This essay reflects on Chinese and American hyperrealism and its effect on the self-perceptions and cultural identities of both countries. Hyperreality is a condition whereby it is impossible to distinguish reality from fantasy. Such a condition is common in technologically advanced cultures where virtual reality has made possible the endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearances. It is however also possible to speak of hyperreality in terms of “culture” or “civilization.” As a first example, China produces a hyperrealist version of its (...) culture in ways that are peculiar to the Confucian treatment of history. As a second example, hyperrealism can be seen in American civilization, which has often been described by some as a materialized utopia excelling in simulations such as Disneyland or Las Vegas and that permeates through large parts of American life like an underlying structure. The mythical and pseudo-historical past upon which many Chinese philosophical discourses are built has arguably led to a quasi-virtual timelessness whose effects remain significant in China’s contemporary political life. At the same time, American civilization consists – viewed from a certain angle – in an aseptic, dishistoricized culture that authors such as Jean Baudrillard have described in terms of “hyperreality.”. (shrink)

This essay attempts to show how a particular view of the self and the mind has ignored its Other-related, world-related and thus embodied character. This view, whose origins in the history of ideas can be traced back to René Descartes, has led to important theories of mind and language. It has also generated a certain hegemony of binaries, such as the inner and the outer, the mind and the world, the self and the other, the subjective and the objective, or (...) the intrinsic and the extrinsic. This picture of the self and the mind thus portrayed as epistemologically insulated entities has begotten serious problems in the philosophies of mind and language as well as in the cognitive sciences. It is a view that has pervaded many recent developments in these fields and bears the name of Representationalism. The essay therefore starts with a critique of the Cartesian conception of the mind and the ensuing inner/outer or self/other dualities that it creates, then turns to Representationalism as found in the analytical philosophical tradition. (shrink)