English edit

Etymology edit

psycho- +‎ semantics

Noun edit

psychosemantics (uncountable)

  1. The study of how meaning is inferred.
    • 1997, Diane F. Halpern, Alexander E. Voiskounsky, States of Mind, →ISBN, page 21:
      Psychosemantics has a long history in psychology and includes concepts and techniques developed by the American psychologist Osgood (Osgood, 1971; Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957( and Kelly (1955). Russian psychosemantics is based on the methodological and theoretical foundations introduced by Lev Vygotsky, Alexei Leontiev, and Alexander Luria.
    • 2008, Y. Gustafsson, C. Kronqvist, M. McEachrane, Emotions and Understanding: Wittgensteinian Perspectives, →ISBN, page 71:
      The solution is proposed that we have some inner concepts; that is the semantically endowed inner concepts of psychosemantics.
    • 2009, Jonathan Cohen, The Red and the Real: An Essay on Color Ontology, →ISBN, page viii:
      Psychosemantics is the theory of what it is in virtue of which our thoughts refer to (parts of) the world; if traditional, linguistic semantics is the theory of word-world relations, the psychosemantics is intended to be the analogous theory of thought-world relations. Although the topic of psychosemantics might, at first blush, seem to be remote from the present concerns about color ontology, it has sometimes been alleged that the argument from perceptual variation that we have been considering depends in a certain way on psychosemantic matters -- or, at least, on the unsatisfactory status of extant psychsemantic theorizing.
    • 2013, Scott M. Christensen, Dale R. Turner, Folk Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind, →ISBN, page 403:
      Psychosemantics argues from the practical indispensability of folk psychology to the need to be "realist" about mental representations.
    • 2014, Radu J. Bogdan, Grounds for Cognition: How Goal-guided Behavior Shapes the Mind, →ISBN:
      So I am not going to rehearse my alternative and the reasons for it, but rather explore and criticize the sources of the psychosemantics of thinking.

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