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Functionalism and Psychologism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

J. D. Mackenzie
J. D. Mackenzie
Affiliation:
Monash University
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Extract

Some philosophers suspect that the functionalist account of mind supports a psychologistic account of logic. One who has argued for a connection of this kind is Remmel T. Nunn. If the connection holds, it might be a powerful support for the currently unfashionable position of psychologism; conversely, it might be a damaging objection to functionalism. In either case, to estabjish the connection would be an achievement of considerable philosophic interest.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 239 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

1 Nunn, Remmel T., “Psychologism. Functionalism, and the Modal Status of Logical Laws”, Inquiry 22 (1976), 343–357. Further references in my text are to this paperCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Fodor, Jerry A., The Language of Thought (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1975), 74Google Scholar.

3 Sir Frederic Bartlett defines “thinking” as: “The extension of evidence in accord with that evidence so as to fill up gaps in the evidence: and this is done by moving through a succession of interconnected steps which may be stated at the time, or left till later to be stated” (Thinking: An Experimental and Social Study [London: Allen and Unwin, 1958], 75).Google Scholar Bartlett has long discussions of guessing (60-63), whose frequency he found “remarkable” (60), and of the artist's (e.g., novelist's) thinking (187ff.), which “… has a plan of its own and modes of its own” (188).

4 Meiland, Jack W., “Psychologism in Logic: Husserl's Critique”, Inquiry 19 (1976), 325–339, 339 nCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Wason, P. C., “Reasoning about a Rule”, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 20 (1968). 273–281CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6 Wason, P. C. and Shapiro, D., “Natural and Contrived Experience in a Reasoning Problem”, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 23 (1971). 63–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See the extraordinary results of Johnson-Laird, P. N., Legrenzi, P., and Legrenzi, M. Sonino, “Reasoning and a Sense of Reality”, British Journal of Psychology 63 (1972), 395–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also Mantkelow, K. I. and Evans, J. St. B. T., “Facilitation of Reasoning by Realism: Effect or Non-Effect?”, British Journal of Psychology 70 (1979), 477–488Google Scholar.

8 Sommers, Fred, “Types and Ontology”, Philosophical Review 72 (1963), 327–363,CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Strawson, P. F., ed., Philosophical Logic (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 138–168; see 158Google Scholar.

9 Quine, W. V., Word and Object (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1960), § 13, 57ff.,Google Scholar and $$ 15, 68ff. See also Parsons, C., “On Translating Logic”, Synlhese 27 (1974), 405–411Google Scholar.

10 Labov, William, “The Logic of Nonstandard English”, Georgetown Monographs on Language and Linguistics 22 (1969), 1–31,Google Scholar reprinted in Keddie, Nell, ed., Tinker, Tailor … The Myth of Cultural Deprivation (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 21–66Google Scholar.

11 By Boolean logic, I mean its development by Venn, J., Symbolic Logic (London: Macmillan, 1881)CrossRefGoogle ScholarKeynes, J. N., Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic (London: Macmillan, 1884), II viiGoogle Scholar and Schröder, E., Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890-1905),Google Scholar rather than Boole's own version, which attempted to preserve the traditionally sanctioned relations. (See W., and Kneale, M., The Development of Logic [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962], 411–414.)Google Scholar An example of the debate between Booleans and traditionalists may be found in the discussion between Russell, Bertrand and MacColl, Hugh, “The Existential Import of Propositions”, Mind n.s. 14 (1905), 398–402,Google Scholar in which MacColl objects to views whose consequence is that “Every round square is a triangle” is true.