Smedslund and the Psychological Style of Reasoning

Abstract

The chapter presents a critique of “psychologism” as a “style of reasoning” that has dominated disciplinary psychology from its inception and set the course for how psychological phenomena are made intelligible and investigated. Styles of reasoning comprise distinct disciplinary frameworks for scientific argumentation that set the terms for how phenomena are identified, defined, and understood, thus circumscribing the kinds of questions that can be posed about them and kinds of answers that can be justified. Psychologism as a style of reasoning holds that thought and experience are reducible to internal mental properties, in turn, taken to be manifestations of more primary biochemical and neurophysiological structures and processes. An explanation of styles of reasoning and their common features is followed by description of the characteristics and assumptions of psychologism, how it functions as a style of reasoning, and the ways it creates conditions of possibility in which psychological properties become articulated and attain ontological status. Subsequently, Smedslund’s analysis of psychological pseudoempiricism and, particularly, his insights concerning the miscasting of analytic claims as empirical ones derived from psychological experimentation are discussed in light of the ways they align with and support the account of psychologism provided. An illustration of the applicability of the analysis is given using the psychological study of self-regulation.