Kai kurios šiuolaikinio kognityvinio mokslo teorijos teigia, kad žmogaus prote veikia dvi sistemos: sistema, vykdanti greitą intuityvų mąstymą, bei sistema, vadovaujanti lėtam logiškam mąstymui. Būtų galima manyti, kad šių sistemų egzistavimą patikrinti sudėtinga. Šiame straipsnyje pateikiamas būdas palaipsniui patvirtinti šių dviejų sistemų egzistavimą. Pasitelkiamas dviejų sistemų, pasireiškiančių per mentalinių modelių teoriją, principas. Be to, laikantis Carnapo redukcijos idėjos, straipsnyje aprašomos dvi procedūros, kuriomis hipotezė patvirtinama palaipsniui. Viena iš jų tyrinėja, kaip žmogaus protas nagrinėja žmogaus proto veiklą darant išvedimus pagal modus (...) tollendo tollens. Kita hipotezė tyrinėja išvedimus iš griežtosios disjunkcijos su trimis disjunktais. (shrink)

Carnap described ways to test scientific hypotheses. However, Carnap acknowledged that confirmation can never be definite. This left open the issue about the criteria to accept hypotheses. On the other hand, Wang has developed a computer program working without sufficient knowledge or resources, which makes the action of the program akin to the manner the human mind thinks. Wang’s program includes quantitative indicators that can be assigned to the frequency and the confidence of sentences. The present paper tries to link (...) both approaches. The goal is to show how quantitative indicators such as those in Wang’s program can also be attributed to scientific hypotheses. Those indicators can help make decisions about the acceptance of the hypotheses. All of this allows proposing general characteristics for a possible algorithm to decide whether a particular hypothesis is admissible. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap proposed three reduction rules to improve scientific language. Those rules indicate when it is correct to add a property in situations in which other properties are already had. Assuming the theory of mental models, it has been shown that the rules are not hard to use from the cognitive point of view. The key to argue that is to accept that the human mind works as dual-process theories claim. According to these theories, people can use two different systems. (...) One of them implies effort but the other one does not. Thus, the idea is that Carnap’s reduction rules can be applied resorting just to the system not implying cognitive effort. This paper goes one step further and poses that even from a Popperian perspective the reduction rules keep not being difficult. One might think that falsifiability requires cognitive effort because it needs to address situations in which the sentences are false. However, this paper tries to explain that, following the theory of mental models, that is not hard if the sentences are conditionals, and the sentences in the reduction rules have conditional structures. (shrink)

This paper describes a study about inter-understanding between Portuguese and Spanish. Based on Peano’s work, the study resorts to the logical relation of intersection between sets and applies it to words in Portuguese and Spanish meaning the same. The material is a text that is the abstract of a psychology paper. Each of the words in that text, which is written in Portuguese, is compared to its corresponding Spanish word by means of the relation of intersection. This is made by (...) considering the letters in the words to be elements in sets. The results show the potential that this methodology can have to provide percentages of inter-understanding between the two languages (and between any pair of languages). (shrink)

It is now generally accepted that the motor system is not purely dedicated to the control of behavior, but also has cognitive functions. Mirror neurons have provided a new perspective on how sensory information regarding others’ actions and gestures is coupled with the internal cortical motor representation of them. This coupling allows an individual to enrich his interpretation of the social world through the activation of his own motor representations. Such mechanisms have been highly preserved in evolution as they are (...) present in humans, apes and monkeys. Recent neuroanatomical data showed that there are two different connectivity patterns in mirror neuron networks in the macaque: one is concerned with sensorimotor transformation in relation to reaching and hand grasping within the traditional parietal-premotor circuits; the second one is linked to the mouth/face motor control and the new data show that it is connected with limbic structures. The mouth mirror sector seems to be wired not only for ingestive behaviors but also for orofacial communicative gestures and vocalizations. Notably, the hand and mouth mirror networks partially overlap, suggesting the importance of hand-mouth synergies not only for sensorimotor transformation, but also for communicative purposes in order to better convey and control social signals. (shrink)

In _The Enigma of Art. On the provenance of Artistic Creation_ Gino Zaccaria offers a meditation on art in light of its ancient Greek sense and of its task inaugurated by “artist-thinkers” like Cézanne, Boccioni and van Gogh.

The author Gino Capozzi, founder of the institutionalist napolitan phenomenological school, includes an original and promising exposition based on the contributions of praxeology and praxeologism, in relation to being and what should be the reality of human rights, their genesis, the development of..

A comprehensive interpretation of the "Scienza Nuova" and of the ways in which Vico managed to present his essentially naturalistic philosophy in a form acceptable within the ecclesiastical climate of 18th century Italy.

Unethical and dishonest behavior has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars from various disciplines. Recent work has begun to focus on a previous overlooked factor predicting dishonest behavior: the beneficiary or victim of dishonest acts. In two laboratory experiments, we manipulate the level of resources allocated to our participants (their "wealth") and investigate whether perceived inequity from wealth that is randomly or subjectively assigned leads individuals to cross ethical boundaries through helping or hurting others. The results show that dishonest behavior (...) is influenced by positive and negative inequity that motivates helping and hurting acts. Furthermore, a third experiment shows that people tend to discount the wrongness of crossing ethical boundaries to hurt or help others when the action restores equity. (shrink)

Describing the will and the extent of its causal power over human actions, Joseph Priestley famously compared the mind to a stone, as both are subject to deterministic laws: “Though an inclination...

Dieser Aufsatz zeigt die Möglichkeiten auf, aus den von Leibniz im April 1679 geschriebenen logischen Abhandlungen ein numerisches Modell für die durch Widerspruchsfreiheit bestimmten Modalbegriffe zu lesen. Dazu wird als erstes die Definition der Modalisatoren durch die Widerspruchsfreiheit betrachtet und die Probleme‚ die das Leibniz'sche ‘continere’ oder ‘implicare contradictionem’ auslöst. Danach werden die in den Schriften von 1679 entwickelten numerischen Modelle untersucht‚ besonders dasjenige‚ das sich auf den Mechanismus des charakteristischen Zahlenpaares stützt. Dieses Modell wird für den Aufbau formaler Definitionen (...) von Möglichkeit‚ Unmöglichkeit‚ Kompatibilität und Inkompatibilität benutzt. Schließlich werden kurz einige spezifische Probleme angeführt‚ die die vorgeschlagene Interpretation offenläßt: die Darstellung der einfachen Begriffe innerhalb des numerischen Kalküls und die Beziehung zwischen den Wortpaaren Kompatibilität-Inkompatibilität und Kompossibilität-Inkompossibilität. Was diese letzteren betrifft‚ wird die Bedeutung betont‚ die eine diachronische Betrachtung der Leibnizschen Lehre für ein besseres Verständnis der theoretischen Zusammenhänge hat‚ in denen diese Bezeichnungen auftreten. (shrink)

Archibald Pitcairne’s medical writings are inspired by Newton’s Principia mathematica, as the Scottish physician assumed Newtonian physics as a model for scientific inquiry that should be applied to other branches of natural philosophy, including physiology and pathology. The ideal of a comprehensive mathematical science was very appealing to late seventeenth-century intellectuals, including physicians. This essay focuses on how Pitcairne tried to implement these ideas. In particular, I argue that Pitcairne’s medical thinking is based on three philosophical assumptions: first, a methodological (...) assumption, for which medical knowledge should be sought in the form of a deductive system; second, an epistemological assumption, that is, that our knowledge of physiological processes is sound only when we reduce them to a set of mathematical laws; and, third, an ontological assumption that identifies blood as the substance on which animal life most directly depends. I also suggest that such ideas should be studied against the backdrop of Pitcairne’s general mindset, including his personal sympathy for political conservativism. I further argue that his insistence on the reduction of natural processes to mathematical relations and his search for the universal order of nature also connect to his religious and political ideals. (shrink)

DePrince relates problems such as dissociation, revictimization and difficulties in social cognition. In particular, she states that individuals with dissociation or have been, by their own testimony, revictimized show obvious difficulties to solve selection tasks designed as social contracts or precautory problems. In my view, these facts mean that, if we accept the theories that there are mechanisms in human mind to regulate social exchanges and situations of risk, individuals with dissociation or revitimized may have altered such mechanisms. However, these (...) theories have been critized and we have no evidence that they are valid. Therefore, in this paper, not admitting the existence of these mechanisms, I try to show that DePrince’s outcomes can be interpreted from other perspectives. DePrince establece relaciones entre problemas como la disociación, la revictimización y ciertas dificultades en la cognición social. En concreto, afirma que las personas que padecen de disociación o que han sufrido, según su propio testimonio, episodios de revictimización manifiestan evidentes dificultades para resolver tareas de selección planteadas como contratos sociales o como problemas de precaución. En nuestra opinión, esto significa que, si aceptamos las teorías que defienden que existen mecanismos en la mente humana que regulan los intercambios sociales y las situaciones de riesgo, las personas que han sido diagnosticadas con disociación o que han sido revictimizadas pueden presentar alteraciones de tales mecanismos. No obstante, esas teorías han sido cuestionadas y no contamos con pruebas concluyentes de que sean válidas. Por ello, en este trabajo, no admitiendo la existencia de los mencionados mecanismos, intentamos mostrar que los resultados de DePrince pueden ser interpretados desde otras perspectivas. (shrink)

En contra de la interpretación de Anselm Jappe del fetichismo de la mercancía como contradicción principal del capitalismo, sostengo que su obra adolece de un sobredimensionamiento del fetichismo que resulta determinista y reduccionista, y que comprende la contradicción en la obra de Marx de un modo simplista. Ofrezco, en cambio, una interpretación del fetichismo que parte de la noción de que la mercancía es una cristalización de las relaciones sociales de las sociedades capitalistas junto con una defensa de la contradicción (...) como motor dinámico del capitalismo antes que como aspecto paradójico del mismo. (shrink)

La teoría de la lógica mental no acepta una regla correcta en el cálculo proposicional estándar: la regla de introducción de la disyunción (esto es, la regla que permite inferir, por ejemplo, p o q de p). Esto es un problema porque esa misma teoría admite otro esquema en el que la regla está realmente implicada. Es cierto que, como ha mostrado López-Astorga, la teoría de la lógica mental puede ser actualizada de acuerdo con resultados empíricos recientes y que (...) tal actualización puede ayudar a la teoría a resolver algunas de sus dificultades. No obstante, la actualización de López-Astorga no afronta los desafíos directamente planteados por la regla de introducción de la disyunción y este trabajo pretende proceder en esa dirección. En concreto, mi tesis aquí es que todas las dificultades de la mencionada regla pueden desaparecer si no es considerada un Esquema Núcleo de la sintaxis del pensamiento humano, sino un Esquema Alimentador de la misma. (shrink)