Psychology and Philosophy of Science

By

Anthony J. Fejfar, B.A., J.D., Esq., Coif

©Copyright 2010 by Anthony J. Fejfar

Every scientific discipline either, explicitly, or implicitly uses an epistemology and

philosophy of science. Most psychologists, either, implicitly, or explicitly, use logical

positivism as their epistemology and philosophy of science. The problem with this is

that logical positivism is not logically, or scientifically valid. As I have written

previously, sense experience, which is the basis for “positivism,” is homeostatic in

nature, and therefore, not objectively nor universally valid. Also, most logical positivists

only pay lip service to logic, and have never even had a course in logic. Moreover, there

is no universal agreement on which logical rules are valid, or at least acceptable. Finally,

it is possible to take one logical syllogism, such as “A or B” and reason to logically

inconsistent conclusions. Thus, while logic is a valuable tool, it is not universally valid.

And, if one were to really apply logical positivism across the board, at least one half of

all the mainstream academic disciplines would be excluded. For example, logical

positivism does not seem to allow for any discussion of internal feelings or thoughts, etc.

With respect to inner thought, feelings, intuition, one might either take the position that

such internal phenomenon of the mind are either not real, as imaginary or ideal, or

alternatively, real. However, internal phenomenon of the mind are neither real, nor

ideal, but instead are relatively real. As Jung tells us, the internal content of the mind or

mental activities are phenomenon, rather than being real or unreal. We cannot say that

the internal content of the mind is real, because such content is often imaginary, or not
real. On the other hand, we cannot say it is unreal, or hallucinated, because such content

does even purport to be sense experience, or real, in some outward, objective sense. For

example, I can imagine an purple cow in my mind, but, it is very difficult to find a purple

cow out in the external world. Yet, is it absurd to say that you can hallucinate in the

imagination, because, of course, what is in the imagination is imaginary, and meant to be

not exactly real. Thus, we can conclude that phenomenology provides a much better

epistemology and philosophy of science for psychology than does logical positivism.