Psychologism and Antipsychologism
I'm wondering about the status of psychologism and antipsychologism in the field of philosophy nowadays. One of the most prominent differences that can be said about the early and later Wittgenstein seems to be of his account of psychologism and antipsychologism in the Tractatus and Investigations. It seems to me that the Tractatus is in large part an antipsychologist account of the use of language, possibly due to the influence by Frege, whereas the Investigations is most definitely a book with a psychologism melody.
But, not to focus too squarely with Wittgenstein, I was concerned with the distinction and the present account of psychologism and antipsychologism in philosophy nowadays.
To try and answer my own question, nowadays it seems that modal logic and Kripkian semantics displays a strong antipsychologist account for the contingent and necessary. Quine neatly categorized psychologism and antipsychologism with the de re and de dicto distinction, respectively.
Anyway, what's your take on psychologism? Where can one demarcate the difference between psychologist accounts and antipsychologist accounts?
But, not to focus too squarely with Wittgenstein, I was concerned with the distinction and the present account of psychologism and antipsychologism in philosophy nowadays.
To try and answer my own question, nowadays it seems that modal logic and Kripkian semantics displays a strong antipsychologist account for the contingent and necessary. Quine neatly categorized psychologism and antipsychologism with the de re and de dicto distinction, respectively.
Anyway, what's your take on psychologism? Where can one demarcate the difference between psychologist accounts and antipsychologist accounts?
Comments (42)
But since his methodology was solipsistic, one shouldn't to go so far as to say that he believed linguistic meaning transcended experience, only that semantics cannot be given a constructive universal definition in terms of immanent experience.
I was under the impression that Wittgenstein was advocating an intuitionalist conception of language in the Investigations. You can see it in his famous example of a lion who could speak but we would never understand it.
Quoting sime
What do you mean by "solipsistic" methodology?
Just off the top of my head, Hume advocated psychologism with the problem of induction. Kant seems to have advocated an antipsychologism take on philosophy with his Critique of Pure Reason. It can go both ways with Kant.
Some other notable philosophers that seemed to have proponents of psychologism were Schopenhauer, existentialists (kinda broad definition), and phenomenologists.
What do you think?
Yeah, so hence why I ask if a demarcation between psychologism and antipsychologism can be drawn? It seems like one of those false dichotomies like the objective-subjective distinction.
Let me know about your take on Rorty. Quite interested.
The desire to reject psychologism arose with the desire to more or less attempt to make philosophy a science, per a sort of caricatured view of what science is/should be a la the mid to later 19th century. Most academic disciplines attempt to "scientize" themselves by the later 19th century.
You mean analytic philosophy, I assume? Continental philosophy seems rife with psychologism in my opinion. Just look at, for example, The Structure of Behavior: Maurice Merleau-Ponty or even Hume.
Yeah, analytic philosophy primarily. And re Hume, the rejection of psychologism occurred in the 19th century. So after Hume.
You mean here, that Frege along with the logical positivists, yes?
Well, I think any psychological view of Kant is a really bad misreading. I mean his entire critiques attempts to prove the universality of epistemology, ethics, aesthetics. Later his construction of nature was extremely antithetical to any psychologisms.
As for Hume, you may be right: he might be the only example historically that I can think of. With the caveat that I think Hume actually left it open that things like causation do really occur, and there might be a uniformity of nature, but we just do not possess the capacity to know.
Also, I'm not sure about Schopenhauer? Nor am I seeing it with any of the existentialist (perhaps Nietzsche)? And definitely not the phenomenologists — all phenomenon are intentional (directed towards objects), and Husserl himself had a giant critique of psychologism.
Yes, as well as Husserl and others.
Sorry, I think you're on point with Kant. Though, psychologism has been replaced by cognitive science in the field of philosophy as of late. What do you think?
Not much as far as I can tell.
What do you mean by that?
Those things are simply ways that we think.
I'd need a positive account for why that'd be the case.
So, where does one demarcate where psychologism starts and where it ends? It seems like a hopeless task to try and demarcate the difference between psychologism and antipsychologism.
If something is necessarily true, like mathematical statements, I'm not sure how they can be dependent on something contingent: like the mind that incidental exists, or psychological states that are vague.
The general project of making some of the categories transcendental is to hold some form of identity between the world and the subject, and having some basis for the form the world phenomenally shows itself.
Since we have a "positive account" that those are ways that we think, we'd now need a "positive account"--in other words, similarly accessible empirical evidence--that they're something else, too.
I don't think "those are ways we think" is enough to say it's merely that, either. Might as well go on to say that things we see are just "ways of seeing" and the objects are just in our heads or something.
The problem is all our accounts we give are the way we think. When we make an observation of empirical evidence and analyse it with our descriptions and scientific through, we are entirely within our own minds. From beginning to end, we are using reports of our thoughts, sensations and feelings to give description of what is true.
Are our observations and theories "just psychological" because they appear in our mind? Is the fact that what we our conscious of when we make an empirical observation enough to say what we are thinking about is just a creation of our mind?
No, we take our experiences report something true about the world, about facts that are independent form our psychology even though they only ever appear to us in our mind.
The question is, why would we assume this must be different for truths like ethics, math or aesthetics? They, like empirical observations, appear to us in our minds. And like empirical observations, we have nothing but an appearance, sensation or idea in our minds to report their truth. Why assume that only that empirical experiences report independent truths?
I'm not claiming that the map is (necessarily) the territory. Are you?
My point is about the maps. In any case, when we have an experience reporting something (a map), it is a state of our experience, a feeling, a sensation, an idea, etc.
Whether we are treating these maps as directly descriptive (i.e. showing exactly what's there) or just an incomplete pointer to something else, it tells us something, reflects a truth independent of our experience, the territory.
My point is how can you conclude our maps of empirical observation have territory and our other notions don't? In any case, we only have the appearance of our map (our experience) and do not get outside it at any point. How can you justify empirical observations are maps with territory, while ethics, logic, math and aesthetics are maps without territory?
How can we know that there's a territory to map and that there's anything different than maps?
Wittgenstein draws a sharp distinction between understanding how to use a word according to public convention, versus the personal attribution of meaning to a word by private acts of the imagination as part of self-expression or sense-making. And he denied the existence of a necessary relationship between these two sorts of meaning. So he wasn't a "psychologismist" in the sense of believing that the meaning of theoretical terms of public discourse could be semantically reduced to private experiences via a private application of translation rules that map theoretical terms into observation terms - as was briefly considered by the logical positivists during their foray into phenomenalism and verificationism.
Wittgenstein's arguments against private language therefore present a paradox. For he presented thought experiments that supposedly delineate public linguistic semantics from 'a priori' private intuition, yet these arguments only appeal to private intuition... His arguments are like arguing with oneself that one's mental image of Elvis Presley isn't the real Elvis Presley because one can imagine the "real" Elvis entering the room.
Hence in my opinion, Wittgenstein's private language arguments cannot be consistently interpreted as being a proof of ontological claims. Rather, they should be construed more weakly as being a therapeutic construction with only medicinal value - arguments that judging by the confusion of the public, appear to have failed in their intended therapeutic purpose.
@Banno, I'm sure you might like this post. What do you think about this?
That's more or less the very question I'm asking you to consider. You insist that empirical observation have territory, while other maps, such as idea of ethics, aesthetic or logic, do not. I'm asking how you arrive at this conclusion when you only have a map in either case. How do you know the empirical maps have territory while the ethical ones do not?
How do you justify empirical maps have territory, and so are not "just psychology," but that other maps, like ethics, have no territory and so are "just psychology"?
I asked you "I'm not claiming that the map is (necessarily) the territory. Are you?"
You didn't give a straight yes or no answer. So yes, you are claiming that?
https://books.google.com/books?id=MYaOVtuEpPYC&lpg=PA137&ots=dLy6HxQUQU&dq=psychologism%20and%20wittgenstein&pg=PA141#v=onepage&q=psychologism%20and%20wittgenstein&f=false
It's pretty good.
I've not commented on that issue because it wasn't what I was trying to discuss. With respect to that point, I would say the map (our experience) is never the territory (things we might be aware of in our experience).
I'm not sure why you are bringing up this point. All along my point has been about the reasoning of your position. Whether maps are territory or not, when there is a map and territory, isn't relevant to this issue I'm talking about.
My point is the move to deny territory to ethics is unjustified just based on someone is experiencing a map.
Isn't the example of Wittgenstein's forms of life and language games, representative of a psychologism tone in his Investigations?
The reason I brought it up is because you said this:
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
That's saying that the maps are the maps.
So we need to check if you think there are only maps.
You don't think that.
But now you seem to be saying that it's not possible to experience something that's not just our experience, or it's not possible to "put something in a map" that doesn't exist outside of the map?
So you believe that when we feel a particular emotion, for example, it's basically a perception of something that's not mental?
We don’t really, for I was not discussing whether there was territory or not, but rather identifying the status of a map and how it related to claims being made. But I will digress for context.
When we experience which reports some sort of truth, be it the presence of an empirical object or a particular ethical significance, we have a map. All we have to show us what is there or not is the experience. Our experiences/maps are the means be which we learn about any territory which might be present.
For example, if I am to know about the tree in my back yard, I do so through the “map” of my experience. I have perceptions and ideas which, even if they show an underlying territory, are never the thing I’m perceiving or thinking about. No matter how much territory my experiences might show me, they will only ever be the map— a thing which is showing me something else outside of it. My knowing of the tree will never be the tree itself. Each of us is a different thing.
I am indeed saying it is not possible to experience something which isn’t our experience. By definition, any instance of experience is only a state of our experience. This is why the fact of me experiencing the tree in my backyard isn’t the tree. Two different states are present, my experience of the tree (map) and the state (territory) of the tree I know about. At no point can our knowing(map) become the thing which is known (territory). Our knowledge can only ever be a map. When we examine our knowledge, we are always limited to maps. Our experience/state of knowledge is never the territory it reports. But this places no limit or restriction on knowing things. Maps are what show us the territory.
So with respect to emotions, yes, it is perception/knowledge of something that is not mental. If someone feels an emotion, it’s an existing state. If I know someone is happy, for example, I have an experience which is reporting on a truth of how someone else exists. I have a map (my experience they are happy) which shows me a territory (their existing emotional state of happiness).
In terms of mind/body dualism, a person’s thoughts, feelings, etc. are not actually mental. Since the are particular existing states, they are material occurrences of causality, much like anything else, just with a different form. Some things are trees, others atoms… some are experiences.
On your view, you have no grounds for believing there's anything but a map.
You're backing (at least epistemological) idealism via representationalism. I'm neither an idealist nor a representationalist. Again, I'm not claiming that the map is (at least the epistemological) territory. You are (well, or you are and you aren't alternately, seemingly rather arbitrarily, basically as if you don't seem to realize the implications of your own views).
I haven't had the time to read the book link you posted, but it is certainly the case, as the author states, that Wittgenstein was an anti-transcendentalist who recognised that the semantics of logic and mathematics was reducible to the application of mathematics in the real world. So there is a case to be made that he didn't support anti-psychologism in the sense of believing that the truth of logic or mathematics (and other language-games) transcends human activities. But that shouldn't be taken to imply support for psychologism either, for the reasons i've previously mentioned.
Any software developer knows that a refusal to test the correctness of their software "because the logic of the software is true for myself, representing as it does my psychological construction of truth" isn't acceptable to the consumer. As Wittgenstein later points out, the notion of truth and falsity is relative to a notion of error. And it is
this conceptual allowance for uncertainty in the correct application of logic that makes logic a meaningful form of communication,whereby the meaning of logical practice is irreducible to any particular application of it's rules or to any particular thoughts and feelings that may occur while practising logic.
Hence the anti-transcendentalist must understand meaning in terms of holistic verification that is irreducible to individual feats of psychology.
There are grounds for believing there is more than a map: the independent of thing from experience of a thing. When we consider some sort truth or fact we know, our interest isn't in how we have a map which shows us it. We are curious about what is beyond the map. Our object of knowledge is not our experience, the map, by the underlying territory on its own terms.
Our experience (the map) is not the truth maker. The other thing, that which is independent of the state of experience in question, is the truth maker. My backyard does't have a tree because my experience shows one. It one because that tree itself exists. Similarly, with a logical truth or ethical truth, it is not the case because my experience says so. It is the case because whatever independent logical of ethic truth is present.
The position I'm outlining is the exact opposite of what you claim: it is materialism, in which the representation of experience has no role in determining truth or existence.
If we were to pose one, by having an experience (map), had the truth of the things shown, we would be an idealist who thought existence or truth was achieved through representation. We would be equating our experience (map) with the thing it showed (territory).
Any materialism requires we be restricted to maps. Since our experiences of representation are not the independent truth or existence of anything shown, they can only be limited to maps. Under a materialist position, it impossible for our experiences to be more than maps.
Epistemology can only ever be a map because its presence is not that of the things it shows-- i.e. the independence of existing things and truths from experience/epistemology.
It's not clear to me what that is supposed to read that would make sense.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Unfortunately, per your views, you have no grounds for believing there's anything but a map.
Completely inconsistent with things you said earlier.
How about we try one thing at a time and try to be consistent, try to make sense, etc.?