Is psychology a natural science? At this point, I imagine most of you
nodding your heads "yes," perhaps impatiently. I suspect, however, that
many of us have different ideas about what psychology is: what territory
it covers and what its limitations are. Before I get into this, however,
let me first discuss a couple points concerning my posts of the last few
days.
I WAS WRONG
After more reflection, I think that I was wrong in setting up a
dichotomy between faith-based beliefs and evidence-based beliefs.
Instead, I think that the best assumption to make is that all people
require evidence for each and every one of their beliefs, but that this
evidence comes in many different forms and qualities. I think that what
I have been calling "faith-based" beliefs involve one of at least two
kinds of evidence: (1) personal experience (aka "Paul Smith's favorite
topic") and (2) the pronouncements of authorities. If "faith" is looked
at in this way, then it seems obvious to me that we all develop
"faith-based" beliefs . Let me explain.
(1) Paul Smith has often alerted us to the place of "personal
experience" in the beliefs of our students. This is the domain of
anecdotal evidence and inference based on intuition. I assume that we
all are aware of the problems with using anecdotal evidence to support
our beliefs. When intuition is involved, we say that we have a "feeling"
(a personal experience) that a belief is correct. This "feeling" is our
evidence. Much research has shown that intuition (unless perhaps one is
trained rigorously in organized programs that have been tested
systematically to check the quality of the trainees intuitive reasoning
in that specific area), can easily lead one into error because intuition
is influenced strongly by biases and error-prone heuristics. Those of us
who have received extensive scientific training have been taught NOT to
rely upon personal experience involving anecdotes or "feelings" to
support the validity of a belief (although we do use it to generate
hypotheses to be tested). This, of course, is something we also try to
teach to our students.
(2) A statement made by an authority is also evidence for a belief.
Authorities may come from science, religion, politics, education, etc.
For example, when the evidence for, say, a scientific belief is so
complex as to be incomprehensible to all but experts in the field, then
we are prone to accept the conclusions of the experts without attempting
to consider the primary evidence. This is the situation, for example, in
many areas of modern physics, such as quantum mechanics. The nonexpert's
understanding requires an act of faith. Nevertheless, this faith is
based on evidence. The nonexpert uses something like the following
argument to justify his/her belief: "those engaged in scientific
research have been trained to collect and evaluate evidence to support
their conclusions--conclusions which have been subjected to review by
other experts. Thus, the consensus reached by these experts IS MY
EVIDENCE that the belief I now hold is a valid one." If someone could
show that the argument's premises were incorrect, or if the consensus
among the experts were to dissolve, this would count as evidence against
the belief. As scientists, we are much more likely to have faith in the
pronouncements of scientific authorities concerning the description and
explanation of nature because we know the safeguards that usually go
into scientific consensus building. We try to teach our students that
they should be very skeptical about the pronouncements of other kinds of
authority, when they are talking about natural phenomena, unless these
authorities have used a scientific approach.
Thus, if faith is defined as "an unquestioning belief that requires no
proof or evidence," then I cannot agree that faith-based beliefs exist:
it seems to me that all beliefs are based on some sort of evidence. The
quality of the evidence becomes the issue. In our courses, we try to
teach students that some kinds of evidence support the validity of
beliefs better than other kinds of evidence. Evidence that is based on a
natural-science approach is the best kind for knowing the world. Over
the last several hundred years, this approach has discovered many ways
in which our reasoning is likely to be led astray. Natural scientists
have developed a general set of procedures in which control of the
research situation is considered paramount if one is to develop valid
beliefs about the universe. Thus, in my original post about "belief in
the unseen," I should have stated something like the following: Students
in our courses often justify their beliefs by pointing to evidence based
on personal experience or appeals to nonscientific authority. Nothing
very surprising here, huh?? Thus, in our courses, we are trying to teach
them an approach that involves extreme skepticism about knowledge claims
based on personal experience or the pronouncements of nonscientific
authorities (or something like this). Sounds pretty harmless; but this
teaching goal actually is a very radical one; and I believe that it was
what I was struggling with in the post that began this thread.
PSYCHOLOGY: A NATURAL SCIENCE?
After more reflection, the problem is becoming somewhat clearer to me.
Let me try to communicate it to you, if I can. As psychologists, we are
trying to teach our students a scientific approach to the understanding
of the human mind and behavior. The science of psychology is modeled
after the natural sciences. The philosophical doctrines fundamental to
the natural sciences are determinism and naturalism; and since the only
known natural processes are physical ones, naturalism reduces to
materialism (if I am understanding my philosophical doctrines
correctly). When this scientific approach of the natural sciences is
directed at the human mind and behavior, mind and behavior are conceived
of as caused by physical factors. This is the "worldview" encouraged by
scientific training. An obvious question arises: is this natural-science
approach essential for the understanding of ALL phenomena involving the
mind and behavior? I assume that it is, but I know that there are some
(perhaps many) on this list who would disagree. I know that many of my
students disagree. They seem to have adopted a different worldview--one
that includes perhaps the naural-science approach, but that assigns it a
limited role. This other worldview (which actually is a number of
distinct ones, similar only in that a limitation is placed on a
natural-science approach) accepts the existence of "nonnatural"
phenomena as well as ways of knowing outside of those accepted by
natural scientists. This second worldview seems to assume that there are
valid kinds of evidence that do NOT involve the empirical study of
physical causes. I suppose that these other kinds of evidence involve
some sort of "personal experience" of these other "realms of the mind"
as well as appeals to nonscientific authorities.
The question, thus, is this: if we want to develop a complete
understanding of the human mind and behavior, are we to allow these
other forms of evidence back into psychology, thereby constructing a
psychology outside of the natural sciences? (It does not seem to me that
one can answer this question by bringing up the old chestnut about "the
conflict between science and religion," and then assert that these two
areas of human activity are complementary, or incommensurable, or
whatever. That point seems to me to be irrelevant to what I am asking. I
am asking whether or not psychology should allow approaches other than a
natural-scientific one for the goal of understanding the mind and
behavior.)
This may seem to some of you like unnecessary territory in which to
tread; but for me, it is absolutely necessary since it determines how I
approach the questions and concerns of students who realize the conflict
between the natural-science approach I am espousing and their own
beliefs about mind and behavior. It is why I occasionally revisit this
question in my posts to you: To my mind, psychology is the most radical
(and threatening) of all the natural sciences because it applies a
natural-science approach to the most central concern of humans--their
"human nature." I am constantly concerned with this as I teach my
students. If many of you believe that there is a dividing line between
the parts of our nature that are amenable to a natural-scientific
approach and the parts that are not, where do you draw the line? How can
we ever achieve a consensus on what we think we know when different
psychologists disagree about where to draw the limits of a scientific
approach? How can we communicate this to students, each of whom has
his/her own ideas about all of this?
I am not expecting that I will get answers to these questions. But I did
want to share my thoughts about this in order to see what you thought
about the issue.
Jeff
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298
Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
"The truth is rare and never simple."
Oscar Wilde
"No one can accept the fundamental hypotheses of scientific psychology
and be in the least mystical."
Knight Dunlap
