scholarly journals El camino hacia una nueva antropología clínica: afectividad y corporalidad en la obra de erwin straus

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-198
Author(s):  
Sebastián Eduardo MENDL
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Phenomenological Anthropology ◽  
Object Of Study

From a hermeneutic reading of the phenomenological anthropology of Erwin Straus, current work seeks to explain the original meaning of affectivity and corporality, as constituting modalities of the relation between human existence and its world. On the first term, through a critical-historical reconsideration of certain propositions of scientific psychology and their philosophical foundations, the aim is to go back to the origin of human condition, deformed by interpretations founded on suppositions a priori, uncovering it. Precisely, opposite to current naturalistic psychology, fades off the ontological difference between man and things, from a perspective as Straus', the incarnated subjectivity, which feels itself when it feels something else, is proposed as the primary object of study of psychological science; its own action is exposed continuously to other influences, therefore, its intrinsic vulnerability. The present analysis allows us to establish a new frame, both for the future experimental investigations and for the comprehension of the experience of the alienated man. Indeed, Straus' phenomenological anthropology allows us to break off the three dualisms that support contemporary investigations of corporality and affectivity: subject-object, receptivity-activity, interior-exterior. Secondly, psychopathologies are understood as different modalities of I-world relations, fully significative in which the impossibility of existence to decide on the course of his biography prevails.

Taking the Humanities Seriously

2020 ◽  
pp. 108926802097502
Author(s):  
Barbara S. Held
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Renaissance Art ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy

As the humanities suffer decline in the academy, some psychologists have turned to them as an especially apt way to advance a psychological science that reflects lived experience more accurately and robustly. Disciplinary psychology’s adoption of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the natural sciences is often seen as a misapplication that has resulted in a science that diminishes if not demolishes subjectivity and misrepresents many. By contrast, the humanities are taken to be well positioned to infuse scientific psychology with myriad aspects of lived experience. I applaud all efforts to take the humanities seriously, by incorporating the theories, methods, and observations of the humanities in psychological science; the question is, how best to do this. On what understanding of the humanities should scientific psychology proceed? With these questions in mind, I review arguments about how psychological science can benefit from attention to the humanities. I also consider worries about a scientistic turn within the humane disciplines themselves, which turn mirrors worries about scientism in psychology. Contemporary examples of scholarship on the origins of ancient Greek philosophy and depictions of Christ in Renaissance art illustrate how the wars over truth and evidence that plague psychology are no less fierce in the humanities. I conclude that if psychologists apprehend the humanities with the critical understandings called for in psychological science, we may not only appreciate their contributions more completely and accurately, but may also deploy those contributions more substantially, in working to broaden and deepen psychological science.

Behaviourism, methodological and scientific

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.R. Gallistel
Keyword(s):  
General Purpose ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Private Data ◽  
Observable Data

Methodological behaviourism is the doctrine that the data on which a psychological science must rest are behavioural data – or, at the very least, publicly observable data – not the private data provided to introspection by the contents of an observer’s consciousness. Scientific, or, as it was sometimes called, ‘radical’, behaviourism contends that scientific psychology ought to be concerned only with the formulation of laws relating observables such as stimuli and responses; not with unobservable mental processes and mechanisms such as attention, intention, memory and motivation. Methodological behaviourism is all but universally embraced by contemporary experimental psychologists, whereas scientific behaviourism is widely viewed as a doctrine in decline. Both forms of behaviourism were articulated by J.B. Watson in 1913. B.F. Skinner was the most prominent radical behaviourist. In addition to its empiricist strictures against inferred mental mechanisms, radical behaviourism was also empiricist in its assumptions about learning, assuming that: (1) organisms have no innate principles that guide their learning; (2) learning is the result of a general-purpose process, not of a collection of mechanisms tailored to the demands of different kinds of problems; and (3) learning is a change in the relation between responses and the stimuli that control or elicit them. Many of these ideas continue to be influential, for example, in connectionism.

scholarly journals Data Diffraction: Challenging Data Integration in Mixed Methods Research

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Uprichard ◽  
Leila Dawney
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Data Integration ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
Object Of Study

This article extends the debates relating to integration in mixed methods research. We challenge the a priori assumptions on which integration is assumed to be possible in the first place. More specifically, following Haraway and Barad, we argue that methods produce “cuts” which may or may not cohere and that “diffraction,” as an expanded approach to integration, has much to offer mixed methods research. Diffraction pays attention to the ways in which data produced through different methods can both splinter and interrupt the object of study. As such, it provides an explicit way of empirically capturing the mess and complexity intrinsic to the ontology of the social entity being studied.

Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber Brian
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
The City

Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (b. c. 1578–d. 1650) is a relatively unknown figure outside of specialist academic circles, yet he has been very influential in the development of the historiography of pre-Hispanic central Mexico, or Anahuac. Born in the last quarter of the 16th century, his family had roots in Anahuac and in Spain. His mother was descended from elite native rulers of the city of Tetzcoco, while his father was a Spanish settler who worked as a Nahuatl-Spanish interpreter in the courts of Mexico City. Alva Ixtlilxochitl also served as an interpreter and as a bureaucratic official in the colonial government. During his lifetime, Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s family’s wealth and status were tied to his mother’s and grandmother’s connections to the family’s cacicazgo (landed estate) in San Juan Teotihuacan. Yet it was his ancestors from Tetzcoco who were the primary object of study in his five historical works. In four historical accounts and his magnum opus, the History of the Chichimeca Nation (2019, cited under Manuscripts, Editions, Translations), Alva Ixtlilxochitl recounts the origins, deeds, and exploits of the leaders of Tetzcoco, including the renowned Nezahualcoyotl (r. 1429–1472) and Nezahualpilli (r. 1472–1515). For these histories he relied on native sources. As he says himself in the prefatory materials to the History of the Chichimeca Nation, these sources included “painted histories and annals and the songs with which they preserved them,” and to make sense of these materials he sought out “the elders of New Spain who were renowned for their knowledge and understanding of those stories” (History of the Chichimeca Nation, p. 29). The result of Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s research and writing has left an important legacy in studies of the history of ancient Mexico. Scholars from the 17th century onward drew on Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s representations of pre-Hispanic and conquest-era Mexico to such an extent that his depictions of Tetzcoco as a center of learning and culture and his depictions of Nezahualcoyotl as a revered poet-king became standard in both academic studies and popular culture. Burgeoning scholarly interest in mestizo historians in the 1990s brought renewed attention to Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s writings and to his position as a colonial subject and author, while the rediscovery of Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s original manuscripts in the 1980s provided new material sources with which to study the creation and impact of his works. Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s own projects and his legacy represent an important reminder of how, on occasion, the stories and storytelling of native peoples survived the brutalities of conquest and colonialism.

RELATIVIZING CHAITIN'S HALTING PROBABILITY

2005 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 167-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROD DOWNEY ◽  
DENIS R. HIRSCHFELDT ◽  
JOSEPH S. MILLER ◽  
ANDRÉ NIES
Keyword(s):  
Computability Theory ◽  
Algorithmic Randomness ◽  
Jump Operator ◽  
Random Real ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Free Machine ◽  
Computable Functions ◽  
Omega Operator

As a natural example of a 1-random real, Chaitin proposed the halting probability Ω of a universal prefix-free machine. We can relativize this example by considering a universal prefix-free oracle machine U. Let [Formula: see text] be the halting probability of UA; this gives a natural uniform way of producing an A-random real for every A ∈ 2ω. It is this operator which is our primary object of study. We can draw an analogy between the jump operator from computability theory and this Omega operator. But unlike the jump, which is invariant (up to computable permutation) under the choice of an effective enumeration of the partial computable functions, [Formula: see text] can be vastly different for different choices of U. Even for a fixed U, there are oracles A =* B such that [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are 1-random relative to each other. We prove this and many other interesting properties of Omega operators. We investigate these operators from the perspective of analysis, computability theory, and of course, algorithmic randomness.

scholarly journals Direct-trauma model of posttraumatic syringomyelia with a computer-controlled motorized spinal cord impactor

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 797-805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnny H. Y. Wong ◽  
Xin Song ◽  
Sarah J. Hemley ◽  
Lynne E. Bilston ◽  
Shaokoon Cheng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Neurological Deficits ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Perivascular Spaces ◽  
Cavity Size ◽  
Optimal Force ◽  
Computer Controlled ◽  
Posttraumatic Syringomyelia ◽  
The Human Condition

OBJECTIVE The pathogenesis of posttraumatic syringomyelia remains enigmatic and is not adequately explained by current theories. Experimental investigations require a reproducible animal model that replicates the human condition. Current animal models are imperfect because of their low reliability, severe neurological deficits, or dissimilar mechanism of injury. The objective of this study was to develop a reproducible rodent model of posttraumatic syringomyelia using a spinal cord impactor that produces an injury that more closely mimics the human condition and does not produce severe neurological deficits. METHODS The study consisted of 2 parts. Seventy animals were studied overall: 20 in Experiment 1 and 48 in Experiment 2 after two rats with severe deficits were killed early. Experiment 1 aimed to determine the optimal force setting for inducing a cystic cavity without neurological deficits using a computer-controlled motorized spinal cord impactor. Twenty animals received an impact that ranged from 50 to 150 kDyn. Using the optimal force for producing an initial cyst determined from Experiment 1, Experiment 2 aimed to compare the progression of cavities in animals with and those without arachnoiditis induced by kaolin. Forty-eight animals were killed at 1, 3, 6, or 12 weeks after syrinx induction. Measurements of cavity size and maximum anteroposterior and lateral diameters were evaluated using light microscopy. RESULTS In Experiment 1, cavities were present in 95% of the animals. The duration of limb weakness and spinal cord cavity size correlated with the delivered force. The optimal force chosen for Experiment 2 was 75 kDyn. In Experiment 2, cavities occurred in 92% of the animals. Animals in the kaolin groups developed larger cavities and more vacuolations and enlarged perivascular spaces than those in the nonkaolin groups. CONCLUSIONS This impact model reliably produces cavities that resemble human posttraumatic syringomyelia and is suitable for further study of posttraumatic syringomyelia pathophysiology.

The Study of ‘Complex Society’ in the Middle East: A Review Essay

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Carl Salzman
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Complex Society ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Organic Solidarity ◽  
Economic Markets ◽  
Object Of Study

Anthropologists have devoted a good deal of attention recently to what they call ‘complex society’. This rather vague concept developed in contrast with ‘primitive’ or ‘simple’ society, the small-scale, isolated, local-oriented, non- literate grouping of like social parts which anthropologists made, or fancied, their primary object of study. This is Tonnies’ gemeinschaft, held together by Durkheim's ‘mechanical solidarity.’ ‘Complex society’ on the other hand, is more similar to Tonnies’ gesellschaft, bases to some degree upon Durkheim's ‘organic solidarity’; it has many differentiated parts, ingeniously interwoven into elaborate structures, with specializations and rankings and overlappings and other imaginative complications. More and more anthropologists found themselves, whatever their original intentions, involved in studies that were manifestly of ‘complex society.’ This was the result of two developments: One was the encapsulation of most ‘simple’ societies by colonial or national societies, and the concomitant engagement with government, economic markets, and development (or under development). This encapsulation was not something completely new that happened during the course of anthropological investigation, but something which had been going on and which anthropologists ‘discovered’ and began to devote attention to. The other development was the carrying of anthropological research to the areas of the ‘great civilizations’ in East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. In these areas, long-recorded histories, literate traditions, great states and empires, and sophisticated technologies belied the notion of ‘simple’ society, and raised embarrassing questions about classical anthropological methodology, ‘participant observation’ in a constricted area for one or two years.

scholarly journals The Cosine-Sine Functional Equation on Semigroups

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Ebanks
Keyword(s):  
Functional Equation ◽  
General Solution ◽  
Direct Solution ◽  
Continuous Solutions ◽  
Topological Semigroups ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Sine Functional Equation

Abstract The primary object of study is the “cosine-sine” functional equation f(xy) = f(x)g(y)+g(x)f(y)+h(x)h(y) for unknown functions f, g, h : S → ℂ, where S is a semigroup. The name refers to the fact that it contains both the sine and cosine addition laws. This equation has been solved on groups and on semigroups generated by their squares. Here we find the solutions on a larger class of semigroups and discuss the obstacles to finding a general solution for all semigroups. Examples are given to illustrate both the results and the obstacles. We also discuss the special case f(xy) = f(x)g(y) + g(x)f(y) − g(x)g(y) separately, since it has an independent direct solution on a general semigroup. We give the continuous solutions on topological semigroups for both equations.

scholarly journals Multitrophic functional diversity predicts ecosystem functioning in experimental assemblages of estuarine consumers

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan S Lefcheck ◽  
J. Emmett Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Food Web ◽  
Functional Diversity ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Functional Trait ◽  
Trophic Levels ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Experimental Investigations

The use of functional traits to explain how biodiversity affects ecosystem functioning has attracted intense interest, yet few studies have a priori altered functional diversity, especially in multitrophic communities. Here, we manipulated multivariate functional diversity of estuarine grazers and predators within multiple levels of species richness to test how species richness and functional diversity predicted ecosystem functioning in a multitrophic food web. Community functional diversity was a better predictor than species richness for the majority of ecosystem properties, based on general linear mixed effects models. Combining inferences from 8 traits into a single multivariate index increased prediction accuracy of these models relative to any individual trait. Structural equation modeling revealed that functional diversity of both grazers and predators was important in driving final biomass within trophic levels, with stronger effects observed for predators. We also show that different species drove different ecosystem responses, with evidence for both sampling effects and complementarity. Our study extends experimental investigations of functional trait diversity to a multilevel food web, and demonstrates that functional diversity can be more accurate and effective than species richness in predicting community biomass in a food web context.

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