Theoretical Issues in Psychology

1. Theoretical Issues in Psychology Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mind for Psychologists B&LdeJ

2. Chapter 2 Kinds of explanations • 3 kinds of explanations • Reduction • Levels of explanation • Reasons and causes • Explanatory pluralism B&LdeJ

3. Explanation Explanation is answering to a ‘why’ question. Three kinds of explanations: 1) Nomological explanation (D-N model) answers ‘why’ by subsumption under a general law (‘covering law’): sciences. 2) Hermeneutic understanding (‘Verstehen’) answers ‘why’ by reconstructing context, explicating meaning and experience: humanities. 3) Functional explanation answers ‘why’ by finding the function (‘what is it for’); mechanistic explanation: biology (engineering); biological psychology. B&LdeJ

4. Nomological explanation law 1…………law n condition 1… condition n event (fact) explanans explanandum • Subsuming an event (fact) under a general law. • Or deducing an explanandum from an explanans. • Prediction logically equals explanation. • Problem: doesn’t work for motives, reasons and actions. B&LdeJ

5. Nomological explanation • Example: • L1: Frustration causes aggression • L2: Football supporters whose club lost are frustrated • C1: These supporters’ football club lost • ---------------------------------------------------------- • E: These football supporters are aggressive B&LdeJ

6. Hermeneutic understanding • Understanding and explicating human behavior and texts. • Describing meaningful relations in context. • Interpreting individual cases (no laws). • Motives and reasons (not causes). • Actions (not movements). • Hermeneutic circle of whole and parts. Problem: no objectivity, not verifiable or falsifiable B&LdeJ

7. Explaining • Natural sc. • Time-spatial events • Causes • Nomothetical • Object / objectivism • Method-oriented • Generalising over • objective facts • Experimental, • biological psychology • Understanding • Social sc./humanities • Actions • Reasons (motives) • Idiographical • Subject / subjectivism • Meaning-oriented • Unique events • Persons experience • Client-centered therapy, • psychoanalysis B&LdeJ

8. Reasons and causes in social science • Explainingor understandingbehavior? • Action (rational, goal-directed, meaningful,motivated). Or • Movement(mechanical, causal, determined). • Solution: multiple levels of explanation, understanding and causal explanation can coexist. B&LdeJ

9. Functional explanations • What an item does, what goal it serves; not what it is (made of). • Teleology (goal-directedness). • The presence of a trait is explained by its function, e.g., mammals have a heart to pump blood. • Characteristic for biology: adaptive functions selected in evolution. • Evolutionarypsychology: function of jealousy, cheater detection, etc. (see Ch. 9.2). B&LdeJ

10. Functional explanations • The presence of a trait is explained by its function. • Adaptation (not physical causation, not interpretation of meaning). • How system works, its design and functioning (no laws, no causes, no predictions). Problem:danger of cheap, circular, pseudo-explanation (adaptationism). B&LdeJ

11. Mechanistic explanation • Extension of functional explanation. • A phenomenon is explained by the orchestrated functioning of the component parts of a mechanism. • E.g., heart (mechanism) pumping blood (phenomenon) by muscles and valves (components) together. • Interlevel: lower level of components explains higher level phenomenon. B&LdeJ

12. Function • Etiological: the trait is selected in the past • for a specific effect: •  evolutionary explanation. • Causal role: the contribution a trait makes • to the capacity of the whole system: •  systemic, engineering explanation. B&LdeJ

13. Functionalism Is a materialistic notion of mind Behaviorism: no mental terms and things; only observables. Mind-brain Identity theory: mind is brain; mental terms have to be reduced to brain terms. Functionalism: materialism without reductionism. B&LdeJ

14. Functionalism • A mental process is a functional organisation of a machine (e.g., brain), an ‘abstract’ organisation, can be realised in different kinds of hardware. • ‘Token materialism’: every function is realised in something material. • No ‘type materialism’: realisation in different kinds of material objects (computers, brains). • Therefore no reduction to neurophysiology. B&LdeJ

15. Materialism in history Behaviorism (behavior) Identity theory (mind=brain) Functionalism: ‘1st cognitive Revolution’ (cognition) ‘2nd cognitive revolution’ (cognition, brain &behavior) 1913 – ca1950 ca 1950 1950 – 1985 1985 – present B&LdeJ

16. Two forms of mind materialism Typematerialism of the Identity theory: ‘I’m afraid when typical brain cells are firing’ Token materialism of functionalism: ‘I’m afraid when my cognitive system is in a certain functional state’ B&LdeJ

17. Type and token The tokens: student A student B The type, the class: students B&LdeJ

18. Problems of type materialism (IT) according to functionalists We have insufficient knowledge of brains. Autonomy of psychology, no reduction (identity) of psychological to neural processes. IT is too ‘chauvinistic’: only human brains can show intelligence; but how about a chess computer? B&LdeJ

19. Functionalism • Mental states are functional states of physical systems. • Functions have a causal role (cause other mental states and behavior). • Functions are materially though multiply realised. • Implementation is irrelevant for explanation. • Liberalism: computers, animals, aliens can show intelligence. B&LdeJ

20. Criticism of biologically-oriented Functionalists • This is machine functionalism: function is stripped of goal-directedness and adaptation. • Therefore: teleological functionalism; biological functions, not abstracted from implementation or environment. B&LdeJ

21. Reduction and reductionism Reduction:explanatory strategy Explain complex phenomena by reducing to elements; chain of ‘why’ and ‘because’ going down from everyday macro-objects to elementary particles. Reductionism:ideology Reality is nothing but matter in motion (‘nothing buttery’), e.g., pain is firing of certain neurons; e.g., altruism is nothing but the blind instinct, programmed by a selfish gene. B&LdeJ

22. Theory reduction Theory reduction: deducing a higher level theory from more basic theories plus bridge laws (extension of D-N explanation): e.g., deduce thermodynamics (temperature and pressure) from statistical mechanics (molecules). Bridge laws connect theories, identifying terms (things) across theories (e.g., temperature is average kinetic energy of gas molecules): e.g., associative learning deduced from synaptic potentiation; Long Term and Short Term Memory deduced from LTP (biochemistry); ‘neural alphabet’ (Kandel). B&LdeJ

23. Classical reduction • Deducing higher level science from lower level; • requires connectability (bridge laws) and deducibility • sociology  psychology  neurofysiology  physics • complex  simple. • ‘Unified science’ (positivism): same kind of observations, same kind of explanations everywhere in science, ultimately ‘ideal physics’. • Basic theory incorporates higher level theory • e.g., Mendelian genetics subsumed under biochemistry (DNA). B&LdeJ

24. Classical reduction • Deducing higher level science from lower level,connected bybridge laws; smooth incorporation of reduced (old) in reducing (new) theory. • Problem: Old theory usually false, concepts do not refer. • New theory corrects old, meaning of concepts changes. • Therefore, no bridge laws, no deduction. • Classical reduction fails as account of real scientific progress works. • Then: • eliminativism: drop old theory (and its world view); • or functionalism: non-reductive materialism, autonomy. B&LdeJ

25. Non-reductive materialism • Multiple realisation: classical reduction impossible in neuro-psychology: no bridge laws (type identities) between mind and brain. • Supervenience:Mental processes determined by (dependent on) material processes. No change in mental states without change in neural process (i.e., no disembodied mind). • Compatible with functionalism as theory about the mind: • autonomy for psychology, no reduction; • but also materialism, no dualism. B&LdeJ

26. Supervenience: the mental and the neural mental mental no reduction determination neural2 neural3 neural neural1 Neural B&LdeJ

27. Reduction vs elimination Reduction:identification of higher level phenomenon with lower level. Retains ontology: the reduced phenomenon really exists e.g., water is H2O; temperature is kinetic energy; e.g., pain is (identical with) firing of certain neurons. Problem:old theory false, meaning changes: no bridge laws, no reduction. Eliminativism:replacing higher level entities and theories by more fundamental ones. Replaces ontology: higher level entities do not really exist e.g., talk of neural processes replaces ‘pain’, ‘consciousness’, ‘meaning’ etc. B&LdeJ

28. New wave reductionism, eliminativism Responds to failure of classical reduction: higher level eliminated. Old reduced theory is to some degree false, obsolete, or incomplete. Old reduced theory to some degree corrected or even entirely replaced by lower level reducing theory. Functional, psychological theories only approximate, coarse descriptions. Cognitive phenomena can better be explained by neuroscience. B&LdeJ

29. Reduction vs levels Reduction in D-N-model: unification, psychology is neuroscience. Eliminativism: psychology replaced by neuro-science: these areone-levelstories. Alternative: multiple levels of explanation: explanatory pluralism, co-evolution of theories at different levels. B&LdeJ

30. When classical reduction fails Autonomy(functionalism), or Elimination (more or less correction of the reduced theory), or Explanatory pluralism (McCauley) coexisting theories, mutually influencing each other top-down and bottom-up. B&LdeJ

31. Explanatory pluralism • Multiple levels of explanation coexist and coevolve. • No autonomous levels (unlike functionalism), but mutual selection pressure. • No reduction or elimination. B&LdeJ