The issue of knowing what it means for a group to have collective beliefs is being discussed more and more in contemporary philosophy of the social sciences and philosophy of mind. Margaret Gilbert’s reconsideration of Durkheim’s viewpoint in the framework of the plural subject’s account is one of the most famous. This has implications in the history and the sociology of science—as well asin the history and sociology of philosophy—although Gilbert only outlined them in the former fields and said nothing (...) about the latter. Symmetrically but independently, a historian of science, Mara Beller, has recently challenged Kuhn’s conception of the role of consensus in sciences in a brilliant analysis by carefully studying the history of Copenhagen School of Quantum Mechanics. Not only does she show the role of disagreement and controversies (doubting whether there was any collective belief characteristic in this group of physicists), but she even shakes up the very idea of individual beliefs. Each scientist (Heisenberg, Bohr, etc.) could be seen as divided into several selves. This paper contends that these two conceptions open important new horizons in several domains, especially if they are linked together. The paper assesses this claim in the light of empirical examples like the Vienna Circle, Copenhagen School, and, eventually, Cartesian philosophy. Key Words: plural subject • polyphony • collective briefs • Cartesian argumentation. (shrink)

The issue of knowing what it means for a group to have collective beliefs is being discussed more and more in contemporary philosophy of the social sciences and philosophy of mind. Margaret Gilbert’s reconsideration of Durkheim’s viewpoint in the framework of the plural subject’s account is one of the most famous. This has implications in the history and the sociology of science—as well asin the history and sociology of philosophy—although Gilbert only outlined them in the former fields and said nothing (...) about the latter. Symmetrically but independently, a historian of science, Mara Beller, has recently challenged Kuhn’s conception of the role of consensus in sciences in a brilliant analysis by carefully studying the history of Copenhagen School of Quantum Mechanics. Not only does she show the role of disagreement and controversies (doubting whether there was any collective belief characteristic in this group of physicists), but she even shakes up the very idea of individual beliefs. Each scientist (Heisenberg, Bohr, etc.) could be seen as divided into several selves. This paper contends that these two conceptions open important new horizons in several domains, especially if they are linked together. The paper assesses this claim in the light of empirical examples like the Vienna Circle, Copenhagen School, and, eventually, Cartesian philosophy. (shrink)

The article is based on selected findings from a study in the field of rehabilitation in a religious context viewed from the perspective of cognitive psychology and psychology of religion. The study shows how a therapeutic process can be facilitated in cases where the psychotherapeutic intervention is co-ordinated with a creative, sound religious activity. One central phenomenon that emerged from the study was the experience of a therapeutic dialogue with the divine person God and/ or Jesus being apprehended as a (...) crucial therapeutic agent. The material is analysed focusing on criteria for creative persons and products. A basic mechanism of creativity is hypothesised by Martindale to be defocused attention. The greater the spread of the attention capacity, the more likely the combinational leap, giving the rich possibility of combining elements in new ways. Religion can extend the perspective and thereby increase the possibilities of finding new and appropriate emotional and cognitive combinations. The analysis shows significant creative qualities in the treatment model studied. (shrink)

Contemporary work-related education and training policy represents occupational competence as the outcome of individual performance at work. This paper presents a critique of this neo-liberal assumption, arguing that in many cases competence should be regarded as an attribute of groups, teams and communities. It proposes a theory of collective competence in terms of (1) making collective sense of events in the workplace, (2) developing and using a collective knowledge base and (3) developing a sense of interdependency. It suggests that the (...) language of competence would become a more effective tool for understanding performance at work if the collectivistic sense of the term 'competence' were used in conjunction with the more established individualistic sense. (shrink)

In everyday life, we usually go by theone-body-one-person rule: one person has one body. This social belief builds on two assumptions: bodies are individual units and they are the same in different situations. This is also the conceptual resource for social theories that build on the notion of individuals. In this article, we turn it into a sociological topic. We develop a vocabulary for reconstructing bodily one-ness and bodily sameness as practically achieved social order, asbody boundary work: what belongs to (...) a body is a matter of local practices that define its situational contours, limits and margins. Practices of identification and personification draw on social memories and enact bodies as trans-situational entities. Persons and bodies, we argue, evolve in co-individuation. Personal corporality, then, can be conceptualized as abody of workthat encompasses these practical efforts of boundary-making. (shrink)

It is often assumed that democracies can make good use of the epistemic benefi ts of diversity among their citizenry, but difficult to show why this is the case. In a deliberative democracy, epistemically relevant diversity has three aspects: the diversity of opinions, values, and perspectives. Deliberative democrats generally argue for an epistemic form of Rawls' difference principle: that good deliberative practice ought to maximize deliberative inputs, whatever they are, so as to benefi t all deliberators, including the least eff (...) ective. The proper maximandum of such a principle is not the pool of reasons, but rather the availability of perspectives. Th is sort of diversity makes robustness across different perspectives the proper epistemic aim of deliberative processes. Robustness also offers a measure of success for those democratic practices of inquiry based on the deliberation of all citizens. (shrink)

Democracy and human rights have long been strongly connected in international covenants. In documents such as 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, democracy is justified both intrinsically in terms of popular sovereignty and instrumentally as the best way to “foster the full realization of all human rights.” Yet, even though they are human and thus universal rights, political rights are often surprisingly specific. In the Covenant, for example, “the (...) right to take part in the conduct of public affairs” is equated with “the right to vote and to be elected.” More often then not, their realization is left to states and their constitutions, as for example in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. Political rights have a “peculiar” status among enumerated human rights, and this difficulty has to do with deep assumptions about the nature and scope of democracy and political community that remain unexamined by the drafters of these important declarations. (shrink)

Cognitive activity, which essentially consistsof the use of signs, does not only depend onthe internal (mental, or brain) processes. Thefirst part of the paper presents severalversions of the idea of the external andcultural organization of individual''s mentalprocesses. The second part of the paperconsiders a future development of cognitivescience as a science of the extended andsocially constructed mind. KazimierzTwardowski''s theory of intentionality and histheory of actions and products provide theconceptual framework of the undertaken analysis.

This paper seeks to develop the rhetorical approach to the study of social psychology, by looking at the rhetorical aspects of British attitudes towards the monarchy. The rhetorical approach stresses that attitudes are stances in public controversy and, as such, must be understood in their wider historical and argumentative context. Changes in this context can lead to changes in attitudinal expression, such as the phenomenon of Taking the Side of the Other, which should be distinguished from the sort of attitudinal (...) changes normally described by social psychological theories of attitudes. One needs to assume that attitudinal stances contain both explicit and implicit aspects, and also that these may be contrary to each other. The change in James Gillray's cartoons from anti-monarchical themes in 1792 to pro-monarchical themes in 1793 is discussed as an example of Taking the Side of the Other in response to changing historical contexts. Contemporary monarchical attitudes are also examined to show the rhetorical nature of implicit criticisms and justifications, as well as the rhetorical complexity of these attitudes. General implications for the rhetorical study of implicit and explicit aspects of attitudes are discussed. (shrink)

This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness that escapes from both methodological nationalism and what can be designated as the monolingual vision, providing substantive (...) perspectives on the proliferation of contact zones or borderlands in a diversity of domains. The article centrally argues for a sociological perspective that examines not just the circulation of meaning but translation as a process of linguistic transformation that is necessarily embodied in words. Only if this more material aspect of translation is attended to can the nature of translation as an ordinary social process be fully grasped and its intervention in meaning-making activities explored. This has far-ranging implications for any reflexive account of the production of sociological works and interpretations. (shrink)

Parallogic models the relationship between mind and context. It, as does the excerpt above, suggests that systems of logic are context specific and therefore parallel. This model points out that perceived departures in mental process, reasoning, may be more apparent than real. It also suggests a new way to conceive of mental illness by separating breakdowns in mental process from shifts in mental process.

Stemming from a study of social aesthetics, in which public reaction to human physical appearance is addressed, the present analysis considers the practice of humans associating themselves with nonhuman animals on the basis of the latter's appearance. The study found these nonhuman animals are intended to serve as a positive reflection on the humans who deliberately choose them for their “special” traits, which the humans then utilize to enhance their own social standing. The study compares this to the same practice (...) used by humans to associate themselves with attractive humans and serves the similar purpose of amassing social status by virtue of the association. This paper explains the phenomenon in theoretical terms; namely, symbolic interactionism, paying special attention to impression-management and dramaturgy, along with other interactionist features of attribution and social exchange. Where available, the paper uses scholarly, empirical work on the topic, supplemented by popular media observations and news articles. Viewed from an interactionist perspective, these empirical and non-empirical examples provide a novel picture of human-and-animal society as a unidirectional, status-seeking interaction intended to benefit human actors. (shrink)

Forty-five children between the ages of nine and twelve years, who were forced to flee their native Sudan and seek refuge in Egypt, were interviewed about their everyday life in Cairo. Phenomenological analyses of the transcripts revealed the physical, social and technological dimensions to their encounter with a new cultural world. The interviews also revealed the extent to which the children had to face racism, discrimination and social exclusion. Specific analyses of children’s difficulties in learning a new form of Arabic (...) and their involvement in play and games indicated that a refugee child develops his or her self-identity as a stranger by reflecting on particular confrontations with the new environment. Finally, comparative analyses across age groups led to the construction of a phenomenological-developmental model of the child refugee. Both the model and the findings are discussed in the context of Alfred Schutz’s (1964a) essay The Stranger, George Herbert Mead’s (1967) communicative model of the self and Binnie Kristal-Andersson’s (2000) psychological framework for understanding migration. (shrink)

Summary The study, carried out in a Greek provincial town, focuses on the cultural meaning of university education and of participation in the extremely competitive entrance examinations to university. In spite of graduate unemployment, in relation to the labour market a university degree is seen as giving more possibilities. Also, the transition to university and the degree that follows are rewarded by the community with prestige and status. Moreover, gaining admission is also important in itself in relation to the individual's (...) wish to achieve something with herlhis own strength. Finally, taking part in the examinations is seen as being of the utmost importance in relation to the local values. Regardless of the outcome, it allows the participants to realize a particular set of values among which the ?duty to struggle? seems to occupy, for historical reasons, a central place. (shrink)

The perception of behavior as a moral or conventional concern can be influenced by contextual variables, including status and power differences. We propose that social processes and in particular social role enactment through the exercise of power will psychologically motivate moralization. Punishing or rewarding others creates a moral dilemma that can be resolved by externalizing causation to incontrovertible moral rules. Legitimate power related to structure and position can carry moral weight but may not influence the power holder’s perceptions of rules (...) and general norms of behavior. Social identity theory suggests moralization could be promoted by a concern for shared, defining values. However, the tendency to moralize another’s behavior can be injurious to shared identity. We explored white-collar employees’ perceptions of several categories of noxious or deviant workplace behaviors and regressed these perceptions on the tendency to use legitimate, referent, or reward and punish power; social identity; and the interaction of social identity and power, in particular legitimate power. Only the tendency to influence others through punishment or reward predicted moralization. Alternative causal explanations for the findings were addressed through the absence of any relationships between punishment and reward power and perceptions of deviant behaviors as wrong, upsetting, or requiring punishment. We discuss these results in the context of self and social processes, the social construction of morals and power, and the impact of managers’ behavior on group or organizational ethics. (shrink)

Science is one faith and has one great commandment. The faith is simply that man can control his future in his own interest. In the face of the appalling discrepancy between the powers of the natural and the social sciences, a discrepancy that leads to visions of man's liquidation by man, the assertion is nevertheless made that the remedy for the consequences of science is more science. The long record of scientific victories in the past gives some warrant, let us (...) suppose, for faith in continued victory, but at bottom there is no compelling proof. There never has been, and, I make bold to say, there never will be. The role of scientist in the human drama always contains lines reminiscent of Prometheus; an utterly nonrational belief in ultimate triumph lends him strength to confront what to others may seem a hopeless future. The frequency with which it will appear in the references is not because the writer regards it as of major importance, but because it dovetails more neatly with this paper than do many other more significant books. Moreover, it has fairly full footnote and chapter bibliographies. The statements in the non-parenthetical part of this paragraph are good examples of the near-elliptical character of much of what is said here. Expansion is badly needed, but the reader must be referred to ch. vi of. The position represented is not new; many writers, among them William James, have held it in various ways.). (shrink)

Honor is a difficult field of inquiry that deserves systematic attention from social scientists. Honor is an internalized concern for recognition and approval that links reputation with conduct and helps sustain existing patterns of social selection and evaluation. The paper argues that scholars are remiss that consider the field of honor obsolete or a residual category left over from the transition to modern forms of social organization. A modern conception of honor is identified in the relationship of a reflexive self (...) and a larger moral and institutional order. A further effort is made to elaborate a reflexive approach to honor informed by the intersection of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social reproduction and Erving Goffman's theory of self presentation. Honor is theorized as a multi-dimensional field that legitimates prevailing standards of evaluation and social selection contested in staged and consecrated interactions that are central to social reproduction. (shrink)

Darwin, Sex and Statusargues that a human sociobiology that mistakes evolutionary theory for theories of psychology and culture is wrong, as are psychologies that could never have evolved or social sciences that posit impossible psychologies. Status develops theories of human self-awareness, cognition, and cultural capacity that are compatible with evolutionary theory. Recurring themes include: the importance of sexual selection in human evolution; our species' preoccupation with self-esteem and relative standing; the individual as an active strategist, regularly revising culturally provided information; (...) and awareness as an impressionmanagement device. Culture is a somewhat structured information pool that itself evolves, often in ways that reduce the genetic fitness of its participants. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher applies enactivist thinking to a staggeringly wide range of topics in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, even venturing into the realms of biological anthropology. One prominent point Gallagher makes that the holistic approach of enactivism makes it less amenable to scientific investigation than the cognitivist framework it seeks to replace, and should be seen as a “philosophy of nature” rather than a scientific research program. Gallagher also gives truth to the saying that “if you want new ideas, (...) read old books”, showing how the insights of the American pragmatists, particularly Dewey and Mead, offer a variety of resources and tools that can be brought to bear on modern day enactivism. Here, I suggest that the adoption of enactivist thinking would undermine the assumptions of certain scientific positions, requiring their abandonment, rather than simply making it more difficult to conduct research within an enactivist framework. I then discuss how Mead’s work has been used previously as a “pragmatist intervention” to help resolve problems in a related 4E endeavour, Gibson’s ecological psychology, and make a case for the inclusion of radical behaviorism as another pragmatist resource for 4E cognition. I conclude with a plea for further enactivist intervention in studies of comparative cognition. (shrink)

Common folks “have” emotions and talk to others; and sometimes they make “their” emotions the topic of such talk. The emotions seem to be “theirs,” since they can be conceived of as private states ; and they can be topicalized, because we seem to be able to attribute or lend a conventionalized public form to some inner state or event. This is the way much of our folk-talk and folk-thinking about emotions, the expression thereof, the role of language in these (...) expressions, and communication in general are organized. However, as we have shown, such talk serves the purpose of communicating effectively and reaching mutual understanding. (shrink)

Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The developments constituting this turn have been contemplated from different perspectives in technical and business publications (O’Reilly 2005), in treatises on convergence or participatory culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2009), and could be (...) usefully interrogated by means of political economy concepts such as the social factory and free labor (Terranova 2004). Marked, or rather symbolically constructed, by these discursive pickets lies a field of practice that the members of the participatory culture, the produsers (Bruns 2008) of open journalism, blogs, social networking sites and other characteristic Web 2.0 applications inhabit and animate with their everyday thought, decision making and action. This paper undertakes a theoretical exploration of the user practices emerging and consolidating around the new technological and organizational models making up Web 2.0. It is informed by a qualitative study of bloggers and Facebook users conducted through focus group methodology, although the concrete empirical data are not presented here. Rather, the analysis employs the concept of technologies of the self by Foucault (1988) as a heuristic device in order to situate Web 2.0 use, first, in a long history of culturally evolved forms of self-constitution and, second, in a complex matrix of relationships with other types of technologies, namely, those of production, sign systems and power. This conceptual choice, we argue, furnishes a study of Web 2.0 use, which holds in balance its liberatory potential and its susceptibility to new forms of domination, rationalization and commodification. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper compares Mead’s and Quine’s behaviouristic theories of meaning and language, focusing in particular on Mead’s notion of sympathy and Quine’s notion of empathy. On the one hand, Quine seems to resort to an explanation similar to Mead’s notion of sympathy, referring to ‘empathy’ in order to justify the human ability to project ourselves into the witness’s position; on the other hand, Quine’s reference to the notion of empathy paves the way to a more insightful comparison between Mead’s behaviourism (...) and an explanation of the emergence of the linguistic from pre-linguistic communication based on empathic identification processes. However, Mead is less ambiguous than Quine in his use of the notion of sympathy finds a fecund parallel in the current neuroscientific and neuro-phenomenological hypothesis on ‘empathy’. The article contends that the ambiguity in Quine’s account of empathy is due to the exigency of trying to elucidate the link between the rules of language in a cultural context and... (shrink)

The aim of the article is to outline several valuable elements of Mead’s pragmatist theory of perception in action developed in his The Philosophy of the Act, in order to strengthen the pragmatist legacy of the enactivist approach. In particular, Mead’s theory of perception in action turns out to be a forerunner of sensorimotor enactivist theory. Unlike the latter, however, Mead explicitly refers to imagery as an essential capacity for agency. Nonetheless, the article argues that the ways in which Mead (...) refers to this capacity do not necessarily place it in opposition to enactivist non-representationalism. On the contrary, as a synthetic process of re-presenting of present and past sensorimotor elements, imagery can be seen as the hallmark of a pragmatically inspired sensorimotor enactivist approach that bypasses the opposition between representationalists and non-representationalists. (shrink)

The article argues in favour of a pragmatist enactive interpretation of the emergence of the symbolic and contentful mind from a basic form of social communicative interaction in which basic cognitive capacities are involved. Through a critical overview of Radical Enactivists (RECers)’ view about language, the article focuses on Mead’s pragmatist behavioural theory of meaning that refers to the gestural conversation as the origin of the evolution of linguistic conversation. The article develops as follows. After exposing the main elements of (...) REC’s theory of cognition and language that involve the construction of a theory of natural signs (teleosemiotics) and basic directionality (Ur-intentionality), some critical points of Hutto and Myin’s proposal will be highlighted. To foster a continuist perspective of language, the behavioural theory of meaning and language that Mead develops from the notion of gesture will be analysed. His theory is akin to REC and could augment the bare bones of REC’s sketched perspective, helping to include Ur-intentionality in a broader non-dualistic phylogenetic and ontogenetic theory of symbolic language from gestural communication, thus helping to overcome the distinction between a content-less intentionality and a content-involving intentionality, i.e., a semantic propositional intentionality. Furthermore, a recent revival of Mead’s theory testifies to its up-to-date relevance to explain the innate social dimension of human and non-human animals, and the human communicative capacity through the conditioning of bio-social canons and structures. (shrink)

This paper explores themethodological consequences of AmericanPragmatism for the social sciences. It alsocriticises some rival perspectives onmethodology of social research, in particularfalsificationist, realist and someanti-naturalist views. It is argued thatAmerican Pragmatism shows striking affinitieswith the genealogical method of history and thereflexive turn in cultural anthropology. It isalso argued that Pragmatism forces us to thinkdifferently about the relationship betweentheory and empirical research.

The construct of ‘alexithymia,’ formulated in the late 1960s, described the inability to express one’s feelings as a deficit in the signifying-abilities of men and women. In this study, the profile of the alexithemic serves as a point of reference for a discussion concerning language and consciousness and the cognitive/neuroscientific turn in the past decades. The objectives of this paper are to show that the cognitive/neuroscientific turn profoundly affected the understanding of alexithymia in particular and the relationship between language and (...) consciousness in general. As the dominant cognitive/neuroscientific models of consciousness ignore the social embeddedness and the importance of the signifying abilities of human beings, this paper presents alternative models of consciousness and issues of intersubjectivity by proposing a variation on a model from René Thom’s ‘catastrophe theory’ and Uexküll’s theory of ‘autoambience.’ These models, predicated upon social embeddedness and semiotic ability, explain how certain circumstances, such as are often identified as ‘depression,’ can be catalysts of productive outcome. In particular, the notion of ‘play’ in René Thom’s catastrophe theory underscores the primacy of ‘language play’ as a combinatorial signifying activity with a restorative function that is exemplified in the notion of fiction in the work of David Lodge. (shrink)

Though there are few more pervasive features of the social world than the ebb and flow of individual participation, the literature only provides hints as to its phenomenology. The phenomenological investigation of social participation presented in this paper indicates that it essentially entails: 1. Attunement to the others' "stock of knowledge at hand" . 2. Emotional and motivational attunement to the group's concerns. 3. Taking for granted that one can contribute appropriately. 4. Being able to assume that one's identity is (...) not under threat. Though the implications can only be touched on in this paper, the phenomenological clarification of participation is a valuable resource, grounding many lines of research of contemporary significance-for instance, in education and the other "person professions" and in social policy and political science-and suggesting fruitful new perspectives. (shrink)

The new science of Complexity explains that limited knowledge prevents societies from predicting and controlling their developments. But Complexity further suggests that nature uses the limits of knowledge to evolve, which turns an apparent obstacle into an opportunity to reevaluate governmental institutions. As in nature, the limits of knowledge lead social systems to evolve by individuating, liberating, and empowering their members. Societies individuate and liberate their members to probe environments and exploit opportunities. Societies empower individuals to globalize their findings which (...) requires constitutionally constraining governmental powers. Societies that respect human rights thus gain selective advantage. Showing that what nature is models what societies ought to be, Complexity may finesse the "naturalistic fallacy" of Hume and Moore. (shrink)

Mindfulness can be understood as the mental ability to focus on the direct and immediate perception or monitoring of the present moment with a state of open and nonjudgmental awareness. Descriptions of mindfulness and methods for cultivating it originated in eastern spiritual traditions. These suggest that mindfulness can be developed through meditation practice to increase positive qualities such as awareness, insight, wisdom, and compassion. In this article we focus on the relationships between mindfulness, with associated meditation practices, and the cognitive (...) neuroscience of attention and awareness. Mindful awareness is related to distributed attention, phenomenal consciousness, and momentary self-awareness, as characterized by recent findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience as well as in influential consciousness models. Finally, we outline an integrated neurocognitive model of mindfulness, attention, and awareness, with a key role of prefrontal cortex. (shrink)