Facts, Concepts, and Theories: The Shape of Psychology's Epistemic Triangle (original) (raw)

Psychology’s epistemic projects

Theory & Psychology, 2019

What are the epistemic projects of psychology? What insights does psychology seek to produce, and what kinds of knowledge are adequate for the psychological challenges of contemporary worlds? These are the fundamental questions we address in this special issue. Dating back more than a century, psychology emerged as a discipline in a specific context with specific challenges and tasks. Since then, societies, humans, and the world have changed, and the pace itself at which changes take place has accelerated considerably over the past couple of decades. It is time to pause and revise psychology’s epistemic projects. More than finding solutions to particular shortcomings, the discipline needs to reflect on how psychology comes to define particular phenomena as areas of scientific concern, what kinds of phenomena are relevant and for whom, and how the disciplinary shaping of psychological concerns has a bearing on what can and will be researched.

Multiple methods in psychology: Epistemological grounding and the possibility of unity

Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 1999

The problem of methodological pluralism in psychology is addressed. The dominant paradigm, in which experimental methods are assigned top priority and quantification is preferred over qualitative methods, is no longer tenable in light of criticisms by philosophers of science and psychologists. The emergence of a panoply of alternative methods is reviewed and the problems of constructionism, eclecticism, and fragmentation are delineated. Solutions based on an indigenous epistemological foundation for psychology are sought in Continental philosophy. The commensurability of experimental, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological psychologies is explored in an effort to secure unity among diverse methods. Educational requirements for a new kind of scientific research in the twenty-first century are discussed. It is a truism to say that there are many different ways in which knowledge is sought in psychology. In textbooks that introduce students to the discipline, the first chapter usually contains a description of multiple methods, such as naturalistic observation, case study, survey, correlational research, and experimentation. Procedures such as interviewing, standardized testing, operational definition of variables, and statistical methods of analyzing data are included. Although much of the pedagogy in our field emphasizes that psychology is a discipline with diverse viewpoints and that its history is filled with controversies, the presentation of research methods is startlingly univocal, with lr

Psychology: The empirical study of epistemology and phenomenology

Review of General Psychology, 2013

Though psychology is now fractured, it was not always so. Psychology formed as a distinct discipline when researchers tried to use empirical evidence to answer epistemological and phenomenological questions—questions about knowledge and experience. The current subdisciplines of psychology can be understood as putting emphasis on different parts of the answer to those very complicated questions. Even radical behaviorism, long treated as a pariah among approaches to psychology, can be understood as providing insights into nature of mundane, daily acts of knowing and experiencing. This can be seen in the tradition of descriptive mentalism that connects from Charles Sanders Peirce and William James through to the present. This line of thinking has the potential to unify the field, by allowing us to distinguish core from peripheral questions and to understand how the various interests of individual psychologists fit together, in service of an overarching goal.

Investigation and its discontents: Some constraints on progress in psychological research

American Psychologist, 1980

This article examines a number of prominent trends in the conduct of psychological research and considers how they may limit progress in our field. Failure to appreciate important differences in temperament among researchers, as well as differences. in the particular talents researchers bring to their work, has prevented the development in psychology of a vigorous tradition of fruitful theoretical inquiry. Misplaced emphasis on quantitative "productivity," a problem for all disciplines, is shown to have particularly unfortunate results in psychology. Problems associated with the distorting effects of seeking grant support are shown to interact with the first two difficulties. Finally, the distorting effects of certain kinds of experimental studies are discussed, together with their implications for progress in this field.

Myths of science: Misconceptions of science in contemporary psychology.

Theory & Psychology, 1992

There is, unfortunately, a large vestigial heritage of positivist errors, and distortions of positivist errors, concerning the nature of science that still permeate psychology. This article contributes to contemporary debates concerning the metascience of psychology not by proposing a positive program of scientific norms and values, but by addressing and countering a number of these errors, these residual myths, concerning the nature of science.

Method and Theoretical Psychology

Few discussions of method appear in relation to the conception and practice of theoretical psychology, despite calls for a theoretical subdiscipline and other forms of organization. This paper argues that the popular conception of method as explicit rule detracts from recognition of the practical and ethical implications of attention to theoretical psychology's own implicit methodological problems. It challenges the necessity of the method as rule view through analysis of two divergent historical accounts of method (Descartes and Vico) arising in relation to the emergence of modern science. The principal argument is that a broader conception of method is both historically warranted and appropriate to the projects of theoretical psychology.

Toward a Richer View of the Scientific Method: The Role of Conceptual Analysis

American Psychologist, 2007

Within the complex set of activities that comprise the scientific method, three clusters of activities can be recognized: experimentation, mathematization, and conceptual analysis. In psychology, the first two of these clusters are well-known and valued, but the third seems less known and valued. The authors show the value of these three clusters of scientific method activities in the works of

Psychology's Inescapable Need for Conceptual Clarification

Wittgenstein’s assessment of the state of psychology – while falling short of complete condemnation – is grave. Taken seriously it should be a cause of concern for anyone working in the discipline today. But, should it been taken seriously? Was Wittgenstein’s evaluation ever justified? More urgently, is it still an accurate portrayal of psychology as practiced today? This paper argues it was and still is, and that this fact highlights an urgent and inescapable need for conceptual clarification in psychology.