Meaning

How are we to understand digital objects? How are we to relate ‘cyberspace’ to physical space? This chapter attempts to provide a set of theoretical tools to understand ‘spaces’ of online interaction and what happens within them without resorting to filamentous constructions of ‘disembodied’ online interaction or to the underlying idealistic Cartesian dualism that pervades many of the theoretical positions that ostensibly refute it. To do so, I make connections between cognitive processes of human subjectivity, the embodied, gestural enactments of physical social spaces, and the social interactions that take place in online environments. The crux of the argument is that like identity, meaning and subjectivity are social phenomena: individual cognition requires social interaction. Similarly, social interaction, mediated or immediate, defines our spaces of subjectivity. This connecting of online ‘spaces’ to embodied cognition may provide a way to understand digital objects and the online interactions they enable through a reconsideration of the concept of space.

The central focus of this paper is the notion that the home can provide a locale in which people can work at attaining a sense of ontological security in a world that at times is experienced as threatening and uncontrollable. The paper builds on and develops the ideas of Giddens and Saunders on ontological security and seeks to break down and operationalise the concept and explore it through a set of empirical data drawn from interviews with a group of older New Zealand home owners. The extent to which home and home life meets the conditions for the maintenance of ontological security is assessed through an exploration of home as the site of constancy in the social and material environment; home as a spatial context in which the day to day routines of human existence are performed; home as a site free from the surveillance that is part of the contemporary world which allows for a sense of control that is missing in other locales; and home as a secure base around which identities are...

We propose that the universe is nonlocal and that the appropriate worldview for this understanding is nonlocal realism. Currently the worldview of local realism guides and frames the understanding and interpretations of science. Local realism was the worldview employed by Einstein in his relativity theories, but the principles of this paradigm have operated as the guiding framework for the rest of classic science for more than a century. This paper points to incoherencies in local realism and to the violation of its principles by recent experiments and suggests these negative effects have undermined the credibility and legitimacy of this worldview. We offer a more inclusive worldview for the future of science called nonlocal realism. Unlike local realism, the worldview of nonlocal realism encompasses meaning, mind and universal consciousness.

Post-modern theology is highly suspicious of social theory and its secular origins. After all, the founder who gave us the word “sociology” also coined the term “positivism.” An alternative strategy is that of Bernard Lonergan, a theologian with a highly developed sociological imagination. He was quite aware of the secularity but devoted a life-time in trying to think through some of the key issues. His was a mind on the move and perhaps it is not surprising that his contribution has yet to be assimilated.
In this paper I shall take a look at a key text from Lonergan’s magnum opus, Insight. I will suggest that, in a sense, this may be regarded as “social physics” (another phrase from Auguste Comte). As we shall see, Lonergan’s thought wrestled with many issues of concern to the other founders of sociology: Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber, but his vision is quite original, and in fact, he will draw on Arnold J. Toynbee.
I do not believe Lonergan’s work is beyond criticism—as his later developments suggest—so I will try to identify some difficulties by examining closely some of those later changes. Before offering my appraisal, then, I will look at Lonergan’s social theory from five periods. First, I shall simply record his interest in the 1930s by referring to some work he retained in a file but never published. Then I shall give a more careful exposition of a chapter written in the early 1950s. I will suggest that Lonergan’s deployment of mathematical analogies to understand social theory underwent some changes and so I will look at that transition in the 1960s. I will then be able to take a glance at the new way Lonergan presented his ideas in Method in Theology (1972) and go on to sample a few developments in the last decade up to 1980. In my appraisal we will be able to see some of the strengths and weaknesses Lonergan encountered in his project of social physics and perhaps make a small increase to the stock of ideas myself.

ABSTRACT 
The Effect of Technology on the Psychology of Death and Dying:  An Empirical Phenomenological Study 
by 
Dana F. Hodgdon 

This study explored the lived experience of death in the hospital intensive care unit (ICU) from the perspective of surviving family members.  More specifically, attention was placed on the experience of withdrawing life-support for a loved one.  A phenomenological approach was adopted, and a convenience sampling technique was
employed with family members in a community in Southern California.  Four (4) caregivers of dying patients were interviewed to explore the lived experience of removal of life-support for a loved one.  The caregiver reactions were categorized into seven themes that were common to all four participants: (a) overall experience, (b) mental perspective, (c) ambivalence about care, (d) perceptions of technology, (e) the decision,
(f) aftermath, and (g) suggestions for others.  The themes were discovered through implementation of transcendental phenomenology in which the researcher's past experience was bracketed out from interpretations of the interviews.  Thus, the participants’ words were taken without preconception to the greatest extent possible. 
Even though the outcomes were identical—the death of the patient—the circumstances leading up to the decisions were each very different.  Each circumstance had bio-ethical ramifications, including breaches in scope of practice, communication breakdown, and caregiver reactions.  The results suggest several areas of improvement including those
areas that were suggested by the participants themselves. 

The intention of this research is to shed light on this experience for mental healthcare professionals, such as psychologists and social workers who provide care for the families before, during, and/or after the experience of a loved one’s death in the ICU. Moreover, it is hoped that this research will help mental health clinicians to better understand the needs of professional healthcare providers who are exposed to these
untenable circumstances on a regular basis.

Long-term pain is a common comorbidity for people with acquired brain injury. This chapter explores what it is like to live with those two conditions, focusing on the meaning for the individual. The meaning of pain plays a part in determining people’s emotional reactions and behavioural choices, and it is central for the process of psychosocial adjustment to a life with functional, social, participatory, and emotional challenges. Meaning is also closely linked to the identity changes that typically happen once people are faced with the challenge of living with long-term conditions. The field of positive psychology has contributed valuable insights into this process and the roles of benefit-finding, resilience, and post-traumatic growth are discussed. Two significantly different case stories are used as an illustration of life with acquired brain injury and long-term pain. One case, Julie, illustrates the process of adaptation and the other case, Mark, illustrates the challenge of dealing with pain issues when insight and pain perception has been changed by a frontal lobe injury. In both cases, the meaning of pain is integral to the meaning of brain injury. Neither Julie nor Mark consider themselves to have long-term pain, they live with the long-term impact of their brain injury, where pain is just one aspect. In fact, Mark’s altered pain perception causes him to claim that he feels no pain, yet it is nevertheless a challenge for him. The chapter concludes with clinical recommendations, calling for access to systematic, psychosocial rehabilitation that includes meaning-based approaches. A holistic rehabilitation model is proposed, suggesting that traditional medical and rehabilitation approaches need to happen within the context of psychosocial adjustment and rehabilitation, rather than expecting psychosocial adjustment to happen by itself, as a “by-product” of medical, physical, cognitive, and occupational interventions.

Wittgenstein’s Investigations proposed an egalitarian view about language games, emphasizing their plurality (“language has no downtown”). Uses of words depend on the game one is playing, and may change when playing another. Furthermore, there is no privileged game dictating the rules for the others: games are as many as purposes. This view is pluralist and egalitarian, but it says little about the connection between meaning and use, and about how a set of rules is responsible for them in practice.
Brandom’s Making It Explicit attempted a straightforward answer to these questions, by developing Wittgensteinian insights: the primacy of social practice over meanings; the idea that meaning is use; the idea of rule–following to understand participation in social practices. Nonetheless, Brandom defended a non–Wittgensteinian conception of discursive practice: language has a “downtown”, the game of “giving and asking for reasons”. This is the idea of a normative structure of language, consisting of advancing claims and drawing inferences. By means of assertions, speakers undertake “commitments” that can be challenged/defended in terms of reasons (those successfully justified can gain “entitlement”). This game is not one among many: it is indispensable to the very idea of discursive practice.
In this paper, my aim will be that of exploring the main motivations and
implications of both perspectives.

Umberto Eco’s The Open Work deals with the making of art. Open work has two constituents: a) multiplicity of meanings and the participation of audience. Artists generate the work of art allowing the audience to fabricate numerous meanings. Work of art as an open work is contingent and the openness toward meaning determines its contingency. A work of art may be open from the audience point of view because interpretation is encompassing and occurs at various levels of human perception. Thus we perceive meanings in a work of art with various perspectives. Eco explains open work as an artwork in process or dynamic progress without any fixed conclusion/ending or meaning. He underlines the necessity in differentiating the association between the work of art and its creator. This paper is an attempt to interpretively read Umberto Eco’s concept of open work, meaning and information.

Meaninglessness is one of the biggest threats of our era. Meaninglessness is not only one of the possible symptoms of depression; meaninglessness as such is a complex experience which can be identified at a micro-dimensional felt sensed level, as a meaning gap at a meso-dimensional  narrative level, and as groundlessness at a macro-dimensional existential level. Person-centered therapies have explicitly focused on the micro- and meso-dimension of meaning; existential therapies have emphasized the macro-dimensions by helping their clients to face the existential givens such as meaninglessness and meaning. In this article we explore how experiential-existential psychotherapy could help clients in dealing with meaninglessness by addressing this experience with micro-, meso-, and macro-dimensional interventions. A case study reveals how all meaning-dimensions are important, but not at any moment. The client concludes the therapy with discovering what is most essential to him in life. From this experience he finds the courage to engage with life at the fullest, whether it is ultimately meaningful or not.

ABSTRACT India has emerged as a global hub for IT industry with the segment having undergone rapid transformation and a phase of accelerated growth. Despite the recent downturn, the IT sector in India has managed to secure a double digit growth rate. With intense global competition, the companies are operating in an environment encompassed by technological innovation and change. Empowering and retaining employees are major challenge for an IT company because when opportunities and challenges are numerous, flow of employees between one company and another becomes commonplace. Therefore, attrition continues to plague the industry making it one of the foremost concerns of the sector today. Studies have shown that empowering employees not only makes a significant difference in their performance and outlook towards work but is also a means of creating greater effectiveness. Although, there have been studies analysing the impact of various factors (including empowerment) on turnover intention, studies of such nature are few in the Indian context. This study, therefore, aims to explore the influence of psychological empowerment on turnover intent of software professionals in IT product and services companies in India.

This paper examines the complex interplay between phrasal prosody, syntax, and meaning in English and Spanish, and explores its implication for second language acquisition (SLA). We present L2 data from L1 Spanish/L2 English learners which indicate that moving from syntax to prosody to encode the thetic/categorical distinction is far more challenging than moving from syntax to prosody to align the focused constituent with Nuclear Stress. On the other hand, L2 data from L1 English/L2 Spanish learners indicate that moving from prosody to syntax to encode the thetic/categorical distinction is far less challenging than moving from prosody to syntax to align the focused constituent with Nuclear Stress. We offer a grammatical account of this seemingly contradictory situation, in support of the view that second language learners acquire a grammatical system rather than isolated patterns.

This paper offers a summary of a doctoral research that investigated the production of meaning in autobiographical performance in dramatherapy, and how it can be described as emerging from the relational and embodied encounter between performers and witnessing spectators. The study responded to a need in autobiographical performance research to analyse and understand the processes and mechanisms of connection between the staged experience of the performer and the lived experience of the witnessing spectator, and how these create possibilities of new meanings for both. The findings of the research reveal complex relational dynamics within the shared space of autobiographical performance and their impact on the meaning making process. The research suggests that the production of meaning in autobiographical performance is located at the intersection between aesthetic, embodied and intersubjective processes. The findings show a reciprocal relationship between the role of the performer and the witnessing spectator, and the way in which they co-author and complete their respective experiences. As part of that dynamic, the research unveils the significance of embodied and pre-reflective processes in the production of meaning. Finally, the research shows how aesthetic processes in autobiographical performances regulate the transformational potential of the encounter between performers and spectators.

Meaning in life is generally not considered to be one of the most central
aspects of person-centered and experiential therapies. However, Carl
Rogers described how clients found purpose in life by going through
a process that helped them to connect to their inner experiencing. This
process was evoked by an empathic, accepting, and genuine therapeutic relationship and resulted in positive therapy outcome. Recently,
scholars have also stressed the importance of the therapeutic alliance
to foster meaning-making processes in therapy. Meaning in life is also
related to well-being. Therefore, the aim of this study is to test whether
meaning in life would mediate between therapeutic alliance and therapy outcome in person-centered and experiential psychotherapies.
Our sample consisted of 96 outpatients nested within 23 therapists.
Using multilevel modeling, we found that meaning in life indeed
mediates between the therapeutic relationship and therapy outcome.
This suggests that meaning in life might actually be at the very core of
person-centered and experiential therapies, and therefore deserves the
attention of clinicians as well as theorists. Our results support the idea
that the therapeutic bond might foster meaning(-making processes) in
therapy, leading to better therapy outcome. However, this idea should
be explored further using longitudinal methods.

The article proposes a typology of meaninglessness based on the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce: meaningless as indecipherable; as incomprehensible; and as uncanny. Each type is exemplified with reference to anecdotic semiotic experience gained while riding Japanese buses. Meaninglessness, however, is not insignificance. Insignificance is a much more disquieting anthropological condition, which the article describes with reference to two symmetrical processes: on the one hand, the euphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage meant as the “birth of new meaning”; on the other hand, the dysphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage which coincides with the alienation of human existence. Through several examples take from present-day societies, the article advocates for an active role of semiotics in warning human communities against the “emergence of insignificance” and its potential of violence and exploitation.

In this paper we associate the three concepts of lan-guage, thinking, and meaning with Fuzzy Sets and Sys-tems and Fuzzy Logic. We present some developments in 20th century history of science and of humanities that show deep links between these concepts and we give a proposal for a fuzzy theoretical interpretation of what is meaning.

Suffering is not something merely to be coped with; it holds important transformative power. Yet, it is important that suffering is not idealized or viewed as something that is, in itself, good. While suffering is not something to be sought, through embracing the sufferings that cannot be avoided the suffering often can be transformed. Meaning is one of the most important constructs in working with suffering from an existential perspective. As Viktor Frankl (1959/1984) stated, “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning” (p. 117). Meaning does not necessarily take the suffering away, but it changes the way that individuals experience suffering. Not all forms of suffering are the same, nor are all forms of meaning the same. From a clinical perspective, the therapist works with client to help them to explore the various realms and aspects of their suffering. However, without a good therapeutic relationship and a competent guide, the journey into suffering can cause harm instead of healing. Not all forms of meaning are able to help a client sustain through and transform the experience of suffering. Superficial or imposed meaning by well-intentioned others often are not sustaining meanings. Therapists working with the client’s suffering need to be able to recognize the varieties of types of suffering as well as the varieties of types of meanings in order to help clients transform their experience of suffering.

The meaning of the meaning – logical-rational and holistic-spiritual approach

In my paper I compare logical-rational to holistic-spiritual approach to what constitutes the meaning of an expression or text and how they are formed. The first approach was significantly shaped by Frege's work and influenced by effort for utmost objectivity; afterwards is continued in logical positivism. Later development of analytic philosophy reveals impossibility of entire objective and univocal meaning. This can get philosophy closer to an understanding of meaning in spiritual traditions, especially in those of their streams which put the accent on experiential and holistic aspect of knowledge, understanding and meaning.
The meaning of the meaning – logical-rational and holistic-spiritual approach

In my paper I compare logical-rational to holistic-spiritual approach to what constitutes the meaning of an expression or text and how they are formed. The first approach was significantly shaped by Frege's work and influenced by effort for utmost objectivity; afterwards is continued in logical positivism. Later development of analytic philosophy reveals impossibility of entire objective and univocal meaning. This can get philosophy closer to an understanding of meaning in spiritual traditions, especially in those of their streams which put the accent on experiential and holistic aspect of knowledge, understanding and meaning.

In this survey article, I focus on whether 2D semantics can fully capture the epistemic and semantic phenomena that seem central to individuating meanings. After outlining the motivations for 2D semantics as a response to externalist thought experiments, I argue that the approach faces an internal tension in fully vindicating the traditional role of meaning. I contrast the 2D theory's broadly descriptivist approach to meaning individuation with a relational approach.

""From the OUP Catalog:

* Ambitious original study of a fascinating aspect of human nature
* The most serious and systematic account of the notion of self-expression in thirty years
* Blends approaches from experimental psychology, linguistics, evolutionary biology, and central areas of philosophy

Mitchell S. Green presents a systematic philosophical study of self-expression - a pervasive phenomenon of the everyday life of humans and other species, which has received scant attention in its own right. He explores the ways in which self-expression reveals our states of thought, feeling, and experience, and he defends striking new theses concerning a wide range of fascinating topics: our ability to perceive emotion in others, artistic expression, empathy, expressive language, meaning, facial expression, and speech acts. He draws on insights from evolutionary game theory, ethology, the philosophy of language, social psychology, pragmatics, aesthetics, and neuroscience to present a stimulating and accessible interdisciplinary work.""

If language is the highest application of the mimetic faculty, what is the shortest? With Walter Benjamin as a guide, this Flash paper corresponds with glitchy animated GIFs and kitschy net cultures. How do GIF images mean? and where can I get some?

This chapter examines in depth under what conditions linguistic meaning can be the object of
an empirical science.
Possible answers, from the point of view of semantics, are given to questions about the proper
object of theories of language structure, about what a theory of language structure explains,
and about the elements a theory of language structure contains.
It is shown that the only empirical observations related to semantics are utterances and human
behaviours; the semantic description of a human language is thus the description of the set of
constraints that words and structures of that language impose on the construction of the senses
of the utterances. Some of these constraints are imposed by articulators (connectives and operators);
others by ‘ordinary’ words; both kinds of constraints concern the points of view
which are necessary in order to build the senses of the utterances.