A Perspective on Epistemology and Ontology of Indian Psychology

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dharm P. S. Bhawuk
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
World View ◽  
The Self ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Twin Research ◽  
Indian Psychology ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Criteria

The epistemology of Indian Psychology (IP) is akin to that of Indian Philosophy or in general the Indian world view of knowledge, truth and belief about making sense of the self and the world. In this article, the epistemological and ontological foundations of IP are derived from a verse from the Ishopanishad and corroborated by verses from the Bhagavad-Gita. In doing so, epistemological questions like what is knowledge in IP or what knowledge (or theories) should IP develop and how (the methodology) are answered. Similarly, ontological questions like what is the being that is the focus of IP research or are biomechanical or spiritual-social-biological beings of interest to IP are addressed. The simplicity and clarity of this derivation fulfils the twin research criteria of parsimony and aesthetics. The role of epistemology and ontology in constructing cultural meaning for theory, method and practice of IP is discussed.

Hegel’s Philosophy of History as the Metaphysics of Agency

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Pinkard
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Human Enterprise

Rather than understanding history as a process guided by an entity (Geist) that is aiming at the goal of coming to a full self-consciousness, this chapter argues that Hegel’s philosophy should be understood against the background of his Aristotelian- and Kantian-inspired metaphysics. Using his Logic as the background, the author argues that his philosophy of history is an examination of the metaphysical contours of subjectivity and how the self-interpreting, self-developing collective human enterprise has moved from one such shape to another in terms of deeper logic of sense-making, and how this has meant that subjectivity itself has reshaped itself over the course of history. The role of the “infinite end” of justice thereby is shown to play an essential role in making sense of history.

Making Sense of the Self: Developing an Understanding of the Role of Objects within the Reading Experience

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Pecoskie
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Recherche Qualitative ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Pleasure Reading ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Vie Quotidienne

In understanding pleasure reading in everyday life we often focus on the text as a primary tool of reading and other tools, such as books, which are instrumental objects, are overlooked. This report of qualitative research focuses on the book as a tool within reading experiences and how it furthers understandings of the self for the reader.En tentant de comprendre la lecture de loisir dans la vie quotidienne, nous considérons souvent le texte comme l’outil principal de lecture, alors que d’autres dispositifs, tels que les livres, qui sont des objets instrumentaux, sont souvent négligés. Ce rapport de recherche qualitative est axé sur le livre comme outil à l’intérieur des expériences de lecture et sur la manière avec laquelle celui-ci favorise la compréhension de la personnalité du lecteur. 

Adolescent Girls Finding Purpose: The Role of Parents and Prosociality

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 801-817 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belle Liang ◽  
Terese Lund ◽  
Angela Mousseau ◽  
Allison E. White ◽  
Renée Spencer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
The Self ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Adolescent Relationships ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Of Parents ◽  
Adolescent Thriving

Scholars have differentiated other-oriented (OO) purpose (i.e., a personally meaningful life aim intended to contribute to the world beyond the self) and self-oriented (SO) purpose (i.e., a personally meaningful life aim without intention to contribute beyond the self). OO purpose is associated with adolescent thriving, yet little is known about how to cultivate it. In a study of 207 adolescent girls, we examined how positive parent–adolescent relationships may contribute to developing OO versus SO purpose; we also tested whether the association between parent–adolescent relationships and OO purpose was mediated by prosocial behavior.

scholarly journals Cognitive Contagion: Thinking with and through Theatre

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Amy Cook
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Stability

Summary Theatre offers an opportunity for communities to think with and through fiction. We come together to hear and tell stories because it is moving, both in the literal and the figurative sense: it changes us. Theories from cognitive science of embodied cognition make clear that making sense of theatre is a full-bodied affair. In this essay, I argue that we can see moments when theatre invited its audience to think in new ways by shifting theatrical conventions. I explore how a contemporary production of Hamlet, Pan Pan’s production of “The Rehearsal: Playing the Dane”, brings its audience to question the stability of the self and text by altering the conventions around casting and representation. This is theatre that I may not understand in a traditional way, but this gives me a way to understand a new way of thinking about the world around me. It is theatre I can use.

scholarly journals I overthink—therefore I am not: Altered Sense of Self in Depersonalisation Disorder

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Ciaunica ◽  
Casper Hesp ◽  
Anil Seth ◽  
Jakub Limanowski ◽  
Karl Friston
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Mental Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Physiological Abnormalities ◽  
Sensory Attenuation

This paper considers the phenomenology of depersonalisation disorder, in relation to predictive processing and its associated pathophysiology. To do this, we first establish a few mechanistic tenets of predictive processing that are necessary to talk about phenomenal transparency, mental action, and self as subject. We briefly review the important role of ‘predicting precision’ and how this affords mental action and the loss of phenomenal transparency. We then turn to sensory attenuation and the phenomenal consequences of (pathophysiological) failures to attenuate or modulate sensory precision. We then consider this failure in the context of depersonalisation disorder. The key idea here is that depersonalisation disorder reflects the remarkable capacity to explain perceptual engagement with the world via the hypothesis that “I am an embodied perceiver, but I am not in control of my perception”. We suggest that individuals with depersonalisation may believe that ‘another agent’ is controlling their thoughts, perceptions or actions, while maintaining full insight that the ‘another agent’ is ‘me’ (the self). Finally, we rehearse the predictions of this formal analysis, with a special focus on the psychophysical and physiological abnormalities that may underwrite the phenomenology of depersonalisation.

scholarly journals To-Do Is to Be: Foucault, Levinas, and Technologically Mediated Subjectivation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Peter Bergen ◽  
Peter-Paul Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Technological Mediation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The World

AbstractThe theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actually support the process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design.

The Rigveda

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Jamison ◽  
Joel Brereton
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
World Religion ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Small Band ◽  
Second Millennium Bce ◽  
And Function

The Ṛgveda is a monumental text in both world religion and world literature; yet it is comparatively little known outside a small band of specialists. The oldest Sanskrit text, composed in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, it stands as the foundational text of what will later be called Hinduism. The text consists of over a thousand hymns dedicated to various divinities, composed in sophisticated and often enigmatic poetry. Its range is large—encompassing profound meditations on cosmic enigmas, exuberant tributes to the wonders of the world, ardent praise of the gods and their works, moving and sometimes painful expressions of personal devotion, and penetrating reflections on the ability of mortals to approach and affect the divine and cosmic realms through sacrifice and praise. This guide introduces the text to a wider audience. It provides an overview of the text, its structure, and the process of its composition and collection; treats its purpose and how this purpose is reflected in the contents and structure of the text; gives a sense of the text by quoting verses and complete hymns; situates it in the religious practices of its time; and considers its use and reception in later periods, which saw profound changes in religious practices and beliefs. It will also introduce the literary qualities of the text and the poets’ belief in the role of their poetry in making sense of, and indeed creating, cosmic order and function by pressing the boundaries of language itself.

Beauchemin-Beaulieu devant Melville et Joyce: l'image oratoire en miroir

1969 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Dupont
Keyword(s):  
James Joyce ◽  
The Self ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
The World ◽  
Connaissance De Soi

Dans nombre de ses biographies imaginaires, parmi lesquelles Monsieur Melville (1978) et James Joyce, l’Irlande, le Québec, les mots (2006) occupent une place de choix, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu se dote d’une posture d’écrivain singulière en construisant un double fictionnel à son image, Abel Beauchemin, chargé de jouer le rôle de son créateur en poursuivant le projet intellectuel de ce dernier, celui d’une quête de l’écriture et de l’être québécois, mais aussi d’une connaissance de soi et du monde par la lecture-écriture. À la faveur d’extraits du Melville et du Joyce, ouvrages qui réfléchissent (sur) la lecture et l’écriture tout en mettant en scène leurs processus croisés, cet article se propose de cerner l’image particulière qu’Abel Beauchemin, le personnage-narrateur, construit de lui-même dans son discours, afin de montrer en quoi la représentation de soi que constitue l’ethos oratoire participe d’une stratégie de persuasion quelque peu détournée, grâce à laquelle il s’agit en quelque sorte, selon l’expression d’Aaron Kibédi-Varga, de « diriger les passions ».AbstractIn several of his imaginary biographies, among which Monsieur Melville (1978) and James Joyce, l’Irlande, le Québec, les mots (2006) are particularly important, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu adopts a singular writer’s posture by constructing a fictional double, Abel Beauchemin, who plays the role of his creator carrying out his intellectual quest for writing and for the Québécois soul, as well as for a knowledge of self and of the world through reading/writing. By way of excerpts from Melville and from Joyce, works that reflect on reading and writing and on the intricate relationship between the two, this article aims to define the image that Abel Beauchemin, the narrator, proposes of himself. In so doing, we intend to demonstrate that the representation of the self through the discourse ethos is part of an indirect strategy of persuasion whose function is, as Aaron Kibédi-Varga’s would say, to “steer the reader’s passions”.

scholarly journals The Way into Transcendental Philosophy from the Argument in Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination

Open Theology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 278-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Louchakova-Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Unity Of The Self ◽  
Visual Light ◽  
Transcendental Unity ◽  
Metaphysical Principle

Abstract This paper presents a phenomenological analysis of the argument in The First Discourse of Part 2 of Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination. Specifically, this argument is considered with regard to temporal extension of its logos, i.e., the succession of logical steps. Contrary to traditional views of Suhrawardī as a Neoplatonizing proponent of the primacy of essence over existence, the steps of his argument convey a much more nuanced picture in which ligh t emerges as the main metaphysical principle. First, Suhra wardī explicates full evidentiality in visible light (which is the most patent, ’aẓhar, from the Arabic root ẓ-h-r = ‘to appear, be [made] manifest’): this light gives us the world as “this-there”; and second, as self-evidentiality (ẓuhūru-hu, ‘being obvious to itself by itself’) in the first-person consciousness of the knower. Suhrawardī accesses these modes by reduction(s) which liberate the transcendental character of light. The correlation in the evidential mode of light between the knower and the objects serves as a ground for the claims of transcendental unity of the self and the world, and as a condition of possibility for knowledge. A juxtaposition of this approach with phenomenological philosophy suggests that in Suhrawardī’s analysis, the evidentiality of visual light plays a role of a new universal a priori. I show that under the phenomenological reduction, this a priori participates in constitution of ontological validities; and within the transcendental empiricism of the physics of light, this a priori underlies the construction of causality. Thereby, the Philosophy of Illumination suggests a new horizon of entry into transcendental phenomenological philosophy. The paper also contains a justification of a phenomenological reading of Suhrawardī’s work, including explanation of the historical reduction.

scholarly journals The Embodied Self and the Paradox of Subjectivity

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Durt
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Reduction ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Natural Attitude ◽  
New Approach ◽  
General Thesis ◽  
The World ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Ordinary Consciousness

Abstract While it seems obvious that the embodied self is both a subject of experience and an object in the world, it is not clear how, or even whether, both of these senses of self can refer to the same self. According to Husserl, the relation between these two senses of self is beset by the “paradox of human subjectivity.” Following Husserl’s lead, scholars have attempted to resolve the paradox of subjectivity. This paper categorizes the different formulations of the paradox according to the dimension each pertains to and considers the prospects of each proposed resolution. It will be shown that, contrary to the claims of the respective authors, their attempted resolutions do not really resolve the paradox, but instead rephrase it or push it to the next dimension. This suggests that there is something deeper at work than a mere misunderstanding. This paper does not aim to resolve the paradox but instead initiates a new approach to it. Instead of seeing the paradox as a misapprehension that needs to be removed, I dig deeper to reveal its roots in ordinary consciousness. Investigating the proposed resolutions will reveal the fundamental role of the natural attitude, and I will argue that already the general thesis of the natural attitude makes the decisive cut that leads to what Sartre calls a “fissure” in pre-reflective self-awareness. The phenomenological reduction deepens the cut into what Husserl calls the “split of the self,” which in turn engenders the paradox of subjectivity. The paradox’s roots in the structure of ordinary consciousness not only constitute a reason for its persistence, but also suggest a new way to further investigate the embodied self.

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