Positioning on the landscape of culture and mind (original) (raw)
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The paper presents a discussion on the role of Social Representations in the articulation between individual and collective dimensions of mental activity. An analysis of some concepts in the works of Wundt and Cattaneo is the starting point for a discussion of the relationship between individual processes, practices, artifacts, symbolic systems and functions of Social Representations in the development of culture and individuals. In this perspective, Social Representations could be considered a space of negotiation of the meaning. The relationship between Social Representations, symbolic systems, practices and sense making involves the elaboration of the tension between continuity and innovation, which is developed through communication and practice along time in the interaction between individual and collective minds.
The Phenomenological Background of Collective Positionality (2012)
Searle is convinced that phenomenology is inadequate to face social-ontological problems. Despite his opinion, collective intentionality in its positional effort can be explained through phenomenological reductions. Clarifying how Husserl comes to the evidence of the background within the exercise of the transcendental reduction, it has to be shown how the frame of primordinal reduction could make an inner description of the plural first-person perspective possible. Finally, some of the reasons that left Husserl to be completely overlooked in the contemporary debate on collective intentionality are exposed. The suspicion that is aroused by Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology could be dispelled if one only considers the social-ontological value of the structure of collective positionality that Husserl claims to be the condition of possibility for the experience of objectivity.
The Phenomenological Background of Collective Positionality
Phenomenology and Mind, 2012
Searle is convinced that phenomenology is inadequate to face social-ontological problems. Despite his opinion, collective intentionality in its positional effort can be explained through phenomenological reductions. Clarifying how Husserl comes to the evidence of the background within the exercise of the transcendental reduction, it has to be shown how the frame of primordinal reduction could make an inner description of the plural firstperson perspective possible. Finally, some of the reasons that left Husserl to be completely overlooked in the contemporary debate on collective intentionality are exposed. The suspicion that is aroused by Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology could be dispelled if one only considers the social-ontological value of the structure of collective positionality that Husserl claims to be the condition of possibility for the experience of objectivity.
Beams of Meaning and Semiotic Territory: Cooperation as Space-sharing
Spaces of meaning are stratified to establish congruence among those belonging to the same semiotic " beams. " Individuals may be geographically close yet unable to cooperate because they are not attuned to the same semiotic territory. Families of signs characterize each semiotic territory, whose inhabitants are linked conceptually. Symbols and metaphors produce a consensual effect among attuned participants belonging to the same beam of meaning. This neo-Aristotelian and neo-Avicennian interpretation of spaces of interaction will be reflected upon in reference to some school situations. In this chapter 1 I offer a demonstration based on two premises. The first premise is that there exist " beams " of meaning analogous to a beam of white light comprising the spectrum of colors. In fact, I would go further and suggest that beams of meaning determine cultural and social currents. The second premise, which is neo-Aristotelian, defines meaning as the space of action and intelligence, whether potential or actualized. The demonstration: time is a manifestation of this mental space. This agrees with the theory of relativity, according to which time and space are reciprocal functions. Thus meaning is produced by the collision of intelligence with space and the reconstituted temporal sequentiality that results from it. In this perspective, spaces of meaning are stratified so that they establish congruence among members of the same epistemic beam. As McLaren (1998, p. xiv) has written, " our desires are shaped by the semiotic network within subjects articulating their subjective positions. " Individuals may be close to each other geographically and yet not cooperate with each other because they do not belong to the same conceptual beam. Beams are distinguished by signs and their members linked by a shared symbolic system. The creation of this symbolic system, or of a linking metaphor, facilitates consensus and characterizes the acting mind. The acting mind is the active meaning that illuminates the passage to action from a state of potentiality, or, to use the term from scholastic
Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Social Representations
Texto & Contexto - Enfermagem, 2015
This manuscript is aimed at discussing the plural nature of the main conceptual, theoretical and methodological features of the social representations in their various manifestations. As a base to discuss the topics, we used the main texts that amalgamated the vision of the main researchers of psychology, sociology and nursing. According to Moscovici, social representations correspond to acts of thoughts in which subjects relate to the object, and that object through some process is replaced by symbols, turning it into a representation in the subject's mind. This process involves different mechanisms of contextualization, processing, construction and interpretation by sociocultural and linguistic aspects. In the transdisciplinary perspective, social representations emerge as a multidimensional field that permits questioning the nature of knowledge and the relationship individual-society, implanted in the main post-modern epistemological currents.