Psychologism: What It Is And What This Philosophical Current Proposes
The truth about things slumbers behind the veil of appearances, in a place that can only be accessed through the safe passage of thought. Since time immemorial, human beings have aspired to know it, in order to unravel the mystery of life and reality.
The search for unknowns about the human and the mundane has been, since the dawn of time, a distinctive element between our species and other animals; as well as the most solid proof regarding the existence of a reason, which lives between the fissures and convolutions of such a refined central nervous system.
Therefore, thoughts are a phenomenon that depends on brain structures and that “connects” directly with the experience and experiential orientation of those who wield them, making it very difficult to separate the results of thinking from the process that ultimately allows them to be achieved. .
At this juncture there is the philosophical current that this article will discuss: psychologism Its ontological and epistemological implications are of enormous significance, and for this reason they were a cause of great conflict among the thinkers of the 19th century.
Psychologism is a philosophical current that arises from ontology and epistemology, which deals with our ability to grasp the truth of things and which has been the target of great controversy since its conception. This perspective was particularly defended by empiricist thinkers, and postulated that all knowledge could be explained by the postulates of psychological sciences (or reduced to them). Such a way of approaching reality implies that philosophical knowledge depends on the emotional, motivational, memory, cognitive and creative substrate of the human beings who think about it; inhibiting access to the ideal root of it (the beginning of what they are).
In other words, all content that is thought about is subject to the limits of the mind that conceives it. Thus, all things would be understood through the filter of information analysis processes and the mechanisms of cognition being the only way to draw such logic.
In fact, psychologism poses an analogy with classical logicism, through which it was intended to reduce any theory to the universal laws of logic, but positing Psychology as the fundamental vertex of this hierarchy. In this sense, logic would become another part of Psychology, but not a reality independent of it, nor a method with which to draw conclusions beyond what is accessible through the senses and the processes of one’s own reflection.
Psychologism is a theoretical prism that starts from anthropocentrism when understanding things in reality , and that has been applied to many of the universal questions raised by Philosophy. His influences have expanded to numerous areas of knowledge, such as ethics or didactics; but also to mathematics, history and economics.
It assumes a form of scientific positivism, but recognizes that potential knowledge is not alien to the perceptual limitations of the person who contemplates it, from which a theoretical contradiction that is difficult to resolve arises.
In short, psychologism emerges at the confluence of Philosophy, scientific positivism and epistemology; and the connection with logic would come from the German ideological debate (19th century) between Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl (of which small touches will be offered later).
Although there is some controversy about it, it is considered that the concept of psychologism It was coined by Johann E. Erdmann in the year 1870 , although its elementary rudiments predate such historical moment. It has also been proposed that it could have been championed by the philosopher Vincenzo Gioberti in his work on ontology (similar to Platonic idealism and in which he aspired to explain the very origin of ideas through an intuitive reflection of their essence), in which the concepts of psychologism and/or psychologism were used to contrast the scope of his vision with a hypothetical opposite (Italian ontology versus psychologism).
In short, psychologism reduces all the “intelligible” elements of reality (which are the object of study of all sciences and Philosophy) to the sensible, that is, to what can be perceived through the senses.
This is why knowledge could not be understood in the absence of a subject who observes it, nor of the mental processes that unfold in the situation of interaction between the observer and what is observed. The subjective sense would impose insurmountable limits on the potential of knowing reality, even at risk of confusing the product of thought with the tool by which philosophical knowledge is obtained (since they are not equivalent).
In the following lines we will delve into the work of some authors who defended or opposed psychologism. Many of them fiercely confronted those on the opposing side, representing one of the most notable dialectical controversies in the entire history of contemporary thought.
Defense of psychologism
Perhaps one of the most relevant defenders of psychologism is David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian who is among the most popular empiricists. From his very extensive work emerges the desire to reduce any possible form of knowledge to what he coined as “empirical psychology”, and which implied the understanding of the sensible through the different sensory organs In its Treat of human nature (a masterpiece of the author) metaphysics, ethics and the theory of knowledge were reduced or simplified to certain psychological parameters; by understanding that such domains were basic to determine direct experience with things in the tangible world.
In his writings Hume described two forms of expression for such psychologism: epistemological and moral The first of them stated that the problems of knowledge (its origin, limits and value) had to be understood as forms of reaction of the mind to the action of the exterior, summarizing all objectivity to an epiphenomenon of mental life. The second understood that all notions of ethics would be explained only as theoretical constructions, since in their beginnings they were nothing more than subjective responses to witnessing more or less fair social interactions.
Another thinker who supported psychologism was John Stuart Mill , English philosopher (but of Scottish origin) who defended the idea that logic was not an independent discipline from the psychological branch of Philosophy, but rather depended on it in a hierarchical sense. For this author, reasoning would be a discipline within Psychology through which to get to know the substrate of mental life, and logic would be only the tool with which to achieve this objective. Despite all this, the author’s extensive work did not definitively clarify his position on the extreme, discrepancies being found at different times in his life.
Finally, the figure of Theodor Lipps (German philosopher focused on art and aesthetics) is also notable, for whom Psychology would be the essential foundation of all knowledge in the mathematical/plastic disciplines. Thus, this would be the supply of every logical precept that supports the ability to know elements of reality.
The main opponent of the psychological movement was, without a doubt, Edmund Husserl This philosopher and mathematician of German origin, one of the most notorious phenomenologists of all time, was opposed to this way of thinking (he considered it empty). His work deeply analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of it, although he seems to be more in favor (as explicitly evidenced in numerous passages of his texts) of its opposition. The author distinguishes two specific types of problems in psychologism: those that are related to its consequences and those that are rather linked to its prejudices.
Concerning the consequences, Husserl showed his concern for the equality of the empirical with the psychological , understanding that each had very different objectives and results. He also considered that the facts of logic and Psychology should not be placed on the same level, since this would imply that the former would have to assume the same character as the latter (which are generalizations of value, but not facts demonstrated according to logical terminology). . De facto, he stressed that no mental phenomenon could be explained with the conventional laws of a syllogism.
Regarding prejudices, Husserl stressed the need to differentiate “pure logic” from the act of thinking (rule-based), since the purpose of the first would be to obtain evidence of objective facts and the second to decipher the nature of subjective and personal constructions about oneself and the world.
The main implication of this would be to discern an objective epistemological structure together with another subjective one, complementary at the level of internal experiences and sciences, but distinguishable at the end of the day. For the author, the evidence would be an experience of the truth, which means that the internal would converge with the external within the framework of representations of the facts that would achieve reality value.
