Saarikoski, Annika Managing the embodied mind: A study on the cognition and recognition of agentic valuation and restraint Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2019, 238 p. Cognitive Science, Master’s Thesis Supervisor: Saariluoma, Pertti This interdisciplinary conceptual study will firstly provide a review on the philosophically distinct characteristics of cognitive science and phenomenology when researching the mind, consciousness and experience. The methodological purpose of this inquiry is to clarify the human scientific and philosophical research cultural confusion, and to identify the constructive connections for studying the problems of communal significance. Phenomenological orientation is then applied to emphasize human consciousness as a relationship to the world. A core interest is on the natural-cultural intersection of tensions that appear at the level of lived experience. The research problem relates to contemporary discussions on the self-managerial forms of informal organizing. The problem of managing the embodied mind is seen in light of critical theories that connect the concept of self-management to the narrow normativity of economic rationalization. This model of control is also known as the emotional economy, which can be understood as a system of governance that utilizes human emotionality. It is operationalized on the assumption that people are weak and irrational evaluators, who can be manipulated to intensify their subpersonal impulses and behaviours. I will call into question the taken for granted role of the emotional economy as a strategic mechanism of directing real life situations of interaction. The goal is to open the possibilities for a more compassionate social imagination and critical sensemaking. I assume that new perspectives enable us to better understand the elementary experiential level of self-regulation in relation to the conception and expression of emotional life. I re-orient the concept of self-management with a classical metaphor of emotion regulation that is figuratively assimilated with the imagery of handling horses. I use the horse-metaphor as a conceptual sensitizer for the purpose of recognizing the embodied, experiential, and lifeworld grounds of cognition. I thus accentuate the personalistic agentic weight of valuation, restraint and empathic apperception, instead of the instrumental model of emotional control that circumscribes cognitive achievement to functional stupidity.

Managing the embodied mind : a study on the cognition and recognition of agentic valuation and restraint

Unlike the first generation of critical theorists, contemporary critical theory has largely ignored technology. This is to the detriment of a critical theory of society – technology is now a centra...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/07255136211002055

Critical theory and the question of technology: The Frankfurt School revisited:

http://summit.sfu.ca/system/files/iritems1/19735/etd20533.pdf

Symbolic collisions: Short-circuits in the libidinal economy

Research into intimacy must grapple with its ambiguity while attempting to place it within a contemporary technological and political context. I argue for a metaphysics of intimacy that provides a ...

Intimacy, Cosmopolitanism, and Digital Media: A Research Manifesto:

Health represents a context where it is possible to observe the relationship between individuals and society, namely which spaces of autonomy are left for the individuals and which social forces are exercised on them. If Critical Theory points out the mechanisms of a neoliberal matrix that makes individuals “subjugate subjects”, Social System Theory allows to investigate how they are “included” in various spheres of society. Integrating these theories, we investigate mechanisms of subjectification on health. Moreover, through the analysis of the recent Italian law on advance directives and living will, we question if the claims of self-determination expressed by individuals could represent a form of “resistance” against neoliberal policies. Through a theoretical reflection and an analysis of the background and the juridical consequences of the law n. 219/2017, we conclude that the individual autonomy could be exercised together with responsibility towards others, balancing individual needs and claims with social solidarity. La salud representa un contexto en el cual se puede observar la relacion entre los individuos y la sociedad. Si la Teoria Critica apunta a los mecanismos de una matriz neoliberal que convierte a los individuos en “sujetos subyugados”, la Teoria de Sistemas Sociales permite investigar como estos son “incluidos” en diversas esferas de la sociedad. Al integrar esas teorias, investigamos los mecanismos de subjetivizacion en el area de la salud. Ademas, a traves del analisis de una ley italiana reciente, nos preguntamos si las proclamas de autodeterminacion expresadas por los individuos podrian representar una forma de “resistencia” contra las politicas neoliberales. A traves de la reflexion teorica y el analisis del contexto y de las consecuencias juridicas de la Ley 219/2017, concluimos que la autonomia personal se podria ejercitar junto con la responsabilidad hacia el projimo, equilibrando las necesidades y las reivindicaciones personales con la solidaridad social. Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1049

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Forms of subjectification: Rights and freedom as neoliberal politics in healthcare system. The Italian law on Living Will

An argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today's society. For Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self. In today's increasingly narcissistic society, we have come to look for love and desire within the "inferno of the same." Han offers a survey of the threats to Eros, drawing on a wide range of sources-Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde,Fifty Shades of Grey, Michel Foucault (providing a scathing critique of Foucault's valorization of power), Martin Buber, Hegel, Baudrillard, Flaubert, Barthes, Plato, and others. Han considers the "pornographication" of society, and shows how pornography profanes eros; addresses capitalism's leveling of essential differences; and discusses the politics of eros in today's "burnout society." To be dead to love, Han argues, is to be dead to thought itself. Concise in its expression but unsparing in its insight, The Agony of Eros is an important and provocative entry in Han's ongoing analysis of contemporary society. This remarkable essay, an intellectual experience of the first order, affords one of the best ways to gain full awareness of and join in one of the most pressing struggles of the day: the defense, that is to say-as Rimbaud desired it-the "reinvention" of love. -from the foreword by Alain Badiou

Erik Butler

Papers

The Agony of Eros