scholarly journals On cognitive tensionsm.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-431
Author(s):  
Marta Iwaszuk
Keyword(s):  
Level Scheme ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Cognitive Value ◽  
Single Instance ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Actual Realization

Aim. The foundation of symbolization is a substitution: a mediation between a Representamen and Object. The paper leverages this core mechanic to examine the substitutions within the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind, which compose every act of thinking. Recognizing it is a single instance: the Ego, which regulates this parallel mediation, the paper focuses on the exploration of dichotomies that result from the necessity to perform two symbolizations simultaneously. Concepts. The study’s theoretical framework is determined by Charles S. Peirce’s (1998) concept of sign and Melanie Klein’s (1948) psychoanalytic theory. From semiotic and psychoanalytic angles, this paper explores possible comprehensions of the object in the quasi-mind (Interpretant in infinite semiosis) and actual realization of code in the act of individual thinking (Ego mediating between conscious and unconscious symbolization). Results and conclusion. The main result of the study is the exposure of dichotomies that structure the shared ground for the conscious and the unconscious symbolization. This, in turn, highlights tangible constraints that the mind is subjected to in the act of thinking. Cognitive value. The study’s main contribution is the high-level scheme of dynamics that hold the Ego in reality through the means of unconscious and conscious symbolization. The study also incorporates into coherent model unexamined aspects of individual sign usage: it deploys psychic continuity into the conscious symbolization process (by basing the model on the instance of Ego), which allows addressing the issues arising at the border of conscious and unconscious symbolization.

Psychoanalytic Theory: A Historical Reconstruction

2018 ◽  
pp. 28-44
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Conceptual Basis ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Resources ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Conceptual Difficulties

This chapter sketches a reconstruction of the basic psychoanalytic conception of the mind in terms of two historical resources: the conception of the subject developed in post-Kantian idealism, and Spinoza’s laws of the affects in Part Three of the Ethics. The former supplies the conceptual basis for the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious, while the latter defines the type of psychological causality of psychoanalytic explanations. The imperfect fit between these two elements, it is argued, is reflected in familiar conceptual difficulties surrounding psychoanalytic theory and explanation.

Similarity of Computations Across Domains Does Not Imply Shared Implementation: The Case of Language Comprehension

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 526-534
Author(s):  
Evelina Fedorenko ◽  
Cory Shain
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
High Level ◽  
General Circuits ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Language Network

Understanding language requires applying cognitive operations (e.g., memory retrieval, prediction, structure building) that are relevant across many cognitive domains to specialized knowledge structures (e.g., a particular language’s lexicon and syntax). Are these computations carried out by domain-general circuits or by circuits that store domain-specific representations? Recent work has characterized the roles in language comprehension of the language network, which is selective for high-level language processing, and the multiple-demand (MD) network, which has been implicated in executive functions and linked to fluid intelligence and thus is a prime candidate for implementing computations that support information processing across domains. The language network responds robustly to diverse aspects of comprehension, but the MD network shows no sensitivity to linguistic variables. We therefore argue that the MD network does not play a core role in language comprehension and that past findings suggesting the contrary are likely due to methodological artifacts. Although future studies may reveal some aspects of language comprehension that require the MD network, evidence to date suggests that those will not be related to core linguistic processes such as lexical access or composition. The finding that the circuits that store linguistic knowledge carry out computations on those representations aligns with general arguments against the separation of memory and computation in the mind and brain.

scholarly journals Double Vision, Phosphenes and Afterimages

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-32
Author(s):  
Işık Sarıhan
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Double Vision ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

Pure representationalism or intentionalism for phenomenal experience is the theory that all introspectible qualitative aspects of a conscious experience can be analyzed as qualities that the experience non-conceptually represents the world to have. Some philosophers have argued that experiences such as afterimages, phosphenes and double vision are counterexamples to the representationalist theory, claiming that they are non- representational states or have non-representational aspects, and they are better explained in a qualia-theoretical framework. I argue that these states are fully representational states of a certain kind, which I call “automatically non-endorsed representations”, experiential states the veridicality of which we are almost never committed to, and which do not trigger explicit belief or disbelief in the mind of the subject. By investigating descriptive accounts of afterimages by two qualia theorists, I speculate that the mistaken claims of some anti-representationalists might be rooted in confusing two senses of the term “seeming”.

scholarly journals Redundancy and reducibility in the formats of spatial representations

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Ryan Yousif
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Spatial Behavior ◽  
Polar Coordinates ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Mind

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet, to understand how the mind works, we must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored), but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). But what does it mean for representations to be formatted? How many formats are there? Is it possible that the mind represents some pieces of information in multiple formats at once? To address these questions, I discuss a ‘case study’ of representational format: the representation of spatial location. I review work (a) across species and across development, (b) across spatial scales, and (c) across levels of analysis (e.g., high-level cognitive format vs. low-level neural format). Along the way, I discuss the possibility that the same information may be organized in multiple formats simultaneously (e.g., that locations may be represented in both Cartesian and polar coordinates). Ultimately, I argue that seemingly ‘redundant’ formats may support the flexible spatial behavior observed in humans, and that we should approach the study of all mental representations with this possibility in mind.

scholarly journals On the Return to Metaphysics in Analytical Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.

Beyond What We Are Told Is Fact

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-66
Author(s):  
Zack Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Immigrant Community ◽  
Ayn Rand ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Key Terms

This chapter more fully introduces the theoretical framework for Kruse’s reading of Ditko’s work and includes more thorough definitions for the key terms as well as a historical and cultural context for those terms. The contextualization provided in this chapter offers a look into Ditko’s hometown Johnstown, Pennsylvania and its immigrant community of industrial workers, along with the liberal political voices such as Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden alongside occult and mystic voices such as H.P. Blavatsky, and how popular twentieth-century advocates of the mind power movement like Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and other members link each of these seemingly disparate ideas and methodologies. The result of this entanglement—in theory and in practice—is mystic liberalism.

Language and the subconscious

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan M Cyna ◽  
Suyin GM Tan
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Conscious State ◽  
Routine Activities ◽  
Logical Thinking ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Extreme Stress ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

Many of the communications commonly encountered in anaesthetic practice elicit subconscious responses, and, because this is so, they frequently go unrecognized. This form of communication involves verbal and non-verbal cues also known as suggestions that can elicit automatic changes in perception or behaviour. Much of this chapter is based on language structures that are thought to make subconscious changes in perception, mood or behaviour more likely, both with patients and anaesthetists themselves. Recognizing subconscious responses will facilitate communication. As is discussed later, anaesthetists can communicate with patients and colleagues in ways that utilize subconscious functioning. To all intents and purposes this looks like intuitive communication, when in reality it has structure and therefore can be learned and taught. The conscious and unconscious states are familiar to all anaesthetists. However, it is frequently unappreciated that all patients, whether in an unconscious or conscious state, will also be functioning subconsciously. In the unconscious patient it is well recognized that subconscious activities still occur—for example, in implicit awareness. Most people would appreciate that there are times during consciousness when they switch off the ‘logical brain’ and enter ‘daydream’-type thinking or they ‘tune out’. People including anaesthetists tend to function subconsciously most of the time—for example, during routine activities such as driving home on ‘autopilot’ and arriving home without realizing it consciously. The ability we all have to function automatically—that is, subconsciously—frees up the conscious part of the mind to focus on other things such as planning tomorrow’s ‘neuro’ case. The teleological basis for this ability lies in being able to filter the massive amount of information continuously presented to the individual. This allows the conscious mind to focus on what it perceives to be important—facilitating learning, logical thinking and problem solving. During activities where logical thinking is not a requirement, the subconscious comes to the fore. This is characterized by dissociation from the external environment—being ‘in your own world’. Paradoxically, at times of extreme stress, the subconscious tends to take over when the conscious part of the mind becomes so overwhelmed by external inputs it ceases to function logically.

May Sinclair

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-125
Author(s):  
Charlotte Jones
Keyword(s):  
Figurative Language ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
Power Of Language ◽  
May Sinclair ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Material Evidence

Chapter 2 extends the previous chapter’s inquiry into the relationship between realist aesthetics and figurative language as it might be oriented towards an unimaginable term—an unknowable, noumenal category—by considering its collision with what May Sinclair posits as its psychological equivalent, the unconscious. Sinclair combined a career as a novelist with philosophical research, mounting a vindication of neo-Hegelian idealist philosophy. For Sinclair, idealism’s impetus for thinking about immaterial and unseen realities led to the intangible and unseen realms of the mind, and a metaphysical absolute becomes the conduit for her early realist novels to begin to imagine a form for the uncertain boundaries and contours of consciousness. Both lack a verifiable content and are therefore apparently beyond the power of language to define or accommodate. This chapter suggests that the models of subjectivity presented in her fiction seek to integrate a revelatory encounter with an idealist absolute with the incontrovertible material evidence of alternative forms of consciousness being presented by the ‘new psychology’.

Psychotherapy: The Search for Chaos and the Discovery of Determinism

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Langs ◽  
Anthony Badalamenti
Keyword(s):  
Science Studies ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy ◽  
Chaotic Attractors ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Science Domain ◽  
Formal Science ◽  
The Mind

The search for a science of psychoanalysis is introduced by defining three modes of psychoanalytic science: domain, statistical-stochastic, and formal. The paper outlines the domain science propositions of the communicative approach to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and indicates how this version of psychoanalytic theory led to the development of an extensive series of statistical-stochastic and formal science studies of the communications between patients and therapists. The formal science efforts which began as a mathematical search for chaotic attractors revealed instead a deep determinism within the psychotherapeutic dialogue. Three specific laws of the mind and human communication have been identified. The research is centred on how we communicate (the communicative vehicle) rather than what we express (the contents). After describing a wide range of unexpected and unprecedented results, the paper concludes with a discussion of some of the clinical implications of these findings and of the new formal science of psychoanalysis created by these investigations.

scholarly journals A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 31-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosi Braidotti
Keyword(s):  
Research University ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conceptual Foundation ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Self Organizing

What are the parameters that define a posthuman knowing subject, her scientific credibility and ethical accountability? Taking the posthumanities as an emergent field of enquiry based on the convergence of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism, I argue that posthuman knowledge claims go beyond the critiques of the universalist image of ‘Man’ and of human exceptionalism. The conceptual foundation I envisage for the critical posthumanities is a neo-Spinozist monistic ontology that assumes radical immanence, i.e. the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing matter. This implies that the posthuman knowing subject has to be understood as a relational embodied and embedded, affective and accountable entity and not only as a transcendental consciousness. Two related notions emerge from this claim: firstly, the mind-body continuum – i.e. the embrainment of the body and embodiment of the mind – and secondly, the nature-culture continuum – i.e. ‘naturecultural’ and ‘humanimal’ transversal bonding. The article explores these key conceptual and methodological perspectives and discusses the implications of the critical posthumanities for practices in the contemporary ‘research’ university.

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