Kuhn and cognitive psychology: Reply

Abstract

I would like to thank Roy Lachman and Eric Amsel* for their insightful commentary and criticism. Both Lachman and Amsel have pointed out putative weaknesses in my paper, “The Convergence of Kuhn and Cognitive Psychology.” However, because Amsel’s critique is the more negative of the two, I will confine this rejoinder to rebutting his claim that my paper represents a radical version of psychologism. Lachman’s disappointment in my use of schema theory, on the other hand, is unfortunately beyond immediate comment as I am not yet sure (or convinced) that schema theory is outside Smith & Medin’s (1981) analysis. For instance, the notion of a script (which is essentially equivalent to the notion of a schema) was recently called “promising” in a review of concept formation by Medin SC Smith (1984). At any rate, I will now confront Amsel’s contention. I must admit before proceeding that I did not intend to make the claim that my paper provided evidence for the reduction of philosophy to (cognitive) psychology; indeed, I have generally been opposed to any form of radical reductionism. Evidently, however, I have not been able to practice what I preach, for Anise1 contends in his opening remarks that my approach (or the “psychology of science” approach) in general is consistent with strong psychologism or the view that “philosophical questions can be completely reduced to ones requiring cognitive psychological analyses” (1~. 265). As such, my approach is based on the assumption “that questions of justification are ultimately answered by cognitive psychological analyses” (p. 265) and “that [the] philosopher’s search for normative standards of scientific inquiry w;li be ultimately derived from fine-grained cognitive explanations of scientist;” (p. 265). This brand of psychologism, he then argues, is implausible; but that is not to say that psychology is irrelevant to philosophy. On the contrary, Anise1 suggests that a more plausible account of the relation between philosophy (and in particular epistemology) and psychology is called mainstrea~l psychologism. Specifically, Amsel advocates a version of psychologism which “does not suppose that philosophy of science is reducible to cognitive psychology, but that psychological evidence is relevant in justifying normative propositions” (p. 266). In short, the bulk of Amsel’s argumentation is directed against the notion that normative propositions can be successfully derived from cognitive psychological analyses in favor of the more tenable view that cognitive psychology is (in some way) relevant to logic and epistemology.