Philippe Gervaix wrote:
> The definitons given have all been given in the singular, as though there
> was one recognised and admitted definition of what psychology and what
> philosophy is. It would be clearer to me if we admitted that the
> definitions given are those of scientific psychology on the one hand and of
> analytic philosophy on the other. There are, beside these, other
> definitions, referring to different fields, traditions, trends, schools, in
> each of these disciplines.
I had been thinking along lines similar to Philippe's but I just hadn't had the
time (and probably the background) to try to craft a cogent response. I still
don't have time but I wanted ro point to another possible problem in our
thinking about the philosophy/psychology distimction: the assumption apparently
made by many that psychology emerged from philosophy. Edward Reed (1997) has
argued that a case can be made that academic philosophy in the US emerged
during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries because of the success
of psychology coupled with philosophers' fears that the "new science" would
displace philosophy in academic institutions. Because I have little time, I
will just quote from his book, "From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology
from Erasmus Darwin to William James" (Yale University Press):
"Although it is common enough to read about how psychology emerged from
philosophy, one rarely reads about how modern philosophy emerged from
psychology. Yet the two most fundamental methods of modern philosophy [he is
referring here to symbolic logic and phenomenology]...both developed in
response to the perceived successes of the new psychology.... Both modern
psychology and modern philosophy--as academic disciplines comprising
professional scientists or scholars--began to emerge toward the end of the
nineteenth century. Psychology in this sense preceded philosophy by at least
ten years, although it tended to be housed within philosophy departments.
Obviously, a great deal of jockeying for position, power, prestige, and
influence took place.... Small wonder that the new professional philosophers
latched onto the most provocative antipsychological methodologies available,
phenomenology and lofic, as defining the activity of members of their emerging
discipline." (p. 200)
Reed's argument suggests that the ready answers we have seen here regarding the
distinction between psychology and philosophy have emerged from this
institutional battle between psychology and academic philosophy--a battle that
began during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. On the side of
philosophy, logicians may have had an easy answer of their own: "psychology
studies the causes of how the mind actually works whereas we study how the mind
should work," or something like that. Because of the diversity with respect to
what psychologists do and what philosophers do, no simple answer to the
question, "what distinguishes psychology from philosophy," tells us very much,
I think. As always, things are more complex than that.
Sorry for being so cryptic but I gotta go,
Jeff
> --
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
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