Theory & Psychology

The inference from order to quantity is fundamental to psychometrics because the sorts of attributes that psychometricians aspire to measure are experienced directly only as ordered and, yet, it is concluded that such attributes are measurable on interval scales (i.e., that they are quantitative). This inference has been a feature of psychometrics since early last century, before which it permeated scientific thought and played a role in the development of psychophysics. Despite this, its cogency has been analysed only rarely. Elsewhere, I have argued that it is not deductively valid, a point that might be considered obvious except that attempts have been made to show otherwise. Its invalidity displayed, it is easily shown that it is not inductively reasonable either. However, it might still be urged that the inference from order to quantity is an inference to the best explanation: that is, that quantitative structure is reasonably abduced from order. I argue that the opposite is true: the most plausible hypothesis is that the sorts of attributes psychometricians aspire to measure are merely ordinal attributes with impure differences of degree, a feature logically incompatible with quantitative structure. If so, psychometrics is built upon a myth.

According to the correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if the world is as the proposition says it is. This theory has been both promoted and rejected by philosophers and scientists down through time. In this paper, we adopt the correspondence theory as a plausible theory of truth and relate it to science. First, we briefly outline the major extant theories of truth. We then present the correspondence theory in a form that enables us to show that the theory uniquely fulfills a crucial function in psychological research, because the interpretation of truth claims as suppositions that concern states of affairs in the world clearly explicates what it means for a theory to be true, and what it means for a theory to be false. For this reason, correspondence truth has the advantage of allowing researchers to properly understand the assumptions of scientific research as claims about the factual state of the world, and to scrutinize these assumptions. It is concluded that correspondence truth plays an important part in our understanding of science, including psychology.

Although the theoretical foundations of construct validity theory have been fairly well described, there remains equivocation over what should properly be taken to be its philosophical underpinnings, with some characterizing it as an essentially positivist enterprise, others identifying a realist philosophy underlying the theory, and others still characterizing its foundations as containing elements of both positivist and realist thinking. This paper summarizes recent work representing each of these three different stances on the philosophical foundations of construct validity theory. Explicit connections are drawn between the work of Herbert Feigl—who pioneered a philosophy of science whose roots lay in logical positivism, but which contained notably realist overtones—and early specifications of construct validity theory. Finally, an appeal is made for a realist interpretation of construct validity theory based both on the connections between early articulations of the theory and key Feiglian ideas and also on Cronbach and Meehl’s later reflections on the origins of their influential work.

Conceptual analysis, like any exclusively theoretical activity, is far from overrated in current psychology. Such a situation can be related both to the contingent influences of contextual and historical character and to the more essential metatheoretical reasons. After a short discussion of the latter it is argued that even within a strictly empirical psychology there are non-trivial tasks that can be attached to well-defined and methodologically reliable, conceptual work. This kind of method, inspired by the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Strawson (conceptual grammar), and Gilbert Ryle (conceptual geography), is proposed and formally depicted as being holistic, descriptive, and connective. Finally, the newly presented framework of connective conceptual analysis is defended against the “Charge from Psychology,” in a version developed by William Ramsey, claiming that conceptual analysis is based on psychological assumptions that have already been refuted by empirical psychology.

Edmund Husserl’s seminal work The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy deals extensively with psychology. He even titled his Prague lecture of November 1935—which served as the basis of the book—The Crisis of European Sciences and Psychology. Husserl’s work is undoubtedly one of the most important critical assessments of psychology. Husserl criticized not only psychology’s methods (i.e., for mimicking the hard sciences), but also the very place of the discipline. His argument can be condensed as follows: the objectivization of science engendered a problematic subjectivity which, in turn, created a need for a psychology. The very paradox of this, viewed from the perspective of the interwar period, led Husserl to declare a crisis of the sciences and, especially, of psychology. Surprisingly, until now Husserl’s critique and defiance have been rarely discussed within the psy-sciences. This paper aims to reopen the debate, beginning with the concept of the life-world, the main concept developed in Crisis. However, as will be argued, that very concept is also the place where Husserl refrains from a radical critique of psychology and where his supposed phenomenological vantage point eventually facilitates the transition from psychologism to psychologization.

A number of prominent theoretical psychologists employ the ideas of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas to address what they take to be a harmful scientism and serious ethical blind spots in modern psychology. We argue that while Levinas’s approach no doubt incorporates a powerful and invaluable turn to ethics, it seems cryptic, limited, and one-sided in some important respects. We illustrate some of the ways these limitations show up in theoretical psychology critiques and suggest that philosophical hermeneutics and the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin present a fuller and more balanced picture of human agency without diluting the crucial insights conveyed by Levinas’s insistence on “ethics as first philosophy.”

Attempts to establish biological foundations of moral decision-making reflect a general failure to identify just what renders a decision “moral.” Moreover, there is a comparably general confusion as to what is foundational in such inquiries. The foundations are metaphysical and the noninferential data of relevance are provided at the phenomenological level.

This essay reviews two books addressing the nature of the self, and relationships between self and others in the context of modernity and globalization. While each book has many merits of its own, they provide for a particularly interesting and thought-provoking joint reading. I see them as opening up a broader debate about pluralism of self and philosophy of the social sciences. Rather than a self in the singular characteristic of Adams’ post-Freudian account, the contemporary self may have a psychology, for example, of superegos, identities, and reflexivities. Furthermore, in order to address the nature of selves, relationships, and societies in a way that is valid and applicable in a global world, we also need to rethink the social sciences in plural terms. The challenge and opportunity that we face today, in my view, is one of bridging universal theories with cultural ones.