Philosophy of Science/Psychology

I talked a little bit about the philosophy of psychology a while ago. I keep encountering it this semester. My counseling psychology class talks about the different assumptions that varying approaches to therapy make: psychoanalysis (very deterministic), existential therapy (compatibilistic – also, the concept of existential anxiety, which I am fond of), and many of the other therapies simply state that personality is one thing we can control, though with struggle. My research methods class brought up the cause and effect relationship between behaviors, which is a fairly deterministic idea. Behavior doesn’t NOT have an antecedent (I say it with the double negative to emphasize that chance is not involved). We do not act out of a vacuum, we respond.

So I went and spoke with my professor after class about it. He gave me two articles to read on the topic and I have worked my way through one of them (the stuff I want to read never gets done as quickly). More context for this discussion came from a book I read over spring break called Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior. I lent the book to a friend (who is doing social psychological research) the moment I finished it – I hope he enjoys a good polemic. In any case, I will not be able to quote from it here.

In the natural sciences there are six basic assumptions we make: (1) “nature is orderly . . . events do not just occur”, (2) “we can know nature . . . the basic conviction that human beings are just as much a part of nature as any other object,” (3) “all natural phenomenon have natural causes” (no supernaturalism), (4) “nothing is self evident . . . claims for truth must be demonstrated objectively,” (5) “knowledge is based on experience . . . we must rely on our [sensual] perceptions, experience, and observations,” (6) “knowledge is superior to ignorance . . . [this belief] is diametrically opposed to the position taken by approaches based on absolute truth” (footnote).

The article assumes these are true for the social sciences as well as the natural sciences, as well they should be. But Dark Ages points out that we have nicety ideas about humanity that we need to rid ourselves of before we can make much progress with the social sciences. He lays out five arguments, I will report the few I can remember (all of these being reasons social scientists put forth for not being able to study humans well): (1) humans have free will, therefore we cannot predict much behavior; and (2) humans cannot be objective when studying other humans, resulting in inaccurate results from the studies.

McIntyre has written another book on this topic and has basically come to the conclusion that the arguments are so weak that he does not even think the people who use them believe them and that they were excuses for being afraid to find the real answers. Free will is an empirical question. We can test it – so why not try? Humans are a part of nature, and we have stayed empirical and objective about it, and we have had some small victories in the social sciences, so let’s up the ante and do it better.

I do not know if many of the things McIntyre says are true at the UMN. He accuses social scientists of approaching theories as if they should validate the theory instead of test its validity. I feel like the scientists I have met have all been good at what they do. That does not mean they were always right, it just means they are honest scientists.

Also, McIntyre does not really address the ethics involved in testing on human subjects – we cannot raise humans in our labs controlling their environments; we cannot instigate riots to see what were the triggers that tipped it over the edge; we cannot ask humans about illegal activities without some of them having to be reported; we cannot get accurate responses from participants because they (1) try to responded affirmatively because they want to help the researcher, (2) if you are asking them something that social norms say you should not ask about – they may respond with lies trying to portray themselves more positively, (3) they may not understand the task (4) etc etc etc. There are whole books written on simply how to reduce these factors in experiments.

This post kind of evolved into a discussion on experiments rather than the philosophy of psychology. To tie the themes together, I would say there is a deterministic nature about the natural sciences and that psychologists would like to recognize that in their science as well, but I do not think they recognize that directly. I think a philosophy of science course would be a good required course for all those entering an empirically based degree, and it would be totally fun.

1. Frankfort-Nachmias, C. & Nachmias, D. Research Methods in the Social Sciences 7th Ed.