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Conceptual Issues & Conceptual Issues & PsychologyPsychology

Dr Roy AllenDr Roy AllenSchool of PsychologySchool of Psychology

room: G09 email: roy.allen@abdn.ac.ukroom: G09 email: roy.allen@abdn.ac.uk

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Readings associated with this Readings associated with this lecture:lecture:

Cooper, R.M., (1982). The passing of psychology. Canadian Psychology, 23, 264-267

McComas, W. (1996). Ten myths of science: re-examining what we think we know. School Science & Mathematics, 96, 10-16.

Popper, K. (1957). Science: conjectures andrefutations. In C.A. Mace (Ed.). BritishPhilosophy in Mid-Century: A CambridgeSymposium. London: George Allen & UnwinLtd.

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About Exam QuestionsAbout Exam Questions

Questions may come from one, some or noneof the Readings associated with this lecture.

Questions will be multi-choice, e.g.: “Sir Karl Popper’s ideas regardingfalsifiability, were a rejection of:a) Logical Positivism;b) Epistemology;c) Formal Logic, or;d) Post-Modernism?

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IntroductionIntroductionfrom 2nd to 3rd-year involves a change ofemphasis from books to peer-reviewedjournal articles;

tend to be out-dated; present information as factual; gloss over detail;

tend to be more up-to-date; very dense; focus on minutiae.

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EpistemologyEpistemologyTheory of Knowledge:1. “What is knowledge?“;2. “How is knowledge acquired?“;3. “What do people know?“;

4. “How do we know what we know?”

How knowledge is acquired:1. a priori/analytic – not requiring experience to

validate, e.g., "My father's brother is my uncle."

2. A posteriori/syntactic/empirical – requiring experience to validate, e.g., “My father’s brother has a black moustache

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Logical Empiricism & Logical Empiricism & ScienceScience

1910s-30s Vienna Circle, coffeehouse group, made a concerted effort to clarify the language of science by arguing that:

the content of scientific theories could be reduced to truths of logic and mathematics (analytic) coupled with propositions referring to sense experience (empirical).

They held that metaphysical speculation was nonsensical, propositions of logic and mathematics tautological, and moral or value statements merely emotive.

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Verifiability 1Verifiability 1

Induction – the accumulation of individual observations sufficient to produce a general rule/law, e.g., Crow number 1 is black Crow number 2 is black Crow number 3 is black, etc, etc, Therefore all crows are black

Deduction – the use of universal rules or laws to explain an individual observation, e.g.,

All diamonds are hardTherefore this diamond is hard

This is very much the “test/retest” approach of the “Scientific Method”

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Verifiability 2Verifiability 2 Unfortunately, “universal” laws aren’t

always robust – so we have good reason to assume that current scientific laws may also be wrong too

Many of our laws are of the “all other things being equal” sort- unsatisfying because in a logical sense you can never be sure of all other things being equal

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Verifiability 3Verifiability 3 and individual observations never and individual observations never

seem to guarantee universality – seem to guarantee universality – compare previous example with:compare previous example with: Swan number 1 is whiteSwan number 1 is white Swan number 2 is whiteSwan number 2 is white Swan number 3 is white, etc, Swan number 3 is white, etc,

etc,etc, Therefore all swans are white!Therefore all swans are white!

Doh!!Doh!!

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Falsifiability 1Falsifiability 1Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902 – 1994):

Professor & Philosopher of Science @ London School of Economics;

saw how unsatisfactory the observationist/inductivist account of the scientific method was (i.e., Logical Empiricism);

believed biggest problem in the philosophy of science was “demarcation”, i.e., how to distinguish between science and non-science;

was profoundly impressed by the differences between the allegedly ‘scientific’ psycho-analytic theories of Freud and Adler and the revolution effected by Einstein's theory of relativity in physics in the first two decades of the last century.

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Falsifiability 2Falsifiability 2

while Einstein's theory was highly ‘risky’, in the sense that it was possible to deduce consequences from it which were, in light of the then dominant Newtonian physics, highly improbable and which would, if they turned out to be false, falsify the whole theory (e.g., that light is deflected towards solid bodies - confirmed by Eddington's experiments in 1919);

Popper realised that:

nothing could, even in principle, falsify psychoanalytic theories…”; He concluded that since proof was logically impossible, scientists should, instead, aim to falsify theories and laws.

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Psychology 1Psychology 1 Sadly, in social/biological sciences like

psychology we don't have anything quite like the natural laws of chemistry or physics, so we are forced to depend on statistical explanations…

and these are inductive, not deductive in the way we wish natural laws to be…. In the statistical inference approach, you have to make assumptions about what you believe is the relevant description (not really a cause) that determines an outcome, e.g.:

• there is a 0.80 probability that a person voted New Labour if their parents voted New Labour . . .• but if they were a self-made millionaire it might be a 0.55 probability . . .• if they were a woman it might be a 0.62 probability . . .• and, if she likes Gordon Brown it might be a 0.70 etc etc etc.

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I have always found psychology depressing because I came into it from physics and engineering thinking that, since it experimentally studied the human mind it was a science.

I soon realized that it was not a science but a catalogue, and a methodology for adding to the catalogue. I don't doubt that it is a useful catalogue: it's certainly important to know such things as how to help people who are depressed or to understand how people's memory or opinions can be changed in emotional contexts or by clever questioning (say in eyewitness testimony).

But many of us had hoped that there was a theoretical science like physics or chemistry there somewhere and we were disappointed. I now believe that the problem is simply that there is no unitary subject matter for psychology -- it is not a natural scientific domain.

But I find renewed hope now that within psychology lies one or more natural scientific domains, and that cognition, suitably circumscribed to include those aspects that are explainable in terms of symbol processing operations (together with the non-symbolic mechanisms required to support symbol processing) may be one of those natural scientific domains.

Psychology 2Psychology 2 Is the statistical inference approach a “stop gap” while we wait

for proper behavioural and scientific laws to be developed which have real “mathematical proof”-like properties?

Pylyshyn, Z. (1986). Cognitive Science Society's Eighth Annual Conference, Amherst, Massachusetts, August 16.

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Ten myths of science (MTen myths of science (MccComas Comas 1996)1996)

1. hypotheses become theories become laws;1. hypotheses become theories become laws; 2. hypotheses are educated guesses;2. hypotheses are educated guesses; 3. there is a commonly-applied scientific method;3. there is a commonly-applied scientific method; 4. evidence leads to sure knowledge (i.e., the problem with 4. evidence leads to sure knowledge (i.e., the problem with

inductioninduction);); 5. science and its methods provide absolute proof (i.e., all swans are5. science and its methods provide absolute proof (i.e., all swans are

white . . . Popper); white . . . Popper); 6. science is not a creative endeavour;6. science is not a creative endeavour; 7. science can answer all questions;7. science can answer all questions; 8. scientists are objective;8. scientists are objective; 9. experiments are the sole route to scientific knowledge;9. experiments are the sole route to scientific knowledge;10. scientific conclusions are continually reviewed.10. scientific conclusions are continually reviewed.

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Learning Outcomes:Learning Outcomes: Know what epistemology is, and how knowledge is acquired; Have a general idea about what Logical Empiricism is; Know what deduction and induction are, and the problems

of verifiability; Understand Popper’s criticism of Logical Empiricism and his

notion of falsifiability; Have a clear understanding about some of the myths (at

least 10) associated with science; Have some feeling for the particular problems associated

with knowledge acquisition in psychology; Understand, and respond to, some of the criticisms directed

towards psychology as regards its “passing”.