POSITIVISM AND CONSTRUCTIONISM IN PSYCHOLOGY

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Problem statement and aim

The question of the thesis in the light of the title, “A critical realist view of psychology as a science,” is whether a Critical Realist view of psychology as science is viable. Underlying this question is the belief that a Naturalist 1 Realism as a philosophy for psychological science should be possible, given the following two assumptions: a) whatever there is proceeds from one reality and b) somehow epistemic access to this one reality is provided by both how reality and our minds (as part of this reality) are structured. Loosely formulated this means the following. Reality and everything within it evolved because of this one reality that exists.
Where, when and how minds, culture and the like developed is an open question but at least we know this: humanity as we know it developed these things and their by- products here on earth from somewhere in the distant past. Along the way things acquired meaning and as a few centuries of Western philosophy show it has been difficult to marry the psychosocial and natural worlds. However, the one cannot be without the other: we can think of a world without humans but not the other way around! In this thought lies one requirement for a Naturalist Realism. Secondly, epistemic access to reality, or for lack of a better term, the different modes of reality whether psychosocial or natural, is much more difficult to work out except to say that we need to find a satisfactory answer that takes both sides of the coin into account, namely, the mind and external reality.
Bhaskar’s philosophy of natural and social science provided one answer to these issues, namely what reality is and how we gain epistemic access to it, especially in science. Bhaskar’s philosophy of science negotiates its way between two avenues proposing epistemic access to the modes of reality. The one, positivism, is a particular widely acknowledged avenue in natural science and in various quarters is seen as the received view of how natural science should proceed. The other, hermeneutics, Bhaskar regards as the standard approach for social science.
The reason is its focus on meaning which is regarded as that aspect of psychosocial reality not managed and dealt with by natural science. Parallel views are reflected in psychological science. Methodologists divide themselves in quantitative and qualitative camps, the one dealing with empirical matters and the other with meaning. A strong movement on the qualitative side is represented by social constructionists and one of their main arguments of why qualitative and constructionist methods should be followed is the fundamentally meaning-based nature of psychosocial reality. Bhaskar’s Critical Realism is popular in psychosocial science and I am taking the opposition between positivism/empiricism on the one side and meaning/constructionism/hermeneutics on the other side as the two opposing forces he tries to reconcile. Thus, one aim is to see whether Bhaskar succeeds and whether his Critical Realism can succeed of what I regard a Naturalist Realism ought to achieve, at least for psychological science. In the process, I would like to briefly describe the problem field and why I regard the positivism-constructionism opposition as problematic for psychological science.
I refer to the development of psychology’s scientific self-image, look at the views of one of the major proponents of social constructionism in psychology, namely Kenneth Gergen, and examine classical empiricism and how its tenets crystalized in positivism. The debates in psychology recruit realism as a form of positivism and I discuss two paradigm examples of Scientific Realism to accentuate the difference between positivism and what realism is supposed to achieve in natural and social science.
Bhaskar contrasts his philosophy of natural science with Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and calls his own approach Transcendental Realism. For this reason I also look at Kant’s epistemology and transcendental argument. The difference between Kant’s and Bhaskar’s ontologies are characterised as subject and object-sided because of the emphasis placed on what the mind contributes to understanding empirical experience. Over and above Semirealism and Minimal Realism, a much earlier version of realism, namely, Situational Realism of John Anderson is considered for its differences and connections with idealism, Kant and empiricism. Because of its close allegiance to Direct Realism which influenced the development of psychology at the beginning of the Twentieth century and beyond, Situational Realism’s principles of one ontology, its object-sided epistemology and non-constitutive relations provides some assistance in correcting Bhaskar’s wedge. The latter is so called because I think his apparent solution of a reconciliation between natural and social science fails: naturalising social science as he did merely serves to drive the wedge between the two domains of reality, natural and social, deeper.

CONTENTS :

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
- 1.1 Problem statement and aim
- 1.2 Background
- 1.3 Chapter overview
- 1.4 Technical issues
CHAPTER 2 POSITIVISM AND CONSTRUCTIONISM IN PSYCHOLOGY
- 2.1 Introduction
- 2.2 The development of a psychological science image
  - 2.2.1 Nineteenth century
  - 2.2.1.1 Method of investigation
  - 2.2.1.2 Models of experimentation
  - 2.2.1.3 The formative social context
  - 2.2.1.4 The aims of knowledge practices
  - 2.2.1.5 Scientific practice and the construction of the person
  - 2.2.2 Current paradigms of psychology: the twentieth century and beyond
  - 2.2.2.1 Conflating realism and positivism
  - 2.2.2.2 The scientist-practitioner and its scientific image
  - 2.2.3 Measurement in Psychology
  - 2.2.3.1 Methods in South African psychology
  - 2.2.3.2 Quantitative and qualitative methods
  - 2.2.3.3 The quantitative imperative
- 2.3 Anti-essentialism of constructionism
- 2.4 Relativism
CHAPTER 3 EMPIRICISM AND POSITIVISM
- 3.1 Introduction
- 3.2 Classical Empiricism
  - 3.2.1 Various descriptions of empiricism
  - 3.2.2 Locke
  - 3.2.3 Berkley
  - 3.2.4 Hume
  - 3.2.4.1 Hume’s doctrine about ideas, perceptions, impressions
  - 3.2.4.2 Simple and Complex ideas
  - 3.2.4.3 Cause and effect is known by experience
  - 3.2.4.4 Induction
  - 3.2.4.5 Scepticism regarding the existence of the external world
  - 3.2.4.6 Scepticism regarding the senses
  - 3.2.4.7 Summary of Hume
- (a) Empirical criterion of meaning
- (b) Nominalism
- (c) Atomism
- (d) Necessity and causality
- (e) Induction
- 3.2.5 Phenomenalism
- 3.2.6 Summary and conclusion
- 3.3 Positivism
- 3.3.1 The French portraiture
- 3.3.1.1 Saint-Simon
- 3.3.1.2 Comte
- 3.3.1.3 Durkheim
- 3.3.2 Logical Positivism (LP)
- 3.3.2.1 Verificationism and empiricism
- (a) Verification theory of meaning
- (b) Metaphysics and the given
- (c) Knowledge empiricism
- (d) Verifying claims
- (e) Rational reconstruction of theories
- 3.3.2.2 The role of language and protocol statements
- (a) Schlick’s view of language
- (b) The role of protocol statements in science
- (c) Carnap’s view of protocol sentences
  - 3.3.2.3 Reduction in psychology according to Carnap
  - 3.3.2.4 Causality
  - 3.3.2.5 The Frankfurter Schule and LP
  - 3.3.3 Instrumental positivism
  - 3.3.4 Summary and conclusion
CHAPTER 4 CONSTRUCTIONISM
- 4.1 Gergen
- 4.2 Modernist assumptions
  - 4.2.1 Primacy of the individual
  - 4.2.2 Knowledge
  - 4.2.3 Language and reality
- 4.3 Scientific knowledge
  - 4.3.1 Stability
  - 4.3.2 Objectivity and values
  - 4.3.3 Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
  - 4.3.4 Constructionist criticism
- 4.4 Constructing the self
  - 4.4.1 Inconstancy of human nature
  - 4.4.2 Interpretative nature of human reality
  - 4.4.3 Establishing the relational nature of self
- 4.5 Summary and conclusion
CHAPTER 5 REALISM
- 5.1 Introduction
- 5.2 Scientific realism
  - 5.2.1 Overview
  - 5.2.2 Entity Realism
  - 5.2.3 From Structural Realism to Semirealism
  - 5.2.4 A brief summary of Semirealism
  - 5.2.5 Causality
  - 5.3 Realism in social science
  - 5.3.1 Minimal Scientific Realism
  - 5.3.2 Models
  - 5.4 Situational Realism
  - 5.4.1 Introduction: the philosophy of John Anderson
  - 5.4.2 Ontology and epistemology
  - 5.4.3 Being and becoming
  - 5.4.4 Situational
  - 5.4.5 Propositional
  - 5.4.6 Relations
  - 5.4.7 Causality
  - 5.4.8 Argument
  - 5.4.9 Truth
  - 5.4.10 Meaning
  - 5.4.11 Distinguishing Anderson’s realism from positivism
- 5.5 Conclusion
CHAPTER 6 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM
- 6.1 A priori, a posteriori knowledge and analytic, synthetic judgements
- 6.2 The transcendental argument
- 6.3 Experience and thought
- 6.4 The metaphysical and transcendental deductions
- 6.4.1 The categories
- 6.4.2 Synthesis
- 6.5 The role of mediating representations: the schemata
- 6.6 The postulates of empirical thinking
- 6.7 Reason
- 6.7.1 Ideas as indication of theoretical concepts
- 6.7.2 Laws of nature
- 6.8 Summary and conclusion
CHAPTER 7 TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM
- 7.1 Introduction
- 7.2 Philosophy and science
- 7.2.1 The relation between philosophy and science
- 7.2.2 The mechanistic worldview
- 7.2.3 The transcendental argument
- 7.3 Critical Realism in natural science
- 7.3.1 The nature of the world
- 7.3.2 Transcendental analysis of perceptual experience and experimentation
- 7.3.2.1 Perceptual experience
- 7.3.2.2 Experimentation
- 7.3.3 Reality as intransitive: its independence of persons
- 7.3.3.1 Transitive and intransitive objects of knowledge
- 7.3.3.2 Ontological commitments
- 7.3.3.3 The nature of the intransitive
- 7.3.3.4 What are laws?
- 7.3.4 Reality as differentiated: open and closed systems
- 7.3.4.1 Regularity determinism and conditions for closure
- 7.3.4.2 Variants of actualism
- 7.3.5 Reality as structured: the primacy of mechanisms
- 7.3.5.1 Three domains of reality
- 7.3.5.2 Generative mechanisms
- 7.3.5.3 Stratification
- 7.3.6 Reality as discovered: the process of science
- 7.3.6.1 Identification of regularities
- 7.3.6.2 Model construction
- (a) Campbell’s analogy phase
- (b) Necessity
- (c) The transcendental realist process of science
- 7.3.6.3 Establishing the reality of theoretical entities
- (a) Theoretical work
- (b) Empirical work
- 7.3.6.4 The tasks of science: taxonomic and explanatory
- (a) Nominal/real essence/definition
- (b) The dual task of science
- (c) Explanation in open systems
- 7.3.7 Science as work: the transitive sphere
- 7.3.7.1 Science as work
- 7.3.7.2 Scientific knowledge as corrigible
- 7.3.7.3 Science as intellectual work
- 7.3.8 Conclusion and summary
CHAPTER 8 CRITICAL REALISM IN SOCIAL SCIENCE
- 8.1 Introduction
- 8.2 Methods in the natural and social sciences
- 8.3 Social domain
- 8.3.1 Different models of society
- 8.3.2 The transformational model of society
- 8.3.3 Measurement in social science
- 8.4 Agency
- 8.4.1 Reasons as causes
- 8.4.2 The possibility of discursiveness
- 8.4.3 Reduction
- 8.4.4 Materialism
- 8.4.5 Characteristics of social science explanation
- 8.5 Critical Realism: between positivism and hermeneutics
- 8.5.1 Against positivism
- 8.5.1.1 Characteristics of positivism
- 8.5.1.2 Transposing positivism to social science
- 8.5.1.3 Criticising the positivistic account of science
- 8.5.2 Critique of hermeneutics
- 8.5.2.1 Concept dependency of social phenomena
- 8.5.2.2 The transposition of the positivist epistemological structure
- 8.5.2.3 The hermeneutic circle(s)
- 8.5.2.4 Summary
CHAPTER 9 CRITICAL EVALUATION OF CRITICAL REALISM
- 9.1 Transcendental argument
- 9.1.1 Problems with the transcendental method
- 9.1.2 Transcendental variations
- 9.1.3 An alternative transcendental proof for realism
- 9.2 The consequence of Bhaskar’s wedge
- 9.2.1 Two ontologies
- 9.2.2 A perpetuated dualism
- 9.3 A naturalised realism
- 9.3.1 Models in science: epistemic access to reality
- 9.3.2 Critical Realism and Situational Realism
- 9.4 Conclusion
CHAPTER 10 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
- 10.1 Defining psychology as science
- 10.2 Externalism in psychological science: the New Realists
- 10.2.1 Introduction
- 10.2.2 Main tenets
- 10.2.3 Direct realism
- 10.2.4 Situation
- 10.2.5 Ecological realism
- 10.2.6 Causal explanation of behaviour
- 10.2.7 Is psychology a science of behaviour?
- 10.2.8 Critical remarks
- 10.2.9 Conclusion
- 10.3 Investigating psychosocial reality
- 10.3.1 The role of the individual
- 10.3.2 Dissolving the subject
- 10.3.3 Three selves
- 10.3.3.1 Self
- 10.3.3.2 Self
- 10.3.3.3 Self
- 10.3.4 Discursive psychology
- 10.3.4.1 Ontology of discursive psychology
- 10.3.4.2 Grounding discursive psychology in language
- 10.3.5 Causal psychology
- 10.3.6 Summary and conclusion
- 10.4 Implications of Situational Realism for psychology
- 10.5 Naturalist Realism and psychological science
- 10.5.1 The ontic status of the psychological
- 10.5.2 Impact of realism on psychological science
- 10.5.3 Naturalist realism and measurement
- 10.5.4 Examples of realist research in psychology
- 10.6 Summary and conclusion: a naturalist realist theory of science for
- psychology
- REFERENCES