Meaning Making

W niniejszym artykule autor rozważa trzy kryteria "dobrej definicji religii", wskazując że najważniejsze jest kryterium empirystyczne. Pozostaje to w zgodzie z Wymogiem Hume'a, które determinuje czy słowo jest sensowne poznawczo. Następnie autor prezentuje niektóre z zarzutów przeciw Wymogowi, ale nie znajduje żadnego, który by go falsyfikował. Dalej autor rozpoczyna analizuje socjologiczne - funkcjonalne i substancjalne - definicje religii używając Wymogu Hume'a. Okazuje się, że definicje funkcjonalne są a priori sensowne, a ich sensowność zapewnia metoda ich konstruowania. Tymczasem wiele definicji substancjalnych jest poznawczo bezsensownych, a głównym tego powodem jest zawarty w nich błąd ignotum per ignotum. Zatem nie mogą one posiadać wartości logicznej. Autor rozważa w jaki sposób definicje substancjalne mogą być usensownione i proponuje powziąć jako bazę empiryczną pewne kluczowe słowa religii i opisać ich behawioralny schemat (Na przykład: sakrum jest to właściwość obiektu, podczas kontaktu z którym, ludzie zachowują się jak następuje...).

In the article the author suggests three criteria of „good definition of religion”. He says that the empiricist criterion the most important. This is due to Hume’s requirement, which determines whether the word is cognitively meaningful. Then the author presented some of the objections against the requirement, but found none which would falsify it. Thuse, the author began the analysis of sociological functional and substantial — definitions of religion, using Hume’s requirement. It turned out that the functional definitions are a priori reasonable, and their sense is provided by a method of their construction. A lot of substantial definitions are cognitively meaningless. The main reason is a widespread error: ignotum per ignotum. This means that using these definitions, one cannot form sentences with logical value. Next, the author showed an idea how we can give meaning to these definitions? The idea is based on finding some characteristic and typical words for any religion, and describing it based on this model. (For example: Sacrum is a property of the object. When contacting it, people behave, or ought to behave as follows...).

In the western port city of Patras, the locals use the word erēmēni (erimin) in abundanceii. And yet should you ask, most of them ––yours truly included–– would struggle to explain the word’s actual meaning. Erimin is just erimin, would be the most often encountered response; shrouded shoulders and an admission of something of a self-defeat: there isn’t, really, a meaning to it. This is precisely where the wonderful thing lies about the word. The locals’ inability to attribute erimin a meaning might very well stem from the fact the word is used to connote an event so strange that we can no longer fully comprehend, or conceive it––an event, in other words, that lies outside our existent system of logic.

The paper focuses on the horizon of meaning as it can be experienced by human beings through movement activities. Although the phenomenon of meaning is not producible by natural sciences, it does not mean that philosophy could not question its validity. The meaning is apprehensible in an existential situation and it comes out clearest at the moment of the loss of the possibilities related to the concrete beingness. The meaning of life can be found in four possible areas. The answer to the question asking about the meaning is religion; the accumulation of experience situations; active work or moral acts; and the rejection of this question. The meaning of life is introspectable in the field of movement culture and it is closely connected with the topic of authentic existence. Metheny offers a distinctive symbology of the meaning of movement. She uses the neologisms of kinescept, kinestruct and kinesymbol highlighting the originality of movement experiences that cannot be transferred onto any other cognitive form. It is possible to look for the meaning of movement in the connection with the meaning of life in the various fields of movement culture as schematically summarized in the final chapter.

Spirituality is often perceived as a synonym for religion. In this article, I would like to point to some alternative definitions of spirituality grounded in Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology. Scheler states that the essence of a human being is not exhausted by practical intelligence, as though it was the culmination of a gradational anthropology. The distinctive principle characterizing the human way of being, is “the spirit” (der Geist). At the centre of its various manifestations is a person, with its freedom, its “openness to the world.” Spirituality can therefore become a symbol of searching for the meaning of life. Thus, the spiritual dimension (also called the vertical dimension, in the light of “deep” ideas and “high” ideals) of human life, represents an area for the development of our potential. The paper outlines this understanding of spirituality, and explores in particular its connection with sport and education.

This qualitative study investigated the lived experiences of highly sensitive persons (HSPs) to better understand the way they experience careers.  Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is the underlying personality trait and is present in approximately 20 percent of the population, equally distributed across gender and racial lines.  SPS is considered a non-normative personality trait in some Western societies and subcultures.  Thus, many HSPs experience difficulty finding an appropriate match between innate temperament and career.   
This qualitative research perspective employed semi-structured interviews with 35 participants recruited through social media web sites and snowball sampling.  Participants in the study were primarily from the U.S., but also from five foreign countries.  Participants were chosen based on answers to a recruitment questionnaire and Elaine Aron’s HSP Self-Test.  Major findings reveal a complex, interwoven dynamic interplay between nine major themes: (1) empathy, (2) childhood’s influence, (3) self-care, (4) a rich inner life, (5) creativity, (6) high sensation-seeking, (7) the sociological perspective, (8) the experience of work, and (9) the integral being.  The significance of this study is that it is the first of its kind to investigate this topic in a systematic, scientific manner. 

This pilot study looked to examine the experiences of women who are “undercover,” the meaning-making of their sexual identity, how they came to negotiate their same-sex sexual desires alongside their primary other-sex unions, and their experience of a secret, compartmentalized life.  The study sought to understand their experiences as well as their meaning-making in the course of maintaining a public heterosexual persona while balancing their secret desire for sex with women. The thirty-four women in this study report lifelong incidence of attraction to and encounters with other women as well as men. They are not transitioning toward a lesbian identity nor experiencing fluidity; rather, clandestine encounters are part of an ongoing means to negotiate their opposite-sex marriages. For them, our culture’s limited notions of sexual identity are less than useful. It was important to their self-concept that their sexuality be understood in terms of its intensity and their desire for frequency and diversity of acts. They defined themselves on their own terms and by their sexual personalities and inclination toward what they considered “hypersexuality” or “freakiness.”  Despite conventional ideas that women are emotionally driven in their extra-relational affairs and need to “fall in love” to participate in extra-relational sexual activity, all of the women were clear in their desire to limit their association with their same-sex partners to sexual encounters only.

The LGBT community is well aware of the phenomenon of “straight girls” seeking out and engaging in intimate sexual relationships with women. However, there is a dearth of research on women who openly identify themselves as heterosexual, and even participate in relationships with men, yet seek out secret relationships with other women. This exploratory study examined the experiences and meaning-making of women who are “undercover” in this way and the factors that shape their construction of their sexual identity and compel them to live a secret, compartmentalized life. Four major themes emerged: a desire to remain married, the belief that “girls don’t count” as extramarital partners, shame, and “on and off the wagon”. For the women in this study, the decision to act on their desire for sexual contact with another woman was fraught with internal conflict, shame, and guilt. The data reveal that the constraints around one’s sexuality are not nearly as powerful culturally as the constraints around one’s public image.

This study examines the factors influencing underachieving boys on a high-performing high school campus. Unlike the “laddishness” often seen in studies of underachievement among boys, the boys in this study were quiet, unobtrusive, and compliant within the classroom. Using qualitative interviews and observation conducted over a one-year period, the study showed the formation of student identities in response to the hegemonic masculinity of the “golden boy” portrayed by the popular boys on campus, which included high academic performance. The boys constructed an alternate masculinity, the Beta Boy, designed to demonstrate superior intellect through eschewing in-class work and homework but performing particularly well on tests.