I compare the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro with the Egyptian philosopher and reformer Muhammad ‘Abduh. Both philosophies emerged within similar cultural contexts. Bot...

In this project, we assessed 242 codes of media ethics from 94 countries across the globe, focusing on their treatment of moonlighting. The analysis included whether the codes dealt with moonlighting, whether geopolitical and geoeconomic characteristics affected the treatment of the issue, and whether the type of media organization was significant. Only about half the codes addressed moonlighting; Eastern European countries paid the greatest attention to moonlighting, and newspapers and chains were more likely than other media organizations to deal with (...) the issue. Overall, it appears that codes of ethics do not provide clear, strict, or consistent guidelines. (shrink)

This landmark volume brings together the work of the world's leading researchers in sublimated perception. This compilation marks a fundamental shift in the current study of subliminal effects: No longer in question is the notion that perception without awareness occurs. Now, the emphasis is on elucidating the parameters of subliminal effects and understanding the conditions under which stimuli perceived without awareness significantly influence affect, cognition, and behavior. PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS firmly establishes subliminal perception within the mainstream of psychological science. Well (...) represented here are the two main research branches that have emerged: One directly investigates the nature of subliminal effects; the other uses subliminal techniques as tools for investigating psychological phenomena such as hypnosis, dreaming, repression, social judgment and inference, psychopathology, and symptom formation. Broadly grouped into three main sections, the contributed chapters explore * The cognitive perspective--including implicit memory and implicit perception, the measurement of unconscious perceptual processes, and methods for revealing unconscious processes * The clinical perspective--exploring the cognitive and dynamic aspects of subliminal perception, memory, and consciousness; direct recovery of subliminal stimuli; and validation of subliminal psychodynamic activation * The social perspective--discussing subliminal mere-exposure effects, affect and social perception, and the role of subliminality in social psychology Timely and thought-provoking, PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS is sure to be of enormous interest to all psychoanalytic clinicians and scholars, as well as cognitive, clinical, and social psychologists whose work touches upon issues relating to psychopathology, perception, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

In his analysis of subliminal perception research, Erdelyi documented two important phenomena: subchance perception and temporal variability in stimulus availability and accessibility. This Commentary addresses three issues raised by Erdelyi's review: the importance of distinguishing “micro” from “macro” temporal shifts; the need to analyze perception without awareness data at the level of the individual as well as the group; and parallels between the dissociations associated with neuroclinical phenomena and those observed in patients with certain forms of personality pathology. Continued integration (...) of laboratory findings with in vivo observations of clinical syndromes will yield a more cohesive and heuristic approach to the study of implicit mental states. (shrink)

In this article we trace the evolution of the Israel Broadcasting Authority's (IBA) code of ethics through 5 permutations between 1972 and 1998. We question whether the code is the outcome of a search for ethical and professional guidelines or a means of protecting the IBA from external pressures. Since 1972 the code has become more detailed, reflecting ethical, organizational, and political sensitivities. We conclude that the result of these changes has been the crystallization and implementation of normative ethical guidelines (...) for Israeli public broadcasting. (shrink)

The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity, by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, analyzes and compares African American cool culture and the Japanese aesthetics of kawaii or cute and characterizes them as expressions set against oppressive homogenizations of a technocratic world. The Cool-Kawaii sheds light on the history and development of both cultures in three main ways: First, both emerge from similar historical conditions; second, both are in search of human dignity and liberation, and finally, both kawaii and African American cool (...) establish a new kind of modernity able to transcend both traditionalism and anti-traditionalist modernity. (shrink)

Born in Vyborg in 1884 by parents of German descent, Vasily (Wilhelm) Sesemann grew up and studied in St. Petersburg. A close friend of Viktor Zhirmunsky and Lev P. Karsavin, Sesemann taught from the early 1920s until his death in 1963 at the universities of Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania (interrupted only by his internment in a Siberian labor camp from 1950 to 1956). Botz-Bornstein's study takes up Sesemann's idea of experience as a dynamic, constantly self-reflective, ungraspable phenomenon that (...) cannot be objectified. Through various studies, the author shows how Sesemann develops an outstanding idea of experience by reflecting it against empathy, Erkenntnistheorie (theory of knowledge), Formalism, Neo-Kantianism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Bergson's philosophy. Sesemann's thought establishes a link between Formalist thoughts about dynamics and a concept of Being reminiscent of Heidegger. The book contains also translations of two essays by Sesemann as well as of an essay by Karsavin. (shrink)

The Chinese concept of wen is examined here in the context of contemporary gene theory and the "cultural branch" of gene theory called "memetics." The Chinese notion of wen is an untranslatable term meaning "pattern," "structure," "writing," and "literature." Wen hua—generally translated as "culture"—signifies the process through which one adopts wen. However, this process is not simply one of civilizational mimesis or imitation but the "creation" of a new pattern. Within a gene-wen debate we are able to read genes neither (...) in terms of nature or culture but, in a Chinese way, in terms of "nature-culture." "Posthuman" or "transhuman" models that celebrate the creation of techno-biobodies (cyborgs) as the continuation of the human by nonhuman means are still dependent on a clear distinction between nature and technology (culture) that is rooted in the Greek and Christian traditions. bioengineering does not do more than gradually replacing the "given" by the "made" until the body is seen as a commodity malleable in the hands of modern technology. A wen-based genetics offers a new perspective on nature-culture continuity because it is not trapped in nature but involved in a concept of wen that a Western mind tends to identify too quickly with natural necessity. (shrink)

el “Posthumanismo Acrítico” celebra la continuación de lo humano por medios no humanos , así como la creación de una realidad por medios “irreales”. Los posthumanistas intentan lograr un cuerpo más autónomo y con eficiencia energética, desarrollando la interacción del cuerpo-tecnología y la conciencia- digitalidad, la biotecnología o la bioinformática. A través de la interferencia mutua del cuerpo, la conciencia y la realidad, se crea un nuevo espacio de “Realidad Virtual”. El posthumanismo crítico intenta desenredar las características comunes de la (...) realidad humana y la Realidad Virtual posthumana y establece vínculos comunicativos entre ambos, adhieriendose a la convicción de que la simulación nunca debe ganarse a la realidad. El posthumanismo crítico intenta ubicar al ser humano en el posthumano. Este artículo analiza los puntos comunes de la Realidad Virtual, la biotecnología y la globalización mediante una reflexión sobre la noción de la narración. La existencia de la Realidad Virtual, el códigogenético, y la globalización se debe al deseo de eludir cualquier narrativa y expresar la realidad “directamente”. La tecnología de los genes no trata de entender alguna estapa - temporalmente definible - de todo el proceso de generación, sino el gen en sí mismo, como la cantidad esencial de generación que no tiene lugar real en la generación en sí. La globalización “globaliza” el mundo y lo representa como algo que no es ni el “mundo real” ni su narración, sino más bien una esfera nueva que tenemos que aceptar como tal. El posthumanismo crítico define las diferencias sutiles entre una Realidad Virtual, en el sentido de una narrativa tecnológica, y una Irrealidad Virtual existencial que interpreta lo virtual en una forma más “humana”. (shrink)

Argues that Daoism and dandyism, linked by likeminded philosophies of "carefree wandering," deconstruct the puritanism and political correctness sought by Confucianism, Victorianism, and contemporary neoliberal culture.

According to Claude Vorilhon, the Elohim do not effectuate miracles but are “designers” who have advanced knowledge in genetics. I approach the politics of the genetic body as it is conceived in Raëlism via a discussion on aesthetics. A genetically constructed body collides with a category that has been central to the Western aesthetic tradition: style. The Raëlian Movement has created the concept of an “artificial world beyond nature” where human existence is limited to the aistetikos. Certain premises regarding style (...) and fashion become manifest through the way in which Raëlism connects genes with the question of style. In Raëlism, positivism overcomes nature as well as the restraining power of civilization and creates a new posthuman world. While Western thought has attempted to spell out reasonable links between the natural and the artificial, for Raëlians everything is artificial, which asks for a revision of aesthetics. (shrink)

This article is divided into two parts. The first part demonstrates the importance of contingency in art. There is a strong link between contingency and creativity, and it is possible to say that in art this contingency-dependent creativity makes art more “real”. In this first part the “creative contingency” or art model will also transferred to the idea of the “art of life” as a mixture of ethics and aesthetics. The second part analyzes the capacity of algorithms to produce aesthetic (...) expressions by following necessary rules and by excluding contingency. Is this cognitive model compatible with artistic creativity? (shrink)

Examination of the phenomenon of Viagra through a philosophical lens. Several authors focus on themes such as immortality and hedonism. Others offer psychoanalytical considerations by confronting clinical sexology with psychological realities. Still others explore intercultural aspects revealing the relative character of potency.

This is a book about space. On a first level, it reflects traditional Japanese ideas of space against various "items" of Western culture. Among these items are Bakhtin's "dialogicity", Wittgenstein's Lebensform, and "virtual space" or "globalized" space as representatives of the latest development of an "alienated", modern spatial experience. Some of the Western concepts of space appear as negative counter examples to "basho-like", Japanese places; others turn out to be compatible with the Japanese idea of space. On a second level, (...) the book attempts to synthesize, by constantly transgressing the limits of a purely comparative activity, a quantity which the author believes to be existent in Japanese culture that is called "the virtual". Be it Kuki Shûzô's hermeneutics of non-foundation or his ontology of dream, Nishida Kitarô's virtual definition of the body of state, or Kimura Bin's notion of "in-between" (aida) that is so closely associated with the "virtual space" of Noh plays: what all these conceptions have in common is that they aim to transcend a flat notion of "reality" by developing "the virtual" as a complex ontological unity. (shrink)

Manuscript reviews are intended to be objective, empirical assessments of the scientific worth of papers submitted for publication. However, critics have charged that manuscript reviews are unreliable, unconstructive, and biased in a number of ways . A review of the empirical literature in this area indicates: that inter-reviewer reliability in manscript assessments is clearly inadequate, that reviewer bias can sometimes influence manuscript assessments, and that there is a dearth of empirical data supporting the predictive and discriminant validity of manuscript assessment (...) procedures. Based on the available evidence it seems that manuscript reviews are more strongly influenced by chance factors than by systematic reviewer or editorial bias. Nonetheless, our desire to conceptualize manuscript reviews in psychology as objective, empirical assessments has produced a number of undesired results. An alternative approach to manuscript review based on an adversery model rather than a scientific model is presented. Advantages of an adversary model as a method for identifying sound research are discussed. Changes in current publication policies that would allow research findings to be disseminated more efficiently are also described. (shrink)

Films and Dreams considers the essential link between films and the world of dreams. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein reveals a common structure of "dreamtense" in the works of major filmmakers like Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Bergman, and Wong Kar-wai.

Research on perception without awareness has provoked strong emotional responses from individuals within and outside the scientific community, due in part to the perceived potential for abuse of subliminal techniques. In this paper, four basic issues regarding the use of subliminal techniques for propaganda purposes are discussed: whether exposure to subliminal stimuli can produce significant, predictable changes in affect, cognition and behavior; whether these effects are robust and powerful enough to make the use of subliminal techniques for propaganda purposes feasible; (...) whether the effects of subliminal stimulation are stable over time; and whether subliminal influences can be resisted by unwilling subjects. Research suggests that exposure to simple drive-or affect-related subliminal stimuli can produce ecologically significant, temporally stable changes in attitudes and behavior, and therefore may have potential for use as propaganda tools. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying subliminal perception are discussed. Technical problems which would need to be addressed before subliminal propaganda techniques could be employed are also discussed. Ethical issues raised by the use of covert attitude and behavior manipulation techniques are addressed. (shrink)

The Eurasianist movement launched a theory according to which Russia does not belong to Europe but forms, together with its Asian colonies, a separate continent named “Eurasia” whose Eastern border is the Pacific Ocean. Similarily, in the early 1920s, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European movement, developed, the idea of “Eurafrica.” I compare the writings of Coudenhove and those of Nicolas S. Trubetzkoy and show how the idea of Europe was used as an anti-essentialist model of a cultural community. (...) Though both “Eurasia” and “Eurafrica” may be understood to express cultural and economic imperialism, the sophistication with which both concepts are brought forward makes their interpretation as simple derivatives of chauvinism impossible. Both Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove refuse national “egocentricity” which “destroys every form of cultural communication between human beings.” Above that, Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove agree that cultural apogees have often come about through fusion. I discuss the idea of “convergence” in the context of Bergson's and Deleuze's biophilosophies. (shrink)

In architecture, the concept of Critical Regionalism gained popularity as a synthesis of universal, “modern” elements and individualistic elements derived from local cultures. Critical Regionalist alternatives are more than a postmodern mix of ethno styles but integrate conceptual qualities like local light, perspective, and tectonic quality into a modern architectural framework. In order to “critically” root architectural works in their corresponding traditions, Critical Regionalists base their conceptual stances on those philosophers that have produced a critical consciousness in European culture like (...) Kant, Ranke, Niebuhr, Humboldt, and others. It must appear as surprising that philosophy, the field from which architectural Critical Regionalism extracted its theoretical foundations, has never developed its own Critical Regionalist tradition. The present article attempts to formulate the relationship between regionalism and philosophy in a different fashion: is it possible and useful to retrospectively use the philosophical insights gained by architectural Critical Regionalism for a definition of the practice of regionalism in contemporary philosophy? (shrink)

Claude Lévi-Strauss holds that history and anthropology differ in their choice of complementary perspectives: history organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations. For R. G. Collingwood historical science discovers not only pure facts but considers a whole series of thoughts constituting historical life. Also Lévi-Strauss sees this: “To understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be.” However, Lévi-Strauss (...) does not perceive the double-sense of history, which can first be a record of historical “conscious” facts and second, a chain of unconscious or half-conscious acts. Like Lévi-Strauss, Charles Bally has derived the main theses of his theory from Saussure. However, contrary to Lévi-Strauss, Bally does not find structures at the inside of the phenomena but at their outside: “Our attention is drawn to the expressive side and not to the interior side of the facts of language.” Bally calls those structures not “history” but “style.” In Roland Barthes’s attempt to establish a structuralist system of fashion we can find a definition of style very similar to Bally’s. In the end, however, none of these thinkers addresses the fact that unconscious relations within historical life are constantly interlocked with conscious elements. (shrink)