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Research on Bipolarity and Reflexivity

Author: 
Year:
Pages:160
ISBN:0-7734-5822-0
978-0-7734-5822-2
Price:$139.95
This book is an enlarged second edition of A Psychological Theory of Bipolarity and Reflexivity (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). The objective of publishing the second edition is to familiarize readers with the new achievements in the studies of bipolarity and reflexivity, which have been significantly advanced within the last ten years. A special journal, Reflexive Processes and Control, is devoted to these studies and published papers related to their development and applications. The “Workshop on Multi-Reflexive Models of Agent Behavior” took place in 1999 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the main topic discussed was the model described in the first edition of this book. A modified version of the same model is now used for simulation of economic and military decision-making. Some results of this work have already been published. The theory underlying all these studies has been developed as well. While in the early 1990s, the model was purely phenomenological; now it can be deduced theoretically on the base of general principles of information processing done by humans and animals. It has also been demonstrated that the model can describe process of choice made by mammals and birds, as well as by human beings. The most important theoretical and empirical achievements will be included in this edition.

Reviews

“I suggest there are two influences in our minds which influence our readiness to act well: (a) Pressure from the outside world ... (b) Our own idea of the outside world, summed up in a single judgment: how good or how bad is it. These two influences act upon our otherwise independent (good or bad) intuitions. As you see, this contains a colossal simplification: that such polarity as good-bad, plays a decisive role in our moral actions. No psychologist will like this. Everyone will say this means thinking of man as an essentially moral being ...” – Sir Karl Popper, eminent theorist

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction to the First Edition
Part I. A Model of the Subject with Free Will
Part II: General Interpretation
Part III: Decisions Based on the Image of the World
Part IV: The Autonomous Subject
Part V: Decisions Based on Belief
Part VI: Categorization of the Self and Other with the Help of Bipolar Constructs
Part VII: Natural Generation of Geometrical Proportions
Part VIII: Natural Generation of Musical Intervals
Part IX: The Subject with Images of Self and Other
Part X: The Algebraic Basis of the Model Conclusion
References
Post Script by Sir Karl Popper
The Additional Part: Bipolar Choice
A Note to the Additional Part
Bibliography to the Additional Part
Index of Names
Subject Index