The historical boundedness of psychological knowledge and the ethics of shared understandings.

Abstract

Psychological claims concerning human activity, character, deviance, and life are thoroughly embedded in the practices of contemporary social worlds. Originating in ordinary language, psychological terms circulate not merely as science but also as history, making such claims historical artifacts about what kind of beings we are, and most important, what we can portend to be. Psychology as a codification of optimal human being is an inherently moral science, and as such all our claims are subject to an “ethics of shared understanding.” This is not merely an obvious ethics of standards such as enumerated in the various professional codes, which are meant, after all, to protect the autonomy of psychology. Instead we are confronted with an ethic of understanding possible human kinds that requires us to weigh scientific expressions within the forms of life they potentially express. Such a view means that psychological knowledge claims are not just ‘natural kinds,’ even if they satisfy the claims of the gatekeepers of science. Instead, they are embedded in historical communities and carry the historical signs of their origins. What forms of life our knowledge claims give expression to will depend on the ethical commitments we make in the bargain.