Academic literature on the topic 'Logic. Reasoning (Psychology) Thought and thinking'

Abstract This chapter begins by introducing the distinction between thinking and knowing, and the pivotal role that it has played in theories of artificial intelligence (AI) development. This distinction is traced back to the work of early theorists such as Hebb and Cattell. Then, focussing on the theories of ‘thinking’, the chapter follows the trajectory of twentieth-century thinking about the nature of thought. The chapter considers early approaches to building AI as systems that reasoned over logical premises, or language-like mental representations. The chapter considers the early approaches to understanding the mental models proposed by Craik, Tolman, and Kohler. It discusses the convergence of psychology and AI research in the 1970s, the development of expert systems, and finally the emergence of Bayesian models for probabilistic reasoning.

Abstract This chapter engages with Michael Dummett’s work on Frege’s notion of sense identity and the role of the context principle. It is argued that sense identity plays a crucial role in the justification of Frege’s foundational programme. Two features of this programme made it desirable to have stringent criteria for sense identity. The first is the claim that deductive reasoning and pure conceptual thought unaided by intuition can enlarge our knowledge; the second is the thesis that arithmetical propositions are analytic, if they can be shown to be derivable from purely logical axioms by means of definitions of arithmetical concepts and rules of a purely logical nature. Special emphasis is given to Frege’s idea that arithmetical propositions are contained in logical axioms as plants are contained in a seed and not as bricks are contained in a house. If this is correct, then what needs explaining is (a) the mechanism of deductive inference—that is, the peculiar mode of containment of the conclusion in the premises of a deductive argument, in such a way as to account for its validity and fruitfulness; and (b) the status of definitions.

If social and behavioral scientists have harbored “physics envy” as some have wryly claimed—envy of its explanatory and predictive success— then computer scientists may be said to have suffered from “mathematics envy.” Interestingly, this envy was less a characteristic of the pioneers of digital computing of the 1940s and 1950s, the people who shed first light on the design of digital electronic computers, the first programming languages, the first operating systems, the first language translators, and so on—though most of them were trained as mathematicians. They were too busy learning the heuristic principles of computational artifacts. Rather, it was in the 1960s when we first find signs of a kind of mathematics envy, at least in some segments of the embryonic computer science community. It was as if, having discovered (or invented) the heuristic principles of practical computational artifacts, some felt the need to understand the underlying “science” of these artifacts—by which they meant its underlying mathematics and logic. Mathematics envy could be assuaged only by thinking mathematically about computational artifacts. Computer science would then be raised to the intellectual stature of, say, physics or indeed of mathematics itself if computer scientists could transform their discipline into a mathematical science. One cannot blame computer scientists who thought this way. The fact is, there is something about mathematics that situates it in a world of its own. “Mathematics is a unique aspect of human thought,” wrote hyperprolific science (fact and fiction) writer Isaac Asimov. And Asimov was by no means the first or only person to think so. But wherein lies the uniqueness of mathematical thinking? Perhaps the answer is that for many people, mathematics offers the following promises:The unearthliness of mathematical objects. The perfectness and exactness of mathematical concepts. An inexorable rigor of mathematical reasoning. The certainty of mathematical knowledge. The self-sufficiency of the mathematical universe. These promises are clearly enviable if they can be kept; usually, they are kept.

When looked at cumulatively, it can be said that American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce strove to understand cognition via his sign theory and especially his notion of existential graphs. Peirce put forth ideas for a discipline that would incorporate notions of psychology and semiotics into a unified ontological and epistemological theory of mind. The connecting link was his system of diagrammatic logic, called “existential graphs.” For Peirce a graph was more powerful than language as a means of understanding because it showed how its parts resembled relations among the parts of cognitive acts. Existential graphs show that cognition cannot be extracted from a linear or hierarchical succession of structures, but the very process of thinking itself in actu. In fact, Peirce called his graphs “moving pictures of thought” because they allow us to see how are thoughts are unfolding. In short, as Kiryuschenko (2012) puts it, “Graphic language allows us to experience a meaning visually as a set of transitional states, where the meaning is accessible in its entirety at any given here and now during its transformation” (p. 122).

The chapter begins with a section on methods and forms of evidence that outlines the difference between top-down and bottom-up analyses of national memory and notes that the latter will be given more emphasis in this book than is the case in many studies of national identity and memory. The section also argues that by understanding how narrative tools can “co-author” individuals’ speaking and thinking, it is possible to avoid misguided notions of “primordialism” that are part of the rhetorical claims of nationalists. The next section examines the sense in which national memory is memory and argues for the need to focus on remembering individuals as members of groups. This involves a review of ideas from figures such as Maurice Halbwachs and Frederic Bartlett on collective and individual memory. This is followed by a section on “Flashbulb Memories as Memory in the Group,” which uses a body of literature in psychology to develop a conceptually grounded notion of national memory that includes the observation that Bartlett’s notion of schema underpins much of the entire discussion. The next section, on “symbolic mediation,” reviews the origins of this idea in the writings of several European and Russian scholars and goes into the case of literacy as an illustration as outlined in empirical studies by Luria and Vygotsky. It then poses an analogous line of reasoning for narratives as symbolic mediation. This includes a discussion of the “inner logic” of narrative tools, “narrative truth,” and two levels of narrative analysis (“specific narratives” and “narrative templates”).

John Holland's ideas have always been marked by a deep instinct for the real—for what works. Thus, in his design of computer algorithms, he avoids mathematical formalisms and goes instead to deeper sources—to mechanisms drawn from biology. In his investigation of human cognitive thinking, he avoids frameworks based on deduction, logic, and choices over closed sets; and goes instead to induction, generative creation, and choices over open-ended possibilities. Running through all Holland's work, in fact, is an instinct for the generative and for the open-ended. Holland's worlds are ones where new entities are constantly created to be tested in the environment, and where these are not drawn from any closed and labeled collection of predetermined possibilities. This makes his science algorithmic rather than analytical, evolutionary rather than equilibriumbased, and novelty-generating rather than static. It makes his science, in a word, realistic. Insofar as the standard sciences are analytical, equilibrium-based, and nongenerative in their possibilities, Holland's thinking offers them a different approach. Here I want to see what a John Holland approach has to offer economics. My involvement with Holland's ideas began in the late summer of 1987. He and I were the first Visiting Fellows of the newly formed Santa Fe Institute, and we shared a house. I had taken up Holland's fascination with evolutionary algorithms, and, by 1988, John and I were attempting to design what was to become the first artificial stock market. It took me some time to realize that John Holland had thought deeply about a great deal more than evolutionary algorithms, and that he had interesting ideas also in psychology. Over the next thirteen years, I found myself applying Holland's thinking about cognition to problems within economics. At first it appeared that Holland's approach—based largely on induction—applied best to specific problems, and I tried to think of the simplest possible problem in economics that would illustrate the need for induction. The result was my El Farol bar problem. Later I began to realize that economics does not need inductive approaches to specific problems as much as it needs to reexamine the foundations of its assumptions about decision making.

The author explains the purport of the article. He intends to emulate the style of Descartes to the extent possible in the contemporary setup. In his 10 meditations the author attempts to grasp vital capacities of Descartes’ method and to that effect to better understand his intellectual achievements and their current relevance. Cartesian moment or creative impact of Descartes upon dynamics of intellectual advancement is a key moment (point in time) that separates old scholastic ways of reasoning from modern ones as Martin Heidegger amply affirmed in his «The Age of the World Picture». Modern way not only relies on ratio but also on individual creative abilities and personal authorship of an investigator. Hence the author explores creative capabilities of a modern researcher typified by Descartes. The author defines Cartesian methodological practice (style, manner) as distinctly personalized and to that effect subjective or self-centered. This novel methodological artifice of Descartes is coupled with typically modern distinction between subjective (personally biased) and subjectival (pertaining to an independent agency of emancipating personality or subject). Investigating self of Descartes intentionally exploits typically modern cognitive and social property of being a free cognitive agent. It may be called cognitive agency or subjectness ( субъектность , subjectnost’ ) as a counterpart to subjectivity ( субъективность , subjectivnost’ ). Respectively Heidegger while discussing unique Cartesian achievement introduces along a casual notion of subjectivity self-coined terms of Subjektsein (subject-object relations, Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung) and Subjektität (resolute self-awareness, unbedingtes Sichwissen). It is characteristic that Heidegger carefully discriminates spontaneous personally biased Ichheit and Egoismus from consistently individually conceived Ichhaft. The article examines two epitomes of subjectness: the initial Cartesian archetype and recent Wittgensteinian prototype. While Descartes instrumentally uses it to reshape scholastic thought into a modern metaphysics (cf. «Meditationes de Prima Philosophia» of 1641 or its authorized French translation of 1647 «Les méditations métaphysiques» ), Wittgenstein respectively elaborates his own brand of philosophy of logic (cf. « Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung » of 1921). With Descartes his actual person is nothing but ‘being on his own’ ( ens per se ). Pragmatically this difference transmutes into operation of the actual whole self of the researcher ( me totum ) with development of polar metaphysical abstractions of non-bodily and non-extensive res cogitans and bodily and non-thinking res extensa . With Wittgenstein the equally pivotal personality of researcher reduces into an intermediator (border, Grenze ) between the world and the transcendental logic. As a result, metaphysical subject (metaphysisches Subjekt) or solipsist me (Ich des Solipsismus) shrinks into a non-extensive dot (Punkt) or eye (Auge) observing the world from outside. While new-born Cartesian cognitive agent has to split within itself into res cogitans and res extensa Descartes’ disciples and followers simply ignore bodily dimension. They radically reduce the investigating self to a detached all-powerful Reason turning subjectival Cartesianism of its founder into a non-subjectival version of Cartesianism, supposedly objective and rational. Wittgenstein helps the investigator (his personal self) come back again but at the expense of limiting himself to a border between the logic and the world able to reconstruct both the logic and the world with incessant language games. In his fifth meditation the author emulates both the style and the way of reasoning typical for Descartes. He remembers his student years in Moscow Lomonosov University. First he has mastered phonological principle of distinctive features and then successfully extended its use beyond linguistics into social studies and political science. Being taught dual - fast and slow reading he learnt to skip and then to restore details. The third personal cognitive discretion utilized in investigation of any scholarly issue is the focus on its emergence, further metamorphoses and evolution. The first two have clear Cartesian formation, while the third helps them both to gain dynamism and discretions. Next meditation deals with Descartes’ idea of the (definite article) method and specific rules for applying inherent inventiveness ( rēgulae ad directionem ingenii ). This Cartesian link implies essential affinity between universal instrumentality (organon) of scientific exploration and fundamental (primeval and primitive) cognitive abilities of humans and other species. Such a polarized dual distinction has helped the Center of advanced methodologies to identify three complex transdisciplinary organons (metretics, morphetics and semiotics) rooted in the elementary cognitive abilities to tell intensity of sensations, to recognize patterns and to grasp functional relevance, potentially meaning. Simplex-complex transformations devised by the Center are instrumental in linking the utmostly complex phenomena to equally simple ones through the range of intermediate manifestations and forms. The results of the analytical transformations can be revealed in the sequences of modules related to a master prototype model. The concluding two meditations deal with cognition and its modes as well as the issue of overcoming of Cartesian dualism. The author insists that cognitive scholars’ ambitions to overcome Cartesian dualism are vain. It is Descartes’ method and style - as far as we can grasp them - that can help to overcome fatal schemes ascribed into notorious mind - body problem. The core of Descartes’ thinking is the continuous preoccupation with embodiment of the rational and emotional aspects of his whole self (total me) and disembodiment of its material aspects.

If we look at the literature about judicial decision-making and interpretation of law, we can find many texts which are dedicated to legal arguments, logic and legal reasoning – in those texts the rationality, analytical and logical thinking is glorified and an interpretation seems ‘just’ as a logical operation where judges subsume certain facts under general legal norm or norms, those norms are formulated linguistically, so it seems that the whole job of judges is to analyze texts. What we can see more rarely are discussions and texts exploring the role of intuitions, feelings and emotions an

The contemporary conjuncture of widespread ecological and social crises summons critical thinking about significant cultural changes in digital media design. The selection and classification practices that marked the history of slavery and colonization now rely on all types of nanotechnologies. On behalf of the future, bodies became expanded territory to sovereign intervention, where the role of contemporary powers enable extraction and mining of material, plumbed from the most intimate sphere of the self. This logic requires the state of exception to become the norm, so that the crisis is the