Theory Of The Mind Research Articles

A Theory of Mind

This is the fourth and final article which the authors have published about the mind and is focused on the actual theory of the mind itself as suggested by them. The authors emphasize that as a concept the mind does exist and is contra distinct to the scientific psychoanalytic approach. The article introduces such features as minding, caring, humanizing and thinking to the therapeutic scene.

Concept formation as knowledge accumulation: A computational linguistics study

Language plays at least two roles in design. First, language serves as representations of ideas and concepts through linguistic behaviors that represent the structure of thought during the design process. Second, language also performs actions and creates states of affairs. Based on these two perspectives on language use in design, we apply the computational linguistics tools of latent semantic analysis and lexical chain analysis to characterize how design teams engage in concept formation as the accumulation of knowledge represented by lexicalized concepts. The accumulation is described in a data structure comprised by a set of links between elemental lexicalized concepts. The folding together of these two perspectives on language use in design with the information processing theories of the mind afforded by the computational linguistics tools applied creates a new means to evaluate concept formation in design teams. The method suggests that analysis at a linguistic level can characterize concept formation even where process-oriented critiques were limited in their ability to uncover a formal design method that could explain the phenomenon.

Neural theories of mind: why the mind-brain problem may never be solved

Contents: Preface. An Introduction to the Concept of Theory. Mind and Brain Before the Modern Cognitive Neuroscience Era. The Limits of Cognitive Neuroscience--An Epistemological Interlude. Field Theories--Do What You Can Do When You Can't Do What You Should Do! Single Neuron Theories of the Mind--The Undue Influence of a Point in Space. Network Theories--Truth Denied. Summary and Conclusions.

Teoría Kantiana de la actividad mental: Algunos problemas desde la ciencia cognitiva

The theories of mind held by modern philosophers have been considered from a new point of view by the contemporary Cognitive Science. The kantian theory of mental activity, included his several faculties and the respective elements of these, have been studied as one of the more attractive proposal, considering his affinity with recent topics in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind, such as the modularity of faculties, the intentionality of mental representation, conceptual structure, and the representational theory of the mind. In this paper we review some relevant contemporary proposals on these topics (Hatfield 1992, Kitcher 1990 Meerbote 1991, Moya 2003, Redding 2001, Strawson 1966), and having in view Kant's theory about the mental, we point out some of the difficulties that contemporary thought at this respect may have to face.

Damasio on mind and emotions: A conceptual critique

Damasio’s theory of emotions and feelings has recently become influential in psychology and related disciplines. The theory states that feeling an emotion consists of having mental images that arise from neural patterns that represent changes in body and brain (and these changes make up the emotion). In this article, I first criticize Damasio’s general theory of the mind, before moving on to a critique of his theory of emotions. This critique involves four points. I argue that it is flawed to say (1) that we observe our feelings, (2) that feelings necessarily involve experiences of changes in body states, (3) that feelings are private, and (4) that feelings are always caused.

“Déjà Vu” or Memory-Science between Gérard de Nerval and Marcel Proust

ArgumentCultivated by a number of writers and studied by psychologists, the phenomenon of déjà vu is an invention of the nineteenth century and is part of a broader exploration of how the mind experiences memory and time. Thus this typically benign mental aberration provides an entry-point into the mechanisms that preside over the regulation of the flow of consciousness. The theories of the mind developed recently by neuroscientists help us understand, meanwhile, why investigations into this mental “event” necessarily invoke concepts of representation and narrative. In fact, our increasingly sophisticated models for processes of memory and perception depend on literary representations. This article relies on the paramnesiac writings of Gérard de Nerval, seen through the lens of Proust's analysis, to argue that a consideration of the aesthetic and representational features of déjà-vu can bring us closer to solving the epistemological challenges we face in studying this phenomenon.For Gregory T. Polletta

Idealism and the Philosophy of Mind1

This paper defends an idealist form of non‐reductivism in the philosophy of mind. I refer to it as a kind of conceptual dualism without substance dualism. I contrast this idealist alternative with the two most widespread forms of non‐reductivism: multiple realisability functionalism and anomalous monism. I argue first, that functionalism fails to challenge seriously the claim for methodological unity since it is quite comfortable with the idea that it is possible to articulate a descriptive theory of the mind. Second, that as an attempt to graft conceptual mind‐body dualism onto a monistic metaphysics, the idealist alternative bears some similarities to anomalous monism, but that it is superior to it because it is not vulnerable to the charge of epiphenomenalism. I conclude that this idealist alternative should be given serious consideration by those who remain unconvinced that a successful defence of the non‐reducibility of the mental is compatible with the pursuit of a naturalistic agenda.

What Müller's Law of Specific Nerve Energies Says about the Mind

Johannes Muller's law of specific nerve energies (LOSNE) states that the mind has access not to objects in the world but only to our nerves. This law implies that the contents of the mind have no qualities in common with environmental objects but serve only as arbitrary signs or markers of those objects. The present article traces the implications of LOSNE for non-physical theories of mind and for modern neural identity theory (that mental events are identical with their neurological representations) and argues that these theories are essentially inconsistent with LOSNE. Teleological behaviorism, a behavioral identity theory of the mind, identifies a person's mind with the correlation over time between that person's overt behavior and environmental objects; this behavioral conception is consistent with a revised form of LOSNE in which the mind is conceived to exist not within the body but at the borderline between the body and the world.

Fra Freud til Matte-Blanco—en utviklingslinje i den psykoanalytiske teori om tenkning

Johnsen, T. (2005). From Freud to Matte-Blanco: A line of development in the psychoanalytical theory of thinking. Nordisk Psykologi, 57, 365–390. In this paper, the author draws attention to the fact that cognitive processes have been a hidden and underdeveloped aspect of the psychoanalytic theory of the mind. This is an unfortunate situation both from a clinical viewpoint and in relation to the recent attempts at integrating psychoanalytical insights with findings in cognitive neuroscience. A relatively unknown contribution to the necessary updating of the psychoanalytic theory of thinking is represented by the Chilean psychoanalyst Ignacio Matte-Blanco. The Freudian roots of Matte-Blanco's model of the mind are pointed at, especially the topographical unconscious and the primary processes. Matte-Blanco's model of the mind, which is informed by mathematical logic, is then described in its essential aspects. He reformulates Freud's dual process theory of thinking (primary versus secondary processes), deep...

O Que é o Monismo Anómalo?

The aim of this paper is to present, in a clear and accessible way, Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism. I stress that what distinguishes Davidson’s monism from other identity theories of the mind is the conjunction of an identity thesis (viz. every mental event is a physical event) with an anti-reductionist argument, according to which there are no strict psychophysical laws.

Brain–mind identities in dualism and materialism: a historical perspective

So-called identity theories that postulate the identity of mental phenomena with brain states are usually associated with materialistic ontology. However, the historical picture of the actual attempts at spelling out the mind–brain identities is more complex. In the eighteenth century such identities were most enthusiastically proposed by dualists (for example by Charles Bonnet), whereas non-reductionistic materialists such as Diderot tried to get along without them. In the nineteenth century physiologists such as Broca, Charcot and Wernicke, who postulated discrete and localizable neural correlates for ideas and mental images, ended up, despite their professed materialism, defending theories that resembled Cartesian schemes and the theories of their eighteenth-century dualistic predecessors. Some problems resulting from the use of these theoretical models postulating local and discrete traces, images or representations in the brain in the context of materialist ontology are obviously related to their dualistic origins and to the fact that they are necessarily bound up with dualistic presuppositions. In the context of the criticism of the nineteenth-century memory trace paradigm it is, however, important to bear in mind that functional localization as such is not dependent on the notion of localizable representations. Nor are materialist theories of the mind necessarily dependent on postulating specific type–type identities between the mental and the physiological.

Education for the prepared mind

A theory of education requires a theory of the mind that is to be educated. Modules are the central feature of the mind of the infant. Innate learning devices, modules, prepare the infant with the following competences: language, number, theory of mind, spatial navigation, music, etc. We propose that the child be taught what evolution has prepared the child to learn. This program requires adding both modular—e.g., Theory of Mind, morality, art—as well as domain-general competences—e.g., analogies, causal analysis—to the curriculum. The program further requires revamping the presently inappropriate teaching of certain modular competences. Finally it requires correcting “evolutionary errors”—modular competences that were not ideal (see Galileo); or that, though once beneficial, have become harmful in the modern world (see imitation). This proposal is taken from [ Premack, D. & Premack, A. (2003). Original intelligence. New York: Macgraw-Hill].

The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessThe Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap Between Science and the HumanitiesStephen Thielke, M.D.Stephen ThielkeSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Apr 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.55.4.459AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This book is Stephen Jay Gould's swan song, written in 2001, a year before his death. Through an examination of early scientific texts, mainly from Gould's personal collection, The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox argues that the sciences and the humanities should foster mutual regard and respect instead of wrangling about supremacy. That assertion might seem absurdly self-evident, but the book is polemical and desperately impassioned.Gould's goad was sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson's claims in the widely reviled Consilience (1) that science will subsume all the humanities and that science should guide all humanistic, artistic, and moral discussion. Wilson's reductionistic program of "turning as much philosophy as possible into science" is, frankly, delusional, and Gould's rebuttal too polite and esoteric, but the debate raises key questions for the soul of psychiatry.Do many of the trends in our field—treating target symptoms and receptors instead of people, blanketing with algorithms, the New Freedom Commission report's expectation that all mental disorders can be prevented or cured, "neurophilosophy" as a way of subsuming philosophy under science (2)—spring from a reductionistic worldview that science can solve everything? Treatment always involves the moral question of what should be done, and, as Gould shows, reductionism wrongly presumes that science can take on morality. Are we selling ourselves quasi-scientific promises that by their very nature cannot satisfy our primary humanitarian aim? And although psychiatry certainly bridges the worlds of science and the humanities, does most psychiatric clinical research, driven by dollars and desired clinical outcomes and largely devoid of skepticism, even constitute science? Gould's accounts of biased interpretations in the history of even the physical sciences remind us how dangerous the will to believe can be.Gould has always portrayed himself as a benevolent polymath, but in this book he makes uncharacteristic jabs at psychiatry, calling Freud's theory "cockamamie and unsupported" and describing psychiatry that isn't science-based as "canonical psychobabble" (in reference to his son's autism). He relies on the unconscious for his argument but lacks any framework to characterize it. His speculations about the operation of the psyche would have been much enhanced by basic reading from theory of the mind—as in lengthy attempts to explain why people think in dichotomies, and the almost comic expectation that exposing dichotomies makes them disappear. The suggestion that "any genuinely wise person" must be learned in both the sciences and the humanities is somewhat distasteful, as is the almost sappy idealization of intellectual culture.The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is not vintage Gould. It replaces the eclectic charm of his previous work with a repetitive and pedantic insistence. But Gould's primary pleas—that we must remember our historic humanitarian and scientific roots and that the guardians of intellectual culture have a responsibility to pursue truth unfettered by bias—are passionately sincere and merit our considered attention.Dr. Thielke is a third-year resident in psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.by Stephen Jay Gould; New York, Harmony Books, 2003, 288 pages, $25.95

Modèles de la pensée : Quels enjeux pour les chercheurs en sciences cognitives ?

Theories of the Mind and the Stakes for the Researchers in Cognitive Science. This paper is concerned with the analysis of the theories of the mind proposed by the researchers in cognitive science and the stakes linked to the construction of this domain. The first part of this work deals with the analysis of the texts, discourses, references and representations of the most famous actors of the construction of the cognitive science. Some maintain that the logic is the most suitable mean to study the cognitive processes, whereas others believe that it is the study of the brain functioning. The aim of the paper is to understand the cultural universe of the researchers in cognitive science, what philosophical choices they adopt and how their practices and formation affect their conceptions. The second part of the paper deals with the institutional aspects of the construction of the cognitive science in France.

Individual differences in working memory capacity and dual-process theories of the mind.

Dual-process theories of the mind are ubiquitous in psychology. A central principle of these theories is that behavior is determined by the interplay of automatic and controlled processing. In this article, the authors examine individual differences in the capacity to control attention as a major contributor to differences in working memory capacity (WMC). The authors discuss the enormous implications of this individual difference for a host of dual-process theories in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. In addition, the authors propose several new areas of investigation that derive directly from applying the concept of WMC to dual-process theories of the mind.

“The Word is not Reflexive”

Hans-Georg Gadamer's appropriation of Augustine's analogy of the inner word, the verbum interius, is by now a well-known theme in philosophical hermeneutics. But what has received scarcely any attention is the Thomist side of Gadamer's appropriation. Two thirds of Gadamer's analysis of the verbum interius in his magnum opus, Truth and Method, is devoted to Aquinas, who employs Augustine's verbum in developing a theory of the mind. In particular, Gadamer gives great emphasis to the Thomist insistence on the character of the inner word. Both Gadamer and Aquinas in their different historical contexts needed to combat subjectivism, which is what Aquinas is doing by insisting on the non-reflective character of the inner word. In this paper I examine this point of convergence to understand why their anti-subjectivism created such a deep common accord, and how this relates their projects to each other. How is the Scholastic involvement of the mind in the world analogous to the circular relation between language and understanding in hermeneutics, and where is the difference?

Darwinian functions and Freudian motivations

Badcock, and Nesse and Lloyd, have argued that there are important points of agreement between Freud's theory of the mind and a theory of mind suggested by adaptive reasoning. Buller, on the other hand, draws attention to the need to avoid confusing an adaptive rationale with an unconscious motivation. The present paper attempts to indicate what role adaptive reasoning might have to play in justifying psychoanalytic claims. First, it is argued that psychoanalytic claims cannot be justified by the clinical experience of psychoanalysts alone. It is urged that, to avoid interpretative proliferation, it is necessary to base interpretation on some theory which is external to psychoanalysis. Next, Buller's reservations about using adaptive reasoning to justify claims about a personal unconscious, are summarized. Then an argument for the existence of a personal unconscious, is offered, based on experimental evidence from Gur and Sackeim. Then it is argued that adaptive reasoning, though it cannot itself provide evidence for the existence of any psychological mechanism, can valuably guide the search for such evidence. It is argued that such an approach has borne fruit, both in biology generally and specifically in psychology. Finally, it is argued that psychoanalysis is important enough to justify such a research project.

The state of emergentism in second language acquisition

‘Emergentism’ is the name that has recently been given to a general approach to cognition that stresses the interaction between organism and environment and that denies the existence of pre-determined, domain-specific faculties or capacities. Emergentism thus offers itself as an alternative to modular, ‘special nativist’ theories of the mind, such as theories of Universal Grammar (UG). In language acquisition, emergentists claim that simple learning mechanisms, of the kind attested elsewhere in cognition, are sufficient to bring about the emergence of complex language representations. In this article, I consider, and reject, several a priori arguments often raised against ‘special nativism’. I then look at some of the arguments and evidence for an emergentist account of second language acquisition (SLA), and show that emergentists have so far failed to take into account, let alone defeat, standard Poverty of the Stimulus arguments for ‘special nativism’, and have equally failed to show how language competence could ‘emerge’.

Out of Its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis: A Call for Reform

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: Mind and BrainFull AccessOut of Its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis: A Call for ReformALAN A. STONE, M.D., ALAN A. STONESearch for more papers by this author, M.D., Cambridge, Mass.Published Online:1 Feb 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.2.397AboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Perhaps my expectations for this book were too great. Hobson is a respected professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has made contributions to our understanding of sleep and dreams. And the blurbs on the dust jacket were very promising: “A brainy book about the mind,” “eye opening and scintillating.”Unfortunately, Hobson’s collaboration with science writer Jonathan Leonard is a disappointment. I must confess that the conflicting and distinctive voices of the two authors of this book are disconcerting. It is as though they could not agree on the authorial tone of the text. Whatever the reason, even the case histories given as examples lack clinical verisimilitude, and there are troubling oversimplifications of the science and everything else.The authors’ enterprise was to describe and explain the crisis in the theory and practice of psychiatry and to offer a remedy. In my opinion, however, the first sentences of the acknowledgment indicate how their project went awry. They refer to their efforts to construct not a “Tower of Pisa” but an “Eiffel Tower” so as to scan the broad landscape. This analogy (typical of the prose style) explains why instead of building a book on Hobson’s own solid expertise, the scientist and the science writer went around interviewing leading figures in the various subdisciplines of psychiatry. As a result, sections of this “overview” recount material that has been described (more convincingly) by those who have actually worked in the subspecialty and written books directed, like this one, at the general reader. I have in mind, among others, Descartes’ Error by Damasio (1), The Emotional Brain by LeDoux (2), The Antidepressant Era by Healy (3), and Mood Genes by Barondes (4). Other sections reveal a woeful ignorance of health policy and medical economics.The best sections of the book deal with Hobson’s lifelong interests, e.g., the problem of consciousness and sleep and the “dance of dreams.” Here one finds an ambitious attempt to present and explain the current scientific background (neuroanatomical and neurochemical) of the mind-brain problem. But even that writing is marred by a forced cleverness that annoys more often than it enlightens. In other places the authors are snide and brash: “Not all of the new psychiatric residents are hopeless” (p. 214). “And HMO [administrators] get paid plenty, because you can’t hire competent people to do a nasty job like depriving others of health care benefits unless you pay them well” (p. 219).Yes, psychiatry is in a crisis: morale is low, psychoanalysis is dead, managed care is a disaster, treatment resources are inadequate, psychopharmacology is not an exact science, and the brain is incredibly interesting. Unfortunately, the authors’ account of all this brings no new insight or clarity, and despite their lofty vantage point they seem not to recognize that all of medicine is now afflicted with some of the same ailments.The authors are upbeat and propose a call for reform. They base that reform on a new psychology—“neurodynamics,” a bottom-up psychology based on brain science. They suggest that we can now go back to Freud’s original scientific project—a theory of the mind based on our knowledge of the brain. Unfortunately, their overview demonstrates how far we still are from the knowledge base necessary for a bottom-up psychology. The brain is awe-inspiring in part because the more we understand about it the more we realize how much of it remains a mystery. As a scientific matter I would suggest that understanding the pathophysiology of cancer will be a simpler task than understanding “neurodynamics.” We can expect a cure for cancer long before our science reduces the mind to the brain.I know and admire Allan Hobson, so I can only hope that his general readers will find more here than I did.By J. Allan Hobson and Jonathan A. Leonard. Cambridge, Mass., Perseus Publishing, 2002, 304 pp., $17.00 (paper).

Searle, Rationality, and Social Reality

ABSTRACT . This paper makes a critical assessment of some contributions of John Searle of direct relevance to social science—his theory of rationality and his theory of institutions. The former is criticized for being able to account for how people can act for “external reasons,” as opposed to their desires, only in cases where an obligation derives from a promise; a rival account is much more general. The latter is criticized on three grounds: (1) his theory of institutions can only account for a narrow range of social reality, that deriving from some kind of “enactment”; (2) his notion of “collective intentionality” is unnecessary to explain institutions and is introduced only so that Searle can stay within an individualistic, Cartesian theory of the mind, something of no interest to social scientists; (3) his account implies that if an institution exists, “we collectively accept it,” whereas it may in fact not be accepted, but merely tolerated or submitted to.