6. Philosophical problems in physics, biology, and psychology

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Jerry Fodor ◽  
Biological Classification ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Taxonomic System

‘Philosophical problems in physics, biology, and psychology’ examines three philosophical questions that are specific to particular sciences. Firstly, the debate between Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727), two of the outstanding scientific intellects of the 17th century, concerning the nature of space and time is discussed. Secondly, the problem of biological classification is considered beginning with the Linnaen taxonomic system and then moving on to the rival taxonomic schools: the cladists and the pheneticists. Finally, the modularity of mind hypothesis in cognitive psychology is addressed. The work of philosopher and psychologist Jerry Fodor and linguist Noam Chomsky is used to illustrate this topic.

The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Port Royal ◽  
Comparative Syntax ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Structural Principles ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Questions

The idea that all languages show affinities in their organisation, and particularly in grammar, is not a new one. It arguably originates in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and manifests in medieval scholastic philosophy, in the 17th-century Port-Royal grammarians, and in modern linguistic theory. In modern linguistics, the concept of a universal set of structural principles that underlies the superficial grammatical diversity of the world’s languages has been most influentially developed by Noam Chomsky. The primary goal of this Handbook is to provide an overview and guide to this aspect of Chomsky’s thinking, to set Chomsky’s ideas in context, to look at their motivation, and to consider their implications. The Handbook is divided into five parts. Part I deals with the philosophical questions related to Universal Grammar (UG), Part II deals with general questions of linguistic theory, Part II with language acquisition, Part IV with comparative syntax and Part V with wider issues.

The rise of gravity in the 17th century or a life in the day of Isaac Newton

Physics Today ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 42-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melburn R. Mayfield
Keyword(s):  
17Th Century ◽  
Isaac Newton

Some influences on the young Isaac Newton

1988 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-243
Keyword(s):  
17Th Century ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
The Family

The appointment of a wife as sole executrix of her husband’s will seems to have been usual in Berkshire in the 17th century even when there were sons. If the same was true in Lincolnshire then no special significance follows from Newton’s grandfather, James Ayscough, having acted in this way in 1652 with respect to Margery, his widowto-be (Baird (1987), see page 172). The probate records at Reading, which were proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Berkshire, disclose that of the 200 wills made by men during this century, who had a wife still living, 161 made their wife sole executrix. The remaining 39 named various members of the family such as mothers, daughters, kinsmen, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, as well as sons. Nearly all these men left children, many of whom had grown-up sons and daughters of their own.

Cognitive psychology

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-234
Author(s):  
Gavin Miller
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Perceived Reality ◽  
Foundational Work ◽  
The Mind

This chapter explores the entanglement of cognitive psychology with science fiction, but avoids familiar motifs from post-cyberpunk fiction. The beginnings of cognitive psychology are traced to the foundational work of figures such as George Miller and Noam Chomsky, subsequently codified into a self-conscious school by Ulrich Neisser. Jack Finney’s classic narrative, The Body Snatchers (1955), draws upon earlier proto-cognitivist discourses to contend, often quite didactically, that the human mind typically operates as a biased, limited capacity information processor. With this psychological and political thesis, the novel explores possible personal, political and aesthetic strategies that might free the human mind from its stereotypes and blind spots. The unsettling of everyday perception in The Body Snatchers is systematically generalized by the linguistic novums of Ian Watson’s The Embedding (1973), Samuel Delany’s Babel-17 (1966), and Ted Chiang’s ‘Story of Your Life’ (1998), which imagine that language (and thought) is fundamentally constructive of perceived reality. These stories ask broader, cosmological questions about the nature and accessibility of ultimate reality – with Watson’s novel ultimately proposing a mystical riposte to cognitivism’s model of the mind.

On Concepts, Modules, and Language

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Language Of Thought ◽  
Computational Theory Of Mind ◽  
Computational Theory ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Jerry Fodor ◽  
Language And Vision ◽  
Cognitive Revolution ◽  
First Time

What are the landmarks of the cognitive revolution? What are the core topics of modern cognitive science? Where is cognitive science heading? These and other questions are addressed in this volume by leading cognitive scientists as they examine the work of one of cognitive science’s most influential and polemical figures: Jerry Fodor. Newly commissioned chapters by Noam Chomsky, Tom Bever, Merrill Garrett, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Zenon Pylyshyn, Janet Fodor, Randy C. Gallistel, Ernie Lepore, Mary C. Potter, Lila R. Gleitman, and others, put in perspective Fodor’s contribution to cognitive science by focusing on three main themes: the nature of concepts, the modularity of language and vision, and the language of thought. This is a one-of-a-kind series of essays on cognitive science and on Fodor. In this volume, Chomsky contrasts his view of modularity with that of Fodor’s; Bever discusses the nature of consciousness, particularly regarding language perception; Garrett reassesses his view of modularity in language production; Pylyshyn presents his view of the connection between visual perception and conceptual attainment; Gallistel proposes what the biological bases of the computational theory of mind might be; and Piattelli-Palmarini discusses Fodor’s views on conceptual nativism. These and many other key figures of cognitive science are brought together, for the first time, to discuss their work in relation to that of Fodor’s, who is responsible for advancing many of cognitive science’s most important hypotheses. This volume—for students and advanced researchers of cognitive science—is bound to become one of the classics in the field.

scholarly journals Fodor’s guide to the Humean mind

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamás Demeter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Jerry Fodor ◽  
Science Of Mind ◽  
Alternative Understanding

AbstractFor Jerry Fodor, Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature is “the foundational document of cognitive science” whose significance transcends mere historical interest: it is a source of theoretical inspiration in cognitive psychology. Here I am going to argue that those reading Hume along Fodor’s lines rely on a problematic, albeit inspiring, construction of Hume’s science of mind. My strategy in this paper is to contrast Fodor’s understanding of the Humean mind (consonant with the widely received view of Hume in both cognitive science and much of Hume scholarship) with an alternative understanding that I propose. I thereby intend to show that the received view of Hume’s science of mind can be fruitfully revised while critically engaging with Fodor’s contemporary appropriation. Consequently, I use this occasion to put forward a rather unorthodox interpretation of Hume’s theory in dialogue with Fodor as my guide.

scholarly journals Cross-dimensional magnitude interactions arise from memory interference (in press, Cognitive Psychology)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenguang Garry Cai ◽  
Ruiming Wang ◽  
Manqiong Shen ◽  
Maarten Speekenbrink
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Memory Interference ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Space Effect ◽  
Different Dimensions

Magnitude information from different dimensions (e.g., space and time) interact with each other in perception, but how they occur remains unclear. In five experiments, the present study investigated whether these interactions arise from cross-dimensional encoding or memory interference. In Experiment 1, participants perceived a duration and two concurrent distances, were cued which distance to later reproduce, and reproduced the duration and then the cued distance. Reproduced duration increased as a function of the cued distance(replicated in Experiment 3), suggesting the duration memory can be biased by the memoryof the cued distance. Experiment 2 showed the memory interference disappeared when the to-be-reproduced distance was cued when the duration memory had been retrieved (i.e. cued at reproduction). Experiment 4 demonstrated a similar memory interference for the time-on-space effect (replicated in Experiment 5). Experiments 3 and 5 additionally showed that cross-dimensional memory interference was modulated by memory noise: noisier unfilled distance, compared to less noisy filled distance, biased duration to a greater extent but was itself biased to a lesser extent. These findings suggest that the direction and extent of cross-dimensional memory interference depend on the relative memory noise of the target interfering dimensions. We proposed a Bayesian account whereby the inference (e.g.,reproduction) of a magnitude is determined by integrating our prior experience thatmagnitudes co-vary across dimensions (e.g., space and time) and the encoded memory of the magnitude dimensions, each with a certain level of noise. We discussed the implications for cross-dimensional magnitude interactions in general.

The Past, Present, and Future of Behavioral IR

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
James W. Davis ◽  
Rose McDermott
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Methodological Problem ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Abstract Originally developed by applying models from cognitive psychology to the study of foreign policy decision making, the field of behavioral IR is undergoing important transformations. Building on a broader range of models, methods, and data from the fields of neuroscience, biology, and genetics, behavioral IR has moved beyond the staid debate between rational choice and psychology and instead investigates the plethora of mechanisms selected by evolution for solving adaptive problems. This opens new opportunities for collaboration between scholars informed by rational choice and behavioral insights. Examining the interactions between the individual's genetic inheritance, social environment, and downstream behavior of individuals and groups, the emerging field of behavioral epigenetics offers novel insights into the methodological problem of aggregation that has confounded efforts to apply behavioral findings to IR. In the first instance empirical, behavioral IR raises numerous normative and philosophical questions best answered in dialogue with political and legal theorists.

scholarly journals O PAPEL DO TREINAMENTO OSTENSIVO NA AQUISIÇÃO DA LINGUAGEM NATURAL

2015 ◽  
pp. 192
Author(s):  
Juliano Santos Do Carmo
Keyword(s):  
Language Of Thought ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Jerry Fodor

A tese da universalidade da linguagem defendida por aprioristas, como Jerry Fodor (The Language of Thought), e inatistas, como Noam Chomsky (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax), tem sido contestada por diversos filósofos, linguistas e teóricos da Psicologia Cognitiva ao longo das últimas décadas. Aprioristas e inatistas em geral concordam que é necessário, de um ponto de vista explicativo, pressupor a existência de uma linguagem do pensamento ou de categorias inatas universais para explicar o processo de aquisição de uma linguagem natural. Neste trabalho, vou procurar mostrar que a noção de “treinamento ostensivo”, enquanto um elemento pré-linguístico para a aquisição de habilidades semânticas e cognitivas, pode oferecer uma resposta satisfatória ao problema da aquisição da linguagem natural, sem a necessidade de pressupor uma linguagem privada do pensamento ou categorias biológicas inatas.

1. Time until Newton

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jenann Ismael
Keyword(s):  
Physical Theory ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Mathematical Form ◽  
The West ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Theory Of Motion ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
The Universe

‘Time until Newton’ begins by describing the historical origin of calendars and mathematical ways of representing time. It discusses the Aristotelian worldview, which formed the dominant understanding of the Universe in the West from the time of Aristotle until the 17th century when Newton proposed his theory of motion. This was the first physical theory in the mathematical form that we expect nowadays and by making space and time subjects of scientific investigation Newton forever changed the way that people studied space and time. After the publication of his theory, a debate about whether space and time were entities or systems of relations broke out between Newton and the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. A series of letters between Leibniz and the philosopher Samuel Clarke focusing on this question introduced the mathematical tools of symmetry and invariance that would become important in subsequent study of the structure of space and time.

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