Dorota Angutek
Ethnography. Practices, Theories, Experiences, Volume 4/2018, 2018, pp. 41-60
https://doi.org/10.4467/254395379EPT.18.003.11162In the article the author aims to define three terms that describe activity of the mind and brain: consciousness, self-awareness, and awareness. They are related to cultural and biological conditions and circumstances under which they function. The author states that there is no definite border between them, but that culture is the basic condition through with they “cooperate” and express themselves, because a man cannot expresses him/herself beyond culture. The author draws arguments and data from transdisciplinary fields such as proxemics, kinesics, connectionism of the Palo Alto “school”, and also from neuroscience and its subdiscipline – enactivism in order to argue her claim that culture does not exclude organic sources, understood as a physical vehicle of cultural phenomenon and processes. The author argues that ideative character of culture does not exclude its organic infiltration by brain. So, there is no biological ethos of mind and its consciousness. During a lifetime mind and brain are interconnected by reflective activity of a human being. She illustrates the influence of cultural mind and natural brain onto haptic perception in European postmodern culture in which magical thinking has been restituted and interconnected with haptic sensous activity.
Dorota Angutek
Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 4 (14) , 2012, pp. 405-408
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.12.034.0997