Cognitive Psychiatry and the processual refoundation of epistemology: Logos, concept, word, proposition and truth from Plato to analytic philosophy
Giovanna Azevedo Rodrigues, Marcelo Eduardo Caixeta
Research Society and Development October 9, 2026 DOI: 10.33448/rsd-v15i10.51800 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that philosophy from Kant through Frege, Carnap and Quine focused on the finished proposition rather than the cognitive process producing it, and proposes instead a processual epistemology in which the proposition is the terminal stage of a sequence beginning in the organism-world relation. Distinguishes objectual, formal and cognitive-processual questions about truth, treating error, lie and paradox as causally produced, explainable cognitive events; the ontological claims are presented as hypotheses. |
Abstract
This theoretical article examines the relation between logos, concept, word, proposition and truth from Plato to analytic philosophy and proposes, from the standpoint of Cognitive Psychiatry, a processual reading of epistemology. The method is a qualitative conceptual essay supported by a narrative review of classical sources and of literature published between 2021 and 2026. The historical reconstruction follows the conversion of Kantian analyticity into logical deducibility by Frege, its relativisation to linguistic frameworks by Carnap and its rejection by Quine. We argue that these three moments share an exclusive attention to the finished product of thought, so that the proposition came to be treated as the original unit of knowledge and the cognitive process that generates it was left outside epistemology. The proposal reverses this order: the proposition is the terminal and relatively stabilised stage of a sequence that begins in the organism-world relation and passes through praxization, transduction of the processuality of the real, concept formation, perspectivation and conceptual hooks before reaching word and proposition. Three questions about truth are distinguished (objectual, formal and cognitive-processual), which allows error, lie and paradox to be treated as real, causally produced and explainable cognitive events. Recent work on analyticity, enactive cognition, process ontology, context-dependent concepts, word learning and scientific progress converges with separate components of the proposal, although its ontological claims remain hypotheses. Science is understood as an intersubjective, correctable and progressively deepened processualisation of the real, within a cognitive-processual realism.