Platonism and Positivism in Psychology

Julie Christian, Mortimer Adler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351308380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Psychology is a field of many paradoxes. Since its earliest beginnings as a natural science, psychologists have been in search of their proper subject matter. Today they are in less agreement than ever. In this classic text, originally published as What Man Has Made of Man, Mortimer J. Adler goes to the root of the problem. He shows that psychology is simultaneously a particular social science and a branch of philosophical knowledge.

These two parts must be distinguished from, yet related to, each other if sound philosophical analysis is to replace bad "philosophizing, " which scientific psychologists too often use to describe their research findings. Adler also examines the scientific contribution of psychoanalysis by distinguishing it from Freud's meta-psychology, which he shows to be an inadequate statement of the traditional or classical philosophical positions.

Adler believes that psychology is crucially important in modern culture. It is theoretically important because it is central to the errors of modern philosophy. It has practical significance because economic, moral, and political doctrines are determined by the view that man reviews his own nature. To understand the history of modern times, and to correct its normative deviations, we must, according to Adler, consider what man has made of man. This engaging analytical study will be a valuable tool for psychologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, and sociologists.

LECTURE ONE

The Conception of Science in the Modern World

I. Introduction

1. Why the modern world? Because it is only in the modern world that science is self-conscious, that it considers itself distinct from other disciplines, as having a method and a mission. Because it is only in the modern world that science and philosophy are sharply separated and that there are supposed to be conflicts between science and philosophy and between science and religion. Because it is only in the modern world that the scientist wonders about himself and his methods. Because it is only in the modern world that positivism has rightly conceived science as different from philosophy, adding thereto a denial that philosophy is knowledge, if it claims to be different from science.
2. This does not mean that science is entirely a modern invention. It occurs and appears in the ancient and medieval worlds, but differently. It is only in the modern world that science has revolted from religion, revolted from philosophy. Thus, in the 17th century, physics revolted and gained autonomy; in the 18th, biology; in the 19th, psychology and the so-called social sciences. As a result of these revolts, it is in the modern world, and particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, that it is supposed that any question worth answering is capable of being answered only by the method of the scientist; or, on the other hand, that any question which is not capable of being thus answered is not a genuinely answerable question.
3. There are, therefore, in modern times a number of peculiar problems which confront and perplex the scientist. (By the sciences I shall henceforth mean the natural sciences, including psychology. I shall, for the most part, ignore the social sciences.)
   1. The difference between science and philosophy, and the relation between science and philosophy.
   2. In considering this first problem, the scientist usually differentiates himself by his method, only to be further perplexed by the plurality of methods (procedures, techniques) which claim to be scientific. He must, therefore, determine what is common to all these different procedures.
   3. He is, furthermore, aware of the plurality of the sciences as they are distinguished according to subject-matter as well as by method, and he is often embarrassed by their several claims to priority or independence. He faces here two sorts of questions:
      • (1) Questions of order: priority and dependence.
      • (2) Questions of composition: cooperating disciplines, hybrid subject-matters.
4. All of these problems are more intensified and, in a sense, more embarrassing for the psychologist than for any other natural scientist.
   1. Thus, for example, his relation to the philosopher, because of the recency of his revolt. Boring’s insight: “Psychology has never succeeded in taking philosophy to itself or in leaving it alone.”¹
   2. Similarly, his attempt to define his subject-matter and his methods. Consider here the existence of “schools” of psychology; the fact that there are rival pretenders to the title of “scientific psychology.” Consider the controversial character of these plural psychologies in contrast to the situation in physics or chemistry, where there is neither this plurality nor such polemic [¹].
   3. Finally, his relation to other scientists: particularly the relation of the psychologist to the physiologist, on the one hand, and to the social scientist, on the other.
5. And even more so are these problems exasperating for the psychoanalyst; and here the following should be noted:
   1. His relation,—in both subject-matter and method,—to the rest of the psychologists. Is psychoanalysis a partof or the wholeof psychology? Is it just another sect or school?
   2. The character of his methods and of his research in relation to the better recognized and more certainly accepted canons of scientific procedure.
   3. His acceptance of a philosophy,—the “philosophy of evolution’s—and, at the same time, his opposition to philosophy.²
6. I propose, therefore, in this opening lecture to approach the problems of the psychologist and the psychoanalyst by considering, first, the two most general problems concerning science in modern times:
   • (1) The distinction between philosophy and science, and their relation.
   • (2) What is common to the plurality of scientific methods, procedures, techniques.

Then, subsequently, I shall consider the position of psychology in the order and relation of the natural sciences and in relation to philosophy.

II. Two Further Introductory Observations

1. We must understand a distinction within the field of logic, made according to differences in the relation of logic, as an organon, to knowledge and the types of cognition. (This is the distinction between the prior and posterior analytics in Aristotle’s Organon,and between petite logiqueand grande logique,or formal and material logic, in the modern tradition.)
   1. Formal logic: the analysis of terms, propositions, syllogisms, but not induction.
   2. Material logic (which necessarily presupposes formal logic) : the analysis of bodies of knowledge according to principles of order and system; the distinction of the kinds of knowledge; the formulation of the methods of knowing (evidence, proof, probability, induction, measurement, etc.)
      • (1) Material logic is, in part, a sort of “theoretical rhetoric”: the methods and types of exposition appropriate to the communication of different kinds of knowledge.
      • (2) Material logic is necessarily related to psychology: the analysis of human powers and acts of cognition.
   3. In these lectures, I shall presuppose formal logic in order to discuss the larger material problems [²].
2. But, as we have seen, material logic involves psychological analysis. We cannot distinguish the kinds of knowledge, we cannot formulate the methods of knowing, without an account of the objects of human knowledge and of the cognitive processes of man. This fact has critical consequences:
   1. Any scientist who entertains certain convictions about scientific method, about abstraction and induction, about observation and conception, about proof and probability, is necessarily, implicitly or explicitly, asserting propositions in psychology about the cognitive operations of man. Thus, for example, consider the ancient paradox of the strict atomic materialist who tried to explain himself as a scientist in terms of his own theory while at the same time appealing for the truth of that theory in terms of the rational canons of scientific method [³].
   2. This paradox is even more embarrassing for the psychologist:
      • (1) It has been exposed by Love joy in the case of the “thinking behaviorist,” and by Bradley in the case of the British associationists [⁴].
      • (2) In short, the psychologist in his capacity as a scientist appealing for the truth of his conclusions and their status as scientific knowledge, must assert or admit
        • (a) That man is in some sense rational, that he is bound by evidence and proof, seeks truth and avoids error, knows the difference between the better and the worse reason, etc. (In short, the man who claims to be a scientist cannot as a psychologist so conceive man that there is no difference between a scientist and a sophist).
        • (b) That man is intellectual as well as sensitive, that he knows by operations other than sensing, that he has abstract concepts, which are not sensory images, that, in short, he can generalize and thus go beyond all sense-data
   3. This point is particularly important for the Freudian, and particularly important for me to make clear at thebeginning of this course of lectures.
      • (1) If psychoanalysis is a body of scientific knowledge which employs abstract concepts,—and it most certainly does employ such abstract concepts as complex^ regression, sexuality, cathexis, abreaction,etc., —then the Freudian cannot without contradiction at one time be proud of his scientific knowledge and at another deny the intellect.³ His position as a scientist considering his own knowledge must agree with his position as a psychologist considering man’s cognitive powers.
      • (2) Furthermore and similarly, if psychoanalysis is scientific in its methods and appeals to the binding canons of reason in evidence and proof, then the Freudian as a psychologist cannot deny the independence of human reason from passion and prejudice. He cannot assert that everything which appears to be rationalis merely rationalizationwithout making psychoanalysis itself a mere rationalization instead of a body of objectively true scientific knowledge.
3. Therefore, as I proceed I shall not hesitate to present a psychological analysis,—an account of man as a scientific knower,—which I shall expect the Freudian to accept, not only because he is a scientist, but in his capacity as a psychologist as well.

III. The Kinds of Knowledge⁴

1. There are two basic ways in which one body of knowledge can be distinguished from another:
   1. By subject-matter₉and here
      • (1) Either in terms of that whichis known: the know-able thingor material object of knowledge.
      • (2) Or in terms of whatis known of it: the thing as knownor formal object of knowledge; the cognitive selection, the content of the knowledge.
   2. By method.
   3. All other distinctions,—such, for instance, as that made in terms of the modality of the knowledge (its certainty or probability),—can be ignored for the time being as subordinate.
2. But first we must consider what is common to almostall human knowledge.
   1. Almost all human knowledge is a product of the cooperative activity of the senses and intellect, as these are involved in processes of observation and reflection.
      • (1) By sense, or the powers of observation, I mean all those perceptual abilities which are exercised through the activity of bodily parts called sense-organs and brain.
      • (2) By intellect, or the powers of reflection, I mean the following abilities: abstraction (the ability to conceive, define, distinguish, generalize, make inductions and analyses); judgment (the ability to formulate propositions and to assert them) ; reasoning (the ability to infer and demonstrate, to systematize knowledge deductively.)
   2. The one exception is important: the kind of knowledge we call immediate experience,—and perhaps, also, the memory of such experiences,—seemsto be purely sensitive.
      • (1) No new reflective process is involved here in the act of knowing.
      • (2) But even here there is an involvement of past reflections (the results of past intellectual activity) as evidenced by the fact that we cannot observe or remember without some interpretation. (This is what Kant meant by saying that percepts without concepts are blind.)
      • (3) This exception need...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Introduction
• Author’s Preface
• Lecture 1. The Conception of Science in the Modern World
• Lecture 2. The Position of Psychology: in Philosophy and among the Natural Sciences
• Lecture 3. The History of Psychology
• Lecture 4. Psychoanalysis as Psychology
• Supplementary Notes
• Epilogue
• List of Principal Notes