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This chapter examines the philosophical dimensions of Vygotsky's legacy. Vygotsky was a profoundly original thinker, but he was not one whose independence of thought caused him to neglect the ideas of others. On the contrary, Vygotsky was exceptionally well-read. He had an impressive command of the European psychological literature and considerable knowledge of adjacent fields, such as anthropology and educational theory. His appreciation of literature and literary theory is well-known and justly celebrated. Less often remarked upon, however, is his debt to philosophy. In this field, too, he was well-versed, having majored in philosophy and history at the Shanyavsky People's University. Vygotsky was much influenced by the philosophical vision of Marx and Engels: Almost all of the many references to their writings in Vygotsky's Collected Works are to philosophical themes. He was also inspired by a number of philosophers who had influenced Marx and Engels, notably Hegel (whom Vygotsky had read in high school), Spinoza, and Feuerbach. Marxism and its antecedents, however, by no means exhaust Vygotsky's philosophical interests. He cites numerous other philosophers, including Aristotle, Bergson, Brentano, Descartes, Dewey, Dilthey, Fichte, Hobbes, Husserl, James, Kant, Lichtenberg, Malebranche, Nietzsche, Neurath, Plato, and Scheler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about "probabilistic logic" which is typically used to refer to systems of logic that permit the attachment of probabilities to the premises and the conclusion of an argument. Systems of probabilistic logic vary with respect to how the uncertainty associated with the premises of an argument is propagated to the conclusion. The worlds in a given set are equivalent with respect to the truth values of the sentences. The sets of possible worlds are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. Nilsson's method for identifying the sets of possible worlds which involves constructing a semantic tree is discussed.

The article offers the authors' insights on 5IS personality. The authors state that the systemic foundation of the said type of personality takes in a strong intrinsic accent that relegates the extrinsic to the shadows. They mention that the persons with the personality type combines abstract intelligence strengthened by intuition with very acute emotional sensitivity.

The article discusses the 6SS personality, which is a rational type. It states that 6SS personality shows a solid systemic foundation, in which both the extrinsic and intrinsic do not have a decisive influence. It says that the brain of children featuring an 6SS constitution develop more than muscles and viscera, which makes them more intelligent than emotional or strong.

In attempting to define intelligence in real-world contexts, psychologists have focused primarily on the kinds of thinking that people do in work-related environments. In this chapter, however, Deanna Kuhn describes another form of thinking that should be central to efforts to describe real-world intelligence: thinking as argument. It is in argument, the author maintains, that we find the most significant way in which higher order thinking and reasoning figure in the lives of most people. Kuhn describes her research, which examines the extent to which a process of reasoned argument underlies the beliefs people hold and the opinions they espouse about important social issues. Her results indicate that argumentive reasoning ability does not differ systematically as a function of sex or age (from adolescence through the late sixties), but is strongly related to education level. Kuhn believes that social contexts, such as the classroom, are the most promising arena for practicing and developing argumentive thinking skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the principle of the economy of logic and economical logic. One thus has to acknowledge that practice has a logic which is not that of logic, if one is to avoid asking of it more logic than it can give, thereby condemning oneself either to wring incoherences out of it or to thrust upon it a forced coherence. The principle of the economy of logic, whereby no more logic is mobilized than is required by the needs of the practice, means that the universe of discourse in relation to which this or that class is constituted, can remain implicit, because it is implicitly defined in each case in and by the practical relation to the situation. Given that it is unlikely that two contradictory applications of the same schemes will be brought face to face in a universe of practice. The fact that symbolic objects and practices can enter without contradiction into successive relationships set up from different points of view means that they are subject to overdetermination through indetermination. The uncertainties and misunderstandings inherent in the logic of suggestion and ambiguity are thus the price that has to be paid for the economy which results from reducing the universe of the relations between opposites and of the relations between these relations to a few basic relations from which all the others can be generated.