Material for thought

I had the opportunity while I was in Berlin to attend a talk at the Deutsche Guggenheim about the recent researches made in neuroscience to understand how much control a given film has upon viewers’ brain activity. The talk was given by Professor Uri Hasson (Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University) and film director Amos Gitai (Israel). It was organized by the Association of Neuroesthetics in collaboration with the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the Institut für Raumexperimente (Studio Olafur Eliasson).

The socio-economist Yann Moulier Boutang and the business strategist Antoine Rebiscoul gave a speech at La ligue des Optimistes (see video in French) and at the Philosophie et Management seminar about possible evolutions of capitalism as we know it today. Here are two interesting points they made among many others.

• An economy of contribution is an economy where actors contribute without having necessary a measurable counterpart (e.g. money, product). This model is radically different from an economy of exchange and must be taken into account when the externalities underlying an industry become central to its process. In this context, the function of companies is to capture positive externalities.

List of system theories as enumerated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in “General System Theory” (1968):

• Classical system theory, basically maths.
• Computerization and simulation using models.
• Compartment theory: “the system consists in subunits with certain boundary conditions between which transport process takes place”.
• Set theory, which studies general formal properties of systems.
• Graph theory concerned with topological space.
• Net theory, a generalisation of sequences (http://en.allexperts.com/e/n/ne/net_(mathematics).htm).
• Cybernetics: “A theory of control systems based on communication (transfer of information) between system and environment and within the system, and control (feedback) of the system’s function in regard to environment.”

According to the psychologist Jean Pieget, “young children do have a lot of fantasy in thought. They may imagine that they are magically affecting things. And they have to learn to distinguish certain ‘fantasies’ which are to be called ‘reality’, namely the ones that pass the tests of reality”:

• that stand up the experience of reality
• that everybody sees
• that resist being pushed
• that are not affected by how you think about them
• …

Read in “Thought as a System” by David Bohm – 1992.

An article summarising the Heterotopia of Walt Disney World presentation that I gave in October 2009 is now published in the February edition of the Philosophy Now magazine. The article is part of a series of papers about ‘continental tales’ and the concept of narrative in Continental philosophy.

Thanks to the team of the Philosophy Now magazine for having kindly accepted to publish my paper and for their extremely professional proofreading!