Psychology a Philosophy or a Science

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Will Psychology remain a philosophy or will it emerge as a science?

-- Sheila Franco (shylzycute@hotmail.com), October 06, 2003

Answers

What makes you think it is "a philosophy" rather than "a science" now? Certainly the work I know of in, say, perception and cognition has little to do with "philosophy" as the latter is practiced in philosophy departments. Whether psychology is fully a "science" (yet?) is a separate question, though the perceptionists and cognitivists I know consider themselves to be "scientists" rather than "philosophers." What social psychologists and personality researchers do may not be mature science, but neither is it "philosophy." Practicing clinical psychologists may not be scientists, but they certainly aren't philosophers either.

Perhaps you should start by looking more closely at what philosophy actually is. I think I would say that different branches of psychology have acheived different levels of scientific sophistication and success. In some areas it is quite high. In others it has been so low that many do not think that the scientific approach is appropriate. Even in those latter areas, however, I don't see that the traditional tools of philosophy have become dominant. Check out terms such as "qualititative methods" and "human science."

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 07, 2003.


I agree with Christoper Green's answer. I would add that some issues are understood better if they are conceptualize as a continua (matter of degree rather than distinct kinds). Historically, the emergence of scientific disciples with their theories,concepts,methods,and data provided a dramatic boost to our understanding, but they had their roots in prior less formal principles and activities. Scientific disciples are based on extensively on prior philosophy and to add to the overlap of philosophy and science is the current extensive use of scientific data and theories in the development of modern philosophical systems. P.S. Sometimes it is useful to alternate between conceptualizing an issue in terms of a continuum and a difference in kind.

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@gasou.edu), October 12, 2003.

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