GURBANI KIRTAN RENAISSANCE: REVIVING MUSICAL MEMORY,REFORMING SIKH IDENTITY

This article examines the modes of revival within the contemporary renaissance of traditional Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh devotional music) in an effort to differentiate historically operative practices from modern products being sold as tradition. Modern reformist tendencies have attempted to institutionalize a normative Sikh musical identity into one homogeneous ‘Gurmat Sangeet’ genre through codifying Sikh raga forms and promoting a particular Sikh musical orthopraxy and history. The process of institutionalization privileges written sources as authoritative, erasing the memory of operative practices passed down orally since the time of the Sikh Gurus through the Gurbani Kirtan parampara (tradition). In questioning how Sikh musical knowledge has been propagated and authenticated since modernity, I propose a reassessment of what values and musical modes are indelible to the fabric of Gurbani Kirtan, what aspects are modern derivatives, and what aspects are negotiable. I believe such an approach will not limit Sikh musical expression to a past identity subsumed by orthodox rigidity. Instead it will move toward a phenomenological epistemology that recognizes how orality and embodied experience are intrinsic to the Gurbani Kirtan parampara that remembers, practices, and teaches a particular methodology to embody the Bani as Guru for newly creative Sikh subjectivities.     

文化互化时代的文化认同

"自我"这个术语指的是在人们不断变化的经验中存续的主体。我们至少将自我视为个体认同的中心,或者是个体的组织功能。假如有"共同体自我"之类的东西,考察文化认同或许是值得期待的。康德认为,存在一个超越我们经验的"先验自我"。我们可以类似地声称,存在一个共同体自我,它超越共同体的历史和文化,凭借提供统一性原则穿越时间、保持其同一性。韩国是一个处于非常动态的文化互化进程中的典型国家。为了在全球化时代获得成功,这样一个国家应该将这个概念应用于其当前的文化境况。     

MEMORY, AMNESIA, AND DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER

Abstract— Virtually all patients with dissociative identity (or multiple personality) disorder manifest interpersonality amnesia, whereby events experienced by a particular personality slate or identity are retrievable by that same identity but not by a different one Though considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID), interpersonality amnesia has to date attracted little empirical attention. Further, the few studies on the topic typically include just 1 DID patient and a single index of retention. In contrast the current experiment involved 9 DID patients and several measures of either explicit or implicit memory Replicating and extending the single-case study of Nissen, Ross, Willingham, MacKenzie, and Schacter (1988), the present results revealed that implicit testing is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for demonstrating transfer of information from one identity to another Specifically, whereas priming in word-stem completion occurred only if the same personality state performed at both study and at test, priming in picture-fragment completion was as robust between different identities as it was within the same identity Discussion focuses on prospects for future research aimed at understanding the nature and scope of interpersonality amnesia.     

BRUTE FACTS,THE NECESSITY OF IDENTITY,AND THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

In ‘Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the Identity of Indiscernibles,’ Della Rocca argues that any counterexample to the PII would involve ‘a brute fact of non‐identity [. . .] not grounded in any qualitative difference.’ I respond that Adams's so‐called Continuity Argument against the PII does not postulate qualitatively inexplicable brute facts of identity or non‐identity if understood in the context of Kripkean modality. One upshot is that if the PII is understood to quantify over modal as well as non‐modal properties, the qualitative explicability of numerical distinctness requires not the PII but a principle of the identity of necessary indiscernibles.     

法国政教分离中的文化传递与民族认同

我在高等研究实践学院任政教分离史和政教分离社会学教授期间,曾受邀去访问几位日本同行,实际上他们是这样对我说的：“对于政教分离这一概念,我们知之不多,究其原因,在于我们主要与讲英语的大学的研究人员来往,对于他们而言这一概念颇是生疏。烦请前来一叙,就其所指向我们做一番讲解。”自然,我非常积极地回应了这一邀请,并且没有多久我就认识到,谈论“日本的政教分离”确实是可能的。     

THE PHYLOGENY AND ONTOGENY OF SERIAL MEMORY:

Abstract— The study of cognitive processes in animals provides a unique opportunity to investigate the phytogeny and ontogeny of cognition, Much of our understanding of human cognition tie-rives from the intensive study of adult human subjects. Serin! learning provides an instructive example. Since Ebhing-haus, experiments on serial learning have been performed almost exclusively on subjects who have had much experience learning lists by virtue oj their formal and informal education. Recent research on serial learning in pigeons and monkeys provides a new perspective on this fundamental skill, which does not require language and which appears to he phylogenetlcally quite old. This research has also revealed qualitative differences in how pigeons and monkeys represent lists they learn to produce and provided opportunities to observe the development of list-learning strategies starting with a subject's first list.     

TESTIMONY,MEMORY AND THE LIMITS OF THE A PRIORI

Philosophical Studies -     

THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES AND THE CO-LOCATION PROBLEM

Abstract:  The Identity of Indiscernibles is the principle that there cannot be two individual things in nature that are qualitatively identical. The principle is not exactly popular. Michael Della Rocca tries to resurrect it by arguing that we must accept this principle, for otherwise we cannot explain the impossibility of completely overlapping indiscernible objects of the same kind that share all their parts and exist in the same place at the same time. I try to show that his argument goes wrong: we need not embrace the identity of indiscernibles to deal with the co-location problem.     

IDENTITY AND THE BRAIN: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF OUR SELF

This article reviews the neuroscientific understanding of the self and personal identity, focusing on various elements of inclusivity and exclusivity as well as engaging religious and spiritual perspectives. We will also consider how the identity is comprised of biological, social, and ideological or spiritual aspects, and how they are interconnected. We will consider how the brain helps us to construct and maintain our representation of the self and what happens when we have self-transcendent experiences. Such an evaluation will have implications for understanding the intersection between consciousness and the self. This information will be helpful from both the psychological and spiritual perspective for understanding human identity.     

TWO SPHERES, TWENTY SPHERES, AND THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES

Abstract:  I argue that the standard counterexamples to the identity of indiscernibles fail because they involve a commitment to a certain kind of primitive or brute identity that has certain very unpalatable consequences involving the possibility of objects of the same kind completely overlapping and sharing all the same proper parts. The only way to avoid these consequences is to reject brute identity and thus to accept the identity of indiscernibles. I also show how the rejection of the identity of indiscernibles derives some of its support from its affinity with a Kripkean account of trans-world identity and theories of direct reference.     

THE CRUCIFIXION AS REALISATION OF IDENTITY: THE GIFT OF RECOGNITION AND REPRESENTATION

This essay approaches the complex structure of the Christian's identity from the perspective of the crucifixion of Christ. Central to this approach are the concepts of recognition and representation, which are employed to clarify presuppositions of Christian identity that can be seen as theologically and philosophically prior to the doctrinal conceptions of reconciliation and atonement. The cross can be seen as a gift only if it is simultaneously conceived of as a possibility for receiving a new identity through the recognition of God both as the other represented and representing the human on the cross. On the basis of recognition and representation, implications concerning the more doctrinal formulation of Christology, anthropology and soteriology are spelled out.