Electronic Library of Scientific Literature
Electronic Library of Scientific Literature
Volume 58 / No. 01 / 2003
PAPERS
REVIEWS
EMIL VIŠŇOVSKÝ, Kabinet výskumu sociálnej a biologickej komunikácie SAV, Bratislava
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No 1, p. 1
There are two different approaches to mind: cognitivist and sociocultural. The author attempts at outlining the latter, while indicating that both approaches are complementary rather than excluding each other. Another difference the author makes in his paper is the difference between brain and mind. Based on the sociocultural approach, human mind is the sociocultural quality or function of the brain, it is the sociocultural construction and product. The content of mind is a representation, which is not only mental, but also social.
MIROSLAV POPPER, Kabinet výskumu sociálnej a biologickej komunikácie SAV, Bratislava
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No 1, p. 10
The paper focuses on exploring sources and aims of evolutionary psychology, on how its representatives devlope their own approaches in opposition to the Standard social science model. Evolutionary psychology is in favor of functionally specia_lized and/or domain-specific mechanisms in the architecture of the human mind as it evolved in the course of evolution. Such evolution is the point emphasized by evolutionary psychology. Attention is also given to the implications the domain-specific architecture might have for culture. In the final section the author outlines his own standpoint concerning evolutionary psychology, attempting to temper the antagonism between it and the Standard social science model.
JANA PLICHTOVÁ, Kabinet výskumu sociálnej a biologickej komunikácie SAV, Bratislava
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No 1, p. 23
The paper's argumentation is for the conception of mind as an
open, although internally structured system. Mind, however, is not just an
actualization of dispositions, but also the accommodation and cultivation of the
latter in the process of a continuous interaction with the intelligible
structures of the other minds as well as with the products of the historical
development of culture.
The author's presupposition is, that the language as the most important product
of the semiotic activity became an accelerator of the evolution of culture, the
basic code of human way of being. Expanding and enriching of the communication
nests led to the rise of a new world, which has transcended the natural world
and changed the human nature. The science investigating the human mind, which
ignores the existence of the semiotic activity (the world of art, religion,
knowing etc.) cuts off the substantial aspects leading to its understanding.
Therefore, the author suggests the dialogue as a basic method of the examination
of mind. It is the dialogue, through which the minds overcome the isolatedness
of their beings and through which an intersubjectively valid knowledge is
created. The dialogical method is compatible with its substance, as the mind is
seen not as a monological, but rather as a dialogical entity.
VLADIMÍR KVASNIČKA, Katedra matematiky FCHPT STU, Bratislava
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No. 1, p. 35
The purpose of the paper is to present basic principles of connectionism and its position within contemporary cognitive science. Connectionist paradigm postulates thinking as a parallel processing of non-structured information by simple calculations performed by neurons that are deeply mutually interconnected. The basic numerical tools of connectionism are represented by so-called artificial neural networks, which are immediately applicable to the study of many cognitive functions at different levels of complexity and sophistication. Connectionism has brought with it a number of important philosophical issues and concerns. Connectionism as a dramatic shift from more traditional accounts of cognition has forced philosophers to reconsider many assumptions based upon earlier theories.
JÁN RYBÁR, Katedra humanistiky FMFI UK, Bratislava
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No 1, p. 43
The paper examines new innovative ideas coming from contemporary empirical researches of perception, language and mind in cognitive and evolutionary psycho_logy. From these researches it follows, that our minds are equipped with certain innate physical, language and psychological principles. The respective disciplines are sometimes referred to as intuitive physics and intuitive psychology. These new empirical data have important consequences in the methodology od social sciences. They are a challenge for the traditional model, in which language and mind are seen first of all as cultural and social products.
JURAJ HVORECKÝ, Centrum teoretických studií UK, Praha 1, Česká republika
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No 1, p. 56
In the midst of the 1980 Daniel Dennett published a series of papers on the problematic of the Self. The resolution offered by Dennett is rather unconventional in philosophy and it might appear as contradicting several contemporary theoretical as well as experimental works in this field. The latter appeal namely to conside_rably different sources of the development of human Self. The aim of the paper is to show, that understanding the resolution offered by Dennett as an attempt at explaining just a particular stage of the development of the Self makes it possible to bring his attitude into accordance with other, seemingly different attitudes.
PETER SÝKORA, Centrum európskych štúdií, Fakulta sociálnych a ekonomických vied UK, Bratislava
FILOZOFIA 58, 2003, No 1, p. 62
According to the author, the dichotomy between the primordialist and the instrumentalist approach to the problem od ethnicity is similar to the classical philoso_phical dichotomy of rationalism versus empiricism. Kant's solution - differentiating between the form and the content of ideas - might be animating for us in overcoming the dichotomy between primordialism and instrumentalism. In a new model of ethnicity (Sýkora 2002) the ethnicity (seen as a phenomenon of an inner identification of the individual with the ethnic group) is to be analogically divided into its form, i. e. the inner universal emotional structure of our mind, on one hand, and its contingent content, acquired from outside in the process of socialization a enculturation on the other hand. This model is based on Tajfel's theory of the minimal group and on Lorenz's conception of imprinting.
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