Understanding social suffering: a phenomenological investigation of the experience of inequality

As global market conditions erode traditional forms of solidarity, there is evidence of psychological disturbance among a number of social groups as a direct result. This paper investigates this issue among a disadvantaged working‐class group in South Yorkshire (England) and argues that understanding emerging forms of social suffering requires both a social and a person‐centred approach that transcends normal clinical/psycho‐analytic accounts. The attempt here is to create well‐founded terms of reference that will support investigators who seek to embed agents' case histories in a social‐psychological framework as they set about illuminating social pathologies. The paper attempts to trace the contours of pathology holistically by following its traces as they are manifest in everyday experience and articulated in conversation; thus putting agents' everyday perceptions of the data at the heart of this account. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On Dynamic Topological and Metric Logics

We investigate computational properties of propositional logics for dynamical systems. First, we consider logics for dynamic topological systems (W.f), fi, where W is a topological space and f a homeomorphism on W. The logics come with ‘modal’ operators interpreted by the topological closure and interior, and temporal operators interpreted along the orbits {w, f(w), f² (w), ˙˙˙} of points w ε W. We show that for various classes of topological spaces the resulting logics are not recursively enumerable (and so not recursively axiomatisable). This gives a ‘negative’ solution to a conjecture of Kremer and Mints. Second, we consider logics for dynamical systems (W, f), where W is a metric space and f and isometric function. The operators for topological interior/closure are replaced by distance operators of the form ‘everywhere/somewhere in the ball of radius a, ‘for a ε Q ⁺. In contrast to the topological case, the resulting logic turns out to be decidable, but not in time bounded by any elementary function.     

Philosophy in the Act: The Socio-Political Relevance of Mamardašvili’s Philosophizing

Although topics in social and political philosophy might not be the first to associate with Mamarda?vili, it is argued in this paper that key concepts in his thought, viz. the concepts of form, thought, and culture come together, in the 1980s in particular, in a notion of civil society that goes deeper than that of many of his contemporaries. The relevance of his philosophy at this point is intensified by the specific nature of Soviet philosophical culture, but, it is argued, extends well beyond that, fully justifying his honorary title of “Georgian Socrates”.     

Social Identity and Spatial Behaviour: The Relationship between National Category Salience, the Sense of Home, and Labour Mobility across National Boundaries

This study explores the impact of manipulating the salience of national categories upon the willingness of highly identifying Scots to take up either short-term or long-term jobs in Scotland as compared to England. The results support the hypotheses (a) that high-identifying Scots increase preference for intra- over extranational locations when national categories are salient, (b) that this effect is fully mediated by "fitting in"—that is, the sense of being "at home" in Scottish as compared to English locations, and (c) that these relationships only hold for long-term as opposed to short-term jobs. We discuss these results in terms of the impact of identity definitions upon spatialised action and the economic/political importance of this relationship.     

Consciousness and topologically structured phenomenal spaces

There are strong reasons to believe that our conscious inner life is structured, suggested both by introspection as well as scientific psychology. One of the most salient structural characteristics of conscious experiences is known as unity of consciousness. In this contribution, we wish to demonstrate how features of experience that pertain to the unity of consciousness could be made precise in terms of mathematical relations that hold between phenomenal objects.Based on phenomenological considerations, we first outline three such features. These are (i) environmental embedding, (ii) the mutual constraint between local and global representations, and (iii) a top-down process of object formation in consciousness. We then introduce a formal model based on the notion of phenomenal space, defined in terms of a set of quasi-elementary and extended entities. We describe the structure of phenomenal space by appealing to mereological and topological concepts, and we outline a projector-based calculus to account for the idea that the structure of phenomenal space is ultimately dynamical.Using the above concepts, one could approach the mind-matter problem by relating environmentally embedded agents to topologically well-defined objects that result from decompositions of phenomenal space. We conclude our discussion by putting it into the context of some recent conceptual questions that appear in cognitive science and consciousness studies. We opt for the possibility to regard the phenomenon of consciousness not in terms of a singular transition that happens between “brain” and “mind” but rather in terms of a series of transitions between structured layers of experience.     

“易得性启发式”与决策框架对风险决策倾向的影响

研究目的:探讨易得性启发式对风险决策认知过程的影响,以及易得性启发式与决策框架相互作用下的风险投资行为特点。方法:采用2×2×7混合实验设计和情境实验。结果:成功结果的易得性启发式导致对风险决策问题采用自上而下加工,失败结果为自下而上加工;成功结果时投资倾向为风险趋向,失败结果为风险规避;易得性启发式与决策框架共同影响风险投资倾向。结论:易得性启发式影响风险决策的认知加工过程,并与决策框架对风险投资倾向产生交互作用。     

Transit Space: No Place is Nowhere

This article deals with representations of one specific city, Århus, Denmark, especially its central district. The analysis is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Skåde Bakker and Fedet, two well-off neighborhoods. The overall purpose of the project is to study perceptions of space and the interaction of cultural, social, and spatial organizations, as seen from the point of view of people living in Skåde Bakker and Fedet. The focus is on the city dwellers’ representations of the central district of Århus with specific reference to the concept of transit space. When applied to various Århusian locations, this might highlight unforeseen meanings and paradoxes.     

虚拟空间语言学研究现状和展望

传统空间语言学研究范式已经难以适应符号学当前研究的需要,本文探讨了以虚拟现实技术为支持的虚拟空间语言学的现存研究范例及其在下列七大方面的创新点 ：兼顾高内部效度和外部效度、保证个人空间的无意识加工特性、可精确控制非言语行为额外变量、保证凝视的平衡作用、实现拥挤压力源的实验研究、实现对实验环境和实验刺激精确的可重复性、优化传统数据收集方法。最终提出了该创新研究范式在本土化符号学和跨文化非言语交际学研究领域中所呈现出的重要理论价值和实践意义。