MATERIAL Y MÉTODO
7.1 DISCUSIÓN SOBRE MATERIAL Y MÉTODO EMPLEADOS
7.2.3 Estado de salud oral
Abstract: Evolutionary psychology claims to offer a unified perspective on human nature and culture, which can serve to further the integration of psychology and the social sciences. I describe four approaches to evolutionary psychology, and note increasing attention to the agency of the individual in constructing the biological and cultural environment. These approaches, however, share a problematic conception of culture as information. I explore the possibility of using Latour's concept of mediation to analyse the relation between human nature and culture without restricting the latter to information, and collect a number of recent studies and essays that illustrate the way individuals mediate nature and culture.
Notes: A critique of evolutionary appoaches to psychology that relegate cultural processes to information received by the individual. Attempts to argue against the increasing focus on the role of the individual in constructing social and biological environments.Relates to evolutionary psychology and personhood.
84.
Deshmukh, V. D. (2008). The multistream self: Biophysical, mental,
social, and existential. The Scientific World Journal, 8, 331-341. Article.
Retrieved from <Go to ISI>://WOS:000254985000034.
doi:10.1100/tsw.2008.19
Abstract: Self is difficult to define because of its multiple, constitutive streams of functional existence. A more comprehensive and expanded definition of self is proposed. The standard bio-psycho-social model of psyche is expanded to biophysical-mental-social and existential self. The total human experience is better understood and explained by adding the
existential component. Existential refers to lived human experience, which is firmly rooted in reality. Existential living is the capacity to live fully in the present, and respond freely and flexibly to new experience without fear. Four common fears of isolation, insecurity, insignificance, and death can be overcome by developing a lifestyle of whole-hearted engagement in the present reality, creative problem solving, self-actualization, and altruism. Such integrative living creates a sense of presence with self-awareness, understanding, and existential well-being. Well-being is defined as a life of happiness, contentment, low distress, and good health with positive outlook. Self is a complex, integrative process of living
organisms. It organizes, coordinates, and integrates energy-information within and around itself, spontaneously, unconsciously, and consciously. Self-process is understood in terms of synergetics, coordination dynamics, and energy-information-directed self-organization. It is dynamic, composite, ever renewing, and enduring. It can be convergent or divergent, and can function as the source or target of its own behavior-mentation. The experience of self is continuously generated by spontaneous activation of neural networks in the cerebral neocortex by the brainstem-diencephalic arousal system. The multiple constitutive
behavioral-mental streams develop concurrently into a unique experience of self, specific for a person at his/her developmental stage. The chronological neuro-behavioral-mental
development of self is described in detail from embryonic stage to old age. Self can be behaviorally-mentally oriented and realized in three complimentary modes of being: egocentric, allocentric, and ecosystemic or existential. The existential mode is both immanent and transcendent, and can be self-actualized, resulting in a healthy, creative, conflict-free, and meaningful life.
Notes: A wide-ranging analysis of the self, particularly in its ‘existential’ dimension. Relates to selfhood/ personhood.
85.
Dezecache, G. & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2012). Sharing the joke: The size of
natural laughter groups. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(6), 775-779.
Retrieved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513812000682.
doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.07.002
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that laughter plays an important role in social bonding. Human communities are much larger than those of other primates and hence require more time to be devoted to social maintenance activities. Yet, there is an upper limit on the amount of time that can be dedicated to social demands, and, in nonhuman primates, this sets an upper limit on social group size. It has been suggested that laughter provides the additional bonding capacity in humans by allowing an increase in the size of the “grooming group.” In this study of freely forming laughter groups, we show that laughter allows a threefold increase in the number of bonds that can be “groomed” at the same time. This would enable a very significant increase in the size of community that could be bonded.
Notes: Explores the role of humour in permitting increases in the size of socially-bonded groups. Relates to evolutionary psychology and personhood.
86.
Dickens, P. (2001). Linking the social and natural sciences: Is capital
modifying human biology in its own image? Sociology, 35(1), 93-110.
Retrieved from http://soc.sagepub.com/content/35/1/93.abstract.
doi:10.1177/0038038501035001007
Abstract: Social science has long fought shy of the natural sciences. Meanwhile, concerns with the environment, health and the new genetics are creating a need for systematic links to be made between these disciplines. This paper suggests a new way in which social theory can be linked to biology. Recent developments in biology point to the importance of
considering organisms in relation to their environment. And work in epidemiology stresses the links between the infant-development, health in later life and the well-being of future generations. Complex combinations of genetically-determined predispositions and capitalist social relations are responsible for important features of contemporary social stratification and well-being. The paper is informed by critical realist epistemology and Marx's theory of the subsumption. Such a fusion leads to a key assertion. Capital tends to modify the powers of human biology in its own image.
Notes: An argument for viewing economic and social conditions in capitalism as structuring of evolved human biology to fit itself. Relates to evolutionary psychology, well-being and personhood.