Predicative minds : the social ontogeny of propositional thinking.

Bogdan, Radu J.

ISBN 10: 0262026368 / ISBN 13: 9780262026369

Editore: Bradford Book, 2009

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Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, c2009. Orig. cloth binding. Dustjacket. xix,156 pp. (A Bradford book). Condition : as new copy. ISBN 9780262026369. Keywords : PHILOSOPHY,

Codice articolo 194388

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Predicative minds : the social ontogeny of propositional thinking.
• Editore: Bradford Book
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0262026368
• ISBN 13: 9780262026369
• Rilegatura: Rilegato
• Condizione: as new
• Condizione della sovraccoperta: sovraccoperta

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

An exploration of why and how the human competence for predication came to be.

The predicative mind singles out and represents an item in order to attribute to it a property, a relation, an action, an evaluation; it thinks, and says, of a house that it is big, of a car that it is to the left of the house, of a cat that it is about to jump, of a hypothesis that it is plausible. The capacity to predicate appears to be neither innate nor learned, yet it is universal among humans. Puzzling in evolutionary, developmental, and philosophical terms, the mental competence for predication still awaits a coherent and plausible explanation. In this exploration of the predicative roots of human thinking, Radu Bogdan takes up the challenge. Bogdan argues that predication is not only an outcome of development but also a by-product of uniquely human features of development, many of them social in nature and unrelated to representation, cognition, and thinking. Humans develop predicative minds for disparate reasons, which bear initially on physiological coregulation, affective and manipulative communication, and the socially shared acquisition of words. Once developed, the competence for predication in turn redesigns human thinking and communication. Predication is at the heart of conscious, deliberate, explicit, and language-based human thinking, and it is the fuel of higher mental activities. Understanding the uniqueness and representational power of the human mind, Bogdan contends, requires an explanation of why and how predication came to be.

Informazioni sull'autore

Radu J. Bogdan is Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology and Director of the Center for Mind, Language and Culture at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. He is the author of Minding Minds (2000) and Interpreting Minds (1997), both published by the MIT Press.