Joseph F. Rychlak

George Kelly and the concept of construction

Abstract A distinction is drawn between a predicational and a mediational model. Predication involves the act of affirming, denying, or qualifying broader patterns of meaning in relation to narrower or targeted patterns of meaning. Mediation occurs when something formed outside a process is taken in and comes to play a role in that process that is not intrinsic to it. Fundamental to predication is the fact that meanings under processing are oppositional. George Kellys theoretical understanding of construction was as a predicational process. The term construction is often confounded with these two views of cognition. Kellys interpretation of construction is contrasted with the cognitive approach of Piaget and the social constructionist views of Harre and Gergen. It is demonstrated that Kellys clearer understanding of construction as a predicational process enables him to lend the individual a capacity for personal agency that the other theories fail to capture

The Nature and Challenge of Teleological Psychological Theory

Teleological theory is shown to rely upon final causation, which in turn also makes use of formal-cause patternings as the ‘that’ for the sake of which events are being intended. In the rise of science over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the belief crystallized that it was possible to explain events by reducing them to underlying material and efficient causation. Cartesian mathematics made it appear that motion caused patterns to come about and hence was basic to patterns. Modern physics has changed all this, placing the formal cause at the center of explanation. The unseating of material and especially efficient causation in science makes it possible for psychology to formulate telic theory. Formal causation is germane to meaning, and human beings can be seen to behave for the sake of such meaningful patterns. Mechanism is shown to be an instrumentality rather than a basic cause of behavior. Logical learning theory is presented as an example of telic theorizing. It is argued that unless psychology meets the challenge of teleological description it will never emerge as a distinctive area of study with a unique contribution to the family of the sciences.

Can psychology be objective about free will

Abstract This paper takes up the question of free will in behaviour, what it can mean, and how it might be said to occur. The case is made that, thanks to psychologys commitment to a 17th century conception of natural science, it has been effectively insulated from putting teleology to a proper empirical test. After presenting a justification and definition of free will in terms of the human beings telosponsive capacities, the paper closes by surveying aspects of the psychological literature which have gathered data relating to telic behaviour only to explain them away via traditional nontelic “scientific” theories.

The insanity defense and the question of human agency

Abstract No court trial focuses our attention on the question of human agency more than one in which the insanity defense is being advanced. The Law presumes that human beings have free will. If they lacked this capacity there is no point in trying to decide whether it was intact during the commission of a crime. Unfortunately, many psychiatrists and psychologists who act as expert witnesses during such trials have been trained to believe that human beings are without free will. This paper seeks to correct this disparity between the assumptions of the legal profession and the social sciences. After reviewing the history of the insanity plea, elaborating the shifting grounds on which it has been and currently is being employed, two major theoretical detractions to free will are critically examined. It is argued that these detractions are not convincing, and that there is just as much theoretical and empirical justification for believing that people have free will as there is for denying this capacity. Expert witnesses of the future need have no qualms about taking free will seriously, even when this concerns unconscious behavior. When disagreements among expert witnesses arise on this question of human agency, they can be dealt with in the same reasoned and measured fashion as disagreements of any sort are resolved in the courtroom.

The Recognition and Cognitive Utilization of Oppositionality

This research series begins in the theoretical view that human cognition rests in part upon implicit oppositionality. Four experiments are presented, each of which builds on some aspect of the recognition and utilization of oppositionality. Experiment I (34 females, 46 males, in cross-validation) finds that subjects recognize antonymy as readily as synonymy in comparison with a control condition (p<.001). Experiment II demonstrates that subjects rely upon oppositionality to solve a problem as readily as on primacy/recency considerations (p<.001). Experiment III (27 males, 27 females) finds that a subjects ability to recognize the opposite meaning of sentences that have been exposed earlier increases with practice (p<.05). Experiment IV (10 females, 11 males) demonstrates that subjects who are given the set to look for either opposite or nonopposite sentence meanings can make oppositional decisions with equal or greater speed than nonoppositional decisions (p<.001). Implications for psycholinguistic theories are discussed.

The Missing Psychological Links of Artificial Intelligence: Predication and Opposition

Abstract A distinction is drawn betiveen the predicationcd and mediational models of human cognition. By predication, 1 mean an act of affirming, denying, or qualifying broader patterns of meaning in relation to narrower or targeted patterns of meaning. By mediation, I mean a form of explanation in which something that is taken in or input comes indirectly to play a role in a process that was not initially a part of this process. Oppositionality of meanings is fundamental to the predicational process. It is shown that George Kelly relied on a predicational model in his psychology of personal constructs. It is not possible to bring Kellyian and computer terminology together into one viewpoint because of this basic contradiction in the theory of human cognition.

The Heuristic Properties of Dialectical Oppositionality in Predication

Abstract Two experiments tested the facilitative effect of dialectical oppositionality in a predication learning task. Subjects were college and high school students. Experiment 1 (N = 160) demonstrated that subjects more readily learned descriptive words that predicate a meaning in relation to a targeted item when such words were dialectical opposites than when they were not opposites (p < .001). Experiment 2 (two samples; N = 50, N = 50) compared the heuristic benefit of various predication instructions, using consonant-verb-consonant (CVC) trigrams as learnable items. It was found in cross-validation that dialectical oppositionality facilitated learning at an equal or higher level of efficiency than did other forms of predication such as identity, negation, and qualification (p < .001).

Testing a predicational model of cognition: Cueing predicate meanings in sentences and word triplets

Predication is a logical process in which meaning is extended from a broader context to a narrower, targeted referent independently of syntax and the passage of time. Since predicates lend meaning to their targets in cognitive processing, it follows that when unrecalled sentences are cued with their predicate-word meanings there should be greater retrieval than when these unrecalled sentences are cued with subject words. Three experiments (combinedN=164) tested this hypothesis and found data in its support (p — levels ranging from .05 to .001). A fourth experiment (N=48) removed syntax from consideration by employing triplets in which one word out of three sharing a common topic was the broadest in meaning, and hence was the expected predicate for cueing triplets when they were not initially recalled. As predicted, it was found that when the expected predicate of unrecalled triplets was used as a cue there were twice as many retrievals occurring as when the less broadly meaningful words were used as cues (p<.001). The findings are discussed in terms of logical learning theorys claim that ongoing cognition involves the continual “taking of a position” within a sea of opposite possibilities.

Evidence for a predication effect in deciding on the personal significance of abstract word meanings

Two experiments were conducted on college students (combinedN=240) to test for the effect of sentence predication on the independent judgement of word significance. Students judge which of two nouns was personally more significant to them. They also employed these nouns in a task which required them to place one word in the subject location and the other in the predicate location of an incomplete sentence. Administration order of these two experimental tasks was counterbalanced. Experiment I demonstrated that when the sentence-completion task is taken first-in which a predication is necessarily framed between the two nouns-the student will subsequently be more likely to judge the noun placed in the subject location of the sentence as more significant than its counterpart (p<.025). Experiment II provided a cross-validation of these findings and also demonstrated that the location of the more significant noun in the sentence can vary between subject and object location depending on whether the verb relation in the sentence unites the two nouns positively or negatively (p<.001).

The Heuristic Power Of Oppositionality In An Incidental-Memory Task: In Support Of The Construing Process

Abstract From a personal construct view, construing is a top-down process in which wider meanings predicate narrower, targeted meanings. Predicate contexts are invariably oppositional, as Kellys (1955) theory reflects. Two memory experiments using college subjects are presented. Subjects were asked to focus on a series of 30 target words to determine if they were similar in meaning to a predicating word (e.g., friendly). Ten of these target words were relevant (e.g., congenial), 10 were opposite (e.g., impolite), and 10 were irrelevant (e.g., abstract) in meaning to the predicating word. Subjects were then (unexpectedly) asked to recall as many words as possible. In line with experimental instructions, the majority of these recalled words were relevant to the predicating word. However, as predicted, in both experiments significantly more opposite than irrelevant words were recalled (p < .001). The results are in support of a personal construct view of human cognition.