Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience

悲伤是我们面临的最痛苦、最不安、最令人困惑的经历之一。在极度悲痛的时候，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。其他人可能似乎在另一个领域做他们的生意，一个人从外面调查。随之而来的是，逝者可能会以一系列相互关联和紧张的方式体验到在场和缺席。人们常常难以表达和理解悲痛的这些方面和其他方面。此外，缺乏对自己和/或他人的理解可能会加剧失落和孤独的痛苦感觉。因此，出现了一些有趣的哲学问题，关于悲伤的经历是什么，以及应该如何设想各种形式的悲伤。然而，令人惊讶的是，哲学家们对这个话题关注得很少。虽然悲伤更多地被其他学科研究，但仍然缺乏对悲伤经历实际构成的详细、广泛、连贯和简明的描述。本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建立这样的描述。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支持)。研究将围绕三个主要主题领域展开：1.情绪和知觉：通过将悲伤这一主题与对知觉和情绪的更广泛研究联系起来，我们将(A)对暂时延长的情绪过程的性质提供新的见解，(B)澄清“一切似乎都有些不同”，以及这方面的悲伤与对损失的更本地化认识有何关系，以及(C)通过分析在场和缺席的经历来探索知觉和情绪之间的关系。人际体验和理解：我们将把大量的社会认知研究带入与悲痛相关的“持续纽带”文献的对话中。后者强调以各种方式保留而不是放弃与逝者的关系。相比之下，社会认知研究(在哲学、认知科学和其他领域)完全关注我们如何体验、思考和与生活相关的问题。通过展示与死者的关系如何也需要协调，我们的目标是打开一个实质性的、新的和重要的调查领域。在此过程中，我们还将调查情绪是如何在个人之间和社会上进行调节的，并澄清丧失亲人幻觉的性质。悲伤的界限：我们会问悲伤与其他形式的情感体验有什么不同，健康的悲伤体验如何与病理性的悲伤和抑郁区分开来。后一个问题在精神病学中具有特别重要的意义，在精神病学中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和最有洞察力的分析，我们将有助于解决这个问题。这项研究的主要贡献将是：*通过以前所未有的深度探讨一个重要但被忽视的主题，填补哲学文献中的一个重大空白。*为更广泛的主题提供新的认识，包括情绪、知觉和社会认知的性质。*提供新颖和详细的分析，为未来哲学和其他学科中关于悲伤经历的研究提供信息。*为当前精神病学的辩论做出贡献，对精神病学分类、诊断和治疗具有潜在的重要影响。*为实践和公众理解做出更广泛的贡献，通过澄清人们感到不安、困惑和难以描述的悲痛方面。

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.