7 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2020
  2. blogs.scientificamerican.com blogs.scientificamerican.com
    A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain
    3
    1. shane754 10 Sep 2020
      Embodied cognition has a relatively short history. Its intellectual roots date back to early 20th century philosophers Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and John Dewey and it has only been studied empirically in the last few decades.

      It's interesting that this way of thinking is so new. I find it interesting how, before the 20th century, we seemed to generally only think of the mind as separate from the body (of course, this is simply what is implied by the text, not necessarily true of the whole world before the 20th century). Did everyone before this point just think of the mind like Spock, all logic and entirely separate from the illogic of the body?

    2. shane754 10 Sep 2020
      And it was during this time - throughout the 60s and 70s -Lakoff realized the flaws of thinking about the mind as a computer and began studying embodiment.

      I find it interesting how as we learned more and more about computers, we began to shift away from seeing the brain as a computer. It almost seems to me as if our increasing knowledge of computers led to a realization that the mind is not like computers, that there are very real things that separate our minds from computers and that these things are due to embodiment.

    3. shane754 10 Sep 2020
      • Thinking about the future caused participants to lean slightly forward while thinking about the past caused participants to lean slightly backwards. Future is Ahead • Squeezing a soft ball influenced subjects to perceive gender neutral faces as female while squeezing a hard ball influenced subjects to perceive gender neutral faces as male. Female is Soft• Those who held heavier clipboards judged currencies to be more valuable and their opinions and leaders to be more important. Important is Heavy.• Subjects asked to think about a moral transgression like adultery or cheating on a test were more likely to request an antiseptic cloth after the experiment than those who had thought about good deeds. Morality is Purity

      I'd love to read more about these kinds of studies, as I find them incredibly fascinating. Seeing physical proof of how physical things influence our minds is very interesting. I wonder if any of these come from evolutionary processes.

    Visit annotations in context

    Annotators

    URL

    blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/a-brief-guide-to-embodied-cognition-why-you-are-not-your-brain/
  3. Aug 2020
  4. harpers.org harpers.org
    [Essay] Body Language, by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich | Harper's Magazine
    4
    1. shane754 05 Aug 2020
      I had decided with every step away from the binary, every step toward being comfortable with myself. We’ve never had a narrative for who I am, but I am trying now, trying with language, trying to tell this story in a way I and others can understand, a way that figures the middle as the destination. I thought back to the child I was, the one who knew that girl didn’t quite fit, who liked the look of boy and couldn’t yet know that that wouldn’t quite fit either, the child who didn’t have the language and would need to write and live and feel a way into it, wait for society to invent the very words that would allow them to be seen. All I said was, “When I was eight.”

      The author concludes by tying back to the beginning of their struggle (which is also the beginning of the piece) and in the process summing up their thesis. This is a complicated narrative to tell, but it is more than worth telling. This also provides a metatextual element to the piece, as the author finding it difficult to tell their story is the story itself.

    2. shane754 05 Aug 2020
      On two different continents, airport security called me “sir,” and then, seeing something in me on a second glance, “I’m sorry, ma’am.” I did not correct them either way. At home, I introduced myself to new people as “Alex” and asked them to use the gender-neutral pronouns they/them. I did not mention this to people who had known me for years, nor correct them when they called me Alexandria.

      The events described here support the idea of the piece that we describe ourselves through our bodies. The author does not feel the need to correct mistaken airport security workers or old acquaintances on their gender identity because they (the author) knows their own identity. They are finally happy in their own body and don't need to worry how others interpret their body language or appearance. They know what their own story is.

    3. shane754 05 Aug 2020
      It wasn’t that man felt right; it was that woman felt wrong, and what could be the alternative?

      This posits the main question behind the piece, that being whether we can describe an alternative to simple male and female binary. By asking the reader this question, the author lets their reader step into the author's shoes to try to empathize and find a solution from their point of view.

    4. shane754 05 Aug 2020
      The term wouldn’t come into existence for another decade, nor would nonbinary, which first appeared in an online forum: “Do you ever really feel as if you’ve moved from that nonbinary existence as a transsexual into a real man or woman?” Note the way nonbinary was positioned from its inception as transitory, as a passing through.

      This quote helps to establish the author's feeling of entrapment. This introduces the worldview of nonbinary as wrong and the binary of a "real man or woman" as right. The author does not need to explicitly say how this kind of thinking affected them; it's clear from the setup of the author themself and the tone of the quote how damaging this kind of thinking is and how alienated the author has been from the rest of the world.

    Visit annotations in context

    Annotators

    URL

    harpers.org/archive/2019/12/body-language-genderqueerness/