Ontological Debates Research Articles

Beyond Psyche: Aesthetic Attunement and Alternative Psychological Care Through the Heart

Putting aside the idea of psyche as the universal basis of personhood in Euro-American psychology, this special issue charts new ground, engaging hybrid and alternative therapies in Japan and China that center the indigenous notion of the heart— xin in Chinese and kokoro in Japanese —as the basis for developing a novel, alternative template for psychological care. Xin is both body and mind, the ground for cognition, emotion, virtue, and bodily sensation. It is less concerned with being than with living and life, and thereby troubling ontological debates. Since xin is the means by which people experience culture, a xin-based approach to mental health care brings a new vision of inclusion. It is key to the aesthetic order associated with Confucianism. Aesthetic order requires people to tune in, artfully, to yin-yang dynamism in themselves, society, and the cosmos. Optimally, this aesthetic attunement brings about a fuller, holistic relationality. Yet, cultivating aesthetic attunement at all levels of individual and social life can become a source of distress for the heart. Heart-related distress of varying intensities eludes psychiatric diagnostic categories. Contributors to this special issue explore the possibility of establishing an embodied, felt (affective), and artful (aesthetic) template of psychological care anchored in the heart.

Complexity, Reality and Ontological Insecurity: On Mistakes and Navigational Skills

This article explores the concept of reality and the transformation concerning the complex approach to the modes of existence based on the interrelation between diverse actants that make up our world. Considering recent ontological debates and critiques of modernity, the article argues for a shift away from ready-made suppositions about reality and the desire for simplified answers. We propose a radical idea of an actant interaction perspective grounded in Bruno Latour’s and Hartmut Rosa’s ideas of exploring an ontology embracing curiosity, imagination, and the importance of making mistakes as necessary attitudes in navigating the uncontrollable nature of reality. The article emphasizes the importance of embracing a sense of liberty when comprehending and interacting with the world. It encourages us to concentrate on the strengths and connections of living organisms.

Theories and Methods of Consciousness

This work explores the ontological theories, and their methodologies, regarding the origins and nature of consciousness in the multiverse. The paper critically assesses Mocombe’s consciousness field theory within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates, and their methodologies, regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness, especially human consciousness, in the world.

New-materialist bricolage: presenting an ontological position for qualitative internet-based research

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to make a novel contribution to new-materialist approaches, toward advancing existing ontological debates. We present a new-materialist bricolage method that was developed from an existing interpretive Community of Practice (CofP) known as the Pivot Project research consortium. This interpretative community was used to theorise the ontological implications of research in the COVID-19 global pandemic. The specific focus was on digitalisation of five qualitative multidisciplinary research projects because of the impacts of an unexpected pandemic. We were able to formulate a bespoke new-materialist bricolage that successfully allowed us to overcome existing impasses of our multidisciplinary ontological differences, whilst enabling us to remain attentive to both abstract and material considerations. We conclude by reflecting on what new-materialist ontology can tell us about what internet-based qualitative research is, could be and perhaps should be, in an ever-changing world.

Philosophical Foundations of Management Research: A Comprehensive Review

This article offers an in-depth exploration of the significance of research philosophy in the realm of management studies. It conducts a critical review of research philosophy, encompassing ontological, epistemological, and axiological dimensions, shedding light on their implications for management research. Traditional ontological perspectives, including realism, idealism, and pragmatism, are analyzed along with their influence on the field. Moreover, contemporary ontological debates are discussed, emphasizing their relevance to management research. The article also delves into the role of epistemology in shaping research methodologies, examining positivism, interpretivism, and critical realism as prominent frameworks. Emerging epistemological trends are explored, highlighting their impact on management research. Throughout the review, novel insights are presented, providing a foundation for future theoretical and empirical development. Researchers are encouraged to embrace ethical pragmatism, dynamic reflexivity, and epistemological pluralism, which can lead to more comprehensive and adaptable theories. The article concludes by calling for continued exploration and innovation in research philosophy to shape the future of management research. It emphasizes the dynamic nature of research philosophy and its potential to drive positive change in the management field.

"That was not the discussion we wanted to have": Engagement of civil society organizations with synthetic biology.

Responsible Research and Innovation calls for comprehensive public and stakeholder involvement. Its specific requirements, however, have raised criticism concerning the limitation of engagement opportunities for actors like Civil Society Organizations that do not share mainstream perspectives on technological innovations. Our article investigates the engagement of critical Civil Society Organizations in public debates and dialogues on synthetic biology and asks how they contribute to opening up respective debates. Based on three case studies, we show how Civil Society Organizations engage in and frame the debate on synthetic biology in different organizational formats. We find that Civil Society Organizations have explicitly challenged visions of a sustainable future by airing concerns about its risks and adverse impacts and engage in ontological debates about synthetic biology. Yet, we argue that different engagement formats are needed to ensure a diverse public debate on synthetic biology.

Kumlbúa þáttr, an Eschatological Event: The Traumatic Ontology of Being in Time in Medieval Iceland

<i>Kumlbúa þáttr</i>, an Eschatological Event: The Traumatic Ontology of Being in Time in Medieval Iceland

Language otherwise: Linguistic natures and the ontological challenge

AbstractLinguistic anthropology has remained largely unaffected by debates about ontology in other subfields. In turn, the concept of language has been conspicuously absent from ontological debates. The past few years, however, have seen attempts at articulating the two, interrogatingwhat language isfrom ethnographic perspectives and extending the analytic focus toontologies of languageorlinguistic natures. This article discusses such efforts and compares them to previous critical engagements with the concept of language. Calling into question the ontological equivalence of language within and across cultures, communities, and regions, it explores understandings of what language is that go against the grain of existing theoretical models.

A Review of Another Me: The Doppelganger in 21st Century Fiction, Television and Film

A Review of <i>Another Me: The Doppelganger in 21st Century Fiction, Television and Film</i>

Why and how ontology matters: A cartography of neoliberalism(s) and neoliberalization(s)

AbstractIn this article, I discuss the importance of ontology and its implications, demonstrated in the examples of different approaches to neoliberalism. The lack of careful ontological considerations leads to confusing and often contradictory usages of the term ‘neoliberalism’, obfuscating its usefulness. Instead, I suggest a cartography which consists of integrating two ontological debates ‐ structure‐agency and material‐ideational ‐ through the interplay between the problematiques of structuration and semiosis, and the operational debate on ideas/interests. In so doing, this cartography can provide readers with various heuristic devices to understand the making of theories, why and how conceptualizations of neoliberalism differ between and within theories and pinpoint the thematic implications of these differences. The translation of this cartography helps to achieve two things, (1) to move beyond the static analyses of neoliberalism and endorse the dynamic understand of neoliberalization processes, (2) to understand why systemic process‐based understandings of neoliberalization can create distinctions between analytical understandings of neoliberalism in terms of either the commodification of marketization processes or the marketization of commodification processes.

Food system resilience: ontology development and impossible trinities

BackgroundGiven the polysemy of the concept resilience, is it possible to have a unified conceptualisation of food system resilience? This paper provides a multidisciplinary evaluation of the literature to identify common themes that prevail in food system resilience debates and the challenges to reach a unified conceptualisation. The aim is to provide insights into some of the main issues and tensions that we identified during our research which will then allow academics and policymakers to identify the most significant themes and topics for discussion in the debate. While we only focus on one application of resilience, namely, food system resilience during extreme events, we believe that our approach and findings could be integrated and applied to other areas of resilience, as well.ResultsOur ontological exploration shows that ‘resilience’ is a rich concept that has an important bearing on many themes and topics in the domain of food systems. This makes it highly relevant to develop and apply the concept of ‘food system resilience’. The application of the concept in research and practice, however, faces many challenges that are rooted in ontological and epistemological differences among different disciplines and practices. While posing serious challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration and communication, these challenges also foster new research opportunities as knowledge gaps are discovered. We propose that there is a need to critically investigate the social, environmental, and economic trade-offs implied in policy strategies towards resilience at various levels of food systems and among different actors or groups of actors.ConclusionInterdisciplinary communication between different fields can be difficult and divisive. The ambition to unify the theory may be counterproductive in addressing practical problems that often require multidisciplinary collaboration. The challenge is to identify context-specific challenges and policy options using the ‘resilience lens’ and translating the concept into measurable indicators. Our research identifies some of these challenges and aims to provide a way to improve dialogue between different actors, through discussions about tensions and issues within their research. The ontological differences and debates are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, nor should it be a priority to resolve these differences. A pragmatic case-specific approach can be adopted to address the problem while considering ontological differences. Our research will provide food system resilience researchers with some guidance about challenges in their research, as well as those working on developing ontologies.

Avicenna on Equivocity and Modulation: A Reconsideration of the asmāʾ mushakkika (and tashkīk al-wujūd)

Abstract This study investigates Avicenna’s conception of philosophical terminology through an analysis of the relation between equivocity (ishtirāk) and modulation (tashkīk) and by drawing evidence from a broad array of logical, physical, and metaphysical texts. In so doing, it also re-examines the notion of the modulation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd). Although the intrinsic definitional ambiguity of tashkīk makes it possible to approach it alternatively through the lens of univocity and equivocity, there are strong textual and philosophical reasons to believe that Avicenna preferred to regard tashkīk as a kind of moderate equivocity, as opposed to both univocity and a kind of pure or absolute equivocity. As a corollary, it is preferable to construe tashkīk al-wujūd as a “modulated equivocity of being” rather than as a “modulated univocity of being.” On the one hand, this underscores the continuity with Aristotle’s theory of pros hen predication and its late-antique Greek and early Arabic reception, which Avicenna, as heir to a long commentatorial tradition, reinterprets in his own way. On the other hand, the reading of the asmāʾ mushakkika and tashkīk al-wujūd proposed here may explain some of the origins of the ontological debates on the construal of existence that developed from the post-classical reception of Avicenna’s works.

Environmental integralism: New prospects for the ontology, the aesthetics, and the ethics of architectural works

This contribution aims to explore a certain ontological approach to architectural works called ‘environmental integralism’, according to which the architectural work does not run out in the building, but includes at least part of the environment in which the building is located. Social context is also relevant in order to assess its functional and its aesthetic values. Not only that, environmental integralism may be understood as a form of paving the way for developing an ethical approach to architecture. In this sense, this talk tries to focus on the social and environmental role in architectural appreciation. This should be understood as showing how ontological debates may have an influence on aesthetic as well as on ethical considerations.

Ontology and Arbitrariness

ABSTRACT In many different ontological debates, anti-arbitrariness considerations push one towards two opposing extremes. For example, in debates about mereology, one may be pushed towards a maximal ontology (mereological universalism) or a minimal ontology (mereological nihilism), because any intermediate view seems objectionably arbitrary. However, it is usually thought that anti-arbitrariness considerations on their own cannot decide between these maximalist or minimalist views. I will argue that this is a mistake. Anti-arbitrariness arguments may be used to motivate a certain popular thesis in the philosophy of mathematics that rules out the maximalist view in many different ontological debates.

The Predicament of Ontology

The ‘ontological turn’ is currently being touted in anthropology and other social sciences as a way of providing new insights into the global ecological crisis. This move encompasses a variety of posthumanist and New Materialist approaches including assemblage theory, vibrant matter, perspectivism and object-oriented ontology. Although distinctive, these approaches share an interest in animating things. Not surprisingly, archaeologists have taken notice of this new-found fascination with things and are participating in the ontological debates on our own terms. One can distinguish three main approaches: symmetrical archaeology, assemblage thinking and relational archaeologies. This paper will examine the nature of the ontological turn and offer a critical review of its use in archaeology.

Ontology, Set Theory, and the Paraphrase Challenge

In many ontological debates there is a familiar challenge. Consider a debate over X s. The “small” or anti-X side tries to show that they can paraphrase the pro-X or “big” side’s claims without any loss of expressive power. Typically though, when the big side adds whatever resources the small side used in their paraphrase, the symmetry breaks down. The big side plus small’s resources is a more expressively powerful and thus more theoretically fruitful theory. In this paper, I show that there is a very general solution to this problem, for the small side. Assuming the resources of set theory, small can successfully paraphrase big. This result depends on a theorem about models of set theory with urelements. After proving this theorem, I discuss some of its philosophical ramifications.

Observing Materiality in Organizations

Research on materiality has grown rapidly over the past 10 years, highlighting the influence of physical artifacts and spaces in organizations, which had been overshadowed by discursive approaches. This body of research enriches our understanding of organizations in many areas including technology, decision-making, routines, learning, identity, culture, power, and institutions. However, researchers sometimes struggle to select methods suited to study materiality, as previous works have not been explicit in that respect. This article calls organizational researchers interested in physical environments – that is, artifacts and spaces – to integrate observation into their data collection. The first section presents a tripartite definition of the physical environment including activities, conceptions, and lived experiences. Ontological debates are introduced, and observation is proposed as a relevant method for studying materiality in organizational research. The second section presents observation techniques based on three approaches: observing materiality in actions, observing beyond seeing, and making participants observe. Each approach is mainly associated with one of the three components of materiality. The final section discusses the scope of observation techniques, suggests how to combine approaches, and flags difficulties associated with visual techniques.

Identity Theft: A Thought Experiment on the Fragility of Identity

This paper intends to discuss some aspects of what we conceive as personal identity: what it consists in, as well as its alleged fragility. First I will try to justify the methodology used in this paper, that is, the use of allegories in ontological debates, especialy in the form of thought experiments and science fiction movies. Then I will introduce an original thought experiment I call “Who am I actually?,” one that was coined with the intent to shed light on several aspects of the issue under examination, that is, the fragility of personal identity. Then I will move on to Christopher Nolan’s film The Prestige, as well as to Derek Parfit’s ‘divided minds’ thought experiment, to further discuss the fragility of personal identity; next to identity theft, the prospect of duplication is also intriguing, especially with regard to the psychological impact this might have on both the prototype and the duplicate. I will conclude with the view that spatial and temporal proximity or coexistence, especially when paired with awareness on behalf of the duplicates, would expectedly result in the infringement of the psychological continuity of one’s identity.

Live empirical issues in debates over objectivity in the social sciences

Questions of objectivity involve many general philosophy of science issues; when directed toward the social sciences, even more complex issues surface about the status of the social sciences, e.g. can they be sciences as are the natural sciences? This paper does not take on this mass of issues directly, but instead argues for more restricted theses, in particular that questions about objectivity in the social sciences are often usefully seen as local empirical issues. I look at arguments around underdetermination, value ladenness, the indeterminancy or nonquantitative nature of social science categories or attributes, and traditional ontological debates over materialism and idealism. I show that in all these cases some of the key issues about objectivity are specific empirical issues in the social sciences.

Resisting easy inferences1

AbstractAmie Thomasson has articulated a novel conception of ontological debates, defending an easy approach to ontological questions as part of the articulation of a deflationary metaphysical view (Thomasson, 2015). After raising some concerns to the approach, we sketch a neutralist alternative to her ontological framework, offering an even easier way of conducting ontological debates.