Australia's Forgotten Frontier

Australia's Forgotten Frontier

Author: Chris Viner-Smith

Publisher: chris viner-smith

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 064647541X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The author describes his life as a Patrol Officer (in the 1960s) in primitive areas of Papua New Guinea. Some of the duties included: supervising the building of roads, bridges, houses, airstrips, wharves and hospitals.


The Mirror and the Mind

The Mirror and the Mind

Author: Katja Guenther

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-11-26

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 069123776X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How the classic mirror test served as a portal for scientists to explore questions of self-awareness Since the late eighteenth century, scientists have placed subjects—humans, infants, animals, and robots—in front of mirrors in order to look for signs of self-recognition. Mirrors served as the possible means for answering the question: What makes us human? In The Mirror and the Mind, Katja Guenther traces the history of the mirror self-recognition test, exploring how researchers from a range of disciplines—psychoanalysis, psychiatry, developmental and animal psychology, cybernetics, anthropology, and neuroscience—came to read the peculiar behaviors elicited by mirrors. Investigating the ways mirrors could lead to both identification and misidentification, Guenther looks at how such experiments ultimately failed to determine human specificity. The mirror test was thrust into the limelight when Charles Darwin challenged the idea that language sets humans apart. Thereafter the mirror, previously a recurrent if marginal scientific tool, became dominant in attempts to demarcate humans from other animals. But because researchers could not rely on language to determine what their nonspeaking subjects were experiencing, they had to come up with significant innovations, including notation strategies, testing protocols, and the linking of scientific theories across disciplines. From the robotic tortoises of Grey Walter and the mark test of Beulah Amsterdam and Gordon Gallup, to anorexia research and mirror neurons, the mirror test offers a window into the emergence of such fields as biology, psychology, psychiatry, animal studies, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The Mirror and the Mind offers an intriguing history of experiments in self-awareness and the advancements of the human sciences across more than a century.


Cringeworthy

Cringeworthy

Author: Melissa Dahl

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0735211639

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examines the ways that embracing socially awkward situations, even when they lead to embarrassment and self-conciousness, also provide the opportunity to test oneself and to recognize how people are connected to each other.


The Created Self

The Created Self

Author: Robert John Weber

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9780393321210

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Created Self takes readers to as-yet-unexplored regions in the modern psyche's preoccupation with self-invention.


The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour

The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour

Author: Alastair Clarke

Publisher: Pyrrhic House

Published: 2008-06-13

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 0955936500

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This slim volume was the first presentation of Clarke’s theory. A limited number of paperbacks are still available. Published in June 2008, An Oultine was produced to offer people who study and work in related fields an overview of the fundamentals of Pattern Recognition Theory and its implications for understanding the role of humour in human cognitive development. Its publication generated worldwide media coverage and discussion.


Exchanging the Past

Exchanging the Past

Author: Bruce M. Knauft

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2002-08

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780226446349

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Twenty years ago, the Gebusi of the lowland Papua New Guinea rainforest had one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Bruce M. Knauft found then that the killings stemmed from violent scapegoating of suspected sorcerers. But by the time he returned in 1998, homicide rates had plummeted, and Gebusi had largely disavowed vengeance against sorcerers in favor of modern schools, discos, markets, and Christianity. In this book, Knauft explores the Gebusi's encounter with modern institutions and highlights what their experience tells us more generally about the interaction between local peoples and global forces. As desire for material goods grew among Gebusi, Knauft shows that they became more accepting of and subordinated by Christian churches, community schools,and government officials in their attempt to benefit from them—a process Knauft terms "recessive agency." But the Gebusi also respond actively to modernity, creating new forms of feasting, performance, and music that meld traditional practices with Western ones, all of which Knauft documents in this fascinating study.


An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing

Author: Maria Danae Koukouti

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-09-03

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1350135178

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Looking at one's face in the mirror and finding one's self in the mirror are not the same. The former capacity is something we share with other animals; the latter is a skill: something we have to learn. What does it mean and what does it take to find oneself the mirror? This book provides a comparative anthropological enquiry into the unity and diversity of mirror gazing. The reader is encouraged to reflect upon and experiment with different mirror gazes through a range of case studies. Koukouti and Malafouris weave together anthropology with philosophy and draw on examples from literature and experiments from psychopathology in a way that has never been attempted before. The master metaphor is that of the mirror as trap. Mirror gazing is viewed on a par with hunting. Mirroring signifies the hunt for self-knowledge. In a time obsessed with the digital self-image, Koukouti and Malafouris reflect on the structures of consciousness that underpin the different ways of looking at and through the mirror. Combining metaphor, comparison and estrangement, they gesture towards a therapeutic alliance between body and mirroring. This allows us to look in the mirror, and think of our shared humanity differently.


The Structure and Development of Self-consciousness

The Structure and Development of Self-consciousness

Author: Dan Zahavi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9789027251954

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Self-consciousness is a topic of considerable importance to a variety of empirical and theoretical disciplines such as developmental and social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy. This volume presents essays on self-consciousness by prominent psychologists, cognitive neurologists, and philosophers. Some of the topics included are the infants' sense of self and others, theory of mind, phenomenology of embodiment, neural mechanisms of action attribution, and hermeneutics of the self. A number of these essays argue in turn that empirical findings in developmental psychology, phenomenological analyses of embodiment, or studies of pathological self-experiences point to the existence of a type of self-consciousness that does not require any explicit I —thought or self-observation, but is more adequately described as a pre-reflective, embodied form of self-familiarity. The different contributions in the volume amply demonstrate that self-consciousness is a complex multifaceted phenomenon that calls for an integration of different complementary interdisciplinary perspectives. (Series B)


The Mirror of the World

The Mirror of the World

Author: Christopher Peacocke

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-02-27

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0191022683

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Christopher Peacocke presents a philosophical theory of subjects of consciousness, together with a theory of the nature of first person representation of such a subject of consciousness. He develops a new treatment of subjects, distinct from previous theories, under which subjects were regarded either as constructs from mental events, or fundamentally embodied, or Cartesian egos. In contrast, his theory of the first person integrates with the positive treatment of subjectsDLand it contributes to the explanation of various distinctive first person phenomena in the theory of thought and knowledge. These are issues on which contributions have been made by some of the greatest philosophers, and Peacocke brings his points to bear on the contributions to these issues made by Hume, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Strawson. He also relates his position to the recent literature in the philosophy of mind, and then goes on to distinguish and characterize three varieties of self-consciousness. Perspectival self-consciousness involves the subject's capacity to appreciate that she is of the same kind as things given in a third personal way, and attributes the subject to a certain kind of objective thought about herself. Reflective self-consciousness involves awareness of the subject's own mental states, reached in a distinctive way. Interpersonal self-consciousness is awareness that one features, as a subject, in some other person's mental states. These varieties, and the relations and the forms of co-operation between them, are important in explaining features of our knowledge, our social relations, and our emotional lives. The theses of The Mirror of the World are of importance not only for philosophy, but also for psychology, the arts, and anywhere else that the self and self-representation loom large. The Context and Content series is a forum for outstanding original research at the intersection of philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. The general editor is Fran?ois Recanati (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris).