G.H. Mead's Understanding of the Nature of Speech in the Light of Contemporary Research

The following analysis demonstrates that G.H. Mead's understanding of human speech (what Mead often referred to as “the vocal gesture”) is remarkably consistent with today's interdisciplinary field that studies speech as a natural behavior with an evolutionary history. Mead seems to have captured major empirical and theoretical insights more than half a century before the contemporary field began to take shape. In that field the framework known as “Tinbergen's Four Questions,” developed in ecology to study naturally occurring behavior in nonhuman animals, has been an effective organizing framework for research on human speech. It is used in this paper to organize the comparison of Mead with contemporary scholars. The analysis concludes that Mead was, in a sense, “beyond” the Four Questions by recognizing the limitations of reductionist methods in understanding the nature of conscious phenomena, especially language. Mead's socially situated model of the nature of human speech makes him relevant to today's field where some see an undervaluation of the treatment of language as a social process.     

The Interplay between Global and State Governance: Theoretical Origins and Practical Reflections

Global governance largely grows out of the externalities in state governance. At present, global governance and state governance are integrated into a kind of “holistic governance” based on their interaction and interpenetration. Our understanding of their interplay can be traced back to ideas that developed from ancient Greek and Roman times to the early 20^th century. More recently, from the second half of the 20^th century, theories of the interaction between global and state governance essentially revolved around the externalities in state governance and efforts to overcome those externalities by designing an ideal world. Today, the interaction between global and state governance is of great practical significance, serving to inspire the establishment of a global order based on sharing, integration and symbiotic harmony. However, we should also be aware that this interaction may be converted by great powers to the service of their own interests. At present, China can help reshape the global governance order of the 21^st century by strengthening its own development, promoting benign interaction between global and state governance, actively harnessing the potential of its state governance capacity and sharing its experience and ideas.     

The Communist Activities of the First International and the Logic of Socialist Party Politics

Against the backdrop of the 19^th century, the First International, guided by Marxism, emerged in the form of the early “International Socialist Federation.” It viewed the seizure of power as the great mission of the proletariat, actively struggled against bourgeois regimes, strongly responded to the call of times for the theoretical self-consciousness and organized struggle of the proletariat, and exerted a profound historical influence on the stirring inauguration and nationally oriented development of the international Communist movement of the 20^th century. From the socialist party political perspective, the First International, once the Communist League, had raised the curtain on socialist party politics, changed the political mode of capitalist party politics’ exclusive world domination through the interactive development of new organizational forms, theoretical viewpoints and political practice. It thus left an abundant historical legacy in terms of ideological creation and practical innovation for the subsequent Second International, the Communist International and the emergence and development of socialist party politics within nation-states. Although its socialist party political practice had an obvious “regional,” “preliminary” and “tentative” nature, the First International had foundation-laying significance and pioneering value for the development of socialist party politics, whether in terms of organizational vehicles, value orientation and activity content, or in terms of ideological guidance, practical patterns and strategic principles.     

Social psychology as a stable interpretative framework irrefutably committed to the scientific study of persons and society

Despite repeated opportunities to reconsider their natural science ambitions, social psychologists have not done so, and there are no obvious signs of this changing. Why? This paper pursues an answer to this question by defining the field after the fashion of Michael Polanyi's thought. According to Polanyi, interpretative frameworks develop from our primitive bodily encounters with the world and then are shaped by language into the vast conceptual systems of our culture. Concerning frameworks erected on our most fundamental beliefs (e.g., science), he says that we “live in [them] as in the garment of our own skin.” Frameworks such as this are not objects of critical evaluation but of commitment, and social psychology, as an outgrowth of positive philosophy, is an interpretative framework in this sense. Professionals' recent responses to the field's political makeup and replication failures demonstrate this. They aim primarily at preserving a natural science understanding of social psychology and point to the influence of belief-stabilizing mechanisms Polanyi finds operative in folk religious practices. These mechanisms appear at work also in psychology as a whole. They are implied, for instance, in the field's resistance to Sigmund Koch's authoritative judgement against its scientific self-conception in the latter half of the 20^th century. Noting this reveals the broader implications of this paper's definition of social psychology, but it also urges questions about truth and relativity that cannot be ignored. These questions are addressed briefly in the end where it is suggested that what psychology needs most of all is a change of heart, and that this will happen, if at all, not primarily through argument and evidence, but through persons who authentically believe in the veracity of a different framework.     

二十世纪重大哲学问题回顾

20世纪的世界哲学流派林立,论点甚多,通过对反形而上学、语言的转向、主体性、实在论和反实在论、相对主义等重大哲学问题进行回顾,我们理清了20世纪世界哲学重大问题的发展思路,从而为21世纪世界哲学和中国现代哲学的进一步研究奠定了基础.     

What are the Links Between Theory of Mind and Social Relations? Review,Reflections and New Directions for Studies of Typical and Atypical Development

Twenty years after research on children's ‘theory of mind’ began, this field continues to be a leading influence in the study of developmental psychology and psychopathology. In this review we examine the contribution of research on children's theories of mind to our understanding of children's developing social relationships. Evidence shows that for both typical and atypical populations this relationship is neither uniform nor unidirectional. Theory‐of‐mind skills are multifaceted and the nature of the developmental relationship between different aspects is not yet known, and there is evidence that theory‐of‐mind skills both transform and are transformed by interpersonal and family relationships and by language communities. To understand the multifaceted and complex nature of development in this area, we need clearer definitions of the skills under investigation, as well as research designs that capture the transactional nature of the relationship between theory of mind and social relations. Addressing these issues should help to clarify (i) the processes by which children's developing understanding of others is influenced by the social environment, and (ii) issues concerning the specificity of theory‐of‐mind impairments in atypical populations and the processes by which these impairments develop.     

Descartes: The Smear and Related Misconstruals

In part because he is known through his Meditations, a short pamphlet he wrote, rightly in fear, to conciliate (unsuccessfully) with the church, and because his rationalism is misconstrued when interpreted empirically, Descartes is subject to a variety of misunderstandings. It does not help that he is dogged by a canard invented in the late 1600s and revived by the animal rights movement, a canard that was designed to denigrate the then burgeoning mechanistic new science, discovered cruelly cutting up living animals, while laughingly insisting the writhing animals feel no pain. Descartes maintained that, physically speaking, humans as well as animals are machines, but he also clearly maintained that animals feel pain and hunger, have sensory experiences, etc. As a more abstract level, 20^th Century analytic empiricism revivified the attack on rationalist views. But the last half century has seen strong support (though largely unacknowledged) for Descartes’ views about cognition and perception.     

当代英美哲学实在论与反实在论语境中的他心问题

身心问题是西方形而上学传统中的一个重要问题,通常也被看作形而上学问题的主要内容。但自从20世纪初的一场哲学革命之后,随着形而上学的被抛弃,身心问题也被英美哲学家们看作思辨哲学的最后堡垒而被抛弃了。由于语言哲学的深入发展,特别是因为后期维特根斯坦的工作,哲学家们愈加关注语言使用者的心灵活动对语言使用所产生的重要的甚至是关键性的影响,对心灵问题的研究正逐渐成为英美语言哲学发展的最新形式,“心灵哲学”被看作是语言哲学的核心。而在这个领域中,他心问题则是实在论与反实在论争论的焦点所在。     

Exploring Nondeliberative Practice through Recreational,Art, and Music-Based Activities in Social Work with Groups

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the history of recreational, arts, and music-based activities in social work with groups, providing a nondeliberative practice context. The article begins with an overview of nondeliberative practice, then presents various uses of recreational, art, and music-based activities during the Settlement House and Recreational Movements, in mid-20^th-century group work practice and in present practice. The article concludes with a review of current projects in the Chicago land area and highlights their potential to decrease young person on young person violence.     

Critical Latitude

From his educational background both in France and America, Professor Pavel not only expresses his endorsement, understanding and judgment of the concept of “imposed interpretation,” but also his opinion and further academic expectations. The article has three parts. First, he confirms the existence of the specific problems of “imposed interpretation,” “subjective assumption prior to interpretation,” and “reversed route of cognition.” Second, he points out that the phenomen on of imposed interpretation is not unique in contemporary times and has existed in Western literary research since the beginning of the 19^th century— from the Zeitgeist of the age of Hegel, the social environment of positivism, the narratology of structuralism, and to contemporary literary critique, all of which have the feature of using concepts to cover the multiformity of literary works. Pavel finally points out that the contemporary phenomen on of “imposed interpretation” embodies the features of American culture and exposes the problem of American education. He hopes that scholars can keep critical latitude and vitality while rectifying the errors in literary research.     

Undisciplining Social Science: Wittgenstein and the Art of Creating Situated Practices of Social Inquiry

There are now countless social scientific disciplines—listed either as the science of … X … or as an ‐ology of one kind or another—each with their own internal controversies as to what are their “proper objects of their study.” This profusion of separate sciences has emerged, and is still emerging, tainted by the classical Cartesian‐Newtonian assumption of a mechanistic world. We still seem to assume that we can begin our inquiries simply by reflecting on the world around us, and by allowing our conceptualizations to guide our actions in our inquiries. Beginning our inquiries in this retrospective manner, however, means that our concepts and conceptualizations are both after‐the‐fact and beside the point, for ‘something else’ altogether is guiding us in the performance of our situation‐sensitive actions than merely our conceptualizations. We need before‐the‐fact, hermeneutically‐structured inquiries that can ‘set out’ inner ‘landscapes of possibilities’, to think‐with and to provide guidance, as we try in our more scientifically organized efforts to achieve socially desired outcomes in particular socially shared situations. Conducting such preliminary inquiries is thus an art, requiring not only judgment, but also imagination and poetic forms of expression aimed at creating such shared, inner landscapes among all concerned.     

The protection of children in time: child protection and the lives and deaths of children in child abuse cases in socio-historical perspective

For some 20 years now in the UK, assessments of the effectiveness of child protection have been carried out under the shadow of child abuse inquiries. Yet, relatively little is known about social work and matters of child life and death that preceded the first major inquiry into the death of Maria Colwell in 1973. This paper offers a socio-historical perspective on child protection and the lives and deaths of children in child abuse cases, and excavates the foundations upon which the major developments of the past two decades have proceeded. The emergence and development of a'modern' ideology of child protection, which held that it is possible and desirable for social intervention to work to protect children in time, is traced to processes that unfolded from the late nineteenth century. Statistical evidence on the numbers of children who have died in cases across the twentieth century is examined and analysed in the context of social theories of modernity and perspectives on the changing ways in which child death has (literally) been handled by professionals and knowlege about the problem managed over time.     

Reading Social Work Competing Discourses in the Rules and Requirements for the Diploma in Social Work

Correspondence to Dr Beth Humphnes, Department of Applied Community Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Manchester M20 2RR Summary The changes which have taken place across all of social workeducation and practice in Britain introduce a new phase forthe profession in line with wider political and economic changesin the UK. The Rules and Requirements for the Diploma in SocialWork exemplify these changes, and the document containing themis a useful focus for an analysis of what is at stake. Thisarticle employs discourse analysis to examine the ideologicalfunctions of the Dip.S.W. regulations and their relationshipto wider social discourses, having in mind both the discipliningrole of discourse and its possibilities for transformation.It identifies a dominant regulatory discourse, and an oppositionalliberatory discourse which are in dialogue with each other andwith related discourses. The article considers the constructionof social work in the document in its surveillance, managerialist,competence-based functions. The analysis also looks for contradictoryvoices in these discourses and in CCETSW'. Welsh Language Policyand Equal Opportunities Statement, which might offer sites ofresistance and refusal. It is argued that the shape of the stagesocial work has entered into is not inevitable, and the destabilizingpotential of such an analysis creates a space for the imaginationof alternatives.     

A Longitudinal Study of Belief and Desire State Discourse During Mother–Child Play and Later False Belief Understanding

There is considerable interest in the role of mental state language in theory of mind development. This study examines cognitive and desire state discourse of 43 mothers during play interactions with their two‐year‐old children and theory of mind as indicated by a battery of false belief tasks around the age of five. Desire state comments of mothers during free play which were appropriate to the conversational context were significantly related to children's later theory of mind, and this relation was independent of other confounding variables, including a home‐based measure of maternal sensitivity, and socio‐economic status, and an estimate of child language. The child's desire state language was concurrently related to the mother's desire state language used appropriately, and the child's cognitive state language was related to the mother's appropriate cognitive state language. Although cognitive state language was not predictive of later theory of mind, this may be because this kind of language plays a later role in theory of mind development.     

The Dewey-Mead analysis of emotions

At the turn of the century, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead collaboratively analyzed emotion. Building on Dewey's reintegration of the Charles Darwin and William James analyses, Mead viewed emotion as a parallel process of goal-oriented social acts. Further elaborations extended the analysis downward into the physiology of the actor and upward into the social structure through the mediation of values.     

Subhumanism: The re-emergence of an affective-symbolic ontology in the migration debate and beyond

A critical analysis of social behavior proposes that the contempt for immigrants, refugees, or asylum seekers around the world is explicitly or implicitly powered by an ontology of the subhuman, a term that was used in early 20^th century American race and eugenic theory, as well as in fascist Germany, to describe and justify the mistreatment of minorities or perceived enemies. “Migrants” are not afforded the same rights and respect as other people, because they are not conceived as real humans, and their subhuman status allows them to be understood as criminals, degenerates, and even parasites, which are infesting the orderly body of the nation. Subhuman theory works with affects rather than with theoretical analyses, with visualizations and imaginations instead of intellectual concepts, and with a normalized, manufactured common sense. It is argued that at the core of the subhuman lies the idea of chaos, unhealthy appearance, and disorderly behavior, from which humanity is removed. Discussed are processes of subhumanization, the relationship between subhumanism and racism as well as fascism, and the dialectics between the particular and the general, which proposes a shared world for all humans. It is suggested that psychological concepts are limited, and that political, legal, and resisting action is required to combat the re-emergence of a normalized ontology.     

Governing Nature: The Re‐Regulation of Resources,Land‐Use Planning,and Nature Conservation*

The ongoing neoliberalization of local and regional economies is contributing to quite profound changes in the ways resources, land uses, and nature are managed. Consider in this regard the changing role of the state ¹ 1Hereafter the term “state” refers to a national or federal government as distinct from, e.g., “State of New Jersey”. within North America and Europe. For a good part of the 20th century, state intervention in land‐use planning, resource management, and nature conservation was motivated primarily by national development goals, including a desire to ensure the territorial‐economic integrity of the nation state. Although there is always variation within countries resulting from such factors as the uneven spatial distribution of natural resources, the variety of arrangements for allocating powers and responsibilities among territorial units of government, and different cultural attitudes toward nature, there was nonetheless a discernible trend toward the nationalization (Europe) or federalization (United States) of resource management, land‐use planning, and nature conservation. At the very least, in most countries the state played a strong coordinating, regulatory, and financial role in relation to the management of nature within its territory.     

Marx’s Four Expositions of His Theory of Social Formation and Their Historico-philosophic Significance

通过对马克思有关社会形态演进的四次论说的考察, 证明他的社会形态理论的核 心内容在于既肯定各民族社会形态从低级向高级发展规律的共同性, 又肯定他们发展 道路的多样性。他在19世纪晚期提出现代化后进国家可能不经过资本主义而建立社会 主义社会的理论设想, 是马克思社会形态理论的重大发展。中国共产党人提出的社会 主义初级阶段理论和建设有中国特色的社会主义理论, 是马克思主义社会形态理论的 最新发展。

关键词: 社会形态演进规律 “人类学笔记” “历史学笔记” 历史哲学

An examination of Marx’s exposition of the evolution of social formations on four occasions shows that the core content of his social formation theory consists in its affirmation of both the universality of the law of the development of social formations from lower to higher stages in different nations and the diversity of their developmental paths. The theoretical assumptions he put forward in the late 19^th century about the possibility of late-developing modernizers being able to establish a socialist society without passing through the stage of capitalism represent a major development of his theory of social formations. The theory of the primary stage of socialism and the theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics advanced by the Chinese Communists are the latest development of Marx’s theory of social formations.     

管窥 "心灵"--谈哲学概念的翻译

哲学文本翻译的最大困难在于哲学语言的涵义多重性和语境的复杂性。造成这种困境的原因在于语言的隐喻性质,所谓隐喻是指根据一类事物来理解和经验另一类事物。任何语言从本质上说都是一个隐喻系统,它构建了我们的日常概念系统,尤其是那些抽象概念。文章以“心灵”概念为例阐述了统一译名是不存在的,翻译的功夫在于解释和商讨。