The pragmatic use of metaphor in empirical psychology

2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110473
Author(s):  
Rami Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
Theory Construction ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Metaphor Use

Metaphors of mind and their elaboration into models serve a crucial explanatory role in psychology. In this article, an attempt is made to describe how biology and engineering provide the predominant metaphors for contemporary psychology. A contrast between the discursive and descriptive functions of metaphor use in theory construction serves as a platform for deliberation upon the pragmatic consequences of models derived therefrom. The conclusion contains reflections upon the possibility of an integrative interdisciplinary psychology.

Mechanisms of Eyewitness Suggestibility: A Test of the Explanatory Role Hypothesis

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Rindal ◽  
Quin M. Chrobak ◽  
Maria Zaragoza ◽  
Caitlin Weihing
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Eyewitness Suggestibility

Confession, the New Psychology, and Birth Control, 1920–60

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick W. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Birth Control ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
Psychological Benefits ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
The Face ◽  
Catholic Tradition

The chapter addresses challenges from empirical psychology and psychiatry that called into question some of the inherited conceptions of sin and guilt. Those relatively new sciences caused some in the Catholic tradition to oppose the psychological approaches as a threat to the confessional tradition and others to reconsider confession in the face of the emerging sciences and to emphasize the benefits of the new psychology for understanding neuroses and mental illnesses that confessors periodically encountered in the confessional. Some, too, underlined the therapeutic and psychological benefits of auricular confession that were consistent with the new sciences. The moral issue of birth control also arose for Catholics in the early 1930s when Pope Pius XI condemned the use of all artificial means of birth regulation. Anecdotal and statistical evidence seems to indicated that significant numbers of childbearing Catholics practiced birth control and a few ceased going to confession because of it.

The Psychology of Knowledge Ascriptions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Gerken
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Knowledge Ascription ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Process Framework ◽  
Intuitive Judgments ◽  
Ordinary Knowledge

Chapter 5 surveys some empirical psychology and outlines some folk epistemological principles. By considering the heuristic and biases tradition, it is argued that ordinary knowledge ascriptions are standardly driven by heuristic processes and, therefore, associated with biases. This idea is integrated with a dual process framework for mental state ascriptions. On this basis, some of the central heuristic principles that govern intuitive judgments about knowledge ascriptions are articulated, and some of the biases associated with these principles are identified. The result is an account of an epistemic focal bias in intuitive judgments about knowledge ascription. Thus, Chapter 5 provides both a survey of relevant psychology and a development of the folk psychological principles governing knowledge ascriptions.

How Content Explains

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Shea
Keyword(s):  
Research Programme ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Content Determination ◽  
Explanatory Relevance ◽  
Tight Connection ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Semantic Properties

The varitel accounts of content allow us to see how the practice of representational explanation works and why content has an explanatory role to play. They establish the causal-explanatory relevance of semantic properties and are neutral about causal efficacy. Exploitable relations give the accounts an advantage over views based only on outputs. Content does valuable explanatory work in areas beyond psychology, but it need not be explanatorily valuable in every case. The varitel accounts illuminate why there should be a tight connection between content and the circumstances in which a representation develops. The accounts have some epistemological consequences. Representations at the personal level are different in a variety of ways that are relevant to content determination. Naturalizing personal-level content thus becomes a tractable research programme. Most importantly, varitel semantics offers a naturalistic account of the content of representations in the brain and other subpersonal representational systems.

In Defense of Perceptual Content

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Schellenberg
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Relational Understanding ◽  
The Way

Chapter 5 takes a step back and traces the way in which excessive demands on the notion of perceptual content invite an austere relationalist account of perception. It argues that any account that acknowledges the role of discriminatory, selective capacities in perception must acknowledge that perceptual states have representational content. The chapter shows that on a relational understanding of perceptual content, the fundamental insights of austere relationalism do not compete with representationalism. Most objections to the thesis that perceptual experience has representational content apply only to austere representationalist accounts, that is, accounts on which perceptual relations to the environment play no explanatory role. By arguing that perceptual relations and perceptual content are mutually dependent the chapter shows how Fregean particularism can avoid the pitfalls of both austere representationalism and austere relationalism. With relationalists, Fregean particularism argues that perception is constitutively relational, but with representationalists it argues that it is constitutively representational.

The Explanatory Role of Existence Proofs

Ethics ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-186
Author(s):  
Alexander Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Existence Proofs

Language and creativity: a Construction Grammar approach to linguistic creativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
The Way

AbstractCreativity is an important evolutionary adaptation that allows humans to think original thoughts, to find solutions to problems that have never been encountered before and to fundamentally change the way we live. One particular domain of human cognition that has received considerable attention is linguistic creativity. The present paper discusses how the leading cognitive linguistic theory, Construction Grammar, can provide an explanatory account of creativity that goes beyond the issue of linguistic productivity. At the same time, it also outlines how Construction Grammar can benefit from insights from Conceptual Blending.

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