Methodological functionalism and the description of natural systems

The primary way that explanations are constructed in cognitive psychology is by methodological functionalism: in short, functionally defined components are proposed in order to explain how inputs (i.e., stimuli from the environment) are turned into behavior. But despite its close association with cognitive psychology, methodological functionalism is a technique that can be used to describe any natural system. I look at how methodological functionalism has fared when used by other special sciences and what lessons can be learned from these cases. Three explanations of chemical and biological systems that were developed using methodological functionalism are examined: Willis’s (1684) explanation of fermentation, Farr’s (mid-1800s) explanation of cholera, and Mendel’s (mid-1800s) explanation of inheritance. The discovery of HIV in the early 1980s, an investigation that rejected methodological functionalism early on, is also discussed. The assessment of methodological functionalism is not positive. This technique has limitations. The implications for cognitive psychology are considered, and one conclusion is that cognitive psychology will eventually cease relying on methodological functionalism.     

Development of knowledge bases and the reliability of a decision support system for behavioral treatment consultation for persons with mental retardation: The Mental Retardation-Expert

The development of expert and decision support systems requires the collection, organization, codification, and storage of a body of specialized knowledge. The development, using reconstructive methods, of two such knowledge bases, the first containing the current scientific literature and the second containing an expert’s knowledge, is described for an automated decision support system, the Mental Retardation-Expert. This system provides practitioners with assistance in the treatment of aggressive, self-injurious, and destructive behaviors displayed by individuals with mental retardation or developmental disabilities. The average interobserver reliability of the expert knowledge base ranged from 92.5% to 95.0% when calculated across four clinicians’ assessments of 31 abstracted cases.     

Ritual Education and Moral Development: A Comparison of Xunzi and Vygotsky

Xunzi’s 荀子 advocacy for moral education is well-documented; precisely how his program bolsters moral development, and why a program touting study of ritual could be effective, remain subjects of debate. I argue that these matters can be clarified by appealing to the theory of learning and development offered by Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky posited that development depends primarily on social interactions mediated by sociocultural tools that modify learners’ cognitive architecture, enabling increasingly sophisticated thought. Vygotsky’s theory is remarkably similar to Xunzi’s account of how studying and practicing ritual restructures learners’ moral psychology. Specifically, both Vygotsky and Xunzi offer nonnativist accounts of psychosocial development that emphasize the centrality of sociocultural tools for learning. This comparison yields a more nuanced and empirically supported interpretation of Xunzi’s account of moral education, as well as an account that has applications in contemporary work in moral education and development.     

Psychology and its role in information technology

This paper discusses a role for psychology in the development of information technology. Because of the popularity of psychology as an undergraduate major, psychology’s expertise in measurement, and the assertion of some that cognitive science provides the scientific basis for advancements in information technologies, psychology has a responsibility as a discipline to advance information technology and to educate students about this technology. Studies suggest that higher education in psychology can facilitate reasoning about general issues. A process-oriented course in psychology and computers is suggested as a way of incorporating computer literacy into the psychology curriculum. The role of the Society for Computers in Psychology is also discussed.     

A Scientific Theory of the Development of Meditation in Practicing Individuals: Patañjali’s Yoga,Developmental Psychology,and Neurobiology

This article considers the psychology of meditation and other introverted forms of mystical development from a neo-Piagetian perspective, which has commonalities with biogenetic structuralist and neurotheological approaches. Evidence is found that lines of meditative development unfold through Patañjali’s stages at different rates in an echo of the unfolding of lines of cognitive development through Piaget’s stages at different rates. Similar factors predicting the degree of independence of development apply to both conventional cognitive and meditative contents. As the same brain and the same nervous system are involved in both cognitive developmental psychology and meditation there are likely to be commonalities between conventional psychological and transpersonal development. Neo-Piagetian transpersonal psychology predicts a variable landscape of spiritual development across traditions and individuals, in line with variability in the cultural learning environment.     

Toward the Development of Expert Assessment Systems

Artificially intelligent (AI) computer programs are emerging in several disciplines including education. This paper provides an overview of one type of AI program called, "expert systems." The potential application of expert systems to the diagnosis and assessment of special-needs chlidren is examined and existing prototype systems are reviewed. The future of this technology is discussed in relation to emerging development tools designed for the creation of expert systems by the lay public.     

有关具身认知思潮的理论心理学思考

具身认知强调了心智或认知对身体及其感觉运动系统的依赖性。与传统认知心理学的符号加工模式不同的是, 它认为身体的构造和状态、身体的物理属性及其大脑与身体的特殊感觉—运动通道对认知具有塑造作用。认知既是具身的, 也是嵌入的, 大脑嵌入身体、身体嵌入环境, 构成了一体的认知系统。最初, 具身认知仅仅是一种反对笛卡尔身心二元论的哲学思潮, 经由认知科学哲学和理论心理学而逐渐进入了实验领域。具身认知研究充分利用了神经科学的方法和技术、数据和结论, 但是它并不主张把心理还原为生理或物理, 同时, 具身认知的神经科学取向仅仅给传统心理研究提供一个认识心智的新视角, 其目标并非取消行为水平的心理研究, 因此不会损害心理学的独立地位。     

行为金融学与心理学

由于理性经济人假设与实际的偏差,经典现代金融学遇到了一些被称为“未解之谜”的现实问题。行为金融学是从人们的实际决策行为出发来研究和解释金融市场的相关问题。因此,心理学的研究成果就成为行为金融学研究必不可少的基础。与投资者信念、偏好以及决策相关的情感心理学、认知心理学和社会心理学的研究成果在行为金融学各领域得到了广泛的应用。金融学与心理学两个领域的密切合作将推动行为金融学的进一步发展。     

Integration versus conflict between schools of dream theory and dreamwork: integrating the psychological core qualities of dreams with the contemporary knowledge of the dreaming brain

The various ways schools of psychotherapy relate to dreams have been marked by isolationism and mutual conflict rather than self-examination and then integrating the discoveries and methods of other schools. Jung’s method was in opposition to Freud’s psychoanalysis. Existential psychology was dismissive of Freud’s and Jung’s discoveries, while cognitive dream interpretation and cognitive therapy sought other roads entirely. In addition, scientific and neuropsychological dream research has been only insignificantly tied to the psychotherapeutic dream theories. These conflicts and the lack of a comprehensive dream theory has made it convenient for the current rationalist collective consciousness and treatment systems to reject the often times challenging knowledge about ourselves that dreams can provide. This paper describes how contemporary theories of complex cybernetic information networks can create an overriding, constructive framework for uncovering common traits within the above-mentioned branches of dream research and dreamwork. Within this framework, ten core qualities are delineated, supported by both therapeutic knowledge as well as scientific research: 1) Dreams deal with matters important to us; 2) Dreams symbolize; 3) Dreams personify; 4) Dreams are trial runs in a safe place; 5) Dreams are online to unconscious intelligence; 6) Dreams are pattern recognition; 7) Dreams are high level communication; 8) Dreams are condensed information; 9) Dreams are experiences of wholeness; 10) Dreams are psychological energy landscapes. For each core quality I describe short dreamwork sequences from my own practice and a schematic image of how I perceive the overriding interaction between systems in the dreaming brain. For each core quality recommendations for practical dreamwork are provided. Finally, I draw attention to dreams as a huge psychological resource for humankind.     

A Hierarchical Multi‐Attribute System Approach to Personnel Selection

In this paper, an approach to decision making in managing human resources that integrates multi‐attribute decision making techniques with expert systems is described. The approach is based on the explicit articulation of qualitative decision knowledge which is represented by a tree of attributes and decision rules. The decision making process is supported by DEXi, a specialized expert system shell for interactive construction of the knowledge base, evaluation of options, and explanation of the results. Practical use of the shell is illustrated by an application in the field of personnel selection for a top manager position.     

核心知识系统及其对相关研究的启示

核心知识系统出现于人类个体发展和种系发展的早期,在人类复杂认知能力的发生发展中起着建构模块的作用。该文以表征物体和数量关系的两类核心知识系统的性质及二者在儿童的“数”概念形成和成人的数学思维中所起的作用为例,综述了以灵长类动物、婴儿、儿童和成人为被试的研究证据,并进而提出了核心知识系统给相关研究带来的若干启示。     

杜威反射弧概念中的具身认知思想

伴随第二代认知科学的兴起,大量研究者开始在具身认知这一主张上达成共识,即有机体的身体运动以及与身体运动相关的特征和感觉经验（或称身体经验）在认知过程中扮演重要角色,而有机体的身体又嵌入到其所处的动态环境之中,从而形成一个不可分割的整体。杜威在《心理学中的反射弧概念》一文中的论证蕴含了上述具身认知思想的雏形,主要体现在：（1）身体运动协调构成了感觉运动回路。（2）在身体运动协调基础上形成的身体经验在感觉运动回路中具有连续性。（3）感觉运动回路中的身体运动与经验以环境为背景,最终目的是为了适应环境。未来的具身认知研究可以借鉴杜威所论证的反射弧概念,对上述三个方面作出进一步探索。     

Expert knowledge as mnemonic cues

It is proposed that expert knowledge can operate as a cognitive cueing structure for the acquisition and retention of new information in memory. Two experiments are reported which demonstrate that expert knowledge about football and clothing can act as mnemonic cues for the recall of information newly associated with that knowledge. In Experiment 1 expert terms from the domains of football and clothing and those neutral nouns paired with them were both better recalled by experts than by non-experts. In Experiment 2 passages containing information contrary to factual knowledge about football and clothing were recalled better by experts than by non-experts, in spite of the fact that information in the passages contradicted what the experts already knew. The results of the two experiments were interpreted as showing that expert knowledge provides mental cues that have desirable mnemonic properties such as constructibility, associability, discriminability and invertibility. Also, the interpretation of expert knowledge as a cognitive cueing structure is compared to Ausubel's ideas regarding advance organizers.     

Aiding self-knowledge

ABSTRACT

Some self-knowledge must be arrived at by the subject herself, rather than being transmitted by another’s testimony. Yet in many cases the subject interacts with an expert in part because she is likely to have the relevant knowledge of their mind. This raises a question: what is the expert’s knowledge like that there are barriers to simply transmitting it by testimony? I argue that the expert’s knowledge is, in some circumstances, proleptic, referring to attitudes the subject would hold were she to reflect in certain ways. The expert’s knowledge cannot be transmitted by testimony because self-knowledge cannot be proleptic.     

Social cognition: learning about what matters in the social world

Social‐cognitive principles underlie people's learning about what matters in the social world. The benefits of these social‐cognitive principles reveal essential aspects of what it means to be human. But these social‐cognitive principles also have inherent costs , which highlight what it means to be ‘only human’. Social cognition is ‘social’ because what is learned concerns the social world, and where the learning takes place is in the social world. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of both sides of social cognition: (1) the cognition of social psychology principles of organization, explanation, knowledge activation and use; and (2) the social psychology of cognition principles of shared reality role enactment, social positions and identities and internal audiences. The fact that there are inherent costs of the same social‐cognitive principles for which there are essential benefits affords a new perspective on social‐cognitive costs that is different from either the classic ‘conflict’ perspective or the more current ‘limited capacity’ and ‘dual‐process’ perspectives. This ‘trade‐off’ perspective deepens both our understanding of the true nature of these principles and our appreciation of our common humanity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A uniform model of computational conceptual blending

We present a mathematical model for the cognitive operation of conceptual blending that aims at being uniform across different representation formalisms, while capturing the relevant structure of this operation. The model takes its inspiration from amalgams as applied in case-based reasoning, but lifts them into category theory so as to follow Joseph Goguen’s intuition for a mathematically precise characterisation of conceptual blending at a representation-independent level of abstraction. We prove that our amalgam-based category-theoretical model of conceptual blending is essentially equivalent to the pushout model in the ordered category of partial maps as put forward by Goguen. But unlike Goguen’s approach, our model is more suitable to capture computational realisations of conceptual blending, and we exemplify this by concretising our model to computational conceptual blends for various representation formalisms and application domains.     

镜像神经元:认知具身性的神经生物学证据

传统认知心理学认为认知类似于计算机对抽象符号的加工和运算,这种观点支持了身心二元论。但是近年来兴起的具身认知运动却否定了这一观点的合理性。具身认知认为认知是身体与世界互动的结果,是身体的感觉-运动系统作用于世界而塑造出来的。认知是具身的,离不开身体的构造和感觉运动系统的作用。镜像神经元的发现支持了认知的具身特征,为认知的具身性提供了神经生物学的证据。     

I Talked to a Genius and All I Got was Knowledge

Bryan Frances’s recent argument is for the epistemic position called Live Skepticism. The Live Skepticism Argument (LSA) attempts to establish a restricted set of skeptical conclusions. The LSA’s “skeptical hypotheses” are scientific and philosophical positions that are “live actual possibilities” in an intellectual community. In order to “rule out” live hypotheses, an expert must know them to be false. However, since these are live hypotheses in this expert’s intellectual community—endorsed by others who have parallel levels of knowledge, intelligence, and understanding—this expert is unable to rule them out. Consistent with the LSA is the outcome that people not exposed to these live hypotheses can know what these experts cannot. However, in this paper, I defeat the LSA by developing and defending a counterexample that focuses on the phenomenon of genius testimony. Everyone, including the LSA’s proponent, can and should allow that expertise comes in degrees. While in many cases a person’s intelligence, understanding, and knowledge are parallel to others in the field, there are some who are extraordinary in their intelligence, understanding, and knowledge (geniuses). If an expert meets with a genius, it is possible that the genius provides this individual with beliefs that can rule out a skeptical hypothesis. Therefore, an expert can have knowledge, even if the skeptical hypothesis is live and endorsed by others who have parallel levels of knowledge, intelligence, and understanding. After providing this counterexample, I present three potential objections, and show how people can know global warming exists and that smoking does not give someone cancer. I conclude by defending this counterexample from a likely reply by proponents of the LSA involving luck and knowledge.