Instruments have become a central feature of psychological science. Their introduction into a research paradigm is typically framed in terms of their practical utility in offering calibration and precision in the presentation, representation, and recording of phenomena. However, a review of early experimental psychology reveals that instruments have an additional role in terms of the accumulation of domain-specific status, or prestige. The emergence and use of prestige technologies reflects a general feature of social organization wherein group members must compete for the attention of a community. An examination of the introduction of the chronoscope demonstrates that while there was an awareness of its functional limitations, these limits were often not prominent features of later paradigmatic discourse. In contrast to early adopters, later researchers appear to have demonstrated a reduced concern for these limitations suggesting that these instruments were being used as much for their prestige function as their practical utility.
This article introduces a non-Western approach to mind and creativity, an approach inspired by the notion of sahrdaya (the appreciative critic) found in the Indian tradition of aesthetics known as rasa. The rasa tradition is preoccupied with a virtual reality governed by the principle of non-duality (advaita), which we illuminate with another virtual reality—as formulated by the mathematical principle of symmetry in quantum mechanics. Far reaching implications of the principle of symmetry/non-duality for psychology in general, and psychology of creativity in particular, are explored.
Jean Piaget’s research program—which involved the study of child development as a central feature (viz. "stages"), but which can be understood more broadly as advancing a constructive theory of knowledge (i.e., "genetic epistemology")—is thought by many contemporary developmentalists to have been guided by a coherent, complete, and unchanging meta-theoretical framework: "equilibration." While this is correct philosophically, it is incorrect historically. Briefly put: the formal meaning of equilibration changed over time, and thus so too did the entirety of the theory that relied upon it. To focus in on one specific change of particular importance, this article examines how Piaget appealed to the changing ideas of Kurt Gödel and their interpretations by French-speaking logicians. This historical analysis (a Foucauldian archaeology) thereby excavates a "neo-Gödelian turn" in Piaget’s research program. The resulting framework is then sketched in outline: the updated formal meta-theory that made possible "Piaget’s new theory."
Critics of the cognitive revolution have argued that the movement should be better understood as a socio-rhetorical phenomenon that only changed the language used by psychologists. In this article I adopt the concept of factish as a way to reconcile these criticisms with the changes brought about by information processing theory in psychology and other cognitive disciplines. My main argument is that contemporary cognition is a kind of factish that from the beginning was institutionalized in a way that allowed multiple performances. I turn to the Sloan Foundation Report of 1978 as a way to discuss the institutionalization of cognition. As we will see in the reading, institutionalization was only possible through an oscillation between convergence and multiplicity. I conclude that a definitive consensus or a single approach to cognition doesn’t represent a possible—or desirable—final goal for the multidisciplinarity of cognitive sciences.
Even before the brain’s deterioration became a health problem of pandemic proportions, literature and film rehearsed the fiction of brain transplantations that would allow an aging person to inhabit a younger body, so that successive surgeries may result in that person’s immortality. Such fiction makes the brain operate like an immaterial soul that does not undergo physical decline. This article examines that fiction as elaborated in Hanif Kureishi’s The Body and several films in connection with older fantasies that articulate desire, eternal youth, and personal immortality, with philosophical discussions about brain and personhood, and with people’s assimilation of neuroscientific idioms into their views and practices of personal identity. In conclusion it discusses how, in contrast to philosophical approaches that tend to focus on self-consciousness, first-person perspectives, and individual autonomy, fiction may contribute to direct attention to relationality as constitutive of personhood.
The aim of this article is to discuss how mutually enriching points from both affordance theory and cultural-historical activity theory can promote theoretical ideas which may prove useful as analytical tools for the study of human life and human development. There are two issues that need to be overcome in order to explore the potentials of James Gibson’s affordance theory: it does not sufficiently theorize (a) development and (b) society. We claim that Gibson’s affordance theory still needs to be brought beyond "the axiom of immediacy." Ambivalences in Gibson’s affordance theory will be discussed, and we will argue for certain revisions. The strong ideas of direct perceiving and of perception–action mutuality remain intact while synthesized with ideas of societal human life. We propose the concept of the affording of societal standards to be a meaningful term in order to grasp the specific societal character of affordance theory.
Modern understandings of the brain involve computation in one form or another. In large brain projects the synthesis of brain and computer is taken to its ultimate conclusion by super computer simulations of the brain and the export of brain processes in the form of neuromorphic computing. But behind these computations lurks the reality of a brain calling upon itself in the representation of itself, with each call establishing a new generation of itself. This is a recursively generational brain, a brain that is both generating and generated. This article conceptualises these processes in terms of the relational symmetries of the generating brain and the generated brain. Abstract constructs are made more tangible in an example in which geometric characteristics of a triangle are used to model the functioning of a simplified recursively generational brain. In conclusion, it is claimed that a proper simulation of the brain would necessarily be cyborgian.
Recent transformations in the history of science and the philosophy of science have led historians of psychology to raise questions about the future development of their historiography. Although there is a dominant tendency among them to view their discipline as related to the social turn in the history of science, there is no consensus over how to approach the history of psychology methodologically. The aim of this article is to address the issue of the future of the historiography of psychology by proposing an alternative but complementary path for the field, which I call a philosophical history of psychology. In order to achieve this goal, I will first present and discuss the emergence of the social turn in the history of psychology, showing some of its problems. I will then introduce the contemporary debate about the integration of the history of science and the philosophy of science as an alternative model for the history of psychology. Finally, I will propose general guidelines for a philosophical history of psychology, discussing some of its possible advantages and limitations.
In this article I juxtapose three critical resources for theoretical psychology: Fanon, Foucault, and feminisms. While the primary focus is on Fanon, some shared methodological assumptions—arising from the influence of Marxism and psychoanalysis on all three—are noted, albeit giving rise to mutual tensions. I then apply this critical frame to a close reading of a clinical case discussed by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. As a psychiatrist, but also political revolutionary and psychoeducator, Fanon’s account is read here as indicative of his pedagogical address in motivating for sociopolitical as well as personal change and his therapeutic approach, albeit in need of a feminist re-reading of the gendering of violence, including sexual violence. The paper concludes by suggesting that Fanon’s psychoaffective analysis, first, indicates how resistance and transformation are simultaneously intrapersonal, interpersonal, and sociopolitical, but also that, second, attending to their shifting unstable and relational features works not only to renew and reinvigorate theoretical psychology but also the interventions and perspectives informing psychological and pedagogical activisms.
In recent years, the "affective turn" has permeated the arts, humanities, social sciences, and psychology, but like any influential academic movement, has not escaped critique. We outline and agree in general terms with a critique by Leys which emphasises the influence of the basic emotion paradigm; the dualisms that accompany its deployment; and concerns regarding intentionality and meaning. We then propose an alternate approach to affect and feeling, derived from the philosophies of Whitehead and Langer; demonstrate how this avoids the endorsement of cognitivism to which Leys, critique succumbs; illustrate the strengths of this approach with respect to analyses of former U.S. President Reagan; and highlight two strengths of affect theory which are compatible with it. We conclude that our approach closes the intentionality gap that Leys identifies whilst retaining a fruitful emphasis upon the affective realm.
Within hermeneutic theory, human identity has been conceptualized as a form of self-interpretation, situated within value-laden practices that offer moral points of reference and standards for cultural engagement. Central to the notion of identity, from this perspective, is a kind of practical-moral position-taking in which a person is an expression of what it means to be human within a particular moral space. This article extends this argument by showing the connection between self-interpretation and situated learning, suggesting that human learning is a type of moral becoming. To do so, the article will, first, offer a review of situated learning scholarship that has drawn a connection between learning and identity; second, show how the adequation of learning and identity is entailed within the broader hermeneutic claim that identity is a moral self-interpretation; and third, argue that learning is fundamentally a moral phenomenon. This argument raises possibilities regarding practical and conceptual issues, such as learning in the service of a cause larger than oneself, the responsibility and resoluteness of learners, and the oft-noted tension between human agency and social structure.
This article analyzes several more or less public controversies around evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. It is asked how participants in the debate draw the lines between science and non-science and what is at stake in their boundary work practices. Evolutionists and their critics practice boundary work both in scientific insider debates and in public scientific controversies. All contenders agree that science is characterized by authority relations and disciplinary gatekeepers and that science is distinguished from other social practices and by a certain code of conduct. Evolutionists and their critics differ in their assessment of scientific authorities’ roles and responsibilities, in their definition of scientific code of conduct, and in their conception of the relation between science and society. The analysis offers insights into the social production of knowledge in both scientific and public discourse and into the ways in which scientists negotiate the very nature of science as such.
According to direct perception theory (DPT) people understand each other’s minds by way of perceiving each other’s behavioral engagements in the world. I argue that DPT admits of two interpretations. One interpretation is found in Searle’s social ontology. The other interpretation departs from an enactivist account of social cognition. Both can make sense of what it is to perceive other minds, but in two different ways. The first claims that people can directly perceive states of mind shared in a community. In contrast, the second interpretation allows for direct perception of particular individuals’ states of mind in the context of participation in social practices. The two interpretations are argued to be compatible. People can perceive communal states of mind in another’s responsiveness to action possibilities in social environments, not only the particular other’s states of mind.
This article traces the contributions to psychological theory and practice of Theodore R. Sarbin over a career that began in the 1930s and ended with his death in 2005. His early research on clinical vs. actuarial prediction and on hypnosis reflected a disposition to be critical of received ways of thinking in psychology. He came to think of many of the terms in the psychological vocabulary as ossified metaphors turned into myths. His promotion of role theory within social psychology gave priority to social structure as the key to understanding conduct, and he saw the self and social identity as products of the interaction of the individual with society. He rejected both mentalism and mechanism as adequate approaches to psychology. He turned to contextualism as the preferred world view for psychology, and to narrative as a way of understanding the flow of human life.
This study applies conversation analysis to an infant/caregiver activity, "getting vaccinated." Here, an infant’s natural reactions (crying) to pain (inoculations) appear to function as inchoate social devices aiding the co-creation of an emerging proto-social interaction order. I argue and demonstrate that the infant’s cries comprise its (biological, as opposed to psychological) devices that contribute to the proto-interaction order, when systematically responded to by caregivers, and thus (inadvertently) employed as interactional resources. The caregivers’ responses to the crying demonstrate that the participants’ actions, including the infant’s, constitute resources for creating a proto-social-interaction order from the interacting normative and biological rule systems. Finally, since conversation analysis has not traditionally been applied to infant/caregiver interaction, I contrast relevant conversation analyses to developmental psychological studies.
Recently there has been spirited disagreement about the merits of dual-system theories of higher cognition. I suggest that this dispute is very similar to the 1970s dispute between two-store theories of memory and levels of processing theory. The two-store or "box" theorists stipulated that short-term memory and long-term memory stores were quite dissimilar and therefore represented separate memory stores. Levels of processing theorists disputed the evidence for separate memory stores and asserted that memory was an epiphenomenon of the depth to which a stimulus was processed. I adopt the levels of processing approach to show how it can help clarify the phenomena previously described by dual-system theories. Furthermore, this proposed resolution to the controversy renders moot the serious disagreements about what features might characterize each of the two processes in dual-system theories.
In a recent issue of Theory & Psychology, Robinson, Danziger, and Teo raise a number of important questions about the current role of historiography in psychology. We concur that there have been genuine costs to the historian in psychology adopting the disciplinary norms and epistemic virtues of the professional historian. Building on recent developments in historiography, we suggest a number of avenues for exploring the relationship between history and psychology. Taken together they illustrate the possibilities of an "eventful psychology" attentive to historical time.
In a desire to account for experimental evidence that is said to indicate that human reasoning is subject to errors and biases, some scholars have championed dual process theories of reasoning. These scholars have attempted to resolve the dual processes interaction problem by proposing either additional processes or one system dominating the other. Utilising modularity theory, this article asserts that human reasoning consists of a multitude of modules that interact via dynamical emergent processes based on information input and output requirements. The proposed solution combines research from modularity and emergence theories.
Human beings are meaning-making creatures, who not only suffer in an immediately felt way, but who can interpret and articulate their discontents through the use of language. The goal of this article is to map different languages of suffering that have been—and still are—in use, when human beings make sense of their problems in living. I argue that our current conception of suffering has been pathologized and biomedicalized with the diagnostic manuals serving as a significant source from which a diagnostic language of suffering emanates. I briefly present four other languages of suffering—religious, existential, moral, and political ones—that are today often delegitimatized by the dominant psychiatric language. Building on pragmatist and hermeneutic philosophies, my goal is to argue that different languages enable different forms of understanding and action, and that we need many different languages in order to fully understand the human condition.
The Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit is central to the psychoanalytical understanding of trauma. However, it has not received much attention within the contemporary field of trauma studies. This paper attempts to reconstruct the logic inherent to this concept by examining Freud’s remarks on the case of Emma. Furthermore, it is argued that Nachträglichkeit offers an interesting perspective on both (a) the well-established yet controversial finding that traumatic reactions sometimes follow in the wake of non-Criterion A events (so-called minor stressors or life events) and (b) the often-neglected phenomenon of delayed-onset PTSD. These two phenomena will appear to be related in some instances. Nachträglichkeit clarifies one way in which traumatic encounters are mediated by subjective dimensions above and beyond the objective particularities of both the event and the person. It demonstrates that the subjective impact of an event is not given once and for all but is malleable by subsequent experiences.
I suggest that the recent, highly visible, and often heated debate over failures to replicate results in the social sciences reveals more than the need for greater attention to the pragmatics and value of empirical falsification. It is also a symptom of a serious issue—the under-developed state of theory in many areas of psychology. While I focus on the phenomenon of "social priming"—since it figures centrally in current debate—it is not the only area of psychological inquiry to which my critique applies. I first discuss some of the key issues in the "social priming" debate and then attempt to show that many of the problems thus far identified are traceable to a lack of specificity of theory. Finally, I hint at the possibility that adherence to the materialist tenets of modern psychological theory may have a limiting effect on our full appreciation of the phenomena under scrutiny.
This article aims to address the issue of what context is and how it can be incorporated in psychological theory by using the case study of creativity research. It starts from a basic definition of context as the spatiotemporal continuum that, together with psychological phenomena, constitutes a totality and should be considered a single, integrated whole. As such, contexts are neither subjective, existing only in perception, nor are they a set of variables external to the person, but participate directly in the processes under study in psychology. We can therefore distinguish between "flat" theorising, one-dimensional and overconcerned with intra-psychological factors, and "3-D" models trying to articulate the psychological, the spatial (sociomaterial), and the temporal. These categories are illustrated by different theoretical approaches to creativity. It is argued here that a cultural psychological perspective on this phenomenon leads to a more "radical" contextualisation by focusing on extended actors, continuous action, dynamic artefacts, evolving audiences, and cumulative affordances. In the end, a short discussion of what contextual frameworks can offer us and the challenges we come against in establishing them is provided.
Although theory rich, contemporary psychologists have no consensual understanding of what constitutes a theory or how theory should be used, revised, and appraised. Likewise neglected are ways that a theory is taken up in specific research domains and how a theory can change over time. In response to calls for renewing psychology’s appreciation of theory, this article introduces an understanding of theory as vivacious and biographically complex. A dynamic perspective affords means to explore how a theory travels, is taken up in different times and places, and changes. So appreciating theory’s liveliness reveals not only what premises of humans are valued at a given time or within a given research domain, but uncovers vestigial features that were abandoned but might be valuable to contemporary theory work. Theory’s livelihood and travel is illustrated here by Erving Goffman’s early work on the self and its uses by Henry Riecken, Robert Rosenthal, and E. E. Jones.
If Barad’s account of agential realism is correct, then the psychological "things" that we name as "thoughts," "ideas," "theories," "knowledge," or "observations," and study as the products of processes hidden within the heads of individuals, are better talked of as emerging within material intra-actions occurring in activities out in the world at large. For, in placing the agential cuts, i.e., the distinctions we make between subjective and objective "things," in different places at different times, we do not uncover pre-existing facts about independently existing things; instead, we ourselves bring such "things" into existence. So, although we might talk in social constructionism of our understandings as being produced by forms of negotiated understanding, such forms of activity can only be seen as having been at work in people’s performances after they have been achieved—and this is the case with many topics of our study in psychological research. Something, somewhere else altogether, guides us in the performance of our actions in relation to our surroundings than the "named things" we claim to have discovered in our research. It is the nature of this "something else," and how it can be publicly studied, that I want to explore below.
This article criticizes recent attempts to explain creative thought as an off-shoot of syntactic mechanisms, such as recursion in language, and proposes an alternative. It agrees with the syntax-centric hypothesis on two fronts. First, it is claimed that a supramodal notion of creative thought, or what paleoarcheologists call human innovativeness, emerged in the human evolution in a sudden quantum transformation that occurred between 200,000–50,000 years ago. Second, it is argued that human innovativeness is linked with certain formal linguistic computations. Where it perceives weakness is in the claim that formal recursion by itself could transform a finite mind into an infinite one. A new hypothesis is proposed, according to which recursive symbol manipulation provides a controlled, volitional access to a more primitive, pre-existing creative non-discursive thought potential by means of non-veridical "wild" triggering.
This article aims to initiate a critical reconstruction of theory and research on reasoning and personal epistemology prompted by socio-philosophical critiques of rationalism and by a theoretical perspective according to which both discourses of knowledge and modes of thought are constituted in a power-infused sociocultural order structured materially and discursively by gender, ‘race,’ and socioeconomic class. A new qualitative methodology is introduced, particularizing participants in terms of their social location and modes of thought while also formulating cross-sectional analytical constructs. New analytical constructs for characterizing epistemic resources ostensibly brought into reasoning are interpretively induced from data through a quasi-inductive process informed by critical philosophical perspectives on knowledge. Theoretical implications point to the functional interplay of dominant and subversive discourses of knowledge in the constitution of thought, the complex assemblage of discursive resources flexibly deployed in reasoning, and the social constitution and biographical particularity of reasoners as epistemic agents.
Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary approach that combines cognitive psychology, economics, and neurobiology in studying how people make decisions. A peculiar feature of this approach is the use of neuroscientific methods for individuating the neural correlates of the cognitive processes involved in decision-making. The rationale motivating this use is that neurobiology can provide physical evidence for theoretical and abstract constructs that define the cognitive processes responsible for the human deliberative capacity. In this contribution, I’ll provide a critical account of the above assumption. I’ll argue that, in order to consider neurobiological data as reliable empirical evidence for decision-making theories, neuroeconomists need to adopt a very strong assumption about the relation of brain activity to mental states: mind–body identity theory. Without such an assumption, we should consider these data only in terms of correlation and thus too loose to be truly informative.
The Millean Quantity Objection—that is, the claim that the measurement of psychological attributes is impossible (Trendler, 2009)—has been countered with partly vigorous opposition (Kyngdon, 2013; Markus & Borsboom, 2012; Saint-Mont, 2012). Kyngdon’s response is of particular interest, since he asserts that measurement may already have been established. If correct, it would definitely invalidate any quantity objection and end the century-long discussion about the measurability of psychological attributes. Therefore the focus of the rejoinder will be on the question of when measurement is reached. First the meaning of measurement is elaborated. On this basis, criteria for the successful establishment of measurement are formulated and it is outlined how these are satisfied in the case of intensive quantities. It is concluded that the evidence presented by Kyngdon is insufficient and inadequate. The approach will also serve as background to discuss objections raised against the Millean Quantity Objection.
Willpower has returned to contemporary psychology, drawing on ordinary speech, but the status of the will in psychology is not settled. Avoiding this antinomy of the will by proposing that willpower is an interactive kind (Hacking, 1999), this paper examines the significations of willpower as it developed in American culture and appeared in American newspapers from the 1850s to 1970. Willpower has diverse significations: self-control, resoluteness, and effort; testing of the limits of endurance; ability to influence and lead others; a visible sign of character; a measurable trait; a goal of education and training. Willpower was questioned, subordinated to other traits, and denied existence. Two conclusions arise: Qualitative research will enrich our understanding of willpower; and the history of willpower is essential to psychology’s understanding of it, showing willpower to be a category appropriate to societies where individual effort, despite circumstances and conventions, is a cultural good.
If we know that certain ways of making decisions are associated with real-life success, is this then how we should decide? In this paper the relationship between normative and descriptive theories of decision-making is examined. First, it is shown that the history of the decision sciences ensures that it is impossible to separate descriptive theories from normative ones. Second, recent psychological research implies new ways of arguing from the descriptive to the normative. The paper ends with an evaluation of how this might affect normative theories of decision-making.
It is argued that generalization in psychology is a creative, interpretative, and reflective act of thought, by accessing a higher level of abstraction from meaningful events. In the context of clarification of this claim, a fresh look at Lewin’s argumentation about the "Aristotelian" and "Galileian" epistemologies will be useful. Lewin’s ideas illuminate the contemporary debate about individual cases, lawfulness, and theory in psychology. Finally, it is demonstrated how Lewin’s reasoning can still provide the ground for theoretical reflection in psychology. This science is indeed still facing some relevant epistemological problems, unwilling to abandon the essentialist and reductionist concept of the "average," and confronting an equal challenge of achieving a scientific status without sacrificing its humanistic dimensions. Consequently, Lewin’s theoretical discussion on epistemology in psychology can provide a relevant starting point to foster contemporary reflexivity in psychology. Scientific method provides conceptual artifacts, constraints, and norms of sharing that enable this particular type of sense-making process.
What epistemic use and function do images and graphs fulfill in scientific practice? Whilst this question is nowadays broadly discussed in the history of science, the history of psychology usually ignores the iconic material presented in textbooks, papers, and essays of the discipline’s past. Such a habit of logo-centrism in the popular history of psychology seems all the more surprising as contemporary psychology heavily relies on flow charts, statistic diagrams, tables, and other iconic elements. Following arguments of the science historian Ludwik Fleck, this paper aims to sharpen the awareness for the specific attributes and performative capacities of iconic media in the history of psychology. We start out discussing general aspects and specifics of graphical objects and their relation to scientific texts and then analyze some popular diagrams in the history of psychology accordingly. Altogether, we argue for an icon-informed history of science to gain a deeper understanding of the discipline’s past and present.
This paper draws on Hannah Arendt’s political thought to question the relationship between theory and practice in psychology and the public role of psychologists. One of Arendt’s main contributions to political theory was to underline the specificity of political action, and to stress that politics should not be ruled by pure theoretical reason or reduced to the technical management of social issues. Applied to psychology, a view of the relationship between theory and practice that ignores this specificity may well lead to efficacious applications, but it has a certain number of politically problematic consequences. These include the a priori disqualification of opinions, a loss of common sense, the a priori definition of the world as a set of variables, and the a priori definition of people as "material" to be shaped rather than as political actors. Such consequences are problematic insofar as they can lead to the exclusion of people from the public realm and undermine the very possibility of genuine political action. These points are illustrated and discussed through examples drawn from psychoanalysis and experimental social psychology.