scholarly journals Jaspers on explaining and understanding in psychiatry

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Hoerl
Keyword(s):  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Daniel Dennett ◽  
Singular Causation ◽  
Psychological Domain ◽  
Psychic Event

This chapter offers an interpretation of Jaspers’ distinction between explaining and understanding, which relates this distinction to that between general and singular causal claims. Put briefly, I suggest that when Jaspers talks about (mere) explanation, what he has in mind are general causal claims linking types of events. Understanding, by contrast, is concerned with singular causation in the psychological domain. Furthermore, I also suggest that Jaspers thinks that only understanding makes manifest what causation between one element of a person’s mental life and another ultimately consists in – that is, the particular way in which one psychic event can emerge from or arise out of another. I contrast the resulting view both with a view on causation in psychiatry recently put forward by John Campbell, and also with another view that is the target of Campbell’s attack, which is due to Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett.

scholarly journals Interpretation Theory and the First Person

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Moran
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Daniel Dennett ◽  
The Core ◽  
Third Person

The “rationalizing interpretation” view of psychological discourse, associated with Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, has been widely influential as a reconstruction of our practices of ascribing attitudes to others, and as an account of the meaning of psychological terms. This perspective has lent support to a wider assumption in philosophy of mind, that we should think of our ordinary use of psychological terms as part of a “theory” to explain the behavior of those around us. This paper argues that given the differences in application of psychological terms in their first-person and third-person uses, the “theory-theory” is a bad picture of what gives sense to our ascriptive practices. A proper understanding of the self/other asymmetries in psychological discourse shows that they follow quite naturally from the core truth of the “rationalizing” perspective, and that this shows the conflict between “rationalizing interpretation” and “simulation theory” to be less than it appears.

Beyond Intelligence Testing

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 320-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serge Nicolas ◽  
Zachary Levine
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Intelligence Testing ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Applied Psychology ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The Many

Though Alfred Binet was a prolific writer, many of his 1893–1903 works are not well known. This is partly due to a lack of English translations of the many important papers and books that he and his collaborators created during this period. Binet’s insights into intelligence testing are widely celebrated, but the centennial of his death provides an occasion to reexamine his other psychological examinations. His studies included many diverse aspects of mental life, including memory research and the science of testimony. Indeed, Binet was a pioneer of psychology and produced important research on cognitive and experimental psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and applied psychology. This paper seeks to elucidate these aspects of his work.

Construcción de mundo: interpretación y principio de caridad

Polisemia ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Edisson Rincón Higuera
Keyword(s):  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Paul Feyerabend

El presente artículo es una aproximación a las problemáticos suscitadas por el surgimiento de teorías como lo inconmensurabilidad y la indeterminación de lo traducción, propuestos por Paul Feyerabend y Quine respectivamente, y las cuestiones de fondo que ello suscita en la problemático del multiculturalismo. Luego de plantear las propuestas fundamentales de los teorías mencionadas, revisaremos la crítica que Donald Davidson realiza con la postulación del principio de caridad, como condición de lo posibilidad de la comunicación y, proponemos una línea interpretativa sobre la base de una teoría de construcción de mundo apoyados en el concepto de empatía e imaginación, como presupuesto fundamentales a la hora de entablar un diálogo.

Psychology: Volume 5

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Science Volume ◽  
Western World ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Difference ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Indian Setting ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

This survey of research on psychology in five volumes is a part of a series undertaken by the ICSSR since 1969, which covers various disciplines under social science. Volume Five of this survey, Explorations into Psyche and Psychology: Some Emerging Perspectives, examines the future of psychology in India. For a very long time, intellectual investments in understanding mental life have led to varied formulations about mind and its functions across the word. However, a critical reflection of the state of the disciplinary affairs indicates the dominance of Euro-American theories and methods, which offer an understanding coloured by a Western world view, which fails to do justice with many non-Western cultural settings. The chapters in this volume expand the scope of psychology to encompass indigenous knowledge available in the Indian tradition and invite engaging with emancipatory concerns as well as broadening the disciplinary base. The contributors situate the difference between the Eastern and Western conceptions of the mind in the practice of psychology. They look at this discipline as shaped by and shaping between systems like yoga. They also analyse animal behaviour through the lens of psychology and bring out insights about evolution of individual and social behaviour. This volume offers critique the contemporary psychological practices in India and offers a new perspective called ‘public psychology’ to construe and analyse the relationship between psychologists and their objects of study. Finally, some paradigmatic, pedagogical, and substantive issues are highlighted to restructure the practice of psychology in the Indian setting.

Brentano on Awareness and Observation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Textor
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Mental Phenomenon ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Shed Light

When we are aware of our perceiving, we cannot attend to (observe) our perceiving, only the object which we (seem to) perceive. The perceiving is therefore the secondary, the object perceived the primary object. The chapter develops and evaluates Brentano’s grounds for the distinction between the primary and the secondary object. This project is of independent philosophical interest because Brentano’s view promises to shed light on the distinctive character of awareness. Awareness cannot become observation, because mere awareness of a mental phenomenon cannot contrast it with others. I argue further that Brentano’s account of noticing and observation has room for an ‘anatomy of the soul’ that proceeds by noticing the elements of our mental life.

Chekhov's Environmental Psychology: Medicine and the Early Stories

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-730
Author(s):  
Matthew Mangold
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Environmental Psychology ◽  
Medical Writing ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Case Histories ◽  
Artistic Vision ◽  
Literary Writing ◽  
Core Issues

In light of the historical circumstances surrounding Anton Chekhov's early writing career and his own statements about the importance of medicine to it, there is surprisingly little scholarship on how medicine shaped his prose. What ideas was he introduced to in medical school and how did he apply them? Which of these drew his attention as he strove to articulate a new artistic vision? How did Chekhov draw on his experience with medicine to experiment with new themes and forms in his literary writing? This article addresses these questions by focusing on the aspects of medicine that had the most discernable influence on Chekhov as he developed his literary writing: hygiene, clinical medicine, and psychiatry. It argues that Chekhov engaged with core issues of medicine not only as a medical student who wrote case histories of his patients, but also as a groundbreaking writer. As he transcodes insights from the clinic into his prose, he creates a new conception of details that disclose relationships between settings and characters and an environmental psychology emerges across his medical writing and fiction. His stories envision relationships between physical and mental life with such originality that he becomes a new literary force not long after completing his medical education.

scholarly journals Propositionalism and Questions that do not have Correct Answers

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Felappi
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Do So

AbstractAs the label suggests, according to propositionalism, each intentional mental state, attitude or event is or involves a relation to a proposition. In this paper, I will discuss a case that seems prima facie not to be accountable for by propositionalism. After having presented the case, I will show why it is different from others that have been discussed in the literature as able to show that propositionalism cannot be correct. I will then consider what the propositionalist can say to fix the problem and I will show that no strategy that is genuinely propositionalist seems promising. I will not conclude that propositionalism is doomed. But I will show that if propositionalism can account for our case at all, it can only do so by losing its main appeal, i.e. its elegance and simplicity. But then propositionalism seems to have lost its advantage with respect to its obvious alternative, i.e. a pluralist account according to which mental states, attitudes and events are not all homogeneously relations to propositions, but rather our mental life should be accounted for in terms of a plurality of kinds of relata.

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