Psychologism: what is it and what does this philosophical current propose?

The truth about things slumbers behind the veil of appearances, in a place that can only be accessed through the safe conduct of thought. Since time immemorial, human beings have aspired to know it, in order to unravel the mystery of life and reality.

The search for unknowns about the human and the mundane has been, since the dawn of time, a distinctive element between our species and other animals; as well as the most solid proof regarding the existence of a reason, which lives between the fissures and convolutions of such a refined central nervous system.

Therefore, thoughts are a phenomenon that depends on brain structures and that "connects" directly with experience and orientation. experience of those who wield them, so it is very difficult to separate the results of thinking from the process that ultimately allows reach them.

At this juncture it is the philosophical current on which this article will deal: psychologism. Its ontological and epistemological implications are enormous, and for this reason they were a source of great conflict between the thinkers of the s. XIX.

• Related article: "How are Psychology and Philosophy alike?"

What is psychologism?

Psychologism is a philosophical current that arises from ontology and epistemology, which deals with our ability to grasp the truth of things and that has been the subject of great controversy since its conception. This perspective was particularly defended by empiricist thinkers, and postulated that all knowledge could be explained by the postulates of the psychological sciences (or reduced to them). Such a way of approaching reality implies that philosophical knowledge depends on the emotional, motivational, mnestic, cognitive and creative substratum of the human beings who think about it; inhibiting access to the ideal root of it (at the beginning of what they are).

In other words, all content that is thought about is subject to the limits of the mind that conceives it. Thus all things would be understood through the filter of the informational analysis processes and the mechanisms of cognition, being the only way to draw such logic.

In fact, psychologism raises an analogy with classical logicism, through which it was intended to reduce any theory to the universal laws of logic, but postulating Psychology as the fundamental vertex of this hierarchy. In this sense, logic would become another part of Psychology, but not an independent reality of it, nor nor is it a method with which to draw conclusions beyond what is accessible through the senses and processes of one's own reflection.

Psychologism is a theoretical prism that starts from anthropocentrism when understanding things from reality, and that has been applied to many of the universal questions posed from Philosophy. His influences have spread to numerous areas of knowledge, such as ethics or didactics; but also to mathematics, history and economics.

He assumes a form of scientific positivism, but recognizes that potential knowledge is not alien to the perceptual limitations of the one who contemplates it, from which a theoretical contradiction difficult to sort out.

In short, psychologism emerges at the confluence of Philosophy, scientific positivism and epistemology; and the connection with logic would start from the German ideological debate (s. XIX) between Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl (of which small brushstrokes will be offered later).

Although there is some controversy in this regard, it is considered that the concept of psychologism was coined by Johann E. Erdmann in the year 1870, although the elementary rudiments of it predate such a historical moment. It has also been proposed that he could be championed by the philosopher Vincenzo Gioberti in his work on ontology (similar to Platonic idealism and in which aspired to explain the very origin of ideas through an intuitive reflection of the essence of these), in which the concepts of psychologism and / or psychologism to contrast the scope of their vision with a hypothetical opposite (the Italian ontology versus the psychologism).

Ultimately, psychologism reduces all the "intelligible" elements of reality (which are the object of study of all the sciences and of Philosophy) to the sensible, that is, to what can be perceived through the senses.

That is why knowledge could not be understood in the absence of a subject who observes it, nor of the mental processes that unfold in the situation of interaction between the observer and the observed. The subjective sense would impose insurmountable limits to the potential of knowing reality, even to risk of confusing the product of thought with the tool by which philosophical knowledge is obtained (since they are not equivalent).

In the successive lines we will delve into the work of some authors who defended or opposed psychologism. Many of them fiercely faced those of the opposing side, representing one of the most notable dialectical polemics in the entire history of contemporary thought.

Defense of psychologism

Perhaps one of the most relevant defenders of psychologism is David hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian who is among the most popular empiricists. From his extensive work, the will to reduce any possible form of knowledge to what he coined as "empirical psychology", and which implied the comprehension of the sensible through the different sensory organs. In its Treat of human nature (a top opera by the author) metaphysics, ethics and the theory of knowledge were reduced or simplified to certain psychological parameters; understanding that such domains were basic to determine direct experience with things in the tangible world.

In his writings Hume described two forms of expression for such psychologism: gnoseological and moral. The first of them stated that the problems of knowledge (its origin, limits and value) should be understood as forms of reaction of the mind to the action of the exterior, summarizing all objectivity to an epiphenomenon of life mental. The second understood that the totality of the notions of ethics would be explained only as theoretical constructions, since in the beginning they were no more than subjective responses to witnessing more or less fair social interactions.

Another partisan thinker of psychologism was John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher (but of Scottish origin) who defended the idea that logic was not a discipline independent of the psychological branch of Philosophy, but depended on it in the sense hierarchical. For this author, reasoning would be a discipline within Psychology through which to arrive at know the substratum of mental life, and logic only the tool with which to achieve this objective. Despite all this, the author's extensive work did not definitively clarify his position on the extreme, finding discrepancies at different times in his life.

Finally, the figure of Theodor Lipps (German philosopher focused on art and aesthetics), for which Psychology would be the essential foundation of all knowledge in the disciplines math / plastic arts. Thus, this would be the supply of all logical precept that supports the ability to know elements of reality.

• You may be interested: "The utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill"

Opposition to psychologism

The main opponent of the psychologist current was undoubtedly Edmund Husserl. This German-born philosopher and mathematician, one of the most notorious phenomenologists of all time, spoke out against this way of thinking (he considered it empty). His work analyzes in depth his advantages and disadvantages, although he seems to be more in favor (as explicitly evidenced in numerous passages of his texts) to his opposition. The author distinguishes two specific types of problems in psychologism: those that are related to its consequences and those that are rather related to its prejudices.

Concerning the consequences, Husserl showed his concern for equating the empirical with the psychological, understanding that the one and the other had very different objectives and results. He also considered that the facts of logic and psychology should not be located on the same plane, since this would imply that the former they were to assume the very character of the latter (which are generalizations of value, but not proven facts according to a terminology logic). De facto, he remarked that no mental phenomenon could be explained with the conventional laws of a syllogism.

Regarding prejudices, Husserl stressed the need to differentiate "pure logic" from thinking (rule-based), since the purpose of the first would be to obtain evidence of objective facts and the the second to decipher the nature of subjective and personal constructions about oneself and the world.

The main implication of this would be to discern an objective epistemological structure together with another of the subjective, complementary in the plane of internal experiences and science, but distinguishable in the end and after. For the author, the evidence would be an experience of the truth, which means that the internal converge with the external in the framework of representations of the facts that would reach a value of reality.

Bibliographic references:

• Gur, B. & Wiley, D. (2009). Psychologism and Instructional Technology. Educational Philosophy and Theory. 41, 307 - 331.
• Lehan, V. (2012). Why Philosophy Needs Logical Psychologism. Dialogue, 51 (4), 37-45.