Q&A: Psychology and Access to the Private Domain
Psychology and Access to the Private Domain
Question
Hello,
I wanted to ask: how are we supposed to learn psychological insights and theories when they are not accessible to empirical observation?
And all that is accessible to us is only the subjects’ modes of expression.
Take even the most basic claim—that other minds exist at all—it is not clear how this can be grounded, since an analogy from a single case—me—is rather weak. I noticed while writing that actually it is not even clear how one infers that either; perhaps it is an a priori claim? But it is strange to say that all of psychology is a priori.
Answer
Every science has a priori components. Even physics assumes that what our eyes show us exists in the world. There is an assumption that what we have seen will probably continue to exist (induction). There is an assumption of causality.
[The claim that other minds exist is similar to the claim that objects exist in the world. With regard to other minds, you at least have one example (yourself), whereas with regard to physical objects you do not have any independent example.]
Psychology too has quite a few a priori assumptions. For example, the reliability of subjects’ answers (although this can be controlled for with various statistical techniques). But you are right that broad parts of psychology are not empirical, and it is hard to see it as a science in the accepted sense. Karl Popper already pointed this out. See also column 405.
Discussion on Answer
As I explained, in physics too our acquaintance is based on assumptions and is not direct. Besides, there too we trust researchers who found this or that result.
You write that a person assumes his eyes reflect reality. That is what I said: there is an assumption here. The existence of our body too is based on those same assumptions. You know of its existence through your senses.
It seems we’re repeating ourselves,
but the physical method is, in theory, open to criticism, whereas the psychological one is less so.
And if so anyway, then why did Karl Popper object to seeing this as a scientific theory?
It is clear that there is an assumption in saying the eyes are reliable, but the point is what you wrote:
"The claim that other minds exist is ***similar*** to the claim that objects exist in the world. Regarding other minds, you have at least ***one example*** (yourself), whereas regarding physical objects you have no independent example"
and that is simply not correct,
because there is no similarity between the cases. Understanding the existence of other people is an analogy from myself (one case), and that is much weaker than explicit visual sense. Because sight says that an object exists before you; analogy is not sensory….
And just as knowledge regarding my body comes from a basic assumption accepted in the empiricist approach, whereas analogy is accepted only in rationalist approaches (after David Hume showed the serious flaw in analogy, which is not derived at all from other events). (If so, the only solution is an a priori one.)
Indeed, we are repeating ourselves. As far as I’m concerned, this has run its course.
Only if I understood you correctly, because from an initial point of view this was a really strange distinction for me,
regarding the problem of minds. (As for Karl Popper, I’ll read the column, God willing.)
What you meant was something like the conceptual continuation of Berkeley after Hume: that insofar as we are not rationalists but empiricists, rationalist assumptions are still embedded here too, such as causality, while in fact the only thing we encounter as the thing in itself is only spirit/mind (something like the migo of the cogito).
And therefore, if so, insofar as we really are empiricists, there also exists within us a rationalistic dimension,
and then it follows that in this case of other minds, this argument actually has even more force than sight, because the analogy in this case stands much more on familiar ground than acquaintance with objects.
And that neutralizes the weakness involved in an analogy from a single event (my own mind) to the mind of all human beings?
But if so, the obvious question is that our acquaintance with a person is acquaintance through his body. If so, this a priori assumption cannot be stronger than sight itself.
And moreover, even questions from the modern field of artificial intelligence—such as whether a robot has consciousness or whether animals have consciousness—seem to show that the answer is not entirely a priori. And then the difficulty returns: even our general understanding of the whole issue of other minds is not from an a priori source. But if so, the question returns: where do we draw it from?
Now you have shifted to discussing what is clearer and what is less so. That is already a topic on which it is hard to make definitive claims.
I will only note that our acquaintance with other minds is not necessarily through seeing the body. It is possible that this can be known directly in a non-sensory way.
It seems to me we’ve exhausted this.
If so, then we definitely haven’t exhausted it.
What does it mean that one can know directly in a non-sensory way, not through seeing a body?
Do you believe in ghosts??? I assume there still are no experiments that have scientifically confirmed such an ability.
That could indeed explain our current ability to distinguish between a robot and a human, right now, but that too could be explained through pure analogy.
What does that have to do with it? Even if we assume that I can know a spirit/mind standing before me not through the body, that is not a ghost. It belongs to a body. Only the acquaintance with it is not made through the body. How do you know of the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He?
How? Suppose indeed that the spirit/mind is connected to a certain body, but you are saying that you have the ability to identify the existence of a human being and not a ghost while your eyes and all your senses are shut and sealed off? That does not sound possible.
God is a simple case. For example, even from a daily encounter with Him one can know, because He implanted awareness of Him within us, as is awakened in prayer, or because He encountered our forefathers at Mount Sinai, and from there we believe that He hears us. But as for His very existence, it is enough to infer it from the complexity of creation.
Thank you. I had actually thought that because there is no direct acquaintance with the experimenter’s mental state, unlike physics for example where matter is accessible, this is not an empirical field. But it is not all that different from any other field, especially since lies can be offset.
I didn’t understand the point about other minds.
From an empiricist point of view, a person actually assumes that his eyes faithfully reflect the state of the world, whereas we do not encounter the mind of the person standing before us.
Likewise, with physical objects too we do have an independent example—our own body.