Judging

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-113
Author(s):  
Mona Sue Weissmark

This chapter discusses the limits of the cognitive view of the mind, most significantly that it attributed the skills and processes of judging, evaluating, and meaning making to pre-assigned information. However, the mind is not a machine of mere inputs and outputs. Instead, according to postcognitive researchers, the human mind is “embodied” and reliant on unconscious judgments and knowledge about the world accumulated intuitively in interaction with the world and other people. Therefore, the post-cognitive view posits that people are active—not passive—participants in the generation of meaning by judging, evaluating, and engaging in transformational interactions: they enact a world. The chapter then considers the limitations of laboratory-controlled studies concerning prejudice and conflict reduction and introduces the concept of “action research.” Coined by the psychologist Kurt Lewin, the term “action research” refers to the triangle of research, training, and action in producing social change. To date, the relatively few studies conducted in this area have yielded no reliable, durable, observable evidence, in part because most of this research has relied on traditional cognitive theories of the mind. Personal histories, memories, and emotions were not considered. The postcognitive revolution, however, recognizes the need for a parallel “affective revolution” to help understand how the emotions are related to the biology of cognition and more specifically to judgments. Moreover, the evolutionary advantage of an affective system is initially evident as a danger signal system.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joerg Fingerhut

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work (e.g., a TV series, a picture, a text, or even a city) that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Elzbieta Magdalena Wasik

<p>Departing from the biological notion of ecology that pertains to mutual relationships between organisms and their environments, this paper discusses theoretical foundations of research on the nature of human mind in relation to knowledge, cognition and communication conducted in a broader context of social sciences. It exposes the view, explicitly formulated by Gregory Bateson, that the mind is the way in which ideas are created, or just the systemic device for transmitting information in the world of all living species. In consequence, some crucial points of Bateson’s reasoning are accentuated, such as the recognition of the biological unity of organism and environment, the conviction of the necessity to study the ecology in terms of the economics of energy and material and/or the economy of information, the belief that consciousness distorts information coming to the organism from the inside and outside, which is the cause of its functional disadaptation, and the like. The conception of the ecology of an overall mind, as the sets of ideas, notions or thoughts in the whole world, is presented against the background of theoretical and empirical achievements of botany and zoology, anthropology, ethology and psychiatry, sociology and communication studies in connection with the development of cybernetics, systems theory and information theory.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-86
Author(s):  
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer

In order to understand Hegel’s form of philosophical reflection in general, we must read his ‘speculative’ sentences about spirit and nature, rationality and reason, the mind and its embodiment as general remarks about conceptual topics in topographical overviews about our ways of talking about ourselves in the world. The resulting attitude to traditional metaphysics gets ambivalent in view of the insight that Aristotle’s prima philosophia is knowledge of human knowledge, developed in meta-scientific reflections on notions like ‘nature’ and ‘essence’, ‘reality’ (or ‘being’) and ‘truth’, about ‘powers’ and ‘faculties’ – and does not lead by itself to an object-level theory about spiritual things like the soul. We therefore cannot just replace critical metaphysics of the human mind by empirical investigation of human behaviour as empiricist approaches to human cognition in naturalized epistemologies do and neuro-physiological explanations propose. Making transcendental forms and material presuppositions of conceptually informed perception and experience explicit needs some understanding of figurative forms of speech in our logical reflections and leads to other forms of knowledge than empirical observation and theory formation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-84
Author(s):  
Mary Franklin-Brown

Abstract Through a study of early French romances, especially the Conte de Floire et Blancheflor and Alexandre de Paris’s Roman d’Alexandre, this essay offers a new approach to the automaton in medieval literature. Bruno Latour’s plural ontology, which elaborates on the earlier work of Gilbert Simondon and Étienne Souriau, provides a way to break down the division between the human mind and the world (and hence the mind and the machine), offering a rich understanding of the way in which the beings of technology [TEC], fiction [FIC], and religion [REL] act in concert upon us to inspire our desire for technological fictions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
SVETLANA VOLKOVA

The article focuses on the little-studied interrelationship between the human way of being and education. The goal of the study is twofold. First, it is to reconstruct the image of the individual that lies at the basis of the scholars’ worldview. Secondly, it is to develop a model of philosophy that would correspond to this image and correlate with the problems and challenges of modern education. Drawing attention to the widespread use of information and electronic technologies in education, the author argues that the model of human being as embodied presence (embodiment) is very important for pedagogical activities. The significance of this model is that it enables to distinguish the meaning-making dimension of human consciousness so needed by contemporary education. The author demonstrates that an individual sees and cognizes the world not so much with the organs that are available and ready, but rather with those that are constituted in the acts of reflexing. Meaning, therefore, is the reflexive functional organ that reproduces the substance of the personality of a human being as a student. The author also notes that the perception and comprehension of the world is carried out from the perspectives of both the “pure” and the embodied mind. Thus, one of the main tasks of education is to engage and reveal the mind-body system as a source of the subject’s meaning-making activity. So, orienting education towards the individual as a being who does not possess meanings but searches for them will succeed only if the human being is viewed as an integral whole rather than as separate parts. The author concludes that both philosophy and pedagogy need to develop educational anthropology, an interdisciplinary area that would explore the subject of education in the integrity of their three dimensions – mind, body and language, taken as sources of creating meanings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nerijus Stasiulis

In this article I present the outline of Filosofija. Sociogija 30(3) the articles of which I see as mainly centering around the issue of Man as placed and interacting within social, cultural and political contexts. However, the discussion of the social or political is generally nourished by metaphysical or epistemological issues or insights. The human mind deals with the fundamental questions concerning human nature, the existence or the metaphysical structure of the world, the status of cognition in general and science/ technology in particular. The articles merge into a choir signalling the inescapably social and political mode of our consciousness.


2011 ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Victor J. Friedman

The goal of this paper is to argue for the importance of ‘meta-theories', or "theories about how to build theories", in action research. Meta-theories express the fundamental assumptions about the world that underlie a theory and influence our ability to combine knowledge and communicate. Action research was originally based on "field theory", a meta-theory developed by Kurt Lewin but largely abandoned by his followers. One of the few meta-theories to have emerged from action research is "action science", which developed by Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. Although there appears to be little similarity between the two meta-theories (i.e. field theory and action science), this paper argues that they actually complement each other. It suggests that integrating field theory and action science into a unified meta-theory can provide action researchers and practitioners with concepts that can enable them see their "behavioral world" in ways expand the range of possible goals, actions, and relationships.


Author(s):  
Bonnie Kent

Bonaventure (John of Fidanza) developed a synthesis of philosophy and theology in which Neoplatonic doctrines are transformed by a Christian framework. Though often remembered for his denunciations of Aristotle, Bonaventure’s thought includes some Aristotelian elements. His criticisms of Aristotle were motivated chiefly by his concern that various colleagues, more impressed by Aristotle’s work than they had reason to be, were philosophizing with the blindness of pagans instead of the wisdom of Christians. To Bonaventure, the ultimate goal of human life is happiness, and happiness comes from union with God in the afterlife. If one forgets this goal when philosophizing, the higher purpose of the discipline is frustrated. Philosophical studies can indeed help in attaining happiness, but only if pursued with humility and as part of a morally upright life. In the grander scheme of things, the ascent of the heart is more important than the ascent of the mind. Bonaventure’s later works consistently emphasize that all creation emanates from, reflects and returns to its source. Because the meaning of human life can be understood only from this wider perspective, the general aim is to show an integrated whole hierarchically ordered to God. The structure and symbolism favoured by Bonaventure reflect mystical elements as well. The world, no less than a book, reveals its creator: all visible things represent a higher reality. The theologian must use symbols to reveal this deeper meaning. He must teach especially of Christ, through whom God creates everything that exists and who is the sole medium by which we can return to our creator. Bonaventure’s theory of illumination aims to account for the certitude of human knowledge. He argues that there can be no certain knowledge unless the knower is infallible and what is known cannot change. Because the human mind cannot be entirely infallible through its own power, it needs the cooperation of God, even as it needs God as the source of immutable truths. Sense experience does not suffice, for it cannot reveal that what is true could not possibly be otherwise; so, in Bonaventure’s view, the human mind attains certainty about the world only when it understands it in light of the ‘eternal reasons’ or divine ideas. This illumination from God, while necessary for certainty, ordinarily proceeds without a person’s being conscious of it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Jess Moriarty ◽  
Ross Adamson

The telling and sharing of stories is synonymous with what it is to be human. The narrative threads reaching back through our personal histories can help us to make sense of who we are in the present and we already use these stories anecdotally, at school, on dates, over coffee, in the local, to make connections with people and our social worlds. At an academic level, storytelling that engenders meaning making is becoming legitimized as branch of qualitative research that can inform us about our culture and identity. Autoethnography is a methodology that links the self (auto) with ethno (culture) to research (graphy). Helping students to work in this way and make these connections in their assessed work can be a challenge, but it can also help them to identify the stories that already exist inside themselves and give them the confidence to believe that these stories might matter in the world beyond their writing journals and university lectures. In this article, the authors share personal stories to reflect on our pedagogic approach to undergraduate creative writing teaching.


1912 ◽  
Vol XIX (3) ◽  
pp. 521-531
Author(s):  
K. V. Shalabutov

As far as the human mind is developed, the area of ​​the miraculous and supernatural is wider and immense for it; therefore, all the incomprehensible and striking phenomena of him belong to him to the action of a higher, mysterious power. This is the origin of the world outlook of primitive peoples, in whom, over the course of time, invisible abstract forces were recognized as deities governing the fate of people, at which there usually arose the influence of deities on good and evil, clean and unclean. Deities have their servants angels and gods. Evil spirits and their incarnations in the image of bots, according to the primitive peoples and uncultured popular masses, have great influence on human life; unhappiness, death and illness depend on them. Sumtsov) says that diseases have long been among different peoples in the form of demonic beings. The spirits of darkness are doctors of health and life; they penetrate into the body of a person and serve as a source of illnesses, they darken the mind and torment the body. Already in the brick books of the ancient Chaldeans, there are conspiracies against diseases, like demonic beings. Among the Iranians, magic spells and cleansing from illnesses were widespread, like unclean demonic creatures. Among the Greeks and Romans, illnesses also had a demonic meaning, In the ancient Scandinavians, internal illnesses were attributed to the action of evil spirits and treated them with conspiracies and sympathetic means. In England in the X and XI centuries and later internal illnesses were considered directly caused by evil spirits, elves, demons, spells of sorcerers or the pernicious influence of the evil eye. The Slavs, in particular the Russians, share the demonic origin of illnesses with all other peoples.


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