{"id":669,"date":"2012-09-12T15:34:59","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T22:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phenomenologyblog.com\/?p=669"},"modified":"2013-03-03T09:39:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T16:39:58","slug":"do-i-really-need-to-read-all-this-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phenomenologyblog.com\/?p=669","title":{"rendered":"“Do I really need to read all this philosophy?”"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like><\/span>

The students who put this question to me are usually taking their first course in phenomenological or hermeneutic (narrative) psychological research. And in a way, I feel for them, because many of them didn\u2019t expect to be facing something called \u201cepistemology,\u201d and bumping into any number of arcane Greek terms that seem to bear no relationship to the psychological phenomena they are interested in studying, like trauma and resilience, creativity, or leadership.<\/p>\n

The problem, as I see it, is that many of us assume that \u201ctrauma,\u201d \u201ccreativity,\u201d or \u201cnarrative\u201d are real things in the same way as the Lincoln Memorial is a real thing. In other words: \u201cJust point to it, it\u2019s obvious, it\u2019s right there!\u201d Or even worse: \u201cI know it when I see it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Socrates\"<\/a>All too often when students encounter words like \u201cresilience\u201d in the media, and even in many psychology textbooks, these words\u2014which are theoretical constructs\u2014are used to mistakenly convey the sense that the constructs are real, self-evident \u201cthings\u201d that are already present in the world\u2014rather than the provisional creations of science. In other words, these constructs are reified<\/em> in everyday language, and in too much \u201cpsychological\u201d language as well\u2014exemplifying what philosophers have identified\u2014sorry\u2014as \u201cthe fallacy of misplaced concreteness\u201d!<\/p>\n

In other words, a beginning student would assume that psychologists are all in agreement about what \u201cresilience\u201d means. But on the contrary, my students are usually surprised to discover, as soon as they begin to review the literature, that there is not a strong consensus regarding psychological constructs such as\u00a0\u201cresilience.\u201d Instead, these terms are usually highly contested\u2014if we\u2019re lucky, because that means the arguments and different points of view are well-articulated\u2014or more often, such terms are used in highly divergent ways (without those differences being carefully reckoned with).<\/p>\n

Back to \u201cthe fallacy of misplaced concreteness.\u201d The fact that we have to go back to philosophy to properly name the problem is exactly my point. It\u2019s philosophy, after all, that teaches us how to think critically. More than that, the fundamental questions of how we as researchers know what we know are philosophical, not psychological: these philosophical questions are propaedeutic (preparatory, foundational) for psychological inquiry.<\/p>\n

In other words any vision of psychology that is not a purely instrumental one requires that we wrestle with\u00a0epistemological\u00a0issues\u2014so that, to do genuine research, meaning to engage in authentic scientific inquiry rather than adopting a cookbook approach\u2014means grasping the epistemological assumptions underlying the method we have chosen to use. These observations are not original on my part, nor are they uniquely phenomenological\u2014though the phenomenological tradition has its own unique ways of encountering and articulating them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But back to our initial problem\u2014why we need to engage with philosophy via epistemology, and why we tend to fall for the fallacy of misplaced concreteness? I\u2019ll claim that this is due largely to the overwhelming success of the positivist vision of psychology, because this vision lends itself to the fallacious reading. \u00a0How so? In 1923 Edwin G. Boring, one of the most important historians of American empirical psychology, wrote about intelligence tests in the New Republic. Regarding the meaning of the construct \u201cintelligence,\u201d he famously said this:<\/p>\n

\u201cIntelligence is what the tests test. This is a narrow definition, but it is the only point of departure for a rigorous discussion of the tests. It would be better if the psychologists could have used some other and more technical term, since the ordinary connotation of intelligence is much broader. The damage is done, however, and no harm need result if we but remember that measurable intelligence is simply what the tests of intelligence test, until further scientific observation allows us to extend the definition.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be generous, we can imagine that Boring is reminding us in a modest way that experimental psychology is not measuring the everyday lived-meanings of intelligence (what he refers to as the \u201cordinary connotations\u201d), but instead we are simply measuring against our measure. On the other hand, one can imagine centuries of philosophers rising in protest from their graves at Boring\u2019s exercise in circular reasoning, a striking example of psychology as a Procrustean bed<\/a>: whatever the lived-meanings of intelligence may be, for psychology as an empirical science, intelligence can only be defined within the limits of those constructs that lend themselves to measurement<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For those of us who teach and study at Saybrook, as inheritors of the existential-humanistic tradition underlying the founding of our institution, one might say we have a unique responsibility to think through our epistemologies, since ours is a minority approach within psychological science. And this requires us to think through our implicit philosophical assumptions, and to encounter philosophy as a means of reflecting critically about the meaning and purpose of our work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reference and notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boring, E. (1923). Intelligence as the tests test it. New Republic. 33, 35-37.<\/p>\n

Lincoln Memorial photo credit:\u00a0Stuck in Customs<\/a>\u00a0via\u00a0photo pin<\/a>\u00a0cc<\/a><\/p>\n

Studying photo credit: Pragmagraphr<\/a> via photo pin<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n

Socrates photo credit: Sebasti\u00e0 Giralt<\/a> via photopin<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n

The Greek vase depicts Theseus killing Procrustes<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The students who put this question to me are usually taking their first course in phenomenological or hermeneutic (narrative) psychological research. And in a way, I feel for them, because many of them didn\u2019t expect to be facing something called \u201cepistemology,\u201d and bumping into any number of arcane Greek terms that seem to bear no

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