Crisis” and “re-foundation” of psychology – outmoded topics of theoretical-psychological discourse?

In the 1970-80ies critical assessments of the problematic state of psychology as science were flourishing, stressing the theoretical disintegration and practical irrelevance of psychological basic research and connecting both defects to a misplaced dependence of mainstream psychology on a scientistic notion of scientific cognition. Talks of a crisis in psychology were gaining ground again. Controverting the paradigmatic maturity vs. the pre-/non-paradigmatic state of our discipline or, alternatively, its necessarily multi-paradigmatic character, the quest for unification as against a programmatic theoretical pluralism became a top issue of scholarly dispute. The institutionalisation of ISTP in 1985 and its initial epistemological and meta-theoretical core themes clearly reflected this pervasive trend. Some 35 years later, it has become noticeably quiet about such concerns, and there is no evidence of a renewal of large-scale discussions on a foundational crisis in psychology, let alone of ambitious attempts at theoretical unification or re-foundation – despite the fact that none of the “epistemopathologial“ (Koch, 1981) diagnoses of traditional variable-psychology have been refuted or lost strategic importance. Combining historical retrospection with an exemplary analysis of topical theoretical-psychological subjects, the aim of my paper is to get a clearer idea of where Theoretical Psychology currently stands in regard to the meta-scientific study of psychological theory-problems.

Shared neuronal bases of inhibition and economic choice in orbitofrontal cortex

ABSTRACTEconomic choice and inhibition are two important elements of our cognitive repertoires that may be closely related. We and others have noted that during economic choice, options are typically considered serially; this fact provides important constraints on our understanding of choice. Notably, asynchronous contemplation means that each individual option is subject to an accept-reject decision. We have proposed that these component accept-reject decisions may have some kinship with stopping decisions. One prediction of this idea is that stopping and choice may reflect similar neural processes occurring in overlapping brain circuits. To test the idea, we recorded neuronal activity in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) Area 13 while macaques performed a stop signal task interleaved with a structurally matched choice task. Using neural network decoders, we find that OFC ensembles have overlapping codes for stopping and choice: the decoder that was only trained to identify accept vs. reject trials performed with higher efficiency even when tested on the stop trials. These results provide tentative support for the idea that mechanisms underlying inhibitory control and choice selection may be subject to theoretical unification.

El ideal de unificación en biología: el caso de la síntesis evolutiva extendida

In this article I will analyze whether the so-called Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) represents a synthesis and an extension with respect to its predecessor, Modern Synthesis (MS). It will be argued that the MS proposes an externalist approach to evolution while the EES considers it necessary to overcome the internalism/externalism dichotomy by proposing more integrative approaches. It will be concluded that the EES cannot be considered an extension of MS and that the appeal to that extension is related to sociological aspects and the epistemic value of theoretical unification that was always present in biological evolutionary thinking.

From vectors to symbols to cognition: The symbolic and sub-symbolic aspects of vector-symbolic cognitive models

To achieve a full, theoretical understanding of a cognitive process, explanations of the process need to be provided at both symbolic (i.e., representational) and sub-symbolic levels of description. We argue that cognitive models implemented in vector-symbolic architectures (VSAs) intrinsically operate at both of levels and thus provide a needed bridge. We characterize the sub-symbolic level of VSAs in terms of a small set of linear algebra operations. We characterize the symbolic level of VSAs in terms of cognitive processes, in particular how information is represented, stored, and retrieved, and classify vector-symbolic cognitive models in the literature according to their implementation of these processes. On the basis of our analysis, we speculate on avenues for future research, and suggest means for theoretical unification of existent models.

The memory tesseract: Mathematical equivalence between composite and separate storage memory models

Computational memory models can explain the behaviour of human memory in diverse experimental paradigms. But research has produced a profusion of competing models, and, as different models focus on different phenomena, there is no best model. However, by examining commonalities among models, we can move towards theoretical unification. Computational memory models can be grouped into composite and separate storage models. We prove that MINERVA 2, a separate storage model of long-term memory, is mathematically equivalent to composite storage memory implemented as a fourth order tensor, and approximately equivalent to a fourth-order tensor compressed into a holographic vector. Building of these demonstrations, we show that MINERVA 2 and related separate storage models can be implemented in neurons. Our work clarifies the relationship between composite and separate storage models of memory, and thereby moves memory models a step closer to theoretical unification.

TIMAL: A Line of attack Theoretical Unification of Spread out/ Congregate I/O and Gigabit Switches

The refinement of wide-area networks hasconstructede x- tremeprogramming,simu- lation of object-oriented languages the current status of introspective epistemologies, analysts urgently desire the exploration of operating systems.In this paper, we validate that the famous trainable algorithm for the analysis of wide-area networks byMartinezetal.is impossible