Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T21:06:03.083Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why Philosophy Needs Logical Psychologism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2013

Vanessa Lehan-Streisel
Vanessa Lehan-Streisel*
Affiliation:
York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that social psychologism is the most philosophically appealing form of psychologism. I present two arguments in support of social psychologism. The first is that this form of psychologism allows philosophers to justify normative claims about human reasoning. In the second part of this paper I argue that social psychologism ameliorates historical concerns with psychologism in general. The conclusion I draw from this discussion is that a need to outline and justify a normative system for deductive reasoning requires some discussion of how formal systems and human minds connect to one another.

Je soutiens dans cet article que le psychologisme social est la forme la plus attrayante de psychologisme. Ma défense du psychologisme social se développe en deux temps. Premièrement, je démontre que cette forme de psychologisme permet aux philosophes de justifier leurs revendications normatives au sujet du raisonnement humain. Je montre ensuite, dans la seconde partie de mon raisonnement, comment le psychologisme social assouplit les préoccupations de nature historique du psychologisme en général. Je conclus en soulignant que la nécessité d’encadrer et de justifier un système normatif pour les raisonnements déductifs exige des discussions approfondies sur les façons dont les systèmes formels et les esprits humains entrent en contact les uns avec les autres.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 575 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Braine, M. and O’Brien, D. 1991 “A theory of if: A lexical entry, reasoning program, and pragmatic principles.” Psychological Review 98(2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, L. 1895 “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles.” Mind 4, pp. 278–80.Google Scholar
Cheng, P. and Holyoak, K. 1989 “On the Natural Selection of Reasoning Theories.” Cognition 33, pp. 285 – 313.Google Scholar
Cosmides, L. 1989 “The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task.” Cognition 31, pp. 187 –276.Google Scholar
Engel, P. 1991 The Norm of Truth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Evans, J. St. B. T., Newstead, S.E., Byrne, R. M. J. 1993 Human reasoning: The psychology of deduction. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Frege, G. 1950 The Foundations of Arithmetic. London: Basil Blackwell, trans. J. L. Austin .Google Scholar
Frege, G. 1997 Grundgesetze der Arithmetic, Vol. 1. The Frege Reader ed. Beaney, Michael, London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kusch, M. 2007 “Psychologism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychologism. Subsection “Recent Re-evaluations”.Google Scholar
Lehan, V. 2012 Empirically Informed Logic: How results in experimental psychology can inform formal logic. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. York University, Toronto, Ontario.Google Scholar
Pelletier, F. J., Elio, R., and Hanson, P. 2008 “Is logic all in our heads?” Studia Logica 86, pp. 1 – 86.Google Scholar