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Rationality as a Source of Uncertainty. On Consequences of Taking Magical Thinking as “Abnormal”Rational thinking is limiting the scope of causal reasoning to physical reality. Magical thinking allows for the existence of causal relationships between objects of empirical experience and phenomena which cannot be known in an empirical way. In some primitive cultures as well as in childhood, rational...
Are Empirical Proofs of Embodied Cognition Anomalies in the Context of Classical Models of Cognition? The article disuccusses the role played by anomalies in Kuhn’s sense in the transition from the „classical model of cognition” to the „embodied paradigm” which can recently be observed in the field of the cognitive sciences. An example of the aforementioned problem is analysed in detail: the role...
Hyperpolyglotes – Anomality or Effect of Hard Work – What Makes Language Geniuses so Unique?What are the characteristic features and capabilities of hyperglots – people who speak more than six languages – that allow them to learn dozens of new languages so quickly and efficiently? Methods of learning, personality traits as well as possible neural correlates of multilingualism are compared and discussed...
Intrusive Thoughts in a Healthy Population – a Norm or an ExceptionIntrusive thoughts, until recently, were considered to be a phenomenon present only in mental disorders. Beginning with the pioneering research by Stanley Rachman and Padmal de Silva in 1978, researchers have turned attention to the commonness of intrusions among healthy persons. Article takes up the issue of intrusive thoughts in...
In the Sea of Semantic NeologismsThe article is an analysis of semantic neologisms extracted from the Culture section of Przekrój weekly. Semantic neologisms have been confronted with the definitions derived from the dictionary of Polish language and defined using cognitive methods. Most space is devoted to the adjective/adverb korzenny/korzennie (“spicy”), representing the same semantic domain. In...
Free Will: an Anomaly in Human ActionFree will has never been a particularly atractive notion, but currently it has found itself under a particularly vicious attack coming from the natural sciences’ camp. It is claimed that this attack could be prevented if we could reject the tacit assumption that free will is a common, everyday phenomenon. Four important components of the concept of free will are...
Phenomenon of Bistable PerceptionThe article aims to draw attention to bistable perception which turns out to be a very interesting subject of experimental and theoretical discussion. This term is understood as visual perception which involves at least two interpretations of what is perceived. Research into this phenomenon provides new facts and knowledge in the field of visual perception. It Indicates...
Between Linguistic Relativism and Linguistic UniversalismThe aim of this paper is to analyze two seemingly contradictory theories, namely: linguistic universalism and linguistic relativism. Undoubtedly, the variety of cultures is associated with the variety of perspectives and ways of perceiving the reality. The question that arises here, is: do we live in totally different worlds, or maybe it is...
Szereszewski – Mnemonic GeniusThe article describes one of the most interesting cases of mnemonic genius, Salomon Szereszewski. He was endowed with photographic memory – visual memory, characterized with remarkable clarity and durability. In addition, Szereszewski also had vast synaesthetic capabilities, consisting in joining together various sensory impressions, which also strongly infl uences better...
The Cognitive Approach Towards Psychometric Scales: When Difficult is Easier than EasyPsychometric scales are used in situations in which a certain feature of the tested person cannot be measured directly, but can be estimated (as a so-called hidden – or implicit – construct or variable) on the basis of the answers to the questions (items) on a scale. The cognitive approach enables us to have a more...
Moral Emotions as the Basis of Moral Sensitivity. Defects of Moral Sensitivity It is shown that, contrary to the rationalist tradition which is prevalent in philosophical ethics and to the traditional views of moral psychology, research results in the field of neuroethics suggest that the basis for moral sensitivity is constituted by certain emotions such as: blame, mercy and compassion which are...
Grapheme-color Synesthesia – a Case Study ReportSynaesthesia had been described as early as in 1883 by Francis Galton, but until recently it was perceived merely as a subjective phenomenon impossible to study using objective methods. Th e development of neuroscience and the consciousness studies created the possibility of scientific study of this phenomenon. At present many types of synesthesia are...
Relational Description of Data – Study of AnomaliesTh is article presents the idea of a semantic dictionary and concentrates on the problem of anomalies which might appear in it. Th e existence of anomalies indicates the points of potential errors in the semantic network, thus the implementation and consequent application of an anomalies discovery algorithm, should have a positive impact on the quality...
Anomalies as a Condition of Creative Communication Anomalies in the colloquial meaning appear as a negative and undesirable phenomena. The situation is similar in science, where they oft en appear as ominous signs of incompleteness or inappropriateness of the scientific theory. Cybernetic analysis of interpersonal communication processes and information exchange enables a different kind of a view...
The Relationship between the Characteristics of the Analyzed Text and the Specific Errors in Reasoning This article describes the relationship between the characteristis of the analyzed text and the specific errors in reasoning. Two complementary systems responsible for reasoning are activated depending on the analyzed content. Referring to Frege’s distinction of sense and reference, there were highlighted...
In the Shadow of Wason. Checking the Correctness of Syllogism and the Use of Material Implication The goal of this article is to continue the reflection, present for a long time in literature, on the formalisation of conditionals using implications functor. The starting point for discussion is the analysis of logical errors made by Jagiellonian University students in a logic exam. I am specifically...
Cognition Finted with Emotions as a Norm of Human Functioning There is a widely spread belief that rationality is the distinguishing characteristic of man. This study was intended to investigate whether our everyday cognitive functioning is really free from the influence of irrational factors such as emotions. It begins with an overview of research findings in the field of neuroscience showing the...
Disease – Objective Disorder of the System or a Theoretical Construct? In this paper I refer to discussion between objectivism and constructivism in relation to the concept of disease. I am presenting the highly objective position of Boorse, pointing to its weakness that generally affects all objectivist theories, especially a problem with an indication of an objective definition of normal body function...
About the Exception That Became a Rule This paper will attempt to answer the question: Why has an exceptional situation become the norm in research on inference? The exception refers to deductive inference. We start with presenting the reasons why we believe that deductive reasoning should be regarded as an exception rather than a rule. Then we move on to a two-stage attempt to answer the main question...
On some Consequences of Some Inconsistencies: the Problem of the Translation of Specialist Terminology in John Lyons Lexical Semantics The text relates to non-coherent conceptual apparatus used in Polish translations of John Lyons’s works – Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1969) and Semantics 1 (1993). In particular, I am pointing at the inconsistent use of two Polish terms: “kohiponim” and...
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