Mind and World

 

More than 24 theories 1950-2000

A short overview

 

general bibliography:     Literatur Modell (ab 1960)

 

See also                    Ganzheit

 

 

Content

What’s happening in our mind?

How real is reality?

 

 

What’s happening in our mind?

 

Following scientific literature mental models and mental images seem to be far different things. Researchers and theoreticists speak either of the one or of the other and do not take note of authors who treat the other one.

 

There are at least ten very different approaches to understand or describe the processes and things in mind:

a)     mental imagery (in German: „Bilder im Geiste“)

b)     mental models

c)      eliminative materialism

d)     functionalism

e)     cognitive naturalism

f)        radical constructivism

g)     mental representation

h)      biosemantics

i)        cognitive grammar

j)        connectionism

 

 

a) „Mental imagery“ has been explored since Francis Galton (1880) and Wilfrid Lay (1898).

The modern „imagery debate“ starts usualy around 1970 with research of Allan Paivio (1971), Roger N. Shepard and colleagues (1971) and Stephen Michael Kosslyn and collegues (1977). With respect to images researchers and theoreticists can be divided in pictorialists ( e. g. Kosslyn) and descriptionalists or propositionalists (e. g. Zenon Walter Pylyshyn, 1973; Jerry Alan Fodor, 1975 and 1981; John Robert Anderson 1978; Peter Slezak 1990). A good overview on the debate from 1973 to 2002 provides Verena Gottschling (2003).

 

see also: Literatur: Imagination/ Einbildungskraft

                 Literatur: The „pictorial turn“/ „iconic turn“ - Bildwissenschaft

 

b) The approach with models in mind sometimes is said to start with Frederick Bartlett (1932) sometimes with Kenneth Craik (1943) and was further developed by Colin McGinn (1989), Philip Johnson-Laird (1983) and Dedre Gentner (1983).

 

c) Based on suggestions of philosopher C. D. Broad (1925) and psychologist E. G. Boring (1933) eliminative materialism was developed in the 1960s by Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty and later put to the extreme by Patricia and Paul Churchland (1986; 1989).

 

d) Modern functionalism was mainly developed by Hilary Putnam since 1960; it is sometimes called „machine state functionalism“. A second strain is „psycho-functionalism“, attributed to Jerry Alan Fodor. A third strain may be called „analytic“ functionalism and can be attributed to David M. Armstrong and David K. Lewis.

 

e) Somtimes the ideas of Noam Chomsky and Paul Thagard (2000) are called „cognitive naturalism“. The term is also used by Sandro Nannini (2000).

 

f) Constructivism or „operative epistemology“ sometimes starts with Jean Piaget (1937) and John Dewey (1938), was developed by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela (1980, 1984)  and further developed in a „radical“ direction by Ernst von Glasersfeld (1981, 1985, 1995), Heinz von Foerster (1981, 1985), Gerhard Roth (1992) and J. R. Staver (1995, 1998).

End of the 1990s Cordula Meier and Thomas Rurik tried to develop a design theory on the basis of the radical constructivism but the attempt failed due to the early death of Rurik (see Cordula Meier 2001).

 

see also:     Literatur Konstruktivismus

                     Definitions: Constructivism, Constructivism (learning theory), Constructionism, Social Constructionism

 

g) In the 1980s the concept „mental representation“ arouse, as the publications of the following researchers show: Joan W. Bresnan (1982), Jacques Mehler et al. (1982), Alan Paivio (1986), Ruth M. Kempson (1988), Hilary Putnam (1988) and Patrick Suppes (1988), Robert A. Cummins (1989, 1996), Stuart Silvers (1989) as well as John Dinsmore (1991) and Eduard Marbach (1993).

 

see also: Literatur: Repräsentation

 

h) Biosemantics was introduced by Ruth Garrett Millikan (1984, 1989).

 

i) Cognitive grammar was developed by Gilles Fauconnier (1984), Ronald Langacker (1987-91, 2000) and Leonard Talmy (1983, 2000).

 

j) Connectionism was developed by David Rumelhart and McClelland (1986), Smolensky (1988), Seidenberg (1993) and Dawson (1998, 2003).

 

see also Defintions: Connectionism I, Connectionism II, Connectivism

 

 

How real is reality?

 

With respect to the world „outside“ of mind we have the naturalism-supernaturalism and the empirism-realism debate as two of the oldest disputes in epistemology or philosophy of science (see Hans Jörg Sandkühler 1992).

 

As Frederick Suppe states, the „Received View on Theories“ was the epistemic heart of logical positivism. It was abandoned in the 1960s.

 

In the 1950s „scientific realism“ was developed to vanquish the logical empirism of the first half of the century. It spread wide though the scientific community. Important publications are from J. J. C. Smart (1963), R. Boyd (1973) and Hilary Putnam (1975, 1981). 1994 Jerrold L. Aronson, Rom Harré and Eileen Cornell Way published the little book "Realism rescued".

 

Since 1960 Hermann Schmitz resuscitated the findings of Edmund Husserl in his „new phenomenology“.

Around 1964 Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen founded the „Erlanger School“ of epistemology, a kind of methodical constructivism based on ideas of Hugo Dingler.

Also in the 1960s Jürgen Habermas started enhancing the marxist „critical theory“ of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, while William W. Bartley III and Hans Albert popularized as antipode the „critical rationalism“ of Karl Raimund Popper (1935).

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann described the „social construction of reality“.

As early as 1960 Patrick Suppes initiated the „semantic view of theories“. Bas C. van Fraassen, Joseph D. Sneed and Frederick Suppe (1974 and 1989) followed; modifications are by John Beatty and Richard N. Giere.

 

Around 1970 Joseph D. Sneed and Wolfgang Stegmüller introduced the structuralist view of theories or the „non-statement view“.

1970 Grover Maxwell went back to Bertrand Russel and proposed a „structural realism“. Later John Worrall (1989) proposed another „structural realism“ going back to Henri Poincaré. J. Layman and S. Psillos disputed it.

The German „evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie“ can be traced back to Nicolai Hartmann, Egon Brunswick and Konrad Lorenz (1941). In the 1970s physicist and philosopher Gerhard Vollmer and zoologist Rupert Riedel precised the „biology of knowledge – the evolutionary basis of reason“ (Riedl, engl. 1984).

 

see also: Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie

 

In the early 1970s Herbert Stachowiak opened with his „general model theory“ (German 1973) a neopragmatic approach to knowledge; in the late 1970s Richard Rorty developed partly in discussions with Donald Davidson his kind of neo-pragmatism or „ironism“.

Also in the 1970s Kurt Hübner and Ulrich Oevermann started to develop hermeneutics; the first soon discovered the „truth of myth“ (German 1985), the later proposed a „objective hermeneutics“ for the social and cultural sciences.

End of the 1970s David Lewis and Fred Dretske, later Stewart Cohen and Keith DeRosen formulated „contextualism“ as a reply to scepticism.

 

In 1980 Bas C. van Fraassen introduced the „constructive empiricism“ with little success.

 

In the 1990s the „Dynamical Systems Theory“ of Norbert Wiener (1948) and W. Ross Ashby (1952) was reanimated (see Robert F. Port and Timothy van Gelder, 1995).