The term ‘musicalization’ comes from Aldous Huxley’s novel Point Counter Point where it denotes the use of music-derived models in fiction. The oeuvre of Russian writer Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) ...provides telling examples of such an approach to constructing both prose and poetry, as in his works, the conventional features of art prose and art poetry are, as a rule, considerably reduced. Kharms’s pieces, typically, consist of discrete ‘incidents’, which can be compared to musical motifs or themes; their organization into finished works is often based upon principles that have their recognizable counterparts in art music of different epochs. Some of Kharms’s texts quoted and commented on in the article show affinities with compositional ideas by major twentieth-century composers such as Alban Berg, Witold Lutosławski, Morton Feldman, Gérard Grisey, and Sofia Gubaydulina.
A large body of research in the field of psychology currently points to a variety of therapeutic outcomes derived from psychedelically occasioned mystical experience. Moreover, additional research ...suggests that such benefits to mental and emotional well-being may depend directly upon the subjective mystical experience itself, rather than upon the substances that triggered it; for instance, research at Johns Hopkins indicates that higher scores on the MEQ30 or MEQ43 might be key predictors of larger therapeutic outcomes. However, the ‘elephant in the room’ often overlooked in psychological studies is this: What exactly is it about the content of the subjective experience that triggers such significant outcomes or, of deep interest philosophically speaking, what might the mystical experience be an experience of? Could it be that such experiences have a viable ontological referent instead of their being wholly subjective and if so, how might Aldous Huxley’s theory in this regard be weighed in light of current data? The essay includes close discussion of the debate regarding the nature of mystical experiences between Robin Carhart-Harris’ REBUS model (the experiences are wholly subjective, with no ontological referent) vs. Edward Kelly’s ROSTA model (contending an ontological referent need not contradict the science). The essay’s thesis is that Huxley’s viewpoint includes plausible and perhaps valuable insights that may help explain why and how that encounter has such profound therapeutic value.
John Raymond Smythies McGeoch, Paul D; Ramachandran, VS
BMJ (Online),
04/2019, Letnik:
365
Journal Article
Recenzirano
...a direct line can be drawn from those salad days to the counterculture, drug revolution, and psychonauts of the 1960s, and then on to the decades of psychedelic suppression during the anti-hippie ...movement. John spent more than a decade at the University of Edinburgh’s psychiatry department, first as a senior lecturer and then reader. John eventually “retired” from clinical practice to become a project scientist at the centre for brain and cognition, at the University of California, San Diego. Psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and psychedelic pioneer (b 1922; q Cambridge 1945; MSc, MD, FRCP Lond), died from heart failure on 28 January 2019
Aldous Huxley saw science--and its claims to be the catalyst for human progress--as a means to concentrate political power in the hands of a ruling minority. Corruption, despotism, and spiritual ...degradation were the logical consequences of a science-based culture, or so Huxley argued. In his 1947 book, Science, Liberty, and Peace, Huxley took aim at the post-war triumph of science.
In Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and the Human , Maren Tova Linett posits literary fiction as uniquely valuable terrain for bioethical inquiry. By depicting phenomena like animality, ...disability, and aging in richly imagined worlds, she argues, literary narratives can promote more nuanced engagement with bioethical questions than do the sparse and decontextualized thought experiments commonly employed in philosophical bioethics. Linett reads several novels written across the long twentieth century as literary-philosophical laboratories for testing bioethical claims about the value of different kinds of lives, demonstrating the importance of literary ways of knowing for bioethics. In doing so, she also makes a compelling case for allying animal studies and disability studies, fields that have historically found themselves at odds but that together have much to say about how we can achieve justice for sentient lives of all kinds.
The Minóy Machine Nechvatal, Joseph
Arts (Basel),
06/2022, Letnik:
11, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The author provides a first-hand account, as a founding editor of Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine and contributing writer with Punctum Press, of his discovery of the early noise music of Minóy ...(pseudonym of the sound artist Stanley Keith Bowsza), and its significance within the history of Machine Art.
The conflict between humans and creatures considered non-humans is a major part of a particular trend in twenty-first-century dystopian novels written by women published in English. In these novels, ...storytelling is used to push on the boundaries of what being human means and therefore the ways humans live. The future in these dystopian scenarios is filled with spaces for resistance, community values and proposals for new ways of living. But to carve out these new worlds, a discussion on what is human and what is not precedes to show that any new form society may take needs to challenge the assumptions of our present day world. In the selected novels, that include Ursula Le Guin’s The Telling, Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods, and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam, when those initially considered non-humans tell stories, they are perceived as humans. However, instead of integrating the previous human culture and reproducing its practices, these new humans propose other forms of humanity with other social arrangements, beliefs, gender configurations, and culture. They point to how humanity is a plural and open concept, not a restrictive ideal, and on the ways we can envision possible futures once a more plural meaning of the word human prevails. Throughout the article I discuss briefly the traditional humanist view on humanity, how it appears on dystopian fiction and how it is challenged, the many ways these ideas are present in the corpus selected and how they are explored and blurred. Finally, I divide the selected novels into three groups according to how the meaning of storytelling in the text challenges the notion of human
This article examines the basic and dialogical models of neurotheology and suggests a third model based on the work of Aldous Huxley. In other words, this proposal is not limited to understanding ...this discipline as a mere pursuit of neural correlates or as a dialogue between neuroscience and theology. Instead, it is the search for an integrative understanding of religious experiences in which the study of neuronal correlates is only one of the multilevels to be integrated within the framework of a plural and conveniently articulated explanation of such phenomena. This model, which we call integrative neurotheology, hopes to achieve knowledge of religious experiences that includes a comprehensive range of disciplines. In order to update and give argumentative consistency to this model, we will use philosopher Sandra D. Mitchell’s theory of integrative pluralism, which is a more epistemologically refined expression of Huxley’s intuitions. We conclude that a comprehensive model is feasible although we are aware that this article cannot give answers to all the difficulties that this model possesses. Nevertheless, we expect to open up a new pathway in the studies of religious experience.
This article studies the reception of the Bhagavad Gita within circles of Perennial Philosophy scholars and examines how the Gita is interpreted to the extent that it influenced their thoughts. ...Within the Hindu tradition, the Gita is often read from a dualist and/or non-dualist perspective in the context of observing religious teachings and practices. In the hands of Perennial Philosophy scholars, the Gita is read from a different angle. Through a critical examination of the original works of the Perennialists, this article shows that the majority of the Perennial traditionalists read the Gita from a dualist background but that, eventually, they were convinced that the Gita’s paradigm is essentially non-dualist. In turn, this non-dualist paradigm of the Gita influences and transforms their ontological thought, from the dualist to the non-dualist view of the reality. Meanwhile, the non-traditionalist group of Perennial Philosophy scholars are not interested in this ontological discussion. They are more concerned with the question of how the Gita provides certain ways of attaining human liberation and salvation. Interestingly, both traditionalist and non-traditionalist camps are influenced by the Gita, at the same time, inserting an external understanding and interpretation into the Gita.
Potential Controversies Pence, David Evan
Philosophy of science,
12/2017, Letnik:
84, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The import of Hodgkin and Huxley’s classic model of the action potential has been hotly debated in recent years, with particular controversy surrounding claims by prominent proponents of mechanistic ...explanation. For these authors, the Hodgkin-Huxley model is an excellent predictive tool but ultimately lacks causal/explanatory import. What is more, they claim that this is how Hodgkin and Huxley themselves saw the model. I argue that these claims rest on a problematic reading of the work. Hodgkin and Huxley’s model is both causal and, in an important sense, explanatory.
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