The reader begins with an original paper by the editors that introduces the social-personality perspective on motivational science and provides an integrated review of empirical and theoretical contributions. Major issues in motivational science are identified that form the basis for the organization of the book. Each section of the book also has a brief introduction, suggested additional readings, and questions for discussion.

Ölümcül Hastalık Umutsuzluk adlı eserinde umutsuzluğu, ben’in bir hastalığı ve kendine yönelen bir ilişkinin sonucu olarak ele alan Danimarkalı filozof Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, bu hastalığın kişide üç farklı şekilde görülebileceğini öne sürmüştür: “(a) bir ben’i olduğunun farkında olmayan umutsuz kişi, (b) kendisi olmak isteyen umutsuz kişi ve (c) kendisi olmak istemeyen umutsuz kişi.” Kierkegaard’a göre kendi ben’ininden kurtulmak isteyen kişi, “olmak istediği ben” hâline gelemediği için olduğu ben’ine katlanamamakta ve bu nedenle umutsuzluk yaşamaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında Kierkegaard’ın benlik ve umutsuzluk (...) ilişkisi üzerine yaptığı bu tespitin, sosyal psikoloji alanının önde gelen araştırmacılarından biri olan Edward Tory Higgins’ın Benlik Uyuşmazlıkları Kuramı üzerinden okunabileceği öngörülmektedir. Higgins, geliştirdiği kuramda çoklu bir benlik ayrımına gitmekte ve benliği gerçek benlik, ideal benlik ve olması gereken benlik olmak üzere üç alana ayırmaktadır. Bu ayrıma göre gerçek benlik, kişinin sahip olduğunu düşündüğü özelliklerin; ideal benlik, kişinin kendisi olmak için idealde sahip olmayı arzu ettiği özelliklerin; olması gereken benlik ise kişinin taşımak zorunda olduğunu düşündüğü özelliklerin bir bütününü temsil etmektedir. Söz konusu özellikler, kişinin kendi kişisel bakış açısına dayalı olabileceği gibi başkalarının bakış açısından da kaynaklanabilmektedir. Higgins’a göre ikili benlik durumları arasındaki uyuşmazlık (örneğin gerçek benlik-ideal benlik ya da gerçek benlik-olması gereken benlik) kişide, kendi beklentilerini ya da başkalarının beklentilerini karşılamada yetersiz kaldığı yönünde negatif duyuşlar yaratmaktadır. Bu duyuşlar arasında depresyonun bir parçası olan umutsuzluk da yer almaktadır. Şimdiki çalışma Kierkegaard’ın tasvir ettiği “olmak istediği ben hâline gelemediği için olduğu ben’ine katlanamayıp umutsuzluğa yakalanan” kişinin içinde bulunduğu durumu, Higgins’ın öne sürdüğü “gerçek benlik-ideal benlik uyuşmazlığının depresyonla (dolayısıyla umutsuzlukla) ilişkili olabileceği” argümanıyla ilişkili bir biçimde ele almayı ve bu yolla benlik ve umutsuzluk ilişkisini felsefe ve psikoloji disiplinlerinin kesişiminde incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. (shrink)

What makes us human is our special motivation to share with others how we feel, what we believe, and what we want to happen in the future. We want to share with others what is real about the world. Shared reality is crucial to what we believe--sharing is believing. It is central to our sense of self, what we strive for and how we strive. It is basic to how we get along with others. It brings us together in fellowship (...) and companionship, but it also tears us apart by creating in-group "bubbles" that conflict with one another. Our shared realities are the best of us, and the worst of us. (shrink)

We argue that it is possible to go beyond the “selfish goal” metaphor and make an even stronger case for the role of unconscious motivation in cognition and action. Through the relevance of a representation (ROAR) framework, we describe how not only value motivation, which relates to “selfish goals,” but also truth motivation and control motivation impact cognition and action.

Recent research in moral psychology has highlighted how the current internal states of observers can influence their moral judgments of others’ actions. In this article, we argue that an important internal state that serves such a function is the sense of control one has over one’s own actions. Across four studies, we show that an individual’s own current sense of control is positively associated with the intensity of moral judgments of the actions of others. We also show that this effect (...) extends not only to judgments of rightness and wrongness (Study 1), but also to assignments of reward and punishment (Study 2). Finally, we demonstrate that this effect is based on the current experience of control by showing a moderation of the effect via motivational states (promotion; prevention) that either lead one to incorporate or disregard internal states when making judgments (Study 3) and by subtly manipulating participants’ sense of control (Study 4). (shrink)

Many researchers in moral psychology approach the topic of moral judgment in terms of value—assessing outcomes of behaviors as either harmful or helpful which makes the behaviors wrong or right, respectively. However, recent advances in motivation science suggest that other motives may be at work as well—namely truth (wanting to establish what is real) and control (wanting to manage what happens). In this review, we argue that the epistemic experiences of observers of (im)moral behaviors, and the perceived epistemic experiences of (...) those observed, serve as a groundwork for understanding how truth and control motives are implicated in the moral judgment process. We also discuss relations between this framework and recent work from across the field of moral psychology, as well as implications for future research. (shrink)

Many models of motivation suggest that goals can be arranged in a hierarchy, ranging from higher-level goals that represent desired end-states to lower-level means that operate in the service of those goals. We present a hierarchical model that distinguishes between three levels—goals, strategies, and tactics—and between approach/avoidance and regulatory focus motivations at different levels. We focus our discussion on how this hierarchical framework sheds light on the different ways that success and failure are defined within the promotion and prevention systems (...) outlined in regulatory focus theory. Specifically, we review research that demonstrates that differences in what “counts” as success versus failure in these systems have important implications for motivational strength, emotional responses, and risky behavior. (shrink)

We propose that cleansing behaviors and other acts of separation or connection have more powerful effects when they are grounded in shared practices – in a shared reality. We conceptualize sensorimotor and shared reality effects as synergistic. Most potent should be physical behaviors performed collectively as a shared practice, grounded both in sensorimotor experience and in shared reality.

This book is a fresh study of the fourth century B.C. Greek adventurer, writer, and student of Socrates, Xenophon. An innovating author of many guises, an important source for the history of his time, a wit and a philosopher, he no longer enjoys the reputation he once did. Suggesting that such a radical de-valuation is more a reflection on nineteenth- and twentieth-century attitudes and scholarship than on the worth of Xenophon, the author in this book attempts to reassert Xenophon’s rightful (...) position by offering a close, literary-historical reading of all of Xenophon’s writings and by focusing in this process on the alluring reticence and ironic subtlety many have often failed to appreciate before offering what turn out to be their too hasty criticisms. It is hoped that this study will help to bring about the realization that Xenophon, when properly read and read without preconceptions, may yet prove an invaluable guide to the development of Greek thought in general and the world of fourth-century Greece in particular. Xenophon emerges as one of the last great representatives of that civilization which reached its height in Athens, and it is in this context that he is best understood, not, as so often previously, against the Peloponnesian and especially Spartan background where he had friends and where he spent a long exile. (shrink)

We propose that abstraction is an interpersonal process and serves a social function. Research on shared reality shows that in communication, people raise their level of abstraction in order to create a common understanding with their communication partner, which can subsequently distort their mental representation of the object of communication. This work demonstrates that, beyond building accurate models, abstraction also functions to build socially shared models – to create a shared reality.

Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson remain central voices in North American spiritual traditions. This article is an attempt to contextualize a major vein of the north American theological and spiritual tradition concerning the intersection of aesthetics and the human experience of God. As will be argued below, both Edwards and Emerson were deeply involved in these conversations and to a large extent offer novel approaches to the tensions between the individual and community as it relates to the experience of (...) God. To that end, this essay begins with an analysis of Edwards's view of religious experience and its normative relation to human experience as a whole. I will argue that... (shrink)

George Grant’s bleak assessment of the prospects of technological civilization owed a lot to his reading of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul. However, Grant understood technological development within the context of liberal theory and capitalist practice. Grant explained why liberalism is the doctrine most appropriate to the development of productive forces, or the most complete exploitation of natural and human resources. Unlike most North American conservatives, Grant was not a friend of capitalism but of civil servants who restrain capitalist accumulation (...) in the name of the common good or national community. Grant was what Gad Horowitz called a Red Tory and offered a unique perspective of how American technique has closed us off from love and contemplation, leaving us with the one-dimensional problem-solving mentality of the social engineer. (shrink)

The primary objective of this study is to provide a description of the major ideas about void space within and beyond the world that were formulated between the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries. The second part of the book - on infinite, extracosmic void space - is of special significance. The significance of Professor Grant's account is twofold: it provides the first comprehensive and detailed description of the scholastic Aristotelian arguments for and against the existence of void space; and it (...) presents (again for the first time) an analysis of the possible influence of scholastic ideas and arguments on the interpretations of space proposed by the nonscholastic authors who made the Scientific Revolution possible. The concluding chapter of the book is unique in not only describing the conceptualizations of space proposed by the makers of the Scientific Revolution, but in assessing the role of readily available scholastic ideas on the conception of space adopted for the Newtonian world. (shrink)

In Projecting a Camera, film theorist Edward Branigan offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding film theory. Why, for example, does a camera move? What does a camera "know"? (And when does it know it?) What is the camera's relation to the subject during long static shots? What happens when the screen is blank? Through a wide-ranging engagement with Wittgenstein and theorists of film, he offers one of the most fully developed understandings of the ways in which the camera operates (...) in film. With its thorough grounding in the philosophy of spectatorship and narrative, Projecting a Camera takes the study of film to a new level. With the care and precision that he brought to Narrative Comprehension and Film , Edward Branigan maps the ways in which we must understand the role of the camera, the meaning of the frame, the role of the spectator, and other key components of film-viewing. By analyzing how we think, discuss, and marvel about the films we see, Projecting a Camera, offers insights rich in implications for our understanding of film and film studies. (shrink)

Explores "why we find spontaneity so elusive and shows how early Chinese philosophy points the way to happier, more authentic lives"--Dust jacket flap.

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. (...) Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

Psychology without genuinely thoughtful philosophy winds up as self-help gimmicks; philosophy without the insights & feeling of psychology remains an arcane academic game out of touch with life. By re-joining spirit & soul, this book is a major work of both philosophy & psychology. Casey asks puzzling questions & gives lasting answers. In a clear & vivid manner, one of America's best professional thinkers takes up one of the great themes of imagination, fantasy, hallucination, remembering & perceiving. Film & architecture (...) provide surprising material for his brilliant & useful account of basic philosophical problems which are also major mysteries of the soul. (shrink)

Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers, populations, genetic trees, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest fires, irrigation systems, and the world’s climate. It's through these representations that we learn about the world. This entry explores various different accounts of scientific representation, with a particular focus on how scientific models represent their target systems. As philosophers of science are increasingly acknowledging the importance, if not the primacy, of scientific models as representational units of science, it's important to (...) stress that how they represent plays a fundamental role in how we are to answer other questions in the philosophy of science (e.g. the scientific realism debate). This entry begins by disentangling ‘the’ problem of scientific representation, before critically evaluating the current options available in the literature. (shrink)

The so-called ergodic hierarchy (EH) is a central part of ergodic theory. It is a hierarchy of properties that dynamical systems can possess. Its five levels are egrodicity, weak mixing, strong mixing, Kolomogorov, and Bernoulli. Although EH is a mathematical theory, its concepts have been widely used in the foundations of statistical physics, accounts of randomness, and discussions about the nature of chaos. We introduce EH and discuss its applications in these fields.

In this unique study of the process of filmmaking, director Edward Dmytryk blends abstract film theory and the practical realities of feature film production to provide an artful and elegant analysis of the conceptual foundations of filmmaking and film studies. Dmytryk explores the technical principles underlying the craft of filmmaking and how their use is effective in developing the viewer's involvement in the cinematic narrative. Originally published in 1988, this reissue of Dmytryk's classic book includes a new critical introduction (...) by Joe McElhaney. (shrink)