<Philosophy and Psychology>

Philosophy and Psychology

Painting by Carlos Prebal

From 1992 to 1994 I worked with Prof. Fernando Gabucio and Prof. Javier de la Fuente in the Department of Basic Psychology at the Universitat de Barcelona. We conducted research on analogical thinking in problem solving. I had been working on metaphor (mainly from the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics) for my undergraduate and masters thesis, and was very interested in the psychological inquiry on this topic. I had the privilege to work with this team until I left for the US with a scholarship to study theoretical linguistics, the field in which I ended up writing my PhD dissertation at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, after a Masters in Cognitive and Functional Linguistics at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

While in the University of Massachusetts I wrote a paper on human language processing under the supervision of Prof. Lyn Frazier. The paper was published by the GLSA (UMOP) under the title "Comparing Serial and SPLT Models of Processing: Evidence from Catalan". It is available here.

Interests

Language and thought

Are language and thought two separate cognitive realities of human beings? How does language channel our experience of the world? Does language help us grasp reality by making it accessible to us, or does it stay in the way of our perception and understanding of it? How do we organize our thoughts in order to construct a model of reality in our mind?
Evolution of Language

How did language evolve? What are the evolutionary building blocks of human language? Did those capacities evolve uniquely for language, or can we relate them to other non-linguistic functions? Which other capacities are a "side product" of language evolving (being selected for) in our mind? Are those capacities only possible in organisms that possess a language? How can we study the evolution of language, when language did not leave any fossils to give us the necessary evidence? Why is the study of the language/communicative systems/cognitive abilities of contemporary non-human animals of any help for these questions?
Animal Minds

Do non-human animals have language? What cognitive abilities would it be necessary for them to have in order to have it (e.g., beliefs, desires, and other intentional attitudes)? Can non-linguistic animals acquire the same concepts as humans? How do non-linguistic animals develop conceptual representations, and how do they structure them? Does language rightly occupy a central place in comparative studies between humans and non-humans? What other conceptual capacities can we study to aid in our inquiry about these questions (e.g., morality, since it presupposes intentional attitudes and colaborative behavior, perhaps two important elements in the evolution of language, etc.)? Is there a relationship between non-human animals and babies, both non-linguistic beings? How can we test for these questions?
Moral Philosophy

What is the role reason plays in our ethical ability? And emotion? How do reason and emotion interact in real moral judgements? What role does self-deception play in our moral judgements? Which psychological capacities play a role in the production of moral judgements (i.e., conceptual categorization, perception of causality, intentionality, mediation of actions and actors, etc.)?

Which are the evolutionary foundations of our moral capacity? Which other capacities are necessary for a being to have morality (for example, intentional attitudes, ability to assign intentional attitudes to others, sense of reciprocality, capacity of social behavior, long term memory, etc.)? Did morality develop independently of other mental capacities (and remained that way in its own mental module), or is it a by-product of the selection for other mental abilities (mainly, rationality, maybe language, maybe some emotions like compassion and solidarity)? Is morality an exclusively human attribute?

Some web sites I like to visit:

The Society of Philosophy and Psychology