Showing papers on "Cognitivism (psychology) published in 2005"

Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions

Abstract: Introduction Our aim in this chapter is to show how discursive psychology (DP) deals with psychological states and characteristics. We do this in several ways: by defining what DP is, by demonstrating it analytically, and by discussing various criticisms and misunderstandings of it. As for defining it, DP works in three closely related ways: Respecification and critique . Standard psychological topics are respecified as discourse practices. Topics recognized in mainstream psychology such as ‘memory’, ‘causal attribution’, ‘script’ knowledge, and so on, are re-worked in terms of discourse practices.We study how people ordinarily, as part of everyday activities, report and explain actions and events, how they characterize the actors in those events, and how they manage various implications generated in the act of reporting. DP often generates a critical stance on cognitive psychology. For example, cognitive theory and measurement of ‘attitudes’ is criticized and replaced by the study of argumentative and evaluative practices in discourse (Billig, 1987; Potter, 1998a; Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Wiggins, 2002; Wiggins and Potter, 2003). Similarly, cognitive methods and theory on ‘causal attribution’ are critically opposed by analyses of how people manage accountability in everyday talk (Antaki, 1994; Edwards and Potter, 1992a, 1993). The psychological thesaurus . DP explores the situated, occasioned, rhetorical uses of the rich common sense psychological lexicon or thesaurus: terms such as angry, jealous, know, believe, feel, want, and so on. For example, expressions such as ‘I don't know’, or ‘your angry stage’ are examined for the local contrasts and interactional work for which they are used (e.g., Edwards, 1995; Potter, 1998b). By grounding such studies in empirical materials, we are able to explore the ways in which concepts such as ‘know’ or ‘angry’ are used interactionally and rhetorically, with regard to specific, locally relevant alternative descriptions. We develop some examples in this chapter.

Making psychology relevant

Abstract: This article describes some key features of a discursive psychological approach. In particular, discursive psychology is analytically focused on the way psychological phenomena are practical, accountable, situated, embodied and displayed. It describes its particular version of constructionism and its distinctive approach to cognition as points of contrast with a range of other perspectives, including critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Finally, it describes three areas where discursive psychology is involved with social critique: work on categories and prejudice, issues to do with cognitivism and its problems, and work developing a discursive psychology of institutions.

Talking cognition: mapping and making the terrain

Abstract: This book addresses issues of talk and cognition. For the first time some of the world‟s experts on interaction analysis have been brought together to consider the nature and role of cognition. They address the question of what part, if any, cognitive entities should play in the analysis of interaction. They develop different answers. Some are consistent with current thinking in cognitive psychology and cognitive science; others are more critical, questioning the idea that cognition is the obvious and necessary start point for the study of human action.

A Philosophical Critique of Classical Cognitivism in Sport: From Information Processing to Bodily Background Knowledge

Abstract: (2005). A Philosophical Critique of Classical Cognitivism in Sport: From Information Processing to Bodily Background Knowledge. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 155-183.

You Don't Know How You Think: Introspection and Language of Thought

Abstract: The question, ‘Is cognition linguistic?’ divides recent cognitive theories into two antagonistic groups. Sententialists claim that we think in some language, while advocates of non linguistic views of cognition deny this claim. The Introspective Argument for Sententialism is one of the most appealing arguments for sententialism. In substance, it claims that the introspective fact of inner speech provides strong evidence that our thoughts are linguistic. This article challenges this argument. I claim that the Introspective Argument for Sententialism confuses the content of our thoughts with their vehicles: while sententialism is a thesis about the vehicles of our thoughts, inner speech sentences are the content of auditory or articulatory images. The rebuttal of the introspective argument for sententialism is shown to have a general significance in cognitive science: Introspection does not tell us how we think.

Theoretical behaviorism meets embodied cognition: Two theoretical analyses of behavior

Abstract: This paper aims to do three things: First, to provide a review of John Staddon's book Adaptive dynamics: The theoretical analysis of behavior. Second, to compare Staddon's behaviorist view with current ideas on embodied cognition. Third, to use this comparison to explicate some outlines for a theoretical analysis of behavior that could be useful as a behavioral foundation for cognitive phenomena. Staddon earlier defended a theoretical behaviorism, which allows internal states in its models but keeps these to a minimum while remaining critical of any cognitive interpretation. In his latest book, Adaptive dynamics, he provides an overview and analysis of an extensive number of these current, behaviorist models. Theoretical behaviorism comes close to the view of embodied cognition, which also stresses the importance of behavior in contrast to high-level cognition. A detailed picture of the overlaps and differences between the two approaches will be sketched by comparing the two on four separate issues: the c...

Inseparable Insight: Reconciling Cognitivism and Formalism in Aesthetics

Abstract: A thesis that is rarely stated but often assumed in art criticism and aesthetics concerns the inseparability of form and content in art. The thesis of inseparability states that (1) it is impossible to have the same content in two different forms; and (2) it is impossible to have the same form in two different contents.' Clearly, the thesis needs elucidation in terms of a plausible account of the distinction between form and content. It also needs to be considered whether the inseparability of form and content motivates a theory of art or, less ambitiously, identifies an important criterion in an account of art.2 The inseparability thesis is traditionally associated with formalism, which, as a general theory of art, has been widely condemned. Nevertheless, formalism is currently making a comeback in particular philosophies of the arts-notably, philosophy of music and philosophy of film.3 Sophisticated formalism in relation to both music and film allows for the aesthetic relevance of other features of the work besides form while recommending a structural focus for aesthetic appreciation. If the assumption that formalism is no longer relevant to our understanding of the arts involves a major oversight, then the inseparability thesis cannot be ignored just because of its traditional association with formalism. But even if one persisted in this oversight, it does not warrant ignoring the importance of the inseparability thesis for the thesis bears no necessary relation to any theory of art, including a formalist one. In what follows, I consider whether the inseparability thesis is compatible with aesthetic cognitivism, the view that art is valuable in part because it can give us nontrivial knowledge. Ultimately, I argue that the two are compatible because there are ways of learning from art that depend on the inseparability of form and content. Given the long and tangled history of the debate over the possibility and value of learning from art, it is supremely important to recognize, finally, such compatibility. Against defenders of aesthetic cognitivism, skeptics and critics have regularly resorted to brandishing the inseparability thesis, defiantly claiming that you cannot expect to learn about the world from art if you cannot "get to" a work's content unaffected by style and medium. Here the assumption is that the kind of aesthetic transformation

Collective cognition and emergence in multi-agent systems

Abstract: INTRODUCTION In the last few decades, the study of collective cognition has become an increasingly interdisciplinary area of research, weaving together an array of scientific contributions from a wide variety of scholarly fields including social psychology, organisation science, complex adaptive systems, social network analysis, business studies, cognitive science, computer science and philosophy of mind (e.g. Argote, 1999; Carley & Hill, 2001; Harrison & Carroll, 2001; Hutchins, 1995; Resnick et al., 1993). The fundamental idea underpinning most of these studies is that cognition is a socialphenomenon that takes place and evolves in a reality jointly constructed by agents who interact within a network of social relations. To capture this idea, several “group mind”-like constructs have been introduced that extend to the group level a range of cognitive phenomena traditionally considered as belonging to the realm of the individual agent's mind (e.g. Halpern & Moses, 1990; Wegner, 1995). Such notions as mutual beliefs, transactive memory, joint intentions, joint goals and joint commitments are relatively recent developments intended to convey the idea that cognition extends beyond, and does not reduce to, the individual's mind. However, despite the apparent enthusiasm for the subject, a number of important foundational issues still remain to be addressed. One of these (see Chapter 1 of this volume) is concerned with the nature of the relation connecting the two levels – individual and collective – at which cognition occurs within a multi-agent system (MAS). What is puzzling about this relation is the fact that one level – the collective – is determined by, and depends on, the other – the individual – and yet takes on an autonomous existence. It is the objective of this chapter to make this seemingly untenable combination of dependence and autonomy more intelligible.

Constructionism: Student Learning and Development

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to assess learning and development of students taught under a constructionist approach. Participants were six teachers and 12 students from a small experimental school in Thailand. Evaluation of student portfolios at three different points in time indicated significant improvement (p Introduction For many years, behavioral psychology was a dominant influence on schools (Druin & Solomon, 1996; Tullavantana, 2002). In the behaviorist viewpoint, teachers are the disseminators of information and students are passive receptacles of the knowledge that teachers impart (Hay & Barab, 2001; Tullavantana, 2002). Drill-and-practice is one of the instructional styles that support behaviorist learning (Suppes, 1980 as cited in Druin & Solomon, 1996). During the 1970s, behavioral psychology declined in prominence and gave way to the rapid increment of cognitive psychology (Gosling & Craik, 1999). Cognitivism emphasizes learning process in the minds of students. Constructivism, one of the cognitive learning theories proposed by Jean Piaget, argues that knowledge is not transmitted from teachers to students, but constructed by students themselves when they interact with the environment (Bjorklund, 1995; Guzdial, 1997; Stager, 2001). This view of knowledge acquisition is similar to Dewey's (1933) idea of learning by doing and discovery learning as a result of interaction with the environment. Constructionism, another one of the cognitive learning theories, was developed by Seymour Papert, professor of learning research at the Media Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Guzdial, 1997). Constructionism, which goes a step further than constructivism (Druin & Solomon, 1996; Petcharuksa, 2001; Tullavantana, 2002), asserts that students are particularly likely to make new ideas and construct knowledge when they are engaged in building objects or making products by themselves (Guzdial, 1997; Hay & Barab, 2001; Papert, 1980, 1984, 1993, 1999; Stager, 2001). Therefore, while constructivism defines learning as the building of knowledge inside of one's head, constructionism suggests that the best way to ensure that such intellectual structures form is through the active construction of something outside of one's head-something tangible that others can see, critique, and, perhaps, use (Guzdial, 1997; Stager, 2001). Another benefit of learning through constructionism is social skill development. Papert (1993) indicated that a constructionist learning environment also allows students to show, discuss, examine, and collaboratively reflect on the cognitive artifacts or product that they create. In this way, their content area knowledge, habits of mind, and social skills will be developed (Hay & Barab, 2001; Stager, 2001). To assess students' learning under constructionism, traditional testing (e.g., true-false, multiple-choice, fill-in, short-answer, and essay) may not be the most appropriate. Traditional tests fail to allow students to demonstrate the multidimensional aspects of what they have learned (Cole, Ryan, Kick & Mathies, 2000). Portfolio is potentially an authentic assessment tool for assessing student learning applied in a complex, real-world situation (Benson & Barnett, 1999). Portfolio reflects many types of student performances i.e. individual abilities and characteristics, as well as growth and progress as seen through their created products or artifacts (Aschbacher, 1990; Birenbaum, 1996; Moonkum, 2000; Poowipadawat, 2001). Although it could be argued that (a) traditional testing can be authentic (e.g., students do make multiple choices in everyday life) and portfolios can be contrived (e. …

Moral cognitivism and character

Abstract: It may seem to follow from Peter Winch's claim in ‘The Universalizability of Moral Judgements’ that a certain class of first-person moral judgments are not universalizable that such judgments cannot be given a cognitivist interpretation. But Winch's argument does not involve the denial of moral cognitivism and in this paper I show how such judgements may be cognitively determined yet not universalizable. Drawing on an example from James Joyce's The Dead, I suggest that in the kind of situation Winch envisages where we properly return a different moral judgement to another agent it may be that we accept their judgement is right for them because we recognise that it is determined by values that, simply because of the particular people we are, we could never know or understand in just the same way.

Rule following and the background

Abstract: In his work on language John Searle favors an Austinian approach that emphasizes the speech act as the basic unit of meaning and communication, and which sees speaking a language as engaging in a rule-governed form of behavior. He couples this with a strident opposition to cognitivist approaches that posit unconscious rule following as the causal basis of linguistic competence. In place of unconscious rule following Searle posits what he calls the Background, comprised of nonintentional (nonrepresentational) mental phenomena. I argue that these two aspects of his philosophy of language cannot be reconciled. In order to preserve his view of language as a rule-governed activity, he must embrace the cognitivist idea of unconscious rule following. Finally, I try to show how such an accommodation would be far less traumatic to Searle’s philosophical system than it might otherwise seem.

On the coexistence of cognitivism and intertemporal bargaining

Abstract: Although Ainslie rejects cognitivism as providing an explanation of willpower, a type of nonhomuncular cognitivism is hiding in his own proposal. The key mental mechanism of aggregating individual decisions (bundled reframings) involves representation and decoupling operations encompassed within the analytic system of dual-process mental architectures.

Cognitive science and liberal contractualism: a good friendship

Abstract: In this paper, I shall argue that both cognitivism and liberal contractualism defend a pre-moral conception of human desire that has its origin in the Hobbesian and Humean tradition that both theories share. Moreover, the computational and syntactic themes in cognitive science support the notion, which Gauthier evidently shares, that the human mind – or, in Gauthier’s case, the mind of “economic man” – is a purely formal mechanism, characterized by logical and mathematical operations. I shall conclude that a single conception of human behaviour runs through the various dominant psychological, moral and political theories of analytic inspiration.

A Holistic, Socio-Cognitive Model of Language and Language Change: A Diachronic Semasiological Story of 'Bedlam' (1)

Abstract: This paper (2) presents a holistic, socio-cognitive model of describing language and explaining its change. The primary domain of the study is lexical semantics, both synchronic and diachronic. The object of the study are lexical expressions, which, like language as such, are contemplated on three dimensions--intersubjective, interactive and cognitive. The object is approached from three perspectives, namely theoretical, synchronic and diachronic. The latter two standpoints are not neatly detachable, because language in its perpetual change is history in the making. The panchronic perspective, in turn, is indispensable for the advancement of a holistic, socio-cognitive model of describing language and explaining its change, which is generated via a critically made synthesis of three investigative approaches, namely, cognitivism, Anlageteleologie, and invisible-hand theory. The authors to whom I am particularly indebted for engendering in my mind a fruitful capacity for wonder, resulting in the present model, are Adamska-Salaciak, Keller, Langacker, Itkonen, Lakoff and Johnson. The paper climaxes in a conjectural story unfolding the history of English 'bedlam', (3) thereby illustrating a practical application of the model. 1. A holistic, socio-cognitive model of language and meaning Before advancing the model of explaining and understanding the socio-cultural evolution of language in general and meaning in particular, it is essential that a theoretical delimitation of the object of study be proposed. From the vantage point of what might be called socio-cognitivism, language and, by implication, meaning are approached as dynamic, three-dimensional epiphenomena of human (re)cognition, specific communicative context, and historical socio-cultural context (cf. Keller 1994: 64, 87; Schonefeld 2001: 151). The three interdependent dimensions are dubbed cognitive or subjective, (4) interactive, and intersubjective. (5) In this construal, language is a historical, socio-cultural institution, a "phenomenon of the third kind" (Keller 1994: 57), (6) which acquires its functional potency via its embedment in a network of social relational acts performed by speakers, who connect this otherwise powerless abstract system of signs and formal rules to their experientially and interactively conceived conceptualizations, i.e., concepts grounded in neurolophysiologically determined conscious and unconscious cognition (e.g., Johnson and Lakoff 1997, 2002). The raison d'etre of language is to be found on the interactive level, and it is the exertion of influence, via verbalization of our conceptual experience, namely meaning (see Langacker 1988a: 6), upon our interlocutors (Keller 1994: 85). Meaning is therefore primarily the communicative means toward attaining the social goal of affecting one's addressee, and the product of what can be described as contextual semiosis, namely online meaning construction. The "contextual", "emergent" (Langacker 1987: 157) structure, negotiated in interaction, is meaning on the move--the first to break free from the conventional synchronic ranks, pulling the established structure to destinations unknown. 2. A dynamic construal of language and lexical meaning On the interactive dimension, language is tangibly a process. The inherent resilience and constant evolving of language, contingent upon micro-dimensional human action, provide for its optimal functionality and untrammeled subsistence--the super-goal striven for unconsciously and attained inadvertently and epiphenomenally in relevantly similar intersubjective behavior. (7) This is so because owing to its processualism, language can respond to the changing needs of its users, dictated by alterations in the world, as perceived by humans, and in conceptualizations thereof. And the existence of language is guaranteed as long as there are people who need the institutional framework of conventions and intuitive guidelines for innovative behavior, within which language operates and evolves, and which results from and reacts to what the attending users do, why and how they do it. …

The Frame Problem and the Treatment of Prediction

Abstract: he frame problem is a problem in artiûcial intelligence that a number of philosophers have claimed has philosophical relevance. he structure of this paper is as follows: (1) An account of the frame problem is given; (2) he frame problem is distinguished from related problems; (3) hemain strategies for dealing with the frame problem are outlined; (4) A diòerence between commonsense reasoning and prediction using a scientiûc theory is argued for; (5) Some implications for the computational theory of mind are discussed.