Finite Provinces Of Meaning Research Articles

Mediated Encounters in Autistic Spectrum Disorder: From the Material to the Digital

Mediated Encounters in Autistic Spectrum Disorder: From the Material to the Digital Lucy Osler*, PhD (bio) Research on autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly describes autistic individuals as displaying: i) a preoccupation with the world of objects and ii) a withdrawal or detachment from the world of subjects. In her insightful and persuasive article, Sofie Boldsen argues that we should not fall into the trap of viewing the world of objects and the world of subjects in isolation from one another. Drawing from her qualitative and phenomenological study on social interaction in ASD, Boldsen urges us to recognize how interacting with material objects can scaffold, facilitate, and regulate different forms of social connectedness in ASD. In doing so, the distinction between the “social” and “non-social” dimensions of ASD is problematized, and a robustly situated and embedded understanding of ASD is presented. Excerpts from both observational and interview-based data are used to illustrate ways in which social interaction in ASD is mediated via interaction with the material world. Line and Helene engage with one another through their mutual attention to a guitar; Ina and Viola dance together, guided by a virtual dance partner; Hanna and Mads connect while playing a board game. Boldsen argues that through engagement with material aspects of the environment various social possibilities are opened; social possibilities that are importantly experienced as less uncertain and overwhelming. Boldsen suggests two ways in which material mediation regulates and grounds social interaction. First, through their sensible nature, objects can scaffold social co-ordination and attunement. The rhythmic structure of music, for example, is socially supportive; it entrains our bodily movements both in time with the music and, in turn, with others also dancing. As such, the music provides a shared structure in which bodily movement and attunement unfolds, guiding and delineating when and how to act. Second, Boldsen highlights how objects can make normative rules and expectations explicit. As such, they not only provide a structure which shapes the spatio-temporal [End Page 209] dynamic of an interaction but facilitate an understanding of how to act appropriately in a particular situation. Board games, for instance, come with a clear set of rules about turn-taking and actions. This brings a confidence about what to do oneself, as well as making the actions of others predictable, thus helping to alleviate the pervasive uncertainty that many autistic individuals experience in social situations. Using material objects is an efficient and effective way of grounding a social interaction in a specific framework that not only makes appropriate forms of interaction more salient, but importantly reduces the kinds of action that might arise. Engaging in a specific materially mediated activity, then, carves out a more manageable space of meaning in the world. Indeed, we might be reminded, here, of Alfred Schutz’s notion of “finite provinces of meaning” (Schutz, 1962). Schutz describes how we can enter certain worlds which operate along their own codes of conduct and logic (e.g., the world of theater, poetry, games). In such worlds, aspects of the everyday world are temporarily rendered irrelevant or non-salient and meaning is constituted within the limited framework of that particular world. If the everyday world is experienced as overwhelming and chaotic, entering the explicitly codified world of, say, a game might be experienced as a relief. Note, though, that material objects offer up different styles and structures of mediated engagement. This point could be made more explicit in Boldsen’s analysis. Music prompts a different rhythmic interaction and set of normative expectations than playing a board game together. Even within the sub-category of games, different games promote very different forms of social engagement—think of the difference between playing chess (a game with highly structured moves, sometimes a specified response time, and which structurally unfolds in a near-identical manner across games and players) and a role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons (a game with more diverse and creative game styles that alters across games and players). I am, therefore, left curious about the differences between materially mediated social encounters. To use the Schutzian terminology, it would be interesting to explore how different finite provinces of meaning and engagement are created...

African-American Humor and Trust

One can understand humor in terms of one or some combination of the three types of humor (incongruity, release, superiority) and also by envisioning humor as a finite-province of meaning in the tradition of Alfred Schutz’s essay “On Multiple Realities”. Exemplifying varieties of humor articulated by philosophical theory, especially the superiority theory, which undermines those thought “superior,” African-American humor, from the days of slavery until the 1960s, struggled against widespread cultural suppression, as a brief survey of its history shows. Contemporary philosophical discussions of trust elucidate why it would have been perfectly rational and prudent for African-Americans to avoid sharing humor that vents legitimate aggressiveness against whites even though modified by humor, and yet these discussions present the possibility that by trusting another one can transform that other. One can find examples in African-American folklore, particularly the John/Ole Massa stories, of a dream of doing what was impossible in pragmatic everyday life, namely to engage in a comic engagement with white slave-owners. In that dream, African-American slaves utopianly imagined themselves as able through humor understood as a finite province of meaning shaped by an epoche, form of spontaneity, reduced tension of consciousness, sense of self, and a distinctive temporality and sociality, to express outrage at injustice, transform even white slave-owners, and even win freedom for humorists themselves.

Beliefs, knowledge and finite provinces of meaning: the case for science and the arts

Purpose This paper aims to build around an abductive argument: the epistemological value of the Arts-derived knowledge is equivalent and may be supplementary to that of science, contributing to the literature on the epistemological mistrust between both systems of knowledge. Design/methodology/approach This essay proposes a conceptual model – a tool, in Kuhn’s terms – grounded on the sociology of knowledge (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Schütz, 1951), to frame the apprehension of reality from a social perspective, and the philosophical pragmatism (Peirce, 2012), considering the fixation of beliefs as the seminal concept that leads to the legitimation of knowledge in society. The proposed conceptual model guides analysis on the epistemological value of the knowledge derived from the Arts and supports reflection on the commonalities between both finite provinces of meaning. Findings Reproducibility, doxastic grounding, community/membership, intersubjectivity and evidence are criteria identified as commonalities between the Arts and Science. Acceptance and legitimation across finite provinces of meaning emerge to produce minimally acceptable objectivity, made possible by the mutual validation of impressions. Research limitations/implications The discussion on greater levels of aesthetic appreciation has been eclipsed by the authors’ intention to find specific epistemological properties of knowledge derived from the Arts. Practical implications As practitioners in applied social science, management researchers are supposed to have mastery over how to apply what they know. So, the findings suggest participation (becoming accepted, first of all) in communities of practice, learning from and contributing to distinct finite provinces of meaning. The role of organizations in the understanding of knowledge derived from the Arts and its application might be that of a protagonist, promoting creativity and innovation through openness to new perspectives on knowledge. Originality/value This essay rescues knowledge as not a justified true belief, but the result of fixed beliefs continuously and socially legitimated. This rescue escapes previous attempts that appeal to Gettier-type counterexamples. A conceptual model was proposed to frame knowledge from a philosophical and sociological perspective and represent a methodological contribution of this essay. The proposition of third-order interdisciplinarity, also represents a contribution, of conceptual nature.

‘Any performer you pick!’ Playful manifestations of porn spectatorship

This article presents a qualitative study of 18 porn spectators' selfreflective sexual narratives. It asks how porn spectatorship shapes one’s sexual self and how it connects to transformations in sexual desires, fantasies, and pleasures. Applying theorizations of play into thinking through the relationship between sexual norms and the uses of porn, the article further conceptualizes online porn as a toy – an object to play with and to use for pleasure. Also, it offers to frame porn spectatorship as a finite province of meaning, namely a sub reality and a particular realm of experience, and thus it sets out to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ecology of play at hand.

Noetic and Noematic Dimensions of Religious Experience

AbstractPhenomenologies of religious experience have been developed by Max Scheler and via Alfred Schutz’s frameworks of “multiple realities” and “finite provinces of meaning.” For both, religious experience resists the pragmatic imperatives of the mechanistic worldview or world of working. Schutz’s paradigm begins with a distinctive noetic religious epoché opening the religious province, in contrast with Scheler’s start with spheres of being (especially the absolute sphere) furnishing the noematic context for religious acts. Scheler’s religious act resembles the religious epoché, but his eidetic analysis highlights the act’s distinctiveness, irreducibility to non-religious acts, and immunity to psychological reductionism. Correlating the religious act with his value theory (the absolute sphere), Scheler better withstands the subordination of religion to the pragmatic imperatives and the absolute to lesser values than does a Schutzian ranking of purposes in the province’s form of spontaneity. Scheler’s absolute personal being, whose revelation one must respectfully wait, supports the Schutzian relaxed tension of consciousness. Respectfulness of persons, the social/communal/critical dimensions of religious experience, religion’s need for critique from theoretical provinces of meaning, and the wariness of idolatrously substituting one’s own finite goods for the absolute can all mitigate the religious imperialism and violence to which absolute commitments can lead.

Considering Finite Provinces of Meaning

This essay considers social science as a finite province of meaning. It is argued that teasing out common-sense meanings from social scientific conceptions is difficult because the meanings of scientific concepts are often veiled in life-worldly taken-for-grantedness. If social scientists have successfully created a scientific province of meaning, attempts to communicate findings outside of this reduced sphere of science should be somewhat problematic.

Objective, Intersubjective Mystical Relationships: Justification and Reality

Abstract Amplifying the idea of religious experience as occurring within an encompassing “religious province of meaning” and developing the personal character of the experience of God in the Abrahamic religious traditions, this paper argues that mystics in those traditions experience God “objectively.” Their experience of God is that of experiencing God as what Alfred Schutz called a “Consociate,” despite the lack of God’s bodily presence. Such a phenomenological account of religious experience converges with the description by analytic philosopher William Alston of religious experience as an objectively given, non-sensual perception of God, even though the personal Consociate model is preferable to the perceptual one, given the Abrahamic traditions. Conversely, Alston and Alvin Plantinga show how ascending levels of rational justification of religious experience are possible with reference to the experiential level, and such levels can be accommodated within the Schutzian “theoretical province of meaning” in its collaboration with the religious province. Both the Consociate and Schelerian/personalist accounts of God resist any explaining away of religious experience as mere phantasy, and the religious finite province of meaning provides a more comprehensive explanation of religious experience than either Alston’s or Plantinga’s approaches. However, the strategy of envisioning religious experience as taking place within a finite province of meaning is more noetic in character than Scheler’s view of an eidetically elaborated noematic absolute reality that precedes the rise of consciousness itself and that counterbalances the noetic portrayal of religious experience.

Life-World, Sub-Worlds, After-Worlds: The Various \u2018Realnesses\u2019 of Multiple Realities

This paper will discuss the correlation between the world of everyday life, finite provinces of meaning, and religion. To this end, the paper will start out by explaining Schutz’ considerations on “paramount reality” of the world of everyday life as well as the theory of “multiple realities” and “finite provinces of meaning”. Schutz’ considerations will then be elaborated upon and taken a step further in a discussion of the various ‘realnesses’ of the multiple realities. Special attention will be paid to a finite province of meaning only mentioned in passing by Schutz: religion. The paper will first analyze the special features of religion as a finite province of meaning and highlight the correlation it enters with the world of everyday life. Subsequently, hereafter and paradise conceptions will be described as “ultimate provinces of meaning,” and it will be shown how their realnesses connect to the world of everyday life. Finally, the “fundamental anxiety” will be studied as the motor of the relevance structures of the world of everyday life, the finite provinces of meaning as well as the hereafter conceptions.

The religious finite province of meaning and suffering.

The religious finite province of meaning and suffering.

Resistance to Pragmatic Tendencies in the World of Working in the Religious Finite Province of Meaning

This essay describes some of the basic pragmatic tendencies at work in the world of working and then shows how the finite provinces of meaning of theoretical contemplation and literature act against those pragmatic tendencies. This analysis prepares the way to see how the religious province of meaning in a similar but also distinctive way acts back against these pragmatic tendencies. These three finite provinces of meaning make it possible to see the world from another center of orientation than that of the ego agens and its proclivity to bring transcendences within reach, thereby freeing oneself to a degree from the fundamental anxiety and revealing the uniqueness of oneself and others, who are no longer subjected to working’s pragmatic imperatives.

The Life-World and Its Multiple Realities: Alfred Schütz’s Contribution to the Understanding of the Experience of Illness

Alfred Schutz original contribution to the social sciences refers to his analysis of the structure of the “life-world”. This article aims to invigorate interest in the work of this author, little known in the field of health psychology. Key concepts of Schutz’ approach will be presented in relation to their potential interest to the understanding of the experience of illness. In particular, we develop the main characteristics of the everyday life and its cognitive style, that is, its finite province of meaning. We propose to adopt this notion to define the experience of chronic or serious illness when the individual is confronted to the medical world. By articulating this analysis with literature in health psychology, we argue that Schutz’s perspective brings useful insight to the field, namely because of its ability to study meaning constructions by overcoming the trap of solipsism by embracing intersubjectivity. The article concludes by outlining both, the limitations and research perspectives brought by this phenomenological analysis of the experiences of health and illness.

“Secularization” or Plurality of Meaning Structures? A. Schutz’s Concept of a Finite Province of Meaning and the Question of Religious Rationality

Referring to basic Weberian notions of rationalization and secularization, I try to find a more accurate sense of the term “secularization”, intending to describe adequately the position of religion in modernity. The result of this query is—or at least should be—a new, original conceptualization of religion as one of finite provinces of meaning within one paramount reality of the life-world, as defined by Alfred Schutz. I proceed by exposing a well known, major oversimplification of the Weberian concept of secularization, very well outlined in Peter Berger’s The sacred canopy, in order to point to the genuine, much more differentiated position of Max Weber in this matter (especially from the period of Foundations of social economic and Economy and society), and, consequently, to return to the roots of Berger’s thought: phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, an attempt to assure the philosophical foundations of Weber’s sociological theory. At a closer glimpse, transformation of religion in the modern process of rationalization does not consist—according to Weber—in eliminating religion and thus depriving society of the religious source of meaning, but in parallel emancipation of many different domains of rationality, including religion itself. Using Schutz’s analysis of the social world as a complex structure of many different final provinces of meaning, I describe religion as such a province and show what does the process of rationalization of this province consist and what it should consist in: a complex, ongoing exchange of cognitive relevances and contents, combined with growing autonomy of many different sub-worlds. Schutz’s theory of symbol, rooted in Edmund Husserl’s description of constitution of complex objects in mono- and polythetic acts of consciousness, moves the analysis to the epistemological level, pointing to a chance of intensifying our cognitive relation to reality through increasing interpenetration of various sub-universes of meaning.

“Don't go on my property!”: A case study of transactions of user rights

ABSTRACTTwo hours of conversation among three children were examined for oral disputes concerning use of beds in their bedroom. Examination of transcript segments revealed that the children signaled a social order governing use of property and objects. The children were found to negotiate such use on an ongoing basis, and the form and content of the disputes differed dramatically according to whether the beds were being claimed for the purpose of play or sleep. The conversations reflected the ongoing construction and negotiation of social representations, within shared frames or finite provinces of meaning, for use of space and objects. (Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, property, ownership)

The meaning of illness: a phenomenological approach to the patient-physician relationship.

This essay argues that philosophical phenomenology can provide important insights into the patient-physician relationship. In particular, it is noted that the physician and patient encounter the experience of illness from within the context of different "worlds", each "world" providing a horizon of meaning. Such phenomenological notions as focusing, habits of mind, finite provinces of meaning, and relevance are shown to be central to the way these "worlds" are constituted. An eidetic interpretation of illness is proposed. Such an interpretation discloses certain essential characteristics that pertain to the experience of illness, per se, regardless of its manifestation in terms of a particular disease state. It is suggested that, if a shared world of meaning is to be constituted between physician and patient, the eidetic characteristics of illness must be recognized by the physician.

The Experimental Reality: the Cognitive Style of a Finite Province of Meaning

The Experimental Reality: the Cognitive Style of a Finite Province of Meaning