the relevance of psychology to epistemology (1975)

METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 6 , No. 2, April 1975

THE RELEVANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO EPISTEMOLOGY

SUSAN HAACK

The appeal to psychology: an example It is not uncommon for philosophers to appeal to psychology

in support of an epistemological theory. An instructive example of such an appeal is to be found in Carnap’s Aufbau ([1927]). The aim of this book is to do for empirical science what (Carnap thought) Russell and Whitehead had done for mathematics-to provide it, that is, with a foundation. In the logicist program all statements of mathematics were to be expressed in purely logical terms, and, ultimately, all theorems of mathematics were to be derived from purely logical principles. Analogously, in Carnap’s program, all statements of empirical science were to be expressed in purely phenomenal terms, and, ultimately (although this goes beyond anything attempted in the Aufbau), all laws of empirical science were to be based on purely phenomenal statements. Carnap described himself as giving a “rational reconstruction’’ of empirical science.

But Carnap intended to do more than simply investigate the definability relations between phenomenal and scientific terms; for he thought that, from the point of view purely of definability, he might as well have started from a physicalist as from a phenomenalist basis. He favored the phenomenalist on grounds of epistemological priority. Whatever, exactly, epistemological priority amounts to, the motivation which underlies the intro- duction of the concept is clear enough. If one is undertaking a foundationalist programme, trying, that is, to provide foundations for a part of human knowledge, one naturally requires that the statements which will form the basis have some kind of epistemological virtue, that they should be, so to speak, epistemologically better off than what is based upon them; and hence, the terms in which the knowledge to be justified is expressed must have a correponding epistemological virtue.

Carnap, using the definition : a is epistemologically prior to b = df. b is recognised via

recognition of a 161

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took it to be reasonably obvious that psychological states are epistemologically prior to physical objects, and that one’s own psychological states, or, as he put it “autopsychological objects”, are epistemologically prior to owner-neutral psychological states. He had then to decide whether, among autopsychological objects, to take concrete individuals, i.e. momentary cross-sections of experience, or repeatable universals, i.e. phenomenal properties, as epistemologically prior. And at this point he appealed to the work of the Gestalt psychologists as supporting the former choice. This work, he thinks, shows that we recognize colors, smells etc. only via recognition of whole, structured perceptions.

There are many difficulties in Carnap’s definition of epistemological priority,* and many difficulties in the argument that the Gestalt psychologists’ discoveries show that Carnap’s elexes are epistemologically prior. But-and this is my present concern- there is also a very considerable disagreement about whether an appeal to psychology is proper at all. There is, in fact, very considerable disagreement, in general, about what the relation between psychology and epistemology is, or ought to be. It is this disagreement that I wish to investigate.

Structure of the Paper Some writers, like Popper, take the view that epistemology is,

and should be, wholly distinct from, and independent of, psychology. Others believe, like Piaget, that epistemology and psychology are, quite properly, inextricably intertwined. My sympathies, as the title of the paper indicates, are with the latter opinion. And so it seems an appropriate procedure to begin by discussing the arguments of those who insist on a rigid separation of epistemology and psychology : the argument from the distinctness of philosophy from science; the argument from the definition of epistemology; the argument for the irrele- uance of psychological data to questions of justification; and the argument for the circularity of appeal to psychology in epistemology. I shall argue that none of these considerations is conclusive. I shall then offer some reasons in favor of the relevance of psychology to epistemology, and finally some considerations to show that, if its relevance is admitted, the appeal to psychology is not only permissible, but actually desirable.

*So many that Goodman, who in The Structure of Appearance ([1951]) chooses qualia-repeatable universals-as basis, expressly rejects epistemological priority as a motivation for this choice.

PSYCHOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY 163

Part I Arguments for the separation of epistemology and psychology.

The autonomy of philosophy argument Some of those who insist on separating epistemology sharply

from psychology do so on the quite general grounds that philosophy is distinct from science, and so, a fortiori, epistemology from psychology. I shall call this view, following Stoothoff in E19661, the “autonomy of philosophy” thesis.

Some adherents of this view make a sharp analytic I synthetic distinction, and entrust philosophy with the task of seeking synthetic truths. Hamlyn, who is also an autonomist, depends rather on a different, though related, distinction, between conceptual and empirical truth. Analytic truths, according to Hamlyn [1970], constitute only a degenerate subclass of the set of conceptual truths : while the denial of an analytic truth results in contradiction, the denial of a conceptual but not analytic truth results in ungrammaticality (apparently in some “logical” rather than strictly syntactical sense of ‘grammaticality’, a sense Hamlyn derives from Wittgenstein). These non-degenerate conceptual truths, according to Hamlyn, are both necessary and informative; and the discovery of such truths is the business of philosophy.

A clear statement of the consequences of his view for the status of psychology vis & vis epistemology is to be found in Hamlyn’s [1967]. The object of his paper is to distinguish the logical (or, equivalently by his lights, the philosophical or epistemological) from the psychological aspects of learning. And Hamlyn insists that

. . . there are questions about learning which are not psychological questions-questions such as what learning is and what is implied when it is said that someone has learned something. To answer such questions we have to clarify the concepts which we employ in this sphere. . . . Investigations of this kind are not so much a matter for the psychologist as for the philosopher.

([19671, p. 24) Hamlyn evidently also thinks that the philosopher’s conceptual investigations have a certain priority over the psychologist’s empirical investigations; for he argues, in the course of the paper, that it is a necessary truth that the abstract is more diffi- cult to learn than the concrete, and consequently, that Piaget’s

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experiments supposedly confirming the hypothesis that children acquire concrete operations before abstract ones, are simply pointless. Why should one laboriously seek an empirical verification of a logical truth? (I am reminded of Geach’s claim, in [ 19651, that the temporal “logic” discoverable from ordinary language shows relativity physics to be conceptually confused. And cf. the views expressed about philosophy vis B vis psychology in his [1957].)

Although I have taken Hamlyn as my example, there are numerous other exponents of this view-including Ryle, who regards the job of the philosopher as “logical cartography”, and Ayer, who in [1963] argues that-despite the preoccupation of Locke and his philosophical successors with the study of the mind-“philosophy is not the science of the mind”.

I suppose one might argue, against this conception of philosophy, that it is not traditional, that the great philosophers (e.g. Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkely, Hume, etc.) certainly did not confine themselves to the narrow sphere which this conception allows them. Since so little of the work of these writers would count as properly philosophical by autonomist standards, this argument has some plausibility. But it would inevitably be inconclusive, since it could be replied, that the fact that the great philosophers concerned themselves with scientific as well as with genuinely philosophical questions in no way threatens the distinction between science and philosophy. Ayer is quite as ready as Piaget to admit that sciences have grown up within, and then emancipated themselves from, philosophy-see 119621 p. 82, and cf. Piaget [1970] p. 64-but unlike Piaget, he does not think that this fact impugns the autonomy of philosophy.

Or, again, one might argue that the autonomist conception depends upon either an analytic I synthetic, or a conceptual I empirical, distinction; and that the feasibility of the first of these distinctions has been thrown into serious doubt by the work of White, Quine et al., while the feasibility of the latter depends on a notion of logical grammar which is, if anything, less clear than that of synonymy. This argument is one with which I have great sympathy, but it has the drawback of requiring rather a strong, and controversial, premiss.

However, the autonomist position requires for its plausibility, not only that a distinction be maintained between factual and linguistic truths, but also that it be maintained in a form which ignores the possibility of linguistic change. Even granted a dis-


tinction between “factual” and “linguistic” truth, an argument appealing to the possibility that factual discoveries should prompt linguistic changes can seriously damage the autonomist case. One might concede, for example, that relativity theory involves some linguistic novelty, without allowing that this shows that relativity theory must, for “logical” reasons, be mis- taken; it is only that the temporal idioms of ordinary language are conditioned by pre-relativity physics. If even this much inter- dependence between factual and linguistic truth is admitted, the autonomist position loses much of its plausibility.

In what follows, therefore, I shall take it that the independence of epistemology from psychology cannot be established on the basis of a generalized independence of philosophy from science. * The argument for the irrelevance of psychology to epistemology properly so called

A sharp distinction between epistemology and psychology is made, and a rationale for the distinction clearly stated, in Reichenbach’s [ 19381. Reichenbach thinks of knowledge as a sociological phenomenon, and believes, consequently, that epistemology is, in a sense, part of sociology. But a distinct part : for epistemology concerns itself solely with the internal relations between those propositions which constitute knowledge, whereas sociology proper also concerns itself with external relations between those propositions and, e.g., the class or social status of their proponents. Although epistemology is concerned with ‘the internal structure of knowledge’, i.e. “the system of connections as it is followed in thinking” (p. 4), Reichenbach particularly stresses that this doesn’t mean that epistemology and psychology are to be identified :

There is a great difference between the system of logical interconnections of thought and the actual way in which thinking processes are performed . . . it would be, therefore, a vain attempt to construct a theory of knowledge which is at the same time logically complete and in strict correspondence with the psychological processes of thought.

The only way to escape this difficulty is to distinguish care- fully the task of epistemology from the task of psfchology.

(C1938l p. 5) Epistemology considers “a logical substitute rather than real

processes”, or, as Reichenbach also puts it, borrowing a locution *Further arguments against the autonomist view can be found in Stoothoff [1966].

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from Carnap’s Aufbau, it gives a rational, not an historical, reconstruction of knowledge. He also uses, in the same context, a correlated distinction between questions of justification (an epistemological task) and questions of discovery (a psychological task). Reichenbach emphasises that once the distinction between epistemology and psychology has been properly drawn it will be apparent that that actual thinking doesn’t conform to it, is never a pertinent objection to an epistemological construction, and, that actual thinking does conform to it, never justifies an epistemological theory.

In spite of the many and important differences between his philosophical views and Reichenbach’s, Popper seems to take an attitude to the relations between epistemology and psychology which is very like Reichenbach’s.

In [ 19681 Popper distinguishes three “worlds” (1) the world of physical objects, (2) the world of mental states and (3) the world of “objective contents of knowledge”,

i.e., propositions, theories, conjectures, proofs etc. This “third world” is more Fregean than Platonic, since its contents are rather propositional than conceptual. Although the contents of the third world are described as “objects of knowledge”, they include false as well as true propositions.

It is a dominant theme of this paper of Popper’s that it is world (3) which is the proper concern of epistemology; indeed, Popper claims that traditional epistemology has been unsuccess- ful precisely because, and to the extent that, it has illegitimately concerned itself with world (2) a t the expense of world (3). Thus :

In upholding an objective third world I hope to provoke those whom I call ‘belief philosophers’: those who, like Descartes, Locke, Berkely, Hume, Kant, or Russell, are inter- ested in our subjective beliefs, and their basis or origin.

. . . Traditional epistemology has studied knowledge or thought

in a subjective sense-in the sense of the ordinary usage of the words ‘I know’ or ‘I am thinking’. This, I assert, has led students of epistemology into irrelevances; while intending to study scientific knowledge, they studied in fact something which is of no relevance to scientific knowledge.

([19681 p. 107) Even if the details of this position are not too clear, the general

PSYCHOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY P 67

scheme can be put thus: the proper concern of epistemology is the study of “scientific knowledge”. This is to be achieved only by consideration of the logical relations between the propositions etc. which are the content, or the object, of knowledge and belief. It cannot be achieved by psychological investigation of the state of belief or knowledge. Epistemology should be “without a knowing subject”.

Popper’s insistence on the separation of epistemology and ‘psychology seems to be due, in part, to a fear that if epistemology allows itself to get entangled with psychology it will inevitably fall into subjectivism. (Popper refers to “traditional epistemology” as “subjectivist” on e.g. pp. 108, 111, 114 and 115 of f19681.) This fear seems ill-founded, since psychological theories are not obviously less objective than theories in other sciences; of course it is true that beliefs are held by a subject, but this does not make them subjective in any objection- able sense.

I think it is clear, and important, that the separation of epistemology from psychology achieved by Reichenbach and Popper is not wholly the result of their definitions of the scope of epistemology. These philosophers assign questions of justification to epistemology, questions of genesis to psychology. But to establish their separateness a further premiss is required, namely, that information about the genesis of beliefs is irrelevant to questions about their justification. This assumption is more explicit in [ 19591, when Popper distinguishes between justification and discovery, and insists that the philosopher of science should concern himself with the question, how scientific hypotheses, theories etc. are justified, rather than with the question, how they are thought up. (It follows, incidentally, that the title, The Logic of Scientific Discovery is contradictory!) Here too he criticizes writers who, according to him, have trans- gressed this distinction, not only on the grounds that they have thereby lapsed into subjectivism but also on the grounds that they have concerned themselves with psychological (or socio- Eogical) issues which are irrelevant to the really epistemological issues.

Unfortunately, the matter is complicated by Popper’s use of an overlapping distinction, between the discovery, on the one hand, and the testing, on the other, of theories. It seems clear that how scientists test their theories is quite as psychological I sociological a question, as how they discover them. Yet Popper often writes as though he supposes that whereas how scientists discover

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theories is a purely psychological question, how they test them is a philosophical, a logical, question. It would be better to say that, given certain views about the logical relations between theories and basic statements, certain consequences follow, not about how scientists do, but about how they should, test theories. So the picture is as follows:

world (3) vs world (2)

(logical relations between) theories, propositions etc.

(psychological relations between) beliefs

justification discovery, test

normative consequences- how scientists should behave

how scientists do behave

PHILOSOPHY / EPISTEMOLOGY

PSYCHOLOGY

And the argument against the appeal to psychology would go like this: the proper concern of epistemology is the study of scientific knowledge, i.e. the logical relations between theories and data; no amount of psychological evidence about how a theory was thought up can possibly establish anything about whether the theory is or isn’t justified, and so psychology is irrelevant to epistemology. As Popper reports in [1972], he has always laid . . . great stress upon the distinction between two problems

of knowelge: its genesis or history on the one hand, and the problems of its truth, validity, and ‘justification’ on the other . . . questions of truth or validity, not excluding the logical justification of the preference for one theory over another . . . must be sharply distinguished from all genetic, historical, and psychological questions.

W721, p. 67) Like Hamlyn, Popper attributes priority to epistemological

issues : psychological considerations are irrelevant to questions of justification, but logical considerations can be relevant to questions of psychology :


. . . . we epistemologists can claim precedence over the genetecists : logical investigations of questions of validity and approximation to truth can be of the greatest importance for genetic and historical and even for psychological investigations. They are in any case logically prior to the latter type of question . . .

W721, p. 67) The crucial issue now is whether good arguments can be pro-

vided for the irrelevance claim. In [1960] Popper gives two arguments. The first is that the view that information about the genesis of beliefs is relevant to questions about their justification is associated with the thesis, which Popper quite rightly rejects, that there are infallible sources of knowledge. However, although it is certainly true that if there were infallible sources of knowledge, then questions of genesis would be relevant to questions of justification, i t does not follow that, since there are no such infallible sources of knowledge, questions of genesis are not relevant to questions of justification. This argument is inconclusive.

Popper’s second argument is that “the strange view that the truth of a statement may be decided upon by inquiring into its sources’’ (p. 18) rests upon a confusion of questions of truth with questions of meaning, a confusion which he thinks is the inevi- table consequence of “essentialism”. This argument fails for the same reason as the first. Although, if all the fundamental principles of the sciences described the true essences of things and were true in virtue of the meanings of key terms, and if origins determine the meaning of words, then questions of genesis determine questions of truth, it does not follow that, if the fundamental principles of science are not true in virtue of their meaning, questions of genesis are not relevant.

So the independence of epistemology from psychology does not follow merely from the definition of epistemology as concerned with questions of justification; and the arguments given for the further premiss, that questions of genesis are irrelevant to questions of justification, are inconclusive. Of course, it will require further argument to show that psychological information is relevant.

The circularity argument Other writers find another defect, more serious even than

irrelevance, in the appeal to psychology : circularity. This argu-

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ment would apply to Carnap’s procedure as follows: If Carnap seriously intends to provide foundations for science, must there not be a begged question in his appeal to psychology, since psychology is, after all, precisely one of the sciences to be justified? The picture would be:

+Science (including psychology) I-Aufbau +I

(A criticism much like this is sometimes made against Hume, who, on one interpretation, offered, in default of a justification of induction, a psychological explanation of the plausibility of inductive arguments; which, according to some critics, requires, and so, cannot non-circularly support, the concept of cause).

The circularity argument is used by Price, in 119321 p. 171, n., where he observes that use of psychological data presupposes induction, the justification of which is one of the tasks of epistemology. It is also, according to Kolakowski [1968] p. 141), used by Husserl against Avenarius’ “principle of least action” and Mach’s “economy of thought”.

It is clear, however, that this argument only applies to appeals to psychology undertaken in the course of foundationalist pro- grams. It does not rule out such appeal on the part of any less optimistic epistemologies. This reply to the circularity argument can be extracted from Quine’s emistemological work.

One of the issues with which Quine concerns himself in 119683 is the problem of the justification of induction. Now in this matter, Quine thinks, we are really no further forward than at Hume’s time. No work since Hume, according to Quine, has avoided impalement on one or other of the horns of Hume’s dilemma : that a deductive “justification” of induction must be too strong, and an inductive “justification” circular. In view of this unpromising situation Quine proposes that we give up trying to justify induction, and retreat, instead, to explaining why we find inductive arguments plausible. (According to Quine, this is what Hume did too.) The title of Quine’s essay derives, in fact, from this “retreat” to psychology.

Again, in [1963], when he is attempting to motivate a preference for simple theories, Quine observes that, since simplicity varies with the way a a theory is expressed, whereas truth cannot, it will be hard to establish a straightforward correlation between simplicity and truth. He proposes, instead, the thesis that simple theories are more likely to be verified, because human perceptual apparatus, and experimental design just are


such as to favor the simple outcome. This, again, is a retreat from epistemological justification (of which Quine despairs) to psychological explanation.

It is, I think, of some importance that Quine regards appeal to psychology as, in some sense, a retreat; in that it would have been nice if our penchant for induction, or simplicity, could have been justified, but, since it can’t, explaining it is better than nothing. This attitude, I think, suggests the following view of the alleged circularity of the appeal to psychology: if, in the course of an attempt to give foundations for empirical science, an appeal is made to psychology, that appeal is objectionably circular. However, a justification of empirical science-in the sense of an argument resting upon assumptions and using principles which themselves either do not need, or can readily be provided with, justification-is, Quine thinks, impossible. And once its impossi- bility has been recognized, epistemology may turn to a more modest, but more feasible, task-the explanatory task; and here it may need, and is entitled to ask, the help of psychology.

Something like this position is also adopted by Pasch. He agrees that the circularity argument has “a measure of credi- bility”, but, if we are realistic about what epistemology can hope to achieve, it is not conclusive:

. . . the proper attitude to take toward circularity is that it is something empiricist philosophers must learn to live with. Unless unquestioned assumptions are made somewhere along the line, or unless some problems are solved by fiat, circularity is unavoidable.

([1958], p. 151) On this view, Carnap’s appeal to psychology is, indeed, vici-

ously circular. For Carnap is attempting a foundationalist program. But, though the circularity objection may be used ad hominem, it is not, in general, conclusive. It fails to apply, in particular, to epistemologies not of a foundationalist kind.

Part I1 Arguments in favour of co-operation

The arguments against the relevance of psychology have been shown to be inconclusive; but further argument is needed to establish relevance.

It seems clear that sometimes information about the origin of beliefs is regarded as bearing upon their justification. (“How do

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you know?”-“I read it in The Times”, “I saw it happen” . . . etc.). Even Popper (inconsistently) admits this. ([ 1961) p. 22). But one can, although Popper fails to realize it, perfectly well allow this much without supposing that such information con- clusively establishes the truth of the beliefs in question-and therefore, without supposing that The Times, or one’s perceptual judgements, or whatever, are infallible. It is quite sufficient that there be a presumption that they are reliable.* Information about genesis is then not conclusive, but i t is, in a weaker sense, relevant to justification. (Goodman’s comments in [1955] pp. 61-4 on the justification of induction, could be thought of as a pro- posal that we should understand ‘justification’ in a more modest sense, in which information on genesis might constitute justification).

It also needs to be said that Popper’s view about the scope of psychology is unnecessarily narrow. Investigation of the genesis of beliefs is not the sole task of psychology.

It also seems clear that other kinds of psychological data than information about the origins of beliefs has a prima facie relevance to epistemological questions. Such work as, for instance, that reported in Gregory’s 119661, concerning the effect of expectation upon perception, bears upon the plausibility of the tabula rasa views of Hume or Locke-although once again, of course, the reply that these were not strictly epistemological, but properly speaking, psychological, views of Locke and Hume, remains possible. (The interpretation of the data Gregory pre- sents requires, I think, rather more sophistication than it re- ceives, but this does not detract from its interest to epistem-

If this much is admitted, a positive case can be made in favor of co-operation. Powerful arguments of this kind can be found in the work of Piaget.

ology.)

The “you do it anyway so you might as well do it properly” argument

Piaget regards the appeal to psychology as not merely proper, but actually required. He wholly rejects the idea that philosophy and psychology can, or should, be sharply demarcated. He thinks it a mistake to suppose that philosophers do or should restrict

*In the case of judgements based on observation there is an argument, derived from the fact that acquisition of observational language takes place in the presence of appropriate stimulation, which supports this presumption of reliability. See Witt- genstein 119691, e.g. 480, and Quine [1970].


themselves to “pure deduction”, or psychologists to “experimental reality” [1970], p. 64). One can distinguish philosophy from science, he thinks, only on the following, admittedly vague, criterion : that philosophers tend to study knowledge as a whole, whereas scientists restrict themselves to more specific questions. But when science and philosophy are distinguished in this way, it becomes quite clear, he argues, that they are, and must be, mutually dependent. For how could philosophers hope to discover truths about the whole of knowledge, in ignorance of any of its specific parts?

Piaget admits a mutual dependence : psychologists may need to call on epistemology, as well as epistemologists on psychology. But I think it is fair to say that he stresses the latter dependence, the dependence of epistemology on psychology, much more heavily.

One of his arguments, which recurs several times, is this: that all traditional epistemologies, whether empiricist or rationalist, do raise questions of fact, and that these questions should, indeed must, be answered by appeal to the relevant science, i.e., in many cases, by psychology. For both empiricists and rational- ists make certain assumptions about the means by which knowledge is acquired (whether the favored means is experience, association of ideas, reminiscence of Forms, Reason, or whatever), and such assumptions can only be properly tested psycho- logically. The only alternative is an altogether unsatisfactory reliance on unrigorous “commonsense” psychology :

. . . all epistemologies, even those which are anti-empiricist, raise questions of fact, and thus implicitly adopt positions which, however, lack effective verification, even though this is indispensable as far as sound method is concerned.

([19701 pp. 4-5) A very similar view is, interestingly, found in a writer from a rather different tradition :

Whether called introspection, inspection, or simply and vaguely “experience”, some sort of factual appeal is made at one point or another by every epistemologist considered (though usually the empirical techniques so employed would not pass muster in a sophomore psychology lab.).

(Pasch, [1958] p. 145) I shall call this the “you do it anway, so you might as well do it properly” argument. Piaget’s appeal for epistemologists to co-

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operate with psychologists is based on the belief that much traditional epistemology uses bad psychology, which some real, rigorous, scientific psychological work could clear up. One of his main targets, especially in [ 19651, is the phenomenologist school, the members of which he thinks are, in effect, doing bad, intro- spectionist, psychology; but his arguments can be used, and in [ 19701 are used, against philosophers in the Anglo-Saxon tradition as well.

It is worth stressing that, although it is true that Piaget defines the scope of epistemology far more liberally than Popper, this verbal difference is not the main reason for their disagreement about the role of psychology. These passages are character- istic :

Epistemology is the theory of valid knowledge, and, even if this knowledge is always a process rather than a state, this process is in essence the change from a lesser to a greater validity. It follows from this that epistemology is by its very nature an interdisciplinary subject, since a process of this kind raises questions both of fact and of validity. . . . The first rule of developmental epistemology is consequently a rule of collaboration. . . .

([19701 p. 6) And, under the heading “The Methods of Scientific Episte- mology” :

The study of the growth of knowledge involves two comple- mentary methods . . . these methods are logical analysis and historical or developmental analysis. . . .

(p. 70) Logical analysis . . . calls upon, rather than contradicts, the

developmental analysis of concepts, which is the second essen- tial method of scientific epistemology.

What is happening here is that Piaget is distinguishing traditional, “static” epistemology, which investigates a corpus of knowledge assumed fixed, from (what he thinks more fruitful) “developmental” epistemology, which is to investigate the growth of knowledge. There seems no question that Popper would agree with Piaget so far, since Popper lays considerable stress upon the importance of looking at theories qua responses to problem-situations, and thus allows for a dynamic element.

PSYCHOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY 175 But Piaget, unlike Popper, seems willing to include the historical, sociological and psychological questions which arise in the study of the growth of knowledge, as part of epistemology. The use of such locutions as ‘developmental epistemology’ and ‘scientific epistemology’ signals a generous view of the scope of epistemo-

But there is much more than a verbal issue here. For Piaget’s first argument-the “you do it anyway so you might as we11 do it properly” argument-applies to epistemology even narrowly, statically conceived. Even static epistemology, Piaget argues, cannot be concerned solely with the logical relations between propositions, for even knowledge-as-a-state is knowledge of the world, and so its study cannot wholly exclude psychological considerations. Piaget is committed to a thesis which Popper strenuously denies, viz., that psychological data can be relevant to questions of the validity of theories-questions which, as he and Popper agree, belong to epistemology. Piaget, in fact, is advocating exactly the kind of appeal to psychology which Car- nap makes, and which Popper deplores.

It is also worth stressing that although the “you do it anyway so you might as well do it properly” argument is compelling, it requires the premiss for which I have argued, but which Piaget takes for granted, that psychology may be relevant to epistemology; since otherwise the reply “But you ought not to be doing it at all” would be possible.

logy.

~ ~ ~ r n u r ~ of Conclusions Although some of the disagreement about what the proper

relation is of psychology to epistemology turns on an essentially verbal matter-how broadly or narrowly the scope of epistemology is conceived-much of the disagreement is substantial.

Appeal to psychology is circular if undertaken in the course of a program which is ‘foundationalist’ in the sense of p. 171. Car- nap’s program is of this kind, so his appeal to Gestalt psychology is out of order.

However, the scope of epistemology can be construed in such a way as to allow the possibility of epistemologies of a non- functionalist kind. Indeed, although Popper and Reichenbach confine epistemology to questions of “justification”, even they certainly do not envisage the provision of conclusive justification of the kind for which Carnap hoped.

Psychological information can be relevant to epistemology, and MPH D

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use of such information is proper, provided the epistemology is not foundationalist.

Finally, appeal to psychological work, when it is relevant, positively ought to be made. Once relevance is conceded there is no reason (other, perhaps, than what Pasch calls philosophers’ “unemployment phobia”!) to deny the force of the “you do it anyway” argument.

REFERENCES

AYER, A. J. [1963] “Philosophy and Science”, Ratio (2). 1963, and in Metaphysics and Common Sense, Macmillan, 1969: page references to Metaphysics and Common Sense.

CARNAP, R. [1927] Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, 1927-English translation by George, R. A., Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.

GEACH, P. T . [1957] Mental Acts, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957. - [1965] “Some Problems About Time”, Henrietta Hertz Memorial Lecture, 1965.

GOODMAN, N. [1951] The Structure of Appearance, Bobbs-Merrill, 1951. - [1955] Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Bobbs-Merrill, 1955.

GREGORY, R. L. [1966] Eye and Brain, World University Library, 1966. HAMLYN, D. [1967] “The Logical and Psychological Aspects of Learning” in The

Concept of Education, ed. Peters, R. S., Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. - [1970] The Theory of Knowledge, Papermac, 1970.

KOLAKOWSKI, L. [1968] Positivist Philosophy (1968), Penguin Books, 1972 : page references to Penguin edition.

PASCH, A. [1958] Experience and the Analytic, Chicago U.P., 1958. PIAGET, J. [1965] Zmights and Zllusions of Philosophy, Presses Universitaires de

France, 1965, and Meridian, 1971. - [1970] Psychology and Epistemology, Denoel 1970, Penguin books, 1972 : page references to Penguin edition.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959. - [I9681 “Epistemology without a Knowing subject”, Proceedings of Third International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, ed. Rootselaar, B. van and Staal, J. F., Amsterdam, 1968, and in Objective Knowledge, O.U.P., 1972 : page reference to Objective Knowledge. - [I9721 “TWO Faces of Common Sense”, in Objective Knowledge, O.U.P., 1972.

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UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

the relevance of psychology to epistemology (1975)

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