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The Role Of Prospective And Retrospective Cognition In Adolescent Mental Health, Gabriel F. Byer-Alcorace Dec 2016

The Role Of Prospective And Retrospective Cognition In Adolescent Mental Health, Gabriel F. Byer-Alcorace

Doctoral Dissertations

This study attempted to replicate the methods of Miles, MacLeod, and Pote (2004) who attempted to extend the application of a theory proposed by Andrew MacLeod and colleagues in the late 1990s. Only the aforementioned study has examined this theory with adolescents ages 14 to 19 year olds enrolled in public schools and 18 to 19 year olds enrolled universities. In the present study 169 students were asked to complete an assessment battery containing measures of depression, anxiety, stress, hope, and demographic information, as well as completing a positive and negative cognition task. It was hypothesized that a strong negative …


Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford Nov 2016

Structuring Thought: Concepts, Computational Syntax, And Cognitive Explanation, Matthew B. Gifford

Doctoral Dissertations

The topic of this dissertation is what thought must be like in order for the laws and generalizations of psychology to be true. I address a number of contemporary problems in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature and structure of concepts and the ontological status of mental content. Drawing on empirical work in psychology, I develop a number of new conceptual tools for theorizing about concepts, including a counterpart model of concepts' role in linguistic communication, and a deflationary theory of concepts' formal features. I also suggest some new answers to old problems, arguing, for example, that content realism …


Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt Jul 2016

Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I argue that understanding possesses unique epistemic value. I propose and defend a novel account of understanding that I call the management account of understanding, which is the view that an agent A understands a subject matter S just in case A has the ability to extract the relevant information and exploit it with the relevant cognitive capacities to answer questions in S. Since inquiry is the process of raising and answering questions, I argue that without understanding, it would be impossible to engage in successful inquiry. I argue that understanding is indispensable for effective cognition and …