A
More Ethical, Dignifying. Authentic and Humanistic Heuristic Approach to the
Studying and Conceptualisation of the
Human Subject and Human Existence
CONCISE SUMMARY OF MY ACTION RESEARCH WORLD CONGRESS REFLECTIVE ENCOUNTER WITH MY AUDIENCE AT MY DEDICATED TIME SLOT
August 23rd (Wednesday) Session 3 (16.45 - 17.45 h)
An Ethically-Laden Heuristic Approach
to An Ontological Living Theory of An Individual’s
Being/Becoming-In-The-World
It is my wish here to
complement my mechanistic, linguistic and disembodied text in the proceedings
where I described my passion and ambition and to liven and humanise them with
my actual presence here and now.
I
am no longer a discursive text, linguistic words and texts nor am, myself, and
my feelings, experiences, values and beliefs detached and disembodied
linguistic ideas, statements, propositions, abstractions, symbols and concepts.
I
am an actual, applied, real-world embodied, living and emerging human being who
is striving to reflectively convey and share with other human beings, fellow
colleagues and peers, my own living embodied, autoethnographical life story:
I
am talking about the living and embodied story of Who I am; What I want and
seek to have and achieve in and for my life; What is important and of value to
me and my life; How and what I seek to educationally, ontologically,
epistemologically and ethically relate and contribute to you.
This
includes, embraces and embodies the following: What gives me the optimal
experiences of dignity, integrity, gratification (self-gratification),
empowerment and self-actualisation, as well as those experiences of
ontological/existential meaning, security and sustainability, productivity and
being productive, constructive and ethical and well-being; And, equally, what I
should like to push forwards within, for and as my professional life and my
mode of developing, increasing and enriching the meanings of my life and
practice.
Still, I am aspiring to do so and convey my story in the
clearest and most engaging, living, human-all-too-human, applicable/applied and
authentic manner feasible.
I am talking about a manner that is the most optimally
beneficial, productive, constructive and contributing (educational and
epistemological) to the fulfilment of its intention.
I am talking about doing so within an open and public
manner that transcends the inner self-reflecting self and reaching the
potential interest of other human beings and researchers.
I think this ontologically, de facto, by essence and
intention embraces structure, discipline, rigour and being self-aware,
self-disciplined and self-critical.
This implies constructing and
developing methods and methodology and a heuristic tool and approach for the
conveyance to you my living, autoethnographical, personal story. This is by which to convey myself to you and
this wholly embodied and wholly human-all-too-human aspects of myself and my
ontological, ethical, educational and epistemological aspects of my
being/becoming-in-the-world.
This for me is namely contemplating and planning and making
plans in regards to the implementation, fulfilment and actualisation of one’s intentions
and aspirations and implementing and sticking to one’s plans.
And my intention here is to construct, develop, clarify and
convey for the critical engagement and hopeful/intentional convinction of my
colleagues and peers, namely you and yours’, this heuristic tool.
This is so as to contribute to, develop and push forward my
field of interest, intention and practice: namely the field of conceptualising
the person and the authentic/naturalistic, embodied, engaging, living,
applicable/applied and ostensive phenomenological meanings of being a person in
the world and applicable, real-world, real-life, real-living, applied
situations and scenarios.
Still, this act of planning and making plans equally implies
for me making sure to the best of one and my own ability that the plan and
planning and their phenomenological meanings, essences and intentions could be
critically engaged with, reflected upon, scrutinised, followed, evaluated and
re-evaluated by both the planner himself/herself and those who are
interrelating with him/her and in turn are engaging with the planning and with
whom the planner is intentionally engaging.
I am talking with you and am telling you the story of my
embodied passion. I am seeking to engage
with you, convey, describe, clarify and explain to you. I am publicly and reflectively sharing with
you what is important and of value to me; what presently and for quite a while
now fulfils, empowers and nourishes me.
I am publicly and reflectively sharing with you what
presently provides meaning, sense of productivity and self-actualisation,
ontological security and sustainability and gratification to my present and
emerging life, my professional practice and intentions for my future and future
development. And what I am presently
intending as my Sartrean life’s work, dedication and commitment and
professional career and its development, empowerment and actualisation.
I am looking for a space and a manner to study and critically,
methodologically and heuristically engage with human existence and its
applied/applicable, phenomenological meanings for the real-life, concrete,
living and embodied individuals that embody and live and lead it.
This is as well as for a space and niche for a more authentic, dignifying human-all-too-human and empowering human expression and self-expression, human integrity and dignity, human autonomy, self-construction, self-development and self-conceptualisation.
This is within an
authentic, embodied, applicable/applied, engaging and living, yet structured,
systematic, methodological, disciplined and self-critical fashion. One that is entailing and embodying a
heuristics of and a heuristic tool and approach to human existence and the
human subject.
I am using myself, my
critical and progressing psychological, self-educational and ethical
self-study, my autoethnographical life-story and my ontology, reflectivity and
ethics as an embodiment, exemplification and illustration of an embodied
general academic phenomenon within the human, educational and social sciences
and as a human-all-too-human phenomenon.
Doing this in this manner is an important part of my argument.
In my work as a theoretical humanistic critical
psychologist of human existence, personality psychologist and a clinician, I
have been criticising the endeavours of my colleagues and my field to produce
and develop general propositional statements and hypotheses about and in
regards to what it is, implies and means to be human and an individual in the
world. And then to spend their research
enquiries providing evidence for these statements/hypotheses and their
validation and legitimation for the convinction of colleagues and peers in the
same field and discipline of interest and practices.
This is as the most appropriate
form and structure for what they endeavour to explain, describe, convey and
account for - More appropriate than the other statements/hypotheses for the explanation,
description, clarification and conveyance of what these specific phenomena are,
mean and involve.
This is the normal, conventional routine and practice in
the academia. And the one we have been
trained in from the beginning of our academic training. There was no mainstream questioning it and we
have learned and been pressured to internalise it and to take it for granted as
the appropriate and most valid and reliable form of research and researching. Moreover, attempts to question it were called
unscientific, poetic, subjective, undisciplined, folk-psychological and
irrelevant.
Still, I have felt that such normal and conventional
research practices objectify, mechanise, reduce and disembody the human subject
from himself/herself and these phenomena that are directly embodied and lived
by him/her and sought to be lived well, meaningfully, gratifyingly and
constructively/productively.
I was wondering what happens to the actual living human
being whose existence those practitioners colleagues of mine are trying to
explain, describe, theorise and conceptualise.
I was reflecting on my own life’s struggles and existential dilemmas and
struggles to find meaning, gratification, self-actualisation, empowerment and
productivity, as well as on the struggling, confused, self-transforming and
self-constructing person, endeavouring to do and achieve the same, that I knew
from my clinical and mundane engagement with him/her. For me, to treat this human subject as
general, disembodied, statements and hypotheses is offensive, insulting,
degrading and dehumanising.
It seems to me that they – those academic researchers in the traditional academia - and in fact we and us (as I have been a part of this) are talking among themselves/ourselves about him/her and using him/her for the communication and systematic clarification for our own convinction, validation and legitimation of these disembodied and generalising propositional statements about him/her. I equally consider this to be an act of reductionism, degradation and dehumanisation.
I asked and am still asking why
not enabling individuals to provide their own descriptions, analysis and
applied/applicable, critical and systematic evaluations of and for their life
and being/becoming-in-the-world and their living and leading it: Specifically,
What gives them their meaning, productivity, self-actualisation, gratification
and empowerment.
---
Let me give you an applied
illustration for this from real-life academia:
Here is an email that was sent
last week, two days prior to my coming here, to academic researchers at the
Giving handouts of the email to the participants in
my workshop
Social Networks in Higher Education Organisations: Call for
Participants:
We are carrying out a long-term study of working
relationships amongst academic staff in UK Higher Education.
The study will investigate the ways in which positive and negative relationships
arise in the academic workplace. We will track the long-term development of
these relationships, and evaluate their positive and negative impacts upon
individual effectiveness, career progression, job satisfaction and personal
well-being.
If you are
planning to commence employment in a teaching capacity as a lecturer in the HE
sector during Autumn 2006, we would be interested in talking to you about your
experiences of working relationships. Following the commencement of your new
job we would first send you several questionnaires and then conduct a series of
interviews. During the interviews you would be offered £10 per hour as
compensation for your time (please note: this does not apply to the time taken
filling out the questionnaires). Any information obtained in the
course of these conversations would be treated in the strictest confidence, and
you would never be required to identify any colleague by name.
If you would
like to participate in our study, please contact:
Name, personal details and
address
Let me read it with you and show you my meanings using it as a real-life
illustration of my abstraction and what I am trying to constructively and
applicably criticise.
AN
ILLUSTRATION:
I have received an email last week just before
coming to
Title- The title of the email is:
Social Networks in Higher Education Organisations: Call for Participants:
And it begins by saying:
We
are carrying out a long-term study of working relationships amongst academic
staff in UK Higher Education. :
And I ask who is ‘We’ – I want to know who is
talking to and assumingly with me.
And
it goes on to say:
The study will
investigate the ways in which positive and negative relationships arise in the
academic workplace. We will track the long-term development of these
relationships, and evaluate their positive and negative impacts upon individual
effectiveness, career progression, job satisfaction and personal well-being.
--
Hence, for me The self-concealing researchers/academics have constructed a
propositional statement that they seek to study, refute or reject and as
convincingly, systematically, methodologically and clearly as they can convey
to their colleagues and peers and the re-evaluation and critical engagement of
these colleagues and peers: I think this study is being carried out as part of
a Doctor of Philosophy study/enquiry though I am not sure:
Anyway the
propositional statement goes as follows: [the statement]
Positive and negative
relationships arise in the academic workplace and affect the academic
performance, progression, job satisfaction and personal well-being of
academics:.-
This is in
contradiction of such propositional statements as ‘each academic is an isolated
island on its own and not affected by social interactions and
interrelationships’.
If you are planning to
commence employment in a teaching capacity as a lecturer in the Higher
Education sector during Autumn 2006, we would be interested in talking to you
about your experiences of working relationships. Following the commencement of
your new job we would first send you several questionnaires and then conduct a
series of interviews. During the interviews you would be offered £10 per
hour as compensation for your time (please note: this does not apply to the
time taken filling out the questionnaires). Any information
obtained in the course of these conversations would be treated in the strictest
confidence, and you would never be required to identify any colleague by name.
Thus – The concealed
researchers (namely, the mysterious ‘we’) turn to the beginner higher education
lecturers whose well-being, job satisfaction and career progression they wish
to study. This is in relation to their
working relationships and interrelationships with their colleagues and
peers. This is namely the
hypothesis/statement
The researcher (i.e. The mysterious ‘we’) come to the beginner lecturers with this propositional statement of theirs’ and conduct structured interviews and email them questionnaires that they set in advance to study their propositional statement. The researched participants (namely, the beginner lecturers) answer the questionnaires and the interviews’ questions. The researchers gain data, take notes of the replies, keep some sort of memos and records.
Then they analyse the
data and replies in terms of their propositional statement. At which point the participants and their
embodied ontology, existence and ethics are gone, vanished into the abysse
{Frankl’s cat}: reduced into replies and data.
[Viktor Frankl’s Cat: How Frankl
described the problem of reducing the human subject}
In 2002, I gave a short presentation to the Psychology
Department at
This was point 4 of the/my presentation then
“4. What is meant by Reductionism and Mechanising: Illustration
There is a nice story that I have
borrowed from Frankl and used years ago to tell my audience about reductionism
and to illustrate the problem within a visual narrative and theatrical
acting-like practice that involved bringing a cat to my astonished audience.
The story goes like that
Two people go see the rabbi because
they have a quarrel. Reuben claims
Shimon’s cat has eaten the pot of butter he has left on the balcony. How much butter was there asks the old and
tired rabbi. Five pounds answers
Reuben. We shall soon see mumbles the
rabbi, and so he grabs the cat [like so], picks it up by the neck, weighs it,
and finds out that it weights exactly five pounds. Now, says the rabbi staring at the cat, we
know, where the butter is, but where has the cat gone?.
Now imagine the cat is man [the human
subject] and the rabbi is empirical psychologists and (as a humanist I cannot
resist the temptation) psychoanalysis.
Empirical psychology was so busy
defining itself as conscious/mental experiences, behaviour/s, representations, neuro-physiology,
human faculties/capabilities, dynamic naturalistic relationships, discourses,
social interactions and interrelationships, methodologies, quantitatives and
qualities and their objective/scientific/systematic/reliable studying that like
the rabbi it sees only those things - man [the human subject], his/her embodied
living and ethics of living well and ethically for himself/herself has been
mechanised, reduced and disappeared.
Those elements consumed him/her.
The psycho-analysts are especially great at this. 'Now we have found
unconscious desires, repressed feelings, childhood and infant events and
whatever else we have been seeking', they shout in great ecstasy, staring at
the shadow in the human form which is sitting on their couch, like the rabbi,
who is holding the cat, but wait a minute where has man (namely the patient
whose fees have just got me this lovely jaguar that is parked outside) gone?".
I used to have many
psycho-analysts friends. Then I told
this story. Now I have none.”
----
They draw on the analysis and interpretation of the data,
replies of the participants and their level and degree of fitting the
propositional statement.:
Now! Where is the actual living and
embodied beginner lecturer who is planning and aspiring to advance his life and
professional career, self-empower and self-actualise? For me – He/she is being
swallowed by the propositional statements and hypothesis. He/she is gone replaced by the propositional
statements and hypotheses of him/her and his/her life/ontology and ethics, how
to live and practice well, productively, gratifyingly and meaningfully for
himself/herself
I am talking about the person who
is struggling with colleagues and peers and with politics of truth and trying
to make sense and the most out of these struggles of his/her –
For those of you who have read
Jack Whitehead’s 1993 account on his relationships with colleagues and peers
and the living contradiction he experienced between what he felt was a
continuous act of bullying and harassment and a severe existential menace to
his career and the success and well-being he felt when he managed to come up
and develop his Living Educational Theory approach you’d know who this person
is or could be:
As for me -
Having received this email: I felt dehumanised, objectified, reduced,
mechanised, degraded and humiliated. I
do not feel the researchers of this study would even begin to have an
epistemological and educational idea/clue of who I am, what is important to me,
what I am passionate about, what I want and aspire to construct and achieve in
my life and my professional practice and career for myself and my field;
And what my
well-being, self-fulfilment and experiences of job satisfaction and career
progression really, meaningfully and truly are, mean for me and made of.
They may be
able to say that they have followed the traditional academic rules in regards
to empirical, scientific objective and systematic conduct.
But I do not
believe they will not have what they have strived to study and evaluate and
convey to their field, colleagues and peers: What it means to be beginner
lecturer as firsthand account and relate and interrelate to/with the world as
one.
The epistemology,
ontology, ethics and ethos will be jeopardised but no one can blame them for
being poetic, folk-psychological, undisciplined and non empirical psychology.
I am really
furious about my field and discipline. I
am determined to change and improve it.
I am an Action Researcher who by definition is trying to improve his
field, his ontology and his practice. I
am here in this World Congress discussing this.
The email
concludes by saying
If you would like to participate in our study, please contact:
Well, I certainly would not do this in this way. I will forfeit my 10 pounds profit meet the researcher whom I know and have been socialising with on a cup of tea and coffee and have a non-impositional, ungrounded, human-all-too-human conversation with him/her, telling her/him what is going on with me and hearing from him/her about what has been happening with him/her. He/she will have to acknowledge me as a human being rather than as someone that is mechanistically used to prove or reject/refute his/her statement/hypothesis about me, my life, ontology, ethos and ethics and my practiced relationships as an academic. I refuse being mechanised into the provision of evidence for the acceptance or rejection of an hypothesis. I refuse to jeopardise my humanity for the sake of what is thought – erroneously I believe – to constitute ‘good’ ‘valid’/’reliable’ academic research practice
I am full of rage regarding this mechanisation and reductionism. I love my field and what I am seeking to constructively do and feel an obligation for it: and am seeking and am devoting my being and practice to do it well, constructively and meaningfully. I am doing this to provide my life and what I am doing with meaning, life affirming energy (Georges Batailles; Jack Whitehead) and to be an ethical, productive and contributing being. I regard being social as being ethical and I am yet to encounter a person who has not contributed and taught me something [even if it is about myself in the world] within our social encounter. I am hoping to contribute something to you with this encounter and that you have picked up something from it.
It is my ontological need to do
something meaningful, empowering and productive and - for my passionate
position, view, perspective and sake - to improve, develop and push forward my
field of passion and active (implementing) practice and intention and my own
embodied/embedded practice and reflective practice within it that has led to my
becoming an action researcher, do what I do and seek to be doing in my
life/practice and [to] do well – gratifyingly, productively and meaningful – as
optimally as I can and am able to: This
is one of the main reasons for my being here as an Action Researcher in an
Action Research World Congress.
IV. What Is My Intention Here In This Presentation?
I am basing my
work on the aspiration to stay away from and to distant myself from the Utopic,
ideological and idealistic and to be practical, applicable methodological,
empirical and epistemological: And to stick to a pragmatic, applied,
constructive and applicable, empirical and methodological type of engagement,
critical and heuristic enquiry/enquiring and work. This is a crucial part of my work, thesis and
argument.
Thus, in this
presentation, within what I have just talked about, I am going to tell you my
own embodied, authentic, ostensive, living and emerging and wholly dynamic
life’s story and personal narrative.
I am embodying my embodied propositions, declarations, views, values intents, plans and beliefs within my life’s, living and progressive personal narrative of myself as an academic, a researcher, clinician, autoethnographer, ontological living theory action researcher and a human being.
This is within my methodological,
ethical, educational and epistemological endeavour to discipline and
systematise it for your understanding, critical engagement and benefit.
I have recently shifted
my ontology and practice from traditional empirical, experimentalist social and
human science into personal, autoethnographical, embodied and living
narratives, World Wide Web Blogs and Bloggings and post-propositional
ontological living theory action research accounts: This is as a result of what I have just said
and illustrated.
I have analysed and critically
enquired into my new field of practice.
I have concluded that
In general the enquiries and the wordings of their
questions are essentially of value and significance and can be followed by the
practitioners of the ethos and the field of the narratives and accounts to
which they are intended.
Still - Most blogs and bloggings are widely considered to
be too personal and embodied and disorganised and undisciplined, and not as
publicly, educationally and epistemologically contributing and of value and
even relevance to others as they could be and could have been.
Similarly, within my reading and critically engaging with
Living Educational Theory writings, I thought they are too confined within a
narrowed scope, practice, interest and intention. This is rather than the more global, inclusive,
common and shared scope and niche of the ontological human-all-too-human
interest, ethics and practice. I also
thought they are not as disciplined and systematic as they could have been in
their immense potential.
I was looking for a question that,
as far as its wording is concerned, can be related, followed and interrelated
and engaged with by all living human beings in common. This is by virtue of and within their common
ontological essence and living embodiment of their being human and their
following a more ontological, disciplined, systematic and human-all-too-human
scope, structure, niche and interest and a heuristics of human existence.
I thought that this way, those professional academics, like
myself, who are interested in the phenomenon of what it is to be a person in
the world could merely read and engage with embodied, living, relational and
dynamic accounts without imposing on them and inflicting on them our own
ontologies, views, propositions and statements about the phenomenon of being a
person.
Our engagement would be bringing
to them, as a possible living, applied, applicable and embodied illustration,
our own ontological living theories account of what being human and leading a
meaningful and productive existence means for us within our own embodied being
in the world as us. And letting them
express themselves and construct, develop and offer their own ontological
living theories of what it is to be them and leading a meaningful and
productive existence in the world as them.
Clinically, and I am essentially a personality psychologist, my principal claim here is that my being a psychologist of human existence and the human subject does not make me an expert on what it means to be one. Merely living it and the being/becoming it is what makes me an expert in and on the meanings of being the human subject that I am, am existing and emerging as and am interested in and fascinated with.
Furthermore, I believe my interference with others’ existence
and endeavours to conceptualise, clarify, explain and convey it can merely mean
objectifying, dehumanising and mechanising them and interfering with their
integrity, autonomy, authenticity and dignity and most basic human rights: the
right to engage with their own life and their expression, reflective,
re-evaluation and experience of it. I
call this interference an imposition and impositional.
In my present practice I
am striving to create a human all too human heuristic question that could guide
personal, autoethnographical, phenomenological, ontological living action
research enquiries and accounts and relate and interrelate them with each other
as what I like to call a constructive/applied, critical humanistic,
post-propositional, embodied, living, dynamic psychology of human existence
that is authentic, reflective, reflexive, dynamic, applied, applicable and
relational.
I have recently found a heuristic
question that I like and that I think is an appropriate one for the
implementation, fulfilment and actualisations of my plans, intentions,
ontology, reflective practice, autoethnography and planning. I should like to introduce and rationalise
this heuristic question of mine to you and your understanding, critical
engagement, convinction and legitimacy within the most convincing, applicable,
empowering, self-actualising, dignifying, gratifying, interesting and
contributing manner that I can. This is
what I am reflectively practicing and doing and striving to develop, push
forwards, empower and do well, constructively, productively meaningfully and
gratifyingly.
V. Introduction to the Question,
its intention, essence and meaning:
I am talking about the question:
'How do I lead a
more meaningful, productive/constructive, ontologically securing and
sustainable, gratifying, dignifying, fulfilling, empowering and contributing
existence in, with and towards the world for myself?'
I
am talking about a
question that I am suggesting and am working on developing it as the
following:
First - An embodied, applied/applicable, constructive,
living and human-all-too-human mode of the following: Living and engaging and
ostensive guidance, structure and evaluation and self-reevaluation in and of
Reflective Practice, Practitioner and Action Research and Living Theory Action
Research and personal autoethnographical narratives and life’s stories.
Second - Embodied, applied/applicable, living, dynamic,
critical, evaluative, relational, educational and epistemological standards of
judgement for such accounts.
Third - An embodied, humanistic, applied, applicable and
constructive heuristic mode of critically reflective and reflexive enquiry/ing
into one’s embodied, lived, experienced and living ontology, epistemology,
self-education, ethics and ethos.
Indeed, by heuristics I am meaning an applied/applicable
and well-structured form of guidance, structure and nourishment.
I am talking about a form of guidance and structure that
enables, sustains, nourishes and encourages the rigorous, systematic, critical,
self-critical and methodological, progressive and developing enquiry and
enquiring into an issue of public concern and interest.
I am talking about a structured form that permits and
actualises the productive and constructive dealing with such an enquiry/ing and
intentionally and applicably providing applied, meaningful and constructive
solutions and answers for its/the intended field and area of enquiry and
enquiring. Hence, I am talking about a constructive,
applied and applicable form/structure.
This is coupled with the enabling and nourishment of a
reflective and reflexive enquiring into and furthering of such an enquiry. The latter namely denotes its development and
the enrichment of its quality, profoundness, rigour and public interest. Thus I am meaning a dynamic and progressive
form/structure.
I am talking about a form that enables the systematic,
evaluative, reflective and critical engagement, comprehension and interrelation
of an engager who has not been himself/herself involved in the enquiry itself
and yet is able to engage with it and benefit from it. Thus I am talking about an intentionally and
essentially relational and inter-relational form/structure.
I am specifically talking about the issue of dealing with
and conceptualising human existence and the being/becoming, existing and living
of a person in the world within an empirical, systematic, academic,
methodological and critical fashion that is equally embodied, ostensive,
living, phenomenological, poetic, dynamic and applicable, whilst contributing
to the public and enlightening understanding, conceptualising, clarifying and
explaining human phenomena and ontological experiences.
My intention is certainly
to construct a formal and open/public form of studying, enquiring into,
analysing, evaluating, conceptualising, clarifying and conveying one’s
embodied, self-constructing (auto-poietic), living and emerging existence and
being/becoming-in-the-world and its embodied meanings for oneself. This is namely what is significant, of value
and importance for oneself and one’s integrity, well-being, self-actualisation,
empowerment, self-fulfilment, ontological security and sustainability.
I am talking about an academic, educational,
epistemological, empowering, productive/constructive, contributing, rigorous,
critical, systematic and evaluative form of ontological self-study and
self-studying.
I am talking about a form that with its attempt to be and
to exemplify its being critical, systematic, methodical and evaluative, is
nonetheless human-all-too-human and wholly embodied within living,
self-constructive and struggling human beings as perceived by the existential
and humanistic philosophies and psychologies - notably within their critiques
of empirical psychologies and psychoanalytic and psychodynamic
psychologies.
I am talking about a form of
heuristic enquiry that is ontologically and ethically wholly based upon and
committed to human dignity, integrity, autonomy, empowerment and personal
agency.
I am thus talking about a form
that is evasive of the disembodied, objectifying, impersonal, alienating,
severing, mechanistic, dehumanising and reductive elements of the traditional
movements of positivism, empiricism and pseudo-positivism towards and of the
living, self-constructing and struggling human subject.
This is in the discipline of empirical psychology,
empirical psychologies and paradigms and models of the discipline of empirical
psychology and the social, human and educational sciences.
This is as exemplified, expressed and come to being in
their standards of judgement and modes of validation/validity, evaluation,
self-conceptualisation, self-legitimation, enquiring, conveyance and
legitimation of theoretical conceptualisation that are at the core of the
traditional humanistic critique that in itself is a propositional model and
paradigm in the discipline of psychology, philosophy and the human, social and
educational sciences.
By propositional model, I am again meaning a mode of perception and view that is considering itself to be the appropriate and most valid one for the specific, intending subject of enquiry, interest and practice and that is thriving and self-validating at the expense of the other models and theories for the subject that it is seeking to defend and sustain itself against their refuting it and to eliminate and replace them in order to prove and show its own validity.
As I already said, [This
practice of constructing this heuristic tool and approach of mine is my
Sartrean life’s project and commitment and what gives my life and practice
ontological/existential meaning and the phenomenological experience of being
productive and contributing, as well as self-gratification, empowerment,
dignity, authenticity and aesthetic, ethical and authentic quality of life and
existence and my leading and living it in the world for myself.
In my talking about and my critical reflection on my
practice of constructing such a humanistic constructive/applied critical
heuristics, I am talking about an act that is my Sartrean life project of true,
authentic and profound ontological commitment, passion and dedication and even
ontological self-association and that I have been working throughout my entire
adult life on and am planning to pursue with my entire professional and
personal life.
This is as a mode to provide an/the optimal passion,
existential/ontological meaning, productivity, gratification, integrity, ontological
security, sustainability and essence to my life, existence and
being/becoming-in-the-world.
This is as well as ethical, epistemological and didactic
contribution to a field, discipline, colleagues and peers. This is as a mode to attain, further and
enrich self-empowerment, self-fulfilment, integrity and social status, niche,
dignity, self-respect and respect from the community and ethos in which I live
and am leading my life, ontology, ethics and professional practice and a
success in what I am doing and aspiring to create, develop and accomplish.
Hence, my work is
embodied within me, my own ontological and ethical intentions and aspirations
and their constructive implementations. And in turn within what is giving me my
ontological/existential meaning and being productive and contributing, as well
as self-gratification, empowerment, dignity, authenticity and aesthetic,
ethical and authentic quality of life and existence and my leading and living
it in the world for myself.
I now wish to provide the autoethnographical narrative for you:
VI. This naturally leads to the
following questions
Who Am I? And What Do I want? What
is my Background? Where I Am Coming From? What is my Embodied,
Post-Propositional Personal story? [Here
I bring a story of how I have come up with this position]
I am therefore embodying my work within my life and my
endeavour to empower and actualise it and myself as optimally as I can. I am doing so through my research question. And my life for the purpose of this
presentation and my conveyance of this heuristics and heuristic question is its
working to convincingly convey, clarify, explain, exemplify and legitimate this
idea of mine, to develop and push it forward and to establish and push forward
my career and professional practice as the person and professional who is
aspiring to do so.
I am doing this work as I am an academic ontologist and a
psychologist of human existence who has been and is still reflecting upon the
role of this field of practice, interest and ontology of mine (who I am and am
conceptualising myself as here and in my work and practice) for and within the
applicable, real-life, real-world life, practices, self-conceptualisation and
living, self-constructing and empowerment of individuals in real-world
situations and scenarios.
I feel an alienation, disembodiment and detachment between
the academic, empirical enquiries into the human subject and the applicable,
embodied, ostensive and living real-world lives of the individual human
subjects in real-life, real-world situations and scenarios. I am embodying my entire research within this
feeling.
I personally feel that no existing form of structured
empirical psychology and heuristic approach to and heuristic tool of human
existence in academia is able to conceptualise, evaluate and convey the
meanings of my leading my present life in the world. I feel that if I do feel and experience this
then there is no reason in the world for any human subject and being not to
feel and embody within his/her own ontology this frustration and resentment
towards the academic enquiries into him/her and the discipline of empirical
psychology and the social, human and educational sciences in particular.
Thus, the discipline of empirical psychology that is the
discipline of the human subject and his/her understanding and knowledge fail to
analyse, enquire into and conceptualise my actual, embodied, living and
emerging existence and being/becoming in the world and in turn to fulfil the
role and essence of the discipline.
I believe that the reasons for this is their embodiments
within the propositional models and empirical psychologies as heuristic tools
and modes of conceptualisation, analysis, enquiring into and approaches to
human existence. This is within the
above mode of validation and legitimation.
I started feeling this way and have been extremely
passionate about it in my third year as an undergraduate psychology. The dominating paradigm was positivistic,
experimental and quantitative Representional cognitive psychology.
There was no mention whatsoever of qualitative work in the BPS curriculum that I studied. My own interest was Humanistic and Existential psychology and philosophies that has started as a teenager reading the classic Existential texts of authors like Sartre, Camus, Frankl, Becket and the philosophy and theatre of the Absurd, increasingly becoming my living doctrine and life philosophy and religion and upon engaging with humanistic psychology, Laing, the Philadelphia association, May, Rogers, Maslow, Logotherapy, Boss and Binswanger my choice of career and professional practice.
In the 1990s I wished to
examine this feeling of mine. I have
embarked on a large-scale postgraduate study into the interrelationship between
Humanism and phenomenology and the discipline of empirical psychology; a study
that has stretched itself within its large scope over the entire second half of
the 1990s.
I have undertaken an
historical and theoretical/philosophical textual analytical examination of the
entire history of the discipline of empirical psychology and its
conceptualisation of and enquiries into the human subject.
This is in light of my
humanistic passions and ideas on individualistic autonomy, self-construction,
need and will for self-empowerment and self-actualisation.
What I have discovered has been a series of wholly propositional models - Mentalism, Behaviourism, Cognitivism and post-positivistic discursive, Constructivism and Social Constructionism - that are reducing and mechanising the human subject into the following:
i.
Mental
experiences and the controlled, experimental and quantitative study of
experiences and the immediate experiences of human experiences (I am talking
about the empirical psychology propsitional model of Mentalism with Wundt and
Ebbinghaus’ empirical Introspectionism and James’ theoretical phenomenological
approach to human cognition):
ii. Controlled, experimental and quantitative study of overt behaviours and conditioned responses to provided and controlled stimuli, classical or operant (I am talking about the empirical psychology propsitional model of Behaviourism of Watson, Tolman and Skinner);
iii.
Controlled,
quantitative, experimental study of mental and cognitive innate, rationalistic,
faculties and abilities ((I am talking about the empirical psychology
propsitional model of Representational cognitive psychology of Miller, Chomsky,
Pylyshyn, Nisbett and Wilson) And
iv. The qualitative, naturalistic study of discourses and human interactions and the dynamics of social interrelationships and relationships. I am talking about the newly established paradigm in empirical psychology of Post-Positivisic Social Constructionism of the Gergens, Billig, Potter, Parker and Antaki
Above all, I have shown
and analysed the situation in which each of these models is claiming itself to
the most appropriate and meaningful manner to enquire into, analyse and
conceptualise human existence.
In 2003 within the
context of an international Critical psychology conference at
In the third part of the
presentation then, I have shown the audience a slide I have that said “Problems With Existing, Mainstream
Psychology (Serper, 1999]”.
III. [showing third
slide; “Problems With Existing, Mainstream Psychology (Serper, 1999]”.
And I went on to say
My principal argument was
that the historic inclination (prescribed by radical positivism) to affiliate
empirical psychology with the natural sciences which can be reduced to
mathematical quantities (in line with Comte’s positivism) tends to alienate the
human subject from real-life situations and interactions, to reduce, automatise
and mechanise the human agent and to be subject to scientific bias,
inauthenticity and scholasticism.
At the same time, radical
post-positivistic Social Constructionism tends to absorb and ‘swallow’ the
individual, holistic, autonomous, self-constructing, self-defining, condemned
to free-will unique human agent in the contextual, the communal, the verbal
discourse, the deterministic, the historical and the social.
It does not devote itself
to him/her as such, namely as a human subject that can transcend the
contextual, cultural, historical, verbal discourse and social and even
himself/herself and his/her own existence.
The models’ system in
psychology is devoted to social and cognitive elements and processes,
behaviours, actions, verbal discourses, conscious experiences, social
interactions etc., rather than to the human subject as a total unit in the
world.
In that 2003 Bath International Critical Psychology Conference presentation, I have told my audience that the conclusion to my mid 1990s’ historical textual analysis work has appealed for a more holistic psychology. One that is wholly devoted to and is living and embodied within the actual, ostensive, living, emerging, self-constructing and self-developing human subject and being/becoming within his/her applicable real-world situations and scenarios.
---
Indeed - Upon finishing this textual analytic examination
of the history of the discipline of empirical psychology and its heuristic
propositional models and theories of and for the studying and conceptualisation
of the human subject and his/her existence, I have spent the late 1990s and the
2000s seeking to work at the production of a constructive, engaging, applicable
and productive response to the reductive, severing and mechanistic heuristic
engagement with and the conceptualisation of the human subject within the
academic, empirical social, human and educational science.
Nonetheless, I was stuck within the very propositional logic that I criticised as reductive and mechanistic but then knew of no post-propositional alternative to it in academic engagement and enquiries which mode of validation and legitimation was defined by the Aristotelian and Popperian rules of conjectures and refutations that perceived the legitimation and validation of a claim and idea as and by resisting to its refutation and by and as its refuting and eliminating and seeking to eliminate its contradicting and what is a misfit within it.
As I have found out, shown and illustrated in details to my
peers and colleagues in my former wholly theoretical, textual-analytic and
propositional humanistic critical psychology work –
According to these traditional rules and logic the
Mentalistic ideas and works do not fit within the Behaviouristic paradigm; that
in turn does not fit within the Representationalistic paradigm; that does not
fit within the post-positivistic, social constructionist one.
And similarly, the positivistic and quantitative rules,
norms and enquiries do not fit within the post-positivistic, naturalistic and
qualitative rules, norms enquiries and vice versa.
In turn each model eliminates and replaces its predecessor
and is being replaced and eliminated by its successor.
Also, the humanistic
critique of the empirical models of the days - of the 1950s and 1960s and
presently has remained within a theoretical, disembodied and propositional
critique and the Gestalt psychologists who propositionally criticised the
Mentalists were either propositionally made invalid by the Behaviourists or
made killed by the Nazis.
Thus there is always a situation where one propositional model is imposing and inflicting itself on the other models and in turn seeks to refute and eliminate them in order to sustain and I believe impose and inflict itself.
This situation in which the propositional logic and
reasoning are completely dominating the research of my field of and into my
areas of interest, did not fit my endeavour to construct a more embodied, holistic,
applied/applicable and living psychology, theory, model and heuristics of human
existence and the human subject that is wholly, livingly and applicably
embodied within and critically engaging with the life and living/leading of the
human existence.
This is rather than within the propositional statements,
models and theories of what he/she is like.
I am talking about the statements that are being sought to be validated
and legitimated by the research into human living/lived phenomena and experiences
and meanings of being a human subject and an individual in the world.
I’d like to emphasise that my aim in my research is not to
eliminate the propositional logic but to humanise it, embody and live it and
push it forwards to a more living, embodied, applied/applicable and ostensive
form that would fit my intentions, values and beliefs. Otherwise, I am nothing but a fool and a
farce.
I already discussed in details what I regard to be the
problems with this propositional logic of statements and their validations and
legitimation. This is as far as the
conceptualisation, analysis of and enquiring into the phenomena of human
existence and the human subject is concerned.
I was stuck,
despairing, feeling an ontological void, frustrated, angry and feeling stuck,
in the same place and even going backwards in my own professional and personal,
ontological and ethical development.
This is as far my passions and interests are concerned.
In 2003, I came across the living educational theory
approach to educational, practitioner and action research and the explanation
and conceptualisation of teaching practices in real-life classroom situations
The living theory approach to practitioner, educational and
practitioner research is offering an applied heuristic tool to directly engage
with, account for, conceptualise and explain the concrete, given, embodied,
ostensive and living, emerging and transforming practice of the given, living,
ostensive practitioner who is living and practicing it.
It is pushing forward Schön’s idea of reflective practice
and practitioner - that is nonetheless using the Aristotelian and Popperian
mode of validation and legitimation – This is into an embodied and living form
that transcends the wholly propositional one.
And it is seeking to use dialectic, living, embodied and inclusional
mode of reasoning and validating for the validation and conveyance of its
enquiries and for their standards of judgement.
Schön’s emphasise on the Popperian propositional logic as a
mode of validation is well evident in Schön (1991) edited book – The
Reflective Turn – that displays case studies in and on Educational Practice
where he specifically describe Popper’s rules of conjectures and
refutations as the
most appropriate ones for reflective enquiries and their legitimation and
validation.
For its part, the Living Educational Theory approach to
Reflective Practice and Practitioner Research is doing so using a more
applied/applicable, living, embodied, ostensive and dialectic version of
critical, applied/applicable and systematic Action and Practitioner
Research.
This is within a direct, embodied and emerging enquiry into
this very practice that is directly led and guided by the question ‘How do I
improve my practice and what I am doing’? and the systematic public enquiring
into this question - And is intentionally sought to publicly analyse and convey
the findings, data and evidence of and for this improvement or the failure to
improve and the reflective learning from this failure.
This is as the creation of a living theory of the
engagement with this practice and the learning from it. This is coupled with the intentions of the
practitioner in regards to it.
This is in line with his/her values, passion and what is
important and meaningful to him/her in regards to it and its actualisation and
fulfilment within an optimally meaningful and productive manner for
him/her.
This is within what he/she is doing and intending and
aspiring to do, construct, accomplish and push forward, enrich and develop in
his/her field/discipline.
This is equally intentionally embodied within his/her
desire to contribute to peers and colleagues and the future of humanity and
push forward his/her social influence and interrelationships with his/her
field, colleagues and peers.
I am letting Jack
Whitehead and his three presentations with fellow living educational theorists,
colleagues and students, here in this World Congress convey the meanings of
his/their own research and approach and in particular the meanings of the
living, embodied educational theories of individual practitioners.
It is needless to put many words
into how much the ability to transcend the propositional in academic,
empirical, methodological, ethical, epistemological and educational research
enquiries means to me and my research progress.
Similarly it is of little need to
elaborate on how much the ability to transform human research into the
embodied, applicable and living form and the autonomous, humanistic, self-constructing,
self-developing, self-empowering, self-actualising, self-analysing,
self-conveying and self-expressing individual and ‘I’ in-the-world means to my
research progress.
--
In In
saying this, I am thinking of Adorno’s critique of Heidegger and Heidegger’s
idea of dasein for being too abstractive/conceptual and formal and not living,
embodied, actualised and personalised/personified/embodied.
ThiThis is
as expressed by Schroyer’s Foreword to Adorno’s (1973) book The
Jargon of Authenticity. Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Schroyer writes:
Adorno’s thesis is that Heidegger’s notion of
selfness remains a reified tributary of Husserl’s concept of the subject. This
concept of subject, in attempting to overcome the pure possibility of the
ontic, claims to be itself concrete.
Hence, Heidegger dogmatically proclaims his concept
of existence as something in opposition to identity – while at the same time he
“continues the tradition of the doctrine of identity with his implicity
definition of the self through its own preservation.”
Hence, Adorno examines the notions of “Dasein,”
“authenticity,” “death,” “care,” etc., and shows that their use evades the
issue of historical determinateness by means of a primary and absolute creative
subject – which is, by definition, supposedly untouched by reification.
Hence
the aura of authenticity in Heidegger is that it names “nothing”; the “I”
remains formal and yet pretends that the word contains content in-itself.
For
Adorno, Heidegger’s existentialism is a new Platonism which implies that
authenticity comes in the complete disposal of the person over himself – as if
there were no determination emerging from the objectivity of history.”
--
+++
VII. This was the/My Background and embodied history
and story of my history that I gave you And Now to My Present Research
As I said above - In and
Within my research, I am seeking to ontologise the Living Educational Theory approach
to educational and practitioner research and shift it to the following domains:
i.
Constructive, applied/applicable, critical humanistic
psychology of the human subject;
ii.
Living, embodied, reflective and embodied ontology;
iii.
Applied, living, applicable and embodied ethics. This is within my emphasis on ethics and my
idea of it as leading the optimal, constructive/productive, empowering,
gratifying and meaningful existence in the world for oneself.
The first domain is exemplified
and expressed as a mode to conceptualise my human existence and the phenomena
of being/becoming a human being and myself in the world and the enquiries into
them. This is within a more embodied and
living fashion that is active/constructive, engaging, ostensive and applied/applicable
as well as reflective, reflexive, autonomous, self-constructing, auto-poietic
and empowering and self-actualising one.
By
Auto-poiesis I mean a self-organising change from
within.
This is as a direct response to
the traditional academic and empirical mechanical, alienating and disembodied
wholly propositional heuristic tools that I perceive to be reductive, degrading
and dehumanising and that described above in details.
The second and third
domains express, exemplify and embrace my reflective practice act of
critically, heuristically and reflectively practicing and working at my own
empowerment, self-gratification, self-fulfilment and self-actualisation within
my real-life, real-world engagements.
And my intentional practice of
leading the most dignifying, productive, worthwhile, gratifying, empowering and
self-actualising existence that I can for myself.
This is as a mode to transform my
ontology of leading and living my embodied life and being/becoming-in-the-world
into the active (intentional and implemented) and active-reflective ethics and
ethos of working, intending, planning and struggling at and to be leading this
embodied ontology of mine within the optimal aesthetic, ethical and authentic
quality and meanings that I am capable of.
This is within the
specific context, lived/living situations and scenarios in which I live and am
embodied/embedded within, emerge and auto-poietically self-construct myself
within the most dignifying, empowering and self-actualising manner. I call this context ethos.
By ontology I mean my
being/becoming-in-the-world and my being myself. I imply in it the state of being that is
simply there for me and that has been launched and inflicted upon me by my
passive act of being born.
By my active and constructive act
of ethics and intentional struggle to construct the most gratifying,
empowering, actualising, meaningful, constructive and productive existence for
myself within an ethos, I relate to, interrelate with, define, redefine,
conceptualise, explain and clarify my ontology and the way I engage and live my
existence and my being myself in the world.
This is within an active,
productive, constructive, reflective, reflexive, systematic, relational and
contributing fashion.
This takes me to Action Research and critical reflective
Practitioner Research and their methodological, educational and epistemological
and ontological essence and intention.
Living cannot be used in this niche and scope.
But living and leading [a] life within a productive,
meaningful and ethical fashion that is empowering, actualising and gratifying
for the living enquirer, ontological living action researcher and living
theoretician could be and I think is very educational and epistemological.
What can be of more value to a human being and any
researcher than living and learning and self-educating to live and lead a
[more] meaningful productive, constructive, empowering, actualising,
dignifying, ontologically securing and gratifying life in the world?
No matter how positivistic or pseudo-positivistic the
academic empirical researcher is, he/she is essentially and ontologically a
human being first. I have yet to read
and even encounter a publication written by a dog or cat or a machine.
Self-actualisation,
empowerment and gratification are certainly the units of appraisal of my
research and suggested heuristics of human existence.
I am seeking to construct a
post-propositional, autoethnographical ontological living theory of person’s
(myself) being/becoming-in-the-world.
I am seeking to use my heuristic research question as the
embodied and living standards of judgement for my research into my present life
and emergence in the world.
Thus I have adopted the Adorno’s
critique of Heidegger in embodied practice and Whitehead’s epistemology and
heuristics. This is even though, I am
far more a Humanistic Heideggerian than a Marxist social researcher,
theoretician, psychologist and scientist.
I feel that I have cracked and
moved away from an impasse that I was stuck in for years
I am talking about the impasse of
How to constructively criticise the propositional use and logic of
propositional heuristic models and theories that I regard as alienating,
mechanistic, pseudo-positivistic and dehumanising whilst being forced to act
from within the same logic and heuristic milieu, simply for the reason of
having no other/alternative option and possibility.
This has pushed forward my own research and helped me shift and
reconstruct my existence, ontology and practice from critical, theoretical
humanistic psychologist to a practical, applied/applicable, constructive
critical ontological post-propositional, living theory one.
Being that I have felt ungratified,
ontologically insecured, unfulfilled and existentially void with my existence
and actual and intended practice as this critical, wholly theoretical,
humanistic psychologist.
And that I wanted to come up and
legitimate a practical, applicable and applied way to constructively,
empirically and applicably solve the problems and issues of the disembodiment,
mechanisation and alienation of the human subject in traditional, academic
research -
This present research and ontology
has provided me with greater meaning and the living phenomenological experience
and feeling of being productive and a contributing being and member of my
community and ethos. This is as well as
with empowerment, ontological security and gratification.
I thus can truly and authentically
say to you and feel and have myself appear to you and myself and conceptualise
myself and have myself conceptualised by you as living and embodying my
heuristic question and enquiry heuristics of human existence as an Ontological
Living Theory of a person’s existence.
I am not just talking and yakking
about propositionally. I am actually and
livingly living it and embodying it with and within my human existence. Two years ago I have introduced the term –
de-yakking and called myself, my heuristics and my work into its construction
and development a de-yakker and de-yakking of human existence.
Let me give you
The present introduced
heuristics of human existence is wholly embodied within the reflective practice
of being a person and seeking and working at constructing a more meaningful,
productive/constructive, gratifying, fulfilling, empowering, ontologically
securing and sustaining, dignifying and contributing existence in the world for
oneself.
As such the post-positivistic
feature of the present introduced heuristics of human existence is embodied
within the Schönian epistemology of reflective practice within the domains of
the studying and explanation of human professional and applicable practices and
skills and their training (therapists, counsellors, architects, teachers).
This is instead of the Constructionist
and Discursive ones that are traditionally utilised and drawn upon by empirical
critical psychology in its endeavour to move the enquiries into and the
conceptualisation of the human subject and human existence from the controlled,
quantitative, experimental, mechanistic and positivistic engagement with the
human subject and his/her existence.
This is into more qualitative,
naturalistic, post-Cartesian, post-positivistic and relational,
inter-relational and dynamic ones in natural human situations, scenarios and
interrelationships.
I am talking about the traditional
empirical critical psychology ideas of works that are influenced by the works
of Wittgenstein on language and thinking; Piaget and Vygotzky and the soviet
school of the influence of social interactions on individuals’ development; and
Garfinkel’s ethnography and ethnomethodology.
I am talking about works that are
represented by empirical works like those of Mick Billig and his Loughborough
DARG group and Ian Parker and the Manchester Metropolitan group, Potter,
Antaki, Discourse and Conversational Analysis, the Gergens, Shotter and
Harré. And many more.
[ ; Harre, I ;
Alexa Hebburn (2002), ; Parker ;Fox and
Prilleltensky, 1997).]
In my attempt to move from positivistic, mechanistic,
quantitative research, the post-positivistic, constructionist, discursive and
post-Cartesian has been the natural thing to do.
I have indeed moved from
theoretical, critical humanistic psychology to constructive/applicable empirical/experimental
social science and started an experimental work that has sought to combine
qualitative and quantitative heuristic tools and to have them attune and
balance each other up. This is within a research work into cognition,
socio-cognition, learning and internalisation.
Still, my need to use and
draw on the propositional logic and mode of engagement, enquiries and reasoning
and to come up with a propositional statement to validate and legitimate has
shifted me to living action research and my present embodied research of
conveying my research question and heuristics of human existence through
embodiment within my life and leading it.
This move has been caused
by my feelings that the former does not provide me with the feelings of living
and experiencing a meaningful and productive existence for myself and those
experiences of gratification, fulfilment, dignity, integrity, ontological
security and sustainability that I long and yearn for. This is from and for myself and within what I
am striving to do, act out and achieve in my practice and what I am doing and
seeking to accomplish.
They may act within mainstream and good politics of truth
but they certainly do not represent my values, passions and beliefs in regards
to my field, interests, intentions and passion.
I felt existential/ontological void, non-gratification, and
insecurity and indignity and inauthenticity, a true Sartrean mouvaise foi –
ill-faith.
I needed to do something constructive, valuable and
productive. And I have moved to the
Living Theory Action Research niche and started my present work of developing
this niche and pushing if forwards to my own areas of interests, practices,
passions and interests.
+++
Let me say a
few words about the transformation of Ontology into Ethics:
IX. Ontology to Ethics:
Practically, Dynamically, Livingly and Applicable:
In my textual paper for this World Congress’ proceeding, I
have written the following:
I regard this practice of leading the most productive, meaningful,
fulfilling, dignifying, contributing, actualising and gratifying existence in,
with and towards the world for oneself, that one can, to be the most important
ethical obligation of a human being.
This is within his/her ontology of being launched into the
world and living himself/herself to death in it.
I regard this Ontological/Existential experience of being
thrown into the world without one’s permission to involve a self-requirement to
make it optimally worthwhile and significant for oneself.
I think most people can relate to and with this paragraph
and intuitively, implicitly and explicitly and rationally understand it from
within their own, embodied and living existence and critical and evaluative
reflection upon it and within it.
What I believe is needed is an embodiment and
exemplification within the life and existing in the world of the individuals
who are willing to draw on it and to offer an enquiry into this question. What does it
mean for one to live such an ethical ontology!
This includes those colleagues of mine who are against the
individualistic approach. I invite them
to embody this heuristic question within their anti-individualistic and
anti-humanistic approach.
It is indeed important to me to emphasise here that I am
exemplifying the heuristics using my own embodied feelings, living/lived
phenomenological experiences, values and morality.
In my work and conveyance of my suggested heuristics, I am
reflectively and heuristically using and drawing on my own heuristics and
heuristic question and doing so on my own existence and existing as a way of
showing and conveying the meanings of this question and heuristics of human
existence for me.
This is as well being a post-propositional de-yakker rather
than a propositional Yakker. This is
all that I can and willing to do.
Those are my own. They belong to me and me alone and are
embodied within me and my life and my life and me alone.
They can merely be conceptualised and perceived as
such. They are right to me and me
alone. They have an applicably embodied
value and by no means a universal, propositional, generalising and standardised
value.
I shall never ask others to use and draw on my own ethics
and values within their own ontological and ethical enquiries into their own
ontology, education, epistemology and ethics.
Those are mine and intended by me for me and my
existence. I consider any act of trying
to call upon others to use my own values and ethics within their own
ontological, educational, epistemological and ethical enquiries to be
pedagogic, impositional and degrading and dehumanising towards the human
subject.
I self educate not educate. And self-construct rather than
construct. I am predominantly concerned with and worry about my own
values and leave others to worry about theirs’.
+++
Why Am I Here Now Doing What I am
Doing Here And Now?
I am here presenting this idea,
passion and work of mine. This is my
present existence and existing in the world and what I am presently doing
within my emerging here and now: I am an academic ontological living action researcher,
a constructively critical, post-propositional, applied humanistic psychologist
who is presenting his/my ideas at this World Congress.
This existence and act and
practice of it means that a few days ago I have left my study and computer and
my present unfortunate existence of listening the whole day to what is
happening with the Second Lebanon War and came here to Groningen to present my
work, ideas and writings to you.
Why? What is the meanings of this
act, who am I here and why? I could have
gone to the
Still, I have committed this act
as I believed it enables me to push forward my existence and to construct a
more productive, gratifying, empowering, meaningful and actualising existence
in the world for myself. I believe this
act increases my research and directly means and implies my leading a more,
productive/constructive, empowering and ontological securing and sustaining
existence in the world for myself. Why?
My research practice implies
mostly a reflective approach of writing ideas that I am self-dialectically and
reflectively engaging with myself and my own existence and existing in the
world and existing well and ethically, productively, gratifyingly and
meaningfully for myself.
I do occasionally bring them to
the awareness and critical engagement of my academic peers and colleagues.
Still, I am doing this research as a traditional personality and critical
humanistic psychologist who is seeking to conceptualise and theorise human
existence and the meanings of being a person in the world.
I have recently found a paper by a
fellow personality psychologist who is seeking to do what I myself aspiring to
do and produce a theory of a living person.
Nonetheless, he has been grounding
himself in the traditional wholly propositional and disembodied mode of
engagement, analysis, enquiring and conveyance in academia. And has failed, or did not know how, to
transcend it.
I am talking about Dreier’s (1999)
paper on his appeal for a theory about the person and the person’s personal
social practices and embodied, personal-social trajectories: A paper published in the journal Outlines
and is entitled “Personal Trajectories of Participation across Contexts of
Social Practice”.
I myself have chosen to move to living, post-propositional
practitioner research and Living Educational Theory. And I do feel isolated as a psychologist of
human existence and applied ontologist and ethician who is working within
traditional academia on theoretical and academic ideas in an attempt to push
them forwards.
I am not a professional practitioner in the Schönian and
Whiteheadean sense. I am essentially a
personality psychologist, ontologist and ethician.
I feel that I do not naturally fit
within a specific niche. I feel falling
between the chairs and niches.
Whilst interrelating and embodying
the various unrelated domains, ontologies, research practices, intentions and
essences within me and what I am endeavouring to construct, innovate and convey
for legitimacy is my innovation and strength, I do feel isolated and lonely:
physically, ideologically and practically.
Occasionally, I do feel saturated and exhausted. And I feel I cannot handle this research and
work any longer.
Coming here and presenting this
work moves me from the reflective dialogue with myself and INTO open dialogues
with others from very different backgrounds and places. This refreshes and energises me. It enables me to move on and proceed.
And I do need this. Coming here
gives me an opportunity to be, to relate and to interrelate with others in a
comfortable surrounding, away from the everyday pressures and chores and to
discuss and share ideas in a calm and patient manner with no pressure want my
peers and colleagues.
And I do want to engage and relate
and interrelate to others
I feel I have constructed something useful,
applied/applicable and meaningful within my critically and constructively
critically, applied reflective research on the issues and problems of my field
and found a possible heuristic solution to show and clarify to my peers and
colleagues. I have constructed this idea
alone and have interacted with the same group of people whom I know and who
know me very well and with whom the interaction has become rather predictable
and repetitive.
This World Congress provides me
with the opportunity to engage with experts in action research who are working
with action and practitioner research far longer than me and within different
context. It enables me to meet and
interact face to face with relevant individuals, peers and colleagues, to
refresh my ideas, thinking and my practice and gain influence within my field
and areas of practice.
It enables me to fulfil my ontological, educational and
epistemological need to hear productive comments and constructive critiques on
my work, ideas, my own constructive critiques and my suggested heuristic
solution and possibility.
This is in order to be able to learn from them and relate to
them in my next writings and subsequently to enrich my ideas and meanings.
It enables me to push forward my passion, interests,
intentions and practices, to fulfil and act out my own research heuristic
question and to lead a more productive, meaningful, constructive, gratifying,
fulfilling, dignifying, ontologically securing and sustainable existence in the
world for myself.
Thus I do feel that coming here is
a way to push forward my research and ontology and make it more productive and
meaning for myself. And this research
and ontology are presently my life, my life’s passion and Sartrean life’s
project.
This is embodied within and is certainly a part of my living and leading my own living, engaging, embodied and post-propositional constructive critical humanistic psychology and heuristics of human existence that I am suggesting and presenting here for your critical engagement, convinction and legitimacy.
Adorno, T. W. (1973). The
Jargon of Authenticity. Translated by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will. Routledge
and Kegan Paul. London.
Billig, M. (1997). Discursive, Rhetorical and Ideological
Messages. In McGarty, C. and Haslam, A. (Eds.). The Message of Social
Psychology. Blackwell. Oxford.
Billig, M., Condor, S., Edwards, D., Gane, M., Middleton, D.J., &
Radley, A.R. (1988). Ideological Dilemmas:
A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking. London: Sage.
Dreier, O. (1999). Personal
Trajectories of Participation across Contexts of Social Practice. Outlines 1 (1), 5-32.
Garfinkel, H. (1967).
Studies in Ethnography. Prentice Hall. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Hutchinson. London.
Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and
Refutations. Oxford University
Press. Oxford.
Popper, K. (1970). Normal Science and Its Dangers. In Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A.
(Eds.). (1970). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge
University Press. Cambridge.
Popper, K. (1972). Objective Knowledge.
Clarendon Press. Oxford.
Schön, D, A. (1983a) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Temple
Smith. London. Quotes are from Schön,
D. A. (1991). (2nd Ed.) The Reflective Practitioner: How
Professionals Think in Action. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Avebury
Schön,
D. (1987a). Educating the Reflective
Practitioner. Harvester. New York.
Schön, D. (1987b). Educating the
Reflective Practitioner. Address to
the 1987 Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Washington DC.
Schön, D. A. (1991). (2nd
Ed.) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.
Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Avebury
Schön, D, A.
(1995) The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology. Change, Nov./Dec. 1995
27 (6) pp. 27-34.
Schroyer, T. (1973).
Foreword, in Adorno, T. W. (1973). The Jargon of Authenticity.
Translated by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
London.
Serper, A. (1999). A Study of the Conception of Man in
Empirical Psychology by Using Textual Analysis. Thesis submitted in
partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Individual Graduate
Programme at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Thesis supervised by
Prof. G. Motzkin. The Hebrew University. Jerusalem.
Serper, A. (2003). Self-Reflexive,
Self-Narrative, Self-Constructive, Individualistic Living Accounts As
Post-positivistic Heuristic Tools for the Questions of the Human Subject and
the Human Existence in the World. Paper
presented at the International Conference of Critical Psychology. University of
Bath, 31st of August, 2003. Bath. United Kingdom. Retrieved 6th
of May, 2004 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/%7Epspas/critpsy.htm
Serper, A.
(2006). Alon Serper’s HomePage. http://www.bath.ac.uk/~pspas/. See the Introduction, the enclosed writings
of human existence and the attempt to study it and the ideas, writings and work
of the present paper’s author, as well as the accompanying electronic mail
forums for interrelationships with other enquirers and with engagers and
readers of my work and the hectic discussions they entail.
Whitehead, J. (1981). A Practical
Example of A Dialectical Approach to Educational Research in Human Enquiry. In Reason, P. and Rowan. (Eds). (1981). The Human Inquiry: A
Sourcebook of New Paradigm Research. John Wiley. New York
Whitehead,
J. (1985) An analysis of an individual's educational development - the basis
for personally orientated action research. In Shipman, M. (Ed.) Educational
Research: Principles, Policies and Practice, pp. 97-108; Falmer. London.
Whitehead
J. (1989a). Creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind ,
" How do I improve my practice”? Cambridge Journal of Education ,
19, 41-52.
Whitehead, J. (1989b). How do we Improve
Research-based Professionalism in Education?-A question which includes action
research, educational theory and the politics of educational knowledge. British
Educational Research Journal, 15, 1, 3-17.
Whitehead, J. (1993). The
Growth of Educational Knowledge; Creating Your Own Living Educational Theories.
Bournmouth. Hyde
Whitehead, J. (1999a). How Do I
Improve My Practice? Creating A Discipline of Education through Educational
Inquiry. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis.
The University of Bath. Retrieved 23
March 2004 from http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/writings/phdok.doc
Whitehead, J. (2004a). What Counts
as Evidence in the Self-studies of Teacher Education Practices? In Loughran, J.
J., Hamilton, M. L., LaBoskey V. K & Russell, T. (Eds.). (2004). International
Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices. Kluwer
Academic Publishers. Dordrecht
Whitehead, J. (2004b).
Do Action Researchers' Expeditions Carry Hope for the Future of Humanity? How
Do We Know? An Enquiry Into Reconstructing Educational Theory and Educating
Social Formations. This was published in the October 2004 issue of the e-Journal
Action Research Expeditions Retrieved 29 March 2005 from http://www.arexpeditions.montana.edu/articleviewer.php?AID=80
Whitehead, J. (2006a).
Living Educational Theory Approach to
Action Research. Accessible from
http://www.actionresearch.net. See the living
theory theses and dissertations at: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~edsajw/living.shtml
and the writings, works and practices concerning the Living Educational Theory
Approach to Action Research in the Web pages. See the hectic discussions in the
electronic mail forums.
Whitehead, J. and McNiff, J.
(2006). Living Theory Action
Research. Sage. London.
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