Philosophical embarrassments of psychology.

Abstract

I APPRECIATE deeply the honor and the privilege of being the guest speaker for this distinguished audience. You chose to invite a philosopher, and I can only hope you will not suffer too much from the consequences.As I am sure you know, philosophers are specialists in generalities. They are usually also somewhat opinionated. Hence, there is the danger that scientists may regard them as unwelcome kibitzers at their game. In this regard their role is similar to that of the literary or the art critic. Physicists, according to my impressions, have in recent years put up a sign: "Philosophers please keep out; reconstruction going on." Small wonder, as the printer's devil once had it: "Nuclear" physics is "unclear" physics. The majority of physicists want to unmuddle themselves without the aid of philosophical clarifiers. But I have found psychologists and social scientists much more hospitable. Just like a certain small minority of physicists, they seem to appreciate a few hints from the philosophers of science. But there is on the one hand the danger of running in open doors, i.e.. of laboring the obvious and the trivial; and on the other hand there is the danger of stepping on sensitive toesespecially with as large and diversified an audience as the present one. I shall have to take these risks and hope for the best. The only reassurance I can offer is that I have been concerned with the philosophy of the empirical sciences for a good many years and that, though my original scientific background was that of physics, chemistry, and astronomy, I have had also a long and enduring interest in psychological theory. This dates back at least to the year 1932 when I taught at the University of Iowa. I still remember the day when, with fear and trembling, I approached Dean Carl E. Seashore, that pioneer of American experimental psychology, and asked him whether he would approve of my offering a seminar in Philosophical Problems of Psychology. Seashore was

Embarrassing problems for the field of psychotherapy

“…However, a serious problem is that these absolute truths are accepted as true more on the basis of trusting faith than careful questioning (Feigl, 1959;Feyerabend, 1972;Mahrer, 1995Mahrer, , 1996Meehl, 1978). Almost without exception, none of these absolute truths has been examined in a way that could find them to be false, wrong, disconfirmed, disproven, or unworthy of a place in a respected pool of absolute truths.…”

Evaluation of cognitive rehabilitation as a treatment paradigm

“…Only certain scholars insist that phenomena invariably should be reduced to specific underlying causes [8,58]. This reductionist view, which characterizes science as the pursuit of general principles obtained from the precise, nomothetic study of specific, molecular phenomena, is closely associated in psychology with the 20th century behaviouristic movement, which zealously rejected other forms of scientific study and knowledge as suspect or invalid [59]. For example, adherents often denigrate the importance of case studies in their pursuit of general laws [60].…”

Of Mice and Men: The Minimal Man and the Maximal Mouse

“…It is this "abstracting out" that leads people like Dollard and Miller ( 1 1 ) to say that learning a neurosis is like learning to play tennis, or Robert Winch (61) to seeing the process of selecting a mate and ordering a dinner as the same. Feigl (12) acknowledges that one may not be able to predict the specific damage done by an earthquake even if we do predict the earthquake. ( H e sounds suspiciously like Carl Rogers (49) who says that we can predict classes of events but not the specifics of the events.)…”