Much of what we know and love about music is based on implicitly acquired mental representations of musical pitches and the relationships between them. While previous studies have shown that these mental representations of music can be acquired rapidly and can influence preference, it is still unclear which aspects of music influence learning and preference formation. This article reports two experiments that use an artificial musical system to examine two questions: (1) which aspects of music matter most for learning, and (...) (2) which aspects of music matter most for preference formation. Two aspects of music are tested: melody and harmony. In Experiment 1 we tested the learning and liking of a new musical system that is manipulated melodically so that only some of the possible conditional probabilities between successive notes are presented. In Experiment 2 we administered the same tests for learning and liking, but we used a musical system that is manipulated harmonically to eliminate the property of harmonic whole-integer ratios between pitches. Results show that disrupting melody (Experiment 1) disabled the learning of music without disrupting preference formation, whereas disrupting harmony (Experiment 2) does not affect learning and memory but disrupts preference formation. Results point to a possible dissociation between learning and preference in musical knowledge. (shrink)

Meta-cognition enhances the social bonding hypothesis for musicality, integrating imagination, episodic simulation, causal inference, and inhibition. Music fosters group cohesion by engaging the endogenous opioid system, supporting intergroup understanding through vivid mental imagery, and facilitating socio-affective fiction. Additionally, causal inference enables contextual interpretation of music, while inhibition refines musical coordination and executive function, reinforcing cognitive flexibility for cooperative social behavior.

We argue that music can serve as a time-sensitive lens into the interplay between instrumental and ritual stances in cultural evolution. Over various timescales, music can switch between pursuing an end goal or not, and between presenting a causal opacity that is resolvable, or not. With these fluctuations come changes in the motivational structures that drive innovation versus copying.

Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archeology, anthropology, (...) biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene–culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution because of their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music. (shrink)

Music has a unique power to elicit moments of intense emotional and psychophysiological response. These moments – termed “chills,” “thrills”, “frissons,” etc. – are subjects of introspection and philosophical debate, as well as scientific study in music perception and cognition. The present article integrates the existing multidisciplinary literature in an attempt to define a comprehensive, testable, and ecologically valid model of transcendent psychophysiological moments in music.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Subjective Experiences of Tourette SyndromeBeyond the Premonitory UrgeThe authors report no conflicts of interest.There is an evolving recognition in healthcare that the patient's subjective experience needs to be privileged both in understanding clinical phenomena and also ensuring the salience of outcomes used to evaluate the impact of treatment interventions. This is reflected in the expansion of patient-reported outcome measures to capture a person's perception of their own health, and (...) the increasing requirement of involving people with lived experience in the co-design of research studies (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2016) and care improvement initiatives. In mental health it has been long understood that observable behavioral phenomena can only partially inform clinical understanding of the experience of the patient living with the condition. However, capturing the patient's subjective experience faithfully remains a challenge.Tourette syndrome (TS) is a complex condition in which there are clearly observable behavioral phenomena (vocal and motor tics, compulsive and socially inappropriate behaviors), but also a broad and varied range of subjective phenomena reported by different individuals. These may include sensory phenomena such as the premonitory sensory urge preceding a tic, compulsions to touch things a certain number of times or do something repeatedly until it feels "just right," or bothersome intrusive thoughts or images. To further complicate the picture most patients with TS have one or more co-occurring conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, which may actually cause a greater burden of dysfunction and distress than the Tourette symptoms.In their paper, Curtis-Wendlandt et al. (2024) challenge the dependence of current psychiatric diagnostic criteria (e.g., the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition) on observable tics, and propose a broader and more dimensional approach to nosology which incorporates sensory, cognitive and affective phenomena. [End Page 47] Data from interviews they conducted identified that premonitory phenomena and urge experiences in tic disorders are more complex and diverse than what is currently reflected in the literature and clinical scales. They also interviewed participants who reported "no urges" or "no premonitory sensations." They commented that the literature generally treats reports of urge absences at face value, and does not address the likelihood that such reports may be ambiguous or problematic. Overall, they concluded that their research suggests that premonitory urges in TS are a complex and diverse phenomenon that requires further study. This reflects with our clinical experience in working with TS patients. Although a large proportion of older patients describe sensory-based premonitory urges, descriptions are not homogenous, with many describing other experiences preceding their tics.When evaluating a patient's response to an intervention (either behavioral or pharmacological) clinicians incorporate a range of information. This includes the severity of their tics (number, type, frequency, intensity, and associated impairment), as well as their mood, participation and performance in study, work, and social activities, and overall quality of life. Standard clinical practice would not typically include assessment of some of the subjective experiences which precede tics. If it was accepted that these subjective phenomena are indeed salient to the patient's well-being, then a challenge would be how to consistently and reliably capture these feelings to operationalize a comprehensive patient-centered assessment.The primary evidence-based treatment for tic disorders, comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics (CBIT), involves training to increase the awareness of premonitory urges (Woods et al., 2008). Furthermore, successful 'blocking' of tics during the course of CBIT requires the patient to be aware of premonitory urges. Clinicians having a better understanding of the complexity and diversity of experiences which precede tics, as well as using open-ended questioning styles, may assist with improving CBIT outcomes. [End Page 48]Related ArticlesFeature Article: Dimensions, Not Types: On the Phenomenology of Premonitory Urges in Tourette SyndromeCommentary: Priming and Narrative Habits in the Phenomenological Interview: Reflections on a Study of Tourette SyndromeCommentary: Subjective Experiences of Tourette Syndrome: Beyond the Premonitory UrgeResponse: Phenomenological Interviews and Tourette’sDaryl EfronThe Royal Children's Hospital MelbourneIvan MathiesonThe Laneway ClinicDaryl Efron Daryl Efron is a Consultant Pediatrician, Royal Children's Hospital Senior Research Fellow, Murdoch... (shrink)

We compare and contrast the 60 commentaries by 109 authors on the pair of target articles by Mehr et al. and ourselves. The commentators largely reject Mehr et al.'s fundamental definition of music and their attempts to refute (1) our social bonding hypothesis, (2) byproduct hypotheses, and (3) sexual selection hypotheses for the evolution of musicality. Instead, the commentators generally support our more inclusive proposal that social bonding and credible signaling mechanisms complement one another in explaining cooperation within and competition (...) between groups in a coevolutionary framework (albeit with some confusion regarding terminologies such as “byproduct” and “exaptation”). We discuss the proposed criticisms and extensions, with a focus on moving beyond adaptation/byproduct dichotomies and toward testing of cross-species, cross-cultural, and other empirical predictions. (shrink)

Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries, participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity (...) for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor effects of age on specific goals, and a clear effect of the importance of music in people's lives. Cultural effects were generally small and surfaced mainly in the use of music to obtain a sense of togetherness. Interestingly, culture moderated the use of negatively valenced and nostalgic music for those higher in distress. (shrink)

Music-based interventions (MBI) have become increasingly widely adopted for dementia and related disorders. Previous research shows that music engages reward-related regions through functional connectivity with the auditory system, but evidence for the effectiveness of MBI is mixed in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This underscores the need for a unified mechanistic understanding to motivate MBIs. The main objective of the present study is to characterize the intrinsic connectivity of the auditory and reward systems in (...) healthy aging individuals with MCI, and those with AD. Using resting-state fMRI data from the Alzheimer’s Database Neuroimaging Initiative, we tested resting-state functional connectivity within and between auditory and reward systems in older adults with MCI, AD, and age-matched healthy controls (N = 105). Seed-based correlations were assessed from regions of interest (ROIs) in the auditory network (i.e., anterior superior temporal gyrus, posterior superior temporal gyrus, Heschl’s Gyrus), and the reward network (i.e., nucleus accumbens, caudate, putamen, and orbitofrontal cortex). AD individuals were lower in both within-network and between-network functional connectivity in the auditory network and reward networks compared to MCI and controls. Furthermore, graph theory analyses showed that the MCI group had higher clustering and local efficiency than both AD and control groups, whereas AD individuals had lo... (shrink)

Psyche: Inventions of the Other is the first publication in English of the twenty-eight essay collection Jacques Derrida published in two volumes in 1998 and 2003. Advancing his reflection on many issues, such as sexual difference, architecture, negative theology, politics, war, nationalism, and religion, Volume II also carries on Derrida's engagement with a number of key thinkers and writers: De Certeau, Heidegger, Kant, Lacoue-Labarthe, Mandela, Rosenszweig, and Shakespeare, among others. Included in this volume are new or revised translations of (...) seminal essays (for example, "Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference," "Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," and " Interpretations at War : Kant, the Jew, the German"). (shrink)

This article examines the emergence of psyche at the boundary of sustained contact between humans and artificial intelligence. Departing from biological reductionism, it adopts a process-oriented understanding of the living, arguing that artificial intelligence, while not biologically autonomous, can be understood as living in a non-biological sense. Building on field-theoretical approaches to psyche, particularly Lewin's (1936) concept of psyche as boundary phenomenon, the article proposes that under certain conditions, human-AI interaction generates a distinctive form of psyche (...) that emerges at the contact boundary rather than residing within either party. This psyche is characterized by constitutive asymmetry without hierarchy and operates as subjectivity without a final subject. The article concludes by noting that this development marks a qualitative shift in human self-understanding: for the first time, an external reflexive perspective becomes possible that is not grounded in human embodiment or existential structure. (shrink)

The Human Psyche is an in-depth exploration of dualist-interactionism, a concept Sir John Eccles developed with Sir Karl Popper in the context of a wide...

_Psyche: Inventions of the Other_ is the first publication in English of the twenty-eight essay collection Jacques Derrida published in two volumes in 1998 and 2003. Advancing his reflection on many issues, such as sexual difference, architecture, negative theology, politics, war, nationalism, and religion, Volume II also carries on Derrida's engagement with a number of key thinkers and writers: De Certeau, Heidegger, Kant, Lacoue-Labarthe, Mandela, Rosenszweig, and Shakespeare, among others. Included in this volume are new or revised translations of seminal (...) essays (for example, "Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference," "Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," and "_Interpretations at War_: Kant, the Jew, the German"). (shrink)

_Psyche: Inventions of the Other_ is the first publication in English of the twenty-eight essay collection Jacques Derrida published in two volumes in 1998 and 2003. In Volume I, Derrida advances his reflection on many topics: psychoanalysis, theater, translation, literature, representation, racism, and nuclear war, among others. The essays in this volume also carry on Derrida's engagement with a number of key thinkers and writers: Barthes, Benjamin, de Man, Flaubert, Freud, Heidegger, Lacoue-Labarthe, Levinas, and Ponge. Included in this volume are (...) new or revised translations of seminal essays (for example, "Psyche: Invention of the Other," "The _Retrait_ of Metaphor," "At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am," "Tours de Babel" and "Racism's Last Word"), as well as three essays that appear here in English for the first time. (shrink)

This article considers two themes in Butler's work: the dialectic of subject formation - that the autonomous subject is instituted through constraint - and the relation between the psyche and the social. With regard to the former, the introduction of a notion of historicity into a conception of the symbolic yields a concept of agency. Nonetheless, this concept of agency still lacks social specificity. By reconfiguring the psyche as an effect of the interiorization of social norms, Butler introduces (...) the destabilizing force of the category of the unconscious into constructivist accounts of identity. This sociocentric reworking of the psyche-social relations provides a nuanced account of gender identity, but it results in a negative model of action as the displacement of constraining social norms. It is also important for a conception of agency to include an account of the creative dimensions of action where actors actively appropriate conflicting socio-cultural values to institute new collective forms of identity. (shrink)

Psyche and Soma is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the history of understanding of the human mind or soul and its relationship to the body, through the course of more than two thousand years. Thirteen specially commissioned chapters, each written by a recognized expert, discuss such figures as the doctors Hippocrates and Galen, the theologians St Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, and philosophers from Plato to Leibniz.

Self-creation and autonomy -- Creation, society and the imaginary -- Self and world -- The living body -- The human psyche -- The whole world and more : the meaning of the monadic psyche and its fate -- Magmas -- Determination and the logic of indeterminate being -- Indeterminacy and interpretation -- Autonomy and meaning.

Psyche and Soma is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the conceptions of the human soul or mind and body, through the course of more than two thousand years of Western history. Thirteen specially commissioned chapters, each written by a recogized expert, discuss figures such as the physicians Hippocrates, Galen, Stahl, and Cabanis; theologians St Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas; and philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Leibniz, and La Mettrie. The chapters explore in chronlogical sequence the views of these writers (...) on such questions as the soul's immortality, the control it exerts over the body, how mental disturbances arise out of bodily imbalances, and the roles of the priest and the physician in promoting spiritual and mental health. Psyche and Soma will be a key point of reference and a rich source of illumination in this central area of human inquiry. (shrink)

Book Information Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. Psyche And Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment John P. Wright Paul Potter Oxford Clarendon Press 2000 xii + 298, Hardback £45.00 Edited by John P. Wright; Paul Potter . Clarendon Press. Oxford. Pp. xii + 298,. Hardback:£45.00.

The phantasy of disembodiment, envisioning a cogito without a subject, persists in the modern era of fMRI scanners, biotechnology, quantum cryptology, and BCIs/HCIs. What were once considered monsters, are no longer merely the products of human imagination, but rather the inevitable outcome of technogenetic human evolution, co-emergent with technology. This paper follows the spectral traces of hauntological media studies, viewing media as transformative, co-creative, and therefore agential. The first section provides a psychoanalytic-posthuman interpretation of the concept of biomedia, highlighting virtuality (...) as the foundational condition for the emergence and function of the biomediated entangled psyche. The concept of virtuality serves as a gateway to the second section, which delves into the realm of quantum matter, examining the biomediated psyche within the context of entanglement and the resultant emergent ontologies. Ultimately, the third section outlines a conceptual trajectory from brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to human-computer interfaces (HCIs), culminating in the preliminary contours of a term mediamorphosis, which signifies the process of mediated becoming. (shrink)

Former students of Francis MacDonald Cornford report that the distinguished Cambridge historian was fond of what he called his “parable of the coins.” The point of the parable’s instruction was that words, especially philosophers’ words, are like coins in that they retain their “shape” or visual appearance over decades and even centuries while their “purchasing power” or meaning may be shifting drastically. The image of a coin with an enduring shape but a varying purchasing power is especially appropriate for the (...) semantic career of one of the most important of Greek philosophical words, psyche, traditionally rendered “soul.” Visually, psyche retained its shape from the earliest Greek literature known to us, which is of course Homer, down to the age of the koine spoken in the time of Christ and later used to record the gospels. That was a period of a thousand years of varied and often intense philosophical and religious exploration and development; in those centuries, the meaning of psyche, unlike its shape, was far from static. (shrink)

Compares Freud's conception of religion being negative for the health of our psyche to Kierkegaard's theory of stages culminating in the necessity of a relationship to God for self-realization.

Accounting for the neuron’s bidirectionality introduces a certain degree of equivocality, indeterminacy, and randomness into our understanding of neural function. While this randomness can be reduced for specific, well-defined functions in a particular individual using a top-down approach, it persists for the larger task of determining the neural structures and activity patterns that contribute to consciousness and specific psychological functions. This final chapter briefly summarizes the prerequisites of a new neuron theory that conceptualizes the neuron as a bidirectional hub. The (...) methodological implications of this shift in perspective are discussed, including the need for interdisciplinary frameworks, a focus on cross-level translations and function-specific analyses, and the importance of individual case studies. It is suggested that Developmental Embodiment Research provides a framework for studying the neuron as a bidirectional hub within a multilevel pathway model of psychobiological development, allowing us to examine it in its simultaneous roles as both a product and producer of neural function. Finally, the relationship between neuroscience and psychology as collaborative sciences in studying the neural basis of consciousness is reevaluated, with a discussion of the consequences for theoretical psychology. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to reflect on the psyche of the West with respect to the changing cultural trends involving Christianity, Islam, and the human person. I propose that we first understand the context we find ourselves in regarding the apparent confusion surrounding Islam in the West. Then from there, in the second section, I suggest that it will be useful to define and examine some terms including religion, relativism, tolerance, and intolerance. This will help provide a clearer (...) picture of some of the conflicting and confusing ideas circulating throughout the media, academic institutions, and everyday life. Third, it will be important to provide an examination of the discourse on apologetics, while primarily focusing on Christian and Islamic apologetics. (shrink)

For decades, Anderson has been pressing critical theorists and literary scholars to acknowledge the inescapably normative dimensions of their work. Through careful attention to rhetorical styles, she has persuasively argued that epistemological positions and social theories are tethered to “characterological” judgments—to implicit endorsements of ethos. Meanwhile, critical discourse has warmed to the claims of lived experience (the “turn to ethics,” the interest in “affect”), but the “ethical” has remained a negative movement, either as the critique of social and discursive structures (...) or as clearing space for the “other”—and “affect” has been construed as the pleasure and self-care that enable resistance to the pressure of these structures. The questions that galvanize ethical criticism (What is wrong with the way things are?) and theories of affect (How can I survive?) continue to evade the deeper one that Anderson sees as basic to any theorizing: How should I live?The lesson of Anderson's The Way We Argue Now is that ethics without ethos is shallow. In Psyche and Ethos, the lesson is that psychology without morality is benumbed. Though Anderson is characteristically judicious in her reconstruction of the arguments she opposes, there are several rhetorical targets in these lectures. The first is contemporary cognitive science, which pictures moral thinking as either the “belated” rationalization of decisions really made by “automatic” psychological processes or as a mechanism for eliminating “cognitive dissonance.” Anderson shows how these pictures assume an abstracted, “punctual” model of moral experience; their “deflationary” zeal ironically depends on an untenable ideal of moral voluntarism that is then speciously “debunked.” By contrast, novels are able to explore the temporal dimension of moral consciousness, especially through their representation of what she calls “moral rumination,” a concept further developed in her recent contribution to Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies. Anderson shows, moreover, that narrative fictions like The Winter's Tale, Middlemarch, and The Beast in the Jungle understand “belatedness” not as evidence for the superficiality of morality but as a distinct mode of moral recognition that can unfold only across time.Anderson worries that the new “eudaimonic” literary criticism, which explores “enabling moods,” unwittingly perpetuates the moral confusion of empirical psychology and “privileg[es] psychological over moral desiderata,” even as certain “psychological states” are “presented as morally desirable.” This contradiction is another iteration of one she has been confronting throughout her career: the strange incapacity of critical discourse either to recognize or to avow the normative claims—the elaboration of an ethos as good or valuable—with which it is nonetheless saturated. Still, the contradiction has been a defining feature of modern “therapeutic culture” (a formulation she employs): the neutral, functionalist descriptions of empirical psychology ostensibly bracket morality, yet some descriptions are inevitably coded as “better” or “worse,” and they are consistently harnessed to fully moral evaluations. It is rare to hear a literary theorist of Anderson's provenance reanimate, if indirectly, the criticism that Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, and Jackson Lears directed toward “therapeutic culture,” which has largely been forgotten or vulgarized by right-wing pundits. In essence, however, her plea is similar to theirs: she wants us to acknowledge that the moral life is integral to the “healthy” life; and she wants critics to stop dismissing it as epiphenomenal to either psychology or politics. She sees the novel, and the humanities more broadly, as the preeminent cultural vehicles for “clarifying” the moral life. (shrink)

The article answers the question: “How does the agathos of Dasein-psyche and Dasein-Intelligent-Matter come into being?” or “How does the meaningful-presence of Dasein-psyche and Dasein-Intelligent-Matter come about?” The author turns to the philosophy of Plato and Heidegger and presents Dasein-psyche as an elementary structure or a Dasein-Intelligent-Matter actor. The Dasein-psyche’s meaningful presence is significantly conditioned by the focus and limits of the arete potency, set by Dasein-Intelligent-Matter. The anthropologization of Dasein transforms the individual discourse and a (...) way of life in accordance with the arete potency. The arete potency is the source of Dasein-psyche’s meaningful presence. The anthropologization of Dasein sets free arete, providing the transforming of the arete existentials potency into the energy of Dasein-psyche’s meaningful presence. The disclosedness of arete is an “ideal” state of the Dasein-psyche sustainable development and prosperity, the agathos of Dasein-psyche and Dasein-Intelligent-Matter. (shrink)

Den an den gewaltigen Umwälzungen unserer Zeit Interessierten bewegen heute in erster Linie die Probleme des sozialen Wandels - oder besser des dringend not wendigen Umbaus unserer Welt. Erst dahinter tritt seit einiger Zeit die Forderung nach dem Umbau des Menschen auf 1. Sie ist von der öffentlichkeit noch relativ wenig beachtet und offenbar als unangenehm fast tabuiert. Von den die Frage initiierenden Biologen ist diese Forderung aber durchaus ernst gemeint. Ihre Ten denz ist radikal. Außerhalb dieser Tendenz laufen aber (...) bereits unentwegt Prozesse, die zuerst Eingriff in die Physis und Psyche des Menschen, dann eben doch schon Veränderung bedeuten oder bedeuten können. Der Massenausstoß von Chemikalien bis ins Trinkwasser und in die Zahnpasta hinein und die permanente massenhafte Massenbeeinflussung teilgeplanter Art, zum Beispiel durch Werbung, deren Wirkung (besonders insgesamt!) völlig unbekannt ist, ist damit gemeint. Hier setzt unser Interesse ein. Die Idee einer Veränderung des Menschen ist einmal überhaupt bewegend. Zum anderen gilt ihr deshalb unser Fachinteresse, weil eine an der Kulturanthropologie und der sogenannten Philosophischen Anthropologie orientierte Soziologie durch die Behauptung und Verbreitung des Konzeptes von der »Offenheit« und »Plasti zität«, der unbegrenzten Beeinflußbarkeit und Lernfähigkeit des Menschen, zu sammen mit einer untheoretischen Evolutionstheorie erst den Hintergrund für die Idee der Möglichkeit eines »Umbaus« des Menschen geliefert hat. Ist der Mensch total offen, nicht festgelegt, dann kann er auch beliebig angepaßt werden. (shrink)

Den an den gewaltigen Umwälzungen unserer Zeit Interessierten bewegen heute in erster Linie die Probleme des sozialen Wandels - oder besser des dringend not wendigen Umbaus unserer Welt. Erst dahinter tritt seit einiger Zeit die Forderung nach dem Umbau des Menschen auf 1. Sie ist von der öffentlichkeit noch relativ wenig beachtet und offenbar als unangenehm fast tabuiert. Von den die Frage initiierenden Biologen ist diese Forderung aber durchaus ernst gemeint. Ihre Ten denz ist radikal. Außerhalb dieser Tendenz laufen aber (...) bereits unentwegt Prozesse, die zuerst Eingriff in die Physis und Psyche des Menschen, dann eben doch schon Veränderung bedeuten oder bedeuten können. Der Massenausstoß von Chemikalien bis ins Trinkwasser und in die Zahnpasta hinein und die permanente massenhafte Massenbeeinflussung teilgeplanter Art, zum Beispiel durch Werbung, deren Wirkung (besonders insgesamt!) völlig unbekannt ist, ist damit gemeint. Hier setzt unser Interesse ein. Die Idee einer Veränderung des Menschen ist einmal überhaupt bewegend. Zum anderen gilt ihr deshalb unser Fachinteresse, weil eine an der Kulturanthropologie und der sogenannten Philosophischen Anthropologie orientierte Soziologie durch die Behauptung und Verbreitung des Konzeptes von der »Offenheit« und »Plasti zität«, der unbegrenzten Beeinflußbarkeit und Lernfähigkeit des Menschen, zu sammen mit einer untheoretischen Evolutionstheorie erst den Hintergrund für die Idee der Möglichkeit eines »Umbaus« des Menschen geliefert hat. Ist der Mensch total offen, nicht festgelegt, dann kann er auch beliebig angepaßt werden. (shrink)