POSTHUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. Outline, Applications and Implications.

Media Models to Foster Collective Human Coherence in the PSYCHecology, 2019

With the enormous chaotic changes taking place today, contemporary artists are showing us a vast and mystifying range of artworks that show glimpses of nascent worlds coming into being and just as quickly disappearing into oblivion. In Part One the author explores a world that seems to be gaining some traction—the world of the posthuman. Contemporary art is showing glimpses of this still-forming world in artworks produced from a collision between, or interpenetration of virtual reality and empirical reality, giving rise to weird, horrific, and sometimes strangely beautiful forms. In Part Two the author seeks to penetrate “behind” this posthuman art to the activity of the artist, in order to find the original “bringing forth” (Heidegger) of posthuman artworks. This move reveals the fundamental place of revelation and prophecy as the origin of any world-forming artwork and thus indicates the essential nature of the posthuman world. Keywords: Art, Artwork, Prophecy, Revelation, Jung, Heidegger, Initiation, World, Alien, Virtual, Empirical.

In the emerging field of Posthuman Studies, extensive debate has been formulated on what is Posthumanism. The main focus has been directed towards the contents and meanings of a posthuman paradigm shift, while the methodology employed to reflect upon has hardly been disputed. This statement argues the potential of Posthumanism as a research method, presenting the reasons why posthuman theorists should reflect on methodology, and which kind of methodological risks they can encounter. It addresses what it entails to adopt a posthumanist methodology, and how a posthuman approach can be employed in applied philosophy and normative ethics, ultimately turning into a way of existential inquiry.

2005

Introduction: The Purposive Evolution of Mind and Self The Contemporary Transformation: Future Shock and Psychological Change The Science of Psychology: Past, Present, and Future Pop Psychology Information Technology, Psychology, and Multiple Selves Biology, Ecology, Physics, and Psychology The Social Dimensions of Psychology The Dawn of Consciousness Philosophy, Education, and Future Consciousness The Evolving Self The Cosmic Self and Cosmic Consciousness Summary and Conclusion

2005

Most educated people would agree that the experience and the body of knowledge that Freud created have had a significant impact in the Western world. Nearly fifty years ago Jacques Lacan wrote: […] Anyone capable of glimpsing the changes we have lived through in our own lives can see that Freudianism, however misunderstood it has been and however nebulous its consequences have been, constitutes an intangible but radical revolution. There is no need to go seeking witnesses to the fact: everything that concerns not just the human sciences, but the destiny of man, politics, metaphysics, literature, the arts, advertising, propaganda-and thus, no doubt, economics-has been affected by it.

2012

Due to development of science we are in the situation of an intervention in the complex area of nature without being able to yet identify the inflection point from which the artificial created by the natural man becomes in turn natural. Perhaps this is just another strong sense of singularity, Consciousness Singularity (CS) is the key moment of this transition. By CS we understand the ability of a consciousness to understand what consciousness is. It is to know in a scientific sense, that brings along prediction with it, the possibility to create a consciousness, finalizing the status of human creator. Instead of the leap assumed by TS the key challenge is the "revolution of consciousness", generated by the new understanding of humanity brought along by CS. Most of the arguments in favour of Technological Singularity (TS) involves the possibility of a qualitative leap based on the quantitative accumulation, missing the problem represented by the knowledge of consciousness. We cannot predict the time / period when the CS occurs or provide strong arguments for the burst of the CS. We think, however, that TS assumes CS. Namely, that the debate about TS is really about CS. The prediction of CS consequences is impossible. The study of consciousness inevitably changes the human’s image and that of the society, finally resulting in the redefining of humanity. Contrary to many expectations emerged on the marketplace of ideas, it is not the switch to trans-humanism the one that will characterize such a change, but the redefining of the humane. Not the post-humanism, but the new humanism is the social-moral objective of the socio-moral consciousness research results. The main feature of the humane is the all-humane: the tendency of people to remain within the humanity regardless of the severity of the practiced behaviours.

During the present century psychological science has been largely guided by a modernist world-view. The modernist perspective, as represented in the arts, sciences, and cultural life, is centrally concerned with locating foundational forms. This romance with essentials is manifest in psychology's assumption of a basic, knowable subject matter; universal psychological processes; truth by (empirical) method; and research as progressive. Yet, in broad sectors of the intellectual world -and elsewhere -one detects a defection from modernism and the emergence of a postmodern perspective. Dominant within postmodernism is a thoroughgoing perspectivism. All attempts at foundations are viewed, then, as reflections of particular perspectives, themselves without justification except by recourse to other perspectives. Postmodernism not only raises critical questions regarding the modernist project in psychology, but opens new vistas for study. Cultural critique and the construction of new and more practical forms of theoretical intelligibility are primary.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2008