Toward the desegregation of thought and affect in psychological theorizing

This article interrogates the historical segregation of thought and affect in psychological theorizing. I note how, across a range of theoretical approaches to the study of thinking, the relations between thought and affect have been either negated or ignored or underemphasized. In the context of the recent \u27turn to affect\u27 in the social sciences, which has been seen as offering a new paradigm for conceptualizing social and psychological phenomena, this elision is all the more striking, and a selective overview of current writings illustrative of this literature is presented. Yet, reciprocally, it is noteworthy that the \u27turn to affect\u27 literature has not addressed the relation between affect and thought, and hence that it contributes to the theoretical segregation that I argue is problematic. I then discuss some recent proposals within psychology that, in each of their specific ways, dissolve the theoretical dualism between thinking and affect, and offer an integrative reformulation that synthesizes the affective, intellectual, and psychosocial constituents of thought, as well as some works outside of psychology that can be viewed as illustrating the fusion of thought and affect. I argue for an approach that recognizes the biographical intertwining of the affective and intellectual life of the epistemic agent and the way in which both are shaped by processes of social constitution and by transgenerational influences

Subverting theoretical dualisms: Discourse and mentalism

This article interrogates dualistic theoretical polarization as an unproductive metatheoretical approach to knowledge production, addresses associated issues of cultural politics, and submits that theoretical tensions are, instead, productive grounds for transformative reformulations and for contingent, selective synthesis. In particular, the article takes issue with the polarization of discourse-theoretic and “cognitive” approaches to psychological phenomena, and it explores a reconstructed notion of the mental grounded in a discursive view of the subject that honors the inseparability of the psychological and the social. A reconceived “mental space” is posited, seen as continuous with the social yet consisting of a distinct functional space, as the anchor for (discursively produced) thought processes in a given moment. These ideas are briefly illustrated with respect to ongoing feminist research on reasoning and discussed with reference to a systemic model of the social that comprises macro-social, local, and personal processes of social constitution. © 2009, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved

Positionality and thought: On the gendered foundations of thought, culture, and development

My aims in this chapter are both critical and substantive. I argue that gender in intersection with other social formations configures cultures and societies, and that epistemic norms (norms defining what constitutes knowledge) are developed in this gendered societal matrix and must therefore be the object of critique. I then explore the substantive implications of this argument. My discussion focuses specifically on deductive reasoning and its development, but the import of these remarks extends beyond this particular domain

Leaving dualisms behind: Felt thinking and the social.Commentary of John Cromby, \u27Beyond belief\u27

From a metatheoretical critical perspective wary of theoretical dualisms, this commentary endorses Cromby\u27s integrative proposal on the fusion of thought and affect.The proposal is discussed in relation to the current \u27turn to affect\u27 in the social sciences and to recent work in feminist theory.Specific arguments on the relation of cognition and discourse are appraised critically.© 2012 The Author(s)

On modes of explanation

A commentary on Johnson-Laird and Byrne\u27s study on the distinctions between deductive reasoning based on mental models and logic drawn from inference rules questions the validity of the research on substantive and metatheoretical grounds. A better approach to the study of deductive reasoning is through the use of these concepts. Furthermore, it is suggested that a clear understanding of the limitations of the problem, one that goes beyond semantic principles is needed in order to address multipremise inferences

Normative theory and the human mind

Discusses H. E. Kyburg\u27s (1983) article Rational Belief (see record 1984-11387-001), and questions his treatment of deductive logic and his extensional treatment of degrees of belief. It is contended that the continuing quest for normative theories in Western culture represents the human mind\u27s attempt to transcend itself and to find a way to sanction its mode of operation in terms of higher-level principles. While Kyburg\u27s theory seems adequate as a basis for decision theory or probabilistic inference, it omits the causal context in which beliefs are ordinarily generated

On the constitution of ‘self’ and ‘mind’: The dialectic of the system and the person

This article introduces a perspective in which questions at a psychological grain of analysis are integrated with a broad societal frame of interpretation, drawing on interdisciplinary feminist writings that provide alternative ways to theorize the social. It is argued that understanding the constitution of subjectivity, ‘self’ and thought requires a societal-level model of the social with both discursive and material constituents as well as local discursive processes that are deployed within, and configured through, that broader system. It is further argued that the ontological notion of a ‘person’ (in a specific, non-modern sense of ‘person’ and in a specific sense of ‘ontological’) is a conceptually necessary part of the theoretical language, as the anchor for processes of social constitution and as the substrate of agency, where agency is theorized as a multilevel process. One central claim developed in this article is that it is through the dialectic among these societal-level, local, and personal constituents that subjectivity, ‘self’ and thought are constituted, a ‘self’ that is assumed to be situated, hybrid, complex, tension-filled and unstable, yet substantial. © 2004, Sage Publications. All rights reserved

Analyse expérimentale et théorique de l'apprentissage des concepts

Doctorat en sciences psychologiquesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe