scholarly journals The Mind of the Political and Social Animal

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nerijus Stasiulis

In this article I present the outline of Filosofija. Sociogija 30(3) the articles of which I see as mainly centering around the issue of Man as placed and interacting within social, cultural and political contexts. However, the discussion of the social or political is generally nourished by metaphysical or epistemological issues or insights. The human mind deals with the fundamental questions concerning human nature, the existence or the metaphysical structure of the world, the status of cognition in general and science/ technology in particular. The articles merge into a choir signalling the inescapably social and political mode of our consciousness.

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-594
Author(s):  
Abdel Wahab Elmesseri

The definition of secularism as the separation of church and statehas gained currency and has become more or less universallyaccepted, probably because of its tameness. It confines the secularizingprocesses to the political and economic realms. Although it couldbe extended to cover what is commonly called the realm of "publiclife," it never goes beyond that. The term suggests that processes ofsecularization are explicit and quite identifiable, and that an individual'sprivate life (i.e., dreams and nightmares, tastes and aestheticsensibilities) can be hermetically sealed off and thus remain free ofthe ravages of secularism.One glance at life in the modern West demonstrates the fallacy ofthis assumption. The state, far from staying out of the realm of publiclife, has penetrated deeper and deeper and into to the farthest comersof our private lives. The corporations and pleasure industries haveinfiltrated our dreams, have shaped our images of ourselves, and havecontrolled the very direction of our libidos.Like most, or probably all, world outlooks, secularism revolvesaround three elements: God, humanity, and nature (nature is hereafterreferred to as "nature-matter" in order to emphasize the philosophicaldimension of the concept and to dispel the romantic aura that hassurrounded it and weakened its analytical and explanatory power).The attitude of God-is He transcendent or immanent; is He abovenature and humanity and history or immanent in (namely reducibleto) them-is what defines the status of a human being in the universeand hisher relationship to nature-matter.Secularism declares that it is immaterial whether or not God exists,for He has very little to do with the formulation of our epistemological,ethical, aesthetic, and signifying systems. If God exists, Hetakes two extreme forms: a) He could be too transcendent and removedfrom humanity and nature, indifferent to human suffering, orb) He could be seen as completely immanent in both humanity andnature (or in either) and as having no existence separate from them.This view, which is the more common of the two, is known as immanence.Immanence implies that a) the world as given has within it allthat is necessary for its full understanding and utilization, and b) thatthe human mind is so equipped that it could acquire all of the knowledgenecessary for a full understanding of, and dominance over,nature. If nature is autonomous and self-sufficient, then so is thehuman mind. This duality (or dualism) produced two orientationswithin the same secular outlook: ...


1970 ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Azza Charara Baydoun

Women today are considered to be outside the political and administrative power structures and their participation in the decision-making process is non-existent. As far as their participation in the political life is concerned they are still on the margins. The existence of patriarchal society in Lebanon as well as the absence of governmental policies and procedures that aim at helping women and enhancing their political participation has made it very difficult for women to be accepted as leaders and to be granted votes in elections (UNIFEM, 2002).This above quote is taken from a report that was prepared to assess the progress made regarding the status of Lebanese women both on the social and governmental levels in light of the Beijing Platform for Action – the name given to the provisions of the Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The above quote describes the slow progress achieved by Lebanese women in view of the ambitious goal that requires that the proportion of women occupying administrative or political positions in Lebanon should reach 30 percent of thetotal by the year 2005!


Author(s):  
Hallie M. Franks

In the Greek Classical period, the symposium—the social gathering at which male citizens gathered to drink wine and engage in conversation—was held in a room called the andron. From couches set up around the perimeter of the andron, symposiasts looked inward to the room’s center, which often was decorated with a pebble mosaic floor. These mosaics provided visual treats for the guests, presenting them with images of mythological scenes, exotic flora, dangerous beasts, hunting parties, or the specter of Dionysos, the god of wine, riding in his chariot or on the back of a panther. This book takes as its subject these mosaics and the context of their viewing. Relying on discourses in the sociology and anthropology of space, it argues that the andron’s mosaic imagery actively contributed to a complex, metaphorical experience of the symposium. In combination with the ritualized circling of the wine cup from couch to couch around the room and the physiological reaction to wine, the images of mosaic floors called to mind other images, spaces, or experiences, and, in doing so, prompted drinkers to reimagine the symposium as another kind of event—a nautical voyage, a journey to a foreign land, the circling heavens or a choral dance, or the luxury of an abundant past. Such spatial metaphors helped to forge the intimate bonds of friendship that are the ideal result of the symposium and that make up the political and social fabric of the Greek polis.


Author(s):  
Xueli Wei ◽  
Lijing Li ◽  
Fan Zhang

Pumping elephantThe COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the lives of people around the world in millions of ways . Due to this severe epidemic, all countries in the world have been affected by all aspects, mainly economic. It is widely discussed that the COVID-19 outbreak has affected the world economy. When considering this dimension, this study aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world economy, socio-economics, and sustainability. In addition, the research focuses on multiple aspects of social well-being during the pandemic, such as employment, poverty, the status of women, food security, and global trade. To this end, the study used time series and cross-sectional analysis of the data. The second-hand data used in this study comes from the websites of major international organizations. From the analysis of secondary data, the conclusion of this article is that the impact of the pandemic is huge. The main finding of the thesis is that the social economy is affected by the pandemic, causing huge losses in terms of economic well-being and social capital.


Economies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Dmitriy G. Rodionov ◽  
Evgenii A. Konnikov ◽  
Magomedgusen N. Nasrutdinov

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused a transformation of virtually all aspects of the world order today. Due to the introduction of the world quarantine, a considerable share of professional communications has been transformed into a format of distance interaction. As a result, the specific weight of traditional components of the investment attractiveness of a region is steadily going down, because modern business can be built without the need for territorial unity. It should be stated that now the criteria according to which investors decide if they are ready to invest in a region are dynamically transforming. The significance of the following characteristics is increasingly growing: the sustainable development of a region, qualities of the social environment, and consistency of the social infrastructure. Thus, the approaches to evaluating the region’s investment attractiveness must be transformed. Moreover, the investment process at the federal level involves the determination of target areas of regional development. Despite the universal significance of innovative development, the region can develop much more dynamically when a complex external environment is formed that complements its development model. Interregional interaction, as well as an integrated approach to innovative development, taking into account not only the momentary effect, but also the qualitative long-term transformation of the region, will significantly increase the return on investment. At the same time, the currently existing methods for assessing the investment attractiveness of the region are usually heuristic in nature and are not universal. The heuristic nature of the existing methods does not allow to completely abstract from the subjectivity of the researcher. Moreover, the existing methods do not take into account the cyclical properties of the innovative development of the region, which lead to the formation of a long-term effect from the transformation of the regional environment. This study is aimed at forming a comprehensive methodology that can be used to evaluate the investment attractiveness of a certain region and conclude about the lines of business that should be developed in it as well as to find ways to increase the region’s investment attractiveness. According to the results of the study, a comprehensive methodology was formed to evaluate the region’s investment attractiveness. It consists of three key indicators, namely, the level of the region’s investment attractiveness, the projected level of the region’s investment attractiveness, and the development vector of the region’s investment attractiveness. This methodology is based on a set of indicators that consider the status of the economic and social environment of the region, as well as the status of the innovative and ecological environment. The methodology can be used to make multi-dimensional conclusions both about the growth areas responsible for increasing the region’s innovative attractiveness and the lines of business that should be developed in the region.


2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-54
Author(s):  
Maria Virginia Filomena CREMASCO

This essay consists of the author’s theoretical examination in the Selection Process of Assistant Professor for the Department of Psychology at the Federal University of Paraná, submitted in June, 2002. It succinctly presents contributions to psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s doctoral thesis of 1945, entitled “Phenomenology of Perception.” Merleau-Ponty sets out to discover original meanings as a road for perceiving human understanding. In his proposal, rationality takes on the status of science by preserving both subject and object. In other words, one finds in the world what it is fact and, on this basis, what perceptions can be confirmed or denied. Merleau-Ponty re-posits Husserl’s transcendental question: based on the natural and the social we discover the ambiguity of life, of being “in the” world and being “of the” world. We are questioned by it and we are free to choose. Contributions to psychology are discussed based on Merleau-Ponty’s perspective of the organization of the perspective field carried out by subject-body in situation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joerg Fingerhut

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.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo T Perez-Rivera ◽  
Christopher Torres Lugo ◽  
Alexis R Santos-Lozada

Between July 13-24, 2019 the people of Puerto Rico took the streets after a series of corruption scandals shocked the political establishment. The social uprising resulted in the ousting of the Governor of Puerto Rico (Dr. Ricardo Rosselló, Ricky), the resignation of the majority of his staff something unprecedented in the history of Puerto Rico; this period has been called El Verano del 19 (Summer of 19). Social media played a crucial role in both the organization and dissemination of the protests, marches, and other activities that occurred within this period. Puerto Ricans in the island and around the world engaged in this social movement through the digital revolution mainly under the hashtag #RickyRenuncia (Ricky Resign), with a small counter movement under the hashtag #RickySeQueda (Ricky will stay). The purpose of this study is to illustrate the magnitude and grass roots nature of the political movement’s social media presence, as well as their characteristics of the population of both movements and their structures. We found that #RickyRenuncia was used approximately one million times in the period of analysis while #RickySeQueda barely reached 6,000 tweets. Particularly, the pervasiveness of cliques in the #RickySeQueda show concentrations of authority dedicated to its propagation, whilst the #RickyRenuncia propagation was much more distributed and decentralized with little to no interaction between significant nodes of authority. Noteworthy was the role of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States of America and around the world, contributing close to 40% of all geo-located tweets. Finally, we found that the Twitter followers of the former governor had indicators of being composed of two distinct populations: 1) those active in social media and 2) those who follow the account but who are not active participants of the social network. We discuss the implications of these findings on the interpretation of emergence, structure and dissemination of social activism and countermovement to these activities in the context of Puerto Rico.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Kelsey

Why is the human mind able to perceive and understand the truth about reality; that is, why does it seem to be the mind's specific function to know the world? Sean Kelsey argues that both the question itself and the way Aristotle answers it are key to understanding his work De Anima, a systematic philosophical account of the soul and its powers. In this original reading of a familiar but highly compressed text, Kelsey shows how this question underpins Aristotle's inquiry into the nature of soul, sensibility, and intelligence. He argues that, for Aristotle, the reason why it is in human nature to know beings is that 'the soul in a way is all beings'. This new perspective on the De Anima throws fresh and interesting light on familiar Aristotelian doctrines: for example, that sensibility is a kind of ratio (logos), or that the intellect is simple, separate, and unmixed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095935432110538
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Rucińska

Review of psychological data of how children engage in imaginary friend play (IFP) shows that it involves a lot of explicit embodied action and interaction with surrounding people and environments. However, IFP is still seen as principally an individualistic activity, where, in addition to those interactions, the actor has to mentally represent an absent entity in imagination in order to engage in IFP. This capacity is deemed necessary because the imaginary companion is absent or not real. This article proposes a proof of concept argument that enactivism can account for complex imaginary phenomena as imaginary friend play. Enactivism proposes thinking of IFP in a fundamentally different way, as an explicitly embodied and performative act, where one does not need to mentally represent absent entities. It reconceptualizes imagination involved in IFP as strongly embodied, and proposes that play environments have present affordances for social and normative interactions that are reenacted in IFP—there is no “absence” that needs to be mentally represented first. This article argues that IFP is performed and enacted in the world without having to be represented in the mind first, which best captures the social and interactive nature of this form of play.


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