Mixed Emotions: Toward a Phenomenology of Blended and Multiple Feelings

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher L. Heavey ◽  
Noelle L. Lefforge ◽  
Leiszle Lapping-Carr ◽  
Russell T. Hurlburt
Keyword(s):  
Experience Sampling ◽  
The Other ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling ◽  
Mixed Emotions ◽  
Observational Methodology ◽  
Theories Of Emotions

After using descriptive experience sampling to study randomly selected moments of inner experience, we make observations about feelings, including blended and multiple feelings. We observe that inner experience usually does not contain feelings. Sometimes, however, feelings are directly present. When feelings are present, most commonly they are unitary. Sometimes people experience separate emotions as a single experience, which we call a blended feeling. Occasionally people have multiple distinct feelings present simultaneously. These distinct multiple feelings can be of opposite valence, with one pleasant and the other unpleasant. We provide examples that inform theories of emotions and discuss the important role observational methodology plays in the effort to understand inner experience including feelings.

Descriptive Experience Sampling: A Method for Exploring Momentary Inner Experience

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher L. Heavey ◽  
Russell T. Hurlburt ◽  
Noelle L. Lefforge
Keyword(s):  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling

Inner Speaking as Pristine Inner Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell T. Hurlburt ◽  
Christopher L. Heavey
Keyword(s):  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Inner Speech ◽  
Psychological Process ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling

Inner speaking is a directly apprehended phenomenon, not an inference or metaphorical claim about a psychological process. Investigations of inner speaking require a method that carefully explores phenomena as they actually occur. Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) is an attempt at such a method, and is described in this chapter, including an annotated case study of its results. DES investigations suggest that many claims about inner speech are hugely mistaken, leading to the conclusion that powerful presuppositions about inner speech can lead investigations astray; the chapter discusses the recognition and the bracketing of presuppositions. It suggests skepticism about claims based on Vygotskian or other theory, on introspection, on experimental manipulations, or on questionnaires unless the method used provides a principled rationale for the bracketing of presuppositions. The chapter describes aspects of inner speaking not frequently recognized as occurring: partially or completely unworded inner speaking, multiple simultaneous inner speaking, meaningless inner speaking.

Applications of Descriptive Experience Sampling

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Jones-Forrester ◽  
Yani Dickens ◽  
Noelle L. Lefforge
Keyword(s):  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling

scholarly journals Shall we quarrel or deal? The argumentation processes of parents and adolescents during family conflicts

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-205
Author(s):  
Nieves Correa Rodríguez ◽  
Juan Rodríguez ◽  
Esperanza Ceballos ◽  
Miriam Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Perspective Taking ◽  
The Other ◽  
Family Conflicts ◽  
Observational Methodology ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Harmony ◽  
Conflict Frequency

The polarization of postures in conflicts among parents and adolescents involve a threat for family harmony. Skills for argumentation and perspective taking are required to enable the achievement of satisfactory agreements during the processes of negotiation. The purpose of this paper has been to analyze the skills of parents and adolescents to adopt other perspectives when discussing a conflict by means of observational methodology. The study was carried out with 29 families (constituted by father, mother and an adolescent son or daughter) who were recorded while they argued about a real conflict. Frequency and duration of five levels of perspective-taking were registered (Myself; Reasoned myself; the other like an obstacle; the other adding to me; and us) in the discourse of the family, and also in the different members of the triad, considering their interrelations. The results were showing a moderated level of perspective-taking in family discussions, predominating the levels Reasoned myself, focused on explaining own perspective, and The other like an obstacle, focused on reasons to contest the perspective of the other. In general parents showed more perspective-taking. Particularly the mothers exhibited more sensitivity with her adolescent son or daughter, providing higher levels of perspective-taking and argumentation.

Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muhyi al-Din (1164–1240)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Robinson
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Divine Essence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Creation ◽  
One And Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Southeast Spain ◽  
The Way

Ibn al-‘Arabi was a mystic who drew on the writings of Sufis, Islamic theologians and philosophers in order to elaborate a complex theosophical system akin to that of Plotinus. He was born in Murcia (in southeast Spain) in AH 560/ad 1164, and died in Damascus in AH 638/ad 1240. Of several hundred works attributed to him the most famous are al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (The Meccan Illuminations) and Fusus al-hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom). The Futuhat is an encyclopedic discussion of Islamic lore viewed from the perspective of the stages of the mystic path. It exists in two editions, both completed in Damascus – one in AH 629/ad 1231 and the other in AH 636/ad 1238 – but the work was conceived in Mecca many years earlier, in the course of a vision which Ibn al-‘Arabi experienced near the Kaaba, the cube-shaped House of God which Muslims visit on pilgrimage. Because of its length, this work has been relatively neglected. The Fusus, which is much shorter, comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who epitomize different spiritual types. Ibn al-‘Arabi claimed that he received it directly from Muhammad, who appeared to him in Damascus in AH 627/ad 1229. It has been the subject of over forty commentaries. Although Ibn al-‘Arabi was primarily a mystic who believed that he possessed superior divinely-bestowed knowledge, his work is of interest to the philosopher because of the way in which he used philosophical terminology in an attempt to explain his inner experience. He held that whereas the divine Essence is absolutely unknowable, the cosmos as a whole is the locus of manifestation of all God’s attributes. Moreover, since these attributes require the creation for their expression, the One is continually driven to transform itself into Many. The goal of spiritual realization is therefore to penetrate beyond the exterior multiplicity of phenomena to a consciousness of what subsequent writers have termed the ‘unity of existence’. This entails the abolition of the ego or ‘passing away from self’ (fana’) in which one becomes aware of absolute unity, followed by ‘perpetuation’ (baqa’) in which one sees the world as at once One and Many, and one is able to see God in the creature and the creature in God.

Unsymbolized thinking, sensory awareness, and mindreading

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell T. Hurlburt
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Descriptive Experience Sampling ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Sensory Awareness

AbstractCarruthers views unsymbolized thinking as “purely propositional” and, therefore, as a potential threat to his mindreading-is-prior position. I argue that unsymbolized thinking may involve (non-symbolic) sensory aspects; it is therefore not purely propositional, and therefore poses no threat to mindreading-is-prior. Furthermore, Descriptive Experience Sampling lends empirical support to the view that access to our own propositional attitudes is interpretative, not introspective.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document