Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi have recently argued against a simulationist interpretation of neural resonance. Recognizing intentions and emotions in the facial expressions and gestures of others may be subserved by e.g. mirror neuron activity, but this does not mean that we first experience an intention or emotion and then project it onto the other. Mirror neurons subserve social cognition, according to Gallagher and Zahavi, by being integral parts of processes of enactive social perception. I argue that the notion (...) of enactive social perception does not yet explain why social perception is subserved by mirroring. I also argue that this problem cannot be avoided by means of an appeal to multiple realization. Instead, I propose a holistic model of neural resonance-based social cognition that does give an explanatory role to mirroring by allowing for a partial experiential overlap between experiencing and recognizing emotions and intentions. This account avoids the simulationist step-wise conception of social cognition and recognizes the qualitative difference between first- and third-person emotion and intention attribution. It does capture too much of the simulationist intuitions, however, to warrant the label ‘social perception’. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I (...) develop the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

Critical studies in higher education often embrace the ideas of the slowness movement to address time pressure. However, this desirable horizon presents some limitations. On the one hand, by emphasizing solutions at the individual level, boosting slowness may promote tactics incapable of producing changes to the underlying structural dynamics of time pressure. On the other hand, approaches based on slowness may also inadvertently foster a form of ethical paternalism within the context of ethical pluralism by prescribing substantive models of practice (...) ultimately based on ‘do this quickly or do it slowly.’ This theoretical research moves away from the temporal paradigm to that of the way of relating. Building upon the ethical concept of resonance, the approach focuses on a formal critique of the current socioeconomic and ethical dynamics of social acceleration, growth, and innovation that can contribute to projecting non-alienated relationships in higher education. (shrink)

Les difficultés identitaires à l’adolescence sont particulières pour les enfants adoptés car en résonance avec diverses violences traumatiques en instance dans la famille. À partir d’un exemple d’une thérapie familiale, nous discutons de ces traumatismes qui se cumulent et dérégulent les rapports de transmission en entravant les processus de subjectivation des membres de la famille. Aussi, nous devons pouvoir penser le travail psychothérapeutique sous une forme de co-construction pour contenir, puis transformer ces souffrances traumatiques qui hantent le groupe familial.

This paper has been explicitly composed for oral presentation: written by ear to be (read as) heard. It stages an experiment/experience ( expérience ) with sound—and in the written text with the “sight” of sound—in order to solicit and engage the becoming sens (e) of sound in the space between resonance and response-ability it seeks to explicate and explore. The presentation begins with the sound of the first few bars of a popular song (whose identity I am withholding in (...) this submission in order to preserve the integrity of the expérience upon which its success depends), which is eventually heard in its entirety and which constitutes the point of departure, reference, and return—of resonance and response-ability—for the composition as a whole. (shrink)

Resonance is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the world of physics and biology, emerging from energy exchanges between interrelated but distinct systems. Resonance experiences, by contrast, are widespread in the human and animal world but not ubiquitous. This essay discusses theological and ethical aspects of resonance theory, particularly pertaining to everyday human experiences of resonance in relation to the more-than-human world. Consistently, resonance experiences intersect the human and the non-human world, and the phenomenon of resonance (...) may thus serve as a bridging concept between science and theology. I argue that while the ubiquitous feature of physical resonance is particularly helpful for reformulating a contemporary creation theology, human resonance experiences are a source for religious experience, hence highly informative for theology and ethics. Resonance theory thus challenges the widespread view that nature is primarily mute, indifferent, or even hostile to human concerns. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the recent work on mirror neurons illuminates the character of our capacities for a politics of resonant receptivity in ways that both help us to comprehend the damages of our contemporary order and suggest indispensable alternative ethical-strategic registers and possible directions for organising a powerful movement towards radical democracy. In doing so, neuroscience simultaneously contributes to our understanding of the possibility and importance of a more durable radically democratic habitus. While the trope, ‘radically democratic (...) habitus’, may seem oxymoronic in light of Bourdieu’s extensive rendering of ‘habitus’, I suggest that research on mirror neurons discloses ways in which iterated practices and dispositional structures are crucial for democratic freedom.Keywords: radical democracy; mirror neurons; receptivity; political resonance; habitus; resonance machine; mimesis; affect. (shrink)

The article employs music to describe the dynamics of Central European identity at the turn of the 20th century. Conceptually, the analysis is based on the notion of cultural resonance and the distinction between political territories, which isolate identity, and cultural landscapes which let it escape. This theoretical understanding is derived from the acoustic philosophy and musical practice of two Central European composers, Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók. Exemplified here is artistic ‘extra-territorial’ identity, which is indeed how Theodor Adorno (...) at one point referred to the ‘peripheral’ sound coming from the region. This process of identity construction amplifies paradoxical middle spaces, which Jean Luc Nancy describes evocatively as a cultural mêlée. The vitality of cultural resonance is fuelled by this primary contact with mundane reality and the ‘navigational hesitation’ underpinning identity and its many trajectories. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from scholarship on contentious action frames, this article examines the framing of demands for social justice for migrant farmworkers in Spain, Italy and Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus particularly on how activists in each country aligned their action frames with prevalent public discourses on the essential contribution migrants make to agricultural production, the need to guarantee “health for all,” and “increased vulnerability” of migrants’ lives during the global health crisis. Using these diagnostic frames, activists in (...) the three countries called for secure legal status for all migrants. Drawing on the literature on contentious action frames, we then analyze if action frames advanced by activists during the COVID-19 pandemic “resonated” with the understanding of these issues by policymakers. We challenge an approach to understanding resonance in binary terms as either present or absent. Instead, we introduce the notion of “ambivalent resonance” to draw attention to the fact that some frames are accepted only partially or only by some policymakers but not the others, as was the case in the three countries under study. We then situate this ambivalent resonance in the context of immigration priorities and recent trends in immigration policy development in these three countries and suggest that activists can build on ambivalences to advance migrant rights to status. (shrink)

This essay defines ethical resonance through an ethnographic interlude that paves the way for a broader theorization of the concept. It begins by contextually recounting the story of an individual who had stayed at Sevagram, Mahatma Gandhi’s last ashram in 1944, shadowing Gandhi for some 20 days. The young man’s brief meeting with Gandhi in which Gandhi uttered only one sentence transformed him for his lifetime. I reflect on the experience and its narrative qualities to explore the broader question (...) of why one is moved, and moved enough to be altered. I propose that the theorization of resonance in modern physics, in phenomenology, and in 11th‐century Sanskrit poetics is productive for understanding the subjective and the trans‐subjective elements that underlie ethical persuasion. I argue that the idea of resonance helps bridge the affective and the aesthetic in moral self‐formation that occurs in everyday life. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Body Awareness to Recognize Feelings: The Exploration of a Musical Emotional Experience” by Alejandra Vásquez-Rosati. Upshot: The enactment view echoes the deeper biology and chemistry of emotion. Music resonates innately because emotional evaluation is the evolutionary grandfather of all senses.

In this contribution, we use the formalism of Magnetic Resonance to present an argument for the reality of the solution of the Schrodinger Equation appropriate for the existence of Bloch Equation magnetization states. We take as our definition of Reality that the observable used can be measured in the laboratory such as the Cartesian x Component of Magnetization. We relate this real existing observable to the Density Matrix corresponding to the system and then argue the Density Matrix must have (...) Physical Reality if the Magnetization has Physical Reality. Since the Density Matrix for a pure state is simply related to the wave function, we then argue that the corresponding wavefunction must also be Physically Real. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Resonance and Response:Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, and Ecological EthicsMatthew Williams-WyantIntroductionThe contributions of Dewey and Merleau-Ponty exhibit a kinship rarely seen in philosophy. This uncanny similarity between two thinkers who shared no known direct contact and were separated by an ocean becomes less mysterious considering their shared situation and approach grounded in lived experience. For Dewey, the denotative-empirical method is a means to study things "on their own account" (Experience and (...) Nature, LW 1:14). Through selective emphasis, the inquirer is open within primary experience to the expressive movement of the object of inquiry. Merleau-Ponty's notion of interrogation seeks a similar aim in motivating Being to creatively express itself. In the act of expression, the reverberations of nature emerge, as Dewey notes, in "a perfect integration" of substance and form (Art as Experience, LW 10:114). The resonances of nature qua reverberations in turn resonate—evoke qualitative, non-cognitive meanings—between the inquirer and the selected object of inquiry establishing a resonance between our conceptions of the concrete world. The similarity between Dewey and Merleau-Ponty, then, is due to their attunement to this resonance.Perspective—the situated, lived context through which each person is attuned—prevents a one-for-one mapping of Dewey's thought onto Merleau-Ponty and vice versa.1 However, the resonance between these two thinkers establishes a complementary approach to ethics. In this paper, I argue that the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and the philosophy of Dewey, when read together, provide a clear path from an aesthetic point of departure to a genuinely ecological ethics. The aesthetic foundation of Dewey's denotative-empirical method benefits from Merleau-Ponty's notion of interrogation grounded on his discussion of the body. In turn, Dewey's ethical contributions give voice [End Page 40] to the implicit ethics present but never explicitly formulated by Merleau-Ponty. The result is an ethical relation of responsiveness that accounts for the plurality of values and the porous, ever-changing boundaries between nature and human activity.1. The "Problem" of ExperienceA genuinely ecological ethics, one founded on the intertwined relation between human activity and nature, requires an approach that avoids the epistemological traps common to many philosophical positions. In framing interrogation as a necessary revision to traditional philosophical approaches, Merleau-Ponty indirectly addresses this concern.For Merleau-Ponty, interrogation is a response to a specific situation raised through the inadequacies of previous modes of philosophical inquiry; namely, reflection, dialectic, and intuition. Each of these perspectives employs a view from above—a "pensée de survol"—resulting in an insurmountable break between our knowledge of the world and the world itself. In attempting to overcome our everyday naïveté through philosophical understanding, the philosophies of reflection "replaces the 'world' with the 'Being-thought'" (Visible and the Invisible 43). In doing so, it remains naïve to the presuppositions that accompany any mode of philosophy that analyzes Being as if the observer were not already caught up in the movement of being. Dialectical philosophy has often been encumbered by formulations that mistake the fluidity of the dialectic itself for a rigid set of stages marked by complete and exhaustive concepts such as Fichte's thesis-antithesis-synthesis or Sartre's Being and Nothingness (Visible and the Invisible 94). According to Merleau-Ponty, it forgets, or ignores, the openness of meaning as it intertwines with others and transcends its previous moment. Finally, philosophical inquiries grounded in intuition run the risk of bifurcating, and ultimately reifying, fact and essence rather than seeing these two aspects as abstract moments, or dependent parts, of concrete existence (Visible and the Invisible 113).Dewey recognizes a similar problem when philosophers emphasize the need for a definition of experience. If our approach to philosophical inquiry was done correctly, we would not see experience as an epistemological stumbling block, but see it for what it is, our point of access to the world. This is what the denotative-empirical method attempted to show.2 For Dewey, traditional theories on the interaction between human activity and nature "are really elaborations of the same sort of assumptions … assumptions which first make a division where none exists, and... (shrink)

I argue that Moorean theories of value have a difficult time accommodating the resonance requirement, that is, the platitude that we should value what’s valuable, while a sophisticated reflective endorsement theory of value and the resonance requirement are perfectly consistent. To this extent, a sophisticated reflective endorsement theory has a significant advantage over the Moorean approach. The reflective endorsement theory that I endorse emphasizes systematic exposure to possible sources of satisfaction, as well as a similarity principle of practical (...) rationality. (shrink)

East Asian imagery resonates throughout Martin Heidegger's writings. In this exploration of the connections between Daoism and his thought, an international team of scholars consider why the Daodejing and Zhuangzi were texts he returned to repeatedly and the extent Heidegger adhered to Daoism's core doctrines. They discuss how Daoist thought provided him with a new perspective, equipping him with images, concepts, and meanings that enabled him to continue his questioning of the nature of being. Exploring the environment, language, death, temporality, (...) aesthetics, and race from the groundlessness of non-being, oneness, and the Way, they illustrate how these themes reverberate with ontological, spiritual, and epistemological potential. A lesson in the art of Daoist and cross-cultural ways of thinking, this collection marks the first sustained analysis of the influence of classical Daoism on a major 20th-century German philosopher. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod deserve appreciation for their cogent argument that dialogue merits greater scientific consideration. Current models make little contact with behaviors of dialogue, motivating the interactive alignment theory. However, the theory is not truly “mechanistic.” A full account requires both representations and processes bringing those representations into harmony. We suggest that Grossberg 's adaptive resonance theory may naturally conform to the principles of dialogue.

This interdisciplinary exploration discusses the intricate conceptual linkages among Buddhism’s Eighth State of Consciousness, Quantum Holography, and the Jungian Collective Unconscious. Central to this study is examining the Eighth Consciousness in Buddhist thought—a realm that transcends the conventional sensory and mental states to connect with a more universal and profound awareness. Drawing parallels, Quantum Holography posits that every part of the universe retains information about the whole, much like a hologram. This notion seemingly mirrors the Jungian concept of the Collective (...) Unconscious, which postulates a shared reservoir of memories and ideas across humanity. The paper contends that the intricate dance of photons, oscillating between particle and wave states, mediates perception through resonance and hints at a multi-layered consciousness stratum that mirrors the vast, enigmatic quantum reality expanse. The study illuminates the intersections and divergences among these frameworks through meticulous comparative analysis, positing that an integrative understanding of quantum theories and Buddhist wisdom can unravel the human psyche’s profound depths. By weaving Eastern philosophies with Western psychological and quantum theoretical tapestry, the discourse unveils a multifaceted consciousness comprehension, championing integrative approaches as invaluable tools for decoding the mind and universe's enigmatic interplay from a quantum viewpoint. (shrink)

Since most of the functions in cells are mediated by multimeric protein complexes, the determination of protein–protein interactions is an important step in the study of cellular mechanisms. Traditionally, after screening for possible target interactors by means of a yeast two‐hybrid screen, several methods are used to validate the initial result before carrying out functional experiments. Nowadays, non‐invasive fluorescence‐based methods like Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) and Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) are widely used in the study of (...) protein–protein interactions in living cells. In the present review, we address the individual strengths and weaknesses of both RET approaches, providing information on their possible future use in the study of G protein‐coupled receptor oligomerization. BioEssays 30:82–89, 2008. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The body at close range: volume and the unlistenable in Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell -- Sonic subjection: Gaspar Noé's Irreversible and the dystopian limits of the resonant body -- A stranger everywhere: the écho-monde of Tony Gatlif's Exiles -- Feedback, asynchronicity, and sonic sociabilities: Arnaud des Pallière's Adieu -- Listening at the limit: non-human noise in Lars von Trier's Antichrist -- Listening to things: Foley as "alien phenomenology" and Peter Strickland's Berberian sound studio.

One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural and behavioral scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena—typically addressed by neuroscience and experimental psychology, respectively. The framework is based on the concept of resonance originated in ecological psychology and aims to be the foundation for a unified theory for radical embodiment; that (...) is, a unified theory for that dissident part of cognitive science that shares a methodological commitment to dynamic systems theory and remains skeptical about the adequacy of mechanism and representationalism as the guiding ideas in the field. In the course of my presentation, I analyze different issues regarding the requirements and constraints unification poses to radical embodiment. (shrink)

Asif A. Ghazanfar,1,3,* Hjalmar K. Turesson,1,3 statistical pattern recognition [16, 17] and psychophys- Joost X. Maier,1 Ralph van Dinther,2 ics [13, 18–23] have suggested that formants are signif- Roy D. Patterson,2 and Nikos K. Logothetis1 icant contributors to these indexical cues. It is likely, 1Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics then, that detecting formants could have provided 72076 Tuebingen ancestral primates with indexical cues necessary for Germany navigating the complex social interactions that are the 2Centre for the Neural Basis of (...) Hearing essence of primate societies. One important indexical Department of Physiology cue is body size. Formant cues related to body size University of Cambridge could be used by monkeys to determine the sex (in sex- CB2 3EG Cambridge ually dimorphic species), degree of potential threat (e.g., United Kingdom whether a competitor is larger or smaller), and/or age of an individual, as such cues do for human listeners [13, 18, 20, 21]. Summary Formants are the result of acoustic filtering by the supralaryngeal vocal tract—the nasal and oral cavities Vocal-tract resonances (or formants) are acoustic sigabove the vocal folds. During vocal production, pulses natures in the voice and are related to the shape and of air generated by the rapid movement of the vocal length of the vocal tract. Formants play an important folds produce an acoustic signal. The frequency of these role in human communication, helping us not only to pulses—the glottal-pulse rate—determines the fundadistinguish several different speech sounds [1], but mental frequency of the signal, which in turn is perceived also to extract important information related to the as pitch. As the signal passes through the supralaryngphysical characteristics of the speaker, so-called ineal vocal tract, it excites resonances, resulting in the dexical cues. How did formants come to play such an enhancement of particular frequency bands; these are important role in human vocal communication? One the formants.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores a state of movement in the humanities into nonhuman entanglements. A key term, “resonance,” emerges in this movement. Predominating scholarship orients resonance as a flourishing. In this article, accounts of the destructiveness of mechanical resonance signal a telling lacuna in humanities scholarship, one this article works to remove.

This article examines the relationship between two phenomena and their respective concepts circulating in contemporary affect theory, i.e., ‘affective resonance’ and ‘affective atmosphere.’ Identifying the main aspects of the two concepts clarifies how the phenomena differ from each other, as well as how they may relate in a dynamic interplay. In light of a distinction between and a conjunction of the aspects of ‘affective relationality’ and ‘affective spatiality,’ the paper proposes a conceptualization of this dynamic interplay through the concept (...) of ‘affective attunement,’ in which resonance and atmosphere are held to converge. As part of this endeavor, the paper further investigates the diverging philosophical traditions to which the two concepts of affective resonance and affective atmosphere originally belong, respectively Spinozist affect theory and New phenomenology. (shrink)

This paper examines the common notion of “resonant experience”—an experience marked by extraordinarily rich, powerful, or deep meaning—as a manifestation of the relational nature of meaning and value. I propose to define resonance as an enhanced feeling of the relational context in which experience is determined, and I then proceed to show how this concept of resonance can be used to understand the experience of enriched meaning and value in art. This exploration of resonance is inspired by (...) William James’s claim that meaning is based in the direct experience of relation, together with John Dewey’s claim that basic features of experience are intensified in the enjoyment of art. It also draws from the relational framework of ecological psychology, and is intended to contribute to that framework from a philosophical standpoint. (shrink)

This paper presents a blueprint for an ecological cognitive architecture. Ecological psychology, I contend, must be complemented with a story about the role of the CNS in perception, action, and cognition. To arrive at such a story while staying true to the tenets of ecological psychology, it will be necessary to flesh out the central metaphor according to which the animal perceives its environment by ‘resonating’ to information in energy patterns: what is needed is a theory of resonance. I (...) offer here the two main elements of such a theory: a framework and a methodology. (shrink)

Resonance can trigger of a series of quantum events and therefore induce several changes related to consciousness at micro as well as macro level within a living system. Therapeutic effects have been observed in several religious meditative and healing practices, which use resonance in the form of chanting and prayers. A living system may have many resonant frequencies due to their degrees of freedom, where each can vibrate as a harmonic oscillator supporting the progression of vibrations as waves (...) that moves as a ripple within the whole system. A cell as an organism or cells in multicellular organisms act as resonating bodies that trigger of oscillation of oscillatory proteins of the cytoskeletal network. The resulting protein conformational changes generate a conscious moment that is regulated via electron tunneling, delocalization and superposition in space time geometry. Consciousness or sentience are phenomenal characteristics of every cell and even though we don’t know the “why” we surely can predict and hypothesize the “how” of consciousness to be quantum computed, which enables the cell to understand and judge perceptions giving it a prospect to behave as per will. (shrink)

Arnold Berleant’s enlargement of the scope of aesthetics to environments and social relationships opens the way for associations with approaches from other human and social sciences. One possible term of comparison is Hartmut Rosa’s theory of modernity, which applies the concept of resonance to various fields, including nature and art. At the beginning, their aims appear to be different and their alternatives slightly different: engagement stresses the continuity between the embodied self and the world, whereas resonance is primarily (...) based upon a model of communication. Nevertheless, their relational theories converge in several respects: they focus on experience, defend participatory models against objectifying and merely contemplative relationships, and practise social criticism in their search for a meaningful and good life. (shrink)

Our culture and tradition, including our theories and our language, act as subsidiaries by which we attune to resonances between outselves as convivial beings and the world. These resonances afford us our senses of reality and illustrate the impossibility of a correspondence theory of truth. We select between theories and versions by learning to sense the deeper and deeper resonances which they evoke in our communal selves.

Jasper and Poulsen have long argued that moral shocks are critical for recruitment in the nonhuman animal rights movement. Building on this, Decoux argues that the abolitionist faction of the nonhuman animal rights movement fails to recruit members because it does not effectively utilize descriptions of suffering. However, the effectiveness of moral shocks and subsequent emotional reactions has been questioned. This article reviews the literature surrounding the use of moral shocks in social movements. Based on this review, it is suggested (...) that the exploitation of emotional reactions to depictions of suffering can sometimes prove beneficial to recruitment, but successful use is contextually rooted in preexisting frameworks, ideology, and identity. It is concluded that a reliance on images and narratives might be misconstrued in a society dominated by nonhuman animal welfare ideology. (shrink)

What, if anything, changes between Hume's moral theory as presented in the Treatise of Human Nature and then in the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals? This question has received increased attention, especially focused on Hume's presentation of sympathy and humanity, and the connection of those principles to Hume's account of moral sentiments. While there is a strong consensus that Hume is making important stylistic changes to the presentation of his views, scholars are divided on the question of whether there (...) are also substantive changes to the views. This paper sides with those who hold that there are substantive changes, offering new evidence for that position. I argue that Hume revised his Treatise account of sympathy to better accommodate cases of affective difference and incapacity. After presenting these cases, I show that Hume's Treatise account of the sympathy mechanism and its role in the production of moral sentiments is more seriously threatened by the problem of affective difference and incapacity than the corresponding account in the second Enquiry. This gives us persuasive evidence in support of the interpretations that hold that there are substantive changes in the second Enquiry, while also helping to explain Hume's motivation for such changes. (shrink)

We posit a key goal of firms’ corporate social responsibility efforts is to influence reputation through carefully crafted communicative practices. This trend has accelerated with the rise of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, which are essentially public message networks that organizations are leveraging to engage with concerned audiences. Given the large number of messages sent on these sites, only some will be effective and achieve broad public resonance. Building on signaling theory, this paper asks whether and how (...) messages conveying CSR-related topics resonate with the public and, if so, which CSR topics and signal qualities are most effective. We test our hypotheses using data on public reactions to Fortune 500 companies’ CSR-focused Twitter feeds, using the retweeting of firms’ messages as a proxy for public resonance. We find resonance is positively associated with messages that convey CSR topics such as the environment or education, those that make the topic explicit through use of hashtags, and those that tap into existing social movement discussions. (shrink)

The alliance in the United States today between cowboy capitalism and evangelical Christianity cannot be understood sufficiently through the categories of efficient causality or ideological analysis. The constituencies fold similar spiritual dispositions into somewhat different ideologies and creeds. Each party then amplifies these dispositions in the other through the media politics of resonance. The ethos infusing the resonance machine is expressed without being articulated. The inability to grasp this political economy separate from the spiritualities infusing it may carry (...) implications for the form a successful countermovement could assume. (shrink)

Democratic conceptions of politics are tacitly or explicitly predicated upon a functioning arena for the formation of public opinion in an associated media-space. Policy-making thus requires a reliable connection to processes of ‘public’ will formation. These processes formed the focus for Habermas’s influential study on the public sphere. This contribution presents a look at more recent ‘structural transformation’, the causes of which are by no means limited to social media communication, and examines its consequences. It proceeds in three steps: 1) (...) in some proximity to Habermas, but also by means of the theory of resonance, it seeks to determine the kind of public sphere that a democratic polity requires; 2) an analysis of problems within the contemporary public sphere will feed into 3) a discussion of the conditions for the restoration of a ‘functioning political public sphere’. These include changes in the realms of participation, representation and spaces of encounter. (shrink)

This article begins with arguments evident at the time of writing about the 5th revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The historical lineages of those arguments are international and not limited to the USA (the current focus in the DSM-5 controversy). The concern with psychiatric diagnosis both internationally and in the USA came to the fore at the end of the Second World War with the construction of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical (...) Manual ( DSM-I) and the World Health Organization’s classification of ‘Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death’ (ICD-6). However, the linkage between categories of morbidity, assumptions about natural biological categories and treatment specificity with ‘magic bullets’ emerged in the middle of the 19th century in physical medicine. This article explores the legitimacy of current psychiatric diagnoses in the light of that international, not national, history of medical knowledge. In conclusion it explores judgements about current cultural imperialism (at times made about US psychiatry) and an older picture of Eurocentrism, which is now being refracted in more recent globalizing knowledge-claims about mental disorder. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 103, Issue 1106, Page 458-469, July 2022.

Magnetic resonance imaging is a noninvasive imaging tool that utilizes a strong magnetic field and radio frequency waves to visualize in great detail organs, soft tissue, and bone. Unlike conventional x-rays, there is no exposure to ionizing radiation and at most field strengths the procedure is considered safe for nearly every age group. Because it is non-invasive and possesses excellent spatial resolution, the use of MRI as a research tool has increased exponentially over the past decade. Uses have ranged (...) from add-ons to a clinical study to studies of brain development in typically developing children. In addition, a major effort has been made in recent years to use MRI to study brain function. Because the clinical utility of fMRI has not yet been realized, fMRI is still considered highly exploratory, and we cannot yet identify incidental findings of a functional nature. (shrink)

Heisenberg’s explanation of how two coupled oscillators exchange energy represented a dramatic success for his new matrix mechanics. As matrix mechanics transmuted into wave mechanics, resulting in what Heisenberg himself described as …an extraordinary broadening and enrichment of the formalism of the quantum theory , the term resonance also experienced a corresponding evolution. Heitler and London’s seminal application of wave mechanics to explain the quantum origins of the covalent bond, combined with Pauling’s characterization of the effect, introduced resonance (...) into the chemical lexicon. As the Valence Bond approach gave way to a soon-to-be dominant Molecular Orbital method, our understanding of the term resonance, as it might apply to our understanding the chemical bond, has also changed. (shrink)

In The Inoperative Community Jean-Luc Nancy suggests that his conception of speech as the cornerstone of community can be likened to the image of two Inuit women engaging in traditional vocal games (katajjaq). This article (1) elucidates this connection through the analysis of ethnographic and ethnomusicological data on katajjaq; (2) shows how the similarity of this image to that of two resonating lyres present in the works of the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino can be used to understand Nancy’s political philosophy (...) as a discussion with the (neo)platonic tradition of harmony, to which Nancy opposes his own concept of resonance. (shrink)