Merleau‐Ponty and the Phenomenological Reduction

It is commonly believed that Merleau‐Ponty rejected Husserl's phenomenological reduction in favour of his existentialist account of être au monde. I show that whilst Merleau‐Ponty rejected what he saw as the transcendental idealist context in which Husserl presents the reduction, he nevertheless accepts the heart of it, the epoché, as a methodological principle. Contrary to a number of Merleau‐Ponty scholars, être au monde is perfectly compatible with the epoché, and Merleau‐Ponty endorses both. I also argue that it is a mistake to think that Merleau‐Ponty's liberal use of the results of empirical psychology signifies a rejection of the epoché. A proper understanding of his views on the relation between phenomenology and psychology is that, at least in Merleau‐Ponty's eyes, the methods of phenomenology and the empirical sciences are largely similar. I conclude that we have every reason to think that Merleau‐Ponty accepted Husserl's demand that the phenomenologist place the world in brackets.     

Grounding and anchoring: on the structure of Epstein’s social ontology

Brian Epstein’s The Ant Trap is a praiseworthy addition to literature on social ontology and the philosophy of social sciences. Its central aim is to challenge received views about the social world – views with which social scientists and philosophers have aimed to answer questions about the nature of social science and about those things that social sciences aim to model and explain, like social facts, objects and phenomena. The received views that Epstein critiques deal with these issues in an overly people-centered manner. After all, even though social facts and phenomena clearly involve individual people arranged in certain ways, we must still spell out how people are involved in social facts and phenomena. There are many metaphysical questions about social properties, relations, dependence, constitution, causation, and facts that cannot be answered (for instance) just be looking at individual people alone. In order to answer questions about (e.g.) how one social entity depends for its existence on another, we need different metaphysical tools. Epstein thus holds that social ontological explanations would greatly benefit from making use of the theoretical toolkit that contemporary analytical metaphysics has to offer. He focuses specifically on two metaphysical instruments: grounding and anchoring. This paper examines Epstein’s understanding and use of these tools. I contend that Epstein is exactly right to say that contemporary metaphysics contains many theoretical instruments that can be fruitfully applied to social ontological analyses. However, I am unconvinced that Epstein’s tools achieve what they set out to do. In particular, I will address two issues: (1) How is grounding for Epstein meant to work? (2) Is anchoring distinct from grounding, and a relation that we need in social ontology?     

Toward the “overthrow of Platonism”: Processist critical social ontology and ameliorative discourse

In this article, I argue that, for the purpose of developing an effective critical social ontology about gender groups, it is not simply sufficient to carve gender groups at their joints: one must have in view whether the metaphysical categories we use to make sense of gender groups are prone to ideological distortion and vitiation. The norms underpinning a gender group's constitution as a type of social class and the norms involved in gender identity attributions, I propose, provide compelling reason to think critical social ontological discourse is more processist-orientated, rather than substantival-orientated. The advantages of a processist critical social ontology of gender groups are that, unlike substance-discourse, process-discourse recognizes how gender group talk and gender identity talk are often messy and therefore require a conceptual scheme that can transform vocabulary for the emancipatory purpose of ending oppression, domination, and marginalization.     

Forty years on: Anti‐naturalism,and problems of social experiment and piecemeal social reform

In The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper attacked a number of anti‐naturalistic doctrines while advocating a program of piecemeal social reform. However, recent work in social science, and especially in the evaluation of social programs and social reforms, has exposed difficulties that have led many scientists to fall back on one or other of these same anti‐naturalistic positions. It is suggested that Popper's strategy for dealing with anti‐naturalism is no longer efficacious, although the difficulties in contemporary social science do not warrant the abandonment of naturalism.     

Discussion: Toward a social‐constructivist view of the psychoanalytic situation

The three papers by Modell, Aron, and Greenberg are discussed in terms of their relationship to a new paradigm for understanding the psychoanalytic situation. The paradigm is called social‐construct‐ivist to capture both the idea of the analyst's participation and the idea of construction of meaning. It is argued that these theorists, as well as many of the authors they cite as part of a broad movement in the field, do not consistently meet the criteria for this paradigm, although they seem to be aiming for it. An important source of inconsistency and confusion derives from the confounding of the two axes: drive‐relational and positivist‐constructivist. Many relational theorists who hold fast to the idea that analysts can grasp the truth of both their own experience and that of the patient are no closer to the constructivist point of view than was Freud. The call by Aron and Greenberg for greater attention to the patient's resisted experience of the analyst's subjectivity is discussed in terms of its potential benefits and problems. The ritualized asymmetry of the psychoanalytic situation is said to have important functions, including prevention of excessive involvement and protection of the unobjectionable positive transference and of a degree of idealization. Modell's notion of paradox, which makes the therapeutic relationship seem “real”; and “unreal”; at the same time, is seen as a special instance of the always precarious social construction of reality. It is argued, moreover, that the social and individual aspects of experience are interdependent. Neither is reducible to the other, and both should be understood, like many other issues in the new paradigm, in terms of a dialectical interplay of figure and ground in experience.     

Post‐modernism and social evolution: An inquiry

Post‐Modernism, according to critics and philosophers, is a linguistic theory emphasizing self‐referentiality. Practicing novelists define it functionally as a reflexive activity in which messages are folded back upon their media of communication. Applied to the symbol systems recording information for guiding the behaviors that structure societies, termed cognitive maps,” self‐referentiality and reflexivity combine in a co‐evolutionary model that offers hints about the creation of societal information. Although left‐ and right‐wing ideologists lament the Post‐Modernist abandonment of ultimate “reality,” this paper argues that, to preserve adaptive flexibility, extremely complex societies need to map themselves and their environments following a Post‐Modernist model.     

Virtue ethics and modern society—A response to the thesis of the modern predicament of virtue ethics

The revival of modern Western virtue ethics presents the question of whether or not virtue ethics is appropriate for modern society. Ethicists believe that virtue ethics came from traditional society, to which it conforms so well. The appearance of the market economy and a utilitarian spirit, together with society’s diversification, is a sign that modern society has arrived. This also indicates a transformation in the moral spirit. But modern society has not made virtues less important, and even as modern life has become more diversified, rule-following ethics have taken on even greater importance. Modern ethical life is still the ethical life of individuals whose self-identity contains the identity of moral spirit, and virtues have a very important influence on the self-identical moral characters. Furthermore, modern society, which is centered around utilitarianism, makes it apparent that rules themselves are far from being adequate and virtues are important. Virtues are a moral resource for modern people to resist modern evils.     

Settling on what we are: The central place of the sense‐of‐self in education,and the implication of the concepts of the teleon and telentropy for the development of the sense‐of‐self

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the centrality of the development of a person's sense‐of‐self in his or her personal growth, and so to justify why educators should deliberately focus the attention of learners on the development of their own senses‐of‐self.

We describe the sense‐of‐self as a person's working hypothesis of what he or she is, as a functioning being. (This is in contrast to the notion of self‐concept, which is composed of the beliefs and evaluations that one has about oneself as a person in a social context.)

To illustrate the centrality of the sense‐of‐self we introduce two associated concepts—the teleon and telentropy. Teleons are “purposeful action patterns,” which may be regarded as the defining characteristic of any living system, including human beings.

Telentropy is similar to entropy (encountered in physics and chemistry), but instead of dealing with the level of disorder in externally described systems, it represents the level of informational confusion existing within an organism regarding its own true nature.

We discuss the implications of the concepts “teleon” and “telentropy” for a person's educability, using examples from daily life and educational institutions.

We provide a number of suggestions for the revising of educational practice to foster the development of the sense‐of‐self in learners. This we demonstrate to have potentially beneficial effects of the general stress levels of society.     

AIDS and ‘dirt’: Reflections on the ethics of ritual cleanliness

AIDS and the responses and attitudes it evokes surpass the analytic abilities of standard bioethics. These responses and attitudes are explored in terms of literary and anthropological categories, such as dirt, disorder, pollution and ritual cleanliness. Implications for medical education are suggested.     

Learning to cheat: The interaction of moral‐development and social learning theories

A possible interaction between moral‐development levels and social learning variables is tested with self‐report data on test cheating from 175 college students. Among those at lower developmental levels, peer reactions best explain cheating behavior. For those at middle development levels, internalized definitions are most explanatory. Among those with more autonomous moralities, no pattern of social variables emerges to explain cheating.     

Attentional dysfunction, social perception, and social competence: what is the nature of the relationship?

The aim of this study was to examine the nature of the relationship between attentional dysfunction and social competence deficits in patients with schizophrenia. Attentional functioning, social perception, and social competence were assessed in 56 inpatients. Measures of vigilance and span of apprehension were administered to assess attentional functioning. Social perception was assessed with an audiovisual measure of affect recognition. Social competence was rated from a role-play task. Span of apprehension and auditory vigilance emerged as specific predictors of social competence. Affect recognition was tested as a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between attentional dysfunction and social competence. Affect recognition was found to moderate the relationship between span of apprehension and social competence.     

The “Manifesto” of New-Confucianism and the revival of virtue ethics

In 1958, a group of New-Confucians issued “A Manifesto for a Re-Appraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture.” Equally in 1958, the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe published her classical paper “Modern Moral Philosophy.” These two papers have the same target — modern Western morality — and the solutions they proposed respectively. Yet Anscombe’s paper did not mention Confucianism, and the “Manifesto” ignored Aristotelian tradition of virtue. Furthermore, from 1960s to 1990s, the revival movement of Confucianism and the revival movement of Aristotelian ethics have not had much dialogue. This paper seeks to explain this phenomenon by comparing these two historically important documents. In particular it tries to understand why the “Manifesto” fails to see the similarities between Aristotle and Confucius. Translated by Lei Yongqiang and polished by Yu Jiyuan from Shandong Daxue Xuebao 山东大学学报 (Journal of Shandong University), 2007, (1): 1–9     

Journal review: Including the critical‐social function into psychology

PsychCritique: The International Journal of Critical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1985. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.     

From individual to social and relational dimensions in asylum-seekers’ narratives: A multidimensional approach

Taking a psychodynamic perspective, the present exploratory study proposes an integrated approach to explore the forced migratory experience, focusing simultaneously on mental health risk and protective factors and on the quality of the subjective experience of migration. We aimed to evaluate trauma and protective factors and to explore in-depth representations and meanings asylum seekers hosted in Italy attribute to their experiences. Levels of trauma and resilience were first evaluated for twenty asylum seekers hosted in two Reception Centres; then, in-depth interviews were administered. Six out of twenty participants presented with symptoms of trauma and all presented with moderately high resilience levels. The interviews were analysed using a quality-quantitative methodology via T-Lab software, and showed four thematic clusters: A godforsaken place; From death to life across the sea; Memories from the past; Searching for a land of care. In line with the identity fracture highlighted in psychodynamic literature, our results show a breakdown between the deeper and original aspects of participants’ identity and their new cultural identity as migrants, which has many social components. Reflections on the implications of the study will be outlined.     

The importance of social structure and social interaction in stereotype consensus and content: is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

This paper addresses the hypothesis derived from self‐categorization theory (SCT) that the relationship between groups and stereotyping will be affected by the social structural conditions within which group interaction occurs. A mixed design experiment (n=56) measured low‐status groups' stereotypes and preferences for conflict with a high‐status outgroup prior to and after within‐group discussion across varying social structural conditions. Over time, participants in [open] conditions consensualized around positive conceptions of the outgroup and endorsed acceptance of their own [low status] position. However, in [closed] conditions participants consensualized around positive conceptions of the ingroup, negative conceptions of the outgroup, and tended towards preferences for collective protest. It is argued that the data support S‐CT's contention that stereotyping and group processes are fundamentally interlinked and that neither can be properly understood in isolation from the dynamics of the surrounding intergroup context. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.