reflectionism

Noun

reflectionism (countable and uncountable, plural reflectionisms)

1. The view that cultural phenomena (literature, art, etc.) simply mirror the ideology of the dominant economic patterns of society.
   • Economic determinism is the central tenet of political theory and "naive" reflectionism is the basic premise of cultural theory.1996, Ricardo Miguel-Alfonso, Powerless Fictions?:, page 180
   • Reflectionism is the other side of the coin of normative realism .2001, Ching-Mei Esther Yau, At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, page 62
2. The belief that we apprehend the world by copying or reflecting it within the mind; the idea that thought is a reflection of reality, rather than something created by the mind.
   • Doesn't reflectionism itself imply that ontology is somehow prior?1985, Johan van der Auwera, Language and Logic: A speculative and condition-theoretic study, page 17
   • That such reflectionism — the required subservience of language to reality — lies at the heart of what comes across as a radical resistance against Communist ideology is something profoundly disturbing. Translated into political terms, this reflectionism becomes the subservience to a higher object...1993, Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora, page 80
3. The belief that judgement is intuitive and that reflection and reason are subsequently applied to justify judgements.
   • I hope by now to have shown that there is good reason to think that ethical reflectionism is a framework of moral inquiry which is far more common than it may appear.1997, Robert Audi, Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character, page 54
   • (see title)2018, Gordon Pennycook, The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology
4. The use of reflection to examine and critique aspects of society.
   • Reflectionism allows society to confront itself or to see its own absurdity.1998, Bart Lootsma, Andreas Broeckmann, Joke Brouwer, The Art of the Accident, page 60
   • The successor to surrealism, from which it borrows its pictorial vocabulary and has assimilated all inflow, reflectionism seeks first and foremost to develop and extend the freedom of the real function of thought.2006, Spotlight on Robert Lauri, page 171