Literal meaning, conventional meaning and first meaning

Literal meaning is often identified with conventional meaning. In A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs Donald Davidson argues (1) that literal meaning is distinct from conventional meaning, and (2) that literal meaning is identical to what he calls first meaning. In this paper it is argued that Davidson has established (1) but not (2), that he has succeeded in showing that there is a distinction between literal meaning and conventional meaning but has failed to see that literal meaning and first meaning are also distinct. This failure is somewhat surprising, since it is through a consideration of Davidson's notion of radical interpretation that the distinction between literal meaning and first meaning becomes apparent.I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support, and to Mark Mercer, Tom Patton and Gary Wedeking for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank David Checkland, who discussed A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs with me at length some years ago.     

Personal meaning as therapy: The roots and branches of Frankl's psychology

In recent years, Victor E. Frankl, the Viennese psychiatrist who is the founder of what has come to be known as the Third Viennese School of Psychology — Freud and Adler constituting the founders of the other two schools — has emerged as the leading proponent in psychotherapeutic circles of the centrality of the experience of “meaning” in mental health.” The goal of human life, argues Frankl, is to find meaning and order in the world for “me” personally and “us” collectively — both as an individual and a social sense of purpose and orderliness of the inner and outer environment. This paper attempts to identify—within the framework of the Jewish mystical tradition — the sources and origins of Frankl's scientific constructs in psychotherapy, and their manifestations in psychoreligious therapeutics.     

Gender perspective in the context of Spanish academic psychology

The purpose of this study is to analyse the evolution of gender perspective in the context of the Spanish academic Psychology. The last three decades were analysed. In each decade, the study describes the groups and individuals who have contributed to the analysis of gender perspective in Psychology, the sponsoring institutions, and the most frequently used research strategies. Likewise, the study analyses the development of topics and areas in these three decades. The general trend shows that the interpretation of sex/gender has moved away from being considered an individual and internal factor to a more dynamic approach that analyses sex/gender through behavioural practices.     

Finding "meaning" in psychology: a lay theories approach to self-regulation, social perception, and social development

Much of psychology focuses on universal principles of thought and action. Although an extremely productive pursuit, this approach, by describing only the "average person," risks describing no one in particular. This article discusses an alternate approach that complements interests in universal principles with analyses of the unique psychological meaning that individuals find in their experiences and interactions. Rooted in research on social cognition, this approach examines how people's lay theories about the stability or malleability of human attributes alter the meaning they give to basic psychological processes such as self-regulation and social perception. Following a review of research on this lay theories perspective in the field of social psychology, the implications of analyzing psychological meaning for other fields such as developmental, cultural, and personality psychology are discussed.     

Gender differences in the person-activity fit for positive psychology interventions

Research on positive psychology interventions (PPIs) has established the value of activities such as acts of kindness, gratitude, and savoring life’s joys, for increasing individuals’ sense of well-being. Critical to the efficacy of PPIs is person-activity fit – the degree activities stem from intrinsic motivation. Although person-activity fit effects are well documented, gaps remain in our understanding of how sociodemographic variables, particularly age and gender, play a role. We investigated how gender may affect self-reported person-activity fit across three PPIs: A gratitude journal; Acts of Kindness; and Savoring life’s joys. Age was explored since the subject sample ranged widely, from 18 to 51?years. Twenty-eight men and 82 women completed person-activity fit questionnaires. A multiple analysis of variance resulted in a main effect for gender, with women showing greater person-activity fit for all three PPIs. Among women only, age correlated significantly with person-activity fit for all three PPIs, suggesting greater maturational variability among men.     

On the meaning of the notion of conflict and its study in social psychology

This study is an attempt, based on historical materialism (the science of the history of social formations), to critically analyze the notion of conflict as social psychology has defined it and as social psychology has developed it with models of non-zero sum games imported from game theory. Whether it concerns the postulate of conflict resolution (which governs this domain of social psychology), or the ideological foundations of the notion of conflict, the structure of a game of the ‘PDG’ type and the imaginary trap it orms, or even the staging which the psycho-sociologist produces in utilizing this model, it is shown that this whole proceeding is an ideological construction which functions principally as an obstacle to true scientific knowledge of the field it covers — which can be defined as constituted by the relationships between the subjective and the political — and secondly as the raw material for a theory of ideology, which is understood as having the double function of recognition and misappreciation. Both tasks demand intensive theoretical study as part of the development of storical materialism and, from that point of view, this work should be considered only as a preliminary study.     

The meaning of race in psychology and how to change it: a methodological perspective

The primary purpose of this article was to offer a methodological critique in support of arguments that racial categories should be replaced as explanatory constructs in psychological research and theory. To accomplish this goal, the authors (a) summarized arguments for why racial categories should be replaced; (b) used principles of the scientific method to show that racial categories lack conceptual meaning; (c) identified common errors in researchers' measurement, statistical analyses, and interpretation of racial categories as independent variables; and (d) used hierarchical regression analysis to illustrate a strategy for replacing racial categories in research designs with conceptual variables. Implications for changing the study of race in psychology are discussed.     

Perception,meaning, and mind

Earlier versions of this paper were read in the Philosophy department at the University of Helsinki, in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, at Vanderbilt University, at the Indiana Philosophical Association, and at the Institute for Logic and Cognitive Science at the University of Houston. I am grateful for very helpful comments on each of these occasions, and I am especially appreciative to John Haugeland, Mark Johnson, and George McClure for their comments and suggestions. Thanks, too, to Robert Solomon who urged me to amplify my claims about perceptual meaning.     

Aesthetics,information and meaning

Aesthetics has been defined relative to objective and subjective values; its historical and cultural world views are referenced. The author's view of beauty as communication is also introduced, where chance and necessity, the two antithetical realities produce the informa‐tion processes of modern time. That is, “difference” is associated with chance, the irrational, the spontaneous and the individual aspect of reality as opposed to necessity, the rational, the formal, and the universal aspects of things. Information is introduced as, the origin, as well as essence, of life. It is what produces information and is the only agent which produces both matter and psyche. Order and disorder, and the laws of “opposites” are considered building blocks of identity and difference and information. Information and Communication as an interconnecting agent are also considered a bridge between Eastern and Western philosophy, i.e., in its deconstruction of the particular into a web or field of energies in the West, and in Eastern thought in its becoming one with Nirvana or Brahman, the Sufi or the Tao, the ultimate one and all. Because goodness and truth under the influence of reason and science had failed, Eastern philosophy as an alternative to Western models is recommended. It is suggested that all that is left objectively is beauty, thus reason as basic is giving way to rules of beauty. And its principles are capable of describing man's evolution and his culture, as well as his aesthetic experience, which is nothing but information processes and communication. In conclusion, design as aesthetic communication is introduced as a model to reflect the above principles.     

Interaction,information and meaning

The possibility of a “unified theory of information” which avoids reifying information or attributing agency to it is explored using the patterned processes characteristic of self‐organization. Interactions are shown to create information from the level of quantum physics to human societies. The difference between meaningless and meaningful information is explained through the contextualizing role of systems.     

Death,meaning and tragedy

In this article, the author submits Zygmunt Bauman's analysis of post-modernity as a life strategy entailing the 'deconstruction of immortality' to critical scrutiny. ‘Deconstructing’ the striving for immortality suggests the transformation of life into a continual rehearsal of the transcience and demise of all things, the celebration of moments or instances of short-lived fame or notoriety, and the effacement of the opposition between the transient and the durable. This idea—with its implicated suggestion that everything, including life itself, loses meaning and importance, and that the striving for durable effect becomes obsolete—is found to be both logically and morally incoherent. The author suggests and develops the idea of life as tragedy within the spectre of death as key to developing a more cogent life strategy, drawing on insights from Aristotle and Nietzsche, and countering the pessimism of Schopenhauer in this regard.