What, why, and whence logic? A response to the commentators (original) (raw)
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In this paper two concepts of psychologism in logic are outlined: the one which Frege and Husserl fought against and the new psycholo-gism, or cognitivism, which underlies a cognitive turn in contemporary logic. Four issues such cognitively oriented logic should be interested in are indicated. They concern: new fields opened for logical analysis , new methods and tools needed to address these fields, neural basis of logical reasoning, and an educational problem: how to teach such logic? Several challenging questions, which arise in the context of these issues, are listed.
Logic and Cognition: the Faces of Psychologism
In this paper two concepts of psychologism in logic are outlined: the one which Frege and Husserl fought against and the new psychologism, or cognitivism, which underlies a cognitive turn in contemporary logic. Four issues such cognitively oriented logic should be interested in are indicated. They concern: new fields opened for logical analysis, new methods and tools needed to address these fields, neural basis of logical reasoning, and an educational problem: how to teach such logic? Several challenging questions, which arise in the context of these issues, are listed.
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ABSTRACT We argue that reasoning has been conceptualized so narrowly in what is known as 'psychology of reasoning' that reasoning's relevance to cognitive science has become well-nigh invisible. Reasoning is identified with determining whether a conclusion follows validly from given premises, where 'valid' is taken to mean 'valid according to classical logic'. We show that there are other ways to conceptualize reasoning, more in line with current logical theorizing, which give it a role in psychological processes ranging from (verbal) discourse comprehension to (nonverbal) planning. En route we show that formal logic, at present marginalized in cognitive science, can be an extremely valuable modeling tool. In particular, there are cases in which probabilistic modeling must fail, whereas logical models do well. WIREs Cogni Sci 2011 2 555-567 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.134 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
How logic relates to mind, how does it appear in the mind from illogical neural operations? An old idea about the mind as a system of logical rules is inconsistent with current scientific data. Views of cognitive scientists on fundamental mind operations are summarized. Interaction between consciousness and unconscious is discussed. Vague and illogical states usually are not accessible to consciousness, but approximately logical perception and cognition are conscious. While conscious states comprise a minority of mental states, every mind subjectively feels conscious and near-logical most of the time. Hence the bias is to perceive the mind as mostly logical. I touch on the problem of free will, analyze what it is from the cognitive science view, and illustrate that related contradictions may exist in logic, but not necessarily in the mind.
Biolinguistics, 2007
Arguments are presented supporting logical nativism: the conjecture that humans have an innate logic faculty. In making a case for logical nativism, this article concentrates on children's acquisition of the logical concept of disjunction. Despite the widespread belief to the contrary, the interpretation of disjunction in human languages is arguably the same as it is in classical logic, namely inclusive-or. The argument proceeds with empirical support for the view that the inclusive-or is the meaning of disjunction in human languages, from studies of child language development and from crosslinguistic research. Evidence is presented showing that young children adhere to universal semantic principles that characterize adult linguistic competence across languages. Several a priori arguments are also offered in favour of logical nativism. These arguments show that logic, like Socratic virtue and like certain aspects of language, is not learned and cannot be taught -thus supporting a strong form of innateness.