作为政治实践的“同情”:同情、审议民主与社会结构

在关于审议民主的讨论中,情感被认为:有损于认知,影响人们的判断;是主观的、个体的,难以形成普遍性的道德规范;会阻碍共识的达成。但关于情感的新的理解,为我们重新看待情感在政治生活中的意义提供了契机。本文关注的是同情在审议民主中的意义,在现有研究的基础上,将同情视为一个过程和一种实践,而不仅仅是一种心理机制。同情能够影响个体的判断,是健全理性的必要构成部分。情感有助于"角色承担",形成普遍化的立场和规范。同情也为我们重新设想"多元公众"提供了视角。但不平等的社会结构、距离、心理机制等因素都有可能阻碍同情的发生。"他者"的问题是政治实践所处理的重要议题。随着"他者"问题的凸显,作为政治实践的同情在未来的政治生活中将会扮演更为重要的角色。     

Communication and Cognition: The Social Beyond Language,Interaction and Culture

Cognition theories describe the social with terms like language, interaction or culture, whose theoretical status has also been discussed in modern sociology. These concepts are not well-positioned to understand the emergence and autonomy of social orders. Sociological theory of self-referential systems can be useful to reconstruct the bottom-up process which contributes to the emergence of the social as communication as well as to describe the way in which society exerts downward causation upon cognitive phenomena. The core of this theory is the systemic category of meaning as a shared horizon for psychic and social systems.     

Improving the Accuracy of Group Judgment: A Process Intervention Combining Group Facilitation,Social Judgment Analysis,and Information Technology

Interacting groups fail to make judgments as accurate as those of their most capable members due to problems associated with both interaction processes and cognitive processing. Group process techniques and decision analytic tools have been used with groups to combat these problems. While such techniques and tools do improve the quality of group judgment, they have not enabled groups to make judgments more accurate than those of their most capable members on tasks that evoke a great deal of systematic bias. A new intervention procedure that integrates group facilitation, social judgment analysis, and information technology was developed to overcome more fully the problems typically associated with interaction processes and cognitive processing. The intervention was evaluated by testing the hypothesis that groups using this new procedure can establish judgment policies for cognitive conflict tasks that are more accurate than the ones produced by any of their members. An experiment involving 16 four- and five-member groups was conducted to compare the accuracy of group judgments with the accuracy of the judgments of the most capable group member. A total of 96 participants (48 males and 48 females) completed the individual part of the task; 71 of these participants worked in groups. Results indicated that the process intervention enabled small, interacting groups to perform significantly better than their most capable members on two cognitive conflict tasks (p < .05). The findings suggest that Group Decision Support Systems that integrate facilitation, social judgment analysis, and information technology should be used to improve the accuracy of group judgment.     

Taking Talk Seriously: Religious Discourse as Social Practice

Talk is easily regarded as having lesser value in studies of social phenomena than action, interaction, and organization. Yet talk is an important way in which humans act, interact, and organize themselves. In this article, I examine how talk has been used in recent decades in the study of religion and in related work on culture and institutions. I argue that careful empirical examination of talk has already significantly increased our understanding of both the micro and macro processes involved in the construction of social life. I discuss four objections to taking talk seriously and show that these objections should not deter investigations in which talk plays a central role. I offer examples of recent work that poses new conceptual and theoretical questions, complements quantitative studies, and provides insights about changing historical and contemporary social conditions.     

Beyond Theory and Practice: A Postmodern Perspective

The insights of chaos theory and postmodernism can be applied by therapists to resolve the apparent conflict between theory and practice. Using the example of the modern scientist, the argument is made that for therapy to have integrity the therapist needs a theoretical foundation. This theoretical orientation, however, is tempered by a postmodern perspective that recognizes the finite nature of all theories. The therapist is encouraged to have a theoretical orientation, but not to become that orientation.     

实践、艺术与自由--马克思实践概念的再理解

近年来 ,在对马克思实践概念的讨论中 ,马克思实践概念与亚里士多德实践概念的重大不同 ,格外为人们所重视。有人据此批评了马克思对亚里士多德的背离 ,有人则为之辩护。但无论是批评还是辩护 ,似乎都忘记追问一下两位实践哲学大师关于实践概念的不同规定是如何产生的 ,马克思是基于什么考虑而采取了与亚里士多德完全不同的实践概念 ,这种不同后面是否还有相同的东西 ,以及这种不同又意味着什么。而在讨论中人们之所以将如此复杂而重大的理论问题简单化 ,在我看来 ,恐怕主要地导因于论者往往忽略了一个至关重要的因素 ,那就是艺术活动在亚里…     

The Social Authority of Paradigms as Group Commitments: Rehabilitating Kuhn with Recent Social Philosophy

By linking the conceptual and social dynamics of change in science, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions proved tremendously fruitful for research in science studies. But Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability provoked strong criticism from philosophers of science. In this essay I show how Raimo Tuomela’s Philosophy of Sociality illuminates and strengthens Kuhn’s model of scientific change. After recalling the central features and problems of Kuhn’s model, I introduce Tuomela’s approach. I then show (a) how Tuomela’s conception of group ethos aligns with Kuhn’s notion of paradigms as group commitments, and (b) how Tuomela’s distinction between I-mode and we-mode forms of collective intentionality can capture the shifting paradigmatic commitments in Kuhn’s model of change as a cycle of normal and revolutionary science. But Tuomela’s analysis does not rely on meaning holism, and thus does not involve the problematic notion of incommensurability that burdened Kuhn’s analysis.     

Beyond Support: Group Psychotherapy with Low-Income Mothers

A review of the functioning of a group for low-income mothers during a 3-year period suggests that a positive therapeutic outcome can be achieved in spite of unorthodox group structural configurations and processes. General psychosocial characteristics of the target population are delineated, and techniques are described which are intended to enable members to participate and benefit from a group experience which includes significant exploration of interpsychic material. Case illustrations are offered of psychodynamic formulations and process interventions. Group leadership is examined, and it is suggested that a flexible, active, and autonomous stance on the part of leaders is a significant variable in achieving a positive group outcome.     

Beyond Humanism and Postmodernism: Theorizing a Feminist Practice

The model of feminism as humanist in practice and postmodern in theory is inadequate. Feminist practice and theory directly inform each other to displace both humanist and postmodern conceptions of the subject. An examination of feminism's use of rights discourse suggests that feminist practice questions the humanist conception’ of the subject as a self-identity. Likewise, feminist theory undermines the postmodern emphasis on the constitutive instability and indeterminacy of the subject.