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interactionism

n.

1. the position that mind and body are distinct, incompatible substances that nevertheless interact, so that each has a causal influence on the other. This position is particularly associated with René Descartes. See Cartesian dualism; mind–body problem.

2. a set of approaches, particularly in personality psychology, in which behavior is explained not in terms of personality attributes or situational influences but by references to interactions that typify the behavior of a certain type of person in a certain type of setting. —interactionist adj.

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Psychology term of the day

January 30th 2025

Gödel’s proof

Gödel’s proof

a proof that in any logic system at least as powerful as arithmetic it is possible to state theorems that can be proved to be neither true nor false, using only the proof rules of that system. Published in 1931, this incompleteness result was very challenging to the mathematics of the time. British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954), with his proof of the undecidability of the halting problem, extended this result to computation (see Turing machine). [Kurt Gödel (1906–1978), Austrian-born U.S. mathematician]