This article is a theoretical study of the relations between logic and Anglo-American cognitive science. It uses temporal, historical, and intentional evidence, and it is based on two consequential assumptions: (a) between the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, some logical systems attempted to explain the foundations of mathematics and (b) since the 1940s and 1950s, these same systems became implicit sources of contents and methods of the rising Cognitivism. This study produces an important conclusion: Anglo-American cognitive science partly derives from logic and partly shares many similarities with this science. Keywords cognitive psychology, history, logical foundations, psychology and logicThe present work arises from the exigency to work out a statement that is not well known: Anglo-American cognitive science partly derives from logic and partly shares many similarities with the science of logic. The research on these foundations and analogies retraces, in psychology, what had already been done in mathematics many years previously. Moreover, the same logical approaches, mostly involved in discussions on the foundations of mathematics between the late 19th century and the early 1930s, contribute to the foundations of the most important cognitive developments since the 1930s and 1940s. In mathematics, these logical approaches represented some conflicting and conscious attempts to
This article defines mind as a system, in general and logical terms. In general terms, a system has internal elements related both to each other (organization) and to the external environment (adaptation). In logical terms, moreover, a system can be opened when its determinate language (symbolic internal organization) is inclusive, so that it accepts external indeterminacy in an effort to expand and strengthen itself. But a logical system can also be closed when its impervious language is exclusive, so that it refuses and contrasts the same external indeterminacy in an illusion to preserve itself in nonchange. So that, like a general and logical system, mind can be internally organized to include the indeterminacy of reality and existence, so that it becomes as a changing flow, which is preserved in the sense of its own continuity and persistence. But mind can be organized to exclude the same indeterminacy, so that it becomes as a rigid structure which does not change, but in a world and in an existence that change. So that, mind generates paradoxes, just like closed logical systems studied by Kurt Gödel, and so it generates suffering of misunderstanding. In conclusion, from a clinical perspective, these paradoxes can become opportunities for understanding and growth, as Graham Priest demonstrates with his paraconsistent logic. Therefore, a clinical intervention on paradox marks the way of change, as we will show at the end of this article with some clinical examples, which are based on evidence. Public Significance StatementThe study demonstrates the importance of considering psychic suffering as a closed and paradoxical system. The objective pursued is to broaden the knowledge of mental illness in general, with the aim of offering new tools for understanding and clinical intervention on the individual. Starting from assumption that becoming aware of one's contradictions facilitates the process of change, discovery and resolution of one's paradoxes can thus help the person to solve their problems.
This work investigates some of the most important logical limits of scientific knowledge. We argue that scientific knowledge is based on different logical forms and paradigms. The logical forms, which represent the rational structure of scientific knowledge, show their limits through logical antinomies. The paradigms, which represent the scientific points of view on the world, show their limits through the theoretical anomalies. When these limits arise in science and when scientists become fully and deeply aware of them, they can determine logical or paradigmatic revolutions. These are different in their respective courses, although the logical forms and the paradigms are parts of the same type of knowledge. In the end, science can avoid or can integrate its different limits. In fact, the limits of science can become new opportunities for its growth and development.
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