CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Tudorie, George Daniel |
|---|---|
| Title | Margins of Psychology |
| Summary | This thesis presents a case for skepticism about the idea that explanation in psychology must proceed uniformly throughout the discipline by adopting a strict version of natural scientific explanation. This idea is not itself a piece of psychology, but a philosophical commitment derivative from the historical struggle of psychology to establish its scientific credentials. Here it is argued that these credentials are not threatened by accepting diverse patterns of explanation for dissimilar explananda. A specific version of this argument is developed in this thesis; its backbone is a distinction between the kinds of individuals that constitute the object of psychological explanation. Individuals are arranged from the equator of typical, socially competent, accultured persons, to various poles or ‘margins’. This arrangement reflects the degree of opacity of various persons, as seen from the interpretive standpoint of (their own) common culture. Two such poles are explored here: young children, and psychotic individuals. The first chapter presents evidence for the persistence through theoretical changes of the idea that psychology progresses as a natural science grounded in a unified explanatory pattern (Mill, James, Watson, Köhler, Marr). The chapter then focuses on two traditions which resist this view: the defense of the autonomy of the 'Geisteswi ssenschaften&#x 27;, areas of psychology here included (Dilthey, Collingwood); and Wittgenstein’s views about the applicability of (regular) psychological concepts in exceptional scenarios. The eventual target of invoking these sources of resistance is the popularity in recent developmental and clinical cognitive psychology of theories that assimilate the explanatory order of the ‘margins’ to that of the paradigm. The second chapter develops this idea in the developmental case (Tomasello’s shared intentionality model of early communication and cooperation), while the third focuses on psychosis (Frith’s theory of schizophrenia). |
| Supervisor | Ben-Yami, Hanoch |
| Department | Philosophy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/tudorie_george.pdf |
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