The Psychology of Scientific Inquiry
Author: Toomela, Aaro
Date: 2019-11-05T08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Psychology; Cognitive Psychology & Cognition; Philosophy; Movements; Critical Theory; Epistemology; Science; Philosophy & Social Aspects; General; Experimental Psychology; Psychedelic Library
Description: This brief sets out on a course to distinguish three main kinds of thought that underlie scientific thinking. Current science has not agreed on an understanding of what exactly the aim of science actually is, how to understand scientific knowledge, and how such knowledge can be achieved. Furthermore, no science today also explicitly admits the fact that knowledge can be constructed in different ways and therefore every scientist should be able to recognize the form of thought that under-girds their understanding of scientific theory. In response to this, this texts seeks to answer the question
Publisher: Springer

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Aaro Toomela

The Psychology of Scientific Inquiry

Aaro Toomela

Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

ISSN 2192-8363e-ISSN 2192-8371

SpringerBriefs in Psychology

ISSN 2511-395Xe-ISSN 2511-3968

SpringerBriefs in Theoretical Advances in Psychology

ISBN 978-3-030-31448-4e-ISBN 978-3-030-31449-1
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1

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Series Editors’ Preface

Toomela’s Quest: Beyond the Information Noise Towards a Basic Science in Psychology

In the twenty-first century, we live under the conditions of exponential increase of information that at times breaks loose from the knowledge it is supposed to represent. This is the case of information noise —too much information that obscures the basic message that is needed for our understanding of the World. Psychology today is filled with information noise—empirical studies are published in ever-increasing quantity with rare efforts to systematically analyze what the value of these messages—other than the fact that they are published in “peer-reviewed journals”—actually is. Science is in danger when fetishism of the administrative evaluation systems of scientists’ work steps in.

This book by Aaro Toomela is a powerful counter-voice to the prevailing ethos of empiricism for its own sake. It is a systematic analysis of the ways in which psychologists think—or—should think if they want to advance their science to that of productive Wissenschaft . His coverage of the issues is typically Estonian—deep in ideas, serious in their implications, and silently humorous in their presentation. Estonia is a small country between Europe and the Orient, where people are serious about many aspects of living—including that of how classical music can be appreciated in its new forms [1] and new forms of technology [2] could emerge from that constantly conquered [3] yet fiercely independent new nation state.

Aaro Toomela’s work in psychology belongs in kind to these basic inventions that Estonia has contributed to the World. He is a unique scholar—combining in his background the education and practice of a medical doctor with that of a cultural psychologist. Currently—as a professor of both neuropsychology and cultural psychology in Tallinn University—a combination of topics within one Lehrstuhl that is unique in the World. He is among the top three persons in the World who is an expert in the work of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria. Much of the theoretical advancement he presents in this book is based on this expertise that dates back to last century.

There is much to learn from the Continental European perspectives in psychology of the 1920s and early 1930s, and Toomela’s work is a good example of how history of psychology can illuminate the future of the discipline. History is not a cabinet of curiosities for old ideas, but rather a reservoir of unfinished and unduly abandoned perspectives many of which can lead us further in our search for theoretical innovations in the twenty-first century. Many of the forgotten names of the European psychology before 1879—when Wilhelm Wundt’s establishment of the first laboratory of psychology has been made to mark the birth of psychology as science—are worth careful re-examination. Psychology is the science of the extraordinary ways in which we live our ordinary lives and is better not dragged over to a laboratory for investigations. Psychologists such as William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Bunin, Henry James, Rabindranath Tagore, Pablo Neruda, and many others have made that point clear—yet mostly in the domain of “applied psychology” appreciating the world literature rather than in “research psychology.” Yet the latter could benefit from it in very realistic ways (Brinkmann, 2009). Psychological issues are one—and complex—within laboratory walls and beyond them.

Toomela understands the basic human value of doing psychology with deep devotion to our basic understanding. He is relentless in pointing out the superficial moments in psychologists’ ways of working. He is known for his intelligently argumentative style that has already been contributing to the present series of SpringerBriefs (Toomela, 2017, 2018), aside from in the analysis of psychology’s methodological crisis (Toomela & Valsiner, 2010). That psychology in the last century has moved in a direction of fragmentation of ideas and mechanistic application of methods is a point Toomela never tires of emphasizing. At times, he—like most of us—gets frustrated as the possible ways of overcoming the crisis are ignored by the readers.

Advocating against the fragmentation of the discipline, Toomela argues that there are specific epistemological and ontological assumptions that good science should satisfy. Psychology would be still on its way to becoming such an integrative science—Toomela calls this stage “metaparadigmatic” science. His aim is to set the epistemological foundations for a metaparadigmatic psychology. According to him, this advance will be possible insofar as the discipline overcomes the narrow understanding of causality that pervades it. Contemporary psychology would reduce cause to efficient cause, leaving important parts of the psychological object/subject a priori outside of scientific consideration. Instead, Toomela argues for the recovery of Aristotle’s model of four kinds of causes as a way to expand the reductionist concept of causality.

This book is a testimony for the intellectual freshness that we all need to understand our own hidden assumptions with which we work. First of all—Toomela reminds us about the dangers of “losing the whole”—replacing systemic study of psychological phenomena by describing the parts of the system and attributing causality to them. This danger is rampant—it is ironically the idea of “measurement” as seen in psychology that contributes to it (Michell, 1999). Most properties of psychological kind that are routinely “measured” in psychology are artifacts of the mental construction of psychologists based on common sense. They are pseudo -empirical as Jan Smedslund has for decades pointed out (Lindstad, Stänicke, & Valsiner, 2019). Toomela’s suggested recipe of a new systemic look at basic psychological functions would be a remedy for the pervasive crisis in the field. This book provides a good start—leaving it to the readers to create new investigative practices.Aalborg, Denmark Jaan ValsinerSantiago, Macul, Chile  Carlos CornejoMay 2019

References

- Brinkmann, S. (2009). Literature as qualitative inquiry: The novelist as a researcher. Qualitative Inquiry, 15 (8), 1376–1394.

- Lindstad, T. G., Stänicke, E., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2019). Respect for reasoning: Jan Smedslund’s legacy in psychology . New York: Springer.

- Michell, J. (1999). Measurement in psychology . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

- Toomela, A. (2017). Towards general-unifying theory of psychology: Engelsted and beyond. In N. Engelsted (Ed.), Catching up with Aristotle (pp. 137–151). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

- Toomela, A. (2018). Thoughts on the Contextual Cognition : Another Déjà vu. In A. Ibanez & A. M. Garcia (Eds.), Contextual cognition. The sensus communis of a situated mind (pp. 85–95). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

- Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers.

Jaan Valsiner
Carlos Cornejo
Aalborg, DenmarkSantiago, Macul, Chile
May 2019

Introduction

VISITOR: Yes, it’s a universal experience that not recognizing something makes it odd.

(Plato, 1997, p. 334; 291b8-9)

In this book, some weird questions about science (of psychology) are asked and tentatively answered. As the questions asked in this book are strange—otherwise these either would be discussed today or abandoned as meaningless or solved time ago—it seems to be justified to think about questions and their role in science. Kant warned a long time ago:

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if a question is absurd in itself and calls for an answer where none is required, it not only brings shame on the propounder of the question, but may betray an incautious listener into absurd answers, thus presenting, as ancients said, the ludicrous spectacle of one man milking a he-goat and the other holding a sieve underneath. (Kant, 2007, p. 97)

I think it is noteworthy that the importance of asking right questions in science has been repeatedly mentioned also by later scholars. Hugo Münsterberg, for instance, found that it is not necessarily a precise answer needed in science but rather a good question:

After all it is better to get an approximately exact preliminary answer to a right question that is stated correctly than to answer with a precision to the last decimal point a question that is stated inaccurately. (Münsterberg, 1924, p. VII)

Lev Vygotsky, following Münsterberg, was a little more sarcastic about answering meaningless questions:

One can multiply the number of citizens of Paraguay with the number of versts [an obsolete Russian unit of length] from the earth to the sun and divide the product with the average length of life of an elephant and carry out the whole operation without a flaw even in one number; and yet the number found in the operation might confuse anybody who would like to know the national income of that country. (Vygotsky, 1982, p. 326)

Claude Levi-Strauss added another angle: science cannot arrive at the final truth, so it is moving towards the truth by asking right questions that ground the development of science:

I do not doubt for a moment that further information already available or as yet unpublished will affect my interpretations. Some that are no more than tentative will perhaps be confirmed; others will be abandoned or modified. No matter; in a subject such as this, scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt. Unlike metaphysics, it does not insist on all or nothing. For this book to be worthwhile, it is not necessary in my view that it should be assumed to embody the truth for years to come and with regard to the tiniest details. I shall be satisfied if it is credited with the modest achievement of having left a difficult problem in a rather less unsatisfactory state than it was before. Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths. The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions (Levi-Strauss, 1969, p. 7)

Aaro Toomela, [4] following Kant, Münsterberg, and Vygotsky, also suggested that science does not begin with the question to be answered. As questions can be more and less meaningful, he suggested, they should be not just asked—questions must be well justified (Toomela, 2010a). Toomela (it is still me) also provided reasons why a question is worthy to be answered. First, it does not make much sense to answer the question already answered. It does not mean that studies should not be replicated—in case of replication, the question is whether the result of another study is reliable, can it be replicated. In case of justified doubt, question of replicability should be answered. But it does not make much sense to conduct studies with known results. As Toomela has shown, psychology today often conducts studies, which lead to rediscoveries. It would make more sense to learn first what has been discovered before and choose questions later. Today in psychology, it seems, everything older than 30–50 years is not worth knowing but increasingly is worth discovering again. Psychology is historically blind.

There must also be theoretical reasons why to study something, why to answer a certain scientific question. For instance, it makes more sense to look for novel ways to test a theory than just try to confirm what is already known (see also Kant, 1997, 2007; Popper, 1994, 2002). Every theory grounds certain predictions about the World. The strength of a theory becomes evident when its novel predictions are tested; thus, a good scientific question is about novel conditions in which a theory could be refuted or falsified in principle. There is also not much point in asking questions that are determined not by a theory about the studied thing or phenomenon but rather by the research methods. Today, mainstream psychology with rare exceptions relies on quantitative methodology. That methodology is based on the assumption that the studied psychological phenomena can be quantified. This assumption is not justified so far (because very likely it is wrong, cf. Toomela, 2008c, 2009, 2010b, 2011, 2018).

In this book, I am going to ask questions at the most general level of analysis. The most important questions are about the general form of scientific theories. Questions asked at this level of analysis allow, in principle, to rule out not only particular theories but general directions of science, such as modern mainstream quantitative psychology (see for arguments, Toomela, 2007, 2008b, 2008c, 2009, 2010b, 2012, 2014a, 2016) and also modern non-mainstream qualitative psychology (see for arguments, Toomela, 2000, 2008a, 2011, 2014b). So such general questions are justified.

It can be asked whether there are actually such general questions to be asked and answered. I think, yes, there are such questions. There is an important fact to consider. There is not one but two or even three different theories about what in principle a scientific theory should contain. In this situation, obviously a question must emerge: If there are two (or more) theories of scientific theory, which of them should be chosen? Or perhaps the existing theories all turn out to be unacceptable and a new theory must be formulated? In psychology today, these questions are not asked. Psychology behaves as if there is only one (correct) theory of scientific theory that is followed by all scholars. As I just mentioned above, psychology is historically blind. This blindness concerns not only particular forgotten theories of the past but also metatheory: a qualitatively different form of scientific theories was developed by many leading scholars in psychology before the Second World War (WWII). These scholars not only developed scientific theories with another form, but they also asked, what that form should be. So there were questions about the form of a scientific theory—together with well-justified answers to these questions.

Today these questions are there, in the history of psychology, but not recognized as important. So, as the Plato’s Visitor observed, such questions must be odd. Certain answer to the question—What should be the form of scientific theories?—has been accepted. Accepting a certain answer to any question might be justified, of course. But this is not the case with the question about the general form of a scientific theory because out of different possible answers the less justified has been accepted in psychology today. How could this happen? I think historical blindness can be blamed. General course of the history of any idea is important here. When a novel idea is first proposed, then it is also justified; more or less explicit reasons are provided why this or that particular idea was proposed and accepted. When the time passes, the idea is followed. Following an idea, however, does not necessarily require constant justification of that idea. If the idea seems (!) to work, the justification is often forgotten. The problem is that ideas may be appropriate and well justified in the beginning but in time, when new facts are discovered and novel understanding of the World emerges together with the development of thought, the same old idea may turn out to be wrong. But to discover that once accepted idea is wrong requires going back to original justifications and reconsideration of them. Historically blind science does not go back to the origins of ideas and therefore has to follow accepted old principles even if these are very questionably justified.

This book is first of all about epistemology. I am going to discuss the axioms that are unprovable assumptions of any science. A set of such assumptions may be different. Next, I am going to show that following from which particular set of the assumptions is taken, different general ways of understanding of what is scientific knowledge, and what is the general form of scientific theories emerge. These issues have been discussed for millennia and justifications for final forms of the relevant ideas accepted today can be found in the past. The ground for scientific thought was laid by philosophers. This is why this book contains a lot of discussion of philosophical ideas, mostly old or very old. Without going back into history, it would not be possible to discover why these ideas were proposed and why they were revised by later scholars.

Altogether I am going to show that depending on the version of the general theory of science accepted by a scholar, more or less powerful theories and understanding of the World is created. Psychology, differently from physics, chemistry, and biology today, is relying on less advanced form of scientific thinking. The more advanced way of scientific thinking was followed by continental European psychologists before the WWII. I suggest that it is justified to go back to the history of psychology and continue from where these continental European scholars ended.

References

Benveniste, E. (1971). Problems in general linguistics. Miami Linguistics Series No. 8. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.

Kant, I. (1997). Critique of practical reason. (Originally published in 1788). In M. Gregor (Ed.), Immanuel Kant. Critique of practical reason. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, I. (2007). Critique of pure reason. (Originally published in 1787). In N. K. Smith (Ed.), Critique of pure reason. Immanuel Kant (revised 2nd ed.) . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1969). The raw and the cooked. Mythologiques, Volume 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Münsterberg, H. (1924). Osnovy psikhotehniki. Pervaya obschaya chast. (In Russian. Originally published in German as Grundzüge der Psychotechnic in 1914) . Moscow: Russkii Knizhnik.

Plato. (1997). Statesman. In J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Plato. Complete works (pp. 294–358). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.

Popper, K. (1994). Conjectures and refutations. London: Routledge.

Popper, K. (2002). The logic of scientific discovery. (Originally published in German in 1935) . London: Routledge.

Toomela, A. (2000). Activity theory is a dead end for cultural-historical psychology. Culture and Psychology, 6 (3), 353–364.

Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 41 (1), 6–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-007-9004-0

Toomela, A. (2008a). Activity theory is a dead end for methodological thinking in cultural psychology too. Culture and Psychology, 14 (3), 289–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354067X08088558

Toomela, A. (2008b). Kurt Lewin’s contribution to the methodology of psychology: From past to future skipping the present. In J. Clegg (Ed.), The observation of human systems. Lessons from the history of anti-reductionistic empirical psychology (pp. 101–116). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Toomela, A. (2008c). Variables in psychology: A critique of quantitative psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42 (3), 245–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9059-6

Toomela, A. (2009). How methodology became a toolbox – And how it escapes from that box. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, & N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 45–66). New York: Springer.

Toomela, A. (2010a). Modern mainstream psychology is the best? Noncumulative, historically blind, fragmented, atheoretical. In A. Toomela & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? (pp. 1–26). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Toomela, A. (2010b). Quantitative methods in psychology: Inevitable and useless. Frontiers in Psychology, 1 (29), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00029

Toomela, A. (2011). Travel into a fairy land: A critique of modern qualitative and mixed methods psychologies. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 45 (1), 21–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-010-9152-5

Toomela, A. (2012). Guesses on the future of cultural psychology: Past, present, and past. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 998–1033). New York: Oxford University Press.

Toomela, A. (2014a). Mainstream psychology. In T. Teo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 1117–1125). New York: Springer.

Toomela, A. (2014b). Modern qualitative approach to psychology: Art or science? In S. Salvatore, A. Gennaro, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Multicentric identities in a globalizing world (pp. 75–82). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Toomela, A. (2014c). There can be no cultural-historical psychology without neuropsychology. And vice versa. In A. Yasnitsky, R. van der Veer, & M. Ferrari (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of cultural-historical psychology (pp. 315–349). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Toomela, A. (2016). The ways of scientific anticipation: From guesses to probabilities and from there to certainty. In M. Nadin (Ed.), Anticipation across disciplines (pp. 255–273). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Toomela, A. (2018). Thoughts on the contextual cognition : Another Déjà vu. In A. Ibanez & A. M. Garcia (Eds.), Contextual cognition. The sensus communis of a situated mind (pp. 85–95). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1982). Istoricheski smysl psikhologicheskogo krizisa. Metodologicheskoje issledovanije. (Historical meaning of the crisis in psychology. A methodological study. Originally written in 1927; First published in 1982). In A. R. Luria & M. G. Jaroshevskii (Eds.), L. S. Vygotsky. Sobranije sochinenii. Tom 1. Voprosy teorii i istorii psikhologii (pp. 291–436). Moscow: Pedagogika.

Contents

1 The Problem Psychology: A Science Yet to Become a Science
1

2 Science is Based on Certain Assumptions
13

3 Doubts, Assumptions, and Social Sciences and PsychologyToday
33

4 Causality, Understanding, and Explanation: PhilosophicalRoots
51

5 Causality, Understanding, and Explanation: FundamentallyLimited Views
67

6 Causality, Understanding, and Explanation: Backto the Roots
81

7 Theory of Causality and Modern Mainstream Psychology
91

8 What Next? Back to the Future
107

Commentary: The Yearning for a Unifying Psychologyand the Unhappy Consciousness
119

Index
129

Footnotes

1

The compositions by Arvo Pärt and by many younger generations of musicians—composers and orchestra directors (e.g., Neeme and Paavo Järvi) have made Estonia into a hub of contemporary classical music.

2

The Skype was invented in 2000 by three (then 28 years old) Estonian schoolmates and programmers—Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn with the financial backing from a Swedish and a Danish investor.

3

Since the thirteenth century, it has been under Danish, Swedish, German, and Russian administrative rules which have only fortified the resistance-based creativity of the Estonians to survive under any political system. The learning from having to deal with the administrators in Moscow in the times of the Soviet Union productively transfer to the successes in similar negotiations within the European Union.

4

I am aware that “Aaro Toomela” is me. Such impersonal way to use one’s own name in scientific texts guarantees objectivity of the ideas presented by the author. The question of how to use pronouns correctly in scientific texts is of utmost importance for all sciences. It has been suggested (= I thought) that after psychology recovers from studying everything from a neuroscientific perspective, the next main question to be answered is the exact (!) role of pronoun use in scientific literature. This is just an example how meaningless questions may ground a lot of meaningless science. Looking for the mind in the brain is not better than to dedicate effort of researchers to the question how exactly pronouns should be used in order to present answers to meaningless questions. It is worth mentioning that I am not suggesting that study of pronoun use as such would be meaningless. On the contrary, it can be very meaningful as, for example, Emile Benveniste has shown (Benveniste, 1971, esp. Ch. 18). The same I can say about these directions of neurosciences that do not search for mind where it is not; such sciences are very meaningful and actually essential for understanding (human) mind (Toomela, 2014c).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_1

1. The Problem Psychology: A Science Yet to Become a Science

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Pre-paradigmaticParadigmaticMetaparadigmaticCrisis of psychology

It may seem that psychology has found itself as a true science. During last century, however, many scholars have suggested that psychology is in crisis (e.g., Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C, Special Issue, 2012, Vol. 43 No 2, pp. 425–521). But the situation is changing. The most recent “crisis”—the so-called replication crisis (e.g., Open-Science-Collaboration, 2015)—seems not to be a true crisis (e.g., Gilbert, King, Pettigrew, & Wilson, 2016) and concerns quite superficial methodical problems of psychology compared to fundamental ontological and epistemological flaws attributed to psychology in earlier declarations of crises. Yet I suggest psychology is not as mature a science as it seems to be for majority of psychologists today. There are actually all the reasons to be dissatisfied with the current state of the science of psychology. Kant described the state of psychology as it was more than 200 years ago as follows:

In this connection we must confess that psychological explanations are in a very sorry state as compared with physical ones, that hypotheses are infinitely available here, that given three explanations, we can also always easily imagine a fourth equally convincing one. Hence there is a host of alleged psychologists of this kind who are adept at identifying the causes for every movement or affection of the mind that is aroused by plays, poetic images, or objects of nature, and who even bestow the name of philosophy upon their ingenuity in finding a scientific explanation for the most ordinary natural events of the material world, although they thereby reveal not merely an absence of real knowledge, but also perhaps of any capacity of attaining it. (Kant, 2007, pp. 344–345)

This description fits psychology today as much as it did in Kant’s time. For the purposes of this book, Vygotsky’s discussion of the crisis in psychology is central. Ninety years ago, Vygotsky observed that the science of psychology was in crisis (Vygotsky, 1982a). Vygotsky agreed with Nikolai N. Lange, one of the nineteenth-century founders of the experimental psychology in Russia, that a science is in a crisis when “There is no generally accepted system of science” (Vygotsky, 1982a, 1982b, p. 373). The most exact “diagnosis” of crisis was, for Vygotsky, proposed by Brentano[1]: psychology was not a science with different directions but rather, there were many psychologies, not one. Each of these psychologies was incompatible with another in its way of studying and explaining phenomena. These psychologies even could not find an agreement in deciding what are the most important questions to ask (!) and what is the proper object of studies of psychology.

We[2] can come closer in history and still find that psychology is in crisis. In early 1960s, Thomas Kuhn (1970) made the relevant observation:

I was struck by the number and extent of the overt disagreements between social scientists about the nature of legitimate scientific problems and methods. [...] Yet, somehow, the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry, or biology normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today often seem endemic among, say, psychologists or sociologists. (p. viii)

So, less than 60 years ago, the vygotskian type of crisis was there. The situation may seem to be different today. Indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of academic psychologists who conduct studies, collect data, interpret them, and publish their results in scientific journals. It would contradict the common sense to suggest that all these thousands and thousands of psychologists who publish thousands and thousands of scientific articles and books can all be wrong. Well, actually psychology has not changed much during last century: there are still many psychologies instead of one psychology differentiated into complementary subfields. In biology, for instance, there are complementary and not isolated biologies. Psychology is fragmented at different levels of organization. The methodological quantitative-qualitative gap can divide psychologists independently of the particular field of psychology. Yet similar gaps can be found inside many subfields of psychology.

The direction where to look in order to understand the state of any science was already suggested by Hegel (2008):

In logic and psychology, signs and language are usually foisted in somewhere as an appendix, without any trouble being taken to display their necessity and systematic place in the economy of intelligence. (p. 77)

So, study of its own language is necessary to scientific thought. Vygotsky (1982a), being Hegelian in several ways, suggested that one way how to understand the state of a science is to analyze its language, its terminology:

Language, especially scientific, is a tool of thought, instrument of analysis, and it is sufficient only to look at what kind of an instrument a science is using in order to understand the nature of operations with which it is dealing with. [...] The language of modern psychology, in the first place, is not sufficiently terminological: it means, psychology does not yet have its own language. (p. 356).

Vygotsky continued by pointing out that psychology uses three kinds of words: (1) from everyday language; (2) from philosophical language; and (3) loans from natural sciences; these loans are used in metaphorical sense and, therefore, “directly serve for deception” (p. 356).

If we study the language of psychology today, we find exactly the same sloppiness of language that characterized psychology a century ago. So, for instance, there are more than three hundred definitions of culture (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952), around eighty definitions of emotion (Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981a) and another 80 definitions of motivation (Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981b). There is no agreed upon definition of personality, tens and tens of choices could still be made from the overview provided seventy years ago by Allport (1937); the situation is not better with a definition of intelligence (Mackintosh, 1998) and with practically all other basic notions of psychology.

There are more signs of crisis in psychology of today. Our science is fragmented and historically blind. Historical blindness is a sign that a science is not cumulative, novel understanding is not elaborating the earlier theories but rather fully replaces them. A noncumulative science, as mainstream psychology today is, cannot lead to the understanding of psyche in principle (Toomela & Valsiner, 2010).

There is one interesting symptom of crisis in modern psychology more. An interesting observation was made by Stellan Ohlsson (2010):

numerous trade books that proclaim this or that breakthrough in our understanding of consciousness, brain or mind, written by business people, journalists, physicists with philosophical aspiration, medical doctors and so on. The corresponding situation would be unthinkable in biology, chemistry or physics: imagine a pediatrician trying to publish a book proclaiming a breakthrough in quantum physics. (p. 28).

Indeed, psychology as a science must be in a miserable state if anyone can—and often does!—claim to know solutions to the problems professional psychologists have not been able to provide.

Lessons from the History of Sciences: General Trends in Scientific Development

I am not going further into the question whether psychology is in crisis, that is whether it is an immature science, or not. I think mature science grounds cumulatively increasing understanding of what is studied. Psychology, a science with no methodology,[3] being noncumulative, historically blind and fragmented into numerous independent psychologies, cannot lead to understanding of psyche. Instead of discussing the “diagnosis” I suggest a direction for “treatment,” for ways for psychology to become a coherent mature science. I think in this discussion the diagnosis becomes also better grounded. The path to that aim can be found in the study of history of science. History of science can be analyzed at different levels of analysis. In one extreme, we can have a history of one idea, such as understanding of what is an atom. In the other extreme, we can look for overall trends that characterize the development of all sciences. At the latter level of analysis we can find direction for the future psychology. There are two theories that are relevant for us, Kuhn’s and Vygotsky’s.

Laws of the Development of Science: Kuhn and Paradigms

Probably the most influential account of the history of science was provided by Thomas Kuhn. He, analyzing the history of science, found that sciences are characterized by what he called “paradigms.” In Postscript—1969 to the second edition of his famous book,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

, he mentions the following:

[...] in much of the book the term ‘paradigm’ is used in two different senses. On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community. On the other, it denotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science. (p. 175).

It is the “paradigm” in the first sense that is of interest here. Overall, sciences, in Kuhn’s opinion, are changing. There are two intermittent phases that seem continuously replace one another. Sciences usually find their paradigm, a world-view. Science conducted in the frame of a paradigm he termed “normal.” Occasionally it turns out that the paradigm is in contradiction with new findings. Then science goes into a phase of “revolution” during which an old paradigm is replaced by a new paradigm. Kuhn characterized the process as follows:

Normal science, the activity in which most scientist inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community’s willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. [...] when, [...] the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice—then begin the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis for the practice of science. The extraordinary episodes [...] are the ones known in this essay as scientific revolutions. (pp. 5–6)

Normal science is essentially contradictory by nature. Kuhn describes several limitations of the paradigmatic science. In a way “normal” science is predetermined to disappear:

that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. (p. 23)

So we see that a future revolution is already encoded into the nature of paradigmatic science: when it refuses to study all relevant phenomena, when it refuses to accept new theories, it actually opens itself to destructive effects of observations that do not fit with it.

“Normal” science is also characterized by another important characteristic:

Though many scientists talk easily and well about the particular individual hypotheses that underlie a concrete piece of current research, they are a little better than laymen at characterizing the established bases of their field, its legitimate problems and methods. If they have learned such abstractions at all, they show it mainly through their ability to do successful research. That ability can, however, be understood without recourse to hypothetical rules of the game. (p. 47)

It turns out that “normal” science is blind regarding the fundamental issues that guide its thinking; it has, as I mentioned above in a footnote, no methodology. Psychology today is clearly paradigmatic in that respect as well.

Vygotsky suggested that the state of a science can be understood by studying its language. Kuhn also shows that paradigmatic science can be discovered through the analysis of terminology of a science:

An investigator who hoped to learn something about what scientists took the atomic theory to be asked a distinguished physicist and an eminent chemist whether a single atom of helium was or was not a molecule. Both answered without hesitation, but their answers were not the same. For the chemist the atom of helium was a molecule because it behaved like one with respect to the kinetic theory of gases. For the physicist, on the other hand, the helium atom was not a molecule because it displayed no molecular spectrum. (p. 50)

One moment “normal” science enters the period of insecurity and instability, Kuhn called crisis (it is not crisis in Vygotsky’s sense). Scientists begin to discover that existing paradigmatic rules fail. New and new versions of theories about the same phenomenon appear; the science is not able any more to declare that it can provide meaningful and satisfactory accounts of studied phenomena. After a period of struggle, another paradigm becomes dominant. The emergence of a new paradigm is not a cumulative process. Rather, the revolutionary restructuring of the fundamentals, the change of the most basic theoretical generalizations takes place and the accomplishments of the earlier paradigm are lost.

If Kuhn’s account of the history of science is correct and exhausts all the principal possibilities how a science can develop, there would be little to learn from the history of science beyond what he already said. The science would be just doomed to endless change of paradigms. This is not so, however. It is noteworthy that Kuhn actually distinguished two more general stages in the development of a science. Before the science became paradigmatic, there was pre-paradigmatic science. Pre-paradigmatic science is essentially without direction, without established world-view:

In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possibly pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant. As a result, early fact-gathering is a far more nearly random activity than the one that subsequent scientific development makes familiar. Furthermore, in the absence of a reason for seeking some particular form of more recondite information, early fact-gathering is usually restricted to the wealth of data that lie ready to hand. The resulting pool of facts contains those accessible to casual observation and experiment together with some of the more esoteric data retrievable from established crafts like medicine, calendar making, and metallurgy. (p. 15)

So, there is one major qualitative leap from pre-paradigmatic science to paradigmatic. As I am going to discuss next, there can also be another qualitative leap from paradigmatic to higher-order science. I think it has to be so because the world studied by sciences is organized, there are certain principles and laws that are objective. Paradigmatic science is a symptom of undeveloped understanding of the studied aspect of reality: a paradigm can be replaced because it is not appropriate for understanding what is studied. Interestingly, more complex understanding of the development of science was proposed several decades before Kuhn.

Vygotsky and Two Stages in the Development of Science

The theory we are looking for was formulated by Vygotsky already in 1927 in his
Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology. A Methodological Study

. This text, however, was first published only in 1982 and was not publicly known before.

Vygotsky, analyzing the crisis in psychology, came to an account of the history of science that is in many respects similar to that by Kuhn, but goes beyond it. He also found the development of science can be distinguished into two stages or phases:

[...] what we can conclude from the analysis—it is the distinction of two phases in the development of any general discipline, as the history of science and methodology shows. (pp. 297–298)

These two stages, however, are not those distinguished by Kuhn. Vygotsky was analyzing the history of science, as a special way of thinking and constructing knowledge. Therefore, he did not analyze in his
Crisis in Psychology characteristics of the pre-scientific or pre-paradigmatic thinking. The first stage of science development distinguished by Vygotsky is very similar to Kuhn’s paradigmatic science. In the following discussion I call this stage paradigmatic, even though Vygotsky did not use that term. Vygotsky not only distinguished this stage but also gave an explanation as to why it is paradigmatic. He proposed that all sciences strive to the creation of the unifying or general theory of the studied thing or phenomenon. Vygotsky suggested that because the need for unifying psychology was acknowledged by psychologists, psychology strived to build a general theory that would unify all contradictory fragmented approaches. One characteristic that distinguishes between the paradigmatic and post-or metaparadigmatic stage of science development is the way how attempts are made to build the unified theory.

In the first phase of development the general discipline is distinguished from special disciplines only quantitatively. [...] The general discipline makes its object of studies that what is common to all objects of that particular science. The special discipline studies what is common to specific groups or even to specific exemplars from the objects of the same kind. [...] General psychology [...] studies characteristics common to all humans [...] (p. 298)

It is important to look into the sources from where the general discipline emerges in the first stage of science development. The general principles emerge from special disciplines, which, as Vygotsky noticed, study only a selected aspect of a whole. Principles deduced from this or that special perspective are attributed to the whole. Vygotsky described this process as follows:

In the beginning there is a more or less significant factual discovery which rebuilds the ordinary account of the whole specific field of studies which this discovery concerns and even transcends the boundaries of the particular group of phenomena within which this discovery was observed and formulated.

After that comes a stage of spreading the influence of the very same ideas to the neighboring fields [...] In this process the idea itself (or the way it is used) changes as well, formulation of it becomes more distant from that in the original special field; the connection with the material that gave birth to it becomes more or less weaker. This material only continues to feed the power of reliability to the new idea, because the idea accomplishes its conquest as scientifically proven, reliable discovery. This is very important.

In the third stage of the development the idea conquered more or less the whole discipline, from where it originated, partly changed because of it, partly changing the structure and extension of the discipline itself. The idea separated from the facts that gave birth to it exists in the form of more or less abstractly formulated principle, enters into the sphere of the fight of disciplines for supremacy, i.e., into the sphere of the influence of the unifying tendency. [...] Continuing to expand on the basis of the tendency of unification, the idea easily transfers over to the neighboring disciplines [...]

In the fourth stage the idea again separates from the basic concept [...] explicitly enters into one or another philosophical system, extends, changes itself and the discipline to the most distant spheres of being, to the whole world, and becomes formulated as a universal principle or even a world-view.

This discovery, that extended to the world-view, as a frog who swelled into an ox, a bourgeois into a nobleman, finds itself in the fifth and most dangerous stage: it bursts like a soap-bubble; in any case it enters into the stage of fight and rejection, what it now meets from all directions. [...] The new idea is shown its real heritage like the bourgeois heritage is shown to the new nobleman. It will be confined to the fields from where it originated, it is forced to reverse its developmental path; it is recognized as a special discovery but rejected as a world-view [...] (pp. 303–304)

So we see that paradigms emerge when some discovery in a special field is extended to the world-view. Kuhnian type of crisis follows when it is recognized that a particular paradigmatic world-view is based on overextended and abstracted from its origin very particular idea. Revolution and a new paradigm emerge when another limited idea takes the place of the previous one. Psychology knows many discoveries made in special disciplines that became world-views or paradigms for psychology, and then either disappeared or are in the process of disappearing today. Behaviorism was basically born on the roots of Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex; the idea of psychoanalysis emerged from studies of neuroses; cognitive psychology was largely founded on the observation that in some sense human behavior is similar to the functioning of computers, etc.

Vygotsky demonstrated that paradigmatic science is essentially contradictory—it strives to achieve two mutually exclusive aims: to understand the specific aspect of the phenomenon a particular science is studying and trying to build, on the same source, the unifying theory for the discipline as a whole. This, however, is not possible because of the differences of the whole and parts. First, a whole—any whole!—has qualities its parts do not have. Second, qualities of parts are partly determined by the whole; the qualities of parts change when they become parts of the whole. It means that when we study a part, we observe two kinds of qualities: those that belong to the part per se and those that became qualities of a part because it belongs to the whole. For instance, we can distinguish (but not isolate!) a whole human living body into parts, i.e., organs. We can study these organs one by one, and learn a lot about the heart, lungs, liver, brain, etc. But immediately we separate the organ from the body, it ceases to be an organ; it becomes dead. Kidneys have several functions; they are involved in “cleaning” the organism from some substances that are natural products of metabolism. But a kidney separated from a body will soon have no function at all; it just will be a dead piece of matter. When we study only kidneys as parts of an organism, we are never able to distinguish what qualities belong to kidneys as such and what qualities emerged because kidneys are parts of the whole organism. The same applies to any science: no specific science can discover the principles for the whole field because it observes only a part, and never a whole. Therefore, another source is needed for observations that can lead to the unifying theory, the theory needed for the emergence of the metaparadigmatic stage of science.

Vygotsky characterized the second stage of science development and proposed the path to achieve it. First of all, metaparadigmatic science emerges with the formulation of the unifying theory. Creation of this theory begins with the development of methodology, the science of methods. Methodology can be understood here as a scientific world-view.

What kind this methodology will be and how soon, we do not know, but psychology is not moving forward until it does not create a methodology; that the first step forward is methodology, is clear beyond doubt. (pp. 422–423)

So, everybody is equally aware that crisis pulls towards creation of methodology, that the battle is for the general psychology. Who tries to jump over this problem, to jump over methodology, in order to build directly one or the other particular science of psychology, he inevitably, jumps over the horse when trying to sit on it. (p. 418)

It may seem that creation of methodology just grounds another paradigm because paradigms are essentially scientific world-views. But there are fundamental differences between paradigmatic and metaparadigmatic science. Of course, Vygotsky could not predict the content of this future unifying theory; it is not possible to know ahead what will be discovered in the future, as also Popper convincingly demonstrated in his critique of historicism. But Vygotsky gave some insight as to what kind of theory it is that is so urgently needed.

We saw that the explanatory principle leads us beyond the limits of a given science and must give meaning to all field of united knowledge as a special category or stage of being [...] In this sense the general science is the philosophy of the special disciplines. (pp. 309–310)

General psychology relates to the special disciplines as algebra is related to arithmetic (p. 323)

For creating such intermediate theories—methodologies, general sciences—it is necessary to reveal the essence of the given area of phenomena, the laws of their change, their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their causality, it is necessary to create categories and concepts specific to it (p. 420, emphasis in original)

Altogether, the general or unifying psychology is not about psyche directly, it is a theory about how to cognize, how to think scientifically about psyche. This theory must be methodology, philosophy of special disciplines of psychology.

Psychology still does not have a general theory of the kind Vygotsky discussed. Yet such theories exist, as Vygotsky suggested, in other sciences: the theory of relativity in physics and the theory of evolution in biology. Thus it can be conjectured that biology and physics are not paradigmatic any more. Indeed, both of these sciences became cumulative and united. Let us take biology, for instance. Vygotsky suggested that it was the Darwin’s theory of evolution that unified biology and thereby brought this science to the second stage of its development. I think it is easy to see that the theory of evolution is a special kind of a theory; its object is not one or another group of organisms, or their parts. The theory of evolution is about all living world on Earth. Darwin was very clear about it in his Origin of Species (Darwin, 1872). Here are just a few examples:

the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys. (p. 93, my emphasis).

[...] all organic beings have been formed on two great laws—Unity of Type, and the Conditions of Existence. (p. 209, my emphasis)

Darwin’s theory is explicitly about classification of the living organisms. Even more, it is classification that has been explicitly built on understanding why this and not some other basis from endlessly many possibilities is taken for classification:

Naturalists, as we have seen, try to arrange species, genera, and families in each class, on what is called the Natural System. But what is meant by this system? Some authors look at it merely as a scheme for arranging together those living objects which are most alike, and for separating those which are most unlike; or as an artificial method of enunciating, as briefly as possible, general propositions, [...] But many naturalists think that something more is meant by the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan of the Creator; but unless it be specified whether order in time or space, or both, or what else is meant by the plan of the Creator, it seems to me that nothing is thus added to our knowledge. Expressions such as that famous one by Linnaeus, [...] that the characters do not make the genus, but that the genus gives the characters, seem to imply that some deeper bond is included in our classifications than mere resemblance. I believe that this is the case, and that community of descent—the one known cause of close similarity in organic beings—is the bond, which though observed by various degrees of modification, is partially revealed to us by our classifications. (p. 423)

Thus Darwin’s theory was not only unifying but also about a whole—about the whole living world as situated in the nature. This theory, therefore, must be relevant to all subdisciplines of the science of biology. It is also very important that Darwin’s theory is about development; it is fundamentally a theory of history and dynamics. Indeed, if we would be searching for common principles to many seemingly different phenomena in the world, then no cross-sectional study can reveal them. What is common can be discovered only through studying history of these phenomena. Therefore, the unifying theory must be essentially historical in addition to being a “philosophy of specific disciplines” as Vygotsky suggested. I think, therefore, this second stage in the development of biology in particular but also of a science in general can be called a metaparadigmatic stage

.

References

Allik, J. (2018). Kuidas inimese vaim kasvab ja areneb. Akadeemia, 30(6), 1111–1122.

Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality. A psychological interpretation. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.

Benveniste, E. (1971). Problems in general linguistics. Miami linguistics series no. 8. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.

Brentano, F. (1995). Psychology from an empirical standpoint. (Originally published in German, 1874). London: Routledge.

Darwin, C. (1872). The origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (6th ed.). London: Odhams Press.

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Hegel, G. W. F. (2008). Encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. Philosophy of mind. (Originally published in 1830). In W. Wallace (Ed.), Georg H. W. Hegel. Philosophy of mind. Translated from the encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. New York, NY: Cosimo Classics.

Kant, I. (2007). Critique of judgement. (Originally published in 1790). In N. Walker (Ed.), Immanuel Kant. Critique of judgement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kleinginna, P. R., & Kleinginna, A. M. (1981b). A categorized list of motivation definitions, with a suggestion for a consensual definition. Motivation and Emotion, 5(3), 263–291.Crossref

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Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and human intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ohlsson, S. (2010). Questions, patterns and explanations, not hypothesis testing, is the core of psychology as of any science. In A. Toomela & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? (pp. 27–43). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Open-Science-Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251), aac4716. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716.Crossref

Toomela, A. (2007). Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 41(1), 6–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-007-9004-0.Crossref

Toomela, A. (2008). Variables in psychology: A critique of quantitative psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42(3), 245–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9059-6.Crossref

Toomela, A. (2009). How methodology became a toolbox: And how it escapes from that box. In J. Valsiner, P. Molenaar, M. Lyra, & N. Chaudhary (Eds.), Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 45–66). New York, NY: Springer.Crossref

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Toomela, A. (2011). Travel into a fairy land: A critique of modern qualitative and mixed methods psychologies. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 45(1), 21–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-010-9152-5.Crossref

Toomela, A. (2018). Arvustuse arvustus. Jüri Allik, “Kuidas inimese vaim kasvab ja areneb. Aaro Toomela. Kultuur, kõne ja Minu Ise. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2016; Aaro Toomela. Minu Ise areng: Inimlapsest inimeseks. (Struktuursüsteemse psühholoogia alused 2.) Tartu: Väike Vanker, 2017”—Akadeemia 2018, 6, 1111–1122. Akadeemia, 30(12), 2254–2273.

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Footnotes

1

Brentano (1995, p. xxv) wrote in the Foreword to his book: “Our most urgent need in psychology is not the variety and universality of the tenets, but rather the unity of the doctrine. Within this framework we must strive to attain what first mathematics and then physics, chemistry, and physiology have already attained, i.e. a core of generally accepted truths capable of attracting to it contributions from all other fields of scientific endeavor. We must seek to establish a single unified science of psychology in place of the many psychologies we now have.”

2

I am using “we” here and there. It seems that for some scholars use of “we” in scientific texts is problematic; it is either an empty expression of politeness or a way to show that an author connects his/her ideas with some well-known theories and through this elevates a value of the ideas proposed (this critique was expressed about a book I wrote, see Allik, 2018, p. 1113). “We” actually can have two distinct contents (Benveniste, 1971, Ch. 18): In one way it implies “I + you” and in the other “I + they.” Allik (and many others, I suppose) seem to assume that “we” in scientific texts is used only in the second way. But I am using it (and used also in the criticized book, see my response on that, Toomela, 2018) in the first way. “We” in this book implies me and you, the reader. For me any scientific text is a form of communication, discussion with somebody, with the reader.

3

Methodology should be science of scientific methods; it should answer the question, why and how used methods allow to answer the questions that are intended to answer by a researcher. In psychology, methodology is understood as a list of methods, essentially a cookbook of science. I think there are many reasons to suggest that psychology today is methodologically a complete failure (e.g., Toomela, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_2

2. Science is Based on Certain Assumptions

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Assumptions of any scienceOntological assumptionsEpistemological assumptionsEpistemology of psychology

Psychology is still a paradigmatic science.[1] To become metaparadigmatic science with the unifying theory, it is necessary to accomplish two tasks. One is to leave behind the currently dominating paradigms, which obviously are limited in explanatory power. The other is to lay foundation for the metaparadigm itself. In some sense, a metaparadigm and a paradigm are similar: both are based on certain axioms. But the axiomatic base of them is different. So, to proceed, it is necessary to go to the roots of scientific thought, to the very fundamentals of the scientific worldview. Next I am going to discuss the basic assumptions of any science. In this discussion I rely only on early philosophers. There are three reasons why not to discuss ideas of later philosophers on these matters. One reason is that I have not found anything substantially new or important for the purposes of this book in more recent discussions of the same ideas (for some recent discussions for comparison, see, e.g., Dilworth, 2006; Gauch, 2003; Harre, 2002; Moreland & Craig, 2003). The second reason is that there seems to be a continuity between the ideas of the early philosophers and approaches to science today. The epistemological ground of scientific approaches in psychology today needs to be made explicit in order to understand the weaknesses and strengths (if they exist) of the modern approaches. The most important reason I already discussed above: we must look for justifications, why the ideas we are going to discuss were proposed in the first place. I am going to show that justifications of some very fundamental ideas accepted today are not acceptable. Therefore the accepted principles become questionable: these can still be acceptable, but only if better justification for them can be formulated. Otherwise the principle in question should be rejected.

Epistemologically the most fundamental, I suggest, problem that needs to be solved was discussed by Descartes. In his Meditations on first philosophy (Descartes, 1985b), he was looking for What can be called into doubt:

Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. [...] So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of them at least some reason for doubt. And to do this I will not need to run through them all individually, which would be an endless task. Once the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built on them collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested. (p. 12)

Indeed, this is a very important question to ask—Is there anything we can be certain about? The idea of doubt, doubt in the possibility of being able to know, and also acknowledgement of the need for constant inquiry, of constant quest for knowledge, can be traced back to Greek Skepticism that emerged in the fifth century BCE. This book, however, is not account of the history of philosophy. Therefore I am not attempting to present full coverage of the philosophers who have said something that can be relevant for the aims of this treatise. Rather I am going to rely on some philosophers of the past who have provided sufficient ground for the arguments I am developing.

What We Cannot Know We Must Assume ... or Stop Looking for Knowledge

Science seems to aim at certainty in knowledge created, yet there is almost nothing we can be absolutely certain about. This is the reason why it is necessary to base science on certain assumptions. If there would be a way to refute these assumptions, science as a quest for knowing the world would lose its meaning.

What We Can Be Certain About?

This is perhaps the most known idea suggested by Descartes: “I am thinking, therefore I exist.” (Descartes, 1985a, p. 127; also Descartes, 1985d). Indeed, if I recognize myself thinking I must exist. It seems this is actually the only fact we can be certain about:

‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ ... I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. [...] After this I considered in general what is required of a proposition in order for it to be true and certain; for since I had just found one that I knew to be such, I thought that I ought also to know what this certainty consists in. I observed that there is nothing at all in the proposition ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ to assure me that I am speaking the truth, except that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist. (Descartes, 1985a, p. 127)

Descartes actually came up with some other ideas he suggested we can be sure of: that there is a God, and therefore, as it is not imaginable that God can lie, there must also be an external world. However, later philosophers provided convincing arguments to suggest that we actually cannot be sure in the existence of God (cf., Hume, 1999; Kant, 1997, 2007). Thus there seems to be nothing more we can be sure about but the existence of myself. Even more, if I can be sure that I exist, I cannot be sure about what this “I” exactly is.

Most sciences do not study one’s own mind but rather something else. At the most fundamental level, however, there can be no certainty that science actually has something to study, and if there is something to study then still there would be no certainty that it actually can be done. Next I am going to discuss what doubts everyone looking for knowledge has to acknowledge. Doing this I rely on works of several philosophers—Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, and Engels (with some references to Marx).[2] These philosophers are not selected randomly. Rather, all of them either have contributed to the scientific worldview today or can ground a step forward to build a consistent metaparadigmatic science with necessary for it unifying theory.

Before going further I think it is useful to justify in more details, why this historical tour to the thoughts of long dead men is necessary. There are different reasons why history is mentioned or discussed in scientific texts (Toomela, 2016b). On the one hand, there are three reasons that are related to identity building of the author rather than to the content of the subject discussed: authors may wish to demonstrate that they are educated and able to cover the discussed subject in historical details; in other cases the authors wish to demonstrate that the most important ideas in the discussed field were proposed by scholars from a certain nation or country—obviously this nation or country of origin corresponds to that of the author; and occasionally authors provide selected facts from the history of science to “demonstrate” that their idea has long history and is therefore well supported. None of these three uses of history are worthy of attention.

However, there are also three other reasons why studying history is essential for building future science. First, the ideas change in time. When a new idea is proposed, it is brought in the context of justification of the idea. Later the idea, if it has been accepted, loses its connection to the justification. It is occasionally important to go back to justifications because these may turn out to be unacceptable in light of knowledge developed later. Second, history can be an important source for new discoveries. This is especially true for paradigmatic sciences which are historically blind. Metaparadigmatic psychology began to emerge about a century ago in continental Europe. After the WWII, only paradigmatic psychology remained (cf. Toomela, 2007, 2008, 2010; Toomela & Valsiner, 2010). Finally, and less importantly for this book, sometimes historical analysis of accepted and still acceptable theories is necessary to remove later interpretations of the theory that do not correspond to its original because of the historical change of the ideas or language in which the original theory was formulated.

So the following discussion of the ideas proposed long time ago is necessary for revealing the justifications for the theoretical principles accepted today as well as for discovering ideas long forgotten or ignored for no good reason.

First Doubt[3]: Is There a World External to My Mind?

I think Descartes was correct when claiming that the fact I think rules out the doubt in the existence of myself. Everything else, however, is doubtful. (Parenthetically, existence of Descartes would thus also be doubtful, but this would not change the conclusions that emerge from the discussion). First of all we must doubt whether there is world external to us, to our mind, at all. Intuitively, and also for practical mind and common sense, this doubt seems to be not justified—of course there is a world outside my mind! But how do we know? What gives us this sense of certainty? I think this certainty comes from experience that the world we perceive as external is not fully under our control; unexpected events happen and our perfectly planned actions do not end up with the expected results.

These arguments, however, were refuted already by Descartes (see below). Indeed, it is sufficient to assume that we are not in full control of the way we think—some thoughts may emerge by chance, for instance—and all such inconsistencies could be explained.

Next I describe the opinions of relevant for us philosophers about the existence of the external world. It becomes clear later that the way the philosophers have solved the question of doubts is directly related to understanding of what is science and how scientific knowledge can be achieved—if it can be achieved in principle.

Aristotle discussed the doubt in the existence of the external world and concluded that it must exist:

And, in general, if only the sensible exists, there would be nothing if animate things were not; for there would be no faculty of sense. The view that neither the objects of sensation nor the sensations would exist is doubtless true (for they are affections of the perceiver), but that the substrata which cause the sensation should not exist even apart from sensation is impossible. For sensation is surely not the sensation of itself, but there is something beyond the sensation, which must be prior to the sensation; for that which moves is prior in nature to that which is moved, and if they are correlative terms, this is no less the case. (Aristotle, 1984a, p. 1596, 101030–10112)

So Aristotle seems not to have had doubted in the existence of the external world; this question was brought into the center of discussions later by Greek skepticists (see also Long, 2006, for further analysis of Aristotelian thinking and its relation to the skepticist worldview).

Descartes had doubts, and his doubts were fundamental: we should doubt in everything, with the exception of the fact that “I exist”:

In rejecting—and even imagining to be false—everything which we can in any way doubt, it is easy for us to suppose that there is no God and no heaven, and that there are no bodies, and even that we ourselves have no hands or feet, or indeed any body at all. But we cannot for all that suppose that we, who are having such thoughts, are nothing. For it is a contradiction to suppose that what thinks does not, at the very time when it is thinking, exist. Accordingly, this piece of knowledge—I am thinking, therefore I exist—is the first and most certain of all to occur to anyone who philosophizes in an orderly way. (Descartes, 1985d, pp. 194–195)

Descartes also asked whether our feeling that some things are out of our control would be sufficient to suggest that these perceived events outside our control must originate from the external world. This argument, he suggested, would not be decisive:

Then again, although these ideas do not depend on my will, it does not follow that they must come from things located outside me. [...] And finally, even if these ideas did come from things other than myself, it would not follow that they must resemble those things. (Descartes, 1985b, p. 27)

Nevertheless, Descartes became inconsistent with his arguments. It seems he could doubt in the existence of the external world and yet he suggested that external world certainly exists because there is God:

So it is necessary for us to investigate next the arguments by which the existence of material things may be known with certainty. [...] it is quite inconsistent with the nature of God that he should be a deceiver. The unavoidable conclusion, then, is that there exists something extended in length, breadth and depth and possessing all the properties which we clearly perceive to belong to an extended thing. (Descartes, 1985d, p. 223)

So I do not see how God could be understood to be anything but a deceiver if the ideas were transmitted from a source other than corporeal things. It follows that corporeal things exist. (Descartes, 1985b, p. 55)

This conclusion is logically valid. And as with all logical conclusions, their correspondence to truth depends on the truth of premises. If there would be no God or the God could be a liar, then we could not get rid of this Doubt. In fact, Descartes is inconsistent in his philosophy that was supposed to prove that God exists. He mentioned in several places that to understand God is beyond human possibilities. Therefore he cannot give also proof that God is not a deceiver. And it turns out that external world may still not exist.

Hume made it clear that we can doubt in the existence of the external world; and we only presuppose that this external world exists:

It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. (Hume, 1999, pp. 200–201)

He also said that senses do not give us sufficient evidence to assume the external world exists:

As to those impressions, which arise from the senses, their ultimate cause is, in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason, and ‘twill always be impossible to decide with certainty, whether they arise immediately from the object, or are produc’d by the creative power of the mind, or are deriv’d from the author of our being. (Hume, 2000, p. 59)

Nevertheless, Hume himself assumed that the external world exists:

Shou’d it be ask’d me, ... whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possest of any measures of truth and falshood; I shou’d reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determin’d us to judge as well as to breathe and feel [...] (Hume, 2000, p. 123)

We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ‘tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings. (ibid., p. 125)

So, we can be certain in the existence of the external world because nobody could take this opinion “sincerely and constantly.” If to assume that the external world exists, and there are other people, it could be so. But Hume also said,

That our senses offer not their impressions as the images of something distinct, or independent, and external, is evident; because they convey to us nothing but a single perception, and never give us the least intimation of any thing beyond. A single perception can never produce the idea of a double existence, but by some inference either of the reason or imagination. (Hume, 2000, p. 126)

Therefore Hume still left us with the Doubt, but he also made it clear that he seems to be certain that the external world exists.

Hegel suggested that things are essentially thought:

to speak of things, we call the nature or the essence of things their notion, and this is only for thought [...] for us the object can be nothing else but our notions of it. (Hegel, 1969, pp. 35–36)

I think this statement agrees fully with what is known today about how organisms can experience the world: sensory systems are organized so that they do not allow to experience things; it is possible to experience only sensory attributes, such as contour, color, orientation or movement in vision, and things are constructions of our mind (cf. for detailed discussion, Toomela, 2016a, 2017). Hegel also understood that we may have Doubt, but we need to presuppose the existence of the external world:

As Mind is free, its manifestation is to set forth Nature as its world; but because it is reflection, it, in thus setting forth its world, at the same time presupposes the world as a nature independently existing. (Hegel, 2008, p. 7)

So, we may have Doubt in the existence of the external world, but we need not bother us with the question whether the external exists or not; we presuppose its existence.

Finally, Engels & Marx were fully aware that such questions exist; despite several disagreements with Feuerbach, they agreed with him in this: the world exists:

Then came Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity. With one blow it dissipated the contradiction by again raising materialism to the throne without any fuss. Nature exists independently of any philosophy. It is the foundation upon which we human beings, ourselves the products of nature, have grown up. Nothing exists outside nature and man, and the higher beings created by our religious fantasies are only the fantastic reflection of our own essence. (Engels, 1996, p. 14)

First Assumption: There Is External World

Taken together, I think that there still is no absolute proof possible that the external to our mind world really does exist. Yet I am certain that it does. I think majority of humans would share this certainty. But, at the same time, it is necessary to be aware that existence of the external world can be assumed or presupposed but not proven. This fact is fundamentally important. First of all because if we answer to this doubt negatively and reject the idea of the external world, we should stop with any science because there would be nothing to study except, perhaps, our own mind. Another important conclusion follows from the need to assume the external world: if the existence of the external world cannot be proven, then there also can be no absolute criterion of truth.

Second Doubt: Is This External World Organized?

So, we assume the external world exists. But this assumption alone is not sufficient. There are still grounds for Doubt. This external world may be absolutely chaotic, not organized, with no rules, no laws, no regularity. We must doubt in the characteristics of the external world already because we cannot be sure that external world exists. Scientists aim at knowing the external world. There can be no knowledge about it if the external world was not organized. This understanding we also find in philosophy.

Aristotle was aware that in order to know the external world, it must be regular, and it must be determined by limited number of laws. This idea we find both in his Physics as well as Metaphysics:

It is clear then that our principles must be contraries. The next question is whether the principles are two or three or more in number. One they cannot be, for there cannot be one contrary. Nor can they be innumerable, because, if so, Being will not be knowable [...] (Aristotle, 1941c, p. 228, 189)

But if the kinds of causes had been infinite in number, then also knowledge would have been impossible; for we think we know, only when we have ascertained causes, but that which is infinite by addition cannot be gone through in a finite time. (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 715, 994)

Descartes approached the same question from another perspective. The world can be organized and lawful, but the laws and organization can change all the time. This situation would make the world unknowable because the organization implies also certain stability; the laws of nature cannot change in time. Descartes saw the world as organized; he assumed that world does not change:

But it is certain, and it is an opinion commonly accepted among theologians, that the act by which God now preserves it is just the same as that by which he created it. (Descartes, 1985a, p. 133)

Descartes also realized that we must assume that the nature, external world, its laws and principles do not change in time:

‘nature’ [...] I am using this word to signify matter itself [...] under the condition that God continues to preserve it in the same way that he created it. (Descartes, 1985f, p. 92)

So, organization is something that must characterize the world; the rules, laws, principles of the world cannot change.

Hume related the requirement for temporal stability directly to knowledge about the world:

If there be any suspicion, that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. (Hume, 1999, p. 117)

Experience, therefore, has meaning only in the condition that there are principles that determine the world; and these principles do not change. Chaotic world cannot be known. However, he, at the same time, suggested that we cannot know the real principles that underlie the world:

Necessity, then, is the effect of this observation, and is nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a determination to carry out thoughts from one object to another. [...] Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it consider’d as a quality in bodies. (Hume, 2000, pp. 111–112)

I have not found (it does not necessarily follow that there was no) discussion of the necessity for external world to be organized and stable for knowledge about it to be possible in Hegel’s, or Engels & Marx’s works. There are probably different reasons for this. Hegel assumed that it is laws of thought, even though dialectical, changing, and developing, that guide our understanding. Engels & Marx, on the other hand, were fundamental materialists; for them there was no question to ask; the existence and regularity of the external world were taken for granted. Their argument was as follows:

In addition there is a set of philosophers—those who challenge the possibility of any knowledge or at least of an exhaustive knowledge, of the world. Among the more modern ones there belong Hume and Kant. [...] What is decisive in the refutation of this view has already been said by Hegel, insofar as this was possible from an idealist standpoint; what Feuerbach has added from a materialist standpoint is more ingenious than profound. The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotches is practice, namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our understanding of a natural process by making it ourselves, producing it from its preconditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then it’s all over with the Kantian ungraspable “thing-in-itself.” (Engels, 1996, pp. 18–19)

Indeed, if the world would be chaotic, it would not be possible to know it. Engels’s criterion is logical: if we are able to produce deliberately certain effects, then we had to rely on certain principles that allowed this production.

Second Assumption: The World External to Our Minds Is Organized

In order to be able to know the external world, it must be organized and the principles and laws of the organization cannot change; otherwise there could be no knowledge about it. The Second Doubt, that logically follows from the First Doubt, requires us to have an opinion about the answer to the second doubt. If we start to study external world, then already, implicitly, we have assumed that this world is organized. So, the second assumption is: the external world is determined by certain principles, laws, rules; it is organized.

Third Doubt: Can We Know External World?

Even after assuming that the external world exists and that it is organized, there still is another doubt we must have. We cannot be certain that we can actually know the external world. In principle it is possible that there is organized external world and yet we are not able to know it. There are two versions of this doubt. First, we may doubt whether any knowledge is possible. The other version is a limited version of the first. According to it, we can know something about the world but only in the limited way. These limits may follow from the limits of our senses or from the complexity of the world.

Aristotle was aware of the possibility that the world might be unknowable:

Gorgias declares that nothing exists; and if anything exists it is unknowable; and if it exists and is knowable, yet it cannot be indicated to others. (Aristotle, 1984b, p. 1548, 97811–12)

Yet his own position was clear: world is knowable:

the soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible: in what way we must inquire. (Aristotle, 1984c, p. 686, 43120–23)

Aristotle not only assumed that the world is knowable but also understood that knowledge emerges and develops over certain steps:

The animals other than man live by appearances and memories and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. And from memory experience is produced in men; for many memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. [...] knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience [...] the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the master-worker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of wisdom than the productive. Clearly then wisdom is knowledge about certain causes and principles. [...] And these things, the most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are furthest from the senses (Aristotle, 1984a, 980b26–981a1; 981a24–26; 981b30–982a2; 982a24–25)

So it is clear that for Aristotle it was possible to know the world from sensory experiences to abstract causality and principles, which “are furthest from the senses.”

Descartes, on the other hand, was full of doubt. Not surprisingly, the doubts about the knowability of the world have to emerge from reading the Bible:

[...] since he is the supreme Lord of all things and has the absolute power to deal with his creatures as he wishes [...] All this seems to be confirmed by those passages in Scripture which establish that we can know nothing. Paul, for example, says in I Corinthians, Chap. 8, verse 2: ‘If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.’ Again, in Ecclesiastes, Chap. 8, verse 17 we find: ‘Then I understood that of all the works of God a man can find no reason for those that are done under the sun; and the more he labours to seek it, the less shall he find it; nay, though a wise man say that he knoweth it, yet shall he be unable to find it out.’ (Descartes, 1985c, p. 280)

So, there are all reasons to doubts whether knowing the world is actually possible. Therefore, being consistent in this respect, he suggested that the knowledge (about causes) he proposes should be taken as hypotheses only:

When philosophizing about such important matters, however, it would seem to be excessively arrogant for us to assert that we have discovered the exact truth <where others have failed>; and so I should prefer to leave this claim on one side, and put forward everything that I am about to write simply as a hypothesis <which is perhaps far from the truth, so as to leave everyone free to make up his own mind>. (Descartes, 1985d, p. 255)

Descartes’s position is fully consistent: if to doubt in the existence of the external world, all knowledge about it becomes under doubt logically.

Hume, Hegel and Engels & Marx probably did not have the Third Doubt in the strong version. But all of them, as it will be discussed below, acknowledged the limits or limitations of knowledge.

Third Assumption: We Can Know External World

So, again, as there is a doubt, we need an assumption. A scientist must assume the world is knowable in principle. Otherwise the scientist could not be a scientist.

A Mild Version of the Third Doubt: Can We Know Everything About the External World?

Weak version of the Third Doubt asks whether there are limits to our knowledge. In fact, having First and Second Doubt—independently of whether we take a positive or negative assumption about them—compels us to accept the impossibility of the full knowledge about the world. If we are not able to demonstrate without any doubt that the external organized world exists, then, logically, we cannot proceed with saying that we can know everything. There are, however, different versions of the weak version of the Third Doubt. Knowledge about the limits sensory systems biology has established today already suggests that senses, on the basis of which knowledge is constructed, can be deceptive (cf. e.g., Levine, 2000; Toomela, 2016a, esp. Chap. 4).

There is, however, a deeper issue involved as well. There seems to exist a world that is not accessible for senses. So, the other question to be answered is whether it is possible to build knowledge beyond senses? Philosophers have had different opinions regarding this question.

Aristotle, even though suggesting that knowledge is possible, did not think that we can be certain in what we know. He mentioned the reasons for doubt in Metaphysics:

Regarding the nature of truth, we must maintain that not everything which appears is true. Firstly, even if sensation—at least of the object special to the sense in question—is not false; still appearance is not the same as sensation. (Aristotle, 1984a, p. 1594, 1010b1-3)

So, Aristotle realized that senses can be deceptive and, therefore, we cannot have knowledge beyond doubt. Nevertheless, he, at the same time, did not suggest that knowledge beyond senses is not possible. Perhaps most clearly this idea is reflected in his treatment of causality (Philosophy of causality will be thoroughly discussed later in this book, so here I only mention as much as is necessary for understanding where Aristotle saw the possible limits of knowledge). In discussing the notion of causality, Aristotle suggested that there are altogether four complementary causes, which are directly related to the knowledge:

Knowledge is the object of our inquiry, and men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’ of it (which is to grasp its primary cause). So clearly we too must do this as regards both coming to be and passing away and every kind of physical change [...] In one sense, then, (1) that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is called ‘cause’ [...] In another sense (2) the form or the archetype, i.e. the statement of the essence, and its genera, are called ‘causes’ [...] Again (3) the primary source of the change or coming to rest [...] Again (4) in the sense of end or ‘that for the sake of which’ a thing is done, e.g. health is the cause of walking about. [...] This then perhaps exhausts the number of ways in which the term ‘cause’ is used. (Aristotle, 1941c, pp. 240–241, 194b–195a)

So, Aristotle relates the notion of causality to knowledge. Two of the causes include aspects that go beyond appearances—“essence” and “that for the sake of which.” Thus it is possible to know at least some aspects of the world not directly available through senses.

Descartes, in turn, suggested that even if we can have some knowledge, this knowledge cannot go beyond senses, we are not able to know the “essence” of things:

However, although this method may enable us to understand how all the things in nature could have arisen, it should not therefore be inferred that they were in fact made in this way. Just as the same craftsman could make two clocks which tell the time equally well and look completely alike from the outside but have completely different assemblies of wheels inside, so the supreme craftsman of the real world could have produced all that we see in several different ways. (Descartes, 1985d, p. 289)

Descartes related our possible understanding of the world also to causality, but for him world beyond senses was not accessible:

Furthermore, in order to make it clear that what we are contemplating here is the series of things to be discovered, and not the nature of each of them, we have deliberately listed ‘cause’ and ‘equal’ among the absolutes, although their nature really is relative. (Descartes, 1985e, p. 22)

In the same passage, Descartes continued with the statement that acquires very important meaning later in the quest for building the foundations of general-unifying psychology:

Philosophers, of course, recognize that cause and effect are correlatives; but in the present case, if we want to know what the effect is, we must know the cause first, and not vice versa. (ibid.)

There are two ideas—we cannot go beyond senses and we can know only correlations—that are inherently related. If humans cannot know the world beyond senses, then they can know correlations between cause and effect events but not how cause makes the effect to emerge. That is hidden from senses.

Hume, overall, shared this doubt with Descartes. He was also convinced that senses are the source of our knowledge, and it is not possible to go beyond appearances. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Hume, 1999), he wrote the following:

All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure. [...] On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations, either outward or inward, are strong and vivid: (p. 99) [...] It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles, on which the influence of these objects entirely depends. (p. 113) [...] there is no known connexion between the sensible qualities and the secret powers. (p. 114) [...] the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. (p. 115)

So Hume is in this together with Descartes: human knowledge is limited to appearances and beyond that we should doubt in what we know.

Hegel’s position was different. It seems, he would rather defend the position that knowledge can infinitely increase, even though never be complete. This position can be inferred from his discussion of the limitations of knowledge:

[...] great stress is laid on the limitations of the thought, of reason, and so on, and it is asserted that the limitation cannot be transcended. To make such an assertion is to be unaware that the very fact that something is determined as a limitation implies that the limitation is already transcended. For a determinateness, a limit, is determined as a limitation only in opposition to its other in general, that is, in opposition to that which is free from the limitation; the other of a limitation is precisely the being beyond it. Stone and metal do not transcend their limitation because this is not a limitation for them. (Hegel, 1969, p. 134)

The sources of error in knowledge, according to Hegel, were not so much in senses as in thinking, in the ways knowledge is acquired. He also suggested a way to improve knowledge: in order to understand the world better we need to understand better our own ways of thought, our own mind:

[...] it is necessary to come first to an understanding concerning knowledge, which is looked upon as the instrument by which to take possession of the Absolute, or as the means through which to get a sight of it. The apprehension seems legitimate, on the one hand that there may be various kinds of knowledge, among which one might be better adapted than another for the attainment of our purpose—and thus a wrong choice is possible: on the other hand again that, since knowing is a faculty of a definite kind and with a definite range, without the more precise determination of its nature and limits we might take hold of clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth. (Hegel, 2005, p. 131)

So, for Hegel, knowledge is not hopelessly bounded to senses; we can go beyond senses by studying our own way of thinking. And yet, we will never be able to know everything, we can transcend the current limitations, but this process will be infinite.

Engels & Marx did not bother themselves very much with the Doubts, even though they were very well aware that these questions exist; they agreed with Hegel:

But the question of the relation of thinking and being has yet another aspect. In what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of knowing the real world? Are we able to produce a correct reflection of reality in our ideas and notions of the real world? [...] With Hegel, for example, its affirmation is self-evident; for what we know in the real world is precisely its content conforming to thought—that which makes the world a gradual realization of the absolute idea, which absolute idea has existed somewhere from eternity, independently of and prior to the world. [...] In addition there is a set of philosophers—those who challenge the possibility of any knowledge or at least of an exhaustive knowledge, of the world. Among the more modern ones there belong Hume and Kant. [...] What is decisive in the refutation of this view has already been said by Hegel, insofar as this was possible from an idealist standpoint; [...] (Engels, 1996, pp. 18–19)

So, they not only were aware of the questions, they also, together with Hegel and several other philosophers, assumed that knowledge of the real world beyond appearances is possible. It did not mean that they would think everything can be known. On the contrary, their position was clear here too: it is impossible to know everything:

The view that all the phenomena of nature stand in systematic mutual relations compels science to prove this systematic interconnection in all respects, in single cases as well as in the entirety. But an appropriate creative, scientific representation of this mutual connection in such a way as to show the composition of an exact thought-picture of the system of the universe in which we live remains not only for us but for all time an impossibility. (Engels, 1907, pp. 57–58)

Perhaps one of the most interesting remarks regarding this issue can be found in Marx’s Capital:

... all sciences would be superfluous if the form of appearance of things directly coincided with their essence ... (Marx, 1981, p. 956)

On the one hand, it is clear here that Engels & Marx assumed it is possible to know the world beyond appearances. On the other hand, however, they also realized that science is not necessary to describe appearances. Science is needed when it is realized that appearances do not correspond always to essences; then, for understanding whatever is studied, knowledge of the world beyond appearances, beyond senses must be searched for. Science is the way to achieve such knowledge.

Third Assumption Elaborated: We Cannot Know Everything But We Can Know World Beyond Appearances

So we see that it is not possible to know everything. This position, naturally, is already granted by accepting the First Doubt. The other issue is also important: is it possible to know beyond what is brought to us directly through senses? Here we have two positions: Descartes, Hume, and Kant agree that it is not possible; Aristotle, Hegel, Engels, & Marx, on the other hand, assume that it is possible to go beyond senses. Even assuming that there is external organized world and it can be (partly) known, we cannot give proof that world beyond senses is accessible for us. Therefore for science it is necessary to assume that world beyond senses is knowable because identical for senses things and phenomena can be different in nonsensory qualities and vice versa, seemingly different things may have directly unobservable similarities in nonsensory qualities.

Fourth Doubt: Is the World Only Material?

We have one more Doubt to discuss. Namely, is the world material or more? It cannot be less than material in the constraints provided by previous Assumptions already taken: if there is organized external world that can be known to some degree, and also beyond senses, then we do assume the existence of material world already. The world that is in space and time. But another possibility is simultaneously there, world with no time and space can co-exist with the material world. This nonmaterial would be, for instance, God. According to Descartes, God is characterized to be “infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent” (e.g., Descartes, 1985a, p. 128).

Is the world only material or not is very important question when knowledge is discussed. Materialist position holds that everything can be—only in principle, of course, because to know everything is impossible—understood and explained. However, assuming that there is also a nonmaterial world that somehow can determine how the material world is organized, the world would become unknowable in principle. This is because there would be no certainty that discovered principles of organization do not change for nonmaterial causes, by the will of God, for instance.[4]

The philosophers whose opinions about Doubts are discussed in this book can be divided into three “camps” on the basis of attitudes toward the question whether the world is only material. There are those who assume that the world is only material and can be known in principle (Aristotle, Engels, and Marx) and those who thought it is not possible to know world in principle and there is also immaterial world (Descartes). In the third camp would be Hume, who refused even to take the question as worthy to discuss and Hegel, who takes an interesting position between the first two camps. Let us see the opinions of these philosophers in more details.

Aristotle’s materialism seems not to be obvious. Different philosophers today have different opinions about that (e.g., Carrier, 2006). I think Aristotelian materialist worldview is actually quite obvious. Namely, in the quote from Aristotle in the previous section, where he listed different causes, he suggested, “This then perhaps exhausts the number of ways in which the term ‘cause’ is used.” (Aristotle, 1941c, 195a). There is no mentioning of supernatural powers or forces in the list of causes that would be necessary to take into account in order to understand the world. In his theory of causality, therefore, Aristotle was materialist. His final cause could be attributed to supernatural powers. I am going to show later, however, that it is not so; Aristotle’s account of the final cause corresponds fully to materialist worldview.

There is also another issue that clearly associates Aristotle with materialism: his understanding of the Soul. His line of arguments was as follows:

Now matter is potentiality, form actuality; of the latter there are two grades related to one another as e.g. knowledge to the exercise of knowledge. [...] That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. The body so described is a body which is organized. [...] If, then, we have to give a general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of actuality of a natural organized body. That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that of which it is the matter. Unity has many senses (as many as ‘is’ has), but the most proper and fundamental sense of both is the relation of an actuality to that of which it is the actuality. (Aristotle, 1941b, p. 555, 412a–412b)

So, according to Aristotle, Soul is a certain form of matter; soul is in unity with matter, not separate or independent from it. This position is that of the materialist.

Descartes, obviously, was not materialist. He introduced the idea of dualism into modern mentality; he separated soul from the body. Descartes always refers to heaven’s power to determine what is knowable. For Descartes, matter was not the sole reality.

Hume found that this question about materiality of the world or immateriality of the soul itself is useless, and he refused to take it as meaningful because it is unsolvable in principle:

Thus neither by considering the first origin of ideas, nor by means of a definition are we able to arrive at any satisfactory notion of substance; which seems to me a sufficient reason for abandoning utterly the dispute concerning the materiality and immateriality of the soul, and makes me absolutely condemn even the question itself. We have no perfect idea of anything but of a perception. A substance is entirely different from a perception. We have, therefore, no idea of a substance. (Hume, 2000, p. 153)

However, when the question came about the possible source of our knowledge, he rather seemed to incline to support the materialist account, yet suggesting that actually this question is not meaningful:

Thus we are necessarily reduc’d to the other side of the dilemma, viz. that all objects, which are found to be constantly conjoin’d, are upon that account only to be regarded as causes and effects. Now, as all objects, which are not contrary, are susceptible of a constant conjunction, and as no real objects are contrary; it follows, that for aught we can determine by the mere ideas, anything may be the cause or effect of anything; which evidently gives advantage to the materialists above their antagonists.

To pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole; the question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible [...] And as the constant conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence of cause and effect, matter and motion may often be regarded as the causes of thought, as far as we have any notion of that relation. (Hume, 2000, p. 163)

Hegel believed in Absolute Idea, for him materialism would not represent the sole reality. But, at the same time, his thought became the ground for dialectical materialism. How so? How it was possible to make just one step and make Hegel’s idealist philosophy into Marxist materialist philosophy? I think the germ of materialism is not so hidden in his works. Hegel assumed that “for us the object can be nothing else but our notion of it.” (Hegel, 1969, p. 36). And another quote, already brought above, but now I bring it again for another purpose:

As Mind is free, its manifestation is to set forth Nature as its world; but because it is reflection, it, in thus setting forth its world, at the same time presupposes the world as a nature independently existing. (Hegel, 2008, p. 7)

I think the crucial question here is the source of knowledge. If we would assume, as Hegel did, that knowledge of the world, Consciousness, is in fact the development of the Absolute Idea, we would be Idealists. However, if we assume the opposite that experience of the material world is the source of the development of Consciousness, then most of the Hegel’s philosophy can be interpreted in Materialist way.

Engels & Marx, in fact, did exactly this: they took Hegelian dialectics and interpreted it in materialist way—viewing nature as the sole reality—by just assuming the source of ideas to be the material world instead of the ideal world:

We comprehended the ideas in our heads materialistically again—as reflections [Abbilder] of real things instead of regarding the real things as reflections of this or that stage of the absolute idea. Thus dialectics was reduced to the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought [...] In this way the dialectic of ideas itself became merely the conscious reflex of the dialectical movement of the real world and thus Hegel’s dialectics was put on its head, or rather, from its head, on which it was standing, it was put on its feet. (Engels, 1996, pp. 40–41)

One important consequence, which also will be discussed later, follows from consistent materialist perspective: philosophy as way of knowing the world without practice will not be necessary any more:

If we derive the scheme of the universe not from our own brain, but merely by means of our own brain, from the material world, we need no philosophy, but simply knowledge of the world and what occurs in it, and the results of this knowledge likewise do not constitute a philosophy but a positive science. (Engels, 1907, p. 57)

Only when natural and historical science has become imbued with dialectics will all the philosophical rubbish—other than pure theory of thought—be superfluous, disappearing in positive science. (Engels, 1987, p. 491)

Marxism is often called philosophy, but in fact it was a theory that assumed knowledge can and should be sought from material reality, not from “our brain” alone. Therefore we have to take seriously the idea that by assuming materialism we, eventually, go beyond philosophy.

Fourth Assumption: The World Is Material

As we have a Doubt, we need an assumption, a decision regarding the Doubt. I assume that the world is material and matter is the sole reality. I assume that there is no supernatural, immaterial world. It makes sense to ask, why do we need this Assumption? We must assume materialism because otherwise the world would not be knowable; we would have to assume that there are supernatural “secret powers,” and we would not be able to distinguish such powers from the principles of the matter.

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Footnotes 1

I am going to give more evidence to support this statement in Chap. 7.

2

Often it is impossible to know whether the ideas in Marxist philosophy belong to Marx or Engels (even though sometimes they may have had even contradictory opinions on some issues, see, e.g., Gouldner, 1980, esp. Chap. 9). My impression is that original most general ideas about the world, nature, etc. belong to Engels, whereas (sometimes quite inconsistent in my opinion) application of them to the analysis of society and its change belongs to Marx. At least it feels to be so with the ideas important for this book: these seem to belong to Engels rather than to Marx. As I cannot be sure about it—and actually it does not matter much because the ideas are important and not their authors—I will use “Engels and Marx” as if it is one person.

3

In this book Doubt and Assumption with a capital letter refer to the four “doubts” and corresponding “assumptions” that I suggest must underlie any epistemology of science.

4

Here it can be said that we may assume there is a nonmaterial force but that force of whatever kind just does not change anything in the organization of the material world. In that case there would be no difference between the only material universe and material universe in parallel with nonmaterial that is fully unrelated to the material. Anybody who prays to heaven or some other “higher” form of being and believes that the prayers can be “answered” by fulfilling the wishes expressed in prayer assumes that the organization of the world is constantly changed by such “higher” forces, by nonmaterial being.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_3

3. Doubts, Assumptions, and Social Sciences and Psychology Today

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Modern qualitative psychologyMainstream quantitative psychologyStructural-systemic psychology

In theprevious chapter the views of several philosophers on seemingly abstract and far from the questions of the true science were discussed. Next I am going to show that there is a continuity between the ideas of the old philosophers and the most recent approaches to science and scientific research. The (often implicit) rejection of some or all of the Assumptions discussed above grounds widespread scientific practices that fundamentally limit the possibility to understand the world that is studied.

Why We Need (to Know) the Assumptions?

Depending on which of the assumptions we take, the aims and content of scientific enquiry would be different. If we just assume that the external world exists, we would not necessarily aim to know it. Knowledge about the world is possible only when the external world is organized. In this way a scientist can already formulate what she/he is looking for: science is aiming at understanding how the world is organized, what are its rules, laws, and principles. This step is necessary but not sufficient. We need to take the Third Assumption in order to start searching for this knowledge; we assume that it is possible to know the external world. But here, again, the scientists’ aim would be different depending on which of the two versions of the third assumption is taken. There is a mild version of the Third Doubt: Some may assume that knowledge is in principle possible but only in the limits of the senses; there is no way to go beyond appearances. In that case a scientist would only study correlations and correspondences between observed things and events as there would be no way to go beyond appearances. Only if we assume that the world is knowable also beyond senses, we begin to look beyond appearances. With the materialist assumption the last step will be taken; it will be assumed that not only material world is knowable beyond senses but also the whole world is knowable in principle because there is no supernatural world. This assumption opens the possibility to ask questions about everything that exists, and to look for scientific ways to answer these questions. Science becomes absolutely free in its quest—dialectically, of course, in the limits determined by Doubts and Assumptions. That is also the reason why I think science should accept exactly these Assumptions I did. Otherwise science would set itself limits it does not have to have by nature.

It is important that all sciences are, implicitly or explicitly, based on the assumptions regarding the four doubts. But in different sciences the set of assumptions taken is not the same. Next I show that we can recognize different approaches in psychology and social sciences today that actually, in their practice—and sometimes independently of what the scientists believe they are doing—follow Assumptions different from what I proposed to follow. The aims and results of sciences with different Assumptions are different as well because Assumptions constrain what can be studied and what is meaningful to study. In other words, Assumptions ground methodology. If any of the assumptions is not taken as I formulated above, the science becomes limited in the questions asked and the knowledge about the world achieved.

Doubts, Assumptions, and Social Sciences and Psychology Today

In Chap. 1, following Kuhn and Vygotsky, I distinguished three stages in the development of science: pre-paradigmatic, paradigmatic, and metaparadigmatic. Now, after describing the Doubts and corresponding Assumptions underlying science, I take a next step. I am going to demonstrate that each of the stages of science development can be distinguished according to the Assumptions taken regarding the four Doubts. Even more, I am also going to demonstrate that in psychology and social sciences today approaches corresponding to all the three stages can be found. Therefore the following discussion is not just an interesting tour to the history of thought; it is relevant for understanding the state of psychology and social sciences today.

Before going further, one terminological issue must be mentioned. Today one of the dividing lines in science can be found between qualitative and quantitative approaches. Before the so-called cognitive revolution around 1950s, psychology was mainly qualitative. So it may seem that the qualitative psychology today is just a revival of the qualitative research in psychology. This, however, is not true. The assumptions that underlaid the earlier qualitative science were very different from those of today. To make it clear, I am going to use “contemporary qualitative approach” for the late version of the qualitative methodology. It turns out that this approach has all the characteristics of the pre-paradigmatic (sic!) science, whereas the earlier version turns out to be essentially metaparadigmatic.

Pre-paradigmatic Science: Contemporary Qualitative Approach

Contemporary qualitative scientists have made it clear themselves that their science is pre-paradigmatic in the sense Kuhn defined. As it was discussed in Chap. 1, pre-paradigmatic science is essentially without direction, without established and accepted world-view. This is how qualitative science defines itself:[1]

The open-ended nature of the qualitative research project leads to a perpetual resistance against attempts to impose a single, umbrellalike paradigm over the entire project. There are multiple interpretive projects [...] (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005b, p. xv)

The researcher as bricoleur-theorist works between and within competing and overlapping perspectives and paradigms. [...] As a site of discussion, or discourse, qualitative research is difficult to define clearly. It has no theory or paradigm that is distinctly its own. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005a, p. 6)

Pre-paradigmatic science is qualitatively constrained in the kind of knowledge that can be achieved by its methodology. The limits of it emerge from having different assumptions about the four doubts. Interestingly, the less Assumptions we take, the less developed a science is. The most developed science, on the contrary, must constrain itself fully with all the four positive Assumptions; it must assume that (1) the external world exists; (2) the external world is organized; (3) the external world is in principle knowable, and it is also knowable beyond senses; and (4) the external world is only material. Less developed science should disagree with some or all of these Assumptions because leaving out any one of the assumptions essentially leads to conclusion that the world is not (fully) knowable in principle. Therefore, if contemporary qualitative science is pre-paradigmatic, then it must rely on at least some negative Assumptions. This is exactly the case, as witnessed not by my perhaps biased interpretation but by their own accounts. When I started to analyze contemporary qualitative science in terms of Assumptions, I actually expected that anybody who intends to conduct scientific studies cannot doubt in the existence of the external world at least. I discovered that contemporary qualitative science actually formulates negatively all the four assumptions.

First Doubt: Does the External World Exist?

Science to me seemed to be the study of the external world. Even when a psychologist studies introspectively oneself, she/he assumes that the discoveries apply to other minds as well. However, it turns out that it is possible to conduct scientific studies and to suggest that external world is not necessarily existing. Followers of the contemporary qualitative approach have expressed this quite clearly:

We have left the world of naive realism, knowing now that a text does not mirror the world, it creates the world. Further, there is no external world or final arbiter—lived experience, for example—against which a text can be judged. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005b, p. xiv)

Or, take another example, Corbin and Strauss (2008) give a list of assumptions that underlies their approach to qualitative research. The first of these assumptions already denies the existence of the external world:

Assumption 1. The external world is a symbolic representation, a “symbolic universe.” (p. 6)

As symbolic representations can exist only intramentally (cf. Toomela, 2016), the “external” world is, thus, not external but internal for contemporary qualitative approach.

I do not see any meaningful way how to leave “the world of naive realism” and at the same time believe that scientific study (of the world?) makes any sense. For my understanding, a science that accepts negative First Assumption is contradictory to the roots. If we suspect that the external world does not exist, why to pretend that I study it? What is actually studied in that case? Even more, it will not be clear, what studying would mean. This contradiction is, in fact, expressed in the pre-paradigmatic nature of contemporary qualitative science. The qualitative researchers refuse to have a common ground in their science, as we saw above. Also research methodology of the contemporary qualitative is a big “mess” as the contemporary qualitative researchers define it by themselves:

We are in a new age where messy, uncertain, multivoiced texts, cultural criticism, and new experimental works will become more common [...] (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005a, p. 26)

Now we see that it is not that qualitative researchers do not want to accept some coherent world-view; they cannot. First Doubt is the most fundamental doubt, to doubt in the existence of the world (without Assuming that it exists) inevitably makes everything doubtful.

Second Doubt: Is the World Organized?

In fact, the negative First Assumption must logically lead to accepting negative Assumptions about the next Doubts. This is the case, indeed:

Critical realists reject a correspondence theory of truth. They believe that reality is arranged in levels and that scientific work must go beyond statements of regularity to analysis of the mechanisms, processes, and structures that account for the patterns that are observed.

Still, as postempirists, antifoundational, critical theorists, we reject much of what the critical realists advocate. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005a, p. 13)

So, a qualitative researcher, by rejecting the critical realist’s position, does not believe that reality is arranged in levels and that science should analyze principles that underlie organization of the external world. Indeed, postmodernist position denies the existence of universal properties that can be discovered by science (e.g., Gergen, 1992a, 1992b; Shotter, 1992). Contemporary qualitative researchers also believe that there is no independent from us reality, reality is a construction:

[...] background assumptions of a range of qualitative research approaches are that reality is created interactively and becomes meaningful subjectively [...] (Flick, von Kardoff, & Steinke, 2004a, p. 7)

I do agree with a statement that our understanding of reality is a construction. I think it must be obvious already because of the constraints put to our understanding of the world by the architecture of sensory organs, the only organs through which we can experience the world external to us. But it does not follow that reality as such is a construction.

There is another aspect of the same Second Doubt. If to assume that the external world is not organized, then this assumption should be reflected in the research methodology. And it is indeed; modern qualitative research is aimed at studying particulars, not universals. So, they aim at particulars:

Qualitative researchers, on the other hand, are committed to an emic, idiographic, case-based position that directs attention to the specifics of particular cases (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005a, p. 12).

This statement also contains a contradiction. If the decision is to study cases, then the approach is not fully emic any more: ‘case’ is already generalization! Case is posited against not-this-case (cf. Hegel, 1969). This is a very high level abstraction that actually assumes that the studied phenomenon is organized. Furthermore, “cases” are not stable units but change in time; “cases” are also different depending on the conditions they are situated (see for the difficulties to understand cases, Toomela, 2010). Thus case has to be a generalization at this more detailed level of analysis. Generalization, however, can be meaningful if the ground for it is organized; there is no meaningful generalization possible from chaos.

Third Doubt: Is the World Knowable and If Yes, Is Knowability Limited to Appearance Only?

If the external world is just a mental construction and not an organized independent universe, then, naturally, this external world must be unknowable. Contemporary qualitative scientists have been coherent in their contradictory way in that respect too:

Objective reality can never be captured. We know a thing only through its representations. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005a, p. 5)

At the very best, then, only individual truths must be possible. Guba and Lincoln (2005), discussing the possibility of all social scientists becoming to work within a common discourse, came exactly to this conclusion. They suggested that common discourse will not appear in the future:

[...] because in the postmodern moment, and in the wake of poststructuralism, the assumption that there is no single “truth”—that all truths are but partial truths; that the slippage between signifier and signified in linguistic and textual terms creates re-representations that are only and always shadows of the actual people, events and places; that identities are fluid rather than fixed—leads us ineluctably toward the insight that there will be no single “conventional” paradigm to which all social scientists might ascribe in some common terms and with mutual understanding. Rather, we stand at the threshold of a history marked by multivocality, contested meanings, paradigmatic controversies, and new textual forms (p. 212).

This quote contains two contradictions. On the one hand, the authors suggest that the world is unknowable, we cannot know the truth. Yet they also declare that there are “actual people, events and places.” If the world is unknowable, how they know that there are actual people and places? Maybe they got it wrong too? Furthermore, if the world is unknowable, then there can be no criteria for judging whether the results of studies are what a researcher was looking for. And so it is:

At some point we [qualitative researchers] ask, “Did we get the story ‘right’?”, knowing that there are no “right” stories, only multiple stories. Perhaps qualitative studies do not have endings, only questions. (Creswell, 2007, pp. 44–45)

So, qualitative research, in this perspective, becomes an endless list of questions. But why to study something at all if the answers lead nowhere in understanding and there is an unlimited number of other questions to be answered with unlimited number of stories without believing that the answer is about what was studied?

So we have a scientist who accepts that the external world does not exist elsewhere but in our representations (which means it does not exist because the representations are intrapsychic); and that world is not organized; and it is also not knowable. If that scientist would still decide to conduct a study, then s/he should assume that it is not possible to go beyond appearances because symbols referring to appearances have more obvious referents than symbols referring to nonsensory qualities of the world. And so it is. Methodically contemporary qualitative research studies only appearances. Their methods include interviewing, direct observation, the analysis of artifacts, documents and cultural records, the use of visual materials, and the use of personal experience (Anfara & Mertz, 2006; Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Creswell, 2007; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005c; Flick, von Kardoff, & Steinke, 2004b; Silverman, 2007)—there is no single method that would go beyond appearance. In this way it is absolutely impossible to distinguish externally identical cases if these are different in nonsensory qualities and also there is no way to discover similarities in nonsensory qualities if in appearances the cases are different. In order to reveal such hidden organization, we must constrain the study situation artificially; we must (!) conduct an experiment. For instance, physics had a similar problem centuries ago. In order to discover that gravity affects all bodies on Earth in the same way, it was necessary to create a situation that does not exist in nature around us: vacuum. Just by observing the behavior of the bodies, we would never discover the effect of gravity. On the contrary, we would think that some things have an internally determined, natural upward tendency, whereas others have a natural downward tendency (this is exactly where Aristotle arrived through analysis of appearances alone; see Aristotle, 1984, 255b14–18).

It can be said that it is not the superficial description of the method by which we can decide whether the method allows to go beyond appearances or not. It is true, but what is determining here is not whether the method is used but how it is used. If the methodology is only aimed at appearances, it must be pure induction. This is indeed so: the procedures of qualitative research, or its methodology, are characterized as inductive:

[...] The logic that the qualitative researcher follows is inductive, from the ground up, rather than handed down entirely from a theory or from the perspectives of the inquirer. (Creswell, 2007, p. 19)

We discover contradictions at every step of analyzing the Assumptions that underlie the contemporary qualitative science. In some sense, then, contemporary qualitative science is coherent. As all knowledge is doubtful, then especially doubtful should be knowledge beyond senses. Hume (1999, 2000) demonstrated it, I think, beyond doubt: by studying associations between appearances there is no way to understand essence beyond appearance. But here lies the deep contradiction, another one: inductive understanding of the world is logically impossible (Popper, 1994, 2002).

Fourth Doubt

There is almost no need to ask whether modern qualitative science would assume that the world is only material. Of course not. Several statements provided above already confirm it. So I bring just one quote more, showing that there is no assumption of one, material reality only. There are many realities:

When researchers conduct qualitative research, they are embracing the idea of multiple realities. (Creswell, 2007, p. 16)

Of course it can be said that multiple realities are all realities with no dualism implied. This is not so, however, because if reality is defined as personal—as it is done by contemporary qualitative science—then nonmaterial soul can be real for some individuals. Thus there is no ground to assume that the world is only material.

Altogether, modern qualitative research has negative assumptions about all the four fundamental doubts. Despite that they still conduct studies, which is in fundamental contradiction with their assumptions. So, we should have a question:

Is Contemporary Qualitative Research Really a Science?

Obviously science can be defined in numerous ways. Qualitative researchers themselves believe that the activities they are conducting when studying something belong to science: “Research, quantitative and qualitative, is scientific” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005a, p. 1). However, ontological and epistemological ground of their activities requires very unusual definition of science. Let us take a closer look at what qualitative research is and how it is conducted. For the beginning an idea about methodology:

How a person does qualitative analysis is not something that can be dictated. Doing qualitative research is something that a researcher has to feel him-or herself through. (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, p. x)

This statement, taken out of the context of the (scientific?) world-view would be hard to interpret. Yet it all makes sense when we know that contemporary qualitative science has negative assumptions about all the four doubts. The first assumption that there is no outside world leads to understanding that all the “knowledge” emerges internally. As there is no organized world outside, then knowledge is not constrained by some coherent rational forms of inference; what is left over is feeling. So, again, contemporary qualitative science is coherent in its incoherence.

I think this position actually should be rejected; science cannot be based on feelings that guide methodological choices. Hegel provides us two thoughts relevant here. First,

[...] philosophizing by the light of nature, which thinks itself too good for conceptual thinking, and, because of the want of it, takes itself to have direct intuitive ideas and poetical thoughts,—such philosophizing trades in arbitrary combinations of an imagination merely disorganized through thinking—fictious creations that are neither fish nor flesh, neither poetry nor philosophy. (Hegel, 2005, p. 126)

So Hegel would characterize contemporary qualitative science as a special kind of science that creates arbitrary combinations of an imagination which leads to disorganized thinking. This does not “feel” science for me.

There is another suggestion from Hegel:

[...] If a man on any topic appeals not to the nature and notion of the thing, or at least to reasons—to the generalities of common sense—but to his feeling, the only thing to do is to let him alone, because by his behaviour he refuses to have any lot or part in common rationality, and shuts himself up in his own isolated subjectivity—his private and particular self. (Hegel, 2008, p. 69)

What Hegel shows here is exactly the essence of the contemporary qualitative science: any science based on feelings is a private enterprise that lacks rationality and isolates the thoughts from reality. To avoid fundamental confusion, I do not see any reason to call this kind of enterprise a science; such activities belong actually to the realm of art. I think Leslie A. White made this distinction sufficiently clear (but see also Toomela, 2014b, for more details):

Science is not merely a collection of facts and formulas. It is pre-eminently a way of dealing with experience. The word may be appropriately used as a verb: one sciences (i.e., deals with experience according to certain assumptions and with certain techniques). Science is one of two basic ways of dealing with experience. The other is art. And this word, too, may appropriately be used as a verb; one may art as well as science. The purpose of science and art is one: to render experience intelligible, i.e., to assist man to adjust himself to his environment in order that he may live. But although working toward the same goal, science and art approach it from opposite directions. Science deals with particulars in terms of universals: Uncle Tom disappears in the mass of Negro slaves. Art deals with universals in terms of particulars: the whole gamut of Negro slavery confronts us in the person of Uncle Tom. Art and science thus grasp a common experience, or reality, by opposite but inseparable poles. (White, 1949, p. 3)

Paradigmatic Modern Science: Quantitative Approach

Mainstream psychology[2] and social sciences today follow the so-called quantitative approach. The roots of this approach emerged long before the “statistical revolution” of the 1950s when statistical tools began to determine the shape of theories and grounded practically all methodology of psychology (Gigerenzer, 1991, 1993). The foundational ideas of the mainstream psychology today were formulated more than a century ago. Emergence of quantitative science, as I am going to show below, was determined by the set of Assumptions accepted by the founders of the paradigmatic psychology. More or less final form of the scientific world-view that grounds psychology today emerged with behaviorism even though the roots of this approach can be traced back to nineteenth century (cf. Malone, 2014).

Before discussing the views behaviorists had about the Assumptions underlying their science one remark is relevant. Behaviorists rejected connection of philosophy[3] to their science:

Psychology, up to very recent times, has been held so rigidly under the dominance both of traditional religion and of philosophy—the two great bulwarks of mediaevalism—that it has never been able to free itself and become a natural science. (Watson, 1929, p. 1)

This attitude explains also why we cannot find very general ideas discussed by behaviorists (as well as contemporary quantitative psychologists). Contemporary qualitative science has dedicated a lot of discussions on the very general questions, which allowed us to find the Assumptions underlying this science also expressed in general-abstract language. Behaviorist science together with its modified version that constitutes the mainstream quantitative psychology today has also very clear position regarding the basic Doubts. Yet the Assumptions of this science are not formulated abstractly but rather are expressed in much more concrete statements. These, nevertheless, clearly imply certain general Assumptions. First, there is no doubt that the external world exists:

For the behaviorist, psychology is that division of natural science which takes human behavior—the doings and sayings, both learned and unlearned, of people as its subject matter. (Watson, 1929, p. 4)

Obviously the external world has to exist if there are “people” who can be studied. It is as obvious that this external world is organized and knowable:

Behavioristic psychology attempts to formulate, through systematic observation and experimentation, the generalizations, laws and principles which underly man’s behavior. When a human being acts—does something with arms, legs or vocal cords—there must be an invariable group of antecedents serving as a “cause” of the act. (Watson, 1929)

The world must be organized and knowable, if it is possible to formulate laws and principles of human behavior. However, it does not follow that the world is fully knowable; behaviorism assumes that knowledge is limited only to appearances. One possibility could be here that behaviorism assumes the existence of nonmaterial soul—which is not knowable in the material world. This is not so; behaviorism clearly rejected the idea of the nonmaterial soul:

Behaviorism claims that “consciousness” is neither a definable nor a usable concept; that it is merely another word for the “soul” of more ancient times. The old psychology is thus dominated by a kind of subtle religious philosophy. [...] No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural started. It probably had its origin in the general laziness of mankind. [...] lazy but good observers soon found devices by means of which they could at will throw individuals into this fearsome attitude and thus control primitive human behavior. [...] The “medicine men” of primitive times soon established an elaborate control through signs, symbols, rituals, formulae, and the like. [...] One example of such a concept is that there is a fearsome God and that every individual has a soul which is separate and distinct from the body. This soul is really a part of the supreme being. This concept has led to the philosophical platform called “dualism.” All psychology except behaviorism is dualistic. (Watson, 1925, pp. 3–4, my emphasis)

So behaviorism clearly rejects the idea of the immaterial soul. It is very important to know, why behaviorism rejected dualism. The reason is not that only material reality was assumed. Rather, the reason was that immaterial soul is not available for direct observation, for senses:

No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience. (Watson, 1925, p. 4)

“Consciousness” cannot be studied for the same reason:

From the time of Wundt on, consciousness becomes the keynote of psychology. It is the keynote of all psychologies today except behaviorism. It is a plain assumption just as unprovable, just as unapproachable, as the old concept of the soul. And to the behaviorist the two terms are essentially identical, so far as concerns their metaphysical implications. (Watson, 1925, p. 5)

This quote brings another interesting idea: assumptions are unprovable and unapproachable and therefore should be rejected. At the same time, Watson also has no way to prove that external world exists and if it does—and is organized—it is also knowable. If he were consistent, he would have to reject behaviorism and all other sciences as impossible too. Behaviorism was actually very clear in limiting knowability of the world to appearances:

In his first efforts to get uniformity in subject matter and in methods the behaviorist began his own formulation of the problem of psychology by sweeping aside all mediaeval conceptions. He dropped from his scientific vocabulary all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image, desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined. [...] The behaviorist asks: Why don’t we make what we can observe the real field of psychology? Let us limit ourselves to things that can be observed, and formulate laws concerning only those things. Now what we can observe? Well, we can observe behavior—what the organism does or says. [...] The rule, or measuring rod, which the behaviorist puts in front of him always is: Can I describe this bit of behavior I see in terms of “stimulus and response”? (Watson, 1925, p. 6)

Mainstream quantitative psychology today may seem to have abandoned behaviorism. Indeed, all the “subjective” terms rejected by behaviorists can now be found in psychology again. According to the widespread construction of the history of psychology, behaviorism ended with the so-called cognitive revolution in the 1950s: “what happened was that American psychologists rejected behaviorism and adopted a model of mind based on the computer” (Smith, 2001, p. 2140). According to the latter summary, behaviorism was “overthrown” with the emergence of three research approaches. First, it was suggested that cognition could be understood as a flow of information within the organism. Second, digital computers were created which led to the belief that human intelligence operates in ways similar to that of the computer. The third root of the new psychology was the development of generative grammar in linguistics. In addition, higher mental processes were introduced back to psychology; this input is associated with Gestalt psychology, which, as almost all European psychology, never accepted behaviorism.

So, what were the terms that appeared again with Cognitive Psychology?

At present, Cognitive Psychology is a broad field concerned with many different topic areas, such as, for instance, human memory, perception, attention, pattern recognition, consciousness, neuroscience, representation of knowledge, cognitive development, language, and thinking. The common denominator of these phenomena appears to be that all of the phenomena reflect the operation of ‘intelligence’ in one way or another, at least if intelligence is broadly defined as skill of an individual to act purposefully, think rationally, and interact efficiently with the environment. (Frensch, 2001, p. 2147)

There are two issues that I just propose but will not discuss in detail. First, I suggest that the mentality or scientific world-view that replaced behaviorism extended from Cognitive Psychology to all other branches of psychology that comprise mainstream psychology today. Second, I think there is no need to waste too much effort to demonstrate that mainstream psychology today is different from behaviorism only superficially; essentially no “revolution” or overthrow of “cause–effect” or “stimulus–reaction” view on mind happened. Most importantly, mainstream psychology today shares with behaviorism understanding of what is scientific explanation. This understanding is based on the assumption of the limited appearance-based knowability of the world, as it will be discussed in details below. In addition, there are many other fundamental similarities between behaviorism and mainstream psychology today, which have been discussed elsewhere (Toomela, 2007a, 2007b).

Still here it is relevant to make two observations regarding behaviorism and contemporary mainstream psychology. First concerns the terms that reemerged with “cognitive revolution.” John Broadus Watson made a relevant statement about rejecting the “subjective terms,” such as sensation, perception, conception, memory, imagination, and attention:

Let me hasten to add that if I were to ask you to tell me what you mean by the terms you have been in the habit of using! I could soon make you tongue tied with contradictions. I believe I could even convince you that you do not know what you mean by them. (Watson, 1925, p. 10).

Indeed, Watson is consistent here: If it is possible to know the world only in the limits of appearances, then there is no consistent way to define unobservables—even if these exist. Mainstream psychology today is in the situation predicted by Watson: there is no understanding of what is meant by the “subjective” terms attributed to mind. There are two possible expressions of inability to define putative unobservables. One possibility is that there is no definition available. But there is also another possibility. In mainstream psychology all the terms are defined, but nevertheless there is no understanding of what is meant by them. Namely, there are very many different definitions of the same term; often these definitions are not even overlapping. Researchers use the terms and extremely rarely inform the readers of their scientific texts which particular definition underlaid their study (obviously there is also no discussion whatsoever on why this definition was selected and why the others were rejected). So, consciousness is defined in many ways (Vimal, 2009); in addition there are many researchers who explicitly declare that they study consciousness without defining it (see for review, Toomela, 2016). Memory, which seems to be simple to define, is nevertheless defined in at least six different ways (Tulving, 2000). Intelligence has turned out to be either undefinable or arbitrarily defined without a scientifically acceptable degree of consensus (Jensen, 1998). For many researchers “intelligence” is explicitly behavioristic: it is what the intelligence test measures (cf. Mackintosh, 1998). Thinking is as little understood as the other notions: if defined broadly, it covers nearly all psychology and if defined narrowly, it seems to be none of psychology (Oden, 1987).

The list of the topics studied by Cognitive Psychology, cited above, has an interesting limitation. There was no emotion, motivation, and planning of activities. This is quite expectable: computers do not have feelings and motivation, they also do not act. Emotion and motivation is still a popular topic of mainstream psychology; each of these terms has more than 80 definitions (see Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981a, for the definitions of emotion and Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981b, for the definitions of motivation). Computers have no personality either; this is another very popular field of studies where more than 50 definitions could be found already in the time of behaviorism (Allport, 1937); today the situation is as obscure as it was in Allport’s time.

I think there is no point to bring more details. Mainstream psychology today actually arrived to the point Watson predicted: it is not clear, what the “subjective” concepts actually mean. Most of the time, mainstream psychology is openly behavioristic: the concepts are defined operationally, by the set of “stimuli” (called tests, tasks, etc.) that lead to certain responses. If there is a response, then a person has a “thing” that is between the stimulus and the response. This “thing” is declared to be a component of the mind.

In methods, mainstream psychology is identical to behaviorism also (see on methods used by behaviorists, Watson, 1925, 1929, Chap. 2 in both books): all the methods are essentially inductive. It is declared by both behaviorists and cognitive psychologists that experimental method is important. Experiment may seem to be noninductive method of study and yet it is a purely inductive method in psychology:

Cognitive psychologists rely heavily on the experimental method, in which independent variables are manipulated and dependent variables are measured to provide insights into the specifics of the underlying cognitive system. To statistically evaluate the results from experiments, Cognitive Psychology relies on standard hypothesis testing, along with inferential statistics (e.g., analyses of variance). (Frensch, 2001, p. 2152)

Statistical evaluation is a set of procedures to evaluate a probability of some events appearing together beyond chance. Statistical procedures are based on study of covariations between variables. The analysis tool can be relatively simple, such as Analysis of Variance, Correlation, Multiple Regression Analysis, or Factor Analysis. It can be some more advanced procedure, such as Structural Equation Modeling. It does not matter. Covariation, in essence, is superficial association. Both Descartes (1985) and Hume (1999, 2000), who doubted in the possibility of knowledge beyond appearances suggested that the only possible knowledge is about efficient causality, about relations between causes and effects. Next, they both agreed that such knowledge can be obtained through observing covariations between events. And both of them agreed that by observing correlations it is not possible to know the essence, hidden from direct observation character, of the world. Basically this data analysis process is inductive. Furthermore, recently the same issue surfaced in the so-called reproducibility crisis: the results of the significant proportion of statistically interpreted experiments in different sciences cannot be reproduced (e.g., Baker, 2016). In fact, even if a result is reproduced statistically, there is still no certainty that the reproduction was not accidental.

There is another methodological problem involved. Mainstream psychology today does not interpret directly observations of the world but variables, which are themselves interpretations of the observations. Observations, encoded into variables, however, cannot be translated back to the observations of the world. Encoding observations into variables may lead in covariational data analysis procedures both to misleading dependencies as well as to misleading independencies between variables. There are several reasons for that (see for details, Toomela, 2008). Most importantly, the phenomenon studied is hidden from direct observation, but variables are descriptions of the observables. The problem is that there is no one-to-one correspondence between behaviors encoded as variables and mechanisms that underlie the behavior encoded. Different mechanisms may be expressed by a similar behavior and vice versa. Take, for instance, a variable constructed from the results of an intelligence test. It is assumed that the correct answers can be added up and the resulting sum can help to understand intelligence. But it cannot. There are too many ways to achieve a correct answer (remembering, calculating, cheating, guessing, etc.) as well as too many ways to achieve an incorrect answer (remembering but incorrectly; calculating, but incorrectly; cheating, but from a wrong source; guessing, but incorrectly, etc.). Therefore the variable constructed from such numbers will be even less meaningful because different persons can achieve correct and incorrect answers in different ways. There are many more arguments to reject quantitative research tools for discovering organization of the world beyond appearances (Essex & Smythe, 1999; Michell, 2000, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2010; Molenaar, 2004; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2005). There is no need to discuss them in details here. All of them reflect the implicit assumption behind the studies that only appearances can be observed and studied.

Metaparadigmatic Science: Pre-World War II Continental European Qualitative Psychology

Here a small introduction into existence of metaparadigmatic psychology is needed. Roots of metaparadigmatic psychology can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Today, however, there seems to be no such aspiration. There are, of course, attempts to create some kind of unifying theory, which is essential for metaparadigmatic science. But all such proposals I am aware of are of the kind Vygotsky described as characteristic of the first or paradigmatic stage of science. All such theories emerge from subfields of knowledge and, therefore, will be unable to unify psychology. Some, as it was discussed above, have taken information processing theory and attempted to apply it to the whole human mind; the others believe humans are like computers. Some believe that a mathematical theory, such as dynamic systems theory, does the job (e.g., Smith & Thelen, 1993; Thelen, 1995; Thelen & Smith, 1994). None of them achieves the goal of unification because their roots are wrong: true unifying theory emerges from studying the mind as a whole (as Darwin studied the life as a whole).

The situation was different in continental European psychology 60 and more years ago (see Toomela, 2007a; Watson, 1934). In addition to Vygotsky, there were many other psychologists who explicitly aimed at understanding humans as wholes; thus they all contributed to establishing the roots of metaparadigmatic science. Among them were Pyotr Anokhin, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin, William Stern, Max Wertheimer, and Heinz Werner to name just a few more outstanding metaparadigmatically oriented scholars of that time. Yet I believe that Vygotsky achieved more than all of them in building the unifying theory.

In discussing contemporary qualitative science and quantitative mainstream psychology, it turned out that these approaches formulate all or some Assumptions about the Doubts negatively. Consequently these approaches are in principle unable to achieve understanding of the mind. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology was different; there all Assumptions were formulated positively. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology was materialist (Vygotsky, 1982). Therefore he assumed that external world exists and it is organized. Obviously he also rejected dualism. In these assumptions Vygotsky was similar to quantitative mainstream psychology and opposed to contemporary qualitative science.

Analysis of Vygotsky’s methodology of research shows that his approach goes beyond quantitative mainstream as well. He assumed that the external world is knowable beyond appearances. He relied only on qualitative research methods—thus he did not assume that only covariations between observed events are knowable. But his qualitative methodology was also different from superficial and descriptive contemporary qualitative science. His qualitative methodology was experimental; this methodology allowed him to construct justified theories about functioning of the mind beyond appearances (e.g., Vygotsky, 1934).

In sum, it can be concluded that there has been a theory which formulated all Assumptions positively. This theory also explicitly aimed at building a metaparadigmatic science. Vygotsky’s theory was not the only one; it adopted many ideas from other continental European approaches of his time. These other approaches shared the same Assumptions as he did (this conclusion can be deduced from Toomela, 2007a; see also Watson, 1934).

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Footnotes

1

Perhaps it is worthy to mention that the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005c) I am citing in several places is not a secondary or uninfluential source. According to Google Scholar (Harzing’s Publish or Perish search), different chapters in this edition together have been cited more than 5500 times and the 2011 fourth edition of the same book already more than 16,800 times. Even though the number of citation is not related to the content of a scientific work, it demonstrates the popularity of it.

2

“Mainstream psychology is an approach to the science of mind accepted by majority of psychologists and defined by ontological and epistemological qualities questioned by representatives of non-mainstream psychology” (Toomela, 2014a, p. 1117). Today, mainstream quantitative approach is questioned by non-mainstream contemporary qualitative research approach. There is no mainstream approach in metaparadigmatic sciences, such as biology or physics.

3

“Philosophy” is defined in many ways and, as usual in philosophy, there is no definition agreed upon. This is a problem, however—because if, for instance, a scientist rejects philosophy without defining it, we have no idea, what exactly is rejected. Usually Wikipedia is not the first source for grounding discussion in science. In this case, however, the definition(s) of philosophy there are relevant: “Philosophy [...] is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. [...] Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy, retrieved March, 07, 2018). Watson seems to have rejected philosophy in both aspects—as a study of general and fundamental problems as well as a special method of study. As a method of study, philosophy consists in reflecting on knowledge already represented in language; essentially it is a game of or in language—that is also the reason why philosophy never provides definite answers. It is a defining characteristic of the human language that words and other linguistic symbols can be used differently from their referents (Toomela, 1996, 2016). So anything can be said about the ideas discussed; this breaks the relationship of philosophy to reality.

Yet I think that it is absolutely necessary to ask the general questions even though I would reject all philosophy that is based on playing with the endless potential of language. In that sense I would agree with Watson: any science becomes science when it breaks free from philosophical games of language and constrains itself with empirical experimental studies of the world. Now the reader may wonder whether this book is not philosophical in its method as well. It is not. I am defining Doubts and Assumptions that determine the methodology and content of science; depending of the Assumptions taken, the sciences are different. So this book is an empirical study of sciences.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_4

4. Causality, Understanding, and Explanation: Philosophical Roots

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Aristotle’s causalityEfficient causalityFinal causalityFour causes

The Assumptions taken by a scientific approach are directly related to another fundamental issue. Science aims at explanation and understanding. But what “scientific understanding” means? I agree with Aristotle in this:

We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is. (Aristotle, 1941d, p. 111, 71b)

In this quote two important ideas are expressed. First, there are different kinds of knowledge: scientific and accidental. And second, the scientific knowledge is about causes of the studied things and phenomena. Now I am going to explain in more details, why the previous discussion of Doubts and Assumptions was necessary. Depending on the Assumptions, “causality”—and therefore also scientific understanding—has very different meanings. When we know what is scientific understanding for one or another approach of science, we can also understand what kind of knowledge is missing or present in one or another science.

I introduce the problem with an imaginary visit.

Visit to a Watchmaker

Let us suppose I have a wristwatch. One day it falls to the floor. After this event my watch stops. And I decide to pay a visit to a watchmaker. So, I arrive there and tell that my watch is not working anymore and I would like to repair it. He asks me, naturally, “What happened to your watch?” And I, naturally, describe what happened: “I dropped it on the floor and after that my watch stopped.” Then I leave.

Next day I come back and ask whether my watch is repaired. I am told that it works again now. And then I do something strange: I ask, “What happened to my watch?” Does it mean I have memory problems? Or am I checking the memory of the watchmaker? Neither of them. I do remember what I said to him yesterday, I am not checking his memory, and yet I am expecting some answer. And not any kind of answer. For instance, answer—“What happened … what happened. You dropped it on the floor, that’s what happened!”—would not satisfy me at all. And actually the watchmaker also would not hesitate to give an answer of a different kind compared my answer to the same question. The watchmaker would tell me that something was wrong with a cogwheel, or with a watch spring, or some screw was broken, or nothing was really broken, but just some of those mentioned things were in the wrong position so that only relationships between cogwheels and screws changed. This kind of answer would be what I expect and what would also satisfy me.

Thus in this situation two different kinds of explanations were given. The first—my—explanation was that of the so-called efficient cause. And the second can be called structural-systemic. Both will be discussed in more details below. If we ask, which kind of the answers we need in order to be able to repair the watch? I think it is obvious that the first answer is practically useless. Knowing that I dropped a watch, after which event it did not work anymore, leads me to no understanding what to do next. It would not help to take a watch from the floor to the position it was before. It would not help to punish the floor, or myself, for this stupid and aggressive act; the watch would not forgive me, it still would not work. It is also noteworthy that the watchmaker actually does not need my cause–effect explanation at all! Things would work out even if I would say that I have no idea what happened to it, it was with my friend when it broke and he did not give me any explanation. Knowing, however, which cogwheels, screws, springs, etc., and in which relationships must be in the working watch of this particular kind, would be sufficient to know how to repair it. So, there are different kinds of explanations possible, and some of them less powerful than the others.

Causality or Causalities?

A nice summary of different philosophical definitions of causality can be found in Chambers’ Cyclopedia (Chambers, 1728a, 1728b). Under the entry “CAUSE,” there is First Cause and Second Causes and many more. Under the “Causes in the School Philosophy,” there are (1) efficient causes, (2) material causes, (3) formal causes, (4) final causes, and (5) exemplary causes. In the other way, again, “Causes” are distinguished into Physical, or Natural, and Moral. Or yet another way, “Causes” are considered as either Universal or Particular, Principal or Instrumental, Total or Partial, Univocal or Equivocal, etc. The different causes are described under corresponding entries in the Cyclopedia.

So, philosophy knew many different forms of cause and causality. The philosophy of causality today, however, seems to know only one that of efficient causality in its different versions (e.g., Campbell, O’Rourke, & Silverstein, 2007; Russo & Williamson, 2007; Salmon, 1989, 1998; Sosa & Tooley, 1993b; Woodward, 2003). Where did the other kinds of causality disappear? Usually this question is even not asked in present-day science and philosophy. If it is, then we learn the following:

Systematic discussion of the topic of causation began with Aristotle […] But although Aristotle’s approach was dominant one in philosophy for almost 2000 years, and although it contains useful distinctions and insights, it is rarely referred to in present-day discussions. There are various reasons for this. One is that Aristotle’s conception of causation […] has a strongly teleological orientation. Another is that Aristotle did not think of causation, as present-day philosophers do, as a relation between events or states of affairs. Perhaps the most important reason, however, is that Aristotle was apparently unaware that there are serious difficulties concerning the concept of causation.

The realization that the concept of causation is deeply problematic, and very difficult to analyze, begins with David Hume […] Hume […] advanced arguments of great depth and originality—so much so that many present-day philosophers still hold that, as regards the central metaphysical issues that arise concerning causation, Hume was essentially right. (Sosa & Tooley, 1993a, pp. 30–31, my emphasis)

So, there are three reasons to reject Aristotelian approach: He was too teleological, he did not understand how problematic the concept of causation is, and he did not think as present-day philosophers do! The last of these arguments is irrelevant; I am going to suggest that the present-day philosophers, who are supporting such views, are simply wrong: I am going to show that (1) Aristotelian view corresponds much more to the modern scientific world-view than that accepted by present-day philosophers; (2) Aristotle’s teleology is based on materialist world-view and fits very well with the contemporary scientific world-view; (3) Hume relied in his philosophy—brilliant for his time—on a world-view (as it was discussed above in Chap. 2) and a theory of psychology that is fundamentally out of date and makes all his suggestions out of date too, he was essentially wrong; and, therefore, (4) present-day philosophers are unaware that there are serious difficulties concerning their concept of causation.

Next I am going to discuss the views of the philosophers whose relation to the Assumptions were already discussed. These were the philosophers who grounded understanding of scientific explanation and causality today. For us it becomes essential to understand what views they had about causality and why they thought so.

Aristotle

Aristotle’s Assumptions

Aristotle assumed that there is knowable material organized external world. He had, therefore, positive Assumptions regarding all four Doubts. His view of causality corresponds to these Assumptions.

Aristotle’s General View on Causes

Aristotle distinguished four individually necessary and collectively sufficient kinds of causes. He gave a full list of them in different works. Essentially these lists overlap. Nevertheless, there are differences in emphasis. Next I provide some of the lists with short comments needed for understanding the discussion that follows. After that each of the causes and some other important aspects of his theory of causality will be discussed in more detail.

So, the exhaustive list of causes is as follows:

In one sense, then, (1) that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is called ‘cause’, e.g. the bronze of the statue, the silver of the bowl, and the genera of which the bronze and the silver are species.

In another sense (2) the form or the archetype, i.e. the statement of the essence, and its genera, are called ‘causes’ (e.g. of the octave the relation of 2:1, and generally number), and the parts in the definition.

Again (3) the primary source of the change or coming to rest; e.g. the man who gave advice is a cause, the father is cause of the child, and generally what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed.

Again (4) in the sense of end or ‘that for the sake of which’ a thing is done, e.g. health is the cause of walking about. (‘Why is he walking about?’ we say. ‘To be healthy’, and, having said that, we think we have assigned the cause.)

[…] This then perhaps exhausts the number of ways in which the term ‘cause’ is used. (Aristotle, 1941e, pp. 240–241, 194b)

In the following discussion, these causes will be called, following the tradition that was established after Aristotle’s time, material, formal, efficient, and final cause, respectively.

Next it is important to know what causality is about; it is about becoming and change:

[…] all causes are beginnings. […] ‘Cause’ means (1) that from which, as immanent material, a thing comes into being, […] (2) The form or pattern, i.e. the definition of the essence […] (3) That from which the change or the resting from change first begins; […] (4) The end, i.e. that for the sake of which a thing is; e.g. health is the cause of walking. (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 752, 1013a, my emphasis)

He connected in this passage the idea of change and becoming only to the material and to the efficient cause. However, different causes are interrelated:

Now, the causes being four, it is the business of the physicist to know about them all, […]—the matter, the form, the mover, ‘that for the sake of which’. The last three often coincide; for the ‘what’ and ‘that for the sake of which’ are one, while the primary source of motion is the same in species as these (for man generates man). (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 248, 198a, my emphasis)

And finally, it is noteworthy that Aristotle described the causes he listed by different characteristics in different places. I am going to show in Chap. 9 that his view on causality was remarkably similar to modern System Theory. So far the vocabulary he used does not make this connection so obvious. However, important terms can be found in the following paragraph:

All the causes now mentioned fall under four senses […] some are cause as the substratum (e.g. the parts), others as the essence (the whole, the synthesis, and the form). The semen, the physician, the adviser, and in general the agent, are all sources of change or of rest. The remainder are causes as the end […] (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 753, 1013b, my emphasis)

So, material cause is not just material, it is parts, formal cause is not just some form, it is whole and synthesis. Therefore we can suggest: description of causality involves the concept of a whole that is composed of parts in specific relationships (synthesis). This is definition of a system: “A system can be defined as a set of elements standing in interrelations” (von Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 55).

Next I discuss each of the causes in more details. I am going to show that Aristotle’s conception of causality stands close to the modern General System Theory, for instance, which can be applied to physics, biology, psychology, and social sciences as von Bertalanffy demonstrated. In this way Aristotle’s approach is still closer to definition of understanding and explanation in metaparadigmatic science today than that of Humean–Cartesian modern philosophers.

Material Cause

So, description of the material cause is essentially description of parts of the whole science strives to understand. “Parts” are not just pieces of a whole; they are components of a whole that can be distinguished there:

by ‘parts’ I mean components into which a whole can be divided and which are actually present in it (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 225, 187b)

Next, parts, or elements, are wholes themselves, but at another level of analysis:

‘Element’ means (1) the primary component immanent in a thing, and indivisible in kind into other kinds; e.g. the elements of speech are the parts of which speech consists and into which it is ultimately divided, while they are no longer divided into other forms of speech different in kind from them. If they are divided, their parts are of the same kind, as a part of water is water (while part of the syllable is not a syllable). (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 754, 1014a)

Here we already see that wholes—structures or systems, we can say—are built hierarchically; what are parts at one level of analysis are systems or wholes themselves at another, more detailed level of analysis. This point was made more clear in another passage:

Now there are three degrees of composition; and of these the first in order, as all will allow, is composition out of what some call the elements, such as earth, air, water, fire. Perhaps, however, it would be more accurate to say composition out of the elementary forces. […] The second degree of composition is that by which the homogeneous parts of animals, such as bone, flesh, and the like, are constituted out of the primary substances. The third and the last stage is the composition which forms the heterogeneous parts, such as face, hand, and the rest. (Aristotle, 1941c, pp. 658–659, 646a)

This view corresponds perfectly with present-day understanding of a living organism for instance, the understanding that was developed considerably after Aristotle’s time: animal body is composed of elements at different hierarchical levels: organism–organs–cells–subcellular organelles–molecular–biologic level of organization. Aristotelian way of explanation would easily fit with modern understanding of an animal body; modern Humean philosophy of causality would be absolutely helpless in explaining and understanding organism or, actually, anything.

There is one very important idea more about the material cause. It is not possible to combine random parts, not everything goes with everything:

Thus it is clear that only those agents are ‘combinable’ which involve a contrariety—for these are such as to suffer action reciprocally. (Aristotle, 1941b, p. 506, 328a).

Here is the reason why material cause must be described together with other causes: certain wholes can emerge only from parts that can be combined; not all distinguishable elements of nature can be combined. So, in order to understand we must know not just that there are parts, but what specific parts can combine into a whole we study. In other words, material cause is constraint on what can happen in nature. The idea of constraint, in turn, fits perfectly with Popperian idea that theories can be tested by trying to falsify them: falsification is possible only if the theory is falsifiable in principle. Falsified can be only a theory that shows what constraints a theory imposes on the world. Such constraints define what should be theoretically impossible. By testing these constraints the theory can be falsified. If theory defines no constraints, i.e., the theory does not imply impossibility of certain states of the world, it cannot be falsified—actually, it cannot be proven too in that case. If a theory proposes that certain parts, certain material causes, are part of the explanation, then the theory already has formulated constraints that make the theory falsifiable, i.e., scientific.

Formal Cause

There are three ideas worthy to mention in respect of the formal cause as Aristotle saw it. First, parts are necessary for becoming a whole, which also means that description of the material cause alone cannot be sufficient. Aristotelian theory of causality is fully coherent in that respect:

[…] the parts are causes of the whole (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 753, 1013b)

Next, it is important that the parts change, when they become parts of a whole:

[…] ‘combination’ is unification of the ‘combinables’, resulting from their ‘alteration’. (Aristotle, 1941b, p. 507, 328b)

This idea—that properties of the to-become parts change when they enter a novel whole—is fundamentally important. First, it says that emergence of a whole is not a quantitative change related to parts becoming together; the becoming of a whole is related to the emergence of new qualities. Second, this idea imposes one very strict requirement on the scientific methodology. It says that the only way to understand material cause is through historical or developmental study. It is so because the properties of the elements will be recognizable only before they enter the whole. After becoming parts, their own properties become inseparably together with properties imposed by a whole, which they are parts of. This interpretation is in full correspondence with Aristotle’s ideas:

Since, however, some things are-potentially while others are-actually, the constituents combined in a compound can ‘be’ in a sense: and yet ‘not-be’. The compound may be-actually other than the constituents from which it has resulted; nevertheless each of them may still be-potentially what it was before they were combined, and both of them may survive undestroyed. […] The constituents, therefore, neither (a) persist actually, as ‘body’ and ‘white’ persist: nor (b) are they destroyed (either one of them or both), for their ‘power of action’ is preserved. (Aristotle, 1941b, pp. 504–505, 327b)

Third important idea is that in order to understand a whole it is not sufficient to know the parts; we must also know in which specific way the parts are put together in this whole. The same parts in other relations give us other kinds of wholes:

[…] if we want to examine the nature of anything else, we examine the parts of which, e.g., a bed consists and how they are put together, and then we know its nature. (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 722, 998b, my emphasis)

Even more, Aristotle also indicated how to solve the seeming contradiction between continuity and qualitative change:

While in a sense we call anything one if it is a quantity and continuous, in a sense we do not unless it is a whole, i.e. unless it has unity of form; e.g. if we saw the parts of a shoe put together anyhow we should not call them one all the same (unless because of their continuity); we do this only if they are put together so as to be a shoe and to have already a certain single form. (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 759, 1016b)

Wholes are continuous with parts because they are composed of them. But whole has qualities that do not characterize the parts; in that respect the change is qualitative at the same time. So, continuity and change apply to different moments of the very same process of becoming. Today we would call this position antireductionist. Qualities of a whole cannot be reduced to the qualities of its parts; but yet the whole does not come from nothing, it becomes when parts become in specific relationships.

Last, but not least, formal cause also defines theoretical constraints. The main constraint that characterized material cause was that the to-become elements must have a potential to enter into relationships with other to-become elements. So, the parts must have certain qualities. Formal cause imposes further constraints: there must be certain number of parts:

A quantity is infinite if it is such that we can always take a part outside what has been already taken. On the other hand, what has nothing outside it is complete and whole. For thus we define the whole—that from which nothing is wanting, as a whole man or a whole box. What is true of each particular is true of the whole as such—the whole is that of which nothing is outside. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 266, 207a)

So, a whole is from which nothing is wanting, it is composed of some necessary set of parts (and these parts must be in specific relationships). In this way two more sources for possible falsification are defined: certain whole must (!) be composed of certain parts and these parts must (!) be in certain relationships.

Efficient Cause

Efficient cause is, according to Aristotle, the source of change or coming to rest. As a source a Cartesian–Humean philosopher today would expect that the notion of the efficient cause entails a sequence, linear relationship between causes and effects. Aristotle, being a dialectical thinker, however, proposed that even though efficient causes operate in time and therefore imply sequences, it does not follow that there are linear relationships between causes that are independent of effects, and effects that fully depend on causes. Linearity of cause–effect relationship applies only to potential of something to become a cause; but efficient cause is cause only at the very moment when it actually is a source of change:

All causes, both proper and incidental, may be spoken of either as potential or as actual; e.g. the cause of a house being built is either ‘housebuilder’ or ‘housebuilder building’. […] causes which are actually at work and particular exist and cease to exist simultaneously with their effect (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 242, 195b)

The idea of efficient cause was more complex for Aristotle:

Some things cause each other reciprocally, e.g. hard work causes fitness and vice versa, but again not in the same way, but the one as end, the other as the origin of change. Further the same thing is the cause of contrary results. For that which by its presence brings about one result is sometimes blamed for bringing about the contrary by its absence. Thus we ascribe the wreck of a ship to the absence of the pilot whose presence was the cause of its safety. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 241, 195a)

So there is no necessity that cause–effect relationship is always linear and unidirectional. On the contrary, if there are two things, say A and B, they can be causes and effects for each other simultaneously. The relationship can be two-directional. It is also important that in such a case the cause–effect relation from A to B and from B to A “is not in the same way.” They are qualitatively different.

Another interesting point was made by Aristotle in that passage: absence can be an efficient cause! This observation is fully coherent with the Aristotelian ideas of material and formal causes discussed above. The qualities of a whole—formal cause—are determined by the quality and number of parts and by specific relationships between these parts. Therefore the absence of a part will be the cause of a different kind of a whole. So all three kinds of causes, material, formal, and efficient, are inherently related to each other. This relationship was elaborated further by Aristotle:

We have, then, the following factors: (a) on the one hand that which directly causes motion, and (b) on the other hand that which is in motion: further we have (c) that in which motion takes place, namely time, and (distinct from these three) (d) that from which and (e) that to which it proceeds: for every motion proceeds from something and to something, that which is directly in motion being distinct from that to which it is in motion and that from which it is in motion (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 301, 224a-224b)

In the sequence of that from which to that in motion to that into which, efficient cause is efficient cause only at the time of the actual motion (below it is shown that “motion” means for Aristotle all kinds of changes, including becoming, not only movement from one place in space to another). Again, therefore, Aristotelian understanding of efficient causality was not that of the unidirectional linear relationship between independent cause and dependent effect. Perhaps most importantly, efficient cause, if defined in Aristotle’s way, is also constrained: something can become a cause only when there is something else that it can have effect on:

Motion, we say, is the fulfilment of the movable in so far as it is movable. Each kind of motion, therefore, necessarily involves the presence of the things that are capable of that motion. In fact, even apart from the definition of motion, every one would admit that in each kind of motion it is that which is capable of that motion that is in motion: thus it is that which is capable of alteration that is altered, and that which is capable of local change that is in locomotion: and so there must be something capable of being burned before there can be a process of being burned, and something capable of burning before there can be a process of burning. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 355, 255a)

Therefore efficient cause alone cannot be sufficient explanation because its potential to become a cause is constrained by qualities of something else that is capable of motion, capable of being affected by the to-become an efficient cause.

It is of utmost importance for the following below discussion of views on causality by other philosophers that the relation of efficient causality to appearances is complex:

We conclude, then, that the same effect may have more than one cause, but not in subjects specifically identical. For instance, the cause of longevity in quadrupeds is lack of bile, in birds a dry constitution—or certainly something different. (Aristotle, 1941d, p. 184, 99b)

It turns out that if efficient causality is observed only between appearances, there may be no constraints related to this kind of causality. Different causes may give superficially similar effects, such as longevity; but this is only superficial similarity. Without knowing the essence, which is beyond appearances, we cannot relate causes to effects as explanations; we cannot understand the relationship. Which also means that the only conclusion we can make from observation of appearances is a statement of a fact: when something A appears then B follows. There will always be a possibility that superficially B also follows from X, Y, Z, etc. In this way there will also be no way to constrain a theory about efficient causality so that it would become truly falsifiable.

Finally, Aristotle gave more reasons why cross-sectional, nonhistorical, nondevelopmental study cannot lead to understanding in principle. By studying only “present,” the motion, the change, the becoming become unknowable because “present” excludes the dimension of time:

The present also is necessarily indivisible—the present, that is, not in the sense in which this word is applied to one thing in virtue of another, but in its proper and primary sense; in which sense it is inherent in all time. For the present is something that is an extremitu of the past (no part of the future being on this side of it) and also of the future (no part of the past being on the other side of it): it is, as we have said, a limit of both. And if it is once shown that it is essentially of this character and one and the same, it will at once be evident also that it is indivisible. […] We will show now that nothing can be in motion in a present. […] Nor can anything be at rest in a present. (Aristotle, 1941e, pp. 321–322, 233b–234a)

Present is indivisible. Therefore there is also no possibility to distinguish between different kinds of causality, or, in fact even to describe any one kind of causality. The description of the efficient cause, for instance, implies the existence of the potential cause, of something that is movable in principle, then the movement (of any kind) itself, which implies time, as well as to which the change proceeds.

Final Cause

Final cause seems to be the kind of cause that disturbs the present-day philosophers of causality most. It seems to tell that all things are designed with some purpose. In this case there should be an ultimate designer—the idea that does not fit into materialist world of modern science. Aristotelian account of the final cause, however, fits with the materialist world-view. First of all, he was clear that not everything is for something; and also, second, final cause itself is not unequivocally related only to purpose, to deliberate intention:

[…] some events are for the sake of something, others not. Again, some of the former class are in accordance with deliberate intention, others not, but both are in the class of things which are for the sake of something. […] (Events that are for the sake of something include whatever may be done as a result of thought or of nature.) (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 244, 196b)

Not all events are for the sake of something; therefore there is no omnipresent Grand Designer assumed. In addition, we have two kinds of final causes here: (1) by purposeful deliberate intention; and (2) by nature. These two kinds of final causes are similar in some respects:

Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.

Further, where a series has a completion, all the preceding steps are for the sake of that. Now surely as in intelligent action, so in nature; and as in nature, so it is in each action, if nothing interferes. Now intelligent action is for the sake of an end; therefore the nature of things also is so. (Aristotle, 1941e, pp. 249–250, 199a)

Yet there are also differences. Final cause “by nature” does not imply necessarily intention or plan:

And since ‘nature’ means two things, the matter and the form, of which the latter is the end, and since all the rest is for the sake of the end, the form must be the cause in the sense of ‘that for the sake of which’. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 250, 199a)

How to interpret the statement, “the form is that for the sake of which”? It is not the same, as some blueprint of a future state that evolves in time. There are different kinds of “by nature”:

This then is one account of ‘nature’, namely that it is the immediate material substratum of things which have in themselves a principle of motion or change.

Another account is that ‘nature’ is the shape or form which is specified in the definition of the thing. (Aristotle, 1941e, pp. 237–238, 193a)

So there are three different kinds of final causes. First, when some intelligent purpose exists, such as a plan in the head of the housebuilder. I think there is no doubt that such final cause can be purely material and is very common in human civilization. Second, there are two kinds of final causes by nature: the form of a thing, and essence of a thing when the essence contains a source of movement, a source of becoming something else. Aristotle characterized the latter kind as follows:

From what has been said, then, it is plain that nature in the primary and strict sense is the essence of things which have in themselves, as such, a source of movement; for the matter is called the nature because it is qualified to receive this, and process of becoming and growing are called nature because they are movements proceeding from this. And nature in this sense is the source of the movement of natural objects, being present in them somehow, either potentially or in complete reality. (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 756, 1015a)

I think there would also be no problem with this kind of final causes: all the living world, as much as present-day science can tell, assumes this kind of final cause. A single cell can become a human being of utmost complexity. It happens and is possible, of course, only in the interaction of this cell with its environment; but there is an internal source for becoming a complex multicellular organism in the single cell. So there should be no trouble with this kind of final causes as well.

We are left with the third kind of final cause; that of the form, the whole. Here, I admit, I was not able to find clear statement in Aristotle’s works that would allow unequivocal understanding of it. Here is how he described it:

‘Whole’ and ‘complete’ are either quite identical or closely akin. Nothing is complete (teleion) which has no end (telos); and the end is a limit. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 267, 207a)

[…] a change may really be completed, and there is such a thing as an end of change, which we have in fact shown to be indivisible because it is a limit. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 327, 236a)

This description would still be open for different interpretations. But there is an interesting passage that allows to interpret the third kind of final causes also in ways that do not disagree with the scientific world-view of today:

[…] where a series has a completion, all the preceding steps are for the sake of that. Now surely as in intelligent action, so in nature; and as in nature, so it is in each action, if nothing interferes. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 249, 199a)

This passage allows to suggest that final causes as forms are understood post hoc: IF there is a series that has a completion, THEN the previous steps were for it. But this IF does not imply necessity, as Aristotle also seems to suggest:

In one sense things come-to-be out of that which has no ‘being’ without qualification: yet in another sense they come-to-be always out of ‘what-is’. For coming-to-be necessarily implies the pre-existence of something which potentially ‘is’, but actually ‘is not’; and this something is spoken of both as ‘being’ and as ‘not-being’. (Aristotle, 1941b, p. 479, 317b)

About similar idea was also expressed in another work of his:

By necessity we shall sometimes mean hypothetical necessity, the necessity, that is, that the requisite antecedents shall be there, if the final end is to be reached […] (Aristotle, 1941c, p. 651, 642a)

So, in order of a form, of a whole to exist now, there must have been steps before that made this whole possible. In the previous steps there can be potential for this kind of a whole, but it does not mean that there is a guarantee or absolute necessity that this particular whole becomes into being. I think this interpretation is also in agreement with the understanding of nature today. The concept of “self-organization” seems to be the modern equivalent to Aristotle’s final cause by nature. This interpretation is also coherent because it connects final cause with other three kinds of causes. The form can become into being only if there are to-become parts, i.e., things that have a potential to become parts of the hierarchically higher level synthesis, the whole. Actual form must have such prerequisites, and in this sense this actual form is the final cause. But only in so far as this form is actual. When the form is only potential, there is no necessary final cause of the form yet. This interpretation seems also to be supported by the following:

Similarly in all other things which involve production for an end; the product cannot come to be without things which have a necessary nature, but it is not due to these (except as its material); it comes to be for an end. For instance, why is a saw such as it is? To effect so-and-so and for the sake of so-and-so. This end, however, cannot be realized unless the saw is made of iron. It is, therefore, necessary for it to be of iron, if we are to have a saw and perform the operation of sawing. (Aristotle, 1941e, pp. 251–252, 200a).

Here it is said that in case of the intentional final cause, the product in addition requires other kind of final cause, that of the necessary parts which make this kind of a produced form possible. The nature of this produced thing depends also necessarily on the material cause; I think this is the essence of the final causes by nature of the form.

One more note on final causes. In Aristotelian thinking, final causes are also constraints. This idea follows directly from what was just said: final cause as to the form is a constraint; not all possible combinations of matter can become specific actual wholes; only some to-become parts have this potential. This is a constraint that can ground further tests for a theory; it opens more ways for falsification in principle.

Motion

There is one important notion more to discuss. What is causality about, what can be understood knowing the causes? Causality is about becoming, about change, about what Aristotle called motion:

[…] all causes are beginnings. […] (Aristotle, 1941a, p. 752, 1013a)

The same idea expressed in another way: To understand nature is to understand motion:

Now the existence of motion is asserted by all who have anything to say about nature, because they all concern themselves with the construction of the world and study the question of becoming and perishing, which processes could not come about without the existence of motion. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 355, 250b)

To say anything about nature means to say about the process of becoming and perishing. For Aristotle, “motion” meant basically any kind of change, not only change in spatial position:

And since there are three kinds of motion, local, qualitative, and quantitative, there must also be three kinds of movent, that which causes locomotion, that which causes alteration, and that which causes increase or decrease. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 342, 243a)

It is possible to be more specific: change can have two forms of becoming (generation and destruction), two forms of quantitative change (increase and diminution), one more kind of qualitative change in addition to becoming (alteration), and locomotion:

There are six sorts of movement: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, and change of place. (Aristotle, 1941d, p. 36, 15a)

Important idea related to it is that motion is constrained; not everything can become but only what exists potentially:

The fulfilment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially, is motion—namely, of what is alterable qua alterable, alteration: of what can be increased and its opposite what can be decreased (there is no common name), increase and decrease: of what can come to be and pass away, coming to be and passing away: of what can be carried along, locomotion. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 254, 201a)

Next important point in his treatment of motion—about which all causes are—is that Aristotle was clearly materialist when discussing this issue:

Generally things which come to be, come to be in different ways: (1) by change of shape, as a statue; (2) by addition, as things which grow; (3) by taking away, as the Hermes from the stone; (4) by putting together, as a house; (5) by alteration, as things which ‘turn’ in respect of their material substance.

It is plain that these are all cases of coming to be from a substratum.

Thus, clearly, from what has been said, whatever comes to be is always complex. (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 231, 190b)

This materialist position leads further; it relates all events not only to time but also to space: motion, change, is possible only through real contact:

For to act on the movable as such is just to move it. But this it does by contact, so that at the same time it is also acted on. Hence we can define motion as the fulfilment of the movable qua movable, the cause of the attribute being contact with what can move, so that the mover is also acted on. (Aristotle, 1941e, ps. 255, 202a)

To be thoroughly materialist, I think, the idea that any kind of change always implies some real physical contact is absolutely essential. Here is one very powerful source for falsifiability in principle of all theories of psychology: It must be possible to define what is in contact with what in the becoming and alteration of mind. Again, this position is not that of a reductionist. This position is another way to suggest the same I did in the foregoing discussion: all changes are continuous in a certain perspective only. This continuity can be traced from psychology to biology and from there to physics. Yet, qualitative changes of mind are never totally reducible to biology or physics; this is exactly what qualitative means. As a materialist, a scientist must be able to reach the point where not only qualitative change but also material continuity is explicated. Otherwise theory misses one extremely important area of possible falsifications: everything that is declared to happen in mind must be physically and biologically possible. This is very strong constraint which importance, I believe, is not fully understood yet. Those, in turn, who try to “explain” mental characteristics by biological or even physical processes alone—the reductionists—miss completely the other side of the same idea: psychological whole, the mind, or soul, if you like, is a whole with qualities that do not characterize its parts. Reductionist explanation, therefore, is also impossible.

To complete the discussion of the Aristotelian notion of causality, I add one final note. There seems to be a pervasive and unsolvable controversy between two approaches in psychology today. There are those who suggest that everything is a process and therefore they study only processes. And there are those who aim at describing stable units that do not change, structure. This controversy should be a curiosity instead of being pervasive because the solution to this opposition can already be found in Aristotle’s works. Motion and Thing, Process and Structure, are in dialectical relationships; they can be understood as different moments (in Hegelian sense, as aspect of unity) of the one and the same matter:

Now since wherever there is a movent, its motion always acts upon something, is always in something, and always extends to something (by ‘is always in something’ I mean that it occupies a time: and by ‘extends to something’ I mean that it involves the traversing of a certain amount of distance: for at any moment when a thing is causing motion, it also has caused motion, so that there must always be a certain amount of distance that has been traversed and a certain amount of time that has been occupied). (Aristotle, 1941e, p. 353, 249b)

First we see here, again, that motion, any kind of change, is about something that changes, about material cause. Next, this something changes in time; in time there is continuity in matter and yet becoming, discontinuity in form. New form is becoming in time, it is born in the process, in the motion. So the new whole, the new structure is basically a process that became stable in time. In this sense the world is always a process, becoming and yet structure, actuality at the same time. Process and structure, Motion and Thing, are moments of the same material unity.

Recapitulation: Aristotelian Causality

Modern philosophy of causation practically ignores Aristotle’s theory of causality. Analysis of his theory, however, reveals that his views fit very well to modern scientific world-view. First, by his distinction of four complementary kinds of causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. Even the final cause that for some reasons troubles modern philosophers does in Aristotelian account fit fully into the modern understanding of the world. Next, Aristotle’s causality defines the most important that is there to understand for any science: it is change, becoming, process—the terms he called all together “motion.” And finally, Aristotelian account of theory of causality is, in all important respects, at the same time a theory of understanding and explanation: understanding is explanation of the studied phenomenon through description of its causes.

References

1. Aristotle. (1941a). Metaphysics (Metaphysica). In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 681–926). New York, NY: Random House.

2. Aristotle. (1941b). On generation and corruption (De generatione et corruptione). In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 467–531). New York, NY: Random House.

3. Aristotle. (1941c). On the parts of animals. (De partibus animalium.). In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 641–661). New York, NY: Random House.

4. Aristotle. (1941d). Organon. In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 7–212). New York, NY: Random House.

5. Aristotle. (1941e). Physics (Physica). In R. McKeon (Ed.), The basic works of Aristotle (pp. 213–394). New York, NY: Random House.

6. Campbell, J. K., O’Rourke, M., & Silverstein, H. (Eds.). (2007). Causation and explanation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

7. Chambers, E. (1728a). Cyclopedia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences: Containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify’d thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: The figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial: The rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: With the several systems, sects, opinions, &c: Among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, & c: The whole intended as a course of ancient and modern learning. In two volumes. Volume the first. Retrieved from http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/HistSciTech/subcollections/CyclopaediaAbout.html

8. Chambers, E. (1728b). Cyclopedia, or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences: Containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify’d thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine: The figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial: The rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial: With the several systems, sects, opinions, & c: Among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, & c: The whole intended as a course of antient and modern learning. In two volumes. Volume the Second. Retrieved from http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/HistSciTech/subcollections/CyclopaediaAbout.html

9. Russo, F., & Williamson, J. (Eds.). (2007). Causality and probability in the sciences. London: College Publications.

10. Salmon, W. C. (1989). Four decades of scientific explanation. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

11. Salmon, W. C. (1998). Causality and explanation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Crossref

12. Sosa, E., & Tooley, M. (1993a). Introduction. In E. Sosa & M. Tooley (Eds.), Causation (pp. 1–32). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13. Sosa, E., & Tooley, M. (Eds.). (1993b). Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14. von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory. Foundations, development, applications. New York, NY: George Braziller.

15. Woodward, J. (2003). Making things happen. A theory of causal explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_5

5. Causality, Understanding, and Explanation: Fundamentally Limited Views

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Cartesian causalityHumean causality

Aristotle “ruled” the European thought about causality for 2000 years. Since about 350 years ago, however, the views changed. Suddenly Aristotle’s theory became rejected. It is noteworthy that the new theories, new philosophies, were not more complex or elaborated. On the contrary, philosophers began to suggest that only one cause is knowable, that of efficient cause. Everything else was thrown away. Every theory is a whole. To throw away a part means that the remaining part(s) will not be the same. It is also the case with Aristotelian causality. Efficient causality changed into something incompatible with Aristotelian account of it. Therefore there are two questions to answer now: what kind of causality was proposed instead of Aristotle’s? and Why Aristotle’s theory was rejected?

Descartes

Descartes’ Assumptions

Descartes did not share Assumptions with Aristotle; basically he doubted everything (with the exception of “I exist”), including the existence of the external world. This last doubt he resolved in positive way by saying that external world exists, but he did not Assume it, he had Faith about it—it was God who cannot be deceiver in principle, who gave this assurance about the reality of the external world. For him the world was not knowable, especially beyond senses; and he definitely was not materialist. Knowing that, I suggest, one may expect a very different approach to causality.

Descartes’ Causality

Indeed, Cartesian causality is fundamentally different from the Aristotelian. First of all, he accepts only efficient causes and second, these efficient causes are very different from those of Aristotelian:

I call ‘absolute’ whatever has within it the pure and simple nature in question; that is, whatever is viewed as being independent, a cause, simple, universal, single, equal, similar, straight, and other qualities of that sort. […] The ‘relative’, on the other hand, is what shares the same nature, or at least something of the same nature, in virtue of which we can relate it to the absolute and deduce it from the absolute in a definite series of steps. The concept of the ‘relative’ involves other terms besides, which I call ‘relations’: these include whatever is said to be dependent, an effect, composite, particular, many, unequal, dissimilar, oblique, etc. […] (Descartes, 1985e, p. 21)

So, cause is independent, simple, universal, single, equal, similar, straight, etc. Effect, in turn, is relative, dependent, composite, particular, many, unequal, dissimilar, oblique, etc. This description also explains how the causes and effects are related: effects can be deduced from causes in a series of steps. The cause–effect relationship, therefore, is linear, and no reciprocity is possible here.

Next, Cartesian understanding of change is very different from that of Aristotelian. Aristotelian idea of becoming, qualitative change, does not fit at all into Cartesian world-view:

Again, when people say that motion, something perfectly familiar to everyone, is ‘the actuality of a potential being, in so far as it is potential’, [AT: This is a quote from Aristotle, discussed also above] do they not give the impression of uttering magic words which have a hidden meaning beyond the grasp of the human mind? For who can understand these expressions? Who does not know what motion is? (Descartes, 1985e, p. 49)

For Descartes it was impossible to understand Aristotelian motion as becoming. The reason was this:

For it is very evident by the natural light not only that nothing comes from nothing but also that what is more perfect cannot be produced by—that is, cannot have as its efficient and total cause—what is less perfect. (Descartes, 1985d, p. 199)

Similar idea, that, it seems from Descartes’ words, is not at all magic but comes by the natural light (which looks profoundly magic to me), we can find in another work:

Now it is manifest by the natural light that there must be at least as much <reality> in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause. For where, I ask, could the effect get its reality from, if not from the cause? And how could the cause give it to the effect unless it possessed it? It follows from this both that something cannot arise from nothing, and also that what is more perfect—that is, contains in itself more reality—cannot arise from what is less perfect. (Descartes, 1985b, p. 28)

Indeed, Aristotle’s position was that novel complex things become into being in the process of synthesis; the more complex is also more perfect. For Descartes it was the opposite: everything more perfect exists as a cause before less perfect, as an effect. And perfection is simple, not composite. So, Cartesian thinking is fully reductionist: everything later, more complex, can only be explained by something earlier and less complex. Perhaps it is noteworthy that this is exactly what reductionists of today are trying to achieve: to explain something more complex with something less complex. This kind of explanation, however, cannot logically stop with physics as reductionists of today believe. Physics itself should be explained with something simpler, something that was before it as a cause. Reductionist thinking logically leads to the First Cause. The First Cause is defined as follows:

First Cause, is that which acts of it self, and from its own proper Force, or Virtue; in which Sense, God is the only First Cause. See God. (Chambers, 1728)

The entry God, however, leaves us no hope to understand anything:

GOD.—No just Definition can be given of the Thing signified by this Name, as being infinite, and incomprehensible. (Chambers, 1728)

So, reductionism leads inevitably to refusing to explain, to recognition that explanation is not possible. (That is also why theories of Physics or Biology cannot explain psyche; psyche needs its own theory, psychology.)

Why Only Efficient Causality?

In Aristotelian philosophy, efficient causes are constrained by themselves and by other kinds of causes. Descartes, in order to be consistent, had to choose only unconstrained version of efficient causality. Everything had to be in principle possible for him. There was no logical way to believe in other causes because he believed in the First Cause, in the lord. And God, according to him, is:

[…] infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent […] all the perfections which I could observe to be in the lord. (Descartes, 1985a, p. 128)

The God cannot become into being, cannot develop, emerge; everything already exists in the First Cause:

For when we reflect on the idea of God which we were born with, we see that he is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, the source of all goodness, and truth, the creator of all things, and finally, that he possesses within him everything in which we can clearly recognize some perfection that is infinite or unlimited by any imperfection. (Descartes, 1985d, p. 200)

Everything depends on God’s power:

But if there were any bodies in the world, or any intelligences or other natures that were not wholly perfect, their being must depend on God’s power in such a manner that they could not subsist for a single moment without him. (Descartes, 1985a, p. 129)

There are two reasons why Descartes could not consistently assume more kinds of causes and, at the same time, to believe in omnipotent God. One is already mentioned, God has no constraints. Therefore any kind of constraining causes (all four kinds of causes were constraints for Aristotle!) is not logically possible. The other reason was that humans, as imperfect beings, as effects of God, cannot know other causes in principle:

It is not the final but the efficient causes of created things that we must inquire into. When dealing with natural things we will, then, never derive any explanations from the purposes which God or nature may have had in view when creating them <and we shall entirely banish from our philosophy the search for final causes>. For we should not be so arrogant as to suppose that we can share in the lord’s plans. We should, instead, consider him as the efficient cause of all things, and starting from the divine attributes which by the heavens’s will we have some knowledge of, we shall see, with the aid of our God-given natural light, what conclusions should be drawn concerning those effects which are apparent to our senses. (Descartes, 1985d, p. 202)

Another important idea was formulated here too: If we can have some understanding of the external world at all, we can look for the understanding only by studying effects which are apparent to our senses! Therefore efficient causality Descartes is describing is accessible only at the level of appearances. Final causes, for instance, are beyond our power to understand:

[…] the nature of God is immense, incomprehensible and infinite, I also know without more ado that he is capable of countless things whose causes are beyond my knowledge. And for this reason alone I consider the customary search for final causes to be totally useless in physics; there is considerable rashness in thinking myself capable of investigating the <impenetrable> purposes of God. (Descartes, 1985b, p. 39)

So, there are only efficient causes, at the level of appearances alone, accessible to the humans. We cannot understand the final cause because it is God’s cause that we in our imperfection are not able to know. Also, formal cause cannot be understood by humans because they are related to the essence of God and, eventually, are the same:

Similarly, in every passage where I made a comparison between the formal cause (or reason derived from God’s essence, in virtue of which he needs no cause in order to exist or to be preserved) and the efficient cause (without which finite things cannot exist), I always took care to make it explicitly clear that the two kinds of cause are different. […] Those who follow the sole guidance of the natural light will in this context spontaneously form a concept of cause that is common to both an efficient and formal cause: that is to say, what derives its existence ‘from another’ will be taken to derive its existence from that thing as an efficient cause, while what derives its existence from ‘from itself’ will be taken to derive its existence from itself as a formal cause—that is, because it has the kind of essence which entails that it does not require an efficient cause. (Descartes, 1985c, pp. 165–167)

Finally, the idea of the omnipotent God as First Cause makes also impossible to accept the idea of material causes:

You say that the axiom ‘There is nothing in the effect which did not previously exist in the cause’ should be taken to refer to material rather than efficient causes; but it is unintelligible that perfection of form should ever pre-exist in a material cause; it can do so only in an efficient cause. (Descartes, 1985c, p. 252)

Taken together, Cartesian causality—which looks only for efficient causes because other kinds of causes would not be consistent with the idea of the omnipotent God—does not grant humans any knowledge beyond what God has wished to be possible to us. And this knowledge can only be about appearances, about more perfect causes that lead to less perfect effects. So, humans are constrained by their imperfect ability to understand. It is not that world does not have material, formal, or final causes. It may be characterized by all of them in principle. But for us, humans, there is no way to understand them because all true understanding is possible only for God, who is perfect.

Consequences of Cartesian Views for Science

Important consequences follow if Cartesian causality would be taken as a ground for a science. The causes all together, but especially formal cause, are about organization. If to assume that organization is not knowable in principle that there can always be some power which is able to change all laws, then scientific inquiry becomes into a dead end and denies itself. Popper put it in this way:

For it is an important postulate of scientific method that we should search for laws with an unlimited realm of validity. If we were to admit laws that are themselves subject to change, change could never be explained by laws. It would be the admission that change is simply miraculous. (Popper, 2002, p. 95)

This passage shows two things. First, science must assume that there are certain universal constraints in nature, such as laws. To understand nature, we need to know these laws. If, however, we reject the idea that nature is organized, that its laws do not change, all our theories become powerless, there is no way to test them, there is no possibility for falsification in principle. Descartes assumed that the world is not changing only in so far as God keeps it going in the same way. But the nature can change; it all depends only on God’s will. Therefore no testable theory can be constructed.

Second, and as important as the first point is, that by accepting the possible change in Laws of Nature, change becomes unexplainable in principle, it becomes a miracle. We can observe and recognize changes, but there is no way to understand why and how they took place. Descartes’ inability to understand what Aristotle meant by “motion” and his inability to incorporate theory of becoming and development into his philosophy are consistent with his limited Assumptions. It also follows—I think a fact of fundamental importance for any science—that science that constrains itself to study of efficient causalities (which are inferred from appearances) is a clear sign that this kind of science can provide neither understanding nor explanation. And it does not matter whether God or some other supernatural power is assumed to be able to change all laws of nature at will; if we admit that we cannot know laws in principle, if we constrain our inquiry only to efficient causes, explanation becomes impossible. This is because cause–effect science would have no constraints in its theories. Popper would completely agree with this diagnosis; he continued the passage provided above in this way:

And it would be the end of scientific progress; for if unexpected observations were made, there would be no need to revise our theories: the ad hoc hypothesis that the laws have changed would ‘explain’ everything. (ibid.)

Here we can come to deeper understanding of the fact, observed by Kuhn, that paradigms are hard to change; extremely relevant observations and facts that unambiguously—in the hindsight only, of course—prove that the theories of the paradigm are flawed are often just ignored in the paradigmatic science! This ignoring, I suggest, stems from the Assumptions that underlie any paradigm, the Assumption that, as it was discussed in the previous Chapter, the world is not knowable, at least not beyond senses and, therefore, beyond efficient causes. So, from inside the paradigm such incompatible with the paradigm observations are not a problem at all because they can be “explained” by some change of laws which are not the same in changed conditions, such as, for instance, conducting a study with a modified methods. Then we can blame the methods and not our theories. In other words, paradigms are fundamentally blind about their weaknesses because, I suggest, paradigmatic science has not explicated the fundamental Assumptions it is relying on. Only possibility for conscious self-criticism at all levels of scientific thinking, beginning from the most fundamental Assumptions, opens science to acceptance of theories of a different kind without destroying its own foundation. It is the essence of metaparadigmatic science, science, which is free to progress, even to admit its own mistakes without destroying itself as inevitably must happen to a paradigm in conflict with observations.

We see next that Humean doubt that also restricts causality to efficient causes only originates from the same source—human hopeless stupidity.

Hume

Hume’s Assumptions

Hume assumed that there is an external organized world, which is knowable only in the limits of appearance; there is no knowledge possible beyond senses therefore. And even though Hume in some remarks seemed to be inclined toward materialist world-view, he actually rejected the question about supernatural as not answerable. So, Hume shared with Descartes the view that world is not knowable beyond appearances in principle. He, however, did not express strong belief in supernatural powers. Therefore it can be expected—if Assumptions really underlie understanding of causality and if the taken Assumptions are consistently applied in thinking—that Hume’s views on causality are similar to Cartesian because they shared the Assumption that world is not knowable beyond senses. However, there must also be differences because Hume, even without assuming materialist view he also did not assume supernatural powers. So the reasons why Hume’s view on causality, if it is similar to Cartesian, cannot be the same. This is exactly what we are going to find.

Hume’s Causality

Hume defined causality in two complementary ways, admitting, at the same time, that the definition is not about the essence of cause but rather superficial. On the one hand, so, causality is applied to the events in the external world:

Yet so imperfect are the ideas which we form concerning it, that it is impossible to give any just definition of cause, except what is drawn from something extraneous and foreign to it. Similar objects are always conjoined with similar. Of this we have experience. Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or in other words, where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed. (Hume, 2000, pp. 145–146)

So, cause is an object which is followed by another object. Cause, therefore, makes other objects possible. Another definition of cause is essentially the same with the difference that it applies not to the external world but to the mind that reflects on causes:

The appearance of a cause always conveys the mind, by a customary transition, to the idea of the effect. Of this also we have experience. We may, therefore, suitably to this experience, form another definition of cause; and call it an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other. (Hume, 1999, p. 146, see also Hume, 2000, p. 114, for similar definitions)

These two definitions together show in which way external world is knowable: by knowing a sequence of things that appeared to the senses. Hume’s causes are only efficient causes. There are many similarities between Humean and Cartesian understanding of efficient causes. First, the relationship between causes and effects is contiguous and linear; cause must be before the effect:

We may therefore consider the relation of CONTIGUITY as essential to that of causation […] The second relations I shall observe as essential to causes and effects, is not so universally acknowledg’d, but is liable to some controversy. ‘Tis that of PRIORITY of time in the cause before the effect. Some pretend that ‘tis not absolutely necessary a cause shou’d precede its effect; but that any object or action, in the very first moment of its existence, may exert its productive quality, and give rise to another object or action, perfectly co-temporary with itself. […] The consequence of this wou’d be no less than the destruction of that succession of causes, which we observe in the world; and indeed, the utter annihilation of time. (Hume, 2000, p. 54)

Next, we find that causes, relative to effects, are simple:

Besides, we find in the course of nature, that tho’ the effects be many, the principles, from which they arise, are commonly but few and simple, and that ‘tis the sign of an unskilful naturalist to have recourse to a different quality, in order to explain every different operation. (Hume, 2000, p. 185)

Two ideas are actually expressed here. One idea is that causes are simple and effects are complex. And second is essentially reductionist: explanation means to reduce to—simple!—causes. So, again, efficient causality leads to reductionism with or without supernatural powers assumed.

Third, as Cartesian causality, Humean also puts no constraints on causes:

When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other. (Hume, 1999, p. 136)

and

[…] ‘tis possible for all objects to become causes or effects to each other […] (Hume, 2000, p. 116)

It can be concluded that theories that look solely for efficient causes are irrefutable in principle. This makes scientific studies actually unnecessary: whatever happens fits with the existent theories. (Here it is useful to remind that this idea, as was provided above, was also supported by Engels&Marx.) The only “study” that would make sense in this ground is to discover some novel cause–effect relationships not observed yet. Even more, the essence of cause–effect science becomes fully revealed by this fact. What follows inevitably from cause–effect thinking was also shown by Hume:

‘Tis evident, that all reasonings from causes or effects terminate in conclusions, concerning matter of fact; that is, concerning the existence of objects or of their qualities. (Hume, 2000, p. 65)

If the only thing about a discovered cause–effect relationship is about existence of it, then science that aims at establishing such relationships ends with giving a name to what was discovered. “Explanation” of some thing or phenomenon becomes just a statement—there was a certain “cause” that made this “effect” to appear. And the effect is “explained” by naming that cause.

Hume, as Descartes, also suggested that even if there are other kinds of causes, only the efficient cause can be known:

Having thus discover’d or suppos’d the two relations of contiguity and succession to be essential to causes and effects, I find I am stopt short, and can proceed no farther in considering any single instance of cause and effect. (Hume, 2000, p. 54)

The material causes may exist, but they are not knowable:

It is true, when any cause fails of producing its usual effect, philosophers ascribe not this to any irregularity in nature; but suppose, that some secret causes, in the particular structure of parts, have prevented the operation. Our reasonings, however, and conclusions concerning the event are the same as if this principle has no place. (Hume, 1999, p. 132)

In fact, all other kinds of causes are not knowable:

First, We may learn from the foregoing doctrine, that all causes are of the same kind, and that in particular there is no foundation for that distinction, which we sometimes make betwixt efficient causes, and causes sine qua non; or betwixt efficient causes, and formal, and material, and exemplary, and final causes. For as our idea of efficiency is deriv’d from the constant conjunction of two objects, wherever this is observ’d, the cause is efficient; and where it is not, there can never be a cause of any kind. (Hume, 2000, p. 115)

We also find some disagreement between Cartesian and Humean accounts of efficient causes. Hume gave eight general rules by which to decide whether cause–effect relationship is observed (Hume, 2000, pp. 116–117). These are already discussed above or do not add anything substantial to the current discussion with the exception of the last:

The eighth and last rule I shall take notice of is, that an object, which exists for any time in its full perfection without any effect, is not the sole cause of that effect, but requires to be assisted by some other principle, which may forward its influence and operation. For as like effects necessarily follow from like causes, and in a contiguous time and place, their separation for a moment shows, that these causes are not compleat ones. (Hume, 2000, p. 117)

This rule is in contradiction with the idea of the First Cause: God is eternal; it exists all the time in its full perfection. But new effects emerge constantly in our world. Therefore, following Hume, it can be concluded that God is not the Sole and First Cause because it needs some other causes to act together in order to have effects.

If Efficient Causality Theory Would Ground Scientific Methodology

Hume gives several interesting aspects of the efficient causality that link his world-view to modern mainstream quantitative psychology. He suggested that knowing efficient causes is related to probability:

If we be, therefore, engaged by arguments to put trust in past experience, and make it the standard of our future judgment, these arguments must be probable only (Hume, 1999, p. 115)

There are different reasons to that, and all of them are related to our inability to know other causes but efficient. Summarizing his discussion on probability, Hume said:

‘Tis by habit we make the transition from cause to effect; and ‘tis from some present impression we borrow that vivacity, which we diffuse over the correlative idea. But when we have not observ’d a sufficient number of instances, to produce a strong habit; or when these instances are contrary to each other; or when the resemblance is not exact; or the present impression is faint and obscure; or the experience in some measure obliterated from the memory; or the connexion dependent on a long chain of objects; or the inference deriv’d from general rules, and yet not conformable to them: In all these cases the evidence diminishes by the diminution of the force and intenseness of the idea. This therefore is the nature of the judgment and probability. (Hume, 2000, p. 105)

One important point here is that all the talk goes around how strong is the belief in the causes; it is only about “force,” about “intenseness” of the idea of cause–effect relationships. So the difference between knowledge of different cause–effect relationships is essentially only quantitative. Another point, even more clearly expressed in the next passage, says that more observations are better than less observations:

[…] when we transfer the past to the future, in order to determine the effect, which will result from any cause, we transfer all the different events, in the same proportion as they have appeared in the past, and conceive one to have existed a hundred times, for instance, another ten times, and another once. As a great number of views do here concur in one event, they fortify and confirm it to the imagination, beget that sentiment which we call belief, and give its object the preference above the contrary event, which is not supported by an equal number of experiments, and recurs not so frequently to the thought in transferring the past to the future. (Hume, 1999, pp. 132–133)

So, here is also the idea with which Popper fundamentally disagreed: theories can be confirmed by a big number of observations. So, in fact, we have now one more reason to understand why the idea of falsification, which seemed to be simple and obvious to Popper, turned out to be not obvious at all; and why it still is not obvious: Paradigmatic efficient causality science cannot accept the idea of falsification in principle because there is nothing to falsify! What could be falsified is unknowable and is simply not part of theories. So, theories of paradigmatic science do not contain falsifiables and therefore the only thing what can be done there in order to pretend to be a science is to look for confirmation through making more and more similar observations instead of looking for dissimilar observations that could falsify the theory. And looking for confirmation means looking for stronger correlations, for higher probability.

There is one important point more that relates Humean thinking to modern mainstream quantitative psychology:

It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical tendency, which may be infallible in its operations, may discover itself at the first appearance of life and thought, and may be independent of all the laboured deductions of the understanding. (Hume, 1999, p. 130)

So, human mind can be understood as mechanical tendency. If so, then it should be possible to create a machine that can “discover” cause–effect relationships. This machine has been created now and is used as “independent of all the laboured deductions of the understanding”; This machine is called statistical data analysis.

Why Only Efficient Causality?

So, in important respects Cartesian and Humean accounts overlap. But it must be for different reasons because Hume was clear: God is unknowable and therefore the idea of a God, of supreme power should not be taken into account in philosophy:

Though the chain of arguments, which conduct to it [to theory of the universal energy and operation of the Supreme Being], were ever so logical, there must arise a strong suspicion, if not an absolute assurance, that it has carried us quite beyond the reach of our faculties, when it leads to conclusions so extraordinary, and so remote from common life and experience. We are got into a fairy land, long ere we have reached the last steps of our theory […] (Hume, 1999, p. 142)

To pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole; the question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible […] (Hume, 2000, p. 163)

Next important idea is that knowledge of causes is based on experiences:

I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits no exception, that the knowledge of this relation [of cause and effect] is not, in any instance, attained by reasoning a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find, that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. (Hume, 1999, p. 109)

Here lies the reason why Hume constrains understanding to efficient causes alone: our mind, our ability to think and make conclusions is limited; the ways we think are too primitive and hopelessly constrained to appearances. So, the reason why knowledge can be only about appearances is related to Hume’s psychology; the world beyond appearances is not knowable:

It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals from us those powers and principles, on which the influence of these objects entirely depends. […] there is no known connexion between the sensible qualities and the secret powers. (Hume, 1999, pp. 113–114)

Furthermore, Hume assumes that what we may think to be Laws of Nature can actually change; our beliefs about “secret powers” are fallible:

All reasoning may be divided into two kinds, namely, demonstrative reasoning, or that concerning relations of ideas, and moral reasoning, or that concerning matter of fact and existence. That there are no demonstrative arguments in the case, seems evident; since it implies no contradiction that the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. (Hume, 1999, p. 115)

If there be any suspicion, that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. (Hume, 1999, p. 117)

Theories which assume that laws can change become irrefutable because the hypothesis that the laws have changed would “explain” everything.

What kind of mind, what abilities to think Hume attributed to the mind? It turns out that for Hume it was not possible to know how mind or soul actually operates:

To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. (Hume, 2000, p. 120)

Yet he suggests that something can be known about mind. First, there is no basic difference between animal and human mind:

[…] beasts are endow’d with thought and reason as well as men. […] ‘Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry’d one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv’d, must also be resembling. (Hume, 2000, p. 118)

This mind works on the principles of association alone:

[…] principles of association […] To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. […] But the most usual species of connexion among the different events, which enter into any narrative composition, is that of cause and effect (Hume, 1999, pp. 101–103).

As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing wou’d be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. […] The qualities, from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner convey’d from one idea to another, are three, viz. RESEMBLANCE, CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT. (Hume, 2000, pp. 12–13)

So, the only operation available for mind is to form associations between observed events as they appear to us. If this would be the case, then Humean doubt in the possibility to have knowledge beyond senses, his proposition that only efficient causes as they appear to us can be known, would be impeccable.

Humean psychology was acceptable in his time, but not any more for a long time. The inability of associationism to be sufficient for explaining the human mind was established and grounded with convincing empirical observations a century ago. Not only humans but even apes were demonstrated to be able to think in a way that is not based on associations alone (Köhler, 1925, see also Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1959; Vygotsky, 1982). The idea that animal mind is based on reflexes and conditioned reflexes discovered by Pavlov (1927, 1951) was actually rejected by scholars from his own laboratory (Anokhin, 1975; Konstantinov, Lomov, & Shvyrkov, 1978). Even contemporary quantitative psychology itself rejects this idea, and yet it behaves, with its methods and methodology in its quest for knowledge, as if only associations can be known. Also, modern philosophers who think that Hume was essentially right ground their ideas on psychology which is absolutely out of date.

Recapitulation: Primitivization of Views on Causality. Descartes and Hume

In this chapter Descartes’ and Hume’s views on causality were discussed. Both of them proposed that only efficient causes can be known. By throwing away other kinds of causes, both philosophers created a theory that is not scientific—efficient causality taken alone has no constraints and therefore any theory about this causality is not falsifiable in principle. Most important for us, however, was the question, why did Descartes and Hume reject other kinds of causes as unknowable? Both, even though on different grounds, assumed that human mind is fundamentally limited, and it is not possible for it to know other causes. If it would have been true, neither modern physics nor modern biology would exist because these sciences both have gone beyond efficient causes. There is enough evidence to suggest that Descartes and Hume were wrong; human mind is capable for more than they assumed. Therefore we can reject their theories of causality.

References

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14. Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Lekcii o rabote bol’shikh polusharii golovnogo mozga. (Lectures on the work of the hemispheres of the brain.). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoje Izdatel’stvo.

15. Pavlov, I. P. (1951). Dvatcatilet’nii opyt ob’jektivnogo izuchenija vyshei nervnoi dejatel’nosti (povedenija zhivotnykh). Moscow: Medgiz.

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17. Vygotsky, L. S. (1982). Problema razvitija v strukturnoi psikhologii. Kriticheskoje issledovanije. (Problem of development in structural psychology. A critical study. Originally published in 1934). In A. R. Luria & M. G. Jaroshevskii (Eds.), L. S. Vygotsky. Sobranije sochinenii. Tom 1. Voprosy teorii i istorii psikhologii (pp. 238–290). Moscow: Pedagogika.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_6

6. Causality, Understanding, and Explanation: Back to the Roots

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Hegel’s causalityMarx & Engels’ causality

My critical position in respect of Cartesian and Humean thinking is a position from our time. In their time, their philosophy was clearly ahead of the time, they determined the future of scientific thought for centuries. I reject (in the limits of my Assumptions, of course) their reasons to suggest that only apparent efficient causes can be known, which also means I reject their theories of causality as limited, as obstacles in the quest for knowledge. Nevertheless, there is one extremely important aspect they brought to philosophy of science and knowledge: it is the question How mind operates? How is knowledge acquired or constructed? It is a general rule in science that excellent answers to meaningless questions are meaningless. It is excellent questions that advance knowledge. And this is the superb service Descartes and Hume made for us; they gave us a question of utmost importance. Three philosophers, Hegel, and Marx, & Engels, took exactly this question into the center of their philosophy.

Hegel

It was Hegel who put the question of becoming in the center of philosophy. And with this idea showed the way forward, out of the constraints the philosophy was suffering, the constraints that left many questions with no answers, many realms of knowledge inaccessible to humans.

Hegel’s Assumptions

Hegel presupposed the organized external world that is knowable through the process of development of Idea; in this process human knowledge can go beyond appearances.

Hegel’s Causality

Aristotle suggested that all four kinds of causes are beginnings; they all are about “motion.” Hegel continued this tradition and put also becoming in the center of his philosophy:

[…] the first Notions of logic, being and nothing, and becoming […] Thoroughness seems to require that the beginning, as the foundation on which everything is built, should be examined before anything else, in fact that we should not go any further until it has been firmly established and if, on the other hand, it is not, we should reject all that follows. (Hegel, 1969, p. 41)

Already doing this, Hegel’s philosophy becomes essentially different from that of Descartes’ and Hume’s—both of them could not incorporate development, becoming, into their philosophies so that these could be explained causally.

For Hegel, the central question was that of the becoming of thought. There are different forms of consciousness that come to be successively, as higher level wholes synthesized from lower level parts. And there his thought is clearly related to material and formal causes:

Here, we are dealing with forms of consciousness each of which in realizing itself at the same time resolves itself, has for its result its own negation—and so passes into a higher form. All that is necessary to achieve scientific progress—and it is essential to strive to gain this quite simple insight—is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative is just as much positive, or that what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity, into abstract nothingness but essentially only into the negation of its particular content, […] and consequently is a specific negation, and therefore the result essentially contains that from which it results; […] It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists. (Hegel, 1969, p. 54, 56)

I think it is justified to suggest that what Hegel called “opposites,” positive and negative, can be understood as just something A and not-A; elements that can become into unity, whole, in principle. This idea is the most general form of the definition of material cause; “opposites” or A and not-A are distinguishable parts of the whole to become. Formal cause, in turn, is a synthesis, an emergent unity of “opposites,” A and not-A.

So we see that Hegel’s psychology was a step forward compared to that of Descartes and Hume; Hegel proposed that thought develops over a hierarchy of what can be called stages. Therefore it became possible to explain, in the true—Aristotelian—sense of the word, how it is possible to understand the world, even beyond senses, so that the principles of understanding neither are given to us (Descartes) nor are absent and impossible (Hume).

Hegel on Efficient Causes

For Aristotle efficient cause was one that must be complemented with the other three. However, as these four kinds are interrelated, the meaning of the efficient cause is distorted when it is taken alone. This is also what can be observed in Hegel’s philosophy: meaning of the efficient cause is in important respects qualitatively different from that of Descartes and Hume.

First, according to Hegel, cause cannot be independent of effect because cause and effect can be related only in unity:

[…] in the causal relation, cause and effect are inseparable; a cause which had no effect would not be a cause, just as an effect which had no cause would no longer be an effect. This relation yields, therefore, the infinite progress of causes and effects; something is determined as cause, but as finite (and it is finite for the very reason that it is separated from its effect) it, too, has a cause, that is, it is also an effect; hence the same thing that was determined as cause is also determined as effect—the unity of cause and effect (Hegel, 1969, p. 151)

This unity, if defined only in this way, would not yet contradict Cartesian view: every cause can be an effect of a cause preceding it, and therefore every cause can still be independent of the effect that follows from it. In other words, the unity of cause and effect, as defined by Hegel in the quote above, can be interpreted as unity only for thought, but not in the actual relationship between the cause and the effect. Hegel, indeed, also suggested when he continued this discussion that such unity is found in the speculative thought:

[…] there is revealed the specific nature of speculative thought, which consists solely in grasping the opposed moments in their unity. Each moment actually shows that it contains its opposite within itself and that in this opposite it is united with itself; thus the affirmative truth is this immanently active unity […] (Hegel, 1969, p. 152)

Nevertheless, for Hegel unity of cause and effect goes beyond speculative thought:

Through its properties the thing becomes cause, and cause is this, that it preserves itself as effect. (Hegel, 1969, p. 488)

Cause does not “go away” after producing the effect, as would be assumed when cause would be defined as independent. I think here the principle of continuity is formulated: development is continuous, and causes become moments of the effect. Hegel, as will be discussed below, fully accepted the idea of material causes. Therefore Hegel’s statement can be reformulated without contradiction: Through its properties the thing becomes cause, and as material cause it preserves itself in the effect as part of it.

Now another problem may seem to emerge: if cause is the material cause, then how to conceptualize an efficient cause? Hegel’s discussion of the issues of potentiality and actuality, which is very similar to Aristotelian understanding of these terms, helps to solve this problem:

What is necessary cannot be otherwise; but what is simply possible can; for possibility is the in-itself that is only positedness and therefore essentially otherness. Formal possibility is this identity as transition into a sheer other; but real possibility, because it contains the other moment, actuality, is already itself necessity. Therefore what is really possible can no longer be otherwise; under the particular conditions and circumstances something else cannot follow. (Hegel, 1969, p. 549)

In terms of material causes, or parts, and formal causes, or wholes, this Hegelian idea can be interpreted as showing: To-become parts have only a potential to be parts of certain wholes; there is no necessity that this potential is actually realized. If there are already actual wholes, however, the parts are absolutely necessary. Therefore, parts in actuality and potentially parts are different: the first can be understood as material cause and the second an efficient cause. Efficient cause as a potential may become into a synthesis of a hierarchical whole and preserve itself there as material cause.

Another important point to mention that follows from the given passage is that Hegel’s understanding allows scientific, in principle falsifiable theories because it contains the idea of necessity, which is constraint to possibilities.

For Hegel, to know only efficient causes was insufficient; it would be only formal knowledge that is superficial and contains no understanding yet:

This relation of causality is, in the first instance, merely this relation of cause and effect; as such it is the formal relation of causality. […] [In Formal Causality] Cause is primary in relation to effect. […] Consequently, effect contains nothing whatever that cause does not contain. Conversely, cause contains nothing which is not in its effect. Cause is cause only in so far as it produces an effect, and cause is nothing but this determination, to have an effect, and effect is nothing but this, to have a cause. Cause as such implies its effect, and effect implies cause; in so far as cause has not yet acted, or if it has ceased to act, then it is not cause, and effect in so far as its cause has vanished, is no longer effect but an indifferent actuality. (Hegel, 1969, pp. 558–559)

Hegel claims that efficient causality alone, as formal and superficial, cannot explain biological and psychological worlds:

Further and above all, we must note the inadmissible application of the relation of causality to relations of physico-organic and spiritual life. Here, what is called cause certainly reveals itself as having a different content from the effect; but the reason is that that which acts on a living being is independently determined, changed and transmuted by it, because the living thing does not let the cause come to its effect, that is, it sublates it as a cause. (Hegel, 1969, p. 562)

Efficient causality relates only to mechanisms, to the physical world; Hegel suggested in the discussion of Mechanisms:

This is what constitutes the character of mechanism, namely, that whatever relation obtains between the things combined, this relation is one extraneous to them that does not concern their nature at all, and even if it is accompanied by a semblance of unity it remains nothing more than composition, mixture, aggregation and the like. (Hegel, 1969, p. 711)

To know mixture or aggregation, as follows from other philosophers discussed above, needs only knowledge of associations, covariations where the relationship between what covaries in experience is only quantitative. There is also no interaction, no reciprocal relationships in aggregates.

So far Hegel’s position is in accordance with Cartesian and Humean: only knowledge of appearances is possible and only in the limits of associations formed in mind. But Hegel made a fundamental step further: Mechanism is not the only kind of knowledge that is possible. So, the first kind of knowledge is that of “mechanism”:

The product of formal mechanism is the object in general, an indifferent totality in which determinateness appears as posited. (Hegel, 1969, p. 720)

This description of the mechanism provides another important link to other philosophers: if the product of formal mechanism is only the object in general, then the definition of it is only name! So, again, explanation with mechanical, efficient causes is only a matter of giving names. But there is a next step that Hegel called “Chemism”:

The chemical object is distinguished from the mechanical by the fact that the latter is a totality indifferent to determinateness, whereas in the case of the chemical object the determinateness, and consequently the relation to other and the kind and manner of this relation, belong to its nature. (Hegel, 1969, p. 727)

So, now in addition to objects their relationships become understood. In this way there is already a way to emergence of novel wholes. And there is one further step, to “Teleology”:

Where purposiveness is discerned, an intelligence [Verstand] is assumed as its author, and for the end we therefore demand the Notion’s own free Existence. Teleology is especially contrasted with mechanism, in which the determinateness posited in the object, being external, is essentially one in which no self-determination is manifested. (Hegel, 1969)

Altogether, so, there are steps in the development of consciousness, of thought, from giving names to things to taking also relationships into account and from there to purposiveness, the final cause. In this way Hegel’s psychology went beyond primitive Cartesian and Humean psychology. World and all kinds of causes, therefore, become knowable in principle. Indeed, other causes are clearly distinguished in Hegel’s theory.

Material and Formal Cause

The idea of whole composed of distinguishable parts—i.e., the idea of formal and material causes —had firmly established place in Hegel’s world-view. Whole is a qualitatively novel thing that consists of parts in certain relationships. Even more, it is also possible to recognize the Aristotelian idea that a whole is a unity where parts cannot be separated, they are parts only potentially, but not actually isolated entities :

Considered more closely, the whole is the reflected unity which has an independent subsistence of its own; but this its subsistence is equally repelled from it; the whole is, as negative unity, negative relation-to-self; it is thus alienated from itself; it has its subsistence in its opposite, in the manifold immediacy, the parts. The whole accordingly consists of parts, so that it is not anything without them. […] Thus the parts likewise are the whole relation. […] Further, they have this whole as their moment within themselves; it constitutes their relation, for without a whole there are no parts. […] The whole and the parts therefore condition each other; […] In accordance with the first respect, that of the essential identity of both sides, the whole is equal to the parts and the parts to the whole. There is nothing in the whole which is not in the parts, and nothing in the parts which is not in the whole. […] But further, although the whole is equal to the parts it is not equal to them as parts; the whole is reflected unity, but the parts constitute the determinate moment or the otherness of the unity and are the diverse manifold. (Hegel, 1969, pp. 514–516)

It is worthy to stress once more: science that does not study relationships but only objects in aggregates is fundamentally flawed :

[…] the physicist; who also is well aware that he has before him a variety of sensuous properties and matters—or usually matters alone, (for the properties get transformed into matters also for the physicist)—and that these matters (elements) also stand in relation to one another. But the question is, Of what kind is this relation? Every peculiarity and the whole difference of natural things, inorganic and living, depend solely on the different modes of this unity. But instead of ascertaining these different modes, the ordinary physicist (chemist included) takes up one, the most external and the worst, viz.: composition, applies only it in the whole range of natural structures, which he thus renders for ever inexplicable. (Hegel, 2008, pp. 193–194)

Final Cause

Final causes are not simple for Hegel; there are different kinds of them. The first kind is “Subjective end.” This, I think, is closest to that final cause Descartes attributed to supernatural powers. For Hegel it is the most primitive kind of a final causes; this is the purposive end ascribed to intelligence:

The subjective end. […] End therefore is the subjective Notion as an essential effort and urge to posit itself externally. […] When purposiveness is ascribed to an intelligence […] But in general end is to be taken as the rational in its concrete existence. (Hegel, 1969, pp. 740–741)

And there is, next, the end as “Means”:

The first immediate positing in end is at one and the same time the positing of an internality, that is, something determined as posited, and the presupposing of an objective world which is indifferent to the determination of end. But the subjectivity of end is absolute negative unity: its second determining […] This positing is therefore not yet the realized end itself, but only the initial step towards it. The object thus determined is so far only the means.

The end unites itself through a means with objectivity, and in objectivity with itself. The means is the middle term of the syllogism. The end, because it is finite, requires means for its realization—a means, that is a middle term, that at the same time has the shape of an external existence indifferent to the end itself and its realization. (Hegel, 1969, p. 743)

So, now final cause becomes related to other causes, the “Means.” Indeed, material causes are needed in order to realize the end; therefore they are distinguished and yet internally related to the final causes. And finally, there is the “Realized end” where the subjective end, with means in between, becomes realized in objective world:

In his tools man possesses power over external nature […] The teleological process is the translation of the Notion that has a distinct concrete existence in Notion into objectivity; […] In every transition the Notion maintains itself; for example, when cause becomes effect it is only the cause meeting with itself in the effect; but in the teleological transition it is the Notion that as such already has a concrete existence as cause, as the absolute concrete unity that is free in the face of objectivity and its external determinability. (Hegel, 1969, pp. 747–748)

Taken together, it appears that Hegelian teleology is constrained by other causes; it is not totally free, it is free only in the limits of the world, constrained by available means, “in the face of objectivity.” This kind of teleology can be incorporated into all scientific theories because it has constraints, which make all such teleological theories falsifiable in principle.

Figure and Ground, Thing and Context

There is one final point I would like to discuss in respect of Hegelian causality; the point that is fully compatible with Aristotelian account and yet seems to go further. It is not only wholes and hierarchical development what we need to understand. There is one crucial moment more. It is the relationship between Thing and Context. According to Hegel, the things are different depending on the context. It means that understanding is always context-dependent; and—this is important!—for understanding a thing it is always necessary to make it also explicit, in which context the thing is understood in that particular way:

So in general anything can have a variety of grounds; each determination of its content, as self-identical, pervades the whole and can therefore be considered essential; the door is wide open to innumerable aspects, that is, determinations, lying outside the thing itself, on account of the contingency of their mode of connexion. Therefore whether a ground has this or that consequent is equally contingent. […] The two sides of the whole, condition and ground, are therefore one essential unity, equally as content and as form. They spontaneously pass over into one another or, since they are reflections, they posit themselves as sublated, relate themselves to this their negation and reciprocally presuppose one another. (Hegel, 1969, p. 466, 473)

This idea is a profound step further from a superficial claim that everything is related to everything. In some sense it might be true, but it does not help understanding a bit further, unless the ground is made explicit. It is not just that things are related. This determination would be external and superficial. It is also necessary to know what kind of relationship is there in each and every particular case. So, to know, to explain, to understand, requires in addition to other things also explicit statement of context in which a thing is understood in a certain way.

Marx and Engels

Marxist Assumptions

Marxism is fundamentally a materialist world-view, therefore the existence of external organized knowable—also beyond appearances—external world is assumed. So, the full circle has been made in the history of thought: Aristotelian way of looking at Assumptions was born again. The theory of causality, according to my hypothesis, should be similar in Marxism and Aristotelian account.

Marxist Causality

First it is necessary to mention that Marxist understanding is based on Hegelian thought, Marxism accepts Hegelian dialectics—and therefore his account of causality—with one final exception: Marxism is materialist world-view. In its foundation, Marxism can be understood as materialist Hegelianism:

Here too the separation from Hegelian philosophy was the result of a return to the materialist standpoint. […] Hegel was not simply put aside. On the contrary, one started out from his revolutionary side, described above, from the dialectical method. […] We comprehended the ideas in our heads materialistically again—as reflections [Abbilder] of real things instead of regarding the real things as reflections of this or that stage of the absolute idea. Thus dialectics was reduced to the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought (Engels, 1996, pp. 39–40)

So, what were Laws of Thought for Hegel became Laws of Nature for Marxism:

In this way the dialectic of ideas itself became merely the conscious reflex of the dialectical movement of the real world and thus Hegel’s dialectics was put on its head, or rather, from its head, on which it was standing, it was put on its feet. (Engels, 1996, p. 41)

Marxist causality, therefore, is fundamentally about “motion,” becoming, process:

The great basic thought that the world is to be comprehended not as a complex of ready-made things but as a complex of processes, in which apparently stable things no less than the concepts, their mental reflections in our heads, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, through all the seeming contingency and in spite of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development finally asserts itself (Engels, 1996, p. 41)

The motion was not restricted to change of location in space alone; motion was in Marxism understood as a change of any kind, as it was for Aristotle. Also, other ideas resurface again: the ideas of continuity as essentially related to qualitative change; the idea that reductionism is unacceptable as explanation; the idea that more complex forms of organization of matter, especially thought, cannot be explained in terms of mechanical motion alone:

Among natural scientists motion is always as a matter of course taken to mean mechanical motion, change of place. This has been handed down from the pre-chemical eighteenth century and makes a clear conception of the process much more difficult. Motion, as applied to matter, is change in general. From the same misunderstanding is derived also the craze to reduce everything to mechanical motion […] which obliterates the specific character of the other forms of motion. This is not to say that each of the higher forms of motion is not always necessarily connected with some real mechanical (external or molecular) motion, […] But the presence of these subsidiary forms does not exhaust the essence of the main form in each case. One day we shall certainly “reduce” thought experimentally to molecular and chemical motion in the brain; but does that exhaust the essence of thought? (Engels, 1987, p. 527)

Basic ideas of Aristotelian-Hegelian dialectical causality were accepted by Marxism:

The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies […] In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. (Engels, 1987, p. 363)

Engels suggested that science became already this type in nineteenth century:

In fact, while natural science up to the end of the last century was predominantly a collecting science, a science of completed things, in our century it is essentially an organizing science, a science of the processes, of the origin and development of these things and of the interconnections which bind all these natural processes into one great whole. (Engels, 1996, pp. 42–43)

Here it turns out that he was not completely right. Biology, indeed, was put on this ground, especially with Darwin’s metaparadigmatic move. Physics together with chemistry followed soon. But modern mainstream psychology, as well as social sciences, is still “collecting sciences.”

Recapitulation: Back to Aristotelian Causality

And so, the circle became full; Aristotelian causality was brought back to philosophy by philosophers who started to ask seriously about the limits of human cognition, and then put the process, the Aristotelian “motion” back into the center of philosophy. This was done mostly by Hegel. The final touch was given by Marx and Engels who put Hegelian philosophy on materialist ground.

On the journey through the history of theories of causality, it also appeared that a theory of causality is in agreement with the fundamental Assumptions a philosopher has taken. Therefore there is further ground to suggest that knowing Assumptions is necessary for consistent scientific thinking.

References

1. Engels, F. (1987). Dialectics of nature. (Originally written in 1873–1882). In N. Rudenko & Y. Vorotnikova (Eds.), Karl Marx, Frederick Engels. Collected works (Vol. 25, pp. 313–590). New York, NY: International Publishers.

2. Engels, F. (1996). Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy. (Originally published in 1888). Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

3. Hegel, G. W. F. (1969). Science of logic. (Originally published in 1831). In H. D. Lewis (Ed.), Hegel’s science of logic. New York, NY: Humanity Books.

4. Hegel, G. W. F. (2008). Encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. Philosophy of mind. (Originally published in 1830). In W. Wallace (Ed.), Georg H. W. Hegel. Philosophy of mind. Translated from the encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. New York, NY: Cosimo Classics.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_7

7. Theory of Causality and Modern Mainstream Psychology

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Mainstream psychologyFallacies

I am not going to discuss the state of modern qualitative psychology. This science, as it was discussed in Chap. 3, is by definition a form of art, where particulars are dealt in terms of universals. Such particulars described in detail by the modern qualitative psychology may support deeper experiencing of the world but do not ground reliable and valid explanation; the latter is the aim of science.

I suggested in the beginning of this book that modern mainstream psychology is in crisis, which means that this science is not yet able to give satisfactory theories about mind. Even more, next I showed that the problems of modern psychology are deep; modern psychology is founded on limited assumptions which makes it a paradigmatic science. In the previous three chapters, it was shown that thinking about causality is related to basic assumptions. If my diagnosis for the modern psychology holds, then modern mainstream psychology must rely on primitive theory of causality. This primitive theory of causality, in turn, is related to many problems that follow from this limited theory. Next I show that it is exactly the case.

Theory of Causality in Modern Mainstream Psychology

So, the first question to answer is, on which theory of causality psychology of today is founded? In the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the modern mainstream psychology, causality is almost[1] exclusively understood in Cartesian-Humean way. I analyzed the content of nine recent randomly chosen textbooks of psychology in English language, which is the dominant language in psychology of today. Most of the textbooks declared that the goal of psychology is to describe, understand, and explain. Understanding and explaining needs description of causality. With no exception causality was understood in one and the same way: causality is only related to cause-and-effect relationships, to the efficient cause (Atkinson, Atkinson, Smith, Bem, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1993; Bernstein, Roy, Srull, & Wickens, 1988; Carlson, Buskist, Martin, Hogg, & Abrams, 1997; Feldman, 1993; Gleitman, Fridlund, & Reisberg, 1999; Grusec, Lockhart, & Walters, 1990; Myers, 1995; Roediger, Capaldi, Paris, Polivy, & Herman, 1996; Smith et al., 2003). Such understanding is not limited to introductory textbooks. The same position can be found in professional-level general theoretical accounts of psychology (e.g., Bem & Looren de Jong, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999).

Paradigmatic science, I suggested, does not take all four assumptions positively; some negative assumptions, especially the assumption that world is not knowable beyond appearances, underlies it. Consequently paradigmatic science due to this—often implicit—assumption is necessarily constrained to look only for efficient causes. Therefore, psychology today is paradigmatic science with the aim of looking for efficient causes alone. As this kind of thinking is fundamentally constrained, we should find several problems related to cause–effect thinking in the modern psychology. These problems can be deduced from the foregoing discussion:

1. 1.

Neglect of exceptions

. Cause–effect science looks for probabilities alone because the real causes, “hidden powers” cannot be revealed anyway and therefore cause–effect relationships that can be observed are always only probabilistic. Therefore exceptions cannot refute a theory; exceptions can be ignored.

2. 2.

Denial of emergence of novel forms. Cause–effect account is unable in principle to understand development, becoming, because causes must have effects already inside them, before the effect takes place. As cause–effect chain is either infinite or leads to the first cause, the becoming cannot be explained.

3. 3.

The aim of science is to give names. Cause–effect thinking can only lead to statement of the matter of fact, of the existence of a thing or of a relationship. Therefore, all explanation is reduced to giving names. The questions formulated by such science would be about Whether? but not about How? Sometimes, naturally, as science is supposed to answer the question How? These two questions are confused and answer to the Whether? is proposed as an answer to the How?

4. 4.

Fragmentation. This is one of the main theses of this book: paradigmatic science is fragmented, there is no unifying metaparadigmatic theory that would make findings in one field of studies be understood in another field of studies. Fragmentation is also a logical consequence of cause–effect thinking because causes are supposed to be “independent,” both from effects and one from another. So, all chains of causes and effects identified in this kind of science are essentially independent one from another.

5. 5.

Anything goes that is correlated. As determination of efficient causality alone is only formal, then science will be ready to accept as a cause anything that correlates, that predicts, even when it needs almost no reflection to understand that such “predictors” have no substantial meaning.

I think there can be more fallacies that emerge from cause–effect thinking. But for a diagnosis of modern mainstream psychology, as much as needed in this book, these five are already more than sufficient. Next I discuss the “symptoms” of the cause–effect “disease” in modern psychology. The choice of the examples in the following discussion is to some degree random; there is no reason to suggest that the selected examples differ in their possible cause–effect bias from other theories and models in modern mainstream psychology.

Fallacies that Follow from the Primitive Theory of Causality

Neglect of Exceptions

Cause–effect science is inclined to ignore exceptions. As a rule, researchers who analyze differences in mean scores report means, in some cases also standard deviations, but not other characteristics of how data are distributed. Group differences in means are interpreted as if there are no exceptions. Sometimes it is declared that mean differences do not characterize all individuals in a group; but no further analysis with exceptions is usually conducted. On the contrary, possible mechanisms for group differences are usually suggested with no discussion why there are exceptions. Even with statistically “large” group differences (effect size 1 SD, for example), overlap of two normal distributions would still be more than 40%; about 16 percent of the people in a group with a lower mean score still fall above the mean of the other group. The total overlap of two distributions is actually so large that there would be more exceptions than nonoverlapping cases that clearly follow the “rule” of group differences. Effect sizes are usually much smaller than 1 SD in social sciences. And even the effect size of 10 SD would mean that there are exceptions possible; because all the analyses are tied to probabilities, not necessities.

One line of research where exceptions are not thoroughly analyzed can be found in research on cognitive sex differences. Very general mechanisms are usually proposed for explaining why men outperform women in mathematical reasoning ability, for example. There are possible hormonal mechanisms, brain mechanisms, and social mechanisms that may lead to sex differences in cognitive abilities (e.g., Benbow, 1988, and commentaries on her target article; Kimura, 1999; see also Halpern et al., 2007). At the same time, there are data from very large studies on sex differences in mathematical abilities, which clearly demonstrate: sex differences are exceptions to overall similarities between men and women! The ratio of boys to girls scoring above the mean on the Mathematics Scholastic Aptitude Test is only about 1.5 to 1 whereas in top one in 10,000 group the ratio of boys to girls is about 3–13 boys for one girl (Benbow, 1988; Benbow & Stanley, 1983; Halpern et al., 2007; see also Baye & Monseur, 2016, for many examples of gender inequality at extreme tails of the score distributions in different areas of academic performance). Effect size for group difference in Benbow’s studies is only about a half of a standard deviation suggesting that, with rare exceptions, there are at least some girls who perform better than most of the boys on SAT-M tests. In that case explanations that characterize all men or all women cannot, in principle, explain why some men or women are different; and not only that the exceptional men, for instance, are different from women, they are exceptional in respect of other men too. Therefore, the data suggest that what is actually needed, is not a theory of sex differences in cognitive abilities but a theory why there are more exceptional boys than girls or vice versa.

There are also small average gender differences in the level of IQ or intelligence, which have to be related to unequal male-to-female ratios at the extremes of score distributions exactly because the overall distributions are largely overlapping. Yet the explanations for such differences are still searched for in variables that distinguish all men from all women (e.g., Arribas-Aguila, Abad, & Colom, 2019; Daseking, Petermann, & Waldmann, 2017).

The neglect of exceptions can take an opposite form: small effect sizes of statistical group differences are taken to indicate no differences between groups. For example, a large-scale meta-analytic study of gender differences in mathematics performance revealed very small effect sizes as if demonstrating that males and females perform similarly in mathematics (Lindberg, Hyde, Linn, & Petersen, 2010). Even though there was some evidence for bigger variability in males (which indicates that there could be overrepresentation of males at the extremes of the score distributions); the real distributions at extremes in that study were not analyzed at all.

The list of such examples would be easily made long: variability in intelligence or personality dimensions is supposed to be “explained” with heredity in everybody; culture is supposed to affect people’s values and attitudes in everybody in the same way; effect of psychotherapy is estimated from mean levels of differences between treated and not treated, or treated in different ways groups, etc.

Taken together, neglect of exceptions is pervasive in psychology. And no particular empirical study can give justification for such a neglect because exceptions are not studied.

Denial of Emergence of Novel Forms

The field of studies where to find falsification for my proposal is, obviously, study of development. Cause–effect approach to both phylogenesis/cultural evolution and ontogenesis should lead to theories that deny qualitative changes in mental development. This is because emergence of novel forms must be “explained” by causes that precede the effect; so there can actually be no novelty emerging. Examples of such theories can be found both in cultural psychology and developmental psychology.

In cultural and comparative psychology , many modern cultural psychologists deny the possibility that culture has changed from less developed to more developed form in the history of the human kind. It has been declared that cultures may be qualitatively different and yet they all are at the same level of development (e.g., Tulviste, 1988; Wertsch & Tulviste, 1992). The idea that some cultures or behaviors are more advanced or more developed than others is explicitly rejected (Berry, 2003; Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002; Cole, 1996). If all world cultures of today are exactly at the same general level of development, then there are only two possibilities. Either all cultures develop exactly at the same pace or cultures in general have not developed at all. The former possibility would be hard to defend because that would require a perfect co-ordination of general cultural changes all over the world at the same time. Thus, what is left is the idea that cultures have not developed since their beginning.

Similar denial of the possibility for emergence of novel forms characterizes comparative psychology. Only quantitative differences are proposed to differentiate humans from other animals (Cole, 1996; Low et al., 2012; Premack, 1976).

No doubt, these issues cannot be fully solved as yet. Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence that human mind may be qualitatively different from minds of other animals (e.g., Tomasello & Call, 1997; Toomela, 2003, 2016a; Vauclair, 2003). Also, results of studies on cognitive differences between cultures are in accordance with the idea that some cultures may be more advanced than the others in terms of mental structures (but not necessarily in the dimension of less valued to more valued end result) (Ardila, 2003; Luria, 1974, 1979; Vygotsky & Luria, 1930, 1994). These studies, not surprisingly, are not from the mainstream psychology.

Taken together, there are theories that explicitly deny the possibility that qualitatively novel forms of psyche have emerged in the history of the human kind. Becoming is not part of theories even in the area that seems to be supposed to study becoming.

The situation is similar in developmental psychology. There are, of course, truly developmental theories of child development. But practically all of them stem from either Piaget’s (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1969) or Vygotsky’s (1934) approaches that are not in the center of mainstream developmental psychology. In fact, the names of Piaget and Vygotsky are very well known, but their theories are either rejected or distorted so that development disappears from their theories. This distortion has been demonstrated well in case of Vygotsky (Mahn, 2010; Toomela, 2015, 2016b, 2018; Veresov, 2010).

There are several well-known theories of mental development with cause–effect science limitations. One example is Brainerd’s suggestion that there are no general stages in the cognitive development (Brainerd, 1978, 1993). In fact, more and more aspects of mind are taken away from the realm of development and put into the nondeveloping structure of mind. Simpson, Carruthers, Laurence, and Stich (2005), in the Introduction to the first volume of the planned three-volume set on nativism (Carruthers, Laurence, & Stich, 2005), observe that in the latter half of the twentieth century nativism has gained increasing support from theoretical and empirical work. The support is increasing in many areas: philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, evolutionary theory, and other cognitive sciences. Indeed, for paradigmatic science there is no other way than to put mental capacities either in the brain or in the environment from where these capacities can be taken in the ready-made form. As mind is personal, then, naturally, the brain must be the seat for all mental capacities and abilities, whatever they are—language, theory of mind, motives, almost everything. This kind of science essentially comes to only giving names instead of explanations (see also the next subsection): there is innate theory of mind in the brain, there is innate language in the brain, there are innate motives in the brain; even wish to kill somebody is innate in our brain (Carruthers et al., 2005).

It is noteworthy that such nativism is not falsifiable in principle, especially because any sign of continuity, which is also absolutely necessary from the Aristotelian/dialectical causality, can be taken to “confirm” the nativist position. Qualitative discontinuity, however, cannot be discovered in principle, because names are taken as explanations. If the same name is given to two or more qualitatively different things or phenomena then even asking a question, how X is different (from assumedly the same) X does not make any sense. Without questions there will be no studies either.

There are other examples of cause–effect thinking limitations in developmental psychology that come from studies of adults. There are theories that explicitly deny any qualitative change in the course of psychic development. In personality studies the perhaps most dominant view today declares that personality is composed of five dimensions, neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These dimensions have been discovered[2] by exploratory factor analysis and “verified” in some cases with confirmatory factor analysis. Based on this idea, the “Five-Factor Theory” was formulated according to which there are so-called basic tendencies (five personality dimensions) that are components of mind. These basic tendencies are biologically rooted and, according to the theory, cannot be shaped by the influences of the environment—basic tendencies do not develop but are fixed elements given us by nature (Allik & McCrae, 2002; McCrae & Costa, 1996, 1999).

Explanations as Names

Cause–effect science would be satisfied with “explanation” when causes are identified. Therefore Whether? and How? become the same questions. Establishment of a fact of relationship becomes explanation. In such a relationship name of one, “independent” variable becomes a cause and the name of another, “dependent” variable becomes an effect.

Again, many examples of explanation-as-a-name fallacy can be identified in modern psychology. Some were already discussed above where it was shown how modern psychology of intelligence, personality, values etc., is mostly ending with giving a name to some “cause.” Several examples were provided in the previous subsection as well. There are more examples, however, even such that extend over the subfields of psychology. One of them is statistical data analysis.

Statistical data analysis, the most widely used set of techniques for data analysis in modern mainstream psychology, reflects this fallacy. This set of techniques allows exactly to establish matters of fact which can be named; but these techniques do not go further, they do not allow to understand and answer why-question beyond giving names. There are methods that allow to discover covariation of variables (correlation), relationship of one variable with several other variables (multiple regression), between several variables with several other variables (canonical correlation, different techniques of structural equation modeling), between group membership and “dependent variables” (analysis of variance, discriminant function analysis), “latent variables” with observed variables (factor analysis).

In most cases these methods are used for discovering linear relationships; quantitative nonlinear relationships can be studied also, but these are much less common. Even more, there is no method of statistical data analysis, I am aware of that would allow to discover qualitatively discontinuous (therefore continuous nonlinear models do not solve the problem) changes. In fact, I am not sure such statistical models can exist in principle, because qualitative change must be recognized before the data are encoded into mathematical variables (Toomela, 2008). If such qualitative change is discovered already, there is no necessity to describe it with mathematical methods.

So, statistical data analysis reveals relationships between variables. As this is the final step in data interpretation not much can be done further but to create a cause–effect “explanation,” i.e., to attribute names to causes and effects. Especially transparent examples can be found when factor analysis has been used; there a “latent variable” becomes the “cause” for covariation between observed variables. Answer to the question, why there is covariation between variables is the name: intelligence, personality dimension, individualism, collectivism, life satisfaction, etc. The process is the same with other kinds of statistically described relationships. Sex, gender, country of origin, race, socio-economic status, or whatever other group membership “explains” the individual differences in whatever “dependent variable.”

Let us take one more example from developmental psychology. We see that the result of some behavior, if similar, is taken as evidence for the similarity of minds behind the behavior. The researchers do not even consider a possibility that externally similar behaviors may emerge on the basis of different psychic mechanisms. Therefore there is no problem in fundamentally changing the task that is superficially similar to some other task and assume that the task is essentially the same and solved in the same way. Then the “cause” will be named, called some innate ability, for instance, and problem is scientifically “solved.” For demonstrating early competence in very young children, novel research methods are designed in modern psychology.

A typical description of the methodological success of such research is that investigators have succeeded in simplifying assessment tasks by making them easier, stripping away unnecessary processing demands, and removing complexity (Wellman & Gelman, 1992, p. 367, my emphasis; see also Wellman & Gelman, 1998, for more recent development of this line of thinking).

The researchers are certain (with no theoretical ground whatsoever) that there are “unnecessary processing demands” and that the same thing, the same “competence” is described with simpler tasks. If the simplified task with “unnecessary processing demands” can be solved, then the mechanism has been the same because … it looks the same.

Such conclusion has been made, for instance, in the studies of numerical competence of human infants. On the basis of observations that infants “calculate” the results of simple arithmetical operations on small number of items it was concluded that infants possess true numerical concepts and they are innately endowed with arithmetical abilities (Wynn, 1992). So, a cause of a cognitive ability is identified; true numerical concepts and arithmetic are innate. But it must be obvious today that there are many qualitatively different ways for adding and subtracting. If 5-months-old children have true numerical concepts, then why they use them only counting up to two or three? I think the early “true numerical competence” is not the same as the later developing numerical concept usually taught in schools. How to calculate 1,005,488 + 456 in the same way as infants add 1 + 1? Algebra, where all real numbers are replaced with one symbol, must be taught relatively late in school; algebra is also late development in the history of culture. This branch of mathematics is based on strategies very different from simple counting, adding, or subtraction. So, researchers can ignore the obvious if they find “explanation” to the whole field of calculation.

Fragmentation

Fragmentation of a science can result from different reasons, but cause–effect scientific worldview must inevitably lead to fragmentation of the studied field. This is so because causes are supposed to be “independent,” both from effects and one from another. Psychology is fragmented in so many ways that it would be superfluous to give specific examples (see, e.g., Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001). Here I discuss shortly only the status of the idea of a general or unified theory in psychology.

It can be expected that in cause–effect science attitudes towards the idea that the unifying theory is possible in principle should be mixed; some should deny even the possibility whereas the others would propose some very general ideas how psychology could be unified. Eleanor J. Gibson mentioned,

I suppose very few of you remember the excitement in the air about the future of psychology in the 1930s. […] the grand theory, a truly psychological one, was eagerly awaited, certain to make its appearance during our lives as scientists (Gibson, 1994, p. 69)

This observation fits well with the conclusions made above in the discussion of paradigmatic and metaparadigmatic sciences of today: germs of metaparadigmatic science can be identified in the pre WWII continental European psychology but not in the modern mainstream. The latter is paradigmatic. Today, there are many scholars who suggest that it is not necessary to try, or even not possible to unify psychology (e.g., Green, 2015; Koch, 1982; Kukla, 1992). Most of research done in psychology corresponds to such understanding—it is not only a unifying theory that is denied; in fact any theory seems to be irrelevant for majority of psychologists in their empirical studies (Beller & Bender, 2017). This attitude was summarized as follows:

Accumulated evidence for reliable effects is the lasting legacy of science—theories come and go, changing to account for new evidence and making new predictions. Numerous theories can account for any data and make predictions along the way. The value of direct replication comes from making sure that theories are accounting for the signal rather than the noise. (Simons, 2014, p. 79).

This truly Cartesian-Humean manifesto of paradigmatic science demonstrates how atheoretical cause–effect science eventually becomes. Indeed, for cause–effect science it would be hard to unify what may not be unifiable in principle (supposedly independent series of cause-and-effect relationships). Thus, it can be expected that general theories, if proposed at all, would suggest uniting psychology through something external to psychology. Such external possibilities are, for example, unification through uniting research methods or unification through applying very general rules. Such uniting rules, however, would be common not only to psychology but to any field of science, because in a cause–effect series every next step can be reduced to the earlier step and there would be no clear way how to separate qualities specific to psyche from qualities common to psyche, biology, and physics.

Both of the mentioned directions are proposed as ways how to achieve unification of psychology. It has been proposed, for example, to use multiple methodologies for studying a single psychological phenomenon (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001; Teitelbaum & Pellis, 1992). Some have said that psychology is actually already sufficiently unified around its methods and functional categories (Stam, 2004, 2015). The others have proposed to achieve the “experimental synthesis of behaviour.” For that five requirements should be met: more complex problems should be studied; correlational and observational data should be used in an initial stage of studies; mathematics and formulation of theoretical structures to integrate facts should be used; dogmatism should be eradicated; and behavioral humanism should be emphasized (Ardila, 1992). It has also been suggested that unification can be achieved by bringing correlational and experimental research methods into complementary relationships (Cronbach, 1957; Eysenck, 1997). Unification may also come through properly programming a computer with difference or differential equations (Simon, 1992).

I think any attempt to unify any science methodologically is doomed to fail. It is just absurd (in my opinion) to determine scientific methods before scientific questions. In any science, again and again it is discovered what should be known about the studied thing; it is the discovery of questions and not answers, that grounds the cutting edge science. If another novel question is discovered, the novel methods must be created to answer the question. If methodology is taken as a unifying principle, questions impossible to answer with the agreed methods cannot be even asked. Soon such science is just producing “facts” without any achievement in understanding better the object of studies.

On the other hand, there have been attempts to follow some extremely general rules in scientific research. Some researchers attempt to rely on general theory for almost everything:

[…] while the endpoints of human development are complex and unique, the process by which we reach those endpoints are the same as those that govern development in even simple organisms, and to some degree, even in complex, nonliving systems. Thus, in our approach to fundamental questions of mental life, we invoke principles of great generality. These are principles of nonlinear dynamic systems […] (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. xiii)

Such idea of unification is fundamentally adevelopmental, because it implies that the same basic theory can be applied to all levels of reality. In this way quantitative continuity of the material world is accepted but qualitative discontinuity is left out from the formula. No wonder that this dynamic systems approach is not actually systems approach because it denies material causes:

Although behavior and development appear structured, there are no structures (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. xix)

Two more recent attempts to build a unifying theory of psychology also propose some philosophical or general theoretical ideas that supposedly unite the science of mind (Engelsted, 2017; Henriques, 2011). There are several problems with these theories. First, definition of what is that what should be understood—what is psyche?—is questionable in both theories. For Engelsted, psyche is an internalized relation in the world; it is that what enables the animal to pause instead of immediately jump to conclusion (op. cit., pp. 41–42). Henriques, in turn, suggests that mind is a set of mental behaviors; it is not an entity that causes (sic!) behavior but a kind of behavior (such as hunting, mating, defending a territory, perceptions, feelings, etc.) (op. cit., p. 10, 72, 188). So, in the first case, the mind is something that makes something possible (pausing) and in the second case it is a special kind of behavior. In both cases, I think, the definition is not sufficiently elaborated. Lack of definition of what mind is (relation is not something, also behaviors of any kind are actually relations, not distinguishable material things) is just a symptom. I think the deep problem in these two (and several other similar) theories lies in the wrong target—such theories attempt to unify sciences of mind, many psychologies (and philosophies); actually, what must be unified, is understanding of what is studied in the science—mind—and how mind can be understood from different perspectives, each approached by a different branch of psychology. In this way psychologies would be naturally united as a consequence.

Taken together, there are many examples of paradigmatic unifying theories that could easily be applied to every field of studies, be it psychology, biology, or physics. What is missing in such general theories is the real unifying theory. Paradigmatic unifying theories emerge, as Vygotsky described (see above), from particular fields of studies, from particular theories and/or philosophies, and then try to spread extensively to all other fields in science. The methodological unifying proposals assume that methods can be separated from theories and become a field of studies in their own rights; and the super-general theories, such as dynamic systems theory, originate from physics and try to take over also psychology where it does not belong.

Anything Goes that Is Correlated

Cause–effect science is satisfied with above-chance (or better-than-the-other-theory) prediction as explanation of psyche. By constraining findings with practically working “solutions,” cause–effect science may also be methodologically utilitarian—if satisfactory level of prediction can be achieved by convenient research methods, there is no need to use more complex/hard to use methods in addition. Both qualities characterize substantial number of studies in mainstream psychology.

The examples of “anything goes as a predictor” I describe next are so common that there seems to be no need to refer to particular studies. Prediction seems to satisfy many fields of psychology. Age is used as an “independent variable” in majority of research done in developmental psychology even though it is obvious that children do not change because of age but because of other things for which age stands as a convenient marker (maturation of the nervous system, experiencing an environment, etc.). Similarly, cross-cultural differences are in majority of cases studied as differences between persons living in different countries or as differences between persons of different ethnicity. Politically defined borders do not cause human differences; the real context where a person lives—which is not studied!—is marked by a convenient marker.

Most of the studies on personality and many other characteristics are conducted in convenient samples—students, relatively highly educated volunteers. Sufficiently large amount of variability is “explained” by factor analysis in such samples; there is no need to study other, less convenient samples. Personality research is largely based on lexical hypothesis; there are almost no studies conducted to prove that this hypothesis is correct. Indeed, it is very convenient to study psyche with verbal questionnaires, which results can be correlated in many different ways. Intelligence, personality, and many other human characteristics are even in the most recent studies very often defined psychometrically without asking whether it is possible in principle to define supposedly studied things in this way. (That it is actually not possible, see, e.g., Essex & Smythe, 1999; Michell, 2000, 2010). So all that correlates is taken as “explanation.”

Recapitulation: Paradigmatic Modern Mainstream Psychology Is Fundamentally Flawed

The state of modern psychology fits well with understanding that paradigmatic science—which is in constant crisis by nature—is based on assumption that world beyond appearances is not knowable. Therefore only correlative relations between “causes” and “effects” can be known. This theory of causality is reflected in several fallacies: modern psychology neglects exceptions, denies becoming, aims at giving names and not more elaborated explanations, is fragmented, and assumes that if some correlation is found between whatever, then already sufficient theory has been achieved. I think it is sufficiently grounded to make a diagnosis of the modern mainstream psychology: it suffers from having “paradigms.”

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Footnotes

1

“Almost” I left there because I cannot be certain that more developed causality theory has not re-emerged somewhere.

2

More likely not discovered but created by the researchers.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

A. ToomelaThe Psychology of Scientific InquirySpringerBriefs in Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31449-1_8

8. What Next? Back to the Future

Aaro Toomela[1]

(1) Institute of Natural Sciences and Health, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Keywords

Metaparadigmatic psychologyStructural-systemic causality

So far I have suggested that knowing causes in Cartesian-Humean cause–effect causality sense grounds very superficial and incomplete understanding of the world. Only appearances and relationships between directly observable events become predictable to some degree better than by chance in this way. No understanding of the structures and processes beyond perceptually available appearances can be known when only efficient causes are searched for.

Of course it is possible that the world is not knowable beyond appearances. Then description of cause–effect sequences is a way to proceed; it adds more and more possibilities to predict a course of events and therefore to adapt better to the changing world. This solution would not be acceptable, however. Human kind has proven in so many ways that it is possible to know the world more than just by observation of events in the world. The whole modern chemistry alone would be sufficient to ground this idea; biology and physics just support this idea many more times than necessary. This, however, may not be sufficient ground to accept the knowability assumption without qualification. It is still possible that physical and biotic world is knowable beyond appearances but the world of psyche is not.

This possibility can be rejected also assuming that it is not an illusion and knowledge about many aspects of the physical and biotic worlds beyond appearances has been actually achieved. These sciences are based on affirmation of all four assumptions, including the materialist one. If all world is only material, as any science has to assume, then demonstration of knowledge beyond appearances about whatever aspect of the world is sufficient to ground the proposition that knowledge beyond appearances is possible about every aspect of the world, including psyche. It is so because material world is continuous: biotic world comprises part of the physical world and is, at the same time, still physical. The same applies to psyche: psyche emerges in part of the biotic world and is constrained by the laws and principles of the physical and biotic world with no exception. In this sense it can be said that all sciences are studying matter; the difference is only in the kind of organization that is studied. Physics studies what applies to all matter equally; biology studies what applies to all living things equally—but not to the physical world in totality because only part of the physical world is alive. Psychology, in turn, studies principles of organization that applies to psyche but not to life or matter in their totality. But it is still the same matter. Therefore if knowledge beyond appearances of one form of organization is possible then all other forms of organization of the matter must be knowable beyond appearances also.

Next possibility is to recognize the limitations of the epistemological ground of the psychology today and explicitly revise and extend the theory of causality underlying it. As it was shown in the previous chapter, the modern mainstream psychology, which is largely, if not exclusively,[1] based on Cartesian-Humean causality, is limited in explanatory power. So there has to be another way to proceed. If quantitative approach that grounds mainstream psychology today is not sufficient then the only other solution is qualitative. But qualitative psychology today, as was discussed above, is even less suitable for achieving understanding of whatever is studied. Actually it is not suitable for achieving any scientific understanding; what can be achieved is artistic experience.

There is a third way—also qualitative but qualitatively different from the qualitative approach today. Roots of this approach can be traced back to Aristotle. Psychology based on complex understanding of what is causality and scientific explanation emerged somewhere in nineteenth century. Next I am going to connect Aristotelian philosophical ground with that kind of science of psyche that was free from Cartesian-Humean causality.

What Kind of Causality Might Be Suitable to Ground Metaparadigmatic Theory: A General Direction of Inquiry

Aristotelian understanding of causality corresponds considerably more to the modern scientific world-view than Cartesian or Humean. The latter view is not suitable for science already because no testable theory—i.e., theory that is falsifiable in principle—can be constructed. Popper, for instance, did not attribute all understanding solely to description of efficient causes; for him causal explanation of an event was deduction from two kinds of premises: universal laws and specific initial conditions (Popper, 1994, 2002a, 2002b). In Aristotelian terms, the initial conditions are material and final causes.

There is something more. I think it is not sufficient for science to aim only at understanding events. World is not only events; world is first of all about things; things that in process of interaction constitute an event. And the aim of science should also be understanding of things. So, not only, Why did the watch stop to work? But also, What is watch? It is Aristotelian formal cause that is needed here, in addition to other causes, to understand things.

If Cartesian-Humean causality is limited then another theory of causality should be selected. I think the version of scientific causality can be rooted to Aristotelian theory, especially if elaborated with Hegelian philosophy and Engelsian materialism. The next, and last in this book, question to answer is whether this kind of causality can be suitable for science. I have provided already several examples how this kind of causality grounds many theories in physics and biology. Below I am going to discuss how Aristotelian causality also entered psychology— yes, it has been there and disappeared for absolutely no scientifically justified reason.

Perhaps it is worthy to mention before going to this subject that Aristotelian causality seems to have grounded psychology without being explicitly related to Aristotle’s philosophy. The authors who defined the aims of scientific enquiry and the most general questions that need to be answered in order to understand whatever is studied formulated principles very similar to Aristotle’s yet, as a rule, not mentioning philosophical roots of their ideas. So it might be possible that in some sense these principles were rediscovered.

The aim of science is to understand. Understanding is explanation of the studied thing or phenomenon by describing its causes. Psychology took Aristotelian direction more than a century ago and then, after the Second World War went completely astray. Remnants of this kind of psychology are relatively recent. There is a relatively modern (yet astonishingly Aristotelian) theory called systems theory or structuralism. Structuralism could be applied in mathematics, physics, biology, psychology, and social sciences (Piaget, 1970). Structuralism, however, being relatively accepted before 1960s, faded away.

There is another set of theories close to structuralism and yet different; today these are known as systems theories (there seems to be no one systems theory but rather several partly overlapping theories). Perhaps one of the main distinguishing features of the systems theories is their aim to formalize everything and disregard what cannot be quantified and formalized. One of the best known systems theories is the general system theory constructed by von Bertalanffy (1968). This theory was explicitly and quite successfully applied to phenomena from all basic divisions of the world: to physics, biology, psychology, and social processes. Von Bertalanffy’s theory itself, however, cannot ground full understanding of the studied things: it cannot, in principle, answer the question, what the studied thing is. This issue I am not going to discuss in more details. So here I just mention that von Bertalanffy aimed at a theory, which “subject matter is the formulation and derivation of those principles which are valid for ‘systems’ in general” (von Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 32). Such a theory, that according to von Bertalanffy should become formal and quantitative, does not ground understanding of the world in sufficient level of complexity[2] (see for more detailed discussion of the limits of mathematics as applied in sciences, Toomela, 2008b, 2009, 2010c, 2011).

In sum, I propose that the best general form of scientific understanding and explanation is a version of structural-systemic causality. Structural-systemic is the term I use to remind that there are both structural theories and systems theories that do not correspond to this specific theory of causality that, I suggest, should ground science. As I reminded in Chap. 2, there are three reasons why knowledge of history is essential for any science. Above history of relevant to this book ideas was discussed most of all to reveal the roots of the fundamental ideas (as a rule, blindly) followed or rejected today. The following shows that there is also a lot to (re)discover in the history of psychology: structural-systemic psychology was founded already more than a century ago. This psychology achieved understanding of psyche to the level still far ahead of the most advanced paradigmatic psychology today. I propose that future of scientific psychology lies in the forgotten past. Next I am going to discuss the emergence of structural-systemic psychology.

Aristotelian Structural-Systemic Causality Enters Psychology

The beginning of the scientific psychology is usually associated with the first experimental laboratory in psychology opened by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879 at the University of Leipzig, Germany. This point, of course, is arbitrary; scientific psychology emerged in Germany with no clear birthdate decades before (Valsiner, 2012). But the aim of this book is not to understand the whole history of psychology. For tracing the history of the idea of scientific explanation, Wundt’s work is an excellent beginning. His understanding of causality rested, directly or indirectly, on the long history of philosophy and sciences, especially biology. According to Wundt (1897; see also Wundt, 1896) attributes of psychical causality can be discovered by studying Psychical Elements, Psychical Compounds, Interconnections of Psychical Compounds, and Psychical Developments. Only on the basis of knowledge from studying the mentioned aspects of mind, Psychical Causality and its Laws can be formulated:

There is only one kind of causal explanation in psychology, and that is the derivation of more complex psychical processes from simpler ones. (p. 24, emphasis in the original).

And understanding development, becoming and change was the central aim for psychology:

[…] the fundamental character of mental life, which I would have you always bear in mind. It does not consist in the connexion of unalterable objects and varying conditions: in all its phases it is process; an active, not a passive, existence; development, not stagnation. The understanding of the basal laws of this development is the final goal of psychology. (Wundt, 1896, p. 454)

So, more than a century ago, in the beginning of the scientific psychology , Aristotelian causality was recognizably there. First of all, to explain meant to understand development, to understand how more complex forms of psychical life emerge from simpler ones. And this development can directly be translated into the language of Aristotle’s causality: it is necessary to study elements—material causes; it is necessary to study relationships and compounds—formal causes.

That time it was also clearly understood that efficient causality is not sufficient for understanding:

[…] it is clear that the theory that antecedence and consequence are the sole content of the idea of causation fails altogether to square with the facts of life and nature. (Carlile, 1895b, p. 224; see also Carlile, 1895a)

The view according to which mind can be understood as a hierarchically developing whole composed of distinguishable elements in specific relationships was called structuralism (Titchener, 1898, 1899). Structuralist position was taken by many eminent psychologists in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Sully (1892), Ladd (1894), Külpe (1909), Kirkpatrick (1909), Wertheimer (1925), Koffka (1935), Köhler (1959), Werner (1948), and Vygotsky (1982, 1994).

It is noteworthy that structuralism from the end of the nineteenth century did not comprise a unitary school of thought. Titchener’s approach itself has two aspects. On the one hand, he held positions that fit well with Aristotelian way of thinking. He suggested that the structural elements are artifacts and abstractions; in reality the elements are interconnected, and different wholes emerge from similar elements united in different ways (Titchener, 1898, 1899). He also observed that biology studies living phenomena from multiple perspectives simultaneously: there was morphology, physiology, and ontogeny of individual organisms that must be complemented with taxonomy, ecology, and phylogeny of “collective life”; he suggested that psychology should be built analogously to biology (Titchener, 1898). Yet at the same time his actual approach to studies focused on analysis and on the “morphology” of mind only. So his psychology became essentially an opposite to the principles of structuralism he had formulated himself—Titchener’s structuralism turned into analytic “Atomism” (cf. Calkins, 1900).[3]

Gestalt psychologists, in turn, are accused in overemphasizing the characteristics of the whole in their theory. Gestalt psychologists themselves disagreed: “In psychology we may go so far as to say that one of the main tasks of Gestalt psychology is that of indicating the genuine rather than fictious parts of wholes.” (Köhler, 1959, p. 98). Actually their position was structural-systemic also.

So, there is an idea that in order to understand mind, it is necessary to understand it as a whole composed of distinguishable parts or elements. It was realized that novel forms result from the rearrangement of the already existing material:

The point which as evolutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all the new forms of being that make their appearance are really nothing more than results of the redistribution of the original and unchanging materials. (James, 1950, p. 146)

Thus, for understanding novel forms it is necessary to describe from what the novel form is created. Novel forms are not “simple sums of its parts” but rather qualitatively new, “organic wholes”:

By organic whole, is understood one which (a) has a certain general character or individuality, while (b) it consists of distinguishable parts each with a certain character of its own, but (c) such that they cannot exist unmodified apart from the whole, while the character of the whole is similarly dependent upon them. (Hobhouse, 1901, p. 374)

The theory was actually much more elaborated. In addition to these general ideas of a whole and parts, it was also known that description of elements means description of the quality and quantity of the elements (e.g., Hobhouse, 1901). So, it was clear that elements constrain what is possible to compose from them; it is quality of an element that imposes such a constraint. Next, to understand systems as wholes, specific relations between the components must be described because the same components can be organized into very different structures (Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1959; Vygotsky, 1994; Werner, 1948). It was also understood that when elements become parts of the hierarchically higher level synthesis, into a new whole, the properties of the elements change (Hobhouse, 1901; Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1959; Vygotsky, 1982).

One idea was not acknowledged equally by all structuralist or systems scholars. It can be said that most of them did not fully understand conceptual consequences of structural development. By most of structural-systemic scholars development was understood in general terms; development was related to the increasing complexity and elaboration of a system. For instance, development was characterized by orthogenetic principle:

[…] it is an orthogenetic principle, which states that wherever development occurs it proceeds from a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation, articulation, and hierarchic integration. (Werner, 1978, pp. 108–109; see also Hobhouse, 1901, for a similar idea)

In general such view on development, sometimes with some nonessential variations, was shared by many, including Gestalt psychologists. Vygotsky (1982) demonstrated, however, that theory of Gestalts, for instance, recognizes only that whole is qualitatively different from its parts. But it does not recognize that every next level of a hierarchical synthesis may require in addition to this general principle also a special theory that applies to that particular next level. To be truly developmental, therefore, it is necessary to build a hierarchy of theories, one for each level of a hierarchical synthesis. So, Vygotsky demonstrated that structural principles are necessary but not sufficient in order to understand development.

In sum, century-old psychology was developing in the direction indicated by Aristotle and Hegel, already going beyond them by elaborating the theory of causality into structural-systemic theory and applying it to the study of mind empirically. For no scientific reasons this way of thinking was abandoned by psychology after the WWII (Toomela, 2007, 2012, 2015, 2016c; Toomela & Valsiner, 2010). I think it is time to forget the embarrassing detour psychology took and continue from where it stopped about 70 years ago. History of the human thought in general, and especially overall development of sciences during this time, allows us not only to rely on the century-old years old ideas but to go beyond them with the aim to build a metaparadigmatic psychology. The need to such direction of the development of psychology to build metaparadigm on structural-systemic approach was also observed by Piaget in his small book Structuralism (Piaget, 1970). First, he mentioned that structuralism is not a doctrine, it is a method—I would call it methodology, the way of scientific cognition (see on distinction of methods and methodology, Toomela, 2014a). And second, as structuralism is about wholes, then becoming interdisciplinary is inevitable, because structures are not independent of the rest of the world; what is whole or structure at one level of analysis is element at another. Only interdisciplinary metaparadigmatic approach—or unifying theory—is able to manage with such complexity.

Achievements of Structural-Systemic Psychology in the Past

Structural-systemic scientific explanation is achieved when three questions are simultaneously answered: What are the parts or the elements of the studied thing or phenomenon? In which specific relationships these parts are? and What novel qualities characterize the whole that emerged in the synthesis of the parts? In order to achieve this structure of scientific explanation it is necessary to study development, the process of the hierarchical synthesis of parts. It is also necessary to realize that each novel level of synthesis necessarily requires its own level of theory as the emergent whole is characterized with entirely novel qualities.

If psychology that followed structural-systemic epistemology existed, then the question is why it disappeared? There has been no theoretical justification I am aware of to abandon this approach. But it is still possible that there was even no need for such justification if paradigmatic psychology just managed to create better theories. In the previous chapter, I described the shortcomings of the paradigmatic psychology. It could be that continental European structural-systemic psychology that began to fade away with the end of the WWII was even worse and the theories that were created were even less powerful than those of the paradigmatic psychology. There is no point to list all the theories created by those early scholars; many books would be needed to describe them in sufficient details. What is noteworthy is that many of the authors of those theories are well-known even today and also appreciated as important figures in the history (!) of psychology. I just mention a few still remembered today scholars who followed structural-systemic epistemology: Aleksander Luria, Friedrich Sander, Heinz Werner, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, Lev Vygotsky, Max Wertheimer, Oswald Külpe, Pyotr Anokhin, Wilhelm Wundt, and Wolfgang Köhler.

So, there were the structural-systemic scholars and there were psychological theories they constructed. These names also seem to be relatively well remembered today. Perhaps psychology has been cumulative and continued developing their theories? Or perhaps their theories were abandoned after thorough theoretical analysis? Neither of these possibilities applies to the mentioned scholars and their theories. It is true that some of the theories are still considered to be important. First of all it applies to Vygotsky’s theory. This theory is a good example of the fate of all structural-systemic theories. Vygotsky’s theory became distorted and replaced with versions (such as the so-called cultural-historical activity theory) that superficially may resemble the original but actually is in deep conflict with it (cf. Toomela, 2000, 2008a, 2015, 2016d, 2018b).

The same applies to other theories. Koffka’s approach to Gestalt psychology, for instance, is occasionally mentioned, usually in the context of the study of perception. But one of the fundamental theoretical ideas he formulated—the distinction between geographical and behavioral environment (Koffka, 1935)—is less often mentioned. Here too misrepresentations of Koffka’s theory can be found. For instance, it has been suggested that this distinction (and similar one by Kurt Lewin) brings Cartesian opposition of physical reality and ego or the world of the experiencing individual (Smith, 2009). This critique ignores the fact that Gestalt psychologists rejected Cartesian cause–effect epistemology and it also ignores Koffka’s own discussion of the subject where no ground for such Cartesian opposition can be found. Such critique, however, is a minor issue. There is one much more important idea that follows from this well justified distinction: if physically identical environments are not identical for different individuals as they experience their environments, then a fundamental methodological issue emerges. If physical environments are experienced differently, then different individuals are not necessarily filling in the “same” test or respond to the “same” stimuli. Interpretation of study results becomes highly questionable if the sameness is simply postulated—as it is done in mainstream psychology today. Interestingly, this issue was introduced to behaviorist North-American psychologists (Watson, 1934) but was ignored then as it is also ignored today (Toomela, 2007, 2010a).

Altogether, the structural-systemic theories of the past known today are not known as structural-systemic theories but rather as Procrustean versions forced into the bed of Cartesian-Humean cause–effect epistemology. What is more important in the context of this book is that there is ample evidence that these early theories were actually very powerful and are still ahead of the theories today: bits and pieces of these theories are rediscovered again and again without acknowledging that ideas proposed as novel are actually oversimplified fragments of more coherent and comprehensive structural-systemic theories (see for many examples of rediscoveries made by most eminent mainstream psychology scholars today, Toomela, 2010b, 2014b, 2016b, 2018a; Toomela & Valsiner, 2010). I think such rediscoveries witness the high value of these theories and support my proposition that path to the future metaparadigmatic psychology can be built on the basis of structural-systemic epistemology and based on this epistemology theories forgotten today.

Structural-Systemic Epistemology: Is it Really the Way to Build Future Psychology?

Even though I proposed that structural-systemic epistemology is well justified basis on which to build metaparadigmatic psychology, I am actually not fully convinced that it is so. I know that in principle new theories can be constructed on this basis. It is possible to understand what is life, what is psyche, what is consciousness, how human psyche is qualitatively different from that of all other animals, what is culture, etc. (Toomela, 2016a). It is also possible to formulate a coherent theory of stages of psychic development that applies both to ontogenesis and phylogenesis (Toomela, 2017). But this all is not sufficient; there have been too many theories created in the history of science that have turned out to be misleading or simply wrong. I am certain that there are such theories today we have not recognized as problematic yet. Understanding the value of a scientific theory can take years and occasionally decades, if not more.

Still there is something that can be done now—and what should be done constantly, all the time. I think it is necessary constantly to question our scientific theories. Furthermore, following Vygotsky’s understanding of the development of science over two stages (Chap. 1 in this book), I call paradigmatic and metaparadigmatic, we should question not only the content of particular theories but also the way of thinking, the epistemological ground of our theories. This is what I have tried to do with this book: I have distinguished different epistemologies, analyzed their content, justification for each, and consequences that follow from relying on one or another. I ended up with unambiguous—I have to admit that only to myself, so far—conclusion that it is structural-systemic epistemology that should be used as a basis for sciencing (this term I borrowed from Leslie White). I think the general questions cannot be avoided: there are different epistemologies in science; there are different consequences that follow from relying on one or another. So I think there is a problem to be solved. The question is whether I have searched for the definition of the problem and for solutions in the right place and in the right way. If the epistemological problem of psychology is not going to be solved, there is a possibility that psychology is going to waste enormous resources for useless studies and meaningless theories. Some time ago we edited with Jaan Valsiner a book titled Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? This book was published 10 years ago, in 2010, and about 60 years had passed since continental European structural-systemic psychology faded away. If I were asked at the moment whether I would agree with the statement made with the title of this book, I would say—no, I do not agree. Today, I would rather declare: The science of psychology: 70 years gone astray. Seventy years of science based on epistemology that is grounded by one philosopher who deduced his epistemology from the premise that all-powerful God exists and by another who deduced his epistemology from the premise that humans cannot know the world beyond appearances in principle is more than highly questionable science.

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Footnotes

1

Cartesian-Humean causality is naturally connected to quantitative “interpretation” of the collected observations about the world. Yet it is not necessary; efficient causality theories can equally be developed without any statistical data analysis in particular or any mathematics in general. I bring as an (absolutely randomly chosen!) example from biology where efficient causality thinking is also widespread, but not almost exclusive as it is in mainstream psychology today. In an article dedicated to some issues in evolutionary biology, it was proposed that causes or events that can have “effect” on something else are, among others, human harvest of wild animals and evolution (Allendorf & Hard, 2009). No process can be a cause of anything because process is a change of the organization. Evolution is not something that can cause other things to happen, evolution—as well as harvest or whatever other process of a similar kind—is actually a name of an efficient cause. Names are not explanations, as it was discussed in the previous chapter. There is no quantitative data analysis or interpretation necessarily involved in such theories. And yet they are essentially quantitative, as Hume demonstrated.

2

Von Bertalanffy’s ideas may seem to disagree with my verdict about his theory. He did not claim that his theory is only about general universal principles. On the contrary, he wrote: “The third level finally is explanation—i.e., the statement of specific conditions and laws that are valid for an individual object or for a class of objects” (von Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 85). The way he continued, however, supports my suggestion that the most important question—what the studied thing or phenomenon is—is not answered by his theory: “In logico-mathematical language, this means that the general functions f of our equation (3.1.) [A.T. This is a system of simultaneous differential equations on p. 56 of his book] are replaced by specified functions applicable to the individual case. Any scientific explanation necessitates the knowledge of these specific laws as, for example, the laws of chemical equilibrium, of growth of an organism, the development of a population, etc.” (ibid. p. 85). From a structural-systemic perspective I am developing in this book, no mathematical function can be sufficient as a scientific explanation. Mathematical functions are about relations, about processes, but they are not about what the thing is. There might be a law of growth of organism but this law does not tell us what an organism is. All quantitative formalized versions of systems theories have lost the most important, the object what is studied.

3

This is one of the main reasons why I prefer to call my approach to causality “structural-systemic” instead of structural or systemic alone. Another reason, the nonstructural nature of dominant systems theories I mentioned above.

Commentary: The Yearning for a Unifying Psychology and the Unhappy Consciousness [1]

Abstract

In this volume, Aaro Toomela conducts an epistemological analysis of modern psychology according to which the discipline would be in a more primitive developmental stage than biology or physics. He uses basically two standards of scientificity: the satisfaction of four epistemological criteria (Is there an external world?/ Is this external world organized?/ Is this knowable?/ Is this world material?); and the kinds of Aristotelian causalities. Toomela concludes arguing for a “structural-systemic psychology” a once existent framework that would satisfy the epistemological standards and that, consequently, would constitute the potential path for a really scientific psychology. In the present commentary, I argue that the first scientificity standard is still embedded in a modern way of talking about sciences whose unsolvable problems have dragged epistemology to bankruptcy. On the other hand, the reintroduction of a variety of ways in which to understand causality seems more promising for integrating psychological studies in a coherent framework. Though the unification of psychology doubtless requires metatheory, this reconstruction must overcome the constraints of the inherited conception of science.

Keywords

Final cause; Epistemology of psychology; Aristotle’s causes; Pragmatics of causality

Introduction

In a world where the massive scientific production paradoxically deters knowledge gain by boosting the quantity of publications while undervaluing their quality—automatizing it to a statistical reckoning of the number of citations— Aaro Toomela’s present work is certainly a rarity. A refreshing one. Thousands of empirical studies are monthly reported whose statistical complexity and/or technical sophistication is high enough to veil their theoretical dearth. The landscape of psychology is teeming with empirical studies—be these quantitative or qualitative—methodologically rigorous but theoretically poor. In this context, Toomela’s contribution goes in a totally different direction. He makes a straightforward diagnosis of the present status of psychology as a science but offers, too, his prescription for developing it further. Toomela dares to make fundamental statements about psychology’s scientificity and methodology. Even more, he sustains these statements with arguments from epistemology and the history of the discipline. By doing this, Toomela makes explicit his personal position concerning core issues about psychology’s scientificity. It is precisely this feature of the book—that the author takes explicit position on what psychology is and should be—that makes its reading fluid and highly interesting.

The book starts from the statement that contemporary psychological science lies developmentally behind other sciences because of the impossibility to reach consensus around minimal ontological and epistemological tenets within the field. The aim of the book is to settle a new epistemological foundation to build a truly unifying psychological science. In what follows, I will summarize the argumentative structure of Toomela’s book. After this, I show that the author offers two distinguishable and independent standards for evaluating scientificity, namely the epistemological axioms the theories assume and the notion of causality they accept. The search for epistemological axioms assumes tacitly that there is one and the same stable reality independent of the language chosen to refer it. This procedure leads to the imaginary possibility that an unknown reality could lie “out there,” access to which is barred to us due to the limits of our human condition or our language—an anxious state of mind that was early labeled by Hegel as “unhappy consciousness.” On the other hand, the second scientificity standard introduced by Toomela—the recovery of Aristotle’s notions of causality—works better to support an integrative framework for the discipline. Although I agree with Toomela’s thesis that psychology needs a unifying theory and that this cannot be reached without recurring to metatheory, I argue this will not be reached by subscribing the ontological dualism implicit in the four fundamental questions. An integrative view of the psychological—what Toomela would call “ metaparadigmatic psychology

”—demands the articulation of different language uses for distinguishing different aspects of the subject matter. This task is performed by recovering Aristotle’s model of four causes.

Three Stages of Science and Four Fundamental Questions

Toomela initially sets up a Kuhnian-Vygotskyan model of the growth of science, according to which any science would advance from a pre-paradigmatic stage, through a paradigmatic one, up to a metaparadigmatic stage. In the first one, sciences would progress without direction insofar as there is no systematic worldview orienting scientific inquiry. In the second stage, a variety of internally coherent frameworks emerge—the so-called paradigms, coexisting within the same discipline. Finally, in the last stage—the metaparadigmatic one—a general, unifying framework emerges and subsumes minor theories and models. The first and less organized stage, the pre-paradigmatic, is represented, according to Toomela, by the “ qualitative approach

” in psychology and elsewhere, where research is not oriented by common epistemological agreements about the very existence of reality and its ontological independence from the mind. The paradigmatic stage would be represented by contemporary quantitative psychology

, due to the variety of coexisting theories, intra-theoretically consistent but inter-theoretically divergent. Finally, a good example of metaparadigmatic science is biology after the emergence and expansion of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This theory would no longer be “a special kind of theory; its object is not one or another group of organisms, or their parts…[t]he theory of evolution is about all living world on Earth” (Toomela, this volume, p. 9). According to Toomela, psychology would lack such a metaparadigmatic, unifying theory, although an incipient candidate existed right before World War II—the “structural-systemic approach,” whose renewal is part of Toomela’s ultimate proposal

.

To refine the description of the three developmental stages, Toomela defines four fundamental questions that any scientific theory, explicitly or implicitly, should answer. The answers to these questions define the stage of scientific development of the theory or discipline. The four questions are: (1) Is there a world external to my mind? (2) If there is one external world, is it organized? (3) Can we know the external world? or in a milder version: Can we know everything about the external world? and (4) Is the world only material? Any scientific theory has to answer to these ontological and epistemological questions. After pondering the answers to the same questions by selected classical philosophers—Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Engels—Toomela concludes that a science can aspire to be metaparadigmatic if and only if it answers affirmatively to each one of the four fundamental questions. Therefore, a metaparadigmatic science has to be realistic, materialistic and non-reductionist. A positive answer to (1) and (2) defines a realistic theory

, while a positive answer to (4) profiles a materialist approach

. Yet a non-reductionist materialism requires furthermore a positive answer not only to the fourth question, but also (and critically) to the third one, since metaparadigmatic science has to be open to knowing everything about the external world. According to Toomela, this is not the case of mainstream psychology, which would be constrained to knowing only observable appearances, leaving from the start important parts of psychological reality either out of focus (e.g., will, planning activities) or severely distorted by experimental needs (e.g., intelligence, emotion, motivation). That is why mainstream psychology is not good soil for building a metaparadigmatic science.

A better prospect for a metaparadigmatic psychological science existed before World War II

. For Toomela, authors such as Lev Vygotsky, Pyotr Anokhin, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Lewin, William Stern, Max Wertheimer, and Heinz Werner were decidedly oriented toward building a unifying psychological theory

“aimed at understanding humans as wholes” (Toomela, this volume, p. 47). Among them, Vygotsky stands out for constructing an approach that answers affirmatively to the four main questions: his psychology was realistic (assuming that a world external and ordered exists) and materialistic. But additionally, unlike quantitative mainstream psychology, Vygotsky

“…assumed that the external world is knowable beyond appearances…[h]e relied only on qualitative research methods – thus he did not assume that only covariations between observed events are knowable…[b]ut his qualitative methodology was also different from superficial and descriptive contemporary qualitative science…[h]is qualitative methodology was experimental; this methodology allowed him to construct justified theories about functioning of the mind beyond appearances ” (Toomela, this volume, p. 47, italics mine).

The highest stage of scientific development will be also reached in psychology when methodologies go beyond appearances . At this point, the question that must be asked is what does it mean to go “ beyond appearances

.” This is a critical question in order to understand what exactly mainstream psychology is cutting off from its subject matter. In this respect, Toomela suggests this would be “structures and processes” (Toomela, this volume, p. 107) that cannot fit in the chain of efficient causes. Therefore, to overcome the paradigmatic stage, psychology needs to incorporate kinds of causes other than the mechanistic efficient one.

Recovering Other Causes

An integrative psychology—“metaparadigmatic” in Toomela’s terms—should overcome the explanative reduction to efficient causes. According to Toomela, this turn can be conducted by reintroducing Aristotle’s four causes model (see Harré, 2012 , for a similar conclusion). The next table shows Aristotle’s original definitions and examples for the four causes:

Definition

Example

Material

That out of which a thing comes and which persists

The bronze of the statue and the silver of the bowl

Formal

The form of the archetype, that is, the statement of the essence and its genera

The formal cause of the octave is the relation of 2:1

Efficient

The primary source of the change or coming to rest

The man who gives advice is an efficient cause; the father is efficient cause of the child; and, in general, what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed

Final

In the sense of end or that for the sake of which a thing is done

To be healthy is the final cause of walking

The material cause corresponds to the matter of which a certain object is composed. It also includes the elements or parts of a whole. The formal one corresponds to the essence of a thing or the entelechy of an organism—the whole composed by the material cause. The efficient cause is the immediate source of change or the agent whose action triggers a change. The final cause corresponds to the reason or intention that explains a state of affairs. Toomela points out that modern psychology reduced the four kinds of causes to just one: the efficient cause. The reason is that psychological theories would represent a reductionist variant of materialism: contemporary psychology limits its research to appearances, relinquishing the study of “structures and processes” such as intentions and motives for behaviors.

As Aristotle’s examples are conspicuously cryptic, the four causes have unsurprisingly been the object of diverse and, partially, contradictory interpretations. This applies particularly to the first and the second causes, since both are strongly rooted in the Aristotelian matter/form distinction, which in turn assumes the Platonic division between immanence and transcendence. Thanks to the intellective part of her/his soul (the nous) , the human being is capable of discovering transcendental forms and essences behind immanent matter. Thus, material cause represents the matter of which a thing is composed and the formal one is the “essence” or “entelechy” that fills the piece of matter in such a way that we recognize it as the thing it is. Both causes are quite understandable when we think of stone and statue, clay and vessel, or silver and bowl. More difficult is to apply them to other ontologies such as time, life, meaning, and symbol. The main difference lies in the fact that in the first set of cases, the observing subject is not part of the object (I have a vessel in front of me, which is definitely not part of my body), while in the second set of things such separation is not so clear ( Time is not out there like a vessel or a statue, but it is part of my subjective way of feeling my being-in-the-world; life is not an external thing that I can observe from the outside, etc.). But even accepting the perishable matter/imperishable form ontology, it is still difficult to understand matter and form as causes . Since a condition of possibility is not the same as a source of change or movement.

On the other hand, efficient and final causes are indeed contemporarily well understood as causes . Toomela shows quite convincingly that modern psychology reduces its research to efficient causes, that is, to the immediate agent that induces a movement or change upon another entity. Thus, you can identify a complex chain of events concatenated by cause–effect relationships without recurring to intentions or volitions. In fact, to construe a mechanistic device you need only efficient causes. Considering this, the challenge of recuperating Aristotle’s causes model consists ultimately in the recuperation of the final cause . It is in fact the final cause which informs us why a certain state of affairs exists. Final cause corresponds to the final end (the telos ) to be reached by this event or state of affairs. While the motion of the eight ball can be efficiently caused by having been hit by the white ball, this does not inform us why is this the case. For understanding why this causal relationship took place, we have to take into account that this is a billiard game, so we have ground to suppose that this motion was purposely triggered by somebody in the context of a game involving at least two people. Having this meaning frame in mind makes it—explicitly or implicitly—possible for us to understand the (efficient) causal chain we are observing. Thus, the inclusion of the final cause involves the reincorporation of the meaningfulness of the phenomenon to be explained. For inquiring into the reasons and motives of a certain event implies the question about the purposes of the agent that directly or indirectly produced the observed state of affairs. Asking for the final cause implies pondering the observed event as non-deterministic, intended action purposely executed by an agent with certain ends, which displaces the event from the mechanistic causal chain.

If this interpretation is right, then Toomela’s argument can be paraphrased in this form: psychology will become an integrative science only when it overcomes the mechanism implicit in the search for efficient causes and advances to include the meaning/sense dimension of human behavior, which is implicit in final causes. There will be no real psychological science if we do not seriously approach the meaningful dimension of reality. I do think this is a fair interpretation of Toomela’s thesis. Enigmatically enough, however, Toomela is reluctant to talk about meaning or sense . He argues for the need to incorporate final causes into psychological explanations, but he does not develop the corollary that this implies including the meaning frames inside which a certain behavior becomes an understandable action. The reintroduction of final causes allows him to include “structures and processes” that are “beyond appearances,” but further developments of this idea are not easily found. Rather, such “structures and processes beyond appearances” are inferable by means of exemplary cases such as Koffka’s Gestalt theory , Piaget’s structuralism , Von Bertalanffy’s open systems theory , and Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach . Now, considering the diversity of explanatory devices implied in these cases, it is not clear whether and how these theories include meaning frames to better understand the psychological subject. On the other hand, if the feature these theories actually share is the fact that they do include final causes in their explanations, must we expect that other non-psychological cases of metaparadigmatic sciences (like Darwin’s biology and Einstein’s physics) to also include intentions and reasons besides mechanical causes? This is a question that remains open in Toomela’s analysis.

Causality After the Pragmatic Turn

The modern concept of causality exhibits still another important deficiency. Not only is it restricted to the efficient causal relationship, but it implicitly conceives the causes as isolated events that, again, can be identified as such from an objective point of view. This means that events such as giving a piece of advice , being a father , or wanting to be healthy are per se causal events. After the pragmatic turn in philosophy (Egginton & Sandbothe, 2004 ), it has been increasingly accepted that the identification of causes (be these efficient or final ) requires the consideration of the communicative context within which a certain cause is selected as explaining a certain state of affairs. That is, the concept of cause is tightly connected with the definition of explanation . A cause is also an event that explains the emergence (or change) of another event—singled out as effect . Thus a cause is, pragmatically understood, always an answer to a (implicit or explicit) question (Bromberger, 1966 ; van Fraassen, 1981 ). The cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers is tantamount to asking the question: Why did the Twin Towers fall down? This question is asking for a cause for an event, but the kind of answers we can give are quite diverse, depending on the context of utterance. So, if asked in a congress of metallurgy and materials science, an answer pointing to an efficient cause such as “Because fire exceeded 2500 °F, which is the fusion temperature of steel” might be considered acceptable by the hearers, although it would be remarkably inappropriate in a congress of political science. Even more, philosophers of science have noticed that depending on the prosody, different answers/causes are expected: Why did the Twin Towers fall down? (and were not merely damaged); Why did the Twin Towers fall down? (and not other buildings).

Of interest for Toomela’s (and our) purposes is that the why-question of the example can ask for efficient causes or for final ones. It is the communicative context that demands one or another kind of causes, so that one and the same event can be explained either appealing to efficient or to final causal events. We in fact use—and are commonly requested to use—(efficient) causes or (final) motives why this or that is the case. The role of context in understanding explanation and cause is nicely summarized by Bas C. van Fraassen as follows:

The discussion of explanation went wrong at the very beginning when explanation was conceived of as a relation like description: a relation between a theory and a fact. Really, it is a three-term relation between theory, fact, and context . No wonder that no single relation between theory and fact ever managed to fit more than a few examples! Being an explanation is essentially relative for an explanation is an answer … it is evaluated vis-à-vis a question, which is a request for information. But exactly… what is requested differs from context to context (van Fraassen, 1981 , p. 156)

A corollary of a pragmatic approach to the causality problem is that to restrict psychological explanations to efficient causes on behalf of an alien methodological protocol is contradictory with the implicit pragmatically explanative requests that we ourselves set and satisfy in ordinary life when dealing with human affairs. Thus, final causes are required in psychology not only to satisfy some scientific standards, but also to avoid a flagrant performative self-contradiction.

Metatheory, Yes; Epistemology, No

The affirmative answer to the four questions is, according to Toomela, the main feature of a metaparadigmatic science. A negative or partially negative answer to the third question ( Can we know everything about the external world? ) defines a science as paradigmatic (other questions being affirmatively answered). Conversely, a negative answer to whichever other questions, qualifies the respective science as pre-paradigmatic. Now, it is important to carefully ponder the perspective from which these questions are formulated. Who is the agent that seeks answers about external reality? External to whom? Which is the implicit “internal” reality? Who is the “we” that asks if “we” are able to know everything about the external world? The very formulation of the first ontological question ( Is there an external world?) assumes the privileged position of a reflective subject who doubts about his/her knowledge, having plenty reason and linguistic capacities to make distinctions “out there.” It is a sort of Robinson Crusoe—an adult, illustrated man with reflective capacities, who suddenly realizes he is in the middle of wild nature and has to construe from scratch a complete theory of it, its things, and properties (including a certain kind of thing which seems to be minded). The question about the existence of an external world (organized or chaotic, knowable or not, material or immaterial) starts from the methodological division of an external part of the universe and an internal one.

The critical point is that the four questions are based on the modern axiom that there exists a point of view from which it is possible to get acquainted with reality in a neutral, uninterested, and absolute way. This axiom resides at the core of the philosophical subdiscipline called epistemology . It assumes a strict separation between the knower ( res cogitans , subject ) and the known ( res extensa , object ). After the linguistic turn (Rorty, 1967 ), the same dualism works under the scheme of language and reality . In this variant, the axiom reads like this: in reality there are material referents and we need a language (a lexicon and grammatical rules) to refer to them. Things preexist words. If everything goes smoothly, I have at my command a language to satisfactorily cover the whole set of things out there. But it can also happen that my language does not cover all of reality. Then I have the unpleasant feeling that a part of reality escapes my comprehension because of my linguistic blind spots. This “unhappy consciousness” accompanies my intellectual apprehension of the world: I know I cannot really know the world as it is, since my language or my being human impedes my accessing it without distorting it with my own conceptual or cultural schemes.

By constructing an epistemological foundation for a unifying psychological science, Toomela situates himself in the tradition of looking for the point of view from nowhere that theoretically would quench our unhappy consciousness. This is clear when he establishes that the affirmative answer to the four questions is the standard for a metaparadigmatic psychology. The best science is realist, materialist, and non-reductionist. Psychology, in other words, should follow the example of the natural sciences that allegedly have conquered positive answers to the four fundamental questions.

Defining scientificity based on epistemology implies accepting from the start the modern separation between language and reality. This separation, and the aporias to which it leads, have been criticized in philosophy of science since at least the beginning of the twentieth century. Of course, this is not the place to summarize the development of the progressive liberalization of philosophy of science along the last century. Just to mention an early milestone of this evolution, Popper’s critical rationalism states that no brute facts exist without a theory (or hypothesis) that sustain them (Popper, 1935 ). As a consequence, what we see is determined by the theoretical framework from which we approach reality. That is the reason why our theory is, at best, i.e., when nothing falsifies it, a reasonable conjecture, which we must abandon as soon as we obtain evidence contradicting it. Conjecture means here: we really do not know how reality is (and unhappily never will!), but the present hypothesis works so far. From Popper onward, many philosophers and science historians have remarked that reality, events, and things are strongly related to the kind of language that we use to describe them. Thus the metaphysical dogma that there is a reality-in-itself, unbound from a certain language/culture, is simply a faith article that cannot be resolved either by rational arguments or by empirical evidence. It has no solution, but dissolution. The latter comes when we realize that there is not a non-human reality to be referred (transcendental, a-linguistic), so we do not have reason for an unhappy consciousness.

Conclusions

The crucial difference between Toomela’s paradigmatic and metaparadigmatic sciences lies in the fact that the first would be reductionist while the second is non-reductionist. And this feature, in its turn, lies in their respective dismissal and acceptation of the Aristotelian final cause . Therefore, my point regarding Toomela’s position can be summarized this way: the unifying psychology we yearn for will be reached when we are able to incorporate the intentions and motives of human action as legitimate causal instances. Yet for grounding such integrative psychology we do not need epistemology—if by “epistemology” we understand the modern philosophical subdiscipline whose aim it is to provide an indubitable “first philosophy.” We do instead need metatheory, that is, the analytical tools to inquire about the consistency of our theories, and about the appropriateness of our methods to access the phenomena of interest. In this sense, I am sympathetic with Toomela’s conclusion: let us construct a unifying psychology. But this means, in my view, recovering the sense and meaning of psychological life—via Aristotle’s final cause —while avoiding the old metaphysical requirement to strive for a chimeric reality-in-itself.

References

1. Bromberger, S. (1966). Why-Questions. In R. G. Colodny (ed.), Mind and Cosmos, pp. 86–108. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

2. Egginton, W., & Sandbothe, M. (Eds.). (2004). The pragmatic turn in philosophy: Contemporary engagements between analytical and continental thought. Albany, NY: Suny Press.

3. Harré, R. (2012). The brain can be thought of as a tool. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 46, 387–394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-012-9195-x . Crossref

4. Popper, K. (1935). Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen Naturwissenschaft [Logic of research: On the epistemology of modern natural science]. Vienna: Springer. [English translation 1959].

5. Rorty, R. (Ed.). (1967). The linguistic turn: Essays in philosophical method. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

6. Toomela, A. (this volume). Towards epistemological foundation for the unifying theory of psychology . New York: Springer.

7. van Fraassen, B. C. (1981). The scientific image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Index

A

Animal vs. human mind

Aristotelian approach

Aristotelian causality
artifacts and abstractions
elements change
morphology
orthogenetic principle
structural-systemic theory

Aristotelian causality scientific cognition

Aristotelian/dialectical causality

Aristotelian-Hegelian dialectical causality

Aristotelian theory

Aristotelian thinking

Aristotle’s model

Aristotle’s theory

Associationism

Assumptions
cognitive revolution
contemporary qualitative research
external world exists
fundamental doubt
principle
psychology and social sciences
qualitative methodology
qualitative researcher
qualitative science
science
terminological issue

Assumptions ground methodology

Atomism

B

Behaviorism

Behaviorist science

Behavioristic psychology

C

Cartesian causality

Cartesian-Humean causality

Cartesian-Humean way

Causality/causalities
Aristotle’s assumptions
assumptions
continuity and qualitative
definitions
doubts
forms
hierarchical levels
linear and unidirectional
material
material and formal causes
material cause
modern system theory
and principles
theoretical constraints

Cause
definition of
idea

Cause–effect approach

Cause–effect explanation

Cause–effect science
attribute names
covariation of variables
developmental psychology
explanation
independent variable
methodological success
methods
modern psychology
numerical concepts
solutions
verbal questionnaires

Cause–effect thinking

Cognitive abilities

Cognitive development

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive revolution

Communicative context

Comparative psychology

Complementary causes

Complete theory

Complex multicellular organism

Consciousness

Contemporary qualitative

Contemporary qualitative approach

Contemporary qualitative researchers

Contemporary qualitative science

Contemporary qualitative scientists

Contemporary quantitative psychology

Contiguity

Contradiction, rules

Crisis in Psychology

Cultural psychology

D

Darwin’s theory

Developmental psychology

Divine attributes

Doubts

Dynamic systems theory

E

Efficient causality

Efficient cause

Epistemological foundation

Explanation-as-a-name fallacy

External world
characteristics
knowledge

F

Fallacies
cognitive abilities
distributions
ignore exceptions
mean differences
neglect of exceptions
personality dimensions
sex differences

Final cause
end
intelligence
means

Five-Factor Theory

Formal cause vs. efficient cause

Formal causes

Formal knowledge

Formal mechanism

Four causes model

Aristotle’s original definitions and examples

Fragmentation
attitude
complementary relationships
experimental synthesis of behaviour
material causes
mental behaviors

G

General System Theory

Generalization

Gestalt psychology

God, nature of

H

Hegel
assumptions
causality
“chemism”
efficient causality
efficient cause
inadmissible application
mechanism
potentiality and actuality
purposiveness
statement
unity

Hegel’s dialectics

Hegel’s philosophy

Hegel’s psychology

Hegelian causality

Hidden powers

Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology. A Methodological Study

History

Human cognition

Hume’s psychology

Humean causality

I

Idea of falsification

Imagination

J

Justification

K

Knowledge

Koffka’s Gestalt theory

Kuhn’s opinion

Kuhnian-Vygotskyan model

M

Mainstream psychology
causality

Mainstream quantitative psychology

Male-to-female ratios

Marxism

Marxist causality
conscious reflex
motion

Material causes

Materialism

Materialist approach

Materialist worldview

Mathematics Scholastic Aptitude Test

Mechanical motion

Mechanical tendency

Metaparadigmatic psychological science

Metaparadigmatic psychology

Metaparadigmatic science

Metaparadigmatic stage

Metaparadigmatic theory

Motion
causality
psychology
quantitative change
spatial position
treatment

N

Natural and historical science

Non-reductionist materialism

Nonsensory qualities

Normal science

Novel forms
cognitive development
comparative psychology
developmental psychology
mental capacities and abilities
mental structures

P

Paradigmatic efficient causality

Paradigmatic science

Philosophy

Physical world

Pragmatic approach

Pre-paradigmatic science

Primitivization

Priority

Psyche

Psychic development

Psychical causality

Psychological science

Psychological theories

Psychology
cumulative process
description
evolution in biology
history of science
language
level of analysis
methodology
organization
paradigm
paradigmatic and metaparadigmatic science
paradigmatic science
philosophical system
revolution
scientific journals
signs
unified theory

Q

Qualitative and quantitative approaches

Qualitative approach

Qualitative methodology

Qualitative psychology

Qualitative research

Qualitative researchers

Qualitative science

Quantitative psychology

Quantitative science

R

Realistic theory

Recapitulation

Reductionism

S

Scientific approaches

Scientific cognition

Scientific psychology

Self-organization

Sensations

Sensory systems

Statistical data analysis

Statistical evaluation

Structuralism

Structural-systemic causality
achievements
aims
psychical causality
psychology
scientific psychology
theories

Supernatural powers

Symbolic representations

Systems theories

T

Thing vs. context

Toomela’s ultimate proposal

V

Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach

Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology

Footnotes

1

Carlos Cornejo

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Macul, Chile