Affectivity

Bioethics has begun to see the revaluation of affects in medical practice, but not all of them, and not necessarily in the sense of affects as we know them. Empathy has been accepted as important for good medical practice, but only in a way that strips it of its affectivity and thus prevents other affects, like sympathy, from being accepted. As part of a larger project that aims at revaluing the importance of affectivity in medical practice, the purpose of this paper is to develop a clinical sympathy that can serve as a trainable skill for medical professionals. While everyday sympathy may be problematic as a professional skill for physicians, this does not imply that sympathy should be entirely rejected. As a natural part of our moral psychology, sympathy is an intersubjective affect that aids in our interactions with others and our decision-making abilities. I present here a theory of clinical sympathy as an affective response to patients, in which physicians are both attuned to their affective response and understand how their affects are influencing their beliefs and judgments. In this way, clinical sympathy serves as a trainable skill that can aid physicians in their interactions with their patients.

Many philosophers have understood the representational dimension of affective states along the model of sense-perceptual experiences, even claiming the relevant affective experiences are perceptual experiences. This paper argues affective experiences involve a kind of personal level affective representation disanalogous from the representational character of perceptual experiences. The positive thesis is that affective representation is a non-transparent, non-sensory form of evaluative representation, whereby a felt valenced attitude represents the object of the experience as minimally good or bad, and one experiences that evaluative standing as having the power to causally motivate the relevant attitude. I show this view can make sense of distinctive features of affective experiences, such as their valence and connection to value in a way which moves beyond current evaluativist views of affect.

Purpose-Drawing on broaden-and-build theory and promotion-and prevention-focus theory, the authors examined the role of positive and negative affectivity (PANA) on the riskiness of investment decisions. The authors also examined the mediating impact of financial knowledge network intensity (i.e. the level of communication with financially literate others in employees' social network) on the PANA-riskiness of investment decisions relationship. Design/methodology/approach-Study 1 used a sample of undergraduate students and operationalized risk using a hypothetical investment scenario. Study 2 replicated and extended the Study 1 findings using employees and operationalized risk using their real-world investment allocations. Findings-Both Studies 1 and 2 provided support for the negative direct relationship between NA and the riskiness of investment decisions. Study 2 found PA was marginally positively related to the riskiness of investment decisions. Financial knowledge network intensity mediated the relationship between NA and the riskiness of investment decisions in Study 2. Research limitations/implications-The findings suggest that employees who see the world in a generally negative light tended to have weaker financial knowledge networks, and this may be one mechanism that explains why they make low-risk investments. Practical implications-Financial knowledge networks can provide access to critical information regarding investment opportunities. Socialization training or social mixers can be used to help employees build and improve their financial knowledge networks. Originality/value-The authors integrate the research on PANA, social networks, and investment decisions to illuminate the social network processes that explain how affectivity impacts the riskiness of retirement investment decisions.

I advance a phenomenology of forgetting based on Husserl’s accounts of time-consciousness and passive synthesis. This theory of forgetting is crucial for understanding the transcendental constitution of the past. I argue that without forgetting, neither memory nor retention suffice for a consciousness of the past as past, since both are irreducibly connected to the Living Present. After an initial survey of the challenges that confront a phenomenology of forgetting (i.e. the “forgotten” is defined by its lack of phenomenality), I provide a descriptive analysis of forgetting as a complex process that integrates an accomplishment of retention that Husserl called “temporal contraction” with an accomplishment of passive synthesis that Husserl called “affective fusion.” Temporal contraction is the accomplishment that creates a qualitative (not quantitative) distinction between near-retentions and far-retentions. Affective fusion enables us to provide a positive (not privative) phenomenological description of the withdrawal of egoic investment in intentional experiences. Taken together, these two syntheses generate a double concealment in which consciousness both forgets its object and forgets that it has forgotten it, thereby constituting it as part of the truly absent past.

It seems obvious that various feelings (various kinds of affectivity) are memorized, forgotten, and recollected to various degrees. Some of them are forgotten. Some of those forgotten can be recollected, while others are lost forever. For example, short and long-lasting feelings and shallow and deep feelings are memorized and remembered in different ways. In this paper I analyse from a conceptual point of view several categories of memory-of-feelings and offer a comprehensive map of them. In the end, the richness of categories in the realm of memory is interpreted as a proof of the intricacy of affectivity.

This paper analyzes the placenta’s biological and ontological
underpinnings in human affectivity as it is generated. The
placenta as medial boundary constitutes a place for the encounter
and becoming of mother and child, not only as sapient beings, but
also in their very nature. Before and beyond the difference between
self and other, the placenta offers a model of affective symbiogenesis
where selves come into existence in and through the very materiality
of one another, contradicting the presumed “immunitary logic of selfpreservation.”

The section on placental (re)presentation crafts a placentology that accounts
for the possibility of ontogenetic becoming in the mother-childplacenta
triad, a becoming that breaks with a linear genetic history of
origin and authenticity to shape what I call the pregnant city. The paper
continues by discussing the placenta’s place and boundary function to
explain the place-making capacities that allow the realities of mother and
child to co-emerge. The paper concludes by discussing the hospitality
offered by the placenta, and how, even after its factual “demise,” the placenta
prominently remains present through its traces. The placenta’s residue
in the form of microchimeric, ritualized, and social traces reminds us
that organisms are all but static, but rather thoroughly mixed, prone to
change, and full of specters of future possibilities. Thus, the placenta and
its enduring traces encourage us to rethink the nature of our intertwined,
constantly altering identities, and to reinstall the original hospitality
made possible by the placenta.

Conflicts are inherent to human relations and should not be ignored; however, they are a lesser component in e-learning discussion. The role of the tutor and the importance of affectivity in conflict mediation in a course offered to Military Police sergeants of a Brazilian state were studied. The perceptions of seven tutors and sixty-four students were collected in a questionnaire prepared with Google Forms. For those subjected to it, conflicts in the virtual learning environment were not common, probably due to the fact that the interactions between students and tutors were considered respectful and friendly. Nevertheless, they expressed their views on which actions were expected in the event of a conflict. In the event of a conflict between students, the tutor should act as a mediator, in an impartial, friendly and
firm manner; in a studentandtutor event, one should seek conciliation and consensus through dialogue, although the placement of a temporary mediator was considered unnecessary. Both tutors and students felt that affectivity would help reduce or mediate conflicts. In the understanding of the students, keeping relations based on ethics and on mutual acceptance and respect would mitigate conflicts between colleagues. Friendliness was chosen as the most important social-affective competence a tutor should rely on in conflict mediation.

Based on empirical data collected in various secondary schools in Guadalajara, this article focuses on a dimension that has received little attention in research on educational attainment: affectivity. The article argues that in contexts where students must often make educational decisions on their own due to economic difficulties or family pressures, students ’ feelings about their school and teachers can influence their decision to remain in school or abandon their studies. The article also reflects on the role of educational counseling in secondary schools: it is suggested that school counselors could do much to promote student well being, but that students currently do not always view the service as inviting or positive.

In order to explore how emotions contribute positively or negatively to understanding the meaning of complex socio-culturally specific phenomena, I argue that we must take into account the habitual dimension of emotions-i.e., the emotion repertoire that a feeling person acquires in the course of their affective biography. This brings to light a certain form of alignment in relation to affective intentionality that is key to comprehending why humans understand situations in the way they do and why it so often is especially hard to understand things differently. A crucial epistemic problem is that subjects often do not even enter a process of understanding, i.e., they do not even start to consider a specific object, theory, circumstance, other being, etc. in different ways than the familiar one. The epistemic problem at issue thus lies in an unquestioned faith in things being right the way they are taken to be. By acknowledging the habitual dimension of affective intentionality, I analyze reasons for this inability and suggest that being affectively disruptable and cultivating a pluralistic emotion repertoire are crucial abilities to overcome this epistemic problem.

The paper is a discussion of P. M. S. Hacker, The Passions: A Study of Human Nature (2018). After a general presentation of the book I mostly focus on its first part, which deals with categories and concepts essential to the philosophy of the emotions. Next I pass on to two subsequent parts of the book devoted to particular emotions. After a brief overview I say more, by way of exemplification, on the chapter on love. I end with a final assessment.

The phenomenon of affectivization of the public sphere, described by Salvatore, De Luca Picione, Bochicchio, Mannino, Langher, Pergola, Velotti, and Venuleo (2021), sheds light on the contemporary Western sociopolitical crisis, strengthened by the weakening of social bonds, where the other is turned into an enemy. Thus, following Freud and Butler, I explore the underlying conditions of this phenomenon to consider new erotic political strategies that aim to heal the public sphere as the space and time of cohabitation. I propose that the Freudian theory of Repression could help understand why subjects that form a community lose the sense of reality as a shared semantic space. This disavowal of reality facilitates the affectivization of the public sphere, but it could also be read as the effect of the eviction of a particularly painful social representation into the unconscious. That is, according to Butler's theory of subjectivation, the repudiation of dependency at the core of subjectivity.

Este artículo recoge los resultados parciales de la investigación doctoral titulada Acción política performativa: relacionalidad y agenciamiento en las actuales formas de reclamación. Dicha investigación se preguntó por la naturaleza performativa en algunas formas de reclamación social actuales, específicamente, en aquellas en las que se recurre a repertorios o mediaciones de carácter estético o artístico. En este sentido se recogen acá algunos de los elementos teóricos de los estudios de la performance y de la comprensión de la performatividad. Junto con ello, se alude a la etnografía performativa analizando tres mediaciones: el grafiti “¿Quién dio la orden?”, el reportaje “Nunca más” del portal digital Pacifistas y la muestra fotográfica Madres terra, para poner en la escena pública el caso de los falsos positivos. Los hallazgos revelan cuatro funciones de la performatividad que dan algunas luces sobre la variabilidad en los lenguajes, las expresividades y los efectos que se generan en estas formas de reclamación. La primera función se refiere a las acciones políticas como convergencia y materialización de la reclamación a través de grafitis, performances, tatuajes, fotografías, etc. La segunda función habla de cómo las mediaciones son expresiones de una ritualidad que se encarga de actualizar y renovar símbolos. La tercera función propone que tales expresiones son utilizadas, sobre todo, por las víctimas como una manera de corporalizar la denuncia. Y la cuarta establece cómo, a través de las mediaciones, es posible movilizar los sentidos convencionales respecto a la reclamación y la denuncia.

Vaikka kestävän kehityksen tavoitteet ovat keskeinen osa nykyisiä opetussuunnitelmauudistuksia, hakevat ympäristöpedagogiset käytännöt yhä monessa oppiaineessa muotoaan. Tarkastelen peruskoulun ja lukion äidinkielen ja kirjallisuuden oppiaineen sisällä tapahtuvan kirjallisuuden opetuksen ympäristöpedagogisia mahdollisuuksia. Tuon 2000-luvun filosofisen ja ihmistieteellisen tutkimuksen materiaalisen käänteen vuoropuheluun monilukutaidon pedagogiikan kanssa. Aineistonani luen Rachel Hope Allisonin "mykkää” sarjakuvaromaania I’m not a plastic bag, joka kuvaa ihmisperäisen jätteen päätymistä Tyyneen valtamereen. Alkaa ekologisten muutosten ketju, jossa pelkästään ihmisen toiminta ei ole maailmaa muuttavaa; myös ei-inhimillinen toimii ja tuottaa toimijuutta. Tavoitteenani on tuoda kirjallisuuden opetuksen käyttöön tietoa siitä, miten ei-inhimillistä, materiaalista ja vaikeasti kielen tasolla tulkittavaa toimijuutta on mahdollista lukea. Tuloksia on mahdollista hyödyntää ympäristöpedagogisen kirjallisuuden opetuksen kehittämisessä.


How reading waste expands the possibilities of literature teaching? “Non-interpretable” matter and its reading in the development of environmental pedagogy literature teaching

Abstract

Although education for sustainable development is a key part of current curriculum reforms, many subjects do not yet have enough environmental pedagogy practices. I study how environmental pedagogy can be put into practice in compulsory basic education and general upper secondary school literature teaching within the subject of Finnish language and literature. I want to bring the material turn within 21st century philosophical and humanistic research into a dialogue with multiliteracy/multiliteracies pedagogy. I read Rachel Hope Allison’s “mute” graphic novel I’m not a plastic bag, which represents human waste ending up in the Pacific Ocean. A chain of ecological changes begins, in which human activity alone is not changing the world; also non-human acts and produces agency. My aim is to bring forth an understanding of how non-human, material and linguistically difficult-to-interpret agency can be read within literature teaching. The results can be used in developing environmental pedagogy literature teaching.

Keywords: Material turn, multiliteracy/multiliteracies, environmental pedagogy literature teaching

The vocative is a still rather underexplored linguistic element which has justifiably been described as ‘peripheral’ in traditional systemic linguistics. Yet, it is of central relevance in the concrete linguistic interaction, where its functions are indispensable from a pragmatic as well as from a sociolinguistic perspective.
The first part of the thesis is dedicated to a basic characterization of the category ‘vocative’ which grounds on a functional definition as a nominal, free form of address. This implies firstly a comprehensive critical analysis of the existing literature from the most diverse linguistic approaches. The next step is the attempt of an alternative characterization of the vocative on sociolinguistic principles which focuses on the concept of affective stance. The vocative is understood as its manifestation in a twofold way: as an element of expressivity and of the relational work between the interactants. In both functions, processes of routinization and desemanticization can frequently be observed, the outcomes of which are discourse marking functions continuously gaining in relevance.
This theoretical framework is the basis for the subsequent empirical analysis of a corpus of spoken Spanish (C-ORAL-ROM) with a special focus on the distribution of vocatives in different kinds of contextes and their affinity to specific characteristics of conceptional orality in communication. Another feature of interest are gender-specific differences in vocative production and the routinization of certain generic vocative forms. Both aspects are finally revisited in the context of the existing literature and examined in view of their sociopragmatic indexicalities. Instead of ‘grammaticalization’ or ‘pragmaticalization’, the term ‘routinization’ is proposed for the development of pragmatic markers which are frequently based on vocatives.

Fink hat in seiner 1930 publizierte Dissertation Vergegenwärtigung und Bild den Gedanken ausgearbeitet, was es heißt, in eine Welt zu versinken, um auf diese Weisedie Besonderheiten des Unwirklichen herauszuarbeiten. Das Phänomen des Versinkens in eine Welt lässt sich am geeignetsten am Traum verdeutlichen. Das Phänomen des Traums eröffnet einen theoretischen Horizont für die Infragestellung der Wirklichkeit der faktischen Welt, indem es die Denkbarkeit aufzeigt, dass die faktische Welt sich als Traum einer anderen Welt herausstellen könnte. Dank dieses „erkenntnistheoretischen“ Arguments zeigt Fink mit dem Hinweis auf den Traum einen denkbaren Übergang von der vorgegebenen Welt in eine andere Welt. Diese „Transweltbewegung“ ist nicht nur eine willkürliche Spekulation, wie es beispielsweise ein rundes Viereck wäre, sondern bedroht transzendental die Selbstvertrautheit des Menschen. Wir möchten die These formulieren, dass der Weltglaube durch die denkbare Unwirklichkeit unserer vorgegebenen Welt relativiert wird, und versuche in dieser Arbeit, die transzendentale Instabilität des Weltglaubens zu artikulieren. Da das Subjekt der Transweltbewegung weder ein Mensch ist, der in der vorgegebenen Welt lebt – denn dieser geht an die extreme Grenze der vorgegebene Welt –, noch das transzendentale Subjekt in seiner Reinheit – denn auch dieses befindet sich immer noch in einem weltlichen Zusammenhang –, schlagen wir eine Untersuchung vor, die zeigen soll, dass die Transweltbewegung bezüglich des Innerweltlichen und des Außerweltlichen auf ein drittes Subjekt verweist.

As we know, it was Nietzsche’s project to reconceptualize Kant’s “judgment.” His choice of force managed to elude the problem of units of quantity, opting instead for an early dynamics. Nietzsche’s dynamics introduced interpretation, accommodation, and domination into the biological model of his time, emphasizing structures of obedience and command in order to preserve the hierarchy intrinsic to value judgments. This simply means that certain organizations of cells, tissues, even living beings “work” better for their growth and flourishing than do others. The problem we noted of a common currency is temporarily suspended with the epochē on quantity—displacing for heuristic ends the primacy of quantity and its metaphysical recourse to units of measure. As a number of Husserl’s commentators have asked (Paul Ricoeur, among them): What are we to make of conscious life when we remove the phenomenological brackets? Could not a similar question be posed of the neuro-phenomenology flowing simultaneously out of Gilbert Simondon and Maurice Merleau-Ponty? To be sure. But what we would have, upon removing the brackets, simply breaks into the objects of psychology and biology, or again, comes down to human experience as the object of multiple sciences or regional ontologies.
Gilbert Simondon, like Andrieu and others since the publication of his work in the 1960s, attempted to demonstrate the possibility of a monism based on energetic interactions. His work resists summary because of its complexity and the plethora of new concepts he created. Some of these were the direct result of advances in chemistry and geophysics. The formation of crystalline structures provided one image of what he called “systems of potentials,” on the basis of which elementary schemas constitute “meta-stable fields.” The meta-stable field comes from the dynamics of liquids but should not be restricted to that domain. It could well be argued that the Nietzschean contribution to a psycho-physics lies in its similar refusal of statics and individual substances. And this strikingly anticipates the structural coupling and dynamic co-determination of organism and Urwelt in Thompson and von Uexküll. Without denying that beings “individuate” in transitional and ongoing ways, Nietzsche strove to keep his forces within a framework wherein becoming was not opposed to being. He might have found a real interest in the innovations of Simondon, Andrieu, Thompson, and Varella.
That does not mean that we can, or should, speak poetically of qualities, as though no difficulties arose in the absence of some theory of energy or energetics. But most of these theories shared the fate of socio-political environments through whose lens they were read and adjusted to the ideals of a given cultural politics. Those readings are, of course, as hazardous as Hans Driesch’s 1930’s vitalism in which the concept of organic totality and a governing principle slid deplorably into an aestheticized, politicized Führerprinzip. Such slippages may be unavoidable and an entire history of 19th and early 20th century misappropriations of vitalism and Lebensphilosophie could be written. Nevertheless, the imperative of bridging body-world and mind-body dualisms must be taken up by a biology in continuous dialogue with psychology and, today, with neuro-philosophy. I have argued throughout that that was the direction in which Husserl’s biology as the universal ontology was moving.