Animated space

This article revisits the canon that imagines urban public space as a site of civic and political formation, based on active subjects. In contrast, the article explores the implications of thinking the urban landscape as sentient in its own right, as a hum of interacting humans and nonhumans that exceeds and performs its occupants. Citing hybrid performances—software in the “smart city,” witchcraft in the streets of Kinshasa, the sermon-filled outdoors in Cairo, and the sensoria of Canton’s opium-trading quarters in the nineteenth century—the article argues that such is the eventfulness of urban public space that the politics of place are always fleeting, hidden, and never reducible to human sociality alone.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available at http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/content/27/2_76/239

Preserved Consciousness in the Absence of a Cerebral Cortex, the Legal and Ethical Implications of Redefining Consciousness and Its Neural Correlates: A Case for a Subcortical System Generating Affective Consciousness

Historically, the scientific and medical communities have taken a corticocentric view on consciousness, emphasizing the need for a cortex in producing the conscious experience. The preserved consciousness observed in hydranencephalic children and decorticated rats suggests that some form of consciousness may be produced by a subcortical network. The brainstem, a phylogenetically ancient and conserved brain structure, could serve as the major integrative machinery to produce this form of consciousness, which is called affective consciousness—the evolutionary antecedent to the reflective consciousness that allows humans to reflect on their experiences. The functional convergence of the brainstem with the amygdala, motor system, and other subcortical structures provides the necessary architecture to support an affective state of consciousness by which instinctual-emotional goal-directed behavior is produced. This subcortical system operates by what Merker (2007) calls the selection triangle—an interface between bodily actions (action selection), the world (target selection), and personal motivation—to produce action through integration. By this model, it is possible that consciousness may persist in the absence of a cortex, such as in the persistent vegetative state. Because of this, it is necessary to establish that multiple forms of consciousness exist and to distinguish between affective and reflective consciousness, because such a distinction would have tremendous ethical implications in the conventional medical treatment of those with disorders of consciousness

The Moral Status and Welfare of Patients Diagnosed as Vegetative With Covert Awareness

Several neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that a minority of patients diagnosed as being in the vegetative state are able to modulate their brain activity in response to the commands of researchers, thus demonstrating that they are ‘covertly aware.’ I examine the moral significance of this discovery, with a specific focus on the implications for patient welfare. I argue that the presence of awareness in these patients is important because it allows for the presence of sentience—the capacity for suffering and enjoyment—which I argue is a sufficient condition for moral status. Insofar as these patients have moral status, their interests matter morally; we have an obligation to give them proper consideration in our decision making. I present empirical evidence which supports the assumption that patients diagnosed as vegetative with covert awareness are sentient, and thus have moral status. I then consider an account of the welfare of these patients, which incorporates three traditional conceptions of welfare—hedonism, desire-satisfaction, and objective theories—and concludes that these patients are faring poorly, such that we may have a moral obligation to end their lives. I analyse and ultimately reject this conclusion. I argue that the application of traditional theories of welfare to these populations is impeded by a lack of knowledge of their subjective experiences, as well as challenges to the conceptions of welfare themselves. I then propose a novel approach for assessing the welfare of these patients, based on their subjective experiences. This approach involves extrapolating from the reported welfare interests of similar patient populations, as well as making plausible inferences about the residual cognitive capacities of these patients, based on the results of novel neuroimaging studies. Using these two sources of information, we can begin to construct a clearer picture of the welfare of these patients, and work to ensure that they have a decent quality of life

Evolutionary appearance of von Economo's neurons in the mammalian cerebral cortex.

von Economo’s neurons (VENs) are large, spindle-shaped projection neurons in layer V of the frontoinsular (FI) cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex. During human ontogenesis, the VENs can first be differentiated at late stages of gestation, and increase in number during the first eight postnatal months. VENs have been identified in humans, chimpanzee, bonobos, gorillas, orangutan and, more recently, in the macaque. Their distribution in great apes seems to correlate with human-like social cognitive abilities and self-awareness. VENs are also found in whales, in a number of different cetaceans, and in the elephant. This phylogenetic distribution may suggest a correlation among the VENs, brain size and the “social brain.” VENs may be involved in the pathogenesis of specific neurological and psychiatric diseases, such as autism, callosal agenesis and schizophrenia. VENs are selectively affected in a behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia in which empathy, social awareness and self-control are seriously compromised, thus associating VENs with the social brain. However, the presence of VENs has also been related to special functions such as mirror self-recognition. Areas containing VENs have been related to motor awareness or sense-of-knowing, discrimination between self and other, and between self and the external environment. Along this line, VENs have been related to the “global Workspace” architecture: in accordance the VENs have been correlated to emotional and interoceptive signals by providing fast connections (large axons = fast communication) between salience-related insular and cingulate and other widely separated brain areas. Nevertheless, the lack of a characterization of their physiology and anatomical connectivity allowed only to infer their functional role based on their location and on the functional magnetic resonance imaging data. The recent finding of VENs in the anterior insula of the macaque opens the way to new insights and experimental investigations

Mind, Brain, and Literature: The Fiction of Iain (M.) Banks

Iain (M.) Banks never refrains from focusing on his characters: their thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and identity. While critics acknowledge the importance of character-building within Banks’ fiction, existing criticism on Banks is heavily oriented on the narrative strategies he is using, and rarely focuses on the writer’s preoccupation with the “celebration of the human” emphasised by Farah Mendlesohn (2005). The phenomenon Mendlesohn pinpointed became my primary point of interest, encouraging me to investigate what being human means within Banks’ oeuvre. In order to achieve my aim, I decided to follow an interdisciplinary method which incorporates within my literary study texts originating from the fields of neuro- and cognitive sciences. This decision grew out of three interconnected observations: Banks is predominantly focused on the human; he is often investigating deeply culturally-established terms and metaphors associated with the human being (such as the ones associated with emotions, memory, or consciousness); and he is in favour of seeking universal laws and schemes -instead on concentrating upon the specific. Thus, I treat Iain (M.) Banks’ fiction as the groundwork of my discussion, which includes close readings of the relevant parts of his works: both mainstream and science fiction. I use scientific texts within my literary study as a key, which allows me to not indulge in genre criticism or stylistic discussions, but to approach Banks’ oeuvre as a unified whole, focusing on persistent ideas and themes which Banks continues to explore. As Banks’ main area of focus is the human being - or, as I shall argue, the human mind – brain and mind sciences are particularly useful. I am postulating that by paying close attention to the different brain-based processes, such as the ones responsible for memory, emotions or consciousness, Banks aims for providing an integrative perspective of the human being. In terms of the cross-disciplinary approach I am using, I am indebted to Steven Shaviro, whose Discognition (2016) has been an example of how fiction can be put together with neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. My analysis is divided into five chapters. I begin the discussion of Banks’ fiction with a chapter on memory and imagination perceived as interconnected faculties of the mind. In the second chapter I discuss Banks’ ideas concerning the cognitive nature of religious thinking and the fear of death. In the third chapter I analyse the concept of consciousness and that of the self. In the fourth chapter I focus on the differences separating - and similarities connecting - the Culture’s sentient machines with the panhuman citizens. The investigation of memory and imagination, religion, immortality and consciousness, as well as the discussion of the cognitive parallels between humans and machines in Banks’ novels, leads me to a conclusion that there is one question underlying Banks’ literary output: What is humanness? The answer is, according to Banks, the cognitive capacity for language, and, hence, for storytelling. I argue that for Banks, human cognitive powers amount to this unprecedented ability for the creation and sharing of stories.W swojej twórczości literackiej, Iain (M.) Banks zawsze skupia się na kreacji i prezentacji bohaterów – ich myśli, uczuć, zachowań oraz ich tożsamości. Jednak, mimo iż krytycy zaznaczają istotność kreacji postaci w fikcji Banksa, dotychczasowa krytyka skupia się przede wszystkim na strategiach narracyjnych wykorzystywanych przez pisarza, a rzadko na jego zainteresowaniu człowiekiem. Swoista „celebracja człowieka”, którą Farah Mendlesohn (2005) przypisuje twórczości Banksa, zachęciła mnie do zbadania, co to człowieczeństwo oznacza, i z czym się wiąże w jego twórczości. Aby osiągnąć swój cel, postanowiłam skorzystać z interdyscyplinarnej metody badawczej - wykorzystuję w moim studium literaturoznawczym teksty wywodzące się z dziedzin neuronauk i nauk kognitywnych. Ta decyzja była pochodną wysnucia trzech powiązanych ze sobą wniosków na temat twórczości Banksa: po pierwsze, pisarz skupia się głównie na człowieku; po drugie, zgłębia silnie zakorzenione w kulturze pojęcia i metafory związane z człowieczeństwem (m.in. z emocjami, pamięcią, czy świadomością); po trzecie, Banks jest zwolennikiem poszukiwania ogólnych zasad i wzorców zamiast koncentrowania się na studium przypadku. Traktuję twórczość literacką Iaina (M.) Banksa jako podstawę mojej pracy badawczej. Rozprawa zawiera więc interpretacje fragmentów prozy Banksa – zarówno tej głównego nurtu, jak i tej wydawanej jako fantastyka naukowa. W procesie interpretacji tekstów literackich korzystam z tekstów naukowych. Metoda ta pozwala mi na rezygnację z krytyki rodzajowej i analiz stylistycznych na rzecz holistycznej analizy twórczości Banksa - ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem idei i tematów, które Banks niestrudzenie porusza. Jako że głównym zainteresowaniem pisarza jest człowiek – a właściwie rzecz biorąc, jego umysł – nauki o mózgu i umyśle są w tym kontekście szczególnie przydatne. Udowadniam, że poprzez skupienie się na różnych procesach mentalnych – na przykład na tych, które odpowiadają za pamięć, emocje, czy pojawienie się świadomości, Banks konstruuje holistyczny obraz człowieka. Na wybór takiej, a nie innej metody badawczej, duży wpływ miała praca Stevena Shavira pod tytułem Discognition (2016), w której to Shaviro zestawia fikcję literacką z tekstami z dziedzin neuronauk, psychologii oraz filozofii. Moja praca składa się z pięciu rozdziałów. W pierwszym skupiam się na pamięci i wyobraźni rozumianych jako wzajemnie zależne zdolności ludzkiego umysłu. W drugim rozdziale omawiam podejście Banksa do myślenia religijnego i do strachu przed śmiercią. W trzecim rozdziale analizuję fenomen świadomości i tożsamości. W czwartym rozdziale koncentruję się na różnicach oraz podobieństwach między czującymi maszynami a biologicznymi organizmami w uniwersum Kultury. Analiza tematów regularnie poruszanych przez Banksa (takich jak pamięć, wyobraźnia, religia, nieśmiertelność czy świadomość), a także zbadanie jego podejścia do organizmów i maszyn, doprowadza mnie do konkluzji, że cała twórczość literacka Banksa podszyta jest próbą odpowiedzi na pytanie, czym jest człowieczeństwo. Według Banksa, odpowiedzią jest poznawczo-mentalna umiejętność tworzenia narracji. W twórczości Banksa ludzkie mentalne procesy przyczyniają się do wyłonienia się wyjątkowej i kluczowej zdolności do tworzenia opowieści i dzielenia się nimi

Doing diabetes (Type 1): Symbiotic ethics and practices of care embodied in human-canine collaborations and olfactory sensitivity

This project studies domesticated healthy members of the canine species, who are educated to make use of their olfactory sensitivity in working with unwell members of the human species, and examines their situatedness, attempting also to comprehend their perspectives. The discipline of anthrozoology, newly added to the social sciences, emphasises a present and future need for an ethics that is involved in, allows for and advocates multispecies' dependencies and interdependencies.The chronically ill participants in this study are vulnerable experts in life’s uncertainties, and have become aware over time of multiple medical and social needs and practices. But, unlike the hypo-aware respondents documented in some studies of diabetes mellitus Type 1, these research participants are also conscious of their inability to recognise when their own fluctuating blood glucose levels are rising or falling to extremes, a loss of hyper- or hypo-awareness that puts their lives constantly at risk. Particular sources of better life management, increased self-esteem and means of social (re-)integration are trained medical alert assistance dogs who share the human home, and through keen olfactory sensitivity, are able to give advance warning when their partners’ blood sugar levels enter ‘danger’ zones. Research studies in anthrozoology and anthropology provide extensive literature on historic and contemporary human bonds with domestic and/or wild nonhuman animals. Equally, the sociology of health and illness continues to extend research into care practices performed to assist people with chronic illness. This study draws from these disciplines in order to add to multispecies ethnographic literature by exploring human-canine engagement, contribution and narrative, detailing the impact each member of the dyad has on the other, and by observing the 'doing' of the partnerships' daily routines to ward off hypo-glycaemia and hospitalisation. In addition, the project investigates the place, role and 'otherness' of a medical alert dog in a chronically ill person's understanding of 'the-body-they-do'. The perspective of symbolic interactionism assists in disentangling individual and shared meanings inherent in the interspecies collaboration by examining the mutualistic practices of care performed. The often-flexible moral boundaries that humans construct to differentiate between acceptable use and unacceptable exploitation of nonhuman animals are questioned within ethics-of-care theory, based on the concept of dogs as animate instruments and biomedical resources

Death and Dying in Human and Companion Canine Relations

Since before the Neolithic Revolution, when human civilisation first emerged, humans and canines have lived, and died, together. This Scottish study is conducted in the field of animal-human interaction and, using qualitative methods, applies established insights from the sociology of health (born of human-to-human interaction) to a human-animal relationship. Specifically, this thesis explores death and dying in relations between the companion canines, and the human members, of ten families. Nonhuman illness narratives are found in profusion in this study, and it was also found to be possible to apply biographical disruption to nonhumans, when conceptualised as biographical disruption-by-proxy. Unexpectedly, there emerged from the data support for a four-fold model of canine selfhood, as forged within the family. This is, as far as I am aware, the first modelling of a specific nonhuman consciousness, within the discipline. Suffering was found to exist in both physical and non-physical forms for the companions, and a mutual vulnerability to loneliness, and desire for companionship, appears to be a powerful point of connection between the humans and the canines. Being together emerged as both a practice, and as an ideal, that moulded the human-canine relations, and it was regarded as unfitting for a canine to die alone. Companion canine dying comes forth as a negotiated process, shaped by a divide between gradual and sudden death. This work encountered developed narratives of departure, that seem to structure the experience of losing a companion. In particular the role of the expert is a privileged voice in the negotiations of dying, and the biomedical view is treated as being definitive. The role of the expert is not simply submitted to however, but a range of stances to veterinary authority are displayed, being; acquiescence, resistance and invalidation of the veterinary voice. Ultimately, whilst interplays of wellbeing are present, they are less biophysically grounded, than they are rooted in the everyday routines of life, in the rituals of eating, sleeping, walking, and playing together, that compose the shared world of the human and companion canine