The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology: Methods, Approaches, and New Directions for Social Sciences

By Jack Martin and Jeff Sugarman

The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology presents a comprehensive exploration of the wide range of methodological approaches utilized in the contemporary field of theoretical and philosophical psychology.

• The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology presents a comprehensive exploration of the wide range of methodological approaches utilized in the contemporary field of theoretical and philosophical psychology.
• Gathers together for the first time all the approaches and methods that define scholarly practice in theoretical and philosophical psychology
• Chapters explore various philosophical and conceptual approaches, historical approaches, narrative approaches to the nature of human conduct, mixed-method studies of psychology and psychological inquiry, and various theoretical bases of contemporary psychotherapeutic practices
• Features contributions from ten Past Presidents of the Society of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, along with several Past Presidents of other relevant societies

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: May 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781118748312

Book preview

Part I

Philosophical/Conceptual Approaches

2

Philosophical Anthropology

Matthew LaVine and Michael A. Tissaw

In this essay, we present features of a systematic, historical approach to investigating the concepts and forms of explanation used in the study of humans. Although Peter Hacker’s (2007) philosophical anthropology¹ (hereafter PA) is, in principle, applicable to all of the humanities and social/behavioral sciences, our discussion of it is aimed at psychologists who are amenable to the proposal that philosophical investigation of the concepts they use can be of value to their theoretical and empirical endeavors. In Section 1, we lay out several ways in which Wittgenstein’s (1953) views on philosophy and philosophical method are foundational to PA. In addition to positioning Hacker’s project in context, this will afford introduction of five key distinctions: empirical versus grammatical propositions, sense and nonsense, surface/depth grammar, the inner and outer, and descriptive versus expressive uses of language. These distinctions undergird Section 2, where we discuss PA’s primary target: the framework of categories set up by Descartes that persist in current neo-Cartesian perspectives on the nature of human beings. Elaborating two senses of Cartesianism (historical and grammatical) sets the stage for our concluding section, where we address PA’s role as a counter to scientism in the human sciences, summarize principles of its alternative to Cartesianism (Wittgensteinian monism), and suggest ways in which PA can inform future critiques of psychological theorizing and research.

For two reasons, PA presents daunting challenges to anyone proposing to do it justice in summary. First, Hacker combines narratives of conceptual developments and debates over the history of philosophy and in other areas of inquiry (e.g., theology and law) with philosophical analyses of turns and twists in those debates. Second, there is the matter of PA’s foundations in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, which presents exegetical and explicative challenges of its own. Fortunately, the purposes of the current volume encourage focus on the fundamental underpinnings of PA as a methodological perspective applicable to psychology. This means that we will not address details of the historical developments of categories to which Hacker applies PA. We strongly encourage readers to examine Hacker’s own account of those developments.

1. The Connection to Wittgenstein

Philosophical anthropology extends Wittgenstein’s general philosophical project in two interrelated ways; first, by explicitly assenting to Wittgenstein’s views on philosophy and philosophical method and, second, by promoting particular applications of the method as paradigms for further analysis. Below, we summarize three aspects of Wittgenstein’s (1953, §§89–133) views on philosophy and philosophical method most relevant to PA. Then we expand on these to introduce fundamental terminology and make more in-depth connections to Hacker’s (2007, 7–14) views on philosophical investigation.

Philosophy’s purpose and philosophical work. Philosophy’s purpose is to resolve philosophical problems that are due to misunderstandings about the possibilities of linguistic meaning. Resolving philosophical problems requires acknowledgment of the possibility of such misunderstanding. The nature and extent of misunderstanding can be revealed by comparing the way(s) in which we use words in specialized contexts with how they are used in everyday contexts (e.g., teaching contexts). Thus, philosophical work often consists in assembling and arranging reminders of how we use language (cf. Wittgenstein 1953, §§90, 109, 122, 123, 127).

Philosophy’s limits. The process of assembling and arranging reminders is descriptive only of uses of language that are open to view and not explanatory of anything that may be hidden behind our uses of language. Since philosophy does not explain, its considerations are not scientific and it does not hypothesize or advance any kind of theory. Philosophy can be regarded as what is possible before scientific and other forms of investigation and discovery (cf. §§109, 126).

Philosophy’s results. Reminders of language use can illuminate the sources of philosophical problems, potentially paving the way to sound empirical theorizing and research. A significant result of philosophical work is the identification of nonsense, or forms of word use that are not meaningful in ways we had assumed. Our habits of using words and the ways in which we tend to think about their uses often make us overlook this nonsense (cf. §§119, 132).

These points should not be taken as suggesting that philosophy need be an adversary to the empirical sciences. But, they form a singular position on what distinguishes philosophical problems and explanations and their resolution from problems and explanations in the sciences. That all three points set philosophy apart from the empirical sciences only suggests that philosophers and scientists alike should be wary of misconstruing philosophical problems as empirical problems. To say that philosophy is descriptive only (Point 2) is just to say that its method and products are entirely unlike those of the sciences. In other words, the products of philosophy are distinguishable from the products of science by the methods from which they emerge and clearly, those methods are not scientific. We will have more to say on this below.

Philosophical problems tend to share two characteristics (Point 1). The first is their seeming intractability and the second is that they often stem from an implicit referentialist conception of language, whereby it is mistakenly assumed that the primary function of words is to stand for (or represent) objects and/or events. It is easy to see how the two can be interwoven; a problem seems intractable because we take a referentialist stance toward it. As a corollary, combined with a referentialist stance, the seeming intractability of a philosophical problem will morph into puzzlement as to how the problem can be addressed empirically; so we will tend to look for objects and events in the world to resolve our puzzlement. Thus, we succumb to a kind of threshold fallacy: the problem exists only because we have mistakenly taken for granted its intelligibility as an empirical (or scientific) problem.

Forms of Explanation: Empirical Versus Grammatical Propositions

From the perspective of PA, our tendency to misconstrue philosophical problems as empirical problems stems from the psychological and anthropological concepts and forms of explanation characteristic of our thinking about human nature. Although we use the concepts effortlessly and correctly in our everyday lives, we become puzzled when reflecting upon them. So too with our forms of explanation; except in contexts of serious inquiry, these forms of explanation may be construed as epiphenomenal, or forms of causal explanation, and so no different in principle from the forms of explanation characteristic of the sciences or as reducible to such forms (Hacker 2007, 13).

So, along with heeding the distinction between philosophical and scientific problems, we must heed the distinction between forms of explanation in philosophy and science and the products of philosophical and scientific work, respectively. Science produces and tests empirical propositions. Via analysis of the possibilities of language use, philosophy produces grammatical propositions (Hacker 2007, 9). Following Wittgenstein, Hacker warns against mistaking the latter for the former, not so much to contrast the products of science and philosophy, but to remind us that oftentimes those products look very similar. Is the statement Every rod has a length (Wittgenstein 1953, §251; Hacker 2007, 8) an empirical proposition that describes the nature of rods? We would not even think of testing it empirically because when we speak of a rod, we speak of an object that has length. Now consider the proposition Every rod on this table has the same length. Insofar as this proposition is testable, it is an empirical proposition. However, this simple distinction might lead referentialists to overlook something very important. They might assume that the function of Every rod has a length is to attach a property (length) to an object (rod). But, Every rod has a length is not a factual assertion about every rod in the world. Instead, it spells out rules for uses of the words rod and length. This is what makes it a grammatical proposition. The fundamental point here is that statements that appear to express necessary truths about the world…are actually no more than grammatical propositions that are implicitly about the use of words (Hacker 2007, 9).

Although we do no empirical work with grammatical propositions, keeping an eye out for them can be a key to conducting worthwhile empirical research in psychology. Suppose researchers conduct an investigation to see whether extraverted undergraduates are more likely than introverted undergraduates to join campus-sponsored social groups. Assuming they use a valid and reliable personality inventory – a huge assumption – it is possible that findings supporting the researchers’ hypothesis might simply reflect the internal, grammatical relationships between what is meant by extroversion and the actions of people counted as extroverts. In other words, rather than the research results being due only to the behaviors of undergraduates, perhaps they are anticipated by the rules governing the meaningful use of extroversion and its cognates. So, by crossing the threshold without due diligence to the distinction between grammatical and empirical propositions, the researchers unwittingly add to the expansive and expanding midden of pseudoempirical psychological research.² To prevent this, prior to designing and conducting their research, the researchers might have considered whether it would be worthwhile to investigate the question, Will introverted undergraduates be more likely than extroverted undergraduates to join campus-sponsored social groups? Is there any doubt that research will produce a negative answer to this question?

Sense and Nonsense

The foregoing brings us to Wittgenstein’s suggestion that philosophy can be regarded as what is possible before scientific discovery (Point 2). It may be true that plenty of good psychological research and theorizing have been done apart from any such philosophizing. But it would be wrong to assume that before here simply means temporally prior to conducting empirical research. This is not what Wittgenstein (1953, §126) means when he says: One might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions. He is not saying, "Do philosophy my way before you conduct empirical research. Rather, he is giving voice to the view, generally characteristic of early/middle 20th-century analytical philosophy, that questions of meaning antecede questions of truth [emphasis added], and are separable from empirical questions of fact" (Hacker 1996b, 195). Since, in this way, PA holds that philosophical work antecedes empirical work, there must be clear markers for success and failure in philosophical work. This is one role played by sense and nonsense in Wittgenstein’s and Hacker’s work (Points 2 and 3). Sense and nonsense are to philosophy what truth and falsity are to science. Falsehood results when scientists err in their observations, measurements, hypotheses, and theories. Nonsense results from using words contrary to their rules of use and sometimes when an extant expression is given a new, perhaps technical or quasi-technical use, and the new use is inadvertently crossed with the old… (Bennett and Hacker 2003a, 6). Nonsensical uses of words do not (necessarily) amount to absurdity, foolishness, falsity, and the like. Rather, in this context, nonsense is similar to meaningless or useless in that when we utter nonsense, we do not do the sort of work with our words that we assume is being done.

Surface/Depth Grammar

We have said that in addition to their seeming intractability, a second characteristic of philosophical problems is that they often stem from an implicit referentialist conception of language. Importantly, this conception contributes to our not noticing occasions in which the superficial similarities in words and sentences conceal deep differences in their possible meanings. One common error of this sort is to assume that the semantics of a subject-predicate sentence must attribute a property to an object. Wittgenstein (1953, §664) brings out errors of this sort in his distinction between surface and depth grammar.

Grammar, in Wittgenstein’s sense, refers to any sense- or meaning-determining rules for the use of words that are not merely syntactical (Hacker 2007, 9). We might say that the purview of grammatical investigation includes all that is implicated in language-in-use, including possible, borderline, and impossible uses (Harré and Tissaw 2005, 135). Compare the sentences I have a pin and I have a pain (Glock 1996, 154; Hacker 1996a, 708). They have the same surface grammar, in that their superficial appearance (or apparent sentence structure) is the same. But this sameness in surface grammar can obscure their very different depth grammars. Can we say that pains are objects, like pins? Can I give you a pain like I can give you a pin? It is important to note that in this case, the primary source of potential problems is not differences in reference of pin and pain (as referentialists would be inclined to assume); it is the depth grammar of to have when used in conjunction with them.

If we do not recognize differences in depth grammar, we risk unwittingly positing fictions, such as inner (Cartesian) objects. Many of the terms and metaphors used in psychology are potentially misleading in this way. For example, consider the term personality trait and the metaphor memory stores. In everyday discourse, the surface grammars of ways we routinely use personality suggest it functions as other nouns do. "She has an introverted personality has the same surface grammar as She has a green car. This might lead us to think that personality" functions as a noun. But that is not all. The surface grammar of these two sentences might lead us to assume something is working behind the scenes (introversion) that fits or even causes the behaviors, attitudes, and so on of introverted persons. These problems are compounded by definitions of trait that essentially reduce persons to psychological trait-parts (e.g., McAdams and Pals 2006). If we evaluate the depth grammars of personality and person, we see that the former does not function semantically as other nouns do and that whole persons, not traits, are introverted, friendly, vulnerable, etc. (Tissaw 2013, 21–22). Now, turning briefly to a potentially misleading metaphor, the psychology instructor who speaks of memory stores risks their students believing there are places in the brain that actually store memories, much like containers (see Bennett and Hacker 2003a, 158–171)! That we recognize certain terms in psychology as metaphors does not make them innocent and the assumption that future research will result in exchanging factual specificity for metaphor does not guarantee adequate attention to the dangers of surface grammar.

The Inner–Outer Distinction

There are many ways in which surface grammar can mislead psychologists. As suggested above, one widespread confusion has to do with uses of language that influence our thinking on the interaction between the inner and the outer; the former purportedly pertaining to the mind or brain and the latter presumably pertaining to behavior, things and events in the world, and so on. For example, philosophers, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have had a lot to say about so-called internal (or mental) representations.³ No one questions that all sorts of things are going on with the brain when persons are engaged in physical and cognitive activities, or that people talk about internal images and the like. But why do cognitive scientists and neuroscientists call these representations? Bennett and Hacker (2003a, 192–193) suggest it is due to the fact that people do perceive many kinds of representations; for example in paintings, photographs, maps, and varieties of written and verbal description. We can speak of paintings in terms of their representational properties (e.g., colors and locations of depicted objects) and non-representational properties (e.g., properties of the paint, the canvas, and brush strokes). But, in order to apprehend a painting’s representational properties, we must be able to perceive its nonrepresentational properties. That is, to talk about what a painting depicts, to think of it as skillfully done, etc., we must be able to see the pigments as they are on the canvas. Now contrast this with how we might speak of an internal representation of the painting. We cannot speak of it as having representational properties because its colors are not of any pigments, but only of the objects that make up the representation. If internal representations have no representational properties, should we say they are representations?

Descriptive and Expressive uses of Language

There is a close connection between sense and nonsense and surface and depth grammar in the philosophical analysis of important concepts used in psychology and other disciplines. When we overlook differences in depth grammar, we utter nonsense by speaking of pains as if they are pins, of persons as if they are composed of psychological parts, of memory as if it is a kitchen cupboard, and of internal representations as we do paintings on a wall. All of these distinctions can be interwoven with Wittgenstein’s (e.g., 1953, §244) distinction between third-person descriptive and first-person expressive uses of language.

One of Wittgenstein’s greatest achievements was to show that it is mistaken to think that we use first-person utterances like My knee hurts to describe anything, despite the fact that its third-person counterpart, Her knee hurts, clearly is meant as a description. If the former were meant as a description, it would be subject to judgments of truth and falsity. Thus, we would be licensed to ask whether or not the person has gotten their description right. But to ask whether they are sure they are in pain would be an odd practice indeed! We might question the sincerity of their utterance; but when sincerity is not in question, neither is the question of whether or not the person was mistaken in uttering My knee hurts.

We tend not to question the sincerity of a year-old child who cries upon falling and hurting their knee. Wittgenstein (1953, §244) uses this example to show that the teaching practices employed by caregivers to teach their young children sensation and emotion vocabularies typically do not involve questions of truth, falsity, and first-person description on the part of the language apprentice. So we should be skeptical about any proposal that assumes the forms of language use that grow out of such teaching practices are descriptive. A cry signaling pain goes out into the world; it does not point to anything inner. It does not describe, but it does express. So, instead of – or along with – crying, when an older child has learned to say My knee hurts, they show they have learned to substitute the natural expression of crying with the linguistic expression.⁴

Another reason why My knee hurts is not a description takes us right to Section 2, where we turn to PA’s treatment of Cartesianism. It is that the bodily feelings, processes, states of mind, etc., in such avowals are not independent of the utterances of the words themselves. How could we survey the former, one at a time, so as to match them with the latter – as if we were creating a crude picture of what is true or false? Now this does not mean that the words and the states are identical, either. That would lead to an equally crude behaviorism. Wittgenstein was not a behaviorist and Hacker’s PA carries no elements of behaviorism. Rather, the utterance My knee hurts is an expression of pain for these thinkers. Having the disposition or inclination to express oneself in this and in other ways are then part of the very experience and expression of pain. Thus, grammatically, there is no gap to be filled between the pain itself and the sincere avowal.

2. The Radically Defective Framework

What we have said about the trait concept in current theorizing on personality is owed to Hacker’s (2007) account of the person concept as a category that has been (and is) central to our thoughts about ourselves, our nature, and our moral and legal relations (285). We suggested that one reason persons are portrayed as being made up of psychological parts is inattention to depth grammar. Hacker’s historical analysis shows that this was not always so and at a pivot point in his analysis of person, he says that in order to break the grip of incoherences involving the concept, one must start afresh by rejecting a radically defective framework that, after hundreds of years, continues to be at the root of extensive confusions (310). That Cartesianism is the defective framework might bring yawns to those who think they know enough about it to have rejected it. But, we caution that Hacker’s account of Cartesianism may cause discomfort even to the most die-hard, self-styled anti-Cartesians.

A typical account of Cartesianism suggests the positing of a mind-body dualism, expressed in what is said about the relationships between overt behavior and supposed inner states and processes of mind. Importantly, Hacker (241) reminds us that Descartes conceived of the mind as an immaterial substance. Anti-Cartesianism typically suggests some kind of rejection or reduction of one side of the dichotomy. Of course, both perspectives take various forms, with all sorts of subtleties. Whatever their forms, most of us are inclined to think of Cartesianism and its alternatives as incompatible, even perhaps diametrically opposed. However, Hacker (2007) applies the label Cartesian to a variety of modern theoretical perspectives in psychology and related disciplines that are consistent not only with Cartesianism as it is typically understood, but with anti-Cartesianism as we have described it. This means that a psychologist or neuroscientist who rejects the mind side of the mind-body dichotomy may be an unwitting Cartesian. We will explain some justifications for this bold thesis by following two distinct (but related) routes that will call to mind much of what we have said in the previous section. The first route is grammatical; the second is historical.

Cartesianism in the Grammatical Sense

In Section 1, by brief example we illustrated the distinctions between surface/depth grammar, the inner and outer, and descriptive and expressive uses of language. The examples were not only intended to clarify the distinctions, but to provide some background for introducing the grammatical sense of Cartesianism. The I have a pin and I have a pain example was particularly instructive in this respect and we expand on it here because we connected it to the referentialist conception of language and the positing of fictions, such as inner (Cartesian) objects. We observed that to assume these two sentences differ in their grammatical properties because they reference different types of substance (pin and pain) is to fall into a Cartesian trap because pain is not a substance concept at all. For, if it did reference a substance, we could find evidence for it. But, when we are in pain and utter I have a pain, we do so without any evidence. To make an utterance of this sort sincerely, we do not have to search, inspect, or introspect for anything. Nor do we have to observe our own behavior to find out we are in pain (Hacker 2007, 268). We simply experience pain and express ourselves, oftentimes automatically and without hesitation. Such automaticity ought to be viewed as brash and dogmatic when it occurs in descriptions of substances in certain states. That is, if an utterance describes a substance, we ought to be able to check the substance to see if it matches the description, prior to making the utterance. Since an automatic utterance of I have a pain is neither brash nor dogmatic, it is not an example of descriptive language.

One way to be a Cartesian in the grammatical sense is to think of first-person talk of the mental as a different species of the same genus as normal, fact-stating discourse. Much like a child’s pain is manifest when she falls and cries, my pain is usually manifest when I utter a sentence like I have a pain in appropriate contexts. This is, in part, what it means to say that certain behaviors are criterial of a person being in certain states. Furthermore, although another person can independently make sure I have a pin, they cannot do so with my pain. It would be quite unusual for a conversational partner to ask if I am sure that I am in pain. But it would be perfectly reasonable for them to ask if I am sure I have a pin. In fact, it is a general mark of factual descriptions that we have a way to satisfy such doubts. In this respect and in this respect only, the first-person I have a pin is much like the third-person observation She has a pain.

There is another way to think about all of this. Following Wittgenstein, Hacker (and the present authors) are questioning the implicit assumption, so evident in the history of philosophy and modern psychology, that psychological concepts are names of (or refer to) entities of any kind. Again, if psychological concepts referred to mental or physical entities, then the names and the entities would be independent of each other. (For instance, memory would refer to the particular structure or set of structures of the brain that have been implicated in remembering.) If this were the case, beyond the issue of sincerity, questions of truth and falsity (and of verification) would be justified. Furthermore, in teaching a child to use words pertaining to bodily feelings and subjective states of mind, there are no internal props at hand to forge a firm connection between the words and feelings or states of mind. All of this suggests that conceiving of our mental vocabulary on the model of object and designation is simply mistaken and must be abandoned.

Two Historical Senses of Cartesianism

To be a Cartesian in the historical sense is to work in the shadow of Descartes in at least one of two ways. The first, which we term superficial, simply involves adopting some form of dualism. Much of Hacker’s historical analyses of categories such as substance, agency, and the mind, aim to show that Cartesian dualism provided the framework of thought about the nature of mankind for the modern era, partly in the sense that the dominant trend was some form or other of dualism… (2007, 25). But there is a more interesting and much deeper sense (Hacker’s words) that involves reflecting on and responding to dualism in terms of the categories Descartes established to posit mind and body. So, in this sense, we may commit to Cartesianism as much by reducing all mental and behavioral predicates to one or the other side of the mind-body dichotomy as by accepting the dichotomy more or less as Descartes presented it. According to Hacker, almost all psychological and philosophical perspectives on the psychology of persons since Descartes can be seen as Cartesian in this deeper sense.

The upshot is that Cartesianism, in the sense of thinking in terms of dualistic principles, is far more prevalent than most of us would think. Twentieth-century ontological behaviorism attempted to reject the immaterial side of Descartes’ dichotomy, while maintaining the material side. All that once was psychological became behavioral. Among other things, this necessitated a deeper reworking of Descartes’ fundamental conception of thought as characterizing mind. So, for example, Watson (1924) famously rejected the notion that thinking is something peculiarly uncorporeal…something peculiarly mental, in favor of thought as nothing but talking to ourselves (238). From the perspective of PA, the rejection of thinking as incorporeal or mental itself is based on acceptance of the Cartesian framework. Precisely because ontological behaviorists rejected the idea that the inner side of the dichotomy is instantiated in the world, they accepted that the Cartesian inner–outer distinction is an instructive way to address mentality (see Hacker 1996b, 226). The same applies to central state materialism, which equates mental states and processes with brain states and processes (both in its token and type versions). So too with functionalism, which individuates states of the mind in virtue of causal relations to states of the body. Also, attempts in cognitive science to explain perceptual and intellectual abilities in terms of information processing contributed to a trend in thinking that the brain processes information, hypothesizes, computes, and so on (Hacker 2007, 26–27).

Hacker labels all of the above (and other) historical developments neo-Cartesian because despite their denying dualism, they have left the

Cartesian conception of the relationship between the inner and behavior…intact despite abandonment of the Cartesian conception of the mind. For what was characteristically done was to ascribe cognitive and perceptual attributes to the brain, in the course of trying to explain the generic cognitive and perceptual activities and achievements of human beings. (2007, 27–28)

Here, Hacker is suggesting that a fundamental conceptual error that marks the history of neo-Cartesianism is what he (and Max Bennett) label the mereological fallacy, which is in evidence anytime we ascribe to a part of a creature attributes which logically can be ascribed only to the creature as a whole – as Descartes did in ascribing conscious awareness of thoughts and experiences to the mind or soul (Bennett and Hacker 2003a, 29). In other words, what has kept the Cartesian tradition together is a pernicious pattern of argument and explanation. All neo-Cartesians accept as legitimate an explanation of the following form: the whole person exhibits what we (perhaps unfortunately) call mental features, abilities, relations, states, and properties in virtue of some proper part of the person exhibiting such features, abilities, etc. Descartes proposed that the whole person thinks, believes, feels, reasons, etc., because the soul thinks, believes, etc. Modern physicalists aver that the whole person thinks because the brain thinks, believes, etc. Hacker rightly calls this a fallacy because this sort of explanatory format is a case of obscurum per obscurius: if something as complex as the whole person exhibiting mentality is in need of explanation, then something simpler exhibiting mentality – like a part of the person – is in need of even more explanation. This is especially the case given that our training with mental predicates involves associating them with overt behaviors, in which a part of the person cannot engage. For example, the brain cannot tell us what it has computed, it cannot show us what it has calculated, it cannot wince at a flame, and it cannot shudder at the scorn of a loved one. Only whole persons do these – not their parts.

So, to be clear, one is Cartesian in the historical sense when one evidentially relates states and processes of the inner to their outer behavioral manifestations (or vice versa). Far from eliminating the Cartesian duality, substituting brain for mind only maintains this view in a mutated guise (Hacker 2007, 242). For this reason, and to repeat, Hacker’s historical thesis is that many who would deny they are Cartesians are, in fact, accepters of more or less the same conceptual framework as Descartes’.

3. The Remedy: Wittgensteinian Monism

In an essay that prefigures the formal introduction of PA, Hacker (2001) articulates his own views on Wittgenstein’s concern with representation in a way that provides clues as to why Hacker has shifted from detailed exegesis and defense of Wittgenstein’s philosophy to applying that philosophy to the history of thought. Instead of being directly concerned with the general question of the status of the study of man in the humanistic disciplines, throughout his philosophical career, Wittgenstein’s main preoccupation was the nature of representation, in particular linguistic representation – hence with meaning and intentionality(39). This preoccupation led Wittgenstein to investigate psychological concepts and the logic of explanations of human action, the profound implications of which are to "provide guidelines for a kind of philosophical anthropology [emphasis added] and hence the foundations for the philosophical understanding of humanistic studies." But, to say that Wittgenstein provided such guidelines is not to justify PA as an alternative approach to studying human nature. What, then, is the justification? It turns out that the justification is not simply the persistence of the Cartesian framework in the study of humans. It is also scientism, or the illicit extension of the methods and categories of science beyond their legitimate domain… (Hacker 2001, 73). To Hacker, Wittgenstein’s work constitutes a much needed bulwark against the illegitimate encroachment of science upon those disciplines that are concerned with understanding ourselves, our culture and society (39).

The prospect that scientism is to be found in psychology sheds additional light on our examples in the two previous sections of pseudoempirical research: personality trait, internal (or mental) representations, and the continuance of the Cartesian framework of categories in 20th-century behaviorism, central-state materialism, functionalism, and cognitive science. It is not just that the conceptual errors evident in these perspectives and domains of inquiry are due to the production (or continuance) of nonsense through inattention to the dangers of surface grammar, partitioning the inner from the outer, or failing to distinguish between descriptive and expressive uses of language. It is that many psychologists have believed and continue to believe that the methods of science must be the primary – perhaps only – means of addressing the mysteries produced by the conceptual errors! This, in our view, is the fundamental respect in which PA is relevant to psychology.

Hacker (2001, 71) notes that the social and natural sciences have produced an abundance of correlations. But in the social sciences,

no understanding of the phenomena described by such correlations…is achieved in the absence of further investigations of the beliefs, motivations, and values of the agents, which will render their behavior intelligible.

The same can be said of experiments and other forms of empirical research in psychology. By further investigations, Hacker does not mean something on par with qualitative empirical research or mixed methodologies in psychology. He means the philosophical work of conceptual clarification, which, although it stands apart from empirical research in many respects, can be integral to intelligible theorizing and research. Intelligibility really breaks down when it is assumed that the categories and concepts central to investigations of human nature can be reduced to the concepts of the natural sciences, can be eliminable, or that explanations in the natural sciences are logically homogeneous with those of the social and behavioral sciences (71). This, to Hacker, is the sine qua non of scientism as it pertains to the sciences that seek to inform our knowledge of human nature.

Wittgensteinian Monism

We are not sanguine about the possibility that lessons on Cartesianism, referentialism, or scientism will contribute much to remedying the perennial conceptual ills exposed by PA. What is needed is a radical departure from the ways in which we conceptualize the fundamental concepts that are integral to studies of human nature. We concur with Hacker (2007) that Wittgenstein’s philosophical psychology represents the deepest challenge to the dominance of the Cartesian tradition and its degenerate offshoots (28). Wittgenstein did not just reject one or another of Descartes’ principles and dichotomies. He rejected Cartesian doctrines entirely and in doing so, unwittingly revived (breathed fresh air into) the Aristotelian tradition (28).

With respect to mind, what characterizes this Aristotelian tradition? Aristotle denied that the mind is a substance and so thought it makes no sense to consider whether it is identical with or distinct from the body. He also denied that mind stands in any material- and efficient-causal relationship to the body, that it is part of living organisms, or that it is embodied in living organisms. For Aristotle, to possess a mind is to be able to exhibit an array of powers of will and intellect. Also, the mind is not a subject of psychological attributes, acts, or activities, is not essentially private, and not essentially transparent (Hacker 2007, 255).

On the whole, we believe that as fundamental conclusions, Wittgenstein would concur with Aristotle on all of these points. But, for our purposes, the most significant parallel between Aristotle and Wittgenstein is that they both maintained that attributes such as consciousness, cognition, perception, and volition are not attributes of the parts of living animals (e.g., the brain), but of the whole animal (Hacker 2007, 28). Bennett and Hacker (2003b) expand on the importance of this parallel via what they call Aristotle’s Principle: it is mistaken to ascribe to the soul of an animal attributes that are properly ascribable only to the animal as a whole (132). This principle, they say, is the historical precursor to their mereological fallacy. Much like neo-Cartesian views in psychology and philosophy get beyond Cartesian dualism only insofar as they replace the soul with the brain as the seat of personhood, one can get a statement of what the mereological fallacy is by replacing soul with brain in Aristotle’s Principle. That is, Aristotle’s Principle undermines traditional Cartesianism (in its Platonic form) in the same way the mereological fallacy undermines current neo-Cartesianism. In many ways, this is telling of the relationship between Aristotle’s and Wittgenstein’s work. They have much the same vision of persons, but Aristotle was responding to Plato’s conception of the person and Wittgenstein can be seen as responding to Cartesian and neo-Cartesian conceptions of the person and referentialist conceptions of language (including his own in the Tractatus).

Recommendations to psychologists

In concluding, we want to suggest a few ways in which PA can inform psychological theorizing and research beyond the handful of brief examples given in prior sections. PA provides a fresh perspective on ways in which psychologists can see themselves as repeating the same (or similar) fundamental conceptual errors as their distant intellectual forebears. The conceptual mistake of breaking persons down into psychological parts has been a theme of this essay. In this respect, there are significant connections between PA and other historical critiques of psychology (e.g. Danziger 1990). For modern psychology, one legacy of Cartesianism is the fragmented person. PA is one remedy to the legacy.

For theoretical psychologists influenced by Wittgenstein, the significance of PA is its wide-angle view of the Western legacy of conceptual confusion inherited by the psychological theorizing and research they critique. This suggests, first, that past Wittgenstein-inspired theoretical work might be interpreted and applied differently, in the sense that conceptual analyses on specific research programs can be seen as being aimed at the legacy of Cartesianism. For example, Tissaw (2007) showed that the meaning of imitation in laboratory research on neonates differs in significant ways from the possibilities of its use outside the laboratory; one implication being that researchers need to qualify their restricted use of imitation in the writing up of research reports. In another theoretical work on developmental psychology, Tissaw (2013) employed conceptual analysis to show that experimental researchers are wrong to attribute sophisticated cognitive abilities to young infants. Although both of these works effectively demonstrate a family resemblance approach to conceptual analysis toward identifying sources of confusion on the part of researchers, they neglected to address directly the Cartesianism so evident in decades of theorizing on human neonates and infants.

Undoubtedly, one reason that philosophically-oriented psychologists face seeming indifference from their mainstream counterparts is the view that philosophy should have little or no role in the discipline or, similarly, that to go philosophical is to backslide towards prescientific crudity. Regardless of the reasons for the indifference, we encourage Wittgenstein-inspired theoretical psychologists to connect their future conceptual analyses to PA’s account of the Cartesian legacy when possible. The principal advantage of this would be to suggest to mainstream psychologists that in fundamental ways, they are not as different from the philosophers of old as they might assume.

References

Bennett, Maxwell R. and Peter Hacker. 2003a. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Blackwell.

Bennett, Maxwell and Peter Hacker. 2003b. The Conceptual Presuppositions of Cognitive Neuroscience: A Reply to Critics. In Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, & Language, edited by Maxwell Bennett, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, and John Searle, 127–162. New York: Columbia University Press.

Dennett, Daniel. 1981. Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Danziger, Kurt. 1990. Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Glock, Hans-Johann. 1996. A Wittgenstein Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hacker, Peter. 1996a. Wittgenstein: Mind and Will. An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Vol.4). Oxford: Blackwell.

Hacker, Peter. 1996b. Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hacker, Peter. 2001. Wittgenstein and the Autonomy of Humanistic Understanding. In Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts, edited by Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey, 39–74. London: Routledge.

Hacker, Peter. 2007. Human Nature: The Categorial Framework. Oxford: Blackwell.

Harré, Rom, and Michael A. Tissaw. 2005. Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

Kuusela, Oskari. 2013. Wittgenstein’s Method of Conceptual Investigation and Concept Formation in Psychology. In A Wittgensteinian Perspective on the Use of Conceptual Analysis in Psychology, edited by Timothy R. Racine and Kathleen L. Slaney, 51–71. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Maslow, Abraham H. 1968. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

McAdams, Dan, and Jennifer L. Pals. 2006. A New Big Five: Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality. American Psychologist, 61: 204–217.

Schulte, Joachim. 1993. Experience and Expression: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Smedslund, Jan. 1988. Psycho-logic. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Tissaw, Michael A. 2007. Making Sense of Neonatal Imitation. Theory & Psychology, 17: 217–242.

Tissaw, Michael A. 2013. The Person Concept and the Ontology of Persons. In The Psychology of Personhood: Philosophical, Historical, Social-Developmental, and Narrative Perspectives, edited by Jack Martin and Mark H. Bickhard, 19–39. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Watson, John B. 1924. Behaviorism. New York: The People’s Institute Publishing Company.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Notes

1 The philosophical anthropology we discuss in this chapter is the one advanced recently by Peter Hacker (2007). More generally, philosophical anthropology refers to a variety of approaches that employ philosophical methods to conceptualize persons, their experiences and capabilities, social environments, values, etc. Max Scheler is credited with establishing it as a separate discipline within philosophy in the 1920s. In psychology, for example, Maslow (1968, 12) mentions philosophical anthropology in his discussion of what psychology can learn from the existentialists. (We thank Morgan M. Harris for bringing this to our attention.) Part of what distinguishes Hacker’s work from earlier versions is its foundations in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Our discussion is restricted to the first of three planned volumes by Hacker.

2 With his Psycho-logic, Smedslund (e.g. 1988) contends that much research in psychology is pseudoempirical. See also Smedslund’s chapter in this volume.

3 For example, the philosopher Daniel Dennett (1981, 119) has insisted that any successful psychology must posit internal representations (see Schulte, 1993, 166).

4 See Kuusela (2013, 58–59) for an explanation of why this does not amount to an empirical claim and why Wittgenstein allowed for the possibility that sentences like My knee hurts need not always serve as expressive substitutes for prelinguistic pain behavior.

3

Conceptual Analysis

Timothy P. Racine

In a loose sense, conceptual analysis involves reflecting on the meanings of the concepts that figure in empirical or theoretical investigations, and, as such, is an activity in which all researchers already engage. Psychologists often take this practice to be mainly a matter of adopting operational definitions of the phenomena a researcher intends to study, or of using often quasi-technical concepts to classify or illuminate particular theoretical issues. For example, Nist and Diehl (2001) operationally define degree of anxiety about test taking as a given score on their test anxiety questionnaire, whereas Newcombe (2011) uses the term neoconstructivism to classify and discuss the relative merits of cognitive developmental research while arguing against nativist and empiricist approaches. Although operational definition and taxonomic or explanatory theoretical work play important roles in psychological research, such activities often presuppose a level of agreement in how terms are to be understood that can be unjustified and problematic in the particular case. However, words, by themselves, cannot speak to their use, for most words can be, and are, put to a variety of uses. Accordingly, terms such as test anxiety, neoconstructivism, and countless others should be understood as shorthand for components of expressions in which a term is embedded. It is a lack of consideration for these fields of use to which this chapter seeks to draw attention and address. As we will see, concerns are more likely to arise when terms are used in highly restricted or unusual manners; the risk in such cases is that it is not entirely clear what the psychologists in question might mean, and this lack of clarity imperils conclusions drawn from their