonnie
-	Springgay beings by discussing different approaches to the study of body image.  She says that researchers neglect the embodied nature of body image and tend to express body image as a discrete concept that can be examined in separation from lived experiences.  In contrast, the author describes body image as an awareness of our own bodies and their relations to gestures, movements, other bodies, objects, and the environment.  She also includes the sensations of our own bodily functions in her concept of body image.
 	Springgay's main point is that new models and methods of studying body image that view it as dynamic and shaped through our interactions need to be developed.  She believes in a discussion of body image through "pedagogies of excess," and to that end, she offers the idea of the "fantastical body."  The fantastical body is full of potential and is made up of processes instead of substances.  She describes other views of body image as goal oriented in that they are about "maintaining equilibrium," and in contrast the fantastical body is trying to modify and create.  Integral to her theory of pedagogies of excess is the importance of knowing that we are constantly becoming and always incomplete.  She draws comparisons between her concept of the fantastical body and Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the Body without Organs.  The BwO is described through the metaphor of an embryonic egg which has no boundaries and represents potentiation.  In becoming an individual, change is constant and there are various forms which could always have been otherwise.
 Wilson: ''Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body,''

← Older revision		Revision as of 17:30, 20 April 2011
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	'''Noe:''' ''Out of Our Heads:'' Lonnie		'''Noe:''' ''Out of Our Heads:'' Lonnie
		+
		+	The central theme of Noe's book is: you are NOT your brain. He writes that in order to understand consciousness we need to look at a larger system, of which the brain is only one element. According to Noe, the reason why we have yet to understand consciousness is that we've been searching for it in the wrong place.
		+	Noe's belief is that there is no one thing inside of us that makes us conscious, and that we should take seriously the possibility that the processes that matter for consciousness are themselves boundary crossing. Language, shared practices, tools, places, objects, etc. are the "machinery" of our beings, they make us who we are, so why draw the boundary for consciousness at the skull? Noe conceptualizes beings as extended, dynamic, and "of the world".
		+	Noe says that "you can no more explain mind in terms of the cell than you can explain dance in terms of muscle. Brains do not have minds... people do."

	----		----

@@ Line 909: / Line 909: @@
 ''Bodies, Disability and Spaces'', by Peter Freund, argues that the concept of disability is fluid. The body cannot be separated from its social or structural environment, and ability/dis-ability depends on the context. A wheelchair is enabling, just as a pair of eyeglasses is enabling, whereas urban built environments are dis-abling for many: "modern landscapes seem to be designed for forty-year-old healthy males driving cars." Disability, Freund says, is a normal, near universal condition and will affect nearly everyone eventually.
 ----
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:''  Awakening... (Ch 7)  Suk Kyoung
@@ Line 920: / Line 918: @@
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:'' Thorns (Ch 19) Suk Kyoung
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:''  The Anaesthetic Animal (CH 24) Tyler

@@ Line 915: / Line 915: @@
 '''Heller-Roazen:''' ''The Inner Touch:''  The Unnamed King (CH 14) D'Arcy & Mark
-The chapter begins by describing the takeover of the Mediterranean by the Arabs and how they translated almost all the Greek writings into Arabic. The hunger for knowledge both from a scientific and social aspect has led many to believe that the "second classical language" should have been Arabic and not Latin. The Arabs did not merely translate the ancient writings but also built upon in their Falsafa (a word in Arabic which translates to Philosophy).
+The chapter begins by describing the takeover of the Mediterranean by the Arabs and how they translated almost all the Greek writings into Arabic. The hunger for knowledge both from a scientific and social aspect has led many to believe that the "second classical language" should have been Arabic and not Latin. The Arabs did not merely translate the ancient writings but also built upon in their Falsafa (a word in Arabic which translates to Philosophy).  The great Arabic philosophers were also very tuned to the human senses. "Sensation" for them is what set animals apart from plants. They went beyond the five senses we are familiar with and developed a system of "internal senses / imaginative faculty" . These senses consisted of imagination, cognition, and memory. These internal senses had a direct connection to our soul. The chapter also describes how the term "common sense" was derived. In the Book of Elements, written by the Arabic philosopher and physician Issac ben Solomon Israeli, he describes it as information received from the corporeal senses (such as sight) is sent to the spiritual senses (imaginative faculty) and the interpretation is considered to be "common sense", deciphering using the external and internal > corporeal & the incorporeal.
 In other books written by the great Arabic philosophers, it states that the five senses can be thought of as Servants, each reporting a different kind of information to the Master, the overseer of the human mamlakat : an Arabic and Persian word for kingdom. The Master or Malik (King) rules over these senses (advisors/servants) and holds the power of translation and perception, the key to our soul. And without this "unnamed King" the animal soul would not exist.  (Mark Nazemi)