Intentionality

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

Kinds of Intentionality

  • collective intentionality


  • Selected Abstracts


    INTENTIONALISM, INTENTIONALITY, AND REPORTING BELIEFS,

    HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2009
    BRANKO MITROVI
    ABSTRACT The dominant view of twentieth-century analytic philosophy has been that all thinking is always in a language, that languages are vehicles of thought. The same view has been widespread in continental philosophy as well. In recent decades, however, the opposite view,that languages serve merely to express language-independent thought-contents or propositions,has been more widely accepted. The debate has a direct equivalent in the philosophy of history: when historians report the beliefs of historical figures, do they report the sentences or propositions that these historical figures believed to be true or false? In this paper I argue in favor of the latter, intentionalist, view. My arguments center mostly on the problems with translation that are likely to arise when a historian reports the beliefs of historical figures who expressed them in a language other than the one in which the historian is writing. In discussing these problems the paper presents an application of John Searle's theory of intentionality to the philosophy of history. [source]


    INTENTIONAL INEXISTENCE AND PHENOMENAL INTENTIONALITY

    PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Issue 1 2007
    Uriah Kriegel
    First page of article [source]


    REFERENCE AND INTENTIONALITY: REFLECTIONS ON WETTSTEIN'S MAGIC PRISM

    ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2006
    Robin Jeshion
    First page of article [source]


    Problems about Young Children's Knowledge of the Theory of Mind and of Intentionality

    JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 3 2002
    Lawrence D. Roberts
    First page of article [source]


    Tempus Fugit: Voice, Intentionality, and Formal Invention in Augustine and Monteverdi

    JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS AND ART CRITICISM, Issue 2 2008
    STÅLE WIKSHÅLAND
    First page of article [source]


    Consciousness is Underived Intentionality

    NOUS, Issue 1 2010
    David Bourget
    First page of article [source]


    Direct Realism, Intentionality, and the Objective Being of Ideas

    PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002
    Paul Hoffman
    My aim is to arrive at a better understanding of the distinction between direct realism and representationalism by offering a critical analysis of Steven Nadler's account in Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. I argue contrary to Nadler that Descartes and Arnauld are representationalists, and I also argue that Aquinas is a representationalist. [source]


    Young Children's Recognition of the Intentionality of Teaching

    CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2008
    Margalit Ziv
    Two studies examined the role of intention in preschoolers' understanding of teaching. Three- to 5-year-olds judged stories in which there was an intention to teach or not (teaching vs. imitation) for 4 different learning outcomes (successful, partial, failed, and unknown). They also judged 2 stories with embedded instructional intent (e.g., guided discovery learning) and several standard theory of mind tasks. There was an age-related change in the understanding of teaching. Five-year-olds distinguished teaching from imitation and recognized guided discovery learning. Understanding of imitation and false belief was related. The findings indicate that theory of mind is relevant to other means of knowledge acquisition besides perceptual access and that understanding intention could help young children to recognize instruction and identify its different forms. [source]


    Die Theorie der Intentionalität Meinongs

    DIALECTICA, Issue 2 2001
    Arkadiusz Chrudzimski
    The most striking feature of Meinong's theory of intentionality is his thesis that every mental act has its reference-object "beyond being and non being". This theory seems, at first, to be a clear example of the so called object-theory of intentionality, as it introduces special "postulated" entities in the target-position of the mental act. Closer examination, however, reveals in Meinong's works important elements of the mediator-theory. Meinong speaks of auxiliary incomplete objects situated "between" the subject and the object of reference and "mediating" the intentional access to the (complete) reference-object. Moreover, even if the object of reference is of the simple nominal form, the mediating structure involves essentially propositional entities (objectives). In the paper we attempt to give a set-theoretical interpretation of Meinong's theory in the frame of which we could eventually do without the incomplete mediating objects. Yet, some general epistemological considerations suggest the indispensability of such incomplete mediating structures. [source]


    Does disturbance of self underlie social cognition deficits in schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders?

    EARLY INTERVENTION IN PSYCHIATRY, Issue 2 2009
    Barnaby Nelson
    Abstract Aim: Although the different approaches to psychosis research have made significant advances in their own fields, integration between the approaches is often lacking. This paper attempts to integrate a strand of cognitive research in psychotic disorders (specifically, social cognition research) with phenomenological accounts of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Method: The paper is a critical investigation of phenomenological models of disturbed selfhood in schizophrenia in relation to cognitive theories of social cognition in psychotic disorders. Results: We argue that disturbance of the basic sense of self, as articulated in the phenomenological literature, may underlie the social cognition difficulties present in psychotic disorders. This argument is based on phenomenological thinking about self-presence (,ipseity') being the primary or most basic ground for the intentionality of consciousness , that is, the directedness of consciousness towards others and the world. A disruption in this basic ground of conscious life has a reverberating effect through other areas of cognitive and social functioning. We propose three routes whereby self-disturbance may compromise social cognition, including dissimilarity, disruption of lived body and disturbed mental coherence. Conclusions: If this model is supported, then social cognition difficulties may be thought of as a secondary index or marker of the more primary disturbance of self in psychotic disorders. Further empirical work examining the relationship between cognitive and phenomenological variables may be of value in identifying risk markers for psychosis onset, thus contributing to early intervention efforts, as well as in clarifying the essential psychopathological features of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. [source]


    What are the Categories in Sein und Zeit?

    EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2007
    Brandom on Heidegger on Zuhandenheit
    In his essay, ,Heidegger's Categories in Sein und Zeit', Robert Brandom argues that Heidegger, particularly in the notion of Zuhandenheit, anticipates his own normatively pragmatist conception of intentionality. He attempts to demonstrate this by marshalling short passages from right across the relevant sections of Sein und Zeit in such a way that they do seem to say what Brandom claims. But does one reach the same conclusion when one examines, more or less in sentence-by-sentence fashion, the large slab of text in which Heidegger introduces the notion of Zuhandenheit? I believe not. First, however, let us look at how Brandom reads Heidegger, in particular, how he interprets the notion of Zuhandenheit, which, in contrast both to Macquarrie and Robinson and to Brandom, I shall translate as ready-to-handedness.1 [source]


    Not Very Material but Hardly Immaterial: China's Bombed Embassy and Sino-American Relations,

    FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 1 2010
    Gregory J. Moore
    In 1999 Sino-American relations experienced intense strain as a result of NATO's Kosovo intervention, and in particular by the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade by an American B-2 bomber. Why did the bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade in the spring of 1999 touch such a raw nerve among the Chinese people and leadership? With the coming of the tenth anniversary of these events, what still needs to be explained is how Chinese and Americans could draw such divergent conclusions about that which they've never disagreed on,the incontestable fact of the embassy's demolition,and how the fact that what Americans called "a mistake" could almost completely derail Sino-American relations, which President Clinton in his very successful visit to China a year before had called a "strategic partnership." Based on a series of semistructured interviews the author did in Beijing and Washington with 28 Chinese and 30 American experts, this research draws a number of important conclusions in this regard. First, intensifying and even defining the conflict were a number of important perceptual gaps. Second, given the dispute over the intentionality of the embassy bombing, the conflict boiled down not to clashing interests, per se, but rather to issues of trust and beliefs about motives and intentions. Third, poor handling of the embassy bombing by both governments deepened the conflict and the alienation both sides felt. Fourth, underlying the lack of trust and the perceptual gaps between the two sides was "Fundamental Attribution Error." [source]


    INTENTIONALISM, INTENTIONALITY, AND REPORTING BELIEFS,

    HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2009
    BRANKO MITROVI
    ABSTRACT The dominant view of twentieth-century analytic philosophy has been that all thinking is always in a language, that languages are vehicles of thought. The same view has been widespread in continental philosophy as well. In recent decades, however, the opposite view,that languages serve merely to express language-independent thought-contents or propositions,has been more widely accepted. The debate has a direct equivalent in the philosophy of history: when historians report the beliefs of historical figures, do they report the sentences or propositions that these historical figures believed to be true or false? In this paper I argue in favor of the latter, intentionalist, view. My arguments center mostly on the problems with translation that are likely to arise when a historian reports the beliefs of historical figures who expressed them in a language other than the one in which the historian is writing. In discussing these problems the paper presents an application of John Searle's theory of intentionality to the philosophy of history. [source]


    Social cognition and the brain: A meta-analysis

    HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 3 2009
    Frank Van Overwalle
    Abstract This meta-analysis explores the location and function of brain areas involved in social cognition, or the capacity to understand people's behavioral intentions, social beliefs, and personality traits. On the basis of over 200 fMRI studies, it tests alternative theoretical proposals that attempt to explain how several brain areas process information relevant for social cognition. The results suggest that inferring temporary states such as goals, intentions, and desires of other people,even when they are false and unjust from our own perspective,strongly engages the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Inferring more enduring dispositions of others and the self, or interpersonal norms and scripts, engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), although temporal states can also activate the mPFC. Other candidate tasks reflecting general-purpose brain processes that may potentially subserve social cognition are briefly reviewed, such as sequence learning, causality detection, emotion processing, and executive functioning (action monitoring, attention, dual task monitoring, episodic memory retrieval), but none of them overlaps uniquely with the regions activated during social cognition. Hence, it appears that social cognition particularly engages the TPJ and mPFC regions. The available evidence is consistent with the role of a TPJ-related mirror system for inferring temporary goals and intentions at a relatively perceptual level of representation, and the mPFC as a module that integrates social information across time and allows reflection and representation of traits and norms, and presumably also of intentionality, at a more abstract cognitive level. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


    Relations between characteristics of workplace practices and types of informal work-related learning: A survey study among Dutch Police

    HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2008
    Anja J. Doornbos
    Some organizations seek to promote informal work-related learning to stimulate organizational performance. This study focuses on six types of work-related learning in relation to personal, relational, and work characteristics of the workplace practice. A survey was conducted to identify types and levels of work-related learning for executive Dutch police officers in terms of intentionality, developmental relatedness, and interaction partner's professional practice and hierarchical position. Analysis of the data found that police officers frequently learn from their peers and together. They learn from new and less-experienced colleagues infrequently. Of the nine characteristics of workplace practices researched in this study, some seemed to individually facilitate work-related learning; in particular, the individual's value of workrelated learning, possibilities for collegial feedback, and a relatively high level of work pressure seemed to stimulate informal work-related learning. Implications of the findings for HRD research and practice are discussed. [source]


    Reading Woman: Displacing the Foundations of Femininity

    HYPATIA, Issue 3 2003
    WENDY A. BURNS-ARDOLINO
    I offer here an analysis of contemporary foundation garments while exploring the ways in which these garments encourage, reinforce and protect normative femininity. In examining the performatives of contemporary normative, ideal femininity as they perpetuate inhibited intentionality, ambiguous transcendence, and discontinuous unity, 1 look to the possibility for subversive performativity vis-à-vis the strengths of women in order to proliferate categories of gender and to potentially displace current notions of what it means to become woman. [source]


    The Computerized MacArthur Story Stem Battery , a pilot study of a novel medium for assessing children's representations of relationships

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF METHODS IN PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH, Issue 4 2006
    Helen Minnis
    Abstract Story stem measures allow the assessment of children's representations of relationship functioning, but are expensive and time-consuming to administer. We developed a computerized story stem measure which does not require specific training for administrators and which allows the child to produce their own animated, narrated story completion. This paper describes, firstly, the reliability of the Computerized MacArthur Story Stem Battery (CMSSB) and, secondly, a preliminary comparison of children in foster care and school controls on narrative coherence, intentionality and avoidance. The CMSSB showed good inter-rater reliability. A group of children in foster care showed significantly poorer coherence of narrative, less intentionality and greater avoidance on the CMSSB compared to a school comparison group. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Perceived intentionality intensifies blameworthiness of negative behaviors: Blame-praise asymmetry in intensification effect1

    JAPANESE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2007
    YOHSUKE OHTSUBO
    Abstract:, The intensification effect in moral judgment refers to the fact that a behavior elicits more extreme blame or praise when it is intentionally (rather than unintentionally) performed. Two vignette experiments tested the hypothesis that intensification is stronger for blameworthy behaviors than for praiseworthy behaviors. In Study 1, 40 Japanese participants read 10 brief descriptions of negative or positive behaviors. Participants who attributed intentionality to negative (or positive) behaviors rated those behaviors as more blameworthy (or praiseworthy) than those who did not. Study 2 (N = 94) presented 20 descriptions of behaviors that differed according to a 2 × 2 (valence of behavior: positive vs. negative; intentionality: present vs. absent) between-participants design. Explicit indication of intentionality elevated blameworthiness of negative behaviors but not praiseworthiness of positive behaviors. [source]


    Procedural fairness in ultimatum bargaining: Effects of interactional fairness and formal procedure on respondents' reactions to unequal offers1

    JAPANESE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2003
    Mitsuteru Fukuno
    Abstract: Ninety-nine Japanese students received one of three offers in an ultimatum bargaining scenario: unfavorable and unequal; equal; or favorable but unequal. These offers were determined by either the other participant or by a computerized lottery. We also manipulated the arbitrariness of the role assignment procedure. Participants perceived the intentional small offer as more unfair in the interactional sense than the unintentional small offer, while they perceived the same offers as unfair in the distributive sense, regardless of intentionality. The intentional small offer was more likely to be rejected than the unintentional small offer. Participants perceived the arbitrary procedure of the role assignment as highly unfair, whereas the difference of arbitrariness in role assignment procedures had no significant impact on their reactions to the offer. Acceptance of the offer was strongly determined by interactional fairness, as well as by distributive fairness, and these types of fairness were influenced by different situational characteristics, such as intentionality, the size of the offer, and the equality of the offer. [source]


    Rules, Social Ontology and Collective Identity

    JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 3 2009
    NUNO MARTINS
    Mainstream game theory explains cooperation as the outcome of the interaction of agents who permanently pursue their individual goals. Amartya Sen argues instead that cooperation can only be understood by positing a type of rule-following behaviour that can be (and often is) out of phase with the pursuit of individual goals, due to the existence of a collective identity. However, Sen does not clarify the ontological preconditions for the type of social behaviour he describes. I will argue that Sen's account of collective identity can be best interpreted in the light of John Searle's notion of collective intentionality, while Sen's explanation of rule-following behavior and agency is best understood using the critical realist transformational model of social activity. [source]


    The Elements of Rationality and Chance in the Choice of Human Action

    JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 4 2004
    ERNEST KRAUSZ
    The focus in this paper is on deliberate human action. The central questions addressed are: whether purely rational choice is possible; whether choices may be induced by chance alone; or whether there is always a mixture of rationality and chance, as well as other factors such as habit, emotion, imitation and irrationality. The approach is a factualist one, upholding the view that, although human action can be explained by its antecedents, this is not incompatible with the notion of "free choice". It is the actual choosing process that determines the final choice of action. Whatever the sources of the elements involved in the choosing process, the choice of action is a specific outcome created by the acting agent. It is in this choosing process and decision making that both rationality and chance enter. The conclusion is that rationality is the element which links intentionality with goal seeking and attainment, but that the actual choice is determined by a complex interactive process in which both logic and chance play a part. [source]


    The Bunshaft Tapes: A Preliminary Report

    JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 2 2000
    Reinhold Martin
    Among the material collected in the Gordon Bunshaft Papers in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Archives at Columbia University are seventeen audiocassette tapes documenting a series of interviews between Arthur Drexler (1925-1987), curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, and Gordon Bunshaft (1909-1990) of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). In these tapes, Bunshaft and Drexler proceed systematically through Bunshaft's work for SOM, with Drexler consistently probing for evidence of authorial intentionality, resisted by Bunshaft. This report considers the manner in which these tapes construct a complex "orality," in which Bunshaft's testimony refuses the intertextual mediation implied by Drexler's questions, which themselves rely on the authority of an oral testimony to guarantee the authenticity of the answers. In turn, Bunshaft's refusals to engage with architectural discourse in the name of a pseudotransparent pragmatics demonstrate the extent of his identification with the ethos of his clients, corporate executives whose "visionary" status in the postwar period was a function of their own-discursive-privileging of pragmatic action over reflective discourse. [source]


    The effectiveness of a programme of enhancing resiliency by reducing family boundary ambiguity among children with epilepsy

    JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 9-10 2010
    Pei-Fan Mu
    Aim and objectives., The aim of the study was to examine the effect of a programme designed to reduce family boundary ambiguity in families who care for children with epilepsy. Background., When parents are caring for an epileptic child, they may experience unclear perceptions about whether the child is psychologically included in the family and develop unclear expectations regarding role performance in the family. Some studies have identified boundary ambiguity as a possible antecedent to relationship problems that are associated with negative outcomes in the areas of parental well-being and family functioning. There is a need to develop family nursing interventions that will reduce family boundary ambiguity when the family is caring for children with epilepsy. Design., A pretest, post-test, one group, quasi-experimental design was used in this study. Methods., This study was made up of three phases: first, the establishing of a parental needs checklist and the development of a parental education information handbook; second, the carrying out of a family assessment including the analysis of the meaning of their experiences and needs and the construction of an educational dialogue and finally, an outcomes evaluation after three months. Seventeen mothers participated in the study. Results., The study found that there were statistically significant improvements in family boundary ambiguity and maternal depression was reduced. Conclusions., This study illustrates nursing intervention that involves the integrating of phenomenological principles into the nursing care process. Specifically, Husserlian phenomenology is able to be helpful to nursing practice, especially the concepts of intentionality, intersubjectivity, empathy and bracketing. Relevance to clinical practice., This study supported the conceptual framework involved in the construction of the meaning of the situation, the enhancement of mastery over the situation and reconstruction of identity. These items are resiliency factors that provided a mechanism that helps to reduce boundary ambiguity when a family is caring for a child with epilepsy. [source]


    Co-evolutionary Dynamics Within and Between Firms: From Evolution to Co-evolution

    JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 8 2003
    Henk W. Volberda
    abstract The extensive selection,adaptation literature spans diverse theoretical perspectives, but is inconclusive on the role of managerial intentionality in organizational adaptation. Indeed this voluminous literature has more to say about selection and sources and causes of structural inertia than about self-renewing organizations that might counteract such inertia. In this introductory essay, we identify four co-evolutionary generative mechanisms (engines) , naïve selection, managed selection, hierarchical renewal and holistic renewal , which illustrate the extensive range of evolutionary paths that can take place in a population of organizations. In particular, the managed selection engine provides the foundations of the underlying principles of co-evolving self-renewing organizations: managing internal rates of change, optimizing self-organization, and balancing concurrent exploration and exploitation. However, it is altogether clear that empirical co-evolution research represents the next frontier for empirically resolving the adaptation selection debate. The essay concludes with a discussion of requirements for co-evolutionary empirical research and introduces the empirical papers in this Special Research Symposium. [source]


    Battle in the Boardroom: A Discursive Perspective

    JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 1 2002
    Wilson Ng
    This article examines the centrality of discourse in achieving managerially relevant outcomes, with a focus on the in-situ performance context of corporate storytellers. The Ric,urian concept of speech act, capturing both the intentionality of organizational discourse and the social context of its production and reception, implicitly guided our research effort. The article has at its core a story of how senior organizational officers exploited the volatile circumstances of a public takeover in Singapore. By looking at the social construction of narratives in their many fragments we come to see how a key protagonist carves out a powerful position. The efficacy of his performances can be seen to be dependent upon the effective use of poetic tropes and the receptiveness of listeners to particular Chinese archetypal relationship-driven themes. In crafting our story we use multiple texts which were produced in and around two case organizations. As such we offer a carefully constructed collage, a mixture of production and reproduction, sticking closely to forms of communication that key organizational actors used to plan, enact and interpret their actions and those of others. Whilst our story offers insights to readers with an interest in organizational discourse, corporate governance and Asian management practices, we refrain from imposing an authoritarian interpretation that insists on identifying with the intentions of the authors. [source]


    Aggression and violence in mental health services: categorizing the experiences of Irish nurses

    JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 2 2007
    J. MAGUIRE msc ba(hons) ffnrcsi rpn rgn dip
    There is growing evidence that nurses in mental health services are likely to be victims of violence or aggression. One of the key difficulties in comparing international findings, however, has been that there has been an inadequate categorization of the types of incident to which staff are exposed. The current study aimed to identify the types of violent or aggressive incidents that staff in Irish Mental Health Services were exposed to within a 1-month long period. A cross-sectional study was undertaken with all nurses working in one of the Mental Health Services in Ireland, serving both an urban and rural population. Data were collected through a questionnaire (Scale of Aggressive and Violent Experiences) adapted from the Perceptions of Prevalence of Aggression Scale. The questionnaire was designed to collect data relating to both personal and professional demographics of the sample as well as experiences of aggressive or violent incidents respondents may have encountered in their work situation. There was a response rate of 31%. Data were analysed utilizing SPSS-11. Both descriptive and inferential analyses were undertaken. The relevant data were subjected to a series of one-way anovas and chi-squared analysis. The findings suggest that nursing staff in this Mental Health Service experienced high levels of verbal aggression, with distinctions obvious between threatening and non-threatening aggression, suggesting discernment in terms of intentionality. Additionally, respondents encountered greater levels of covert or indirect violence or aggression than forms that were overtly directed towards staff. The implications are discussed in relation to both policy and practice. [source]


    MARGOLIS ON HISTORY AND NATURE

    METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 5 2005
    Dale Jacquette
    Abstract: In his philosophy of culture, Joseph Margolis maintains that, although human beings and human societies have a history, there is no human nature in the sense of a fixed essence. I consider objections to Margolis's thesis, beginning with the possibility that nonhuman intelligent species might be in a position to study human behavior from its origins to its demise with the proper distance from our own situation in order to arrive at an understanding of what is essential to human nature, perhaps as a Kantian regulative rather than constitutive principle, and involving abstractions from particular cases and idealizations, as in other branches of science. Finally, I examine the historical-past orientation of Margolis's concept of humanity's self-understanding and its dependence on the intentionality of human thought, and I conclude that it provides an inadequate reason for denying that there can be such a thing as human nature. [source]


    Play, games, and the development of collective intentionality

    NEW DIRECTIONS FOR CHILD & ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT, Issue 115 2007
    Hannes Rakoczy
    Playing games, particularly pretense games, is one of the areas where young children first enter into collective, conventional practices. This chapter reviews recent empirical data in support of this claim and explores the idea that games present a cradle for children's growing into societal and institutional life more generally. [source]


    Augmenting the Cartesian medical discourse with an understanding of the person's lifeworld, lived body, life story and social identity

    NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2009
    Helena Sunvisson RN PhD
    Abstract Using three paradigm cases of persons living with Parkinson's Disease (PD) the authors make a case for augmenting and enriching a Cartesian medical account of the pathophysiology of PD with an enriched understanding of the lived body experience of PD, the lived implications of PD for a particular person's concerns and coping with the illness. Linking and adding a thick description of the lived experience of PD can enrich caregiving imagination and attunement to the patient's possibilities, concerns and constraints. The work of Merleau-Ponty is used to articulate the middle terms of the lived experience of dwelling in a lifeworld. Examining lived experience of embodied intentionality, skilled bodily capacities as highlighted in Merleau-Ponty's non-mechanistic physiology opens new therapeutic, coping and caregiving possibilities. Matching temporal rhythms can decrease the stress of being assisted with activities of daily living. For example, caregivers and patients alike can be taught strategies for extending their lived bodily capacities by altering rhythms, by shifting hyperactivity to different parts of the body and other strategies that change the perceptual experience associated with walking in different environment. A medical account of the pathophysiology of PD is nessessary and useful, but not sufficient for designing caregiving in ways that enrich and extend the existential skills of dwelling of persons with PD. The dominance of mechanistic physiology makes caregivers assume that it is the ,real discourse' about the disease, causing researchers and caregivers alike to overlook the equally real lived experience of the patient which requires different descriptive discourses and different sources of understanding. Lack of dialogue between the two discourses is tragic for patients because caregivers need both in order to provide attuned, effective caregiving. [source]


    Relational care: learning to look beyond intentionality to the ,non-intentional' in a caring relationship

    NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2007
    Dennis Greenwood PhD MSc BA RN
    Abstract, This paper considers the implications for nursing practice of what the continental philosopher Emmanuel Levinas described as the ,non-intentional'. The place of the non-intentional emerges from a critique of Buber's conception of the ,I-Thou' and the ,I-It' relations, and is revealed to a person in the moments prior to the grasping of conscious understanding. A specific incident that took place between a nurse and a person diagnosed with dementia is described and then used to illustrate an exploration of the ,I-Thou' relation and then the non-intentional. The nurse practitioner's pre-understandings of the term dementia are shown to have hindered the emergence of an ,I-Thou' relation and the possibility of a non-intentional glimpse of the otherness of the other. It is suggested here that the plausible associations that become synonymous with a diagnosis like dementia detract from attentiveness to another ,person'. The more tangible an understanding of another person becomes, the less likely it is that a person can really experience the other as separate to their perception of them. The implications for practitioner education and learning in relation to the non-intentional are considered, in particular the need to reflect on the immediacy of the feelings experienced in a relationship. The non-intentional highlights how ,I', as a nurse practitioner, can exclude the other by imposing an understanding on what is seen and experienced in relation to another person. The ,I' prioritizes intentional understanding and so obscures the importance of the spontaneous response to the tear in the eye of the other, which is the basis for Levinas's conception of the non-intentional. The spontaneity of the non-intentional is what Levinas believed confirmed the separateness and autonomy of the other and consequently should be the basis for a therapeutic nursing relationship with a patient. [source]