Minds as Connoting Systems: Logic and the Language of Thought

The principal aim of this essay is to discuss some logical features of the so-called Classical model of cognitive architecture as it is advocated by J. Fodor and Z. Pylyshyn in their much discussed article 'Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis'. It is pointed out that their structural assumptions have consequences of a logical kind which call into question the view that the Classical architecture (in their sense) can be employed to model human cognition. It seems that the consequences have escaped Fodor and Pylyshyn's notice, or else they have failed to appreciate them, since some of their claims evidently conflict with them. It is also investigated whether the human mind can be characterized as being logical in some weaker sense of logic. Furthermore, it is argued that J. H. Fetzer's view that it is a semiotic system is more realistic than the Classical model, but the distinction he suggests between human cognition and other kinds may be problematic.     

The Ismaili sect in London: Religious institutions and social change

The Ismailis in London are a community attempting to adapt the stock of Ismaili theoretical concepts to the explanation and control of events in a changed and changing social situation. This article is concerned with assessing the role of Ismaili religious institutions in this process of adaptation. It will be argued that because the Ismaili belief system emphasizes the irrelevant and transitory nature of Ismaili religious institutions, the true role, paradoxically, of these religious institutions is preserved, and as a consequence they remain relevant to Ismailis.     

The Ismaili sect in London: Religious institutions and social change

The Ismailis in London are a community attempting to adapt the stock of Ismaili theoretical concepts to the explanation and control of events in a changed and changing social situation. This article is concerned with assessing the role of Ismaili religious institutions in this process of adaptation. It will be argued that because the Ismaili belief system emphasizes the irrelevant and transitory nature of Ismaili religious institutions, the true role, paradoxically, of these religious institutions is preserved, and as a consequence they remain relevant to Ismailis.     

Dialogue as Constructivist Pedagogy: Probing the Minds of Psychology's Greatest Contributors

In this article, I report on my use of dialogue as an exploratory teaching tool in an undergraduate colloquium titled Historical Foundations of Psychology. Students completed written assignments in which they identified the contributors to psychology associated with each of a series of position statements that capture the intellectual, philosophical, or theoretical views of these individuals. Students were not told in advance the identity of contributors relative to their respective position statements, which assumed the form of excerpts and quotations (direct or paraphrased) from original and secondary sources. As part of their written responses, students provided supporting rationale for their answers and discussed the truths and misconceptions inherent in each statement. Afterward, students engaged in class discussion involving peer critique of their written responses. Through qualitative assessment, the dialogue method was shown to advance critical thinking and participation in the learning process. Students generally described dialogue as challenging, helpful, and enjoyable in exploring the views of eminent thinkers throughout the history of psychology. Findings are discussed in light of constructivist pedagogy, in which students actively and interactively create their own conceptual understandings. In line with the conclusion that dialogue is a promising instructional technique, future classroom applications are also presented.     

Minds of their own

by Lesley J. Rogers, Allen & Unwin, 1997. $16.95 (x+212 pages) ISBN 1 86448 504 3.     

Desgabets on Cartesian Minds

George Berkeley maintains both anti-abstractionism (that abstract ideas are impossible) and idealism (that physical objects and their qualities are mind-dependent). Some scholars (including Atherton, Bolton, and Pappas) have argued, in different ways, that Berkeley uses anti-abstractionism as a premise in a simple argument for idealism. In this paper, I argue that the relation between anti-abstractionism and idealism in Berkeley's metaphysics is more complex than these scholars acknowledge. Berkeley distinguishes between two kinds of abstraction, singling abstraction and generalizing abstraction. He then rests his case for idealism, not on the denial of the possibility of generalizing abstraction, but rather on the denial of the possibility of singling abstraction. Moreover, Berkeley's argument does not rest on a blanket rejection of all forms of singling abstraction. Rather, the fundamental anti-abstractionist assumption, for his purposes, is the claim that primary qualities cannot be mentally singled out from secondary qualities. Crucially, the claim that the existence of physical objects cannot be mentally singled out from their being perceived is not a premise in, but rather a consequence of, Berkeley's argument for idealism. Berkeley's argument therefore avoids circularity inasmuch as it appeals to the impossibility of singly abstracting one idea in order to establish the impossibility of singly abstracting another.     

Emotions as social relationships

While emotions are usually treated as internal states, it is possible to view them as social relationships. From this perspective, the different emotions are not primarily understood in terms of facial expression, physiological pattern, hedonic tone, or level of arousal, but as different transformations of the relationship between person and other. To demonstrate the value of this approach, judgments of the similarity between different emotions were submitted to multidimensional scaling. It is shown that the resulting dimensions describe different aspects of the relation between self and other. These dimensions provide us with a taxonomy of emotions that makes some important distinctions between closely related emotions and leads to some interesting predictions about personality differences.The authors would like to thank David Stevens for his assistance with the statistical analysis, Eric de Rivera for drafting the three-dimensional figures, and James D. Laird and Shula Sommers for their helpful commentary.     

Heuristics as social tools

Psychological models of judgement and decision making assume that people use heuristics to make inferences when faced with constraints in time, information, or processing capacity. This paper explores the use of heuristics in social interaction. Extending the concept of heuristics to social domains can be used to construct better understandings of behavioural regularities, especially when such regularities are not easily predicted by or accounted for in conventional models of rational choice.     

Crying as social behavior

Twenty mother-infant pairs were observed once a week for 7-hour periods when the infants were 2, 3, 4, and 5 weeks old. The occurrence of crying and its relationship to patterning of maternal behaviors was studied in two social contexts: while the mother was holding the infant and while she was not holding the infant. There were significant individual differences in the amount of crying in each of these contexts. The amount of crying in the two contexts was not correlated. Six variables describing forms of maternal attention throughout the 7-hour day were selected, and profiles were formed from measures of these variables. These profiles were found to vary systematically as a function of the amount of crying while the mother was holding the infant. In this context, only physical stimulation increased linearly with increased crying, whereas other forms of attention showed a U-shaped function in relation to increased crying. No relationship was found between crying while the mother was not holding the baby and patterns of interaction. We conclude that the structuring of a mother-infant relationship is reflected in the amount of crying that occurs while mother and infant are in close physical contact. The results also provide evidence that the social context for an infant's crying must be taken into account if the full adaptive value of crying is to be understood.