THE ARTIFICIALIZATION OF MIND AND WORLD

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to renewed ambitions of developing artificial general intelligence. Alongside this has been a resurgence in the development of virtual and augmented reality (V/AR) technologies, which are viewed as “disruptive” technologies and the computing platforms of the future. V/AR effectively bring the digital world of machines, robots, and artificial agents to our senses while entailing the transposition of human activity and presence into the digital world of artificial agents and machine forms of intelligence. The intersection of humans and machines in this shared space brings humans and machines into ontological continuity as informational entities in a totalizing informational environment, which subsumes both cyber and physical space in an artificially constructed virtual world. The reconstruction of mind (through AI) and world (through V/AR) thus has significant epistemological, ontological, and anthropological implications, which constitute the underlying features in the artificialization of mind and world.     

A Theological Reflection on Torture and Democracy

Abstract : First, I summarize the major findings of a new comprehensive resource, Torture and Democracy, by Darius Rejali, as corrective for the current state of confusion and concealment in United States with regard to the persistence of torture. Second, I respond theologically to the insights from this scholarship through a) reflection on victims of torture as ‘nonpersons’ in light of theological anthropology, and through exploring the role of Christians in the public square, and b) addressing the problem of sacrificialism.     

Dark Desires

An influential view of sexual morality claims that participant consent is sufficient for the moral permissibility of a sexual act. I argue that the complex and frequently dark nature of sexual desire precludes this, because some sexual desire has a character such that it should not be gratified, even if this were consented to. I illustrate this with a discussion of a famous literary character, the Vicomte de Valmont, and draw on Kant's anthropology to illuminate the nature of such desire, before offering an account of its psychological roots. In the course of the paper I explain why the view of sexual desire endorsed by my main opponents is mistaken, and attack the limited conception of the normative which is a central plank in the argument of a prominent recent defender of the view, Igor Primoratz.     

Rediscovering the ritual technology of the placebo effect in analytical psychology

Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accomplish an objective of some kind. Modernity has produced many kinds of ever‐expanding new technologies, but it is also evident that technologies can be lost or fall out of use. A cross‐cultural survey of ritual reveals a rather startling observation: that while developed nations often exceed other cultures in terms of material technology, they often pale by comparison in their use of ritual technology. In this essay we will see how ritual is a powerful sort of technology that developed nations have mostly allowed to drift out of regular, vigorous use, despite its numerous psychological and biological effects. This tendency has left one of the rituals we still have – psychotherapy itself – to be bereft of some of the typical tools for concretizing the symbolic in recurrent patterns around the world. Jung himself could be accused of being somewhat anti‐ritual himself, enmeshed as he was in the post‐Protestant, post‐Enlightenment cultural environment that defines the West in many ways 1 . But these under‐utilized elements of ritual technology may be a natural fit for Jungian therapy due to its use of symbols.     

What is Philosophical about Kant’s Anthropology?

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View is fundamentally about the sphere of civilization, and, with this, a particular kind of philosophical self-understanding. By civilization, Kant means to indicate the process by which human beings transform their inner natures based on pragmatic or prudential considerations born of our living together. Civilization is what we do to ourselves in order to get along with others with whom we share the earth. In the Anthropology, what we come to understand about ourselves is the possibility of transforming our inner natures based on our will.     

Being in‐between: The relevance of ethnography and auto‐ethnography for psychotherapy research

Aims: This paper proposes that ethnography and auto‐ethnography can make important contributions to counselling and psychotherapy research. Auto‐ethnography is a recent methodological approach that focuses on the subjective experiences of the researcher. It is informed by anthropology, which encourages the researcher to journey alongside the persons being observed and to make meaning of complex symbolic systems in their lives. Method: Examples from a study of therapeutic processes in a mental health setting for women are examined. Discussion: If auto‐ethnography situates the researcher with the insider's perspective and ethnography is from the outsider's perspective, the researcher is caught ‘in‐between’ these two approaches. Acknowledging the concept of ‘in‐between‐ness’ can both cause discomfort and transform the experience of all who engage in the process and enhance the quality of the research.     

Cross-cultural similarities and differences in person-body reasoning: experimental evidence from the United Kingdom and Brazilian Amazon

We report the results of a cross-cultural investigation of person-body reasoning in the United Kingdom and northern Brazilian Amazon (Marajó Island). The study provides evidence that directly bears upon divergent theoretical claims in cognitive psychology and anthropology, respectively, on the cognitive origins and cross-cultural incidence of mind-body dualism. In a novel reasoning task, we found that participants across the two sample populations parsed a wide range of capacities similarly in terms of the capacities' perceived anchoring to bodily function. Patterns of reasoning concerning the respective roles of physical and biological properties in sustaining various capacities did vary between sample populations, however. Further, the data challenge prior ad-hoc categorizations in the empirical literature on the developmental origins of and cognitive constraints on psycho-physical reasoning (e.g., in afterlife concepts). We suggest cross-culturally validated categories of "Body Dependent" and "Body Independent" items for future developmental and cross-cultural research in this emerging area.     

EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: TRAIT COMPLEXITY IN ACTION THROUGH COMPASSION

In this third and last article on the evolution of religious capacity, the authors focus on compassion, one of religious expression's common companions. They explore the various meanings of compassion, using Biblical and early related documents, and derive general cognitive components before an evolutionary analysis of compassion using their model. Then, in taking on neural reuse theory, they adapt a model from linguistics theory to understand how neural reuse could have operated to fix religious capacity in the human genome. They present a teaching tool on “Religious Capacity in Action,” and develop an example of compassionate decision making in very early Homo sapiens in North Africa. They round out their analysis of compassion by exploring theory in neuroscience on a standard decision‐making model, and investigate what goes on in the human brain when a values‐based decision is made.     

Qualitative Cancer Genetic Counseling Research, Part I: Ethnography in a Cancer Clinic

This is a report of the experience of several months' ethnographic research by a genetic counselor researcher in a cancer treatment clinic. One goal of the exercise was to directly experience a method of qualitative research known as ethnography, which relies heavily on participant-observation, in an applied clinical setting. Another goal was to explore a previously undescribed research area in the genetic counseling literature, namely, the meaning of cancer and cancer treatment for affected individuals and their support companions. Here we report on a personal account of the experiences of conducting and publishing the research. The preliminary analysis and results of this field experience are published elsewhere (Peters et al. (2001) J Genet Counsel 10(2):151–168.). These initial findings support the feasibility of genetic counselors, who are trained in specific social science methodologies, to conduct qualitative research pertinent to genetic counseling practice.This work was completed at the University of Pittsburgh before employment at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and does not represent the views of the NCI, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the Federal Government