Logic, Syntax, and a Structural View : The Psychology of Trump's Hall of Mirrors

"This book presents a new structural approach to the psychology of the person, inspired by Kenneth Colby's computer-generated simulation, PARRY. The simulation was of a paranoid psychological state, represented in forms of the person's logic and syntax, as these would be evidenced in personal communication. Harwood Fisher uses a Structural View to highlight similarities in the logical form of the linguistic representations of Donald Trump, his avid followers ('Trumpers'), and the paranoid--referred to as 'The Trio.' He demonstrates how the Structural View forms a series of logical and schematic patterns, similar to the way that content analysis can bring forth associations meanings, and concepts held in the text. Such comparisons, Fisher argues, can be used to shed light on contingencies for presenting, representing, and judging truth. Specifically, Fisher posits that the major syntactic and logical patterns that were used to produce the computer-generated 'paranoid' responses in Colby's project can be used to analyze Donald Trump's rhetoric and his followers' reactions to it. Ultimately, Fisher offers a new kind of structural approach for the philosophy of psychology. This novel work will appeal to students and scholars of social and cognitive psychology, psychology of personality, psychiatric classification, psycholinguistics, rhetoric, and computer science."--Provided by publisher Front Matter ....Pages i-ix The Structural View (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 1-17 Values, Features, and Heuristics of a Structural View (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 19-31 Reduction Versus the Expanding Manifold (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 33-41 Development and History as Parameters of the Expanding Manifold (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 43-50 Metaphor, Geometric Space, and the Structural View (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 51-57 Logic and Schema Modalities (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 59-94 The Proactive SV: Logical Form, Truth, and Sociopolitical Analogies (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 95-118 The Metaphoric Float (Harwood Fisher)....Pages 119-129 Back Matter ....Pages 131-167