LANGUAGE BETWEEN THE WORLD AND THE MIND

METOD ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 243-268
Author(s):  
Mikhail Zabotkin
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Ferdinand De Saussure ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Structuralist Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

The article strives to explain why semiology based on the structuralist approach to language was not widely recognized as a metascience. The author views as the key reason the fact that the subject matter of linguistics was understood to be linguistic structure as immanent reality. In order to support this argument, the author examines the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev, and Emile Benveniste as not only linguistic, but also philosophical theories. The structuralist interpretation of Saussure’s theory views the structure of language as independent from the world and the human mind. The article demonstrates why it leads to the conclusion that the language sets the limits of one’s world and mind. The author shows why this conclusion generates internal contradictions in the theory and, paradoxically, casts doubt on the possibility of studying and explaining language. The article analyzes how Hjelmslev and Benveniste tried to provide theoretical solutions to these problems and why their attempts were not fully successful. It is argued that the key source of problems of this approach is the ontologization of language structure which makes explaining language possible only through deep structures that belong to the extralinguistic reality. The author shows how rejecting the ontological understanding of structure and including human subjectivity in the theory makes it possible to avoid the problems of structuralism. The article concludes with a brief overview of several theoretical frameworks which analyze language and its interconnections with the mind and extralinguistic reality without relying on the concept of structure.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Preyer
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

The study of meaning in language embraces a diverse range of problems and methods. Philosophers think through the relationship between language and the world; linguists document speakers’ knowledge of meaning; psychologists investigate the mechanisms of understanding and production. Up through the early 2000s, these investigations were generally compartmentalized: indeed, researchers often regarded both the subject matter and the methods of other disciplines with skepticism. Since then, however, there has been a sea change in the field, enabling researchers increasingly to synthesize the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology and to energize all the fields with rich new intellectual perspectives that facilitate meaningful interchange. One illustration of the trend is the publication of Lepore and Stone’s ...

Career Development Theory: An Integrated Analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Yates
Keyword(s):  
Career Choice ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Integrated Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Career Practice

Career theories are developed to help make sense of the complexity of career choice and development. The intricacy of the subject matter is such that career theories most often focus on one or two aspects of the phenomenon. As such, the challenges of integrating the theories with each other, and integrating them within career practice, are not insignificant. In this chapter, an overview of the theoretical landscape is offered that illustrates how the theories align with each other to build up a comprehensive picture of career choice and development. The chapter introduces a wide range of theoretical frameworks, spanning seven decades and numerous academic disciplines, and discusses the most well-known theorists alongside less familiar names. The chapter is structured around four concepts: identity, environment, career learning, and psychological career resources. Suggestions are offered for the incorporation of theories in career practice.

Prayer as the “Lifeline of Theology”

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-283
Author(s):  
Marilyn McCord Adams
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Partnership Models ◽  
Human Family

The thesis of this essay is that—before writing—theologians should get to know their subject matter. Prayer is the lifeline of theology, because God is the subject matter of theology and prayer is our way of being in the world with God. Developing this idea first with human family and partnership models brings out how multifaceted prayer is, and how it is a way of being in the world not only for individuals but for Christian communities. Applying these observations to the task of theology, the essay attempts to clarify the thesis by answering the charge that it makes theology perniciously subjective.

Global Distributive Justice

2018 ◽  
pp. 102-117
Author(s):  
Simon Caney
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

This chapter explores the relevance of facts and empirical enquiry for the normative project of enquiring what principles of distributive justice, if any, apply at the global level. Is empirical research needed for this kind of enquiry? And if so, how? Claims about global distributive justice often rest on factual assumptions. Seven different ways in which facts about national, regional and global politics (and hence empirical research into global politics) might inform accounts of global distributive justice are examined. A deep understanding of the nature of global politics and the world economy (and thus empirical research on it) is needed: to grasp the implications of principles of global distributive justice; to evaluate such principles for their attainability and political feasibility; to assess their desirability; and, first, to conceptualize the subject-matter of global distributive justice and to formulate the questions that accounts of global distributive justice need to answer.

Sex Differences in Children's Art

1982 ◽  
Vol 164 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen McNiff
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
School Adjustment ◽  
Children's Art ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Psychological Differences ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Trends Over Time ◽  
The Subject

This paper examines the similarities and differences in the art of boys and girls aged six, seven, and eight. It is primarily concerned with the ways in which the subject matter of the children's art reflects sex differences in interests, introspective thought, and symbolic organization of the world. The methodology, based on the spontaneous art experience, seeks to establish that artistic activity is a viable medium through which information on the non-discursive aspects of children's thought can be obtained. Over 1800 drawings, done by 26 children, were collected. The content of the drawings was examined for its range of subject matter and for thematic trends over time. It was found that girls and boys consistently portray very different subjects. The children's art did not present stereotypic images of sex roles nor could the contrasts be specifically attributed to genetic, social, or psychological differences between the sexes, although there was some correlation with the research findings in those areas. It was concluded that girls and boys have very different expressive interests and needs which are not fully incorporated into their educational environment and which affect all areas of school adjustment.

“Stonehenge in the Mind” and “Stonehenge on the Ground”:

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Roark
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

In Stone-Heng Restored (1655), Inigo Jones, the father of English neoclassicism, used drawings, histories, and questionable logic to argue that Stonehenge was built by the ancient Romans and that it originally exhibited perfect Platonic geometries. This argument was never given much credence, but by 1725 the subject matter and the architect had received enough attention that two book-length responses (a challenge and a defense) were published, and both were then republished in a single volume alongside Jones's original text. While most Jones scholars have neglected this work because of its logical and historical shortcomings, Ryan Roark argues in “Stonehenge in the Mind” and “Stonehenge on the Ground”: Reader, Viewer, and Object in Inigo Jones's Stone-Heng Restored (1655) that it was in fact exemplary of what made Jones, for many, a protomodern architect and scholar. Rather than viewing Jones's book as an earnest attempt to prove a historical inaccuracy, Roark considers it as an exercise in formal analysis, one that set the precedent for the contemporary pedagogical trend of using geometric simplifications of existing structures as a first step in new design. Jones's idiosyncratic reading of Stonehenge belied the idea that such analysis could be anything but intensely reliant on the subjectivity of both architect and viewer.

scholarly journals Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joerg Fingerhut
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The World ◽  
Media Work ◽  
The Mind

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.

scholarly journals Double Vision, Phosphenes and Afterimages

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-32
Author(s):  
Işık Sarıhan
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Double Vision ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

Pure representationalism or intentionalism for phenomenal experience is the theory that all introspectible qualitative aspects of a conscious experience can be analyzed as qualities that the experience non-conceptually represents the world to have. Some philosophers have argued that experiences such as afterimages, phosphenes and double vision are counterexamples to the representationalist theory, claiming that they are non- representational states or have non-representational aspects, and they are better explained in a qualia-theoretical framework. I argue that these states are fully representational states of a certain kind, which I call “automatically non-endorsed representations”, experiential states the veridicality of which we are almost never committed to, and which do not trigger explicit belief or disbelief in the mind of the subject. By investigating descriptive accounts of afterimages by two qualia theorists, I speculate that the mistaken claims of some anti-representationalists might be rooted in confusing two senses of the term “seeming”.

scholarly journals Słownictwo dotyczące świata fauny i flory w Symbolice wiosennej Stefanii Ulanowskiej

2021 ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Andrejczyk
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Reconstructed Image ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Selection Of

The object of interest in this sketch is an analysis of the vocabulary indicating selected elements of the world of fauna and fl ora in Symbolika wiosenna (Spring symbolism) by Stefania Ulanowska (Kraków 1884). The collected language material is characterised by wealth and complexity of the subject matter. The indicated vocabulary has not been characterised yet. This paper employs elements of the cognitivist description of language. The selection of this method enables depiction of the relation between linguistic knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge. Language becomes an indispensible element of mental processes of the perception of the world (Tokarski 1995; Miodunka 1980). The analysis of the excerpted material clearly shows that the discussed spring symbolism usually invokes, contrary to the prototype, the semantic fi eld related to ‘śmierć’ (death) rather than ‘życie’ (life). The reconstructed image of the folk idea of spring largely deviates from the ideas established in the consciousness of language users in general, which is confi rmed by the discussed examples. It presents unit connotations that are individualised and present in the consciousness of members of small rural communities of those times. Keywords: Stefania Ulanowska – vocabulary of fauna and flora

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