a link between the social and natural sciences: the case of scientific psychology

S&S Quarterly, Inc.Guilford Press

A Link between the Social and Natural Sciences: The Case of Scientific PsychologyAuthor(s): Claude M. J. Braun and Jacinthe M. C. BaribeauSource: Science & Society, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 131-158Published by: Guilford PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40402641Accessed: 05-04-2016 01:05 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

S&S Quarterly, Inc., Guilford Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto Science & Society

This content downloaded from 132.206.33.30 on Tue, 05 Apr 2016 01:05:04 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Science fcf Society, Vol. XLIX, No. 2, Summer 1985, pp. 131-158

A LINK BETWEEN THE SOCIAL AND

NATURAL SCIENCES: THE CASE OF

SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

CLAUDE M.J. BRAUN AND JACINTHE M.C. BARIBEAU

ESSAY ADDRESSES a readership interested in the social sciences. It is written, however, by experimental psychophysiologists whose primary fields of research are

in natural science. Our purpose is to theorize about the links which exist between living organisms as natural beings and as social beings, and thereby to lay the foundations for a metatheory of psychology compatible with Marxism.

These relations will be analyzed within the context of the problem of objectivity versus subjectivity in psychology. The fact that psychology is a link between the natural and social sciences will be emphasized. By describing psychic activity as the most evolved form of "information exchange," an attempt will be made to modernize Lenin's reflection theory. The specific application of materialism to psychology will be demonstrated, along with the role of realism and radical determinism.

An Initial Precaution: The Marxist Definition of Definition

Marxists generally agree that the Aristotelian definition (by species and genus) is handy and precise. But as Lucien Sève has noted,1 Marxism does not define things quite the same way Aristotle did. There are two problems with the Aristotelian approach to definitions: 1) it tends to fix things outside of time, 2) it tends to be formal and abstract.

The present essay will try to approach the general problems of scientific psychology by defining the things, the real entities,

1 Lucien Sève, Introduction à la Philosophie Marxiste (Paris, 1981), p. 72.

131


132 SCIENCE & SOCIETY

which make up the object of psychology. Each attempt to conceptually fixate an object of scientific investigation involves an analysis of the genesis of that object. What is essential is the concrete existence of each object, its content more than its form, its development more than its structure, and above all, its mediation, its connection with other objects.

The Marxist philosophy of science classifies, defines, and analyzes the sciences on the basis of their objects more than their methods. Scientific methods have become too local, too special- ized, too heterogeneous, too independent and too changing, to be of much use for the global metatheoretical analysis we attempt here. We need a clear concept of the object of psychology - though we recognize that concepts of scientific objects also evolve over time.2

Toward a Marxist Definition of the Object of Scientific Psychological Investigation

If we are to define the object of psychology we will need to know where it is, when and how it develops, what it is made of, and how it functions. Marxists usually do not take part in the de- bate over whether psychology is the study of the "mind" or of "behavior." In science, mind is always studied via behavior, and psychologists never study bodily movements which do not reflect some kind of psychic process. The word "behavior" clearly implies "psychological" involvement - in everyday language and in technical psychological language as well. The important difference between the two terms, for Marxist materialists, is that the term "psyche" denotes a concrete natural-science determina- tion of a structured, stable fundamental object of investigation, whereas Watsonian "behavior," with its exclusion of the term "psyche," does not provide such a possibility.3

2 Roy Bhaskar makes this point very clearly against the (sociological) anti-realism or positivism of Popper, Hempel, and Winch. He writes, "... we must first know what kinds of things societies are before we can consider whether it is possible to study them scientifically. Indeed, without some prior specification of an object of inquiry, any discourse on method is found to be more or less arbitrary." "On the Possibility of Social Scientific Knowledge and the Limits of Naturalism," in John Mepham and David-Hillel Ruben (eds.), Issues in Marxist Philosophy, Vol. 3 (Brighton, Sussex, 1979), pp. 110-111.

3 It is ironic that Watson, who expelled the word "psyche" from the vocabulary of science on the grounds that the term is vague and mystified, had no clear concept of


SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY 133

Everyone acknowledges today that the psyche (mind) is not simply a passive build-up of sensory receptions - as our associa- tionist forefathers believed. Strangely though, the Watsonian behaviorist conception of the object of psychology, because of its rigid methodologial focus, started out as narrow associationism. Watsonian behaviorism postulated that behavior is to be defined as macroscopic or immediately observable bodily movements in brief stimulus-response (S-R) contexts. Behaviorists have since been compelled to expand, in time and space, the environmental context of what can legitimately be called "behavioral." Instru- mentally, however, behaviorism continues to impose rigid re- strictions on the types of movements which are to be recognized as "behavioral," thereby excluding the whole field of sub- organismic, or intra-organismic processes from psychological study.

Marxists do not recognize the validity of such a restriction. Psychic function is no doubt visible in immediately observable peripheral organismic motions, but it is also visible in brain motions.4 In fact, the purest, most essential form of psychic function consists of "psychic reflection" - not gross motor behavior. Psychic reflection necessarily comprises in-going and out- going facets. Behavior is always action, i.e., a junction or mediation between appropriation and objectification of information by an organism. Psychic function is essentially a "knowledge act." As early as 1938, the most eminent French Marxist psychologist, Henri Wallon, unpretentiously hit the nail on the head when he said that "mental life" is the object of psychology.5 The problem with this definition, however, is that it is liable to be interpreted mentalistically, subjectivistically, even though Wallon himself had a materialist and objectivist point of view.

The first, and perhaps the only Marxist author to date who has come up with an unambiguously materialist, dialectical, objectivistic, non-reductionistic definition of the object of psychological science is Alexei Leontiev. If one were to summarize Leontiev's theory of psyche in a single sentence (a genus and

"behavior." See "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," Psychological Review, 1913 (20), pp. 158-177.

4 For a passionate and effective recent philosophical defense of neuroscientinc investigation of psychological phenomena see Mario Bunge, The Mind-Body Problem (Toronto, 1980).

5 See Henri Wallon, Les Origines du Caractere Chez l'Enfant (Paris, 1953), p. 54.



species definition) one would be compelled to formulate some such clumsy expression as "psyche is objective activity constitu- tive of subjective reflection." A longer version of this definition comes from Leontiev himself:

. . . evolution of behavior and the psyche of animals may be adequately understood specifically as a history of the development of the objective content of activity. At every new stage there appeared an even more complete subordination of activity to objective connections and relations of the properties of the objects with which the animals interacted. . . . the development of the objective content of activity finds its expression in subsequent development of psychic reflection, which regu- lates the activity in the objective environment. ... a double transfer is realized: the transfer object -> process of activity, and the transfer activity -» its subjective product.6

Everything Marxism stands for in psychology can be found in this definition. It is a genetic definition phylogenetically, historically, and ontogenetically. It is a materialist monism because it represents its object as a system within a system. It gives precedence to the objective over the subjective. It distinguishes between the process and the product, the content and the form. It interprets the psyche as a "production." It is dialectical because it does not fail to express the unity and interpénétration of opposites - which in this case happens to be crucial. Perhaps most important, it is ingenious. It expresses precisely what it is supposed to define, leaving nothing out and yet excluding everything it is not supposed to cover.

The Marxist definition of psyche is not a form of sensualist empiricism. It does not view the mind as the gradually defined shores of a river of external qualities grooving passages and net- works in an initially inert and formless state. On the other hand, it can in no way be identified with constructivism of the mentalistic kind to be found in Kant, Piaget and Kolakowski. It excludes pan-psychism in biology, since purely vegetative and infra-vegetative formations and functions are not recognized as "psychic." Nor does it allow psychology to be turned into a non- entity by an overbearing sociological "Big Brother" of the structuralist kind, as found, for example, in Althusser. It is a

6 Alexei Leontiev, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978), pp. 52-53.



psychologist's definition, which should be acceptable to all those presently involved in scientific research in the field of psychology-

Objectivity and Subjectivity in Psychology

Because psychology is a "fundamentar science of subjective and objective phenomena, an analysis of the specific problems and discoveries of psychology with regard to objectivity and subjectivity may bring some new insights to both natural and social scientists in their understanding of each other, and each other's objects of study.

First, however, a brief etymological clarification is required. From Duns Scotus until Kant, the philosophical meaning of the word pair, "subject/object," was in a way the inverse of its present meaning. The subject was the "referent," the object was the "rep- resen tation.w The still frequent expression "subject-matter" is a vestige of this usage. This usage is now antiquated and will re- ceive no further consideration here.

Perhaps the most prevalent distinction between the two terms today consists of denoting self-conscious or "internal" knowledge as subjective, and "external" or experimental and ob- servational knowledge as objective (Claude Bernard). This distinction is of course quite pertinent to the metatheory of psychology. To the extent, however, that subjective and objective forms of knowledge are viewed as intuitive/deductive and inductive respectively, in Bernard's sense, the distinction is not com- pletely adequate. Intuitive/deductive knowledge can under certain conditions be objective, and inductive knowledge can under certain conditions be subjective.

We will attempt to demonstrate that the above formal distinctions between subjectivity and objectivity are improper by analyzing the latter as concrete and real entities. Before this, however, it will be helpful to consider another modern notion of subjectivity and objectivity: this consists of inappropriately ap- plying the Marxist concepts of "base" and "superstructure" to human individuality. Buss for example defines the "material base" as something "objective" and the "psychological superstructure" as something "subjective."7

7 Alan Buss, A Dialectical Psychology (New York, 1980), pp. 44, 56, 60. Marr, who be-



Putting aside for the time being Buss's (incorrect) notions of base and superstructure, let us examine his statement that that which is psychological is subjective while that which is not psychological is objective. This viewpoint seems not only unacceptable but worthy of some discussion since it has crucial implications for psychological metatheory. We shall consider two reasons why, in our opinion, psychological reality cannot be identified with subjectivity.

1. For the scientific psychologist subjective phenomena are real material phenomena which occur within "subjects" or "persons." These "subjects" are in turn things with special properties - namely, higher order consciousness, including consciousness of consciousness itself. Our use here of the term consciousness

should be understood in a wide sense, which includes false knowledge, illusion, delusion, irrationality, as well as true knowledge. Primary consciousness consists of the entire immediate content, the ensemble of accessible representation, of an alert or awake psyche. All psychological beings are capable of at least ru- dimentary consciousness. Our concept, "subjectivity," we hope, can be made more precise and less tautological than the concept, "consciousness." We need a clear and stable criterion which will

allow us to define how subjective processes emerge from non- subjective processes. Many authors have identified subjectivity with certain types of, or formal properties of, knowledge. Others have identified subjectivity with human experience, particularly emotions and sentiments. The problem with these definitions is that nobody agrees on the meaning of these criteria. The design and execution of a scientific experiment involves induction, de- duction, intuition, analysis, synthesis, insight, and quite often - irrationality. Which of these are subjective, which objective? Pure introspection can be performed using any of the above models. And as for human experience, what is the difference between it and animal experience? Do animals emote, do they feel, are they

lieved that human language is a part of the superstructure was bluntly refuted by Stalin in Marxism and the Problem of Linguistics. Stalin defended the (correct) thesis that language is neither an infrastructure nor a superstructure. Lucien Sève, in his Marxisme et Théorie de la Personnalité (Paris, 1972), took up this theme and broadened it by showing that historically mediated functions of the mind occur in the base and superstructure of society and that the dialectic between the spontaneous creation of symbols and their crystallization in history engages the base-superstructure relationship. He coined the term "juxtastructure" to express this aspect of the human psyche.



subjects, can they be persons? We feel that the generally accepted ways of conceptualizing

subjectivity and objectivity are quite fruitless. We prefer to define subjectivity as the ensemble of a person's psychological processes which require as a condition of their existence the identifi- cation, by means of arbitrary signs (language), of an ability to represent to him or herself, directly by means of similar arbitrary signs, a reality conceived as having an existence independent of the person's own knowledge. Subjectivity then, to put it briefly, is the recognizance of objective existence, or to put it another way, is knowledge of knowledge. Animals do not possess this property and are therefore not subjects, though they do manifest psychological functions. In Pavlov's terminology, subjectivity would be said to make its appearance with the second signaling system. In Marx's terminology this would correspond to "socialized" representation. In Lenin's terminology, "reflection of reflection" might be the appropriate term. Modern cognitive psychologists simply refer to the phenomenon as "metacognition."

2. Psychological science constantly discovers ways by means of which one human being may more or less directly observe so- called "subjective" or internal states or processes taking place within another human being. If "subjectivity" were to consist of that which is unobservable by an external observer and "objectivity" of that which is so observable (we think this would be a crudely empiricist and incorrect definition of subjectivity and objectivity), then the sphere of subjective human experience would shrink very rapidly and would in principle have no theoretical content. Complex psychophysiological methods, such as brain- evoked potentials, provide direct (or at least more direct) access - without mediation of the "subject's" self-interpretation - to such higher order mental processes as voluntary attention, ex- pectation, decision-making, and even semantic activity itself.8

8 See Walter Ritter, "Cognition and ERP: the Relation of Post-stimulus Negative Poten- tial and Cognitive Processes," Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Event- Related Slow Potentials of the Brain (EPICVI) (Chicago, 1981); Robert M. Chapman, John W. McCrary, John A. Chapman, "Memory Processes and Evoked Potentials," Canadian Journal of Psychology, XXXV, 1981, pp. 202-212; Harry H. Kornhuber, Lar- ry Deecke (eds.), Progress in Brain Research, Vol. 54 (Amsterdam, 1980); Martha Kutas, Emanual Donchin, "Variations in the Latency of P300 as a Function of Varia- tion in Semantic Categorization," In D. Otto (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress on Event-Related Slow Potentials of the Brain (Washington, 1980).



The argument we want to make here is not that subjectivity does not exist - on the contrary. What we want to show is that subjectivity is not a realm exclusively accessible by self-analysis or introspection. Because Marxism refuses to credit subjectivity with mystical properties, it has no problem in admitting the observability in principle of subjective activity, and the importance in scientific practice of a concrete approach to subjective life, i.e., the direct study wherever possible of higher order psychic processes. The meaning of the word pair, subjectivity/ objectivity, requires, perhaps, still further elaboration.

The term "objective" in common language, and perhaps in philosophical language too, commonly refers to the property of "a knowledge attempt which is apt to be truthful."9 "Subjective," on the other hand, refers to a knowledge attempt which is too self-centered and biased to be "apt to be truthful." We reject this usage of the antonym pair because it is imprecise. While there is undoubtedly a connection, the difference between truth and objectivity should not be overlooked. Truth is an essentially formal concept whereas objectivity, as we define it here, contains concrete, formal, and functional properties. It is a law of grammar that adverbs and adjectives are transformations of verbs or nouns from functional ontological statements to qualification statements. Consequently it follows from our prior definition of the noun "object" that we understand the adjective "objective" to serve the purpose of qualifying any "thing" as existing without meta-knowledge (knowledge of knowledge). Atoms, stones and certain parts of active brains are objective beings. However, the part of a given brain involved in philosophizing about its own subjective/objective processes should be viewed as an objectively existing subjective being.

Conceivably, a disembodied brain living in a bowl (not necessarily a complete brain) could include within itself a subject (provided it has lived in a social environment long enough prior to its dissection from the organism). The reverse however is not possible; a body without a brain could never be a subject. To

9 Frank Cunningham, in his book Objectivity in Social Science (Toronto, 1973), pp. 3-4, adopts such a definition - though by discussing exclusively the problem of objectivity, he avoids numerous sticky problems having to do with the concept of subjectivity. In fact, objectivity includes within its concept its opposite - an aspect which unfortunately is frequently bypassed.



sum up the "concrete" aspect of this concept of subjectivity/ objectivity, we propose that subjectivity, or a subject as a "thing," is necessarily a higher-order brain structure, and that in opposition to this, objectivity, or an object as a "thing," is anything up to but not including certain higher-order brain structures previously defined.10

The objectai or "thing" aspects of any concept are not the only important ones, however. When thinking psychologically about the concept pair, objectivity/subjectivity, the "process" or "functional" dimension of the concept pair often takes precedence. It is well known that personal metatheory, i.e., theory de- signed by an individual to understand how he/she personally views the world, is highly contentious as far as its truth value is concerned. We can easily see that if subjective thinking is knowledge of our own knowledge - or to be more precise, an individual's thinking about his own personal knowledge - the common language notions of "emotionality" and "arbitrariness" attached to subjectivity are preserved - though they lose their defini- tional status. We also agree with the prevalent notion which holds that objective thinking consists of a more empirically de- rived type of knowledge of things and events. We recognize that there is a privileged link between such "objective" knowledge and "truth." However, this statement means very little without a specification of the detailed conditions of truthful knowledge. Of course, providing such specification would go beyond the scope of the present essay.

Can subjective knowledge be known objectively? This is one of the major problems facing scientific psychology. Psychologists have in fact been highly imaginative, but not very effective, in devising objective tools and methods for the study of subjectivity. Examples of such attempts include projective tests like the Rorschach ink blot test. More promising techniques include cognitive electrophysiology and other more natural-science ap- proaches.

10 Vygotsky was the first to state that "any word possesses an object reference. It can function as a substitute for an object." Reported by Alexander R. Luria in Language and Cognition (New York, 1981), p. 34. Even the concept of "truth" can be formulated so as to illustrate this principle. "Truth" consists of a relation between two things or objects, a cognition (or brain process) on the one hand and an external independent object on the other. The relation can be postulated to be identity, isomorphy, similari- ty, etc.



A final clarification of our understanding of the word pair, "subject-object," might be useful. Both words refer to things as- sumed by us to exist in space and time. Our technical concept of "subject" does not occupy the same semantic field as the common language concept of "human individual." The "subject" is a functional sub-unit of the human organism - not the entire organism.

A Materialist Approach to the Metatheory of Psychology

In the previous section, our emphasis upon objectivity over subjectivity, our refusal to let form get the better of content,11 our recognition of the irreducibility of the philosophical concept of "concreteness"12 are simply corollaries of a more general philosophical view - namely, the Marxist variety of materialism.

Absolute materialism as an ideological position is spontane- ously adhered to as such by most Marxist metatheorists. As a scientific attitude, however, absolute materialism is an a posteriori synthesis, which is always a process of observing and testing the evidence, rather than the expression of an a priori commitment.

The extent to which Marxism has evolved in this area -

particularly with respect to the science of psychology - can be measured by comparing present scientific views and terminology to those of Lenin, Dietzgen, Marx and Engels on the mind-body problem and on the use of the terms "matter," "material," etc.

To say thought is material is to make a false step, a step toward confusing materialism and idealism. - Lenin13

The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind. - Lenin14

1 1 See Henri Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism (New York, 1968). 12 See Georges Politzer, Ecrits II: Les Fondements de la Psychologie (Paris, 1973). In the

1930s, this French Communist philosopher wrote simultaneously against traditional theological ("abstract") psychology and against the "abstract" positivist psychology of his time. His own attempt to introduce the human experiential dimension into psychology found expression in his call for a "science of drama" and for a "concrete psychology."

13 Materialism and Empino-Criticism (Peking, 1972), p. 290. 14 Ibid, p. 311.



Matter is a boundary of the mind beyond which the latter cannot pass. - Dietzgen15

The fundamental form of this [productive] activity is of course material, on which depend all other forms - mental, political, religious, etc. - Marx and Engels16

Needless to say, these formulations are not compatible with absolute materialism as contemporary materialist psychologists see it. "Thought" is viewed today as an exclusively material process which consists of nothing but the motions of parts of the brain. No gnoseological distinctions or terminological twists can be allowed to infirm this statement. There are no "non-material"

forms of mental or "social" activity. There are no ontological distinctions to be made between symbolic phenomena - whether they be dead (Popper's third world) or alive (thought) - and non-symbolic phenomena. Both have a concrete existence - only the former also has an abstract existence in addition to, and in perfect isomorphy with, its concrete existence.

Relations Between the Objects of Psychology and Biology

The ideal is nothing more than the material when it has been transposed and translated inside the human head.17

Consciousness is a product of the brain.18

. . . thought is a function of the brain.19

Despite certain lacunae in some aspects of the mind-body problem, Marx, Engels and Lenin were able to state, in limpid materialist terms, a thesis which no psychophysiologist would deny today and yet which many philosophers, including some

15 Quoted by Lenin, Ibid, p. 290. 16 K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology (Moscow, 197(5), p. 90. 17 Karl Marx, Das Kapital, "Preface," Vol. I (Hamburg, 1883), p. 3 (our translation).

English language translators have usually translated Marx's term Menschenkopf by mind whereas we feel the term head is more correct and more interesting for our own purposes.

18 Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach (Moscow, 1968), p. 607, and Anti-Dühring (Moscow, 1975), p. 46.

19 We prefer Lenin's formulation in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (Peking, 1972), p. 97, because though the idea of thought as a brain product has not been conclusively rejected by experimental bioscience, it is generally more appropriate today to con- ceive of thought as a brain function or process.



Marxists,20 are still unable to grasp. Since cognition and neural processes both occur in the brain, how are we to distinguish the concrete object of psychology from that of neurophysiology? The answer to that question is to recognize that there are different processes that go on in the brain. Brain function of an essentially psychic nature, consisting of reflective activity, is not the same as brain function of an essentially non-psychic nature, such as thermal, chemical, immunological regulation and other vegetative processes required for sustenance of life. This does not deny that vegetative functions can be brought into the psychological orbit with biofeedback techniques.

Psychic processes or psychic reflection occurring in the brain necessarily comprise a set of mnemonic traces organized into a system of anticipatory construction, a set of anticipatory loops, i.e., action programs. Purely biological functions operate at less complex levels. Psychic functions subsume the biological. Psychic life requires and includes, but is not specifically essentially identical to, such processes as thermo-regulation, cell nutri- tion, cell excretion, cellular repair and maintenance, immunological processes, etc. Biological existence is conceivable in a context of mere homeostasis, vegetativeness. Not so for psychic functions.

The phylogenetic and developmental facts concerning psychic function force us to recognize that the psyche assumes a certain number of changing structures over time. These structures are essentially determined by the operation of anticipatory reflection (Oparin) - i.e., diverse combinations of maturational and learned patterns in the case of most species studied by psychologists. Psychic function cannot be explained, cannot even be conceptualized, solely by means of inputs and outputs. Certain insect-eating plants manifest tissue irritability which resembles animal sensation. They also react rather quickly to stimuli such as flies by suddenly closing up into a trap. "Technically" such mechanisms compare favorably to quite a range of animal "motor" responses. However, fly-eating in plants cannot be considered a psychological mechanism (or a behavior) because plants do not learn. Plants cannot learn because they cannot remember. Psychological memory, as opposed for example to machine 20 See Tran Duc Thao, Récherches sur l'Origine du Langage et de la Conscience (Paris, 1977),

p. 51.



memory, is a process of gradual and/or discontinuous, incidental and/or essential, partial and/or all-encompassing, directed and/or scattered, selective and/or free-floating, constructive and/or deconstructive, passive and/or active mediation of traces of environmental variations among themselves, of environmental variations with sensory variations of the organism, and of sensory variations among themselves - including our awareness of our own ongoing thoughts and feelings. Memory consists of the establish- ment of links, of relations, of mediations between events. Learn- ing, which is the essential psychic mechanism, happens in the brain - not in the limb movements or muscle groups studied by the behaviorists.

The notion of psyche as "mediation" is a crucial concept for Marxism.21 Learning is a mediation between past and present, interior and exterior, sensation and motoricity. Psychology's des- tiny is to become an integrated science of individual behavior. This means that psychology's descriptions and explanations will then be equally detailed and powerful at the levels of 1) mental content, 2) mental function, 3) physiological content, and 4) physiological function. The science of psyche must strive towards the concrete understanding of psychic activity, "on loca- tion." Psychic activity occurs (among other places such as the en- docrine system) in brains. It is principally in brains that we will find the mechanisms whereby individuals learn to "appropriate" and "objectify" information.

Where in the brain are these two types of processes, psychological and physiological? How do they develop? How are they interconnected?

We know a great deal about the basic simple vegetative functions of the brain. Unfortunately, we know practically nothing about psychic functions of the brain. We are able to localize complex psychic functions such as verbal-motor, verbal- receptive, spatial, etc., in areas of the brain. We have a few notions about brain psychopathology. We have a few vague bits of information regarding relations between ingestion and certain drugs and mental processes. We are beginning to correlate electrical field events in the brain with cognitive processes such as voluntary selective attention, etc. We have some knowledge of

21 See Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).



the ways by which psychic functons get organized hierarchically (spatiotemporally) in the brain during a person's life span.22 But we still have no idea of what a mnemonic trace looks like! We

are still searching for the engram. We suspect the engram of having chemical, electrolytic, magnetic, holographic, hormonal, genetic, electrical properties, but we have no hard facts to allow us to choose any one or several of these hypotheses. The elementary psychological brain unit remains entirely a hypothetical con- struct to this day. Nobody knows what a psychological trace, engram, deposit, or assembly looks like. We have not progressed very far beyond Wilder Penfield's remarkable discovery that pin- point stimulation of the cortex in humans produces vivid recol- lections and/or reenactments of past events complete with affective concomitants, appropriate color, kinesthetic and acoustic im- pressions, etc.23 Nevertheless, some progress has been made, es- pecially at the level of the molecular organization underlying learning. Although initial crude methods of finding the biomolecular basis of learning and memory storage proved dis- appointing, more recent investigations on intact, living inverte- brates in experimental learning paradigms hold great promise.24

Relations Between the Objects of Psychology, the Social Sciences, and Other Knowledge Forms

We have attempted to delineate as concretely as possible the inferior limits of the psychological object in our metatheory. We wish now to briefly consider what could be called the upper limits, as understood in the concrete sense, of this psychological object. Though we hold that the concrete study of the psychic organization of the brain is the most challenging and potentially the most fruitful task of scientific psychology, it is important to keep in mind that the action of the organism as a whole, in its full integrity, is the central concern of what we can call psychic motion. Thus, global concepts compatible with integral action of the organism are indispensable. However, anthropocentric metaconcepts such as "intentionality" and zoocentric metaconcepts such as "drive" must be carefully avoided, or at least 22 See Luria's 3-tier theory of brain organization in The Working Brain (New York, 1976). 23 Wilder Penfield and Theodore Rassmussen, The Cerebral Cortex of Man: A Clinical

Study of Localization of Function (New York, 1950). 24 See Eric Kandell, The Cellular Basis of Behavior (San Francisco, 1976).



relativized, if we want to build a metatheory relevant to psychology and not truncated either from below or from above. Leontiev's concepts of "appropriation" and "objectification" of the environmental or historical given are a good starting point from which to work down to more specific and elementary aspects.25 Though only neural and neuroglandular tissues possess psychic properties (bone, cartilage, blood, etc., cannot in themselves be objects of psychological study, though the case of the immune system is less clear-cut), the structure and flow of psychic phenomena have a concrete as well as an abstract (coded) spatiotemporal existence. The gross form of the nervous and neuroglandular systems (tree shape, cephalocaudal and proximodistal organization, etc.) must never be neglected, even though the core set of engrams can be maintained despite loss of one or several branches (e.g., the phantom limb phenomenon) and can be reestablished in children, following the loss of practically any component beneath a critical mass (e.g., speech centers migrate to the non-dominant hemisphere following destruction of the dominant hemisphere).

Every psychologist knows that psychology is a "borderline" science, that it is surrounded on all sides by other sciences upon which it heavily depends. Clearly, scientific psychology is far from being the only route by which to explore the psyche. Many sciences tend to be confused with what can properly be called psychology. There is an obvious explanation for this. Psychology has little direct experimental access to its core object, particularly at the human level, for ethical reasons. Psychology has traditionally been forced to raid the other sciences and non- scientific disciplines and to appropriate their methods and con- ceptual equipment. Understandably this has produced a loss of sense of identity among psychologists. It is one of the tasks of metatheory to work out such problems. Many social sciences other than psychology have important contributions to make to the investigation of the psyche, as do natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology. Philosophy, art and hermeneutic practices, and religious studies are also indispensable sources for psychologists. Classifying and distinguishing the sciences and non-sciences should not lead to a conception of these diverse

25 See also Alexei Leontiev, Problems of the Development of the Mind (Moscow, 1981).



thought forms as unconnected and independent of each other. Every phenomenon finds its cause outside itself. Psychological phenomena are no exception. Psychic content would be complete- ly meaningless to an investigator ignorant of non-psychological laws. The phylogenetic heritage (and historical acumen in the case of humans), as well as the pervasive presence of a structured changing world, are themselves non-psychological data indispensable for psychological explanation, prediction and con- trol. There are many keys to the understanding of the psyche, among which academic psychology may not be the most important.

Marxists, conscious of the priorities generated by dialectical logic, and of the preeminence of content over form, have been giving a great deal of serious thought to the problem of the production of higher order mental content in humans. Lucien Sève has devoted an entire chapter of his book, Marxisme et Théorie de la Personnalité^ to analysis of the importance for psychology of Marx's sixth thesis on Feuerbach, which postulates that "the human essence is not an abstraction inherent to the individual but

is in reality the totality of social relations." Ilyenkov devoted an entire book to the elaboration of the thesis that ideality is a social production and not primarily a brain process.27 This problem has been amply treated by Marxist theorists and does not require further elaboration here.

Nevertheless, with a few notable exceptions such as the Brit- ish natural scientist J.B.S. Haldane, whose ideas helped launch the scientific investigation of animal societies, most Marxists have traditionally seen sociology, psychology and biology as contigu- ous rather than emmeshed. The scientific investigation of popu- lation genetics in animal society, for example, is now sufficiently developed to justify a metatheoretical turnaround in the Marxist epistemology of sociology. We can no longer base ourselves exclusively upon the study of human social formations to explain social formations "in general/' In other words, historical materialism as a metatheory must be re-worked to accommodate revo- lutionary new paradigms coming from the natural sciences. This does not, of course, put into question the more general principles of the Marxist world view. What, for example, is the essence 26 Lucien Sève, Marxisme et Théorie de la Personnalité (Paris, 1975), pp. 220-361. 27 E.V. Ilyenkov, Dialectical Logic (Moscow, 1977).



of pre-human psychic function? As in traditional Marxist an- thropology, we find the anwer outside the individual. Pre- language, pre-symbolic, pre-historical psychic function cannot be grasped theoretically from the sole perspective of the individual organism. To paraphrase Marx: the essence of pre-symbolic reflection is the totality of environmental and hereditary relations. In our metatheory, the connection between terms supersedes in importance the terms themselves.28

The Pertinence of Reflection Theory to Contemporary Metapsychology

Lenin's theory of reflection has been particularly singled out by philosophers (Sartre, Eastman, Hook, etc.),29 and even by psychologists, for impassioned criticism. Buss,30 for example, refers to Leninist reflection theory as a "one-way deterministic, materialistic, undialectical, positivistic, copy theory of knowledge." Of course the above passage betrays Buss's anti-science stand. But most important for our present purposes, it shows that Buss conceived of Lenin's reflection theory as a theory of knowledge. Lenin's theory of reflection is not a theory of knowledge, even less of knowledge acquisition. In fact, Lenin's theory of reflection is a genial and foresightful sketch of a materialist and determinist logic. It lays the axiomatic ground for a materialist and determinist general theory of information exchange in objective and subjective systems indifferently. Regarding human knowledge, Lenin's reflection theory begins by stating that sensation is a part of the real material world which reflects (is connected with) another distinct part of the real material world in a determinate relation. Lenin's concept of reflection does not apply, and he never meant it to apply, to learning, perception, concept formation, theory building, etc. It applies to simple basic sensation, and more specifically to the concrete anatomical-physiological operation of sensation as a passive peripheral receptor mechanism of information processing. Lenin's reflection theory is a theory of direct perception. Most theories of knowledge are variants of

28 The same idea is expressed for biology in Jean-Michel Goux and Pierre Roubaud, "Le concept central de la biologie, l'adaptation," La Pensée, CCI!, 1978, p. 58.

29 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la Raison Dialectique (Paris, 1960), pp. 31-55; Max Eastman, Lenin and The Science of Revolution (Westport, Conn., 1973); and Sidney Hook, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (New York, 1933).

30 Alan Buss, A Dialectical Psychology (New York, 1980), p. 103.



representationalism rather than direct perception. Realism, which tends to be associated with concepts of direct perception, views sensation as a direct passage from the exterior to the interior. The external world is postulated to cause certain transformations in the sense organs. Diverse perceptual and intellectual phenomena are postulated to follow from sensation. Representationalism postulates that sensation is at most an inference about a hypothetical or "bracketed" external world. Sensation is postulated to be immediately a form of representation, an intellectual act. Representationalism is of course more closely associated with skepticism, constructivism, and apriorism than with realism.31

Lenin's application of his general reflection theory to psychological function was no more than an attempt to say in philosophical terms that human sensation is a part of the real material world which reflects (is connected with) another distinct part of the real material world in a determinate relation.

When Lenin did choose to speak about higher order processes such as cognition, he was in fact very dialectical:

Cognition is the eternal endless approximation of thought to object. The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not "lifelessly," not "abstractly," not devoid of movement, not without con- tradictions, but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of con- tradictions and their solution.

Psychologists are in the unique position today of being equipped to substantiate the extraordinary foresightedness of Lenin's choice of the word reflection as the best term by which to combine the ontological and epistemological essences of knowledge. Reflection is a bona fide philosophical category. It antic- ipated the modern concept of information - understood as a universal property of matter which assumes specific forms in physics, biology, and psychology.33 3 1 We tend to refer, as psychologists, to Lenin's theory of psychic reflection as a theory

of sensation. Marxist philosophers have tended to view it as a theory of direct perception as opposed to representational perception. For an informative discussion on this topic see Daniel Goldstick, "The Leninist Theory of Perception," Dialogue, XIX, 1980, pp. 1-19.

32 Vladimir Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, Vol. 38 (Moscow, 1972), p. 195. 33 Todor Pavlov, "On the Dialectical Unity of Philosophy and the Natural Sciences," in

Lenin and Modern Natural Science (Moscow, 1978); and Igor V. Blauberg, Vadim N. Sadovsky, Evan G. Yudin, Systems Theory: Philosophical and Methodological Problems (Moscow, 1977).



In physics, any cause-effect relationship (i.e., real connection between discernible entities) consists at the same time of an information exchange. On the "effect" side of the connection, any new relatively stable property may be characterized as reflection. Thus reflection is portrayed here as a particular aspect of the general phenomenon of information exchange, namely, "cumulation" or "appropriation" (in the sense of objective acquisition of a new property) of information. Though cumulation of information is known to occur in purely physical entities, the phenomenon can be considered fortuitous or tendentially random since it is generally recognized that whatever cumulation of information exists in the known universe is on the decrease (law of entropy).

In biology, things are different. Here information exchange involves the specific way by which genetic matter is selectively caused to accumulate particular information. The principle which determines the selection of specific information and the discarding of other potential information is natural selection. Cumulation of information in genes, or biological reflection, manifests the property termed "anticipatory reflection" by the Soviet molecular biologist, Oparin.34 The expression summarizes the dialectic which operates in the life-death opposition in the wide sense, and in the process of natural selection in the specific sense. The extent to which life-forms code within their genes determinate messages for their own future development is the same extent to which past selection has determined that these messages selectively sustained life and were in turn selectively sustained by life. However, the limitation which inexorably imposes itself on information cumulated in lower biological forms is that such cumulation is locked into the process of speciation. Although biological reflection undergoes (throughout speciation) cumulation of a sublative rather than disjunctive nature in the long run (evolutionary stumps or dead-ends are examples of disjunctive cumulation in the short run), the possibili- ties of significant and varied cumulation within each species are minimal. Thus, the general rhythm of biological reflection appears as periodical rather than random as in physics. The gener-

34 Alexander I. Oparin, Genesis and Evolutionary Development of Life (New York, 1968); The Chemical Origin of Life (Springfield, 111., 1964); Life, Its Nature, Origin and Develop- ment (New York, 1964).



al property of biological reflection, which consists of its constant increase in its cumulative complexity throughout the process of speciation, was called negentropy by Brillouin for obvious reasons.35

In psychology, reflection once again assumes a specific form. It appears here as an intensive process of cumulation of information essentially embodied not in the genes but in complex brain movements still to be identified in their full specifici- ty. The greatest challenge facing contemporary science may be the resolution of the problems of the concrete passage from physical to biological reflection on the one hand and from biological to psychic reflection on the other.

A Realist Approach to the Metatheory of Psychology

Lenin's fundamental impact in epistemology was to have fully grasped the necessity to reconceptualize realist epistemology from scratch, using new categories compatible with those al- ready established within dialectical materialism. It is a tribute to Lenin's genius that this is exactly what he succeeded in doing in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism - despite the fact that he had not yet studied Hegel in detail (he did have access to isola- ted comments on Hegel and quotations from him in Marx, Engels, and other sources, and apparently, he had read the Log- ic). In his Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel, his epistemological ideas took a more explicitly dialectical form.

Philosophers of science recognize today, as Lenin did 77 years ago, that materialist realism is so pervasive in scientific thinking that it is built into the language of scientific theories. There are no scientific theories which do not explicitly and necessarily assume the material existence of the objects of their attention independently of the "constructions" and "activity" of the theorists themselves.36 Even in psychology (one of the last ref- uges of idealism aside from religion) the dominant theories, psy- choanalysis and behaviorism, were founded by materialist athe- 35 Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory (New York, 1955). An excellent article

summarizing the relevance for psychology of information theory, dissipative structures, open and closed systems, etc. is Sandor B. Brent, Trigogine's Model for Self- Organization in Nonequilibrium Systems," Human Development, XXI, 1978, pp. 374-387.

36 See Mario Bunge, The Philosophy of Physics (New York, 1963); Ralph Bhaksar, A Realist Theory of Science (Leeds, 1978); and Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972).



ists37 whose epistemological attitudes concerning the psyche were explicitly realist as well as materialist.

The most general principles of any materialist-realist theory of knowledge can be summarized in the following way. The world consists of processes in space and time. There are two-way connections between that which is thought and that which is non-thought. However, in several very general ways, that which is not thought is primary. The chronological precedence of geogeny over phylogeny, of non-thinking objects over thinking objects, has been well established in science since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. However, Darwin's theory of evolution goes much further than this. It provides a general framework which explains in detail the mechanisms whereby thinking objects are produced from a purely and immanently material ground. No creationist, whether of Christian, Muslim, or other persuasion, can be a consistent Darwinian (unless creation is as- sumed to antedate geogeny). Still, materialist realism of the Marxist variety goes further than Darwinism in refuting philosophical mysticism. Marxist realism postulates that non-thought permeates and determines thought in the totality of its movement. The non-psychic world is the prime mover of thought in all circumstances, under all conditions, and at all times. Need we recall the numerous occasions on which Marx stressed practice as the primary pole in the theory-practice dialectic? On a more psychological plane, we find the same emphasis in Leontiev's activity theory. For Leontiev, activity (a more fluid and objective phenomenon than reflection) is in dialectical relation to relatively crystalized forms of psychic reflection (attitudes, personality, etc.), in the same way as Marx's base is related to the superstructure. The former term is determinant in the last instance.

The knower is undoubtedly an "active," "constructing" being. This postulate is not questioned by Marxist realism. The human senses are admittedly influenced in their basic function by the attitudes, theories, beliefs, prejudices, and other higher order mental processes of the knower. The ocular muscles orient the eye to see what the subject wants or needs to see, etc. On the other hand, the chain of knowledge from the external world to the central nervous system must go through structures in the organism's periphery (sensory receptors) which are a) not influ- 37 Sigmund Freud and John B. Watson.



enced in their structure by historical change, and b) are minimally influenced in individual ontogeny by the subject's life history. There is, then, a degree of passivity within, and of course, an external imposition upon, the knowledge process.

Epistemologists who present the knowledge process as a unilateral "activity" or "construction" of the knowing being, even if only for certain types of knowledge (Kant's a priori categories, for example), are obliged to view the world, or parts of the world external to the knower, in one of several ways: a) as non- existent, b) as immobile, formless, chaotic, etc., c) as unknowa- ble.38

In its insistence on the independent existence of a structured changing world which determines knowledge (without denying reciprocity, but not in the last instance) Lenin's materialist realism sublates constructivism and allows for the discern-

ment of the limitations of radical constructivism in the theory of knowledge. Objective experimental methods have shown that such primitive beings as planaria are capable of establishing con- ditioned responses - a form of learning higher than simple ha- bituation or sensitization. We doubt however that anybody would suggest that planaria are capable of "constructing" or "representing" reality in any sense of these words.

The Problem of Determinism in the Metatheory of Psychology

Causation is a principle which gives ontological status to reg- ularities observed in the world. It is so pervasive that it is implied in the structure of all predicative languages, including every predicate used by Hume to challenge determinism. Neverthe- less, since causation is not in itself observable, several philosophers have agreed with Hume in reducing it to a universal illusory inference. On the other hand, scientific theories assume the principle of determinism to such an extent that it is given axiomatic status (undemonstrable self-evident truth upon which the edifice of science is built).

Among the sciences, psychology, to this day, characteristical-

38 See Leszek Kolakowski, "Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth," in Marxism and Beyond (London, 1969), whose epistemology is an example of unilateral constructivism. For a Marxist critique of Kolakowski's epistemology see David-Hillel Ruben, Marxism and Materialism: A Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge (New Jersey, 1979).



ly remains a renegade as far as its conception of determinism is concerned. Even within the Marxist scholarly tradition, the specific problems faced by scientific psychology continue to generate serious controversy in this sphere. To illustrate this fact, several anti-deterministic statements written by three authors who have claimed to be sympathetic to Marxism will be presented and criticized.

Buss has recently attacked determinism in psychology on the basis of a metatheoretical combination of Kolakowskian

constructivism and Aristotelianism. Remarkably, in the following passage he denounces and simultaneously upholds the principle of determinism in psychology.

A mechanistic, deterministic conception of the individual left no possibility for an active self-determining agent.39

Buss's denunciation of the principle of determinism refers to special meanings of the term, which differ from those he uses when he upholds the same principle he previously denounced - or so we assume. In Buss's book, the terms "determinism" or "deterministic doctrine" are frequently juxtaposed to such terms as "passive subject,"40 "alienated subjects,"41 "dehumanized subjects,"42 "mechanistic,"43 "positivistic,"44 and "fatalistic"45 doc- trines. In addition, we have seen that Buss believes that a theory of knowledge should not be "deterministic."

Clearly, Buss's concepts of determinisim, in those situations where he denounces it, all hold in common the notion of a passive subject. Most Marxists would agree with Buss that crude reductive determinism is to be rejected. Lenin himself criticized the epiphenomenalism of the naturalistic materialists Vogt, Moleschott, and Buchner, who were indeed guilty of what should be called biological reductionism. They proposed a model for psychic function based on the crude analogy of glandular secretion (in fact the model is extremely pertinent in modern behavioral molecular biology, but at a much higher level of so-

39 Op. cit., p. 103 (our italics). 40 Ibid., p. 6. 41 Ibid., p. 104. 42 Ibid., p. 80. 43 Ibid., pp. 9, 93, 103, 104. 44 Ibid., pp. 17, 90. 45 Ibid., p. 103.



phistication). Buss, however, seems prepared to do more than just beat dead horses. Singlehandedly46 he has taken on the entire axiomatic base of modern science: the general principle of determinism itself. The following passage shows how a psychological theorist who would otherwise be sympathetic to the materialistic-deterministic metascience approach, tends to opt out when he moves into the field of attribution theory:

The deep answer to that question is rooted in a consideration of the causality notion as ideological, and the encapsulating, partialist, limit- ing metascience within which such attribution theorists move. Causality is a useful and necessary notion in regard to explaining social behavior. When it is totalized and thus transformed into unquestioned dogma however, it becomes an ideology that obscures and hides, rather than enlightens and informs.47

Buss insists that "reasons" are examples of "final" causes (in the Aristotelian sense) and "causes" (as understood in the usual materialistic-deterministic metascience model) are examples of "efficient" causality (in the Aristotelian sense). He weak- heartedly attempts to make these concepts compatible with historical materialism by adding the notion of "generations":

Thus it is the unique historical events which serve as catalysts in creating a distinct generational style of "entelechy."48

Buss argues that both forms of causality, efficient and final, operate in psychological processes, and that final causes are more fundamental, more important, in human history and individual development than efficient causes:

If we view development as fundamentally a teleological process, in which telos is ever more progress or advancement in terms of such things as reason, the mastery of nature, and the humanization of social relations, then we can begin to make sense out of both historical and individual development in terms of each other.49

Marxism, however, does not view "progress," "mastery of

46 It is probably his enthusiasm for the Frankfurt school's (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas) view of instrumental and technological reason which in- spired Buss to push the anti-science ideology one step further.

47 Op. cit., p. 183. 48 Op. cit., p. 96 (Buss's quotations). 49 Op. cit., p. 71.



nature," "advancement in reason," "humanization of social relations," as a realization of a series of "acts" or "purposes." Clearly, a more dialectical view of history involving the struggle between reason and irrationality, progress and regression, mastery and slavery, consciousness and non-consciousness, action and inac- tion, etc., is more meaningful. How else can we explain how wars, class struggle, destruction, alienation, misery (as well as all the opposites of these) are visible in every epoch? Likewise, although we do not deny the real material existence of purposes, intentions, ends, in the brains of individual people, we do not identify those processes, in the strong sense Buss insists on, with individual development. Individual development involves non- conscious, non-volitional, and indeed non-psychic, mediation in its development.

Piaget, whose sympathy for Marxism is widely known,50 has also adopted a concept of indeterminism for psychology which is incompatible with the concepts favored in the other sciences. Piaget, who in many respects has been known as a psychophysical interactionist with strong sympathies for materialist monism,51 nevertheless considers himself a "psychophysical parallelist." He calls the organic system a "causal system" and consciousness a "sui generis" "system of implication."52 Elsewhere he writes:

States of consciousness are not causally determined (they have no spatial structure, substance, mass, force, energy. . .).d3

and

In the domain of intellectual operation . . . the forms of the norms de- termine their contents.54

Piaget went as far as to conclude that the psychological system of "implication" is "isomorphic" but not causally related to, or in- cluded in, the system of neural causation.55 At this point he real-

50 In Epistemologie et Sciences de l'Homme (Paris, 1970), Piaget referred 26 times to Marx- ism, always in positive terms, and frequently eulogistically.

51 In an interview with Jean-Claude Brinquier, Conversations Libres avec Jean Piaget (Par- is, 1977), pp. 99-100, Piaget declared himself a philosophical materialist.

52 Epistemologie et Sciences de l'Homme, p. 374. 53 Logique et Connaissance Scientifique (Paris, 1970), p. 1181 (oui translation). 54 Epistemologie et Sciences de l'Homme, p. 302 (our translation). 55 Ibid., p. 273.



ized, contrary to Buss, that his concept of psychological indeter- minacy was incompatible with Marxism.56

This brief exposition of Piaget's position illustrates the non- scientific content of mentalism in psychology. No one would question that some psychological processes can be characterized in certain respects as "implicative." The fact that everyone uses implicative statements is proof of this. This however is not what is meant by Piaget. His point is that all psychological processes are implicative and indeterminate. Now the analysis of any predicative language shows that determinism is a formal property of all languages. Computers can also be programmed to process information by implication. This does not mean, of course, that computers do not conform to the concept of causality presently favored in the other sciences - namely, efficient causality. The psyche is a part of the neural system. If not, where can the psyche be placed? Piaget has never attempted to answer this question. We suggest that any metatheory which does not attempt to answer this question, even if only hypothetically, is idle.

A third contemporary Marxist who has written a defense of mentalism by propping up the status of reasons and intentionality in human conduct is Roy Bhaskar. Here are a few relevant quotations:

... a reason for an action can itself be sufficient for that action.57

. . . that the reason for the behavior is itself a belief differentiates it

from physical causes.58

It makes no sense to locate an economy or set of beliefs at some point in space.59

The powers that make psychology possible cannot be seen or touched, tasted, smelled or heard.60

Mentalistic predicates are irreducible.61

Attributions of "reason" as explanations of behavior are usually naive dualistic or idealistic interpretations. Marxism cannot

56 Ibid., p. 116. 57 Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism (New Jersey, 1979), p. 107. 58 Ibid., p. 109. 59 Ibid., p. 127. 60 Ibid., p. 129. 61 Ibid., p. 130.



accept the reality of final causation, of the action of the future on the past. In ordinary language, Marxists use finalist attributions as convenient short-cuts, just like everybody else. "I'm taking my umbrella because its going to rain" is such a common attribution. In reality, people take their umbrellas because they foresee rain, because of the TV forecast or of precursor signs, because they know that the umbrella will keep them dry, etc. However, such reasons (even when interpreted non-finalistically) taken individually are never absolute or sufficient causes of subsequent behavioral events. First, the reasons that can be invoked to explain any given behavior can be multiplied indefinitely. Sec- ond, reasons being higher order verbal-cognitive processes, om- nipresent affective and other subcognitive psychic processes are neglected when attributions focus exclusively upon reasons as causes of behavior. Thirdly, even the highest order types of behavior cannot be independent of non-psychological organismic (biological) antecedents nor of the numerous antecedents which make up the extra-organismic situation (physical, chemical, social, cultural, economic, political, interpersonal).

Perhaps the most difficult problem for materialistic- deterministic metapsychology is the explanation of the most pri- vate and complex thought processes of man: purposiveness, will, and freedom. The extreme extent to which introspection can bias people's metatheoretical attitudes has been demonstrated experimentally time and time again. When we have the experience of certainty regarding our predictions of future events, we are at times transported by our affects and imagination into the belief that our minds can actually touch the future; this is the source of finalism and other idealistic interpretations of anticipation, purposiveness, intentionality, etc.62 Likewise, when we experience variations in the levels of our motivation, determina- tion, power to enact plans, and are unable to see the antecedents of these variations, we attribute them to our own psychic facul- ties. We then call this free.63 Also, the universal experience of daydreaming no doubt produces anti-scientific (common sense) interpretations of freedom. The daydreamer may be quite ignorant of the state of his body or of the outside situation. He or she, under no identifiable environmental or bodily pressure,

62 See Spinoza's Ethics. 63 See William James's Principles of Psychology.



generates images and concepts which seem to him or her to come out of nowhere. The indétermination of such images and concepts appears overwhelming. We easily forget that underived mentation is an absurdity.64

It is in these areas of purposive mentation and free choice that scientific explanation goes most directly against common- sense (introspective) evidence. The scientific explanation of cognitive anticipation or prediction of future mental (or non- mental) events starts from the following basic postulate: we can predict an event (psychological or not) to the extent and only to the extent that we are able to fixate in our conciousness a struc-

ture of variation or a pattern of regularity which encompasses the predicted event among a span of other events. Without memory there can not be anticipation. Even though we all seem to have the experience of being able to generate pure intentions "out of nowhere," it seems reasonable to consider the hypothesis that such self-attributions might be an illusion, an artifact facili- tated by the structure of our predicative language. Language gives us words to express states of consciousness in terms of unitary, elementary and immediate intentions. But in such fields as the study of conflicts, neuroses, attitudes, needs, desires, etc., we find no such thing. There are no higher order thought processes which are not mixtures of consciousness and unconscious-

ness, and which do not result from internal and external deter- minants.

Our primary task in scientific psychology is to describe, explain and predict when, how and where learning takes, and does not take, place. Mentalism and other forms of idealism charac- teristically neglect most of all the question "where." Natural science psychologists, far more than social science psychologists, can be counted upon to doggedly pursue the challenge of dis- covering where exactly psychic function occurs.

Department of Psychology University of Quebec at Montreal

64 Spinoza's Ethics.


a link between the social and natural sciences: the case of scientific psychology

Documents