The International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) is the oldest international association of psychologists, founded in 1920. Since that year the IAAP has sponsored a long series of influential International Congresses . The proceedings of these Congresses provide an invaluable resource of information about the history of psychology in general and applied psychology in particular. Until now these Proceedings have been exceptionally difficult to locate; this collection reproduces the rarest and most inaccessible volumes (the first 13 Congresses, (...) 1920-1958), which document international activity in applied psychology between the wars and during the post-War reestablishment of international scientific collaboration. Individual prefaces highlight the content and importance of key Congresses. The collection has a new 76 page Index in English, which will appear only in Volume1. This is an invaluable guide to the Proceedings, which are in a variety of languages, including German, Italian, Spanish, French, English and Russian. The set is also available as individual volumes at £85.00 per volume (except Volume 1 which is £55.00). (shrink)

I should like to convey to you some doubts which have occurred to me on the subject of the notion of consciousness that prevails in all our treatises on psychology.

Originally published in 1983, the purpose of this book was to discuss the relations between philosophy and developmental psychology, as those relations existed over the course of the history of the discipline and as they existed at that time. Although not all portions of developmental psychology are surveyed, major proponents of several key areas are represented. In addition, discussion of many currently prominent issues are included. The diversity of approaches and of interests present in the book are representative (...) of the breadth of theoretical and empirical interests found in developmental psychology at the time. (shrink)

During the last third of the 19th century, the ‘new’ French psychology developed within ‘the hypnotic context’ opened up by Charcot. In spite of their claims to the scientific nature of their hypnotic experiments, Charcot and his followers were unable to avoid the miracles that had accompanied mesmerism, the forerunner of hypnosis. The hysterics hypnotized in the Salpêtrière Hospital were expected to have supernormal faculties and these experiments opened the door to psychical research. In 1885 the first French (...) class='Hi'>psychology society was founded. The research carried out by this society may seem surprising: its members – Charles Richet in particular – were interested in strange phenomena, like magnetic lucidity, ‘mental suggestion’, thought-reading, etc. Very quickly, psychologists applied themselves to finding rational explanations for these supposedly miraculous gifts. Generally, they ascribed them to unconscious or subconscious perceptual mechanisms. Finally, after a few years, studies of psychical phenomena were excluded from the field of psychology. However, during the 4th International Congress of Psychology, which took place in Paris in 1900, the foundation of an institute devoted to the study of psychical phenomena was announced, but Pierre Janet and Georges Dumas founded within it the Société Française de Psychologie, from which psychical research was excluded. As for Charles Richet, disappointed by the psychologists, he devoted himself to the development of a new ‘science’ which he called ‘Métapsychique’. Several hypotheses have been put forward to account for this early research undertaken by the French psychologists, pertaining as much to parapsychology as to scientific psychology. (shrink)

Psychological Sequentialism holds that no causal constraint is necessary for the preservation of what matters in survival; rather, it is sufficient for preservation if two groups of mental states are similar enough and temporally close enough. Suppose one’s body is instantaneously dematerialized and subsequently, by an amazing coincidence, a group of molecules are configured to form a qualitatively identical human body. On this view, these events preserve what matters in survival. Despite its unpopularity, several philosophers have argued for this view. (...) One of the main arguments is that a psychologically sequential person is bound to have the same psychological traits and inclinations, and thus preserves what matters in the original person’s survival. In this paper, I argue that this argument fails to establish that no causal constraint is necessary. I also argue that if sequentialism is true, I should be content with the prospect of my bodily destruction followed by the creation of a series of short-lived beings whose mental states are sequential to mine. I suggest that the implausibility of this implication is sufficient to reject the view. (shrink)

Some experimental studies have recently claimed to undermine semantic externalism about natural kind terms. However, it is unclear how philosophical accounts of reference can be experimentally tested. We present two externalistic adaptations of psychological placeholder essentialism, a strict externalist and a hybrid externalist view, which are experimentally testable. We examine Braisby’s et al. (1996) study which claims to undermine externalism, and argue that the study fails in its aims. We conducted two experiments, the results of which undermine internalism and the (...) hybrid theory, and support strict externalism. Ourconclusion is that lay speakers’ natural kind concepts involve a belief in an external category essence, which determines reference. (shrink)

The essays appearing in these two volumes are based on Keynote and State-of-the-Art Lectures delivered at the XXVth International Congress of Psychology, in Brussels, July 1992. The Brussels Congress was the latest in a series of conferences which are organized at regular intervals under the auspices of the International Union of Psychological Science, the main international organization in the field of Scientific Psychology. The first of those meetings took place in Paris in 1889. An important function of the (...) International Congresses is to promote communication between different specializations in Psychology. Speakers were therefore asked to present lectures and discussions in their own fields of study, in a way that would be accessible to fellow psychologists active in other fields. State-of-the-Art lecturers were specifically asked to prepare a tutorial review on a topic which, in the view of the Program Committee, had recently given rise to particularly important developments. These contributions are included in Volume Two. Keynote lecturers were left free to address whatever subject they felt was of greatest interest. The chapters in Volume 1 are preceded by the Presidential Address by Mark R. Rosenzweig. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Banff Congress on Theoretical Psychology. Philosophers and psychologists discuss the relative merits of their approaches to the study of consciousness.

A compilation of selected papers presented at the 1989 Charles S. Pierce International Congress Interest in Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is today worldwide. Ernest Nagel of Columbia University wrote in 1959 that "there is a fair consensus among historians of ideas that Charles Sanders Peirce remains the most original, versatile, and comprehensive philosophical mind this country has yet produced." The breadth of topics discussed in the present volume suggests that this is as true today as it was in 1959. Papers (...) concerning Peirce's philosophy of science were given at the Harvard Congress by representatives from Italy, France, Sweden, Finland, Korea, India, Denmark, Greece, Brazil, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the United States. The Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress opened at Harvard University on September 5, 1989, and concluded on the 10th—Peirce's birthday. The Congress was host to approximately 450 scholars from 26 different nations. The present volume is a compilation of selected papers presented at that Congress. The philosophy of science and its logic are themes in the work of Charles Peirce that have been of greatest interest to scholars. Peirce was himself a physical scientist. He worked as an assistant at the Harvard Astronomical Observatory from 1869 to 1872 and made a series of astronomical observations there from 1872 to 1875. Solon I. Bailey says of these observations, "The first attempt at the Harvard Observatory to determine the form of the Milky Way, or the galactic system, was made by Charles S. Peirce....The investigation was of a pioneer nature, founded on scant data." Peirce also made major contributions in fields as diverse as mathematical logic and psychology. C. I. Lewis has remarked that "the head and font of mathematical logic are found in the calculus of propositional functions as developed by Peirce and Schroeder." Peirce subsequently invented, almost from whole cloth, semiotics - the science of the meaning of signs. Ogden and Richards, the British critics, say that "by far the most elaborate and determined attempt to give an account of signs and their meanings is that of the American logician C. S. Peirce, from whom William James took the idea and the term Pragmatism, and whose Algebra of Dyadic Relations was developed by Schroeder.". (shrink)

The assumption that commonsense psychological explanations of behavior are causal underlies current debate between simulation theory and theory theory regarding the nature of cognitive mechanism responsible for our folk psychological practices. Theory theorists claim that these explanations are subsumed by the covering law model of causal explanation. Simulationists are not explicit about the nature of the explanations produced by simulation. In what follows, I propose a set of plausible conditions that a correct causal simulation-produced folk psychological explanation will satisfy and (...) point out two prima facie problems. In discussing a possible solution, I discover that the latter incurs the need for some sort of causal law. An examination of two likely candidates for these laws reveals that neither is capable of playing the role required. I then suggest alternative routes that simulationists might explore in order to provide simulation theory with a sorely-needed account of the nature of the explanations produced by simulation. (shrink)

The psychology of Aristotle has never been understood in a historically correct way. A new interpretation of the De anima will be proposed in which this work can be seen as compatible with the psychology that can be reconstructed from the fragments of Aristotle's lost dialogues and the De motu animalium and other biological works and the doxographical data gathered from ancient writers besides the commentators. In De anima, II, 412b5, where psychè is defined as 'the first entelecheia (...) of a natural body that is organikon,' the words 'natural body' should not be taken to mean 'the body of a living plant, animal or human being' but to stand for 'elementary body.' And the qualification 'organikon' should not be understood as 'equipped with organs' but in the sense of 'serving as an instrument to the soul.' This 'instrumental body' that is inseparably connected with the soul is the seat of desire, which physically influences the parts of the visible body. Besides those two corrections there are the words ta merè in 412b18 that should be taken as meaning not 'parts of the body' but 'parts of the soul.' Aristotle is arguing there that even those parts of the soul that are not yet actualized in the embryo of a new living being can be said to be 'not without body.'. (shrink)

This article was prepared for the International Demographic History Congress on ‘Malthus Yesterday and Today’ which took place in Paris, 27–29 May 1980.

Contemporary philosophers writing on the issue of personal identity agree that, whatever is disputable about fission cases, there is little doubt that, if there could be fission, there would be psychological continuity between the original person and her offshoot (if the branching is one-one), or between the original personand her offshoots (if the branching is one-many). The belief is one with a long history dating back to John Locke; it has, over time, acquired the status of self-evident truth. This paper (...) is not an attempt to refute this deeply rooted belief, though I think the near universal acceptance of it is rather unfortunate. My main goal in what follows is to make an initial case for three forms of psychological discontinuity that I believe would exist between the fission ancestor and the offshoots. If I am right about the existence of the three forms of psychological discontinuity, contemporary Lockeans on the issue of personal identity will need to rethink their position, or so I will argue in the last section of the paper. (shrink)