Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience

悲伤是我们所面临的最令人痛苦、不安和困惑的经历之一。在极度悲伤的时候，整个世界似乎发生了某种变化——遥远、陌生、不受欢迎、不可预测。其他人似乎在另一个领域从事他们的业务，这是一个从外部调查的领域。与此同时，逝者可能以一系列相互关联和充满紧张的方式被体验为在场和缺席。人们常常很难表达和理解悲伤的这些和其他方面。此外，对自己和/或他人缺乏理解会加剧迷失和孤独的痛苦感觉。因此，出现了许多有趣的哲学问题，包括悲伤的经历是由什么组成的，以及应该如何理解各种形式的悲伤。然而，令人惊讶的是，哲学家们很少关注这个话题。虽然悲伤更常被其他学科讨论，但仍然缺乏一个详细的、广泛的、有凝聚力的、简洁的关于悲伤经历实际上是由什么组成的描述。该项目的总体任务是通过采用将现象学研究（关于人类经验结构的研究）与心灵哲学工作相结合的哲学方法来发展这样一种解释。该项目还将借鉴其他学科的见解，包括心理学、精神病学、文学理论、宗教研究和文化人类学（由一个跨学科咨询小组提供支持）。研究将围绕三个主要主题领域进行：情感和感知：通过将悲伤的主题与更广泛的感知和情感研究联系起来，我们将(a)对暂时延伸的情感过程的本质提供新的见解，(b)阐明“一切似乎都不一样”，以及悲伤的这一方面如何与更局部的损失认知联系起来，(c)通过分析在场和缺席的经历来探索感知和情感之间的关系。人际体验和理解：我们将带来大量的社会认知研究，与“持续的纽带”有关悲伤的文献进行对话。后者强调与死者保持关系的各种方式，而不是放弃。相反，社会认知研究（在哲学、认知科学和其他领域）只关注我们如何体验、思考和与生者的关系。通过展示与死者的关系也需要适应，我们的目标是开辟一个实质性的，新的，重要的调查领域。在此过程中，我们还将研究人际关系和社会调节情绪的方式，并阐明丧亲幻觉的本质。悲伤的界限：我们将探讨是什么将悲伤与其他形式的情感体验区别开来，以及如何将健康的悲伤体验与病态的悲伤和抑郁区分开来。后一个问题在精神病学中尤其重要，这方面一直存在相当大的争论。通过对悲伤经历进行迄今为止最详细、最具洞察力的分析，我们将帮助解决这个问题。这项研究的主要贡献将是：*填补了哲学文献中的重大空白，以前所未有的深度解决了一个重要但被忽视的话题。*对更广泛的主题，包括情感、感知和社会认知的本质，提出了新的见解。*提供新颖而详细的分析，为未来哲学和其他学科对悲伤体验的研究提供信息。*有助于当前精神病学的争论，对精神病学的分类、诊断和治疗具有潜在的重要意义。*通过澄清人们感到不安、困惑和难以描述的悲伤方面，为实践和公众理解做出更广泛的贡献。

Grief is one of the most distressing, unsettling, and puzzling experiences that we face. During times of profound grief, the world as a whole appears somehow altered - distant, unfamiliar, unwelcoming, unpredictable. Other people may seem to go about their business in another realm, which one surveys from outside. Along with this, the deceased may be experienced as present and absent in a range of interconnected and tension-riddled ways. People often struggle to articulate and to comprehend these and other aspects of grief. Furthermore, lack of comprehension on the part of oneself and / or others can exacerbate painful feelings of being lost and alone.A number of interesting philosophical questions therefore arise, concerning what experiences of grief consist of and how grief, in its various guises, should be conceived of. However, philosophers have paid surprisingly little attention to the topic. Although grief is more often addressed by other disciplines, what remains lacking is a detailed, wide-ranging, cohesive, and concise account of what grief-experiences actually consist of.The overall task of this project is to develop such an account, by employing a philosophical method that combines phenomenological research (research concerning the structure of human experience) with work in philosophy of mind. The project will also draw on insights from other disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, literary theory, religious studies, and cultural anthropology (supported by an interdisciplinary advisory group). Research will be structured around three main thematic areas:1. Emotion and Perception: By relating the topic of grief to broader research on perception and emotion, we will (a) offer new insights into the nature of temporally extended emotional processes, (b) clarify how 'everything seems somehow different' and how this aspect of grief relates to the more localized recognition of loss, and (c) explore relationships between perception and emotion by analysing experiences of presence and absence.2. Interpersonal Experience and Understanding: We will bring a substantial body of social cognition research into dialogue with the 'continuing bonds' literature on grief. The latter emphasizes various ways in which relations with the deceased are retained, rather than abandoned. In contrast, social cognition research (in philosophy, cognitive science, and elsewhere) concerns itself exclusively with how we experience, think about, and relate to the living. By showing how relations with the dead need to be accommodated too, we aim to open up a substantial, new, and important area of inquiry. In so doing, we will also investigate ways in which emotion is interpersonally and socially regulated, and clarify the nature of bereavement hallucinations.3. The Bounds of Grief: We will ask what distinguishes grief from other forms of emotional experience and how healthy grief-experiences might be distinguished from pathological forms of grief and from depression. This latter issue is of particular importance in psychiatry, where there has been considerable debate. By formulating the most detailed and discerning analysis of grief-experiences to date, we will help to resolve the issue.The principal contributions of the research will be to: * fill a significant gap in the philosophical literature, by addressing an important but neglected topic in unprecedented depth.* cast new light on a wider range of topics, including the nature of emotion, perception, and social cognition.* provide a novel and detailed analysis that will inform future research on grief-experiences in philosophy and other disciplines.* contribute to current debates in psychiatry, with potentially important implications for psychiatric classification, diagnosis, and treatment.* make broader contributions to practice and public understanding, by clarifying aspects of grief that people find unsettling, confusing, and hard to describe.