Laughing and Crying: A Study of the Limits of Human Behavior
... My approach will be dialogical, I will focus specifically on laughter, trying to account for all of its uses in interaction, whether humour is present or not. As essential starting points I will take the proposal put forward originally first by Plessner (1970) and then by Glenn (2003) and Ginzburg et al. (2015) that laughter conveys meaning; and the hypothesis that laughter comprehension and production rely importantly on contextual and pragmatic reasoning (Reddy, Williams, and Vaughan, 2002). ...
... One of the central assumptions that shapes my work is that laughter analysis can be decomposed into different layers, similar to what has been done for centuries in traditional linguistics: separating out the acoustic and phonetic form, the positioning in the larger discourse structure (syntax), the semantics, the pragmatics and the social effects, goals and functions for interactions. This thesis therefore proposes, in line with Plessner (1970), Glenn (2003), and Ginzburg et al. (2015) that laughter deserves a semantic layer, i.e. laughter has propositional content. ...
... Mon travail prend comme points de départ la proposition, présentée à l'origine par Plessner (1970) puis par Glenn (2003) and Ginzburg et al. (2015), que le rire apporte une signification, ainsi que l'hypothèse que la compréhension et la production du rire dépendent dans une large mesure de raisonnements pragmatiques et contextuels (Reddy, Williams, and Vaughan, 2002). L'ensemble de la thèse repose sur la conception, aujourd'hui généralement bien acceptée, que la communication en interaction implique de multiples modes et canaux en dehors de la parole, capables de véhiculer des signification (Iedema, 2007;Jones and LeBaron, 2002;Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2001;Streeck, Goodwin, and LeBaron, 2011;Wierzbicka, 2000). ...
Laughter is a social vocalization universal across cultures and languages. It is ubiquitous in our dialogues and able to serve a wide range of functions. Laughter has been studied from several perspectives, but the classifications proposed are hard to integrate. Despite being crucial in our daily interaction, relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of laughter in conversation, attempting to model its sophisticated pragmatic use, neuro-correlates in perception and development in children. In the current thesis a new comprehensive framework for laughter analysis is proposed, crucially grounded in the assumption that laughter has propositional content, arguing for the need to distinguish different layers of analysis, similarly to the study of speech: form, positioning, semantics and pragmatics. A formal representation of laughter meaning is proposed and a multilingual corpus study (French, Chinese and English) is conducted in order to test the proposed framework and to deepen our understanding of laughter use in adult conversation. Preliminary investigations are conducted on the viability of a laughter form-function mapping based on acoustic features and on the neuro-correlates involved in the perception of laughter serving different functions in natural dialogue. Our results give rise to novel generalizations about the placement, alignment, semantics and function of laughter, stressing the high pragmatic skills involved in its production and perception. The development of the semantic and pragmatic use of laughter is observed in a longitudinal corpus study of 4 American-English child-mother pairs from 12 to 36 months of age. Results show that laughter use undergoes important development at each level analysed, which complies with what could be hypothesised on the base of phylogenetic data, and that laughter can be an effective means to track cognitive/communicative development, and potential difficulties or delays at a very early stage.
... (b) Investigating the role of laughters during interaction: Laughters are linked to human behavior and are hypothesized to carry out several social functions [9,10]. In this experiment, we examine if the mere occurrence of a laughter during interaction carries some information with regards to the ChangeTalk valence. ...
... Several studies suggest the importance of laughters in discourse [9,10]. In this section, we perform preliminary analysis of laughters and study their effect on our previous system. ...
... The exploration of emotional and existential experiences was expressed both verbally and physically by participants, the latter through crying and laughter. According to the philosopher Helmuth Plessner, these are (opposite) bodily responses that occur in response to "boundary situations" where language falls short [28]. Participants frequently cried, but predominantly laughed when discussing story fragments that confronted them with the limits of their existence. ...
Purpose
Advanced cancer patients may perceive their disease as an experience of contingency: a (sudden) disruption of the life-narrative evoking existential concerns such as loss of meaning and identity. The research project In Search of Stories aimed to investigate whether and how reading and discussing literary texts assisted participants in integrating their diagnosis as the experience of contingency into their life-narrative.
Methods
This qualitative study reports on interviews with 25 advanced cancer patients, who read a story from a curated collection of 10 literary texts. They discussed the story with a spiritual caregiver, using a reading guide to structure the conversation. The interviews were thematically analyzed using template analysis.
Results
Participants identified with contingency experiences and related existential concerns presented in the texts, including loss of meaning and identity, bodily alienation, and social estrangement. Reading and discussing literary texts also enabled participants to engage in self-regulation; in exploring how to relate to devalued emotions and attitudes, and in further developing their identity post-diagnosis.
Conclusions
A structured reading of literary texts revolving around contingency experiences enables advanced cancer patients to identify with and articulate emotions, attitudes, and existential concerns such as loss of meaning and identity. This allows them to break down barriers in talking about their illness experiences and to transition towards acceptance of their diagnosis as the experience of contingency.
Implications for Cancer Survivors
Reading and discussing literary texts about contingency may support people with advanced cancer to integrate their own experience of contingency into the life-narrative.
... The baby's crying is an instinctive behavior, apparently differentiating the human species (Plessner 1970), which only the adult is conditioned to interpret as a signifier of something. The signifier in this case clearly precedes the potential meanings that can be attributed to it. ...
Phonosymbolism can be considered a universal phenomenon of language. Although the materiality of the linguistic sign is associated with its meaning with a high degree of conventionality, a substratum of iconism persists (and is even required) in the configuration of the expressive means of any natural language. Phonosymbolism is thus far from being an anecdotal fact, as has often been suggested. In the following study I will try to answer some questions that allow us to support this ‘need’ for an iconic link between expressive means and meaning, which could be characterized in terms of a ‘phonosymbolic drive’. Beyond the specific products that reveal ‘phonosymbolism’, the paper explores the cognitive processes, ergonomically based, that would explain these products.
... Su ambición era reunir el conocimiento más avanzado de la época tanto en la filosofía como en las ciencias naturales, de forma tal de responder adecuadamente a la doble dimensión -biológica y moral-de la existencia humana. En esta tradición, los seres humanos son comprendidos como organismos naturales controlados por sus impulsos, emociones y procesos adaptativos orgánicos al mundo, pero también como seres conscientes, que se definen por sus percepciones intelectuales, estéticas y morales (Gehlen 1980;Plessner 1970). Una implicación robusta de esta tradición de antropología filosófica es la tesis de que no hay tal cosa como una "naturaleza humana", esencial y fundada en nuestra biología, que integre las características definitorias que nos hacen seres humanos. ...
Este breve texto resume los presupuestos y tesis principales del programa de investigación de la sociología filosófica. Tomando como punto de partida la tradición de la antropología filosófica de la primera mitad del siglo pasado, la sociología filosófica sostiene que, como especie, los humanos tenemos un conjunto de propiedades antropológicas que hacen posible esa producción y reproducción de lo social. Es decir, se trataría de propiedades generales que si bien se actualizan socioculturalmente mantienen un alto nivel de autonomía en relación con esos contextos. El artículo pasa revista a tres de las dimensiones distintivas de la sociología filosofica: (1) su compromiso con una posición humanista más no antropocéntrica; (2) la justificación postmetafísica de su orientación universalista; (3) la centralidad del concepto de “idea normativa” para capturar la manera en que las ideas morales se despliegan en la vida.
... First of all, it seems that the habitual body schema and the actual experience of one's own body can come apart (Merleau-Ponty, 1994: 84). Merleau-Ponty is not investigating the various kinds of momentarily experienced self-estrangement when aspects of being and having a body come apart (see for instance Plessner, 1970). Moreover, the roots of the bodily ruptures Merleau-Ponty has in mind are temporal, it seems. ...
The study of traumatic experiences led Freud to investigate what he termed a compulsion to repeat. The present paper takes up the idea of a tendency to repeat something that reinforces psychic pain and asks which kind of agency is possible in the light of traumatic repetitions. First, the experiential roots of repetitive doings induced by trauma are investigated. Might a compulsion to repeat belong to the sphere of the kind of tendencies which Husserl terms “generally unconscious”? And if so, does this sphere bring us to the limit of phenomenology where we might need to cooperate with psychoanalysis to make sense of the manifestations of such an unconscious sphere? This is proposed in section two. In section three, Freud’s notion of the compulsion to repeat is discussed. At this point, the repetitive activity of the mind is investigated as the traumatized person’s ongoing struggle to survive with the trauma and as a struggle to understand what survival in this case even means. In section four, an attempt is made to describe the kind of agency involved in the repetitive activity of the mind. The paper concludes that weak agency is possible in traumatic repetition when understood as the person’s ongoing attempt to compose a future for what has been lost.
... Yet, in contradistinction to "trialism" or "triple-essence theory," which construes body, psyche, and spirit as discrete substances, Plessner's argument establishes the "originary unity of spirit, soul, and body" as interdependent yet distinct dimensions of the human life form (LaC: 17f.; P 7: 218; PA: 4; P 5: 140). Plessner develops a unitary perspective on these three dimensions by means of an interpretive theory of living nature that allows him to construe human existence as 1 Throughout the article, I use the following abbreviations to cite primary sources by Plessner and Schelling: E = (Plessner, 2002); L = (Plessner, 1975) [quotes in English are from (Plessner, 2019), with page references keyed to (Plessner, 1975), whose pagination is included in the English translation]; LaC = (Plessner, 1970); LC = (Plessner, 1999); P: (Plessner, 2003); PA = (Plessner, 2018); S: (Schelling,1860) [quotes in English are from (Schelling, 1994) and (Schelling, 2006), with page references keyed to the pagination of (Schelling, 1860)]; SB = (Schelling, 1870). Quotes from English translations are given with occasional modifications for the sake of accuracy. ...
While Schelling’s anticipation of Freudian psychoanalysis is well established, it has thus far gone unnoticed that Schelling’s ideas also proved fruitful in the context of a distinctively philosophical theory of the psyche developed by a younger contemporary of Freud. During the 1920s Helmuth Plessner, a key figure of philosophical anthropology, outlined a complex conception of the psyche as an individualized, inner region of reality. Although Plessner did not present his philosophical psychology in a systematic form, its building blocks can be found in The Unity of the Senses, The Limits of Community, and Levels of Organic Life and the Human, among other writings. Moreover, Plessner left a clue as to how these building blocks fit together, which suggests that Plessner viewed his philosophical psychology as structurally analogous to the model of personality outlined in Schelling’s 1809 treatise on human freedom. I propose that Plessner sought to formulate an alternative to both idealism and realism about the psyche that might reconcile the insights motivating these rival positions. Schelling provided Plessner with a workable model for such a reconciliation. After reviewing textual evidence for my hypothesis, I sketch Schelling’s predecessor theory. Based on the Schellingian template, I then reconstruct Plessner’s non-reductively naturalistic theory of the psyche, which aligns the real bodily ground of the psyche with its ideal existence. Highlighting the strengths of Plessner’s philosophical psychology against the foil of Paul Ricoeur’s and John McDowell’s relevant arguments, I argue that the theory reconstructed here deserves contemporary consideration as a plausible contender.
... This does not come as a surprise, since we cannot assume academia to be insensitive or separate from the societal Zeitgeist. It is also part of the critical posthumanist argument that we should not confine ourselves to cognitivism, and we should allow more space for our corporeal emotions, irrespective if they are love or anger, laughter or crying (see also Plessner 1970, about laughing and crying), but it does make a difference if this leads to blunt categorization and exclusions. This exclusionist tendency seems to confuse the real "utopian/ dystopian" character of our [b] orderings with the undetermined character of a true utopia, which acknowledges the contingency of our current situation, judgements and opinions and always tries to transcend these towards an even more inclusive future. ...
... This does not come as a surprise, since we cannot assume academia to be insensitive to or separate from the societal Zeitgeist. It is also part of the critical posthumanist argument that we should not confine ourselves to cognitivism and we should allow more space for our corporeal emotions, irrespective if whether those are love or anger or laughing or crying (see also Plessner, 1970, about laughing and crying), but it does make a difference if this leads to blunt categorisation and exclusions (Neiman, 2023). ...
In this brief contribution, I reflect on some of the newest tendencies and fashions in social theoretic thinking in the field of human geography and beyond. Human geography attracts its scholars, thinkers and audiences with its engagement to contribute to a better environment and a better world. As such human geography as a discipline is a political project, with high societal relevance. In this human engagement with the world around us, the relationship between the human and the spatial environment is of central importance, and thorough scientific conceptual reflections are crucial in a discipline that is not just political but also scientific. Geographers traditionally excel in sophisticated conceptualisations of our physical and social environment but have rather neglected the conceptualisation of the other end of this relationship, the human being and becoming. In the current debate on the various versions of posthumanism, we observe that one easily resorts to rather simplistic categorisations and qualifications of what we envision as posthuman utopias or dystopias, with sometimes also dangerous ethical consequences. In this contribution, I try to argue that, if we dig a bit deeper, with the help of the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner we gain a more nuanced and sustainable as well as ethically responsible view of the role of the posthuman self in the geography of today's world.
... The experience of simultaneously having and being a body has been the topic of numerous research [34,56]. Various studies have investigated how we experience embodiment not only towards our natural body but also to artificial objects, such as in the Rubber Hand Illusion [71], or toward virtual bodies, avatars, in VR [52], delving into their impact on behaviors and therapeutic outcomes. ...
Body awareness is relevant for the efficacy of psychotherapy. However, previous work on virtual reality (VR) and avatar-assisted therapy has often overlooked it. We investigated the effect of avatar individualization on body awareness in the context of VR-specific user experience, including sense of embodiment (SoE), plausibility, and sense of presence (SoP). In a between-subject design, 86 participants embodied three avatar types and engaged in VR movement exercises. The avatars were (1) generic and gender-matched, (2) customized from a set of pre-existing options, or (3) personalized photorealistic scans. Compared to the other conditions, participants with personalized avatars reported increased SoE, yet higher eeriness and reduced body awareness. Further, SoE and SoP positively correlated with body awareness across conditions. Our results indicate that VR user experience and body awareness do not always dovetail and do not necessarily predict each other. Future research should work towards a balance between body awareness and SoE.
... According to Plessner's anthropology (Plessner 1970), laughing as well as crying can be understood as a human response to crises. In such situations, no routines or patterns of interpretations exist that assure a clear definition. ...
... The translations of citations in this text are all my own, except where no translation was needed, i.e. in the citations from Laughing and Crying(Plessner 1970). ...
... Em 1927 A preocupação dessa vertente do pensamento antropológico era a de compreender a essência, a natureza dos seres humanos em geral. Dentro desse escopo, a antropologia focalizou a comparação entre "homem" e animal (Gehlen, 1988;Plessner, 1970), com o objetivo de distinguir características compartilhadas e diferenças. A fim de se compreender a conditio humana, reflexões filosóficas foram produzidas para incidirem sobre insights biológicos. ...
Objetiva contribuir para a análise da relação entre antropologia, educação e desenvolvimento humano e aborda amplos panoramas do conceito de antropologia histórico-cultural. A antropologia inclui quatro paradigmas: o processo de hominização, o filosófico, o histórico e o cultural. Tais paradigmas correspondem a duas tendências contraditórias de desenvolvimento na globalização atual: uma é direcionada à uniformização, enquanto a outra se volta aos limites desse desenvolvimento e acentua as condições de diversidade cultural. Há uma dupla historicidade e culturalidade na antropologia que surge da historicidade e culturalidade das diferentes perspectivas de pesquisadores antropológicos e do caráter históricocultural dos conteúdos e dos temas de pesquisa. A relação entre pesquisa de uma única disciplina, interdisciplinar e transdisciplinar é uma questão fundamental na antropologia. Enquanto há muitas abordagens possíveis, a interdisciplinaridade e a transdisciplinaridade, como formas de organização, são particularmente adequadas para a pesquisa no campo da antropologia.
... Given these complex communicative and intentional functions of laughter and other non-verbal behaviours which interact with verbal phenomena, some linguists argue that laughter, like verbal/written language, conveys its own propositional content that interacts with verbally conveyed propositional content (Plessner, 1970;Ginzburg et al., 2015Ginzburg et al., , 2020Tian et al., 2016;Eshghi et al., 2019). In these theories, far from being an automatic response of emotional contagion, the interpretation of laughter by the audience involves highly complex reasoning processes requiring contextual inferences about attentional, emotional, and intentional internal states (Reddy, Williams, & Vaughan, 2002;Ginzburg et al., 2015Ginzburg et al., , 2020Mazzocconi, 2019). ...
Previous experimental findings support the hypothesis that laughter and positive emotions are contagious in face-to-face and mediated communication. To test this hypothesis, we describe four experiments in which participants communicate via a chat tool that artificially adds or removes laughter (e.g. haha or lol ), without participants being aware of the manipulation. We found no evidence to support the contagion hypothesis. However, artificially exposing participants to more lol s decreased participants’ use of haha s but led to more involvement and improved task-performance. Similarly, artificially exposing participants to more haha s decreased use of haha but increased lexical alignment. We conclude that, even though the interventions have effects on coordination, they are incompatible with contagion as a primary explanatory mechanism. Instead, these results point to an interpretation that involves a more sophisticated view of dialogue mechanisms along the lines of Conversational Analysis and similar frameworks and we suggest directions for future research.
... The preoccupation of this strand of anthropological thought was to understand the essence, the nature of human beings in general. Within this framework, anthropology concentrated upon a comparison between "man" and animal (Gehlen, 1988;Plessner, 1970), with a view to distinguishing shared features and differences. To grasp the conditio humana philosophical reflections were brought to bear upon biological insights. ...
... Estos modos se expresan, por ejemplo, en la ya clásica distinción entre cuerpo como Körper (i.e., el cuerpo como objeto de la intencionalidad: 'tener un cuerpo') y el cuerpo como Leib (i.e., el cuerpo como sujeto de la intencionalidad: 'ser un cuerpo') (véasePlessner, 1970). ...
En este libro se analizan las relaciones entre la corporalidad, las presentaciones sintomáticas actuales, la psicopatología infanto-juvenil, el psicoanálisis de orientación lacaniana y los estudios sobre desarrollo psicológico. A través del análisis conceptual y metateórico, la discusión de casos clínicos y el reporte de experiencias profesionales y de resultados de la investigación empírica, se aborda la importancia inédita que el cuerpo ha adquirido en nuestra época.
... Estos modos se expresan, por ejemplo, en la ya clásica distinción entre cuerpo como Körper (i.e., el cuerpo como objeto de la intencionalidad: 'tener un cuerpo') y el cuerpo como Leib (i.e., el cuerpo como sujeto de la intencionalidad: 'ser un cuerpo') (véasePlessner, 1970). ...
En el capítulo se presenta brevemente el problema de la atribución de estados mentales. Luego, se critica la perspectiva de 2da persona considerando aportes de los enfoques psicológicos culturales y semióticos del desarrollo temprano. Por último, se propone una solución semiótica, pragmática, enactiva y extendida al problema de cómo conocemos las otras “mentes”. // The chapter briefly introduces the problem of mental state attribution. Then, the 2nd person perspective is critiqued taking into account contributions from cultural and semiotic psychological approaches to early development. Finally, a semiotic, pragmatic, enactive and extended solution to the problem of how we know other "minds" is proposed.
... Breyer;Mundt, 2014, p. 19) 4 Statements of the psychotic patients are a kind of book with torn pages, and the role of the psychopathologist (psycho-hermeneuticist) is to synthetize this confusing "statement mosaic" into a meaningful composition. 5 Helmuth Plessner is the inventor of the concept of the eccentric positionality of the human entity, and in his perspective it is a characteristic that divides human beings from animals and vegetables (Plessner, 1970). I claim that the basic issues of the psychotic person are present in the frame of the eccentric positioning of its presence in the frame of the phenomenological objective field. ...
The Inherent inseparability of psychopathology and phenomenology is generally a known fact, established and popularised by Karl Jaspers in Allgemeine Psychopathologie. In the following paper, I will show the development of interdisciplinary methodology initiated by Jaspers, and discuss it by combining M. Merleau Ponty's theory of embodiment, R. D. Laing's existential-phenomenological approach, and T. Fuchs concept of brain resonance and integral causality with the hermeneutical thoughts of Paul Ricœur regarding the notion of selfhood. The main thesis proposes that fusion of hermeneutics and phenomenology with psychiatry can play a signifcant methodological role in the approach to diagnosis and treatment of the psychotic disorders spectre, especially regarding the most complex yet inaccurately defned and evaluated mental disorder - schizophrenia. Due to the fundamental interpretative capacity of both disciplines regarding the understanding of the displacement (translocation) of subject, disembodiment, delusions and consciousness, I am considering them as a prerequisite for the effective expansion of psychiatric practice.
Chapter 4 turns to the connection between humor’s access to truth and its access to value. It tries to show that, because of and built into the way humor gives us (and in fact partly consists in) access to deep truth, it also gives us (and partly consists in) a uniquely privileged access to value at a deep level. The chapter ends with a brief account of the nature of laughter as an expression of the relation of humor to deep truth and value.
This article explores the relationship between humour and humanism. We argue that humour is a pivotal part of human life, and demonstrate that it plays a significant role in the writings of various humanist authors. The very phenomenon and acknowledgement of the phenomenon of humour functions as a counterargument against those critics, especially posthumanists, who claim that the subject of humanism is an overly rational isolated atom. Our rigorous philosophical analysis will show that humour is an essential human feature, often neglected by such critics. Furthermore, our humane position on humour will offer an important complementation to the ethics of humour. In a humanist framework we defend the broadness of humour and argue against fixed universal rules. Instead, we believe that the ethics of humour is very much about respecting the other as a full human being.
This article examines how a selection of Scandinavian children’s books, spanning the 1970s until today, have addressed questions about how babies are made. Previous research has shown that various forms of humour have been used in the dissemination of information on intercourse and conception. In our article, we examine how and why humour is used when presenting adult sexuality in books for children. We consider humour a strategy for taking the edge off this challenging topic. However, this strategy comes with a cost. With reference to critical theory and humour theory, we problematise the strategic use of humour, as it may contribute to the perpetuation of heteronormative notions and patterns. In the article, we assess several recurring tactics, which we have categorised into five forms of humour: transgression of taboos, humorous recognition, absurd humour, naive humour and anthropomorphic humour.
To my lights, somaesthetics is already queer in its interdisciplinary orientation and pluralist mode of inquiry. It was from this theoretical position that inspired Shusterman himself to shed new light on pre-modern cultures of sexual arts in Ars Erotica and played a part in the performance art piece with Yann Toma called The Adventures of the Man in Gold. I want to explicate this basic queer orientation of somaesthetics by first developing from Sara Ahmed’s pioneer work in “queer phenomenology” with reference to Merleau-Ponty. I argue somaesthetics is more inclusive of the lived experience of queer bodies than Ahmed’s reconstruction allows. From there, I push the implications of queer somaesthetics through the idea of countersexuality to expose its radical, deviant potential.
We argue that the main difference between humans and other animals lies in humans’ unique form of sociality: their shared intentionality. Instead of conceiving of shared intentionality as a special skill humans have in addition to the skills they share with nonhuman animals (the additive account), we propose to think of shared intentionality as transforming human cognition in its entirety (the transformative account, as in the thesis of Kern and Moll). We discuss the relevance of the evolution of the human face for shared intentionality, and we argue that the development of shared intentionality proceeds in the following three steps: 1) newborns’ tendency to engage in preverbal, face-to-face dialogue, 2) 1-year-olds’ drive to jointly attend to the world with others as plural subjects, and 3) preschoolers’ appreciation of individuals’ different perspectives. The shared intentionality thesis defended here can be viewed as an extension of Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural account of human development.
This volume explores the concept of humour and its relationship with human behaviour. The interdisciplinary essays in this book cover a wide range of time, from the sixteenth century to the present day. They delve into various cultural contexts, challenging social norms and prompting readers to reflect on the ethical implications of humour. The collection highlights the varied metaphors of heroes and monsters in each case study, which are crucial to understanding the moral spectrum of human existence. These metaphors represent aspirational ideals and darker aspects of what it means to be human. The book encourages readers to critically analyse the complexity of humorous objects and social practices in contexts like digital culture, mythical folklore, entertainment technology, or politics, recognising their interconnectedness with societal issues and emphasising that different settings might call for different interpretations.
This volume explores the concept of humour and its relationship with human behaviour. The interdisciplinary essays in this book cover a wide range of time, from the sixteenth century to the present day. They delve into various cultural contexts, challenging social norms and prompting readers to reflect on the ethical implications of humour. The collection highlights the varied metaphors of heroes and monsters in each case study, which are crucial to understanding the moral spectrum of human existence. These metaphors represent aspirational ideals and darker aspects of what it means to be human. The book encourages readers to critically analyse the complexity of humorous objects and social practices in contexts like digital culture, mythical folklore, entertainment technology, or politics, recognising their interconnectedness with societal issues and emphasising that different settings might call for different interpretations.
Those who play demonstrate that more and different things are possible than the execution of the normal and necessary. This demonstration can be accused of being a loss of reality or positively attributed as the creation of new possibilities. A clearly marked boundary of meaning, the freedom and equality of the players, and the non-binding act as if as an operating mode create the typical ludic dimension of reality. Since the game is constituted from the difference to social normality, which is dominated by the expected, the meaning of the game is to be found in dealing with the unexpected, both with the threats and the allure of the unexpected. From this, the game gains its appeal. This appeal culminates in success.
In the Anthropocene, humans have become increasingly uncertain about who they are and how they should view themselves. The future of the planet, people and animals depends to a great extent on our conception of ourselves and our actions. Amid all the criticism of inadequate conceptions of humanity, what is certain is that we have nothing beyond ourselves. That is why extensive anthropological research is needed, to determine our limitations and capabilities. In the face of globalization, it is especially important to combine diachronic historical perspectives with synchronic cultural anthropological and philosophical perspectives and reflections. The dual historicity and culturality of the objects of research and of the researchers themselves is important, as is the development of transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives and insights into the limits of human knowledge and action.
Critics often link yet distinguish between ‘moving’ and ‘touching’ characters, scenes and artworks. It has been argued that being moved is a specific emotion, that its formal object is the thin goodness of exemplified final, important and impersonal thick values, and that being touched is an attenuated form of that phenomenon. First, I dispute that the values that move us must be impersonal, since we can be moved by the personal goodness of being loved, free or healthy. Second, I argue that being touched should be considered a distinct emotion type. To support this claim, I refer to apparent differences between the formal objects that the two affective phenomena relate to as well as to dissimilarities in cognitive sophistication and phenomenology. I suggest that we are touched by that which invites love. Vulnerable, innocently suffering and affectionate beings are touching insofar as they need and will be responsive to love.
According to Dutch philosopher Spinoza (1631-1677), the body is a power of acting. This force of existence can be affected (checked or stimulated) by the mechanisms of subjection that discipline the body, with obvious consequences for our development and well-being. These were the questions for inquiry: what importance should be attributed to Spinoza in the ecology of existential knowledge? What kind of body experience does he advocate? What lessons for education can be drawn from his thinking? In this sense, we highlight as an axial objective: To discuss Spinoza’s importance in the idea of body as ecology of knowledge. As sources we used the published works of Spinoza. To achieve our goals, we adopted a methodological strategy that is enacted in an approximation between phenomenology and historical hermeneutics (in the wake of Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer). It is a question of inquiring how the body is revealed to consciousness (disconcealment), because it plays an important role in the production of truth. As a conclusion we will say that Spinoza knew how to distance himself from the legacy of the process of body mortification and he also knew how to position himself critically vis-à-vis the ideas of modernity. He helps us find a more ecological type of education so we can establish healthier relationships.
(Im)perfekte Körper 2.0 – Körperverständnisse in Körperpraktiken der Gegenwart
In Körperpraktiken werden gesellschaftliche Körperverständnisse und -diskurse sichtbar. Es wird angenommen, dass Körperverständnisse im Zuge der gesellschaftlichen Transformation einem Wandel unterworfen sind. Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, welche Körperverständnisse und Diskurse in zeitgenössischen, jugendlichen Körperpraktiken propagiert werden und ob ein Wandel im Körperverständnis bevorsteht.
The paper draws attention to contexts in which livelihood and residence opportunities to migrants without formal status are meagre, specifically Nordic countries where policies towards undocumented persons have notably tightened. In such conditions, invisibility becomes a key characteristic of life. The paper introduces a broad conception of visibility that identifies different ways of seeing and being (un)seen, as part of embodied agency that turns intercorporeal at the presence of other people. Drawing from existing Nordic scholarship that we read through Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, we argue that in situations where personhood becomes challenged by forced (in)visibility, undocumented migrants are compelled to build and maintain a façade between their experienced self and social self. This allows them to manage to be seen yet not exposed, but often with dire consequences to their well-being and agency as persons.
This chapter discusses the comic potential that originates in the way players of digital games take on the dual position of being at once a played self that is internal to the gameworld and a playing self that perceives this world from the outside. I first describe the comic attitude as it is defined within philosophy: as an attitude of distanced and dispassionate reflection towards an incongruity. I then show how the dual position of players during gameplay not only is characterized by incongruities, such as contradictions between the apparent seriousness and the ultimate triviality of in-game actions, but also allows players to dispassionately reflect on these incongruities. I thus argue that digital gameplay entails the inherent possibility of turning players into both a comic object and a laughing subject.
This article will analyse the preconditions of sense of humour for artificial intelligence. Can artificial intelligence have a sense of humour? Is there a difference between human and machine laughter? Some machines already fulfil certain conditions which are associated with the human sense of humour: on the most superficial level machines appear to laugh and produce jokes, and they recognize sarcasm and punchlines, and they can evaluate funniness. In short, artificial intelligence is already able to recognize humour, and reacts to it accordingly. Furthermore, people laugh with humorous machines. However, it is still uncertain whether artificial intelligence can have a sense of humour or not, at least in comparison to a human sense of humour. To build bridges between AI research and philosophy of humour, this article proposes that there are (at least) five notable philosophical issues to be addressed if we are to accept that machines can have a (humanlike) sense of humour. These principles are: 1) worldview, 2) self-consciousness, 3) self-reflection, 4) self-criticism, and 5) losing control.
Today the phenomenological concept of the lived body figures centrally in several philosophical and special scientific debates. In these wide and widening fields, the concept is used with multiple different meanings. In order to clarify and delineate the debates, this paper provides an explication of the phenomenological-transcendental methods. It argues that these methods help us remove the most fundamental ambiguities of the concept of embodiment by distinguishing between the main constituents of the lived body and by illuminating their mutual relations.
Trust is critical for social life, and yet it is alarmingly fragile. It is easily damaged and difficult to repair. Philosophers studying trust have often noted that basic kind of trust needs to be in place in order for social life to be possible. Although philosophers have suggested that basic trust must exist, they have not tried to describe in explicit terms what this basic trust looks like, or how it comes to be. In this article I will identify and describe a basic form of trust that I call recognition trust. It is a latent expectation we have in others to respect our moral status as persons. By conceptualizing recognition trust, I can explain why trust is not just a useful tool for social cooperation: having our personhood recognized is necessary for living a minimally decent human life, and trust is a necessary element of recognition. First, I motivate the need for conceptualizing a basic form of trust by looking at cases of moral injury and our inherent vulnerability. Such injuries involve the betrayal of an expectation we have in others to recognize us as persons with moral status. Second, I dig deeper into this basic human need of recognition that is thwarted in moral injuries. I argue that fulfilling this basic need requires a particular kind of trust that others will not morally injure us. Third, I give shape to recognition trust by describing its core features, showing why it is a candidate for basic trust. Finally, I defend my concept of recognition trust against a pair of objections.
In the scope of this paper, we engage with the orientational discipline Integrative Bioethics, supplemented with pluriperspectivity’s (Čović 2018), inter- and trans-disciplinarity methodological postulates, to provide a unique platform for the interdisciplinary integration between perspectives (Jurić 2018) of philosophy (phenomenology) and (bio)ethics. We place particular emphasis on their mutual hermeneutical potentiality, with a high degree of benefits and improvements in the context of understanding life as the first step for its protection, synthetically bridging bios-psyche-episteme. To strengthen our arguments and aims, we will turn to the integrative bioethics of psyche as a fruitful research field to prove our thesis in which Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Thomas Fuchs, among others, will be teleologically analogized within the scope of the discipline.
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