Emotion

2018 ◽  
pp. 305-315
Author(s):  
René Rosfort
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Structures ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Biological Approach ◽  
Human Emotions ◽  
Phenomenological Psychopathology ◽  
The Way

Emotion plays a fundamental role in mental illness. A central part of understanding mental illness is to make sense of the fragile character of human emotional life. Emotion research has long been divided into a biological approach and cognitive approach, arguing that the nature of human emotions is to be found in either our specific human cognition or in our cross-species biology. In fact, although human emotions are indeed characterized by intentionality and cognitive structures, many human emotional phenomena, for example, our feelings and moods, are non-intentional and cognitively impenetrable. Phenomenological psychopathology can help to clarify this interplay without renouncing either the biology or the rationality of human emotions. It offers a phenomenology of human experience that allows us to make sense of how emotions feel combined with a hermeneutics of the existential significance of our emotions, that is, what they are and why we feel the way we do.

Phenomenology and Hermeneutics

2019 ◽  
pp. 234-247
Author(s):  
René Rosfort
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Hermeneutical Phenomenology ◽  
Phenomenological Psychopathology ◽  
The Way

The aims of phenomenology are to clarify, describe, and make sense of the structures and dynamics of pre-reflective human experience, whereas hermeneutics aims to articulate the reflective character of human experience as it manifests in language and other forms of creative signs. This suggests that the two approaches differ in aims, methods, and subject matter. A closer look at the two disciplines reveals, however, that in terms of history, themes, and philosophical goals they have more in common than that which separates them. This chapter examines these differences and common features in the philosophy of Heidegger and Gadamer, then demonstrates how Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology provides us with a dialectical account of personal identity that can contribute to phenomenological psychopathology. The combination of a phenomenological clarification of selfhood and a hermeneutical emphasis on interpretation paves the way for an interdisciplinary approach to mental illness.

What is the purpose of cognition?

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aba Szollosi ◽  
Ben R. Newell
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Number ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
The Way

Abstract The purpose of human cognition depends on the problem people try to solve. Defining the purpose is difficult, because people seem capable of representing problems in an infinite number of ways. The way in which the function of cognition develops needs to be central to our theories.

Prescriptive Power: Biologism, Biopsychiatry and Drug-centred Psychopharmacology

Somatechnics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 291-309
Author(s):  
Francis Russell
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
False Consciousness ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Biological Ontology ◽  
Health Discourse

This paper looks to make a contribution to the critical project of psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff, by elucidating her account of ‘drug-centred’ psychiatry, and its relation to critical and cultural theory. Moncrieff's ‘drug-centred’ approach to psychiatry challenges the dominant view of mental illness, and psychopharmacology, as necessitating a strictly biological ontology. Against the mainstream view that mental illnesses have biological causes, and that medications like ‘anti-depressants’ target specific biological abnormalities, Moncrieff looks to connect pharmacotherapy for mental illness to human experience, and to issues of social justice and emancipation. However, Moncrieff's project is complicated by her framing of psychopharmacological politics in classical Marxist notions of ideology and false consciousness. Accordingly, she articulates a political project that would open up psychiatry to the subjugated knowledge of mental health sufferers, whilst also characterising those sufferers as beholden to ideology, and as being effectively without knowledge. Accordingly, in order to contribute to Moncrieff's project, and to help introduce her work to a broader humanities readership, this paper elucidates her account of ‘drug-centred psychiatry’, whilst also connecting her critique of biopsychiatry to notions of biologism, biopolitics, and bio-citizenship. This is done in order to re-describe the subject of mental health discourse, so as to better reveal their capacities and agency. As a result, this paper contends that, once reframed, Moncrieff's work helps us to see value in attending to human experience when considering pharmacotherapy for mental illness.

Refining Contrapuntal Pedagogy: Reflections on Teaching Warsan Shire’s “Home” and W.H. Auden’s “Refugee Blues” to First-Year Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Grogan
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Poetic Voice ◽  
Teaching Poetry ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
The University ◽  
The Way

This article reports on and discusses the experience of a contrapuntal approach to teaching poetry, explored during 2016 and 2017 in a series of introductory poetry lectures in the English 1 course at the University of Johannesburg. Drawing together two poems—Warsan Shire’s “Home” and W.H. Auden’s “Refugee Blues”—in a week of teaching in each year provided an opportunity for a comparison that encouraged students’ observations on poetic voice, racial identity, transhistorical and transcultural human experience, trauma and empathy. It also provided an opportunity to reflect on teaching practice within the context of decoloniality and to acknowledge the need for ongoing change and review in relation to it. In describing the contrapuntal teaching and study of these poems, and the different methods employed in the respective years of teaching them, I tentatively suggest that canonical Western and contemporary postcolonial poems may reflect on each other in unique and transformative ways. I further posit that poets and poems that engage students may open the way into initially “less relevant” yet ultimately rewarding poems, while remaining important objects of study in themselves.

Cognitive Models and Narrative Construction

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-103
Author(s):  
Mikhail Tarasov
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Models ◽  
Narrative Construction ◽  
Cognitive Structures ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Adequate Description ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Concept Model ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
Different Levels

The article deals with the narrative text construction. The study thoroughly analyzes cognitive models that can become the basis of this process. Firstly, the author is studying the theory of rhetoricalcommonplaces. The article shows that this theory is suitable for constructing a rhetorical text, but not a narrative one. The second model discussed is the concept model. The article argues that this model is most convenient for text analysis, but not for its formation. Marvin Minsky's frame theory is analyzed in detail. It is stated that the theory of frames and individual narrative concepts, in particular those formulated by R. Barth, have much in common. It is concluded that the theory of frames can be perceived as the ontological basis of the narrative scientific description. In addition, the article briefly discusses the cognitive model by R. Quillian and R. Langacker. Their essence is to highlight the main and secondary content in the text. The possibility of using these models in the text analysis and its synthesis is proved by their conceptual similarity with G.Y. Solganik’s analysis of the novel by L. Tolstoy. Special attention is paid to the theory of R. Abelson. It is argued that the proposed hierarchy of cognitive structures has a generalizing character and is adequate to the text. The article gives an example based on a local narrative figure analysis undertaken by V.V. Vinogradov. The paper indicates the possibility to describe this figure within Abelson's theory. As a result of different cognitive models and narrative conceptscomparison, the article formulates the sequence of stages in the analysis and synthesis of text units found at different levels. The first stage of this sequence is the narrative figures analysis. The second one is the analysis of episodes, which are narrative figures associations. The third one is the analysis of the text plot structures. It is proposed to consider text units as realizations of cognitive structures. It is argued that the cognitive approach to the narrative provides its holistic and detailed adequate description.

Language and creativity: a Construction Grammar approach to linguistic creativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
The Way

AbstractCreativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before and to fundamentally change the way we live. One particular domain of human cognition that has received considerable attention is linguistic creativity. The present paper discusses how the leading cognitive linguistic theory, Construction Grammar, can provide an explanatory account of creativity that goes beyond the issue of linguistic productivity. At the same time, it also outlines how Construction Grammar can benefit from insights from Conceptual Blending.

Unstoppable Decay and Relentless Hope: Study of Alterity in Popular Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-76
Author(s):  
Adrien Ordonneau
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Consequences of capitalism’s crises and their manifestations in arts have deeply modified the way we can approach mental health. As Mark Fisher pointed out in 2009 with his book Capitalist Realism, neoliberalism is using mental illness as a way to keep existing. The capacity to think a way out of alienation is deeply linked with arts and popular culture. The article proposes to study the uncanny dialogue between arts and politics in relationships to people, and mental health. The theoretical framework will show how arts are trying to build a way out of alienation, since 2009. The article will illustrate this research with the study of many artistic practices, including our own. The findings will show how the ambiguous and uncanny relationships with the world is used by artists as a way out of alienation, despite the difficulties occurring with mental health in time of crisis.

Mental Health Ontologies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

Mental health presents one of the defining public health challenges of our time. Proponents of different conceptions of what mental illness is wage war for the hearts and minds of patients, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public. Debate and fragmentation around the nature of the entities that feature in the mental health domain divide resources and reduce progress. The way mental health is publicly discussed in the media has tangible effects, in terms of stigma, access to healthcare and resources, and private expectations of recovery. This book explores in detail the sorts of statements that are made about mental health in the media and public reporting of scientific research, grounding them in the wider context of the theoretical frameworks, assumptions and metaphors that they draw from. The author shows how a holistic understanding of the way that different aspects of mental illness are interrelated can be developed from evidence-based interpretation of the latest research findings. She offers some ideas about corrective, integrative approaches to discussing mental health-related matters publicly that may reduce the opposition between conceptualisations while still aiming to reduce stigma, shame and blame. In particular, she emphasises that discourse in the media needs to be anchored to an overview of all the research results across the field and argues that this could be achieved using new technological infrastructures. The author provides an integrative account of what mental health is, together with an improved understanding of the factors driving the persistence of oppositional accounts in the public discourse. The book will be of benefit to researchers, practitioners and students in the domain of mental health.

scholarly journals The Ethical Experience of Nature: Aristotle and the Roots of Ecological Phenomenology

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan B. Van der Schyff
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
Moral Meaning ◽  
Ethical Experience ◽  
The Way

I demonstrate here how Aristotle's teleological conception of nature has been largely misunderstood in the scientific age and I consider what his view might offer us with regard to the environmental challenges we face in the 21st century. I suggest that in terms of coming to an ethical understanding of the creatures and things that constitute the ecosystem, Aristotle offers a welcome alternative to the rather instrumental conception of the natural world and low estimation of subjective experience our contemporary techno-scientific culture espouses. Among other things, I consider how his conception of orexis and eudaimonia (happiness or, as I prefer here, "the flourishing life") might be extended to include the eco-system itself, thus allowing us to better understand the moral meaning of nature. I conclude with a look at the way in which modern phenomenology re-addresses the fundamental Greek concern with ontology, meaning and human authenticity. I consider the ways in which phenomenology reasserts the value of direct human experience that was so important to Aristotle; and I consider how this view, and that of Deep ecology, may help us to experience nature - and all of Being for that matter - in a more authentic, meaningful and altogether ethical light.

scholarly journals The Definite and Indefinite Articles of Spanish (or Castilian) Language in Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-127
Author(s):  
Sonia Montero Gálvez
Keyword(s):  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
The Common ◽  
Communicative Context ◽  
The Way

The present paper addresses the contrast between the definite article (el/la/los/las) and the indefinite article (un/a/os/as) from a cognitive approach that not only poses a single meaning for each kind of article, but also highlights the pragmatic (or contextual) aspects that underlie that meaning and establish the use of one form or another. The article’s meaning is shaped by the way we conceptualize the reference: the definite article implies an inclusive reference characterized by the uniqueness of the referent, while the indefinite article implies an exclusive reference characterized by the lack of uniqueness. The possibility to choose one or other way depends on contextual aspects related to the common knowledge shared by the interlocutors, the communicative context (linguistic and situational) and the space (physical or mental) where the referent is located.

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