Mind-Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Marriage Patterns

Social change comes from the combination of communication among people and their individual cognitive and emotional processes. This book systematically connects neural and psychological explanations of mind with social phenomena, covering major social sciences (social psychology, sociology, politics, economics, anthropology, and history) and professions (medicine, law, education, engineering, and business). The aim is not to reduce the social to the psychological but rather to display their harmony and interdependence. This display is accomplished by describing the interconnections among mental and social mechanisms, which interact to generate social changes ranging from marriage patterns to wars. The major tool for this description is the method of social cognitive-emotional workups, which connects the mental mechanisms operating in individuals with social mechanisms operating in groups. Social change is the result of emergence from interacting social and mental mechanisms, which include the neural and molecular processes that make minds capable of thinking. Validation of hypotheses about multilevel emergence requires detailed studies of important social changes, from norms about romantic relationships to economic practices, political institutions, religious customs, and international relations. This book belongs to a trio that includes Brain–Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.

History and International Relations

Mind-Society ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 228-256
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
General Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Insight Into

Historical explanation and the understanding of international relations can be enhanced by applying detailed psychological, neural, and social mechanisms to real-world events. By applying the method of social cognitive-emotional workups to the origins of World War I, this chapter shows the relevance of an integrated account of beliefs, concepts, values, rules, analogies, metaphors, emotions, inferences, and communication. The result transcends the limitations of purely narrative explanations in history and provides insight into why the field of international relations has lacked a satisfactory general theory. Explaining social changes in both groups and individuals requires understanding the communicative interactions of cognitive-emotional minds; the result is mechanistic-narrative explanation. Dealing with complex historical developments such as the outbreak of wars requires solution of the person–group problem.

Brain-Mind

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Cognition And Emotion ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Action Intention

Minds enable people to perceive, imagine, solve problems, understand, learn, speak, reason, create, and be emotional and conscious. Competing explanations of how the mind works have identified it as soul, computer, brain, dynamical system, or social construction. This book explains minds in terms of interacting mechanisms operating at multiple levels, including the social, mental, neural, and molecular. Brain–Mind presents a unified, brain-based theory of cognition and emotion with applications to the most complex kinds of thinking, right up to consciousness and creativity. Unification comes from systematic application of Chris Eliasmith’s powerful new Semantic Pointer Architecture, a highly original synthesis of neural network and symbolic ideas about how the mind works. The book shows the relevance of semantic pointers to a full range of important kinds of mental representations, from sensations and imagery to concepts, rules, analogies, and emotions. Neural mechanisms are used to explain many phenomena concerning consciousness, action, intention, language, creativity, and the self. This book belongs to a trio that includes Mind–Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.

scholarly journals From «Problems» to «Risks»: Evolution of the Conceptual Apparatus of Social Sciences

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-80
Author(s):  
V. V. Samsonov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Predictive Analysis ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Problematic Situations

The paper studies the transformation of the conceptual apparatus of contemporary social sciences, characterized by a shift from a socially problematic to a risk-predictive analysis of social transformations. It is shown that these conceptual and theoretical changes are conditioned by the internal logic of the development of sociology, which has gradually passed over in the analysis of social phenomena from the study of the adverse effects of social changes and the symptoms of social deviations to the causes of socially problematic situations.

Explaining Social Change

Mind-Society ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 3-21
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Emergent Properties ◽  
Emotional Communication ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Neural Process ◽  
Critical Transitions ◽  
Important Kind

Social change results from mental mechanisms in individuals and from social mechanisms for the interactions of thinking individuals. The mental mechanisms operate with images, concepts, rules, analogies, and emotions, all of which derive from neural mechanisms based on an important kind of neural process called semantic pointers. The interactions of individuals contribute to changes in their mental representations through cognitive and emotional communication that transfers, prompts, and instigates semantic pointers. Changes in the mental states and behaviors of individuals and groups result from changes in representations and interactions. Explanation of social changes requires identification of emergent properties of groups that are not simply the sum of change of changes in individuals. Social change resulting from cognitive and social mechanisms often results from critical transitions, not just gradual accumulations. Emotional gestalt shifts are important critical transitions that occur when individuals and groups reconfigure their arrays of attitudes and values.

Natural Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thagard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Human Brains ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Philosophy is the attempt to answer general questions about the nature of knowledge, reality, and values. Natural philosophy draws heavily on the sciences and finds no room for supernatural entities such as souls, gods, and possible worlds. Paul Thagard develops interconnected theories of knowledge, reality, morality, justice, meaning, and the arts. He uses new theories of brain mechanisms and social interactions to forge original accounts of the traditional branches of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. Rather than reducing the humanities to the sciences, this book displays fertile interconnections that show that philosophical questions and artistic practices can be much better understood by considering how human brains operate and interact in social contexts. The sciences and the humanities are interdependent, because both the natural and social sciences cannot avoid questions about methods and values that are primarily the province of philosophy. Rather than diminish philosophy, the goal of this book is to show its importance for diverse human enterprises, including science, politics, the arts, and everyday life. Natural philosophy draws on the sciences to dramatically increase understanding of fundamental issues concerning mind, meaning, and morality. This book belongs to a trio that includes Brain–Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity and Mind–Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.

“We Speak the Truth!”

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Qualifications

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science

Political psychology

2013 ◽  
Vol 154 (16) ◽  
pp. 619-626
Author(s):  
Mária Resch ◽  
Tamás Bella
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Psychology ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Cognitive Mapping ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
History Of

In Hungary one can mostly find references to the psychological processes of politics in the writings of publicists, public opinion pollsters, philosophers, social psychologists, and political analysts. It would be still important if not only legal scientists focusing on political institutions or sociologist-politologists concentrating on social structures could analyse the psychological aspects of political processes; but one could also do so through the application of the methods of political psychology. The authors review the history of political psychology, its position vis-à-vis other fields of science and the essential interfaces through which this field of science, which is still to be discovered in Hungary, connects to other social sciences. As far as its methodology comprising psycho-biographical analyses, questionnaire-based queries, cognitive mapping of interviews and statements are concerned, it is identical with the psychiatric tools of medical sciences. In the next part of this paper, the focus is shifted to the essence and contents of political psychology. Group dynamics properties, voters’ attitudes, leaders’ personalities and the behavioural patterns demonstrated by them in different political situations, authoritativeness, games, and charisma are all essential components of political psychology, which mostly analyses psychological-psychiatric processes and also involves medical sciences by relying on cognitive and behavioural sciences. This paper describes political psychology, which is basically part of social sciences, still, being an interdisciplinary science, has several ties to medical sciences through psychological and psychiatric aspects. Orv. Hetil., 2013, 154, 619–626.

“Jumble Sales Are the Same the World Over”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Watson
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
West African ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Lesbian Relationships ◽  
Female Friendship ◽  
The World ◽  
Female Headed Households

This chapter analyzes the novels of the British writer Barbara Pym, which are often read as cozy tales of English middle-class postwar life but which, I argue, are profoundly influenced by the work Pym carried out as an editor of the journal Africa at the International African Institute in London, where she worked for decades. She used ethnographic techniques to represent social change in a postwar, decolonizing, non-normative Britain of female-headed households, gay and lesbian relationships, and networks of female friendship and civic engagement. Pym’s novels of the 1950s implicitly criticize the synchronic, functionalist anthropology of kinship tables that dominated the discipline in Britain, substituting an interest in a new anthropology that could investigate social change. Specific anthropological work on West African social changes underpins Pym’s English fiction, including several journal articles that Pym was editing while she worked on her novels.

scholarly journals Variation in Faroese and the development of a spoken standard: In search of corpus evidence

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Knooihuizen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Morphological Variation ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
Rapid Social Change ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
Constrained Variation

Although Faroese exhibits extensive linguistic variation and rapid social change, the language is near-uncharted territory in variationist sociolinguistics. This article discusses some recent social changes in Faroese society in connection with language change, focusing in particular on the development of a de facto spoken standard, Central Faroese. Demographic mobility, media and education may be contributing to this development in different ways. Two linguistic variables are analysed as a first step towards uncovering the respective roles of standardisation, dialect levelling and dialect spread as contributing processes in the formation of Central Faroese: morphological variation in -st endings and phonological variation in -ir and -ur endings. The analysis confirms previously described patterns of geographically constrained variation, but no generational or stylistic differences indicative of language change are found, nor are there clear signs that informants use Central Faroese. The results may in part be due to the structure of the corpus used.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document