scholarly journals Pascal Boyer: Den ganske historie om religion (nogensinde)

2003 ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Jeppe Sinding Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Partial Explanation ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Cognition And Culture ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Cognitive Study

This review article was occasioned by the publication of Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained. The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2001), the title of which left this reviewer in some doubt and intent on investigating whether Boyer’s ambition has been fulfilled. Here, it must be noted that this reviewer is generally positive about the rewarding aspects of the ‘cognitive turn’ in the study of religion and Boyer’s earlier substantial contributions to this, but he is also wary of the fallacy of ‘partial explanation’: explaining a part does not amount to an explanation of the whole.After a presentation of the reviewer’s perspective and involvement in a research group working on religious narrative, cognition and culture, a substantial step-by-step review of the contents and structure of Boyer’s argument is presented. Then follows a discussion of the central concepts of domain specificity concerning cognitive representations and the ‘counter-intuitive’ nature of religious thought and, further, Boyer’s subsequent ideas concerning rituals and the ramifications for social formations and historical developments in what he calls ‘The Full History of All Religion (ever)’. Next, the reviewer offers some ‘critical intuitions’ and questions the return of (a new mode of) psychologism in the human sciences and Boyer’s dependence upon earlier theorizing which is not clearly noted nor acknowledged, but which has consequences for the epistemic status of his project and for those who follow the same tracks in the cognitive study of religion. It turns out that the methodology is based on extreme individualistic and scientistic attitudes, where ‘higher-order’ theoretical objects are explained (away?) by lower-order phenomena. In short, Boyer (and others) stops where culture begins and, as a consequence, religion is transformed into an epiphenomenal category without any causal effects. In the chosen theoretical perspective, religions ‘mean’ nothing; there exist ‘nothing but’ the cognitive representations of individual individuals – but in this manner, the currently dominating approach in the cognitive study of religion perpetuates a Cartesian mystique and a dubious physicalist dualism concerning the mind and the objects it ‘cognizes’. Cognitive theory is definitely an advance in the study of religion but it takes more than materialist fideism to make it convincing. The work of language, culture etc. has to be accounted for more seriously and in more detail.

THE ROAD LESS INTENDED: INTEGRATING ENTREPRENEURIAL COGNITION AND RISK IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (04) ◽  
pp. 411-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAULO D. BARBOSA ◽  
JILL KICKUL ◽  
BRETT R. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intentions ◽  
Resource Base ◽  
Entrepreneurial Process ◽  
The Road ◽  
Entrepreneurial Cognition ◽  
New Business ◽  
Recent Developments

In this paper, we review recent developments in the fields of cognitive theory and risk in order to highlight generally overlooked dilemmas in entrepreneurship education. Such dilemmas concern the amount of planning necessary to succeed in creating a new business and the extent to which educators should boost students' intentions and self perceptions. We suggest that integrating research on entrepreneurial cognition and risk provides a theoretical perspective that enables the identification of these dilemmas and guides practice in a more effective and balanced way. We introduce two modes of thinking — analysis and intuition — and succinctly layout their implications in terms of risk throughout the different phases of the entrepreneurial process, including the development of entrepreneurial intentions and the passage to action. We then present an entrepreneurship education program conceived to develop both kinds of thinking and to minimize risks by providing students a knowledge-resource base that can enable them to critically examine their projects and then proceed down the road of transforming intentions into action if so desired. In presenting such a program, we show how a sequence of entrepreneurship education experiences may help to develop both the analytic and intuitive skills necessary to succeed in the different aspects of the entrepreneurial process.

scholarly journals Cross-Modal Correspondences in Non-human Mammal Communication

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 49-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria F. Ratcliffe ◽  
Anna M. Taylor ◽  
David Reby
Keyword(s):  
Mammalian Species ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Form Complex ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
Combine Information

For both humans and other animals, the ability to combine information obtained through different senses is fundamental to the perception of the environment. It is well established that humans form systematic cross-modal correspondences between stimulus features that can facilitate the accurate combination of sensory percepts. However, the evolutionary origins of the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved in these cross-modal associations remain surprisingly underexplored. In this review we outline recent comparative studies investigating how non-human mammals naturally combine information encoded in different sensory modalities during communication. The results of these behavioural studies demonstrate that various mammalian species are able to combine signals from different sensory channels when they are perceived to share the same basic features, either because they can be redundantly sensed and/or because they are processed in the same way. Moreover, evidence that a wide range of mammals form complex cognitive representations about signallers, both within and across species, suggests that animals also learn to associate different sensory features which regularly co-occur. Further research is now necessary to determine how multisensory representations are formed in individual animals, including the relative importance of low level feature-related correspondences. Such investigations will generate important insights into how animals perceive and categorise their environment, as well as provide an essential basis for understanding the evolution of multisensory perception in humans.

scholarly journals Clichés as evaluative resources: A socio-cognitive study

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-313
Author(s):  
Stella Bullo
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Analysis Tools ◽  
Cognitive Study

Abstract In this article, I explore clichés as socio-cognitive resources that enable the expression of attitudinal positioning in interaction. I examine a corpus of 150 clichés collected from a variety of publicly available sources and illustrate their function by exploring how they are used to convey evaluation in institutional meetings. By co-deploying the attitude system of the appraisal framework with socio-cognitive discourse analysis tools, I argue that clichés can be used to provoke evaluation through the socio-cognitive resources they evoke given the shared knowledge contained within them. The findings indicate that the majority of evaluative instances relate to performance or ability of human entities by reference to basic aspects of human experience contained in the socio-cognitive representations evoked. The article also finds that the provoked attitudinal values work in a cumulative way to create a flow of evaluative patterns, which, in turn, contributes to our understanding of the interpersonal function they perform, i.e. persuade, urge action and save face. The paper argues that the co-deployment of both approaches allows the investigation of clichés as resources for covertly expressing evaluation by reference to knowledge shared by the interlocutors.

scholarly journals Charles Ballyʼs paper «Syntaxe de la modalité explicite» and modern linguistics

Movoznavstvo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 318 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-51
Author(s):  
V. M. Britsуn ◽  
◽  
L. V. Anishchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
The Body ◽  
Affective Factors ◽  
Ferdinand De Saussure ◽  
Active Approach ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
The Subject

The article examines the place of Charles Ballyʼs paper «Syntaxe de la modalité explicite» in the body of work of the prominent Swiss linguist on the category of modality and identifies the role of his ideas in modern description of syntax. In Charles Ballyʼs linguistic heritage the concept of modality plays an exceptionally important role. His views o n the modal organization of the sentence are based on the theoretical perspective to describing the phenomenon of language proposed by his teacher Ferdinand de Saussure. Charles Ballyʼs theory of modality is an integral part of his general theory of enunciation. Identification of the two components in the semantic structure of the sentence, namely the modus and the dictum, becomes some kind of a bridge between Saussureʼs intellectualized grammar of language and the grammar of speech, which specifically entails the study of emotional and affective factors, and also stylistic aspects of human language. According to Charles Bally, the modus is a combination of a modal verb, which may contain a variety of shades of opinion, feeling or will, and a modal subject, which can represent a speaking subject and also other subjects. Charles Ballyʼs studies significantly influenced the interpretation of the category of modality in modern linguistics. However, not every theory based on the idea of identifying the modus and the dictum in the sentence can be theoretically convincing. Identifying the dictum with the representation of the objective, and the modus with the subjective led to unsubstantiated theoretical opposition of objective and subjective modality. Only misunderstanding of Charles Ballyʼs ideas might explain the attempts to attribute the ability to express the category of evaluation and emotionality to the modus. Charles Ballyʼs original theoretical views proved to be productive in the development of the cognitive theory of modality, which in its turn is based on other theoretical views on the phenomenon of language. Within this theory, modality is defined as a category that describes the mental-sensory differentiation of the speakerʼs thoughts in the process of sentence formation. According to the active approach to sentence interpretation, the subject of the modus in cognitive modality theory is only the speaker. The paper «Syntaxe de la modalité explicite», which Charles Bally described as a program of studies, has not lost its relevance. The task of describing the semantic shades of modality, as well as various forms of its expression, the principles of classification of modal verbs outlined in the paper as the goal of linguistics, remains largely unresolved today.

scholarly journals Cloud Computing Services

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Ratten
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Security And Privacy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Marketing Capability ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Computing Services ◽  
Cloud Computing Services

Cloud computing is an emerging service technology that has ethical and entrepreneurial implications. Due to technological innovations increasing the attention placed on cloud computing services, more people are focusing on the security and privacy issues determined by ethical guidelines and how the technology is evolving as an entrepreneurial service innovation. This paper presents a theoretical perspective on how a person adopts cloud computing. The literature on technology innovation and adoption behaviour is examined with a focus on social cognitive theory. A theoretical framework is then presented, which indicates a number of propositions to describe the intention of a person to adopt cloud computing services. The role of technology marketing capability, sustained learning and outcome expectancy are included in helping to understand the role of cloud computing applications. Suggestions for future research and practical implications are stated.

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