The ArgumentThe history of psychology, like other human science subjects, should attend to the meaning of words understood as relationships of reference and value within discourse. It should seek to identify and defend a history centered on representations of knowledge. The history of the word “inhibition” in nineteenth-century Europe illustrates the potential of such an approach. This word was significant in mediating between physiological and psychological knowledge and between technical and everyday understanding. Further, this word indicated the presence of a (...) common discourse structuring ways of thought about order, whether in technology, moral activity, or experimental psycho-physiology. Writing history as the history of discourse suggests several difficulties; these are considered briefly. Nevertheless attention to language and meaning makes it possible to integrate the history of psychology with intellectual history and thereby to broaden its potential audience. (shrink)

In 1883, while a student of C. S. Peirce at Johns Hopkins University, Christine Ladd-Franklin published a paper titled On the Algebra of Logic, in which she develops an elegant and powerful test for the validity of syllogisms that constitutes the most significant advance in syllogistic logic in two thousand years. Sadly, her work has been all but forgotten by logicians and historians of logic. Ladd-Franklin's achievement has been overlooked, partly because it has been overshadowed by the work of other (...) logicians of the nineteenth century renaissance in logic, but probably also because she was a woman. Though neglected, the significance of her contribution to the field of symbolic logic has not been diminished by subsequent achievements of others.In this paper, I bring to light the important work of Ladd-Franklin so that she is justly credited with having solved a problem over two millennia old. First, I give a brief survey of the history of syllogistic logic. In the second section, I discuss the logical systems called “algebras of logic”. I then outline Ladd-Franklin's algebra of logic, discussing how it differs from others, and explain her test for the validity of the syllogism, both in her symbolic language and the more familiar language of modern logic. Finally I present a rigorous proof of her theorem. Ladd-Franklin developed her algebra of logic before the methods necessary for a rigorous proof were available to her. Thus, I do now what she could not have done then. (shrink)

We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In showing how to recover an approximation to Russell's conclusion (...) while explaining scientists' continuing appeal to causal ideas (without violating naturalism by philosophically correcting scientists) we illustrate a general naturalist strategy for handling problems around the unification of sciences that assume different levels of naïveté with respect to folk conceptual frameworks. We do this despite rejecting one of the premises of Russell's argument, a version of reductionism that was scientifically plausible in 1913 but is not so now. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the formulation of the concept of ‘reality’ between the XV and the XVI centuries by investigating the classification of being of reason and its distinction from real being in...

ArgumentThe new English term “empathy” was translated from the GermanEinfühlungin the first decade of the twentieth century by the psychologists James Ward at the University of Cambridge and Edward B. Titchener at Cornell. At Titchener's American laboratory, “empathy” was not a matter of understanding other minds, but rather a projection of imagined bodily movements and accompanying feelings into an object, a meaning that drew from its rich nineteenth-century aesthetic heritage. This rendering of “empathy” borrowed kinaesthetic meanings from German sources, but (...) extended beyond a contemplation of the beautiful to include a variety of experimental stimuli and everyday objects in the laboratory. According to Titchener's structural psychology, all higher thought could be reduced to more elemental aspects of mind, and experimental introspection showed empathy to be constituted of kinaesthetic images. The existence of kinaesthetic images, Titchener argued, formed an incisive critique of the view that thought could take place without images, held by one of Titchener's major psychological rivals, the school of thought-psychologists in Würzburg, Germany. The new term “empathy” in early American academic psychology therefore delineated a kinaesthetic imaginative projection that took place on the basis of ontological difference between minds and things. (shrink)

Rene Descartes and William James had "body first" theories of the passions or emotions, according to which sensory stimulation causes a bodily response that then causes an emotion. Both held that this bodily response also causes an initial behavioral response (such as flight from a bear) without any cognitive intervention such as an "appraisal" of the object or situation. From here they differ. Descartes proposed that the initial processes that produce fear and running are entirely mechanical. Even human beings initially (...) run from the bear as a result of physiological processes alone, without mental contribution. These physiological processes also cause a mental passion, which is a cognitive representation of the situation (as regards novelty, benefit, or harm), and which motivates the will to continue the behavior already in progress. According to James, emotions are caused by instinctive bodily responses that are triggered by noncognitive but nonetheless conscious perceptual states. Emotions are bare feelings of internal physiological stirrings that accompany an instinctual response that has evolved through Darwinian natural selection. Jamesian emotions initially have no motivational or cognitive content, which they subsequently acquire through learning. The methodological legitimacy of comparing these positions across the centuries is defended, and the two theories are compared to recent theories. (shrink)

The concept of instinct espoused in psychology in the early 20th century and the contemporary concept of psychological adaptation invite comparison. Definitions of both employ the notions of inheritance, selection, functional specificity, and species typicality. This article examines how psychologists before the rise of behaviourism sought to establish instinct as a psychological phenomenon. One of the consequences of doing so was a decoupling of psychological and physiological forms of instinct. This led to a failure of constraint in the usage of (...) the term instinct and the abandonment of the project to establish it as foundational. I argue that the notion of psychological adaptations at the heart of contemporary evolutionary psychology as espoused by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides invites similar difficulties and may come to share a similar fate. (shrink)

The problem addressed is that of finding a sound characterization of ambiguity. Two kinds of characterizations are distinguished: tests and definitions. Various definitions of ambiguity are critically examined and contrasted with definitions of generality and indeterminacy, concepts with which ambiguity is sometimes confused. One definition of ambiguity is defended as being more theoretically adequate than others which have been suggested by both philosophers and linguists. It is also shown how this definition of ambiguity obviates a problem thought to be posed (...) by ambiguity for truth theoretical semantics. In addition, the best known test for ambiguity, namely the test by contradiction, is set out, its limitations discussed, and its connection with ambiguity's definition explained. The test is contrasted with a test for vagueness first proposed by Peirce and a test for generality propounded by Margalit. (shrink)

The new disciplines of experimental psychology and physical chemistry which emerged in late-nineteenth-century Germany were transmitted rapidly to North America, where they flourished. At the time, American higher education was growing fast and undergoing important organizational changes. It was then especially receptive to such European ideas as these new growth points in German science. However, although there were important similarities in the transmission of the two sciences, experimental psychology was changed far more than physical chemistry by the transfer. Physical chemistry (...) was able to fit into a flourishing pattern of German-inspired chemistry in higher education. Psychology was more dependent on its intellectual and social context, and the American context was quite different from that of Germany. (shrink)

There are some necessary conditions on causal relations that seem to be so trivial that they do not merit further inquiry. Many philosophers assume that the requirement that there could be no temporal gaps between causes and their effects is such a condition. Bertrand Russell disagrees. In this paper, an in-depth discussion of Russell’s argument against this necessary condition is the centerpiece of an analysis of what is at stake when one accepts or denies that there can be temporal gaps (...) between causes and effects. It is argued that whether one accepts or denies this condition, one is implicated in taking on substantial and wide-ranging philosophical positions. Therefore, it is not a trivial necessary condition of causal relations and it merits further inquiry. (shrink)

Envy and resentment are generally thought to be unpleasant and unethical emotions which ought to be condemned. I argue that both envy and resentment, in some important forms, are moral emotions connected with concern for justice, understood in terms of desert and entitlement. They enable us to recognise injustice, work as a spur to acting against it and connect us to others. Thus, we should accept these emotions as part of the ethical life.

Our point of departure is Russell’s (1913) argument for the ‘complete extrusion’ of the word ‘cause’ from the philosophical vocabulary. We argue that at least three different types of philosophical project concerning ‘cause’ should be carefully distinguished, and that failures to distinguish them lie at the root of some apparently recalcitrant problems. We call them the ‘cognitive’, the ‘scientific’ and the ‘metaphysical’.

In this reply to Professor Hookway’s lecture the comments are focused, first, on the topic of what dichotomies really are, since it is an illuminating way of understanding pragmatism in general and Putnam’s pragmatism in particular. Dichotomies are artifacts that we devise with some useful purpose in mind, but when inflated into absolute dichotomies they become metaphysical bogeys as it is illustrated by the twentieth century distinction between fact and value. Secondly, a brief comment on the so-called “thick” ethical concepts (...) and artifact terms is presented, and finally it is added a word on John L. Austin, whose approach to dichotomies is aligned with pragmatism and Putnam. (shrink)