Impasse-driven problem solving: the multidimensional nature of feeling stuck

This study reports findings across four preregistered experiments (total N = 856) that establish the multidimensional nature of impasse and resolve two paradoxes implicit in the problem-solving literature: how a state of impasse can be at once necessary to solve a problem with insight and yet also have appear to have a catastrophic effect on solution rates, and why individuals such as problem-solving and gaming enthusiasts seem to seek out this apparently aversive state. We introduce a new way of measuring impasse based on qualitative reports and subsequently confirmed through quantitative analysis that exploits two aspects of impasse: its dynamic and unstable nature (it can be resolved or unresolved) and its multidimensionality in terms of feelings of cognitive speediness, motivation, and affect. The feeling of being stuck varies resolved and unresolved impasse in terms of feelings of speediness and positive affect, but not motivation, which remains constant. We demonstrate that the feeling of insight can be reliably elicited by experiencing and resolving impasse but also in the absence of impasse, which suggests that there is more than one path to an insight experience. This adds depths to current proposals of the cognitive mechanisms underlying both insight problem-solving and impasse. Our findings are robust across a range of problem types. The novel conception of impasse in this paper as dynamic and multidimensional has implications for theories of insight problem solving, and also wider implications for understanding how impasse can be resolved across different domains such as education and design

Introduction: Language and Worldviews

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Introduction: Language and Worldviews

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Thought experiments as model-based abductions

In this paper we address the classical but still pending question regarding Thought Experiments: how can an imagined scenario bring new information or insight about the actual world? Our claim is that this general problem actually embraces two distinct questions: (a) how can the creation of a just imagined scenario become functional to either a scientific or a philosophical research? and (b) how can Thought Experiments hold a strong inferential power if their structures “do not seem to translate easily into standard forms of deduction or induction”? (Bishop in Philos Sci 66(4):534–541, 1999). We contend that, in order to answer both questions, we should consider the relation between the creation of the imagined scenario and the inferential power of Thought Experiments. Specifically, we will analyze Thought Experiments from an eco-cognitive point of view as goal-oriented objects, explaining their inferential power considering their generation as the result of abductive cognition and the construction of an imagined scenario as a process of scientific modeling. This will lead us to consider the creation of a Thought Experiment as a case of sophisticated model-based abduction

Situated ignorance: the distribution and extension of ignorance in cognitive niches

Ignorance is easily representable as a cognitive property of more than just individual subjects: groups, crowds, and even populations can share the same ignorance regarding particular concepts and ideas. Nevertheless, according to some theories that refer to the extension, distribution, and situatedness of human cognition, ignorance is hardly a state that can be extended, distributed, and situated in the same way in which knowledge is in our eco-cognitive environment. In order to understand how these contradictory takes can come across in a coherent description of ignorance, in this paper I aim at analyzing the impact of the agent’s ignorance in her ecological and cognitive environment, as well as the effect that the surrounding context has on the agent’s epistemological successes and downfalls. To this end I will adopt the cognitive and empirically sensitive perspectives of the distributed cognition, the extended mind and cognitive niches construction theories, which will help me address and answer three topical questions: (a) adopting the theories about the extended mind, the distributed cognition, and the cognitive significance of affordances can we describe ignorance as extended and distributed in spaces, artifacts, and other people? (b) extending or distributing ignorance in one’s eco-cognitive environment has the same cognitive and ecological impact of extending or distributing knowledge? (c) can we recognize instantiations of externalized or distributed ignorance? I will argue that by acknowledging the extended, distributed, and situated dimension of ignorance in cognitive niches we could recognize the impact that our ignorance and uncertainty has on how we manipulate and organize our environment and also how our eco-cognitive frameworks affect the perception of our epistemological states

Ignoranza

L'analisi dell'ignoranza condotta negli ultimi anni ha fatto emergere un insieme multidisciplinare di conoscenze. I cosiddetti Ignorance Studies sono infatti oggi un fronte di ricerca variegato e in espansione, che sfrutta collegamenti tra diversi settori accademici. Senza sottovalutare la natura interdisciplinare dell'argomento, la presente voce ha lo scopo di offrire un quadro d'insieme delle principali correnti di pensiero filosofico – affermate ed emergenti – che trattano l'ignoranza come termine chiave d'indagine. Le correnti esaminate trattano, in particolare, delle implicazioni etiche dell'ignoranza, della sua definizione a livello epistemologico e del suo ruolo nei processi cognitivi dell'individuo agente. Scholars have recently begun analyzing the topic of ignorance, bringing out intricate and incohesive knowledge in the philosophical literature. Indeed, the so-called Ignorance Studies refer now to those miscellaneous investigations that examine the nature and features of ignorance from various perspectives. Without underestimating these studies' multidisciplinary nature, this work focuses on the philosophical points of view from which ignorance has been analyzed as a stand-alone research topic. The paper is divided into four main parts that describe ethical, epistemological, and cognitive investigations of ignorance. The last part aims at describing emergent and potential follow-ups to current studies