Glossary

  • Fundamental Attribution Error – a pervasive cognitive error due to a bias that misconstrues the cause of something to be based on intrinsic traits of agent rather than, or in ignorance of, contextual/situational influences; useful to know in social analysis to accurately allocate causes per effect and avoid misattribution, but applicable to all fields of science or analysis.
  • Sociocultural – overarching/overspecific/redundant term to note societal or cultural aspects; note: culture implies society as culture is defined by society and society does not imply culture, hence sociocultural implies society or culture; useful when speaking of human traits that are present in other species or cases or any generalized situation
  • Space-Time – that which is not matter or energy, fabric of universe, medium of relative interactions using E=mc^2
  • Orbital; Path, Velocity
  • Field; in terms of Quantum, Energy, Force
  • Biocultural – refers to interaction or interface of biochemical or environmental processes/systems and human culture; best used when culture and non-culture reflexively interact
  • Intersubjective – between subjective entities, notably humans; refers to interface made between two subjectively defined things, such as minds.
  • Idiosyncratic – differing per individual
  • Interlocutor – discourse participant; someone active in a conversation/dialogue
  • Epi-phenomenon – distinguished events best defined in terms of other events or only existing as a byproduct of other events; subjectively applicable
  • Esoteric – anything (words, styles, concepts, methods, social entities, etc) that an organized group of humans use to communicate that is either explicitly cryptic or so specific that it is difficult to understand or completely foreign to an outsider.
    • Usage: Esoteric entails some degree of social context and an ongoing use and conveyance of behaviors or concepts. So, necessarily, esoteric items are defined relatively and subjectively, so allow differences and respect reasonable bounds. With someone’s use you are being told about what they know. For your use, consider if the esoterism is actually viewed from a few odd-balls or if another description, like “unique” is what is going on. I use this term for specialized fields of study, secret or cryptic social groups and materials, but I always use it with language in mind, as it does apply to non-linguistic actions but is guaranteed to be applicable to language. What I should say is decide how esoteric the conveyance aspect is first, as if it is esoteric in it’s human-to-human continuation it is esoteric in all other ways An example: a esoteric dance style, in itself will appear esoteric but surely is b/c it is taught esoterically; also think how this differs from only a unique dance. One more for clarity: French is not esoteric even though you could get away with saying so, because it is used openly by a billion people and could easily be known. So, it’s notable to say naivety or ignorance is a poor reason to use esoteric to describe something as well as for singularities or one-offs.
  • Auxillary – describes something that is supplementary or modifying;
  • Affect, Positive/Negative Affect – [in social science] refers to how a person feels emotionally and thoughtfully with the adjective “positive” or “negative” subjectively added to indicate if these thoughts and emotions are experienced as “good” or “bad” per arbitrary convention.
    • Usage: This is a non-objective and relativistic term and used per arbitrary convention, meaning someone decides if an experience has positive or negative affect based on what someone says they feel and the interpretation of their description. The arbitration could extend to interpreting facial expressions or behavior. In science it is based on a contrived scale equivalent to a person selecting from provided adjectives, each weighted toward negative, neutral, or positive (simplest ex: How did the video make you feel?: uncomfortable, bored, inspired, i.e. neg., neut., pos.; then a collection of these questions with different wordings or specifications add up to an affect scale for a person and the situation). Usually an affect scale is used to indicate quality of well-being. But there is a general use which is ideal for describing a feeling without being specific. I use this term usually in place of saying sad/mad/upset or happy/estatic/content and the like so that I can be non-specific. I could use euphoric or dysphoric but they are usually interpreted in extreme meanings and so can be specific. It’s an easy way to allow for any given emotion to be included in a broad description (Video games provided positive affect in chronic users; I don’t have to say the person is happy, excited, proud, inspired but it is possible as positive affect contains a lot of specific states). I also try to pronounce it “Ah-fect” rather than “Eh-fect” or “Uh-fect” so it is clear we’re not talking about “effect”. With that one last note: Affect is a feeling or influence and effect is a result. E.g. negative affect leads to negative effects; sadness leads to depression. If you tend to confuse use of affect and effect remember this heuristic: alphabetically a is before e so affect is before effect, this corresponds to cause and effect. It is never cause and affect so if you remember cause and effect, substitute in affect and you know it’s right because it’s in alphabetical order.
  • Jargon – words or phrases that are specific to a field of study or profession; can be either newly invented words or usages or forms that have relevant meaning to insiders but lack meaning in regular context; used to convey special concepts concisely or to maintain trade-knowledge or confuse outsiders.