Esta enciclopédia abrange, de uma forma introdutória mas desejavelmente rigorosa, uma diversidade de conceitos, temas, problemas, argumentos e teorias localizados numa área relativamente recente de estudos, os quais tem sido habitual qualificar como «estudos lógico-filosóficos». De uma forma apropriadamente genérica, e apesar de o território teórico abrangido ser extenso e de contornos por vezes difusos, podemos dizer que na área se investiga um conjunto de questões fundamentais acerca da natureza da linguagem, da mente, da cognição e do raciocínio humanos, bem (...) como questões acerca das conexões destes com a realidade não mental e extralinguística. A razão daquela qualificação é a seguinte: por um lado, a investigação em questão é qualificada como filosófica em virtude do elevado grau de generalidade e abstracção das questões examinadas (entre outras coisas); por outro, a investigação é qualificada como lógica em virtude de ser uma investigação logicamente disciplinada, no sentido de nela se fazer um uso intenso de conceitos, técnicas e métodos provenientes da disciplina de lógica. O agregado de tópicos que constitui a área de estudos lógico-filosóficos é já visível, pelo menos em parte, no Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus de Ludwig Wittgenstein, uma obra publicada em 1921. E uma boa maneira de ter uma ideia sinóptica do território disciplinar abrangido por esta enciclopédia, ou pelo menos de uma porção substancial dele, é extrair do Tractatus uma lista dos tópicos mais salientes aí discutidos; a lista incluirá certamente tópicos do seguinte género, muitos dos quais se podem encontrar ao longo desta enciclopédia: factos e estados de coisas; objectos; representação; crenças e estados mentais; pensamentos; a proposição; nomes próprios; valores de verdade e bivalência; quantificação; funções de verdade; verdade lógica; identidade; tautologia; o raciocínio matemático; a natureza da inferência; o cepticismo e o solipsismo; a indução; as constantes lógicas; a negação; a forma lógica; as leis da ciência; o número. (shrink)

This article deals with the rationality and functionality of the existence of regret and its influence on decision making. First, regret is defined as a negative, cognitively based emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our present situation would have been better had we acted differently. Next, it is discussed whether this experience can be considered rational and it is argued that rationality only applies to what we do with our regrets, not to the experience itself. Then, research (...) is reviewed showing that both the anticipation of future regret and the experience of retrospective regret influence behavior. The influence of anticipated regret can be considered rational as long as the decision maker can accurately predict the regret that may result from the decision. The influence of experienced regret cannot be considered rational, since decisions should be based on future outcomes, not historical ones. However, influence of experienced regret can be called functional since it may result in increased learning from our mistakes. (shrink)

Critics of the computational connectionism of the last decade suggest that it shares undesirable features with earlier empiricist or associationist approaches, and with behaviourist theories of learning. To assess the accuracy of this charge the works of earlier writers are examined for the presence of such features, and brief accounts of those found are given for Herbert Spencer, William James and the learning theorists Thorndike, Pavlov and Hull. The idea that cognition depends on associative connections among large networks of neurons (...) is indeed one with precedents, although the implications of this for psychological issues have been interpreted variously — not all versions of connectionism are alike. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to show that the distinctions made by Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber between the natural sciences and the 'Geisteswissen-schaften' are sound in principle, pace the arguments to the contrary within classical logical empiricism. It is held that intentional contexts are characteristic of social science. Intentional contexts are held to be more important in psychology than mental states, like toothache. If logical behaviourism is to have any plausibility, it has to be shown how intentional contexts (...) can be dealt with. Carnap's programme was to reconstruct scientific discourse within a truth-functional language. It is argued that his reduction of belief-sentences was not successful. It is further argued that in the logical empiricist's discussions of the problem of Verstehen, only motivational understanding is taken account of, what Max Weber calls observational understanding is overlooked as we try to show through a discussion of Theodore Abel's well-known explication of 'the operation called Verstehen'. From this it is concluded that the founda-tional problems of social science are different from those of natural science, and this conclusion is further elaborated through an exposition of views held by authors in the German tradition, which, in the fifties, many philosophers held to be obsolete. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between various different conceptions of behaviour and action before exploring an accompanying variety of distinct things that ‘action explanation’ may plausibly amount to viz. different objectives of action explanation. I argue that a large majority of philosophers are guilty of conflating many of these, consequently offering inadequate accounts of the relation between actions and our reasons for performing them. The paper ends with the suggestion that we would do well to opt for a pluralistic understanding of action (...) and its explanations. (shrink)

Insects factored as ‘symbols of instinct’, necessary as a rhetorical device in the boundary work of early social psychology. They were symbolically used to draw a dividing line between humans and animals, clarifying views on instinct and consciousness. These debates were also waged to determine if social psychology was a subfield of sociology or psychology. The exchange between psychologist James Mark Baldwin and sociologist Charles Abram Ellwood exemplifies this particular aspect of boundary work. After providing a general background of the (...) debates, I turn specifically to the writings of Baldwin and Ellwood between 1890 and 1936, tracing the use of insects as ‘symbols of instinct’. (shrink)

Emotions signal flaws in the person’s anticipation systems, or in other words, in aspects of models of how the world works. As these models are essentially shared in society, emotional challenges e...

Western philosophy has a long-standing interest in the relationship between thought and language. This is not least because language use and our mental capacities are so central to our human self-conception, as well as to the ways in which we have tried to think about other beings. Retrospectively, it is possible to identify certain broad traditions in the philosophical study of thought and language, traditions which also have their representatives in psychology and linguistics. In this introduction I shall focus on (...) one such tradition, the one sometimes known as ‘lingualism ’, in so far as it bears on the papers brought together in this volume. (shrink)

Covert speech is accompanied by a subjective multisensory experience with auditory and kinaesthetic components. An influential hypothesis states that these sensory percepts result from a simulation of the corresponding motor action that relies on the same internal models recruited for the control of overt speech. This simulationist view raises the question of how it is possible to imagine speech without executing it. In this perspective, we discuss the possible role played by motor inhibition during covert speech production. We suggest that (...) considering covert speech as an inhibited form of overt speech maps naturally to the purported progressive internalization of overt speech during childhood. We further argue that the role of motor inhibition may differ widely across different forms of covert speech and that considering this variety helps reconciling seemingly contradictory findings from the neuroimaging literature. (shrink)

Sex and sensibility: The role of social selection Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9464-6 Authors Erika L. Milam, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2115 Francis Scott Key Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA Roberta L. Millstein, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA Angela Potochnik, Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA Joan E. Roughgarden, Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA Journal Metascience Online (...) ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)