This article questions social constructionists' claims to introduce Wittgenstein's philosophy to psychology. The philosophical fiction of a neonate Crusoe is introduced to cast doubt on the interpretations and use of the private language argument to support a new psychology developed by the constructionists. It is argued that a neonate Crusoe's viability in philosophy and apparent absence in psychology offends against the integrity of the philosophical contribution Wittgenstein might make to psychology. The consequences of accepting Crusoe's viability are explored as they (...) appear in both philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate the soundness of the prototype paradigm, in particular its basic assumption that there are pan-human psychological essences or core meanings that refer to basic-level natural kinds, explaining why, on the whole, human communication and learning are successful. Instead I argue that there are no particular pan-human basic elements for thought, meaning and cognition, neither prototypes, nor otherwise. To illuminate my view I draw on examples from anthropology. More generally I argue that the prototype paradigm exemplifies (...) two assumptions that dominate cognitive science: (1) If human beings use words they mean something particular and what they mean can be discovered by scientific methods. (2) There is a fixed number of domains of categorization, each made up of a fixed number of basic categories. I suggest that these two assumptions lead to Brave New World. (shrink)

A woman is listening to Sinatra before work. As she later describes it, ‘suddenly from nowhere I could hear my mother singing along to it … I was there again home again, hearing my mother … God knows why I should choose to remember that … then, to actually hear her and I had this image in my head … of being at home … with her singing away … like being transported back you know I got one of those (...) … like shivery feelings really suddenly’ (Anderson 2004, 9-10). An older couple, discussing their honeymoon forty years ago, each say that they can’t remember the show they saw, until through iterative, puzzled cross-cuing they finally get there – ‘Desert Song, that’s it’ (Harris et al 2011, 292). An elderly English veteran of a prisoner of war camp in Japan, finishing up morning tea with a young Japanese social scientist interested in reconciliation, suddenly calls out loudly - in Japanese - ‘stand to attention’. He stands to attention in front of her: like many of the men she interviews, he physically re-enacts fragments of that long-past world of the camp, bringing that absent past into this new present context with a visceral shock (Murakami 2001, 2012; Middleton & Brown 2005, 133-136). (shrink)

Taking Rom Harré's social constructionism as a focus we point to and discuss the issue of the a priori psychological subject in social constructionist theory. While Harré indicates that interacting, intending beings are necessary for conversation to occur, he assumes that the primary human reality is conversation and that psychological life emerges from this social domain. Nevertheless, we argue that a fundamental and agentive psychological subject is implicit to his constructionist works. Our critical analyses focus upon Harré's understandings of persons, (...) human development and human agency. Our intention is neither to suggest that this latent entity must be understood in a Cartesian sense nor is it to ask for an explicit accounting of an autonomous agent. Rather, our claim is simply that psychological subjectivity is reflexively entailed in Harré's human psychology. We suggest that this pertains more generally to social constructionist theory. (shrink)

Abstract Is it plausible to claim (some) non?human animals have beliefs, on the (non?behaviourist) assumption that believing is or involves subjects? engaging in practical reasoning which takes account of meanings? Some answer Yes, on the ground that evolutionary continuities linking humans with other animals must include psychological ones. But (1) evolution does not operate?even primarily?by means of continuities. Thus species, no matter how closely related (in fact, sometimes even conspecifics) operate with very different adaptive ?tricks'; and it is plausible to (...) think these, rather than the physiological ?groundings? underlying them, are the best means of (analogies for) explaining beliefs. Also (2) it is reasonable to assimilate most cases ?down? to creatures (e.g. flies) that obviously lack beliefs rather than ?up? to others (chimpanzees) that apparently possess belief?like states (proto?beliefs), because observation shows the internal workings of such middle animals? ?beliefs? differ markedly from the corresponding things humans do. For example, ducks do not have beliefs about the numbers of objects, because although they estimate numerically, they do it in a way that is much more firmly connected to perceiving than would be the case either with counting or a counting?like process. (shrink)