Tools for Real Democracy
Tools for Real Democracy
Psychology, as a scientific discipline, has been slow in getting underway. False starts, such as that initiated by Behaviorism, crippled the field by imposing arbitrary and inappropriate limits upon what, and how, psychological phenomena could be studied. Others, such as Freudianism, imposed an impoverished and conceptually confused framework of interpretation of human conduct. In the face of problems of this nature, a kind of eclecticism has emerged, but without fundamental clarity concerning how to go about separating more valuable and appropriate approaches from less.
However, as bad as the many difficulties associated with working out a scientific methodology have proven, psychology has also largely shared with medicine a sort of willful blindness to its normative dimension. While medicine could proceed as if disease and health are matters of indifference, one state being just as desirable as the other, this would inevitably lead to a discipline that fell far, far short of its potential value and importance. (And, indeed, this is not not as far from what has actually happened in profit-based American medicine as one might wish.) Similarly, while psychology can proceed as if all human conduct is a matter of indifference, with, say, criminal conduct being regarded as just as desirable as conduct within the bounds of ethical norms, this approach again leads to a discipline that falls far short of its potential. And this, too, is what has happened. If anything, the situation in psychology is even worse than the situation in medicine.
Fortunately, in both cases there is a way around the impasse.
Scientific methodology has proceeded primarily within the limits imposed by an approach to scientific explanation known as "reductionism". In this approach, everything is supposed to be explainable in terms of the tiniest bits of matter — for much of the 20th century the bits in question being atoms. (As it began to be clear that there were even tinier bits of matter, namely fermions and bosons, the habit of invoking atoms as the appropriate "fundamental" explanatory units became increasingly arbitrary, yet this arbitrariness was increasingly overlooked.) There are understandable reasons for this: for relatively simple phenomena, the reductionistic approach has been highly productive, and will continue to be. In fact, the simpler the phenomena, the more productive the reductionistic approach has proven.
But in biology and psychology concepts such as structure, function, information, and especially purpose, have all been sacrificed, like so many virgins, at the reductionistic altar. While it's true that science is largely comprised of a methodology for discovering the nature of the factual, that methodology being known as "the" scientific method, any truly scientific methodology should be dictated by the characteristics of the phenomena being investigated. To instead impose blinders upon the recognizable characteristics of phenomena so as to render them appropriate matters of study for a particular, narrow methodology is, clearly, madness. To illustrate the point more concretely, let's consider the discipline of evolutionary biology. In this case, while the concept of "adaptedness" is now widely acknowledged to be central to evolution theory, it's clear that atoms aren't "adapted" to anything, and neither are subatomic particles. Obviously, neither of these can either "survive" or fail to survive. Organisms, on the other hand, can be, and are, adapted to their environments. Organisms can survive or fail to survive. And environments are, themselves, not appropriately or usefully regarded as conglomerates of subatomic particles, but rather as "ecological niches" with global properties, such as "humidity", not found in subatomic particles. Here the appropriate "units of analysis" are, respectively, the organism as a whole, and the more global features of environments (such as the relative humidity of deserts or rainforests).
If, in visiting the Galapagos islands, Darwin had asked himself what sort of atoms he was encountering, he would never have gotten anywhere, though he would have made a crackerjack reductionist. Much more sensibly, and much more scientifically, he took cognizance of emergent phenomena such as organismic survival and ecological niches, and also utilized concepts and terminology appropriate to these phenomena, such as "fitness," that mean nothing at the atomic and subatomic levels. So much for "reductionism".
In the case of psychology, the single most striking feature of conduct is its purposiveness; yet psychologists have gone to absurd and even excruciating lengths to ignore the obvious, since purposiveness isn't a concept relevant to atoms (or fermions or bosons), and reductionistic methodologies aren't helpful when studying purposiveness.
The obvious way forward? Psychology, like biology, must proceed by fitting its concepts and methdology to the phenomena that it studies rather than fitting the phenomena that it studies to preconceived concepts and methodologies.
Norms, or standards, appear with the emergence of purposiveness. Conduct can either achieve its ends or fail to achieve its ends. In the former case, conduct is successful. In the latter case, it is unsuccessful. Both terms, "successful" and "unsuccessful", are, essentially and irreducibly, normative. (Pleasure and pain are typically so orchestrated in the organism as to help ensure successful conduct or the maintenance of biological integrity, and to discourage unsuccessful conduct.)
Ironically, "Humanistic" psychology was established in recognition of the reality of psychological norms; and yet, at the same time, this discipline failed to recognize that norms comprise its most central concept. Unsurprisingly, Humanistic psychologists subsequently failed to seek out a methodology that recognized, and was relevant to, this reality.
The two most important norms of conduct are those of ethics and those of success. "Humanistic", or more appropriately "Normative" psychology is accordingly concerned most centrally with the study of conduct (behavior being of little to no interest), and of individuals, in light of these two sets of norms. The primary question before Normative psychology is, therefore: what sort of individual is most likely to be both successful and ethical? Or, to place more emphasis on conduct itself, the primary question would be: what sort of conduct best conduces to both success (that is, successful achievement of its aims) and conformity to ethical norms?
The term "greatness" ordinarily applies to individuals who have manged to conduct themselves both successfully and in light of ethical norms. And so the insights of Normative psychology should, therefore, be expected to tell us, concretely, how each of us can strive to be a greater individual.
In addition to elaborating the nature of Normative psychology, and making it clearer how we can all achieve greatness to some degree, we will also inform our readers of discoveries relevant to this discipline. There are also important implications for both politics and economics, and for the theory of the ideal society.
This undertaking is part of the desperately needed intellectual housekeeping required to keep civilization itself afloat. And that sort of housekeeping is what Everything Progressive is all about.
Psychology is a science, but a science that can be conducted in light of a recognition of the relevance of both ethical norms and norms of success.
