philosophy of psychology the philosophical study of psychology. Psychology began to separate from philosophy with the work of the nineteenth-century German experimentalists, especially Fechner (1801–87), Helmholtz (1821– 94), and Wundt (1832–1920). In the first half of the twentieth century, the separation was completed in this country insofar as separate psychology departments were set up in most universities, psychologists established their own journals and professional associations, and experimental methods were widely employed, although not in every area of psychology (the first experimental study of the effectiveness of a psychological therapy did not occur until 1963). Despite this achievement of autonomy, however, issues have remained about the nature of the connections, if any, that should continue between psychology and philosophy.
One radical view, that virtually all such connections should be severed, was defended by the behaviorist John Watson in his seminal 1913 paper ‘Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.’ Watson criticizes psychologists, even the experimentalists, for relying on introspective methods and for making consciousness the subject matter of their discipline. He recommends that psychology be a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, that its theoretical goal be to predict and control behavior, and that it discard all reference to consciousness. In making behavior the sole subject of psychological inquiry, we avoid taking sides on ‘those time-honored relics of philosophical speculation,’ namely competing theories about the mind–body problem, such as interactionism and parallelism. In a later work, published in 1925, Watson claimed that the success of behaviorism threatened the very existence of philosophy: ‘With the behavioristic point of view now becoming dominant, it is hard to find a place for what has been called philosophy. Philosophy is passing – has all but passed, and unless new issues arise which will give a foundation for a new philosophy, the world has seen its last great philosopher.’
One new issue was the credibility of behaviorism. Watson gave no argument for his view that prediction and control of behavior should be the only theoretical goals of psychology. If the attempt to explain behavior is also legitimate, as some anti-behaviorists argue, then it would seem to be an empirical question whether that goal can be met without appealing to mentalistic causes. Watson and his successors, such as B. F. Skinner, cited no credible empirical evidence that it could, but instead relied primarily on philosophical arguments for banning postulation of mentalistic causes. As a consequence, behaviorists virtually guaranteed that philosophers of psychology would have at least one additional task beyond wrestling with traditional mind– body issues: the analysis and criticism of behaviorism itself. Although behaviorism and the mind–body problem were never the sole subjects of philosophy of psychology, a much richer set of topics developed after 1950 when the so-called cognitive revolution occurred in American psychology. These topics include innate knowledge and the acquisition of transformational grammars, intentionality, the nature of mental representation, functionalism, mental imagery, the language of thought, and, more recently, connectionism. Such topics are of interest to many cognitive psychologists and those in other disciplines, such as linguistics and artificial intelligence, who contributed to the emerging discipline known as cognitive science. Thus, after the decline of various forms of behaviorism and the consequent rise of cognitivism, many philosophers of psychology collaborated more closely with psychologists. This increased cooperation was probably due not only to a broadening of the issues, but also to a methodological change in philosophy. In the period roughly between 1945 and 1975, conceptual analysis dominated both American and English philosophy of psychology and the closely related discipline, the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers took the position that philosophy was essentially an a priori discipline. These philosophers rarely cited the empirical studies of psychologists. In recent decades, however, philosophy of psychology has become more empirical, at least in the sense that more attention is being paid to the details of the empirical studies of psychologists. The result is more interchanges between philosophers and psychologists. Although interest in cognitive psychology appears to predominate in recent American philosophy of psychology, the new emphasis on empirical studies is also reflected in philosophic work on topics not directly related to cognitive psychology. For example, philosophers of psychology have written books in recent years on the clinical foundations of psychoanalysis, the foundations of behavior therapy and behavior modification, and self-deception. The emphasis on empirical data has been taken one step further by naturalists, who argue that in epistemology, at least, and perhaps in all areas of philosophy, philosophical questions should either be replaced by questions from empirical psychology or be answered by appeal to empirical studies in psychology and related disciplines. It is still too early to predict the fruitfulness of the naturalist approach, but this new trend might well have pleased Watson. Taken to an extreme, naturalism would make philosophy dependent on psychology instead of the reverse and thus would further enhance the autonomy of psychology that Watson desired.
See also BEHAVIORISM, COGNITIVE SCIENCE , NATURALISM , PHILOSOPHY OF MIN. E.Er.