The Ontological Problem, digital original edition
The Ontological Problem, digital original edition

Author: Paul M. Churchland

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 026231861X

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This selection from a recently updated edition of a classic work by Paul Churchland considers such questions as the nature of mental states and processes, in what medium they take place, how they are related to the physical world, whether consciousness survives the disintegration of the physical body, and if a purely physical system such as a computer could enjoy real conscious experience. It proceeds by investigating which of the available theories of mind proves to be the most reasonable theory on the evidence and has the greatest explanatory power, predictive power, coherence, and simplicity.

Science for Monks: Buddhism and Science, digital original edition
Science for Monks: Buddhism and Science, digital original edition

Author: Owen Flanagan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 55

ISBN-13: 0262318873

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How is meaning possible in a material world? Owen Flanagan proposes a naturalistic (rather than supernaturalistic) way to live meaningfully, to live a life that really matters, to flourish, to achieve eudaimonia—to be a “happy spirit.” In this BIT, Flanagan draws on insights from neuroscience and on the transformative mindfulness and self-cultivation practices in Buddhism.

The Subject, This Inwardly Circumcised Jew, digital original edition
The Subject, This Inwardly Circumcised Jew, digital original edition

Author: Slavoj Zizek

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 93

ISBN-13: 0262318776

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Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Slavoj Žižek is interested in the “parallax gap” separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an “impossible short circuit” of levels that can never meet. In this BIT, Žižek draws on Lacan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kant, Hegel, and Marx to explore the philosophical implications of parallax.

On the Existence of Digital Objects
On the Existence of Digital Objects

Author: Yuk Hui

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2016-02-29

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1452949921

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Digital objects, in their simplest form, are data. They are also a new kind of industrial object that pervades every aspect of our life today—as online videos, images, text files, e-mails, blog posts, Facebook events.Yet, despite their ubiquity, the nature of digital objects remains unclear. On the Existence of Digital Objects conducts a philosophical examination of digital objects and their organizing schema by creating a dialogue between Martin Heidegger and Gilbert Simondon, which Yuk Hui contextualizes within the history of computing. How can digital objects be understood according to individualization and individuation? Hui pursues this question through the history of ontology and the study of markup languages and Web ontologies; he investigates the existential structure of digital objects within their systems and milieux. With this relational approach toward digital objects and technical systems, the book addresses alienation, described by Simondon as the consequence of mistakenly viewing technics in opposition to culture. Interdisciplinary in philosophical and technical insights, with close readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Simondon as well as the history of computing and the Web, Hui’s work develops an original, productive way of thinking about the data and metadata that increasingly define our world.

Are Dreams Disembodied Experiences?, digital original edition
Are Dreams Disembodied Experiences?, digital original edition

Author: Jennifer M. Windt

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-08-03

Total Pages: 93

ISBN-13: 026233030X

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Dreams, conceived as conscious experience or phenomenal states during sleep, offer an important contrast condition for theories of consciousness and the self. In this BIT, Jennifer Windt considers how the phenomenology of (dis)embodied selfhood in dreams relates to the sleeping, physical body and the brain.

Anywhere or Not at All
Anywhere or Not at All

Author: Peter Osborne

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1781680949

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A new reading of the philosophy of contemporary art by the author of The Politics of Time Contemporary art is the object of inflated and widely divergent claims. But what kind of discourse can open it up effectively to critical analysis? Anywhere or Not at All is a major philosophical intervention in art theory that challenges the terms of established positions through a new approach at once philosophical, historical, social and art-critical. Developing the position that “contemporary art is postconceptual art,” the book progresses through a dual series of conceptual constructions and interpretations of particular works to assess the art from a number of perspectives: contemporaneity and its global context; art against aesthetic; the Romantic pre-history of conceptual art; the multiplicity of modernisms; transcategoriality; conceptual abstraction; photographic ontology; digitalization; and the institutional and existential complexities of art-space and art-time. Anywhere or Not at All maps out the conceptual space for an art that is both critical and contemporary in the era of global capitalism. Winner of the 2014 Annual Book Prize of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (USA)

Digitalization of Society and Socio-political Issues 2
Digitalization of Society and Socio-political Issues 2

Author: Éric George

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-01-13

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1119694825

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Digitalization is a long socio-historic process in which all areas of societys activities are reconfigured. In the first volume of Digitalization of Society and Socio-political Issues, there is an examination of the transformations linked to the development of digital platforms and social media which affect cultural and communicational industries. The book also analyzes the formation of Big Data, their algorithmic processing and the societal changes which result from them (social monitoring and control in particular). Through diverse critical reflections, it equally presents different ways that digital participates in relations of power and domination, and contributes to eventual emancipatory practices. Following on, the second volume examines the transformations that are linked to digital practices that affect the production, circulation and consumption of information, as well as new forms that are taken by social mobilizations. It treats several important issues in the digital era that are more likely to become the subject of public debates, among which one can include the renewed relationship between research and digital. Through diverse critical reflections, it equally presents different ways that digital participates in relations of power and domination, and contributes to eventual emancipatory practices.

Governing Expression#Social Big Data and Neoliberalism, digital original edition
Governing Expression#Social Big Data and Neoliberalism, digital original edition

Author: Ronald E. Day

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13: 0262327988

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In the modern age, indexes have gone from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. In this BIT, Ronald Day examines the use of social “big data” as a technique of neoliberal governance that employs indexing and analytics for purposes of surveillance.

Being No-Self and Being Nice, digital original edition
Being No-Self and Being Nice, digital original edition

Author: Owen Flanagan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 0262318881

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Can there be a Buddhism without karma, nirvana, and reincarnation that is compatible with the rest of knowledge—a “naturalized” Buddhism? In this BIT, Flanagan connects Buddhist wisdom to the compassion and lovingkindness that Buddhism endorses—linking Buddhism's metaphysics to its ethics.

The Aesthetic Dimension of Visual Culture
The Aesthetic Dimension of Visual Culture

Author: Jakub Stejskal

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2010-08-11

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1443824321

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How can aesthetic enquiry contribute to the study of visual culture? There seems to be little doubt that aesthetic theory ought to be of interest to the study of visual culture. For one thing, aesthetic vocabulary has far from vanished from contemporary debates on the nature of our visual experiences and its various shapes, a fact especially pertinent where dissatisfaction with vulgar value relativism prevails. Besides, the very question—ubiquitous in the debates on visual culture—of what is natural and what is acquired in our visual experiences has been a topic in aesthetics at least since the Enlightenment. And last but not least, despite attempts to study visual culture without employing the concept of art, there is no prospect of this central subject of aesthetic theory ebbing away from visual studies. The essays compiled in this volume show a variety of points of intersection and involvement between aesthetics and visual studies; some consider the future of visual art, some the conditions and characteristics of contemporary visual aesthetic experience, while others take on the difficult question of the relation between visual representation and reality. What unites them is their authors’ willingness to think about contemporary visual culture in the conceptual frame of aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, art history, and cultural studies.