Q&A: On Psychology and Sociology
On Psychology and Sociology
Question
I’ve heard various criticisms of you saying that you have logical thinking, and therefore you understand analytic philosophy, but thought, and understanding reality and the world in general, are made up of additional things—psychology, sociology, anthropology—things that you rather dismiss with contempt.
What is your response?
Don’t you think that makes your ideas detached from reality, which depends on many more things besides rational thought and logic? After all, as you know, more than 90 percent of what a person does is not rational at all, even if he thinks he is completely rational. If you like, psychology (intuitions, drives) defeats reason and rationality.
In short, thought requires expertise in other disciplines such as the social sciences, not only the natural sciences, which provide skills of analytic thinking and logic.
What do you say?
Answer
I don’t dismiss them with contempt, but I don’t believe in them very much as disciplines.
When people are too lazy to think, or don’t know how to think, they always use the argument that life is not logic and that there is much more than logic. They don’t even understand that statement itself. Logic is a necessary condition, even if not a sufficient one. Contradictory things say nothing at all, but coherent things are only possible, not necessarily true.
The fact that people act irrationally does not prevent a logical analysis of their actions and thoughts. The social sciences do not provide many skills, certainly not in logic and analytic thinking.