Psychologism Revisited in Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology

Abstract

Psychologism is a philosophical ideology that seeks to explain the principles of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology as psychological phenomena. Psychologism has been the storm center of concerted criticisms since the nineteenth century, and is thought by many to have been refuted once and for all by Kant, Frege, Husserl, and others. The project of accounting for objective philosophical or mathematical truths in terms of subjective psychological states has been largely discredited in mainstream analytic thought. Ironically, psychologism has resurfaced in unexpected guises in the form of intuitionistic logic and mathematics, cognitivism, and naturalized epistemology. I examine some of the principal objections to psychologism -distinguishing roughly between good and bad or philosophically acceptable versus unacceptable psychologism -and consider the extent to which a new wave of psychologism may be gaining prominence in contemporary philosophy, and the light its successes and failures may shed on the original concept and underlying perspective of classical psychologism.

Reimaging epistemology: A historical analysis of shifting paradigms

“…In this intellectual voyage, it is essential to maintain an acute awareness of the challenges and intricacies that underlie the psychologistic and naturalistic paradigms (Jacquette, 2001). While these paradigms provide innovative pathways for reinvigorating epistemology, they are not without their critiques and dilemmas.…”

A psychological theory of reasoning as logical evidence: a Piagetian perspective

“…It is testimony to the power of Frege's and Husserl's arguments that a strict division of labour between logicians, on the one hand, and psychologists and sociologists, on the other, represented the status quo for almost a century. More recently, however, interest in the psychologism/anti-psychologism debate is being rekindled (Jacquette 1997;Jacquette 2001;e.g., Jacquette 2003a;Hanna 2006), and naturalist tendencies in philosophy in general and cognitive science in particular are beginning to erode the strict division of labour in more recent decades (Jacquette 2003a, sec. 3;Kusch 2006Kusch , 2612Kusch 2015b).…”

“…A more differentiated critique of psychologism is advocated, discerning between justified criticism levelled at plump cases of untenable psychologism and unjustified criticism that has stifled research. (Jacquette 1997;Jacquette 2001;Jacquette 2003b) Learning from actual practice through historical case studies in mathematics and the natural sciences has proven its worth in the philosophy of science, and this method is equally well justified in logic (Martin 2020). There are nevertheless limits to what can be learnt from practice.…”