Showing papers by "Jaan Valsiner published in 2019"

Culture & Psychology: 25 Constructive years:

Abstract: In this article, I review main directions in innovative ideas that have been presented on the pages of Culture & Psychology over its 25 year history. The field of cultural psychology has become est...

La psicología cultural como proyecto teórico

Abstract: Cultural psychology is the new effort to overcome an old problem in psychology as a science — its irrational effort to imitate the so-called ‘hard’ sciences by reducing complex phenomena to element...

The Theoretical and Methodological Framework. Semiotic Cultural Psychology, Symbolic Universes and Lines of Semiotic Forces

Abstract: The analyses and discussions developed throughout the volume are based on the Semiotic Cultural Psychological Theory (SCPT). SCPT integrates relational psychoanalysis, Dynamic Systems Theory and pragmatic semiotics within the more general framework of socio-cultural psychology. SCPT conceives mental processes as ongoing dynamics of sensemaking. Sensemaking consists of processes of interpretation of the world that shape experience. These interpretation processes are guided by generalized, affect-laden meanings that reflect the cultural milieu and that work as basic intuitive assumptions about the world—what is and how it works—as a whole. SCPT adopts the term “symbolic universes” to denote such systems of assumptions. A symbolic universe is an affect-laden, pre-semantic meaning working as a basic, generalized assumption that shapes the experience of both the outer (i.e. the social and physical space) and inner environment (i.e., the experience of one’s body and feelings), namely, the embodied image sensemakers have of themselves and of their relation with the world. In their turn, a symbolic universe can be interpreted as the emergent effect of the interplay of a certain set of polarized, generalized embodied latent dimension of sense—defined “lines of semiotic force” by SCPT. This chapter outlines how symbolic universes and lines of semiotic force can be detected and the role they play in social development.

From Causality to Catalysis in the Social Sciences

Abstract: Our knowledge is trapped in the discourse about causality. This trap is set by the common language notions of something causing something else and its penetration into scientific domains. The crucial feature of the phenomena in the social sciences is the flexibility for intentional coordination of conditions of personal and collective cultures with social representations which is a feature absent at the lower levels of catalysis. This is made possible for the use of sign systems at various levels—personal, communal, societal, economic, and political. We can look at human phenomena as semiotically catalyzed. Social sciences introduce a new demand for philosophy of science—to account for the agency of purposeful actors and their co(unter)-actions in any generalized scheme of catalytic processes. This demand is an opportunity that may lead all social sciences toward understanding the dramatic realities of the human condition.

Generalization in Science: Abstracting from Unique Events

Abstract: In this chapter I undertake an intellectual journey to the realm of generalization in irreversible time. The coverage leads us to a rather paradoxical conclusion—in order to create any knowledge, the knowledge maker has to act on the basis of unique, transient, phenomena that occur in the flow of irreversible time. To accomplish the making of general knowledge the mundane flow of irreversible time needs to be transcended. This is only possible through semiotic mediation—abstracting from experience through signs—arriving at generalized knowledge that is freed from the confines of time. The process by which this is achieved is abduction—re-constructing explanations in retrospect, across the border of the present, into the vanished past. Furthermore—the generalized knowledge leads to very concrete anticipatory actions in practice—thus testing its adequacy again at the level of unique events. We live on and through personally unique life courses which are general for all human lives in their basic organization.

General Conclusion: What Can Social Science Practitioners Learn from Philosophies of Science?

Abstract: This volume was born in a six-semester collective teaching effort in Norway, but its implications go far beyond the mundane expectations of a “mandatory course” on philosophy of science to any cohort of social science aspirants for Ph.D. degrees. What is at stake in our twenty-first century is the new nature of knowledge construction in the social sciences—where the input from different social power holders into the kinds of knowledge our sciences create becomes increasingly immediate. This normative control is put into practice by rapid growth of the administrative structures of universities, the role of which is to exercise control over the actions of researchers via the legitimate guarantees of the rightful expenditure of research grant funds and protection of the rights of the human research participants. Researchers themselves also contribute to this social guidance of their work—by accepting the administrative demands to publish in “Scopus-listed” journals of “high impact factor.” The main results from the volume are brought together into the proof that social sciences need philosophy.

General Introduction: Social sciences between knowledge and ideologies: Need for Philosophy

Abstract: Social sciences are crucial in our understanding of the increasingly globalizing ways of living in the twenty-first century. Rapid technological advancements in our societies—“East” and” West”, “North” and “South”—are paralleled with resistances by traditional social orders to them. Local social norms and political control systems that sometimes erupt as revolts or revolutions constitute the braking systems in development. Development and resistance to it go hand in hand—leading to tensions in the building of new knowledge. This chapter serves as the introduction to the innovative volume where philosophy of social sciences is treated from its metadigmatic (Andrey Yurevich) perspective, based on a series of Ph.D. seminars in social sciences at University of Oslo in 2016–2018.