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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802829078 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 12/16/2011 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 228 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d) |
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Why Psychology Needs Theology
A Radical-Reformation PerspectiveWilliam B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2005 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8028-2907-4
Chapter One
Philosophical Resources for IntegrationNancey Murphy
1. Introduction
Prior to the question of how theology and psychology are to be integrated is the oft-debated issue of what psychology is itself. In an era that places high value on science, there has been a strong motive to show that psychology is scientific. Thomas Kuhn's justly famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions played an important role in such discussions, raising the question, for instance, of whether psychology is an "immature" science because there is no overarching paradigm governing its research.
In these essays, I shall assume the scientific character of psychology. I believe, however, that while the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn has received much attention by psychologists, a more useful account of the nature and evaluation of scientific theories is found in the writings of Imre Lakatos, a Hungarian-born philosopher of mathematics. Lakatos's contributions to philosophy of science incorporated responses to Karl Popper's falsificationism and to the (perceived) relativism of Kuhn's account of paradigm change. My interest in Lakatos's work increased considerably when I perceived that his account of "progressive" and "degenerative" research programs could be adapted for purposes of describing and reforming theological methodology.
In this chapter I first summarize Lakatos's account of research programs in science. Second, I show how his methodology can be applied to theology. The purpose of this second move is to show that theology is sufficiently akin to science so that it makes sense to attempt to integrate its claims into a psychological research program. Third, I turn to a model intended to help conceive of the proper relationship between the disciplines of theology and psychology. This is the model of the hierarchy of the sciences, which extends from physics at the bottom, through chemistry and biology, to psychology and the social sciences. I follow Arthur Peacocke in arguing that theology is best understood as the science at the top of the hierarchy, in that it studies the most encompassing and complex system of all - the relation of God to all that is. If this is the case, then theology relates to psychology in the same manner as any higher-level science does to those below it.
I end this chapter with a preliminary consideration of how the content of theology might best be employed in formulating a Christian research program in psychology. Lakatos's account of the structure of a research program is as follows. The program takes its identity from a central theory, often of an abstract metaphysical nature, which describes the basic character of the program's subject matter - for example, atomism in early modern physics, or the thesis that all behavior is a product of conditioning for the Skinnerian program. This "hard core" is surrounded by additional theoretical statements, called auxiliary hypotheses, that spell out the content of the core theory in such a way as to make it empirically testable. The "name of the game" in science is to adjust and expand the belt of auxiliary hypothesis in a way that avoids falsification of the hard core and at the same time increases the program's empirical content.
My proposal for theology-psychology integration depends on Lakatos's concept of a metaphysical hard core. I suggest that theological accounts of human nature and of the goal or telos of human life entail ethical theses about what constitutes human flourishing. Such an account of human flourishing should be used to formulate hard cores of psychological research programs. Since there is no "generic" Christian theory of human nature, I shall present in my second chapter a particular Christian subtradition, my own Radical-Reformation tradition, and consider its consequences for ethics. In my third chapter, I shall suggest some concrete implications of this theological and ethical position, particularly the central place it gives to self-renunciation and nonviolence, for rethinking assumptions in psychology.
2. Imre Lakatos's Scientific Methodology
I want to begin by placing Lakatos's work in a historical perspective that I believe will be familiar to psychologists. Philosophy of science of the twentieth century has had a tremendous impact on the field of experimental psychology. In fact, it was my perception of these connections that led me to change my career plans from psychology to philosophy - in particular, to the philosophy of science.
When philosophers of science speak of scientific methodology, they intend to speak not of the concrete experimental or observational methods used in particular sciences but rather of the "logic" of science - of the relation between theories and evidence, of the criteria for judging one theory to be rationally superior to its rivals. It was neopositivist philosopher Carl Hempel who most clearly formulated the basic logical structure of research. It is neither inductive nor deductive, but rather "hypothetico-deductive": begin with observations, formulate a hypothesis to explain them, then deduce predictions from the hypothesis that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical investigation. Around the same time, Percy Bridgman emphasized the necessity of operational definitions as a means of connecting abstract concepts to empirical research.
Karl Popper was the most prominent member of the neopositivist school - those mid-twentieth-century philosophers who revised and moderated the goals of the earlier logical positivists. Popper's emphasis was on falsification. Recognizing that great quantities of evidence can be produced in favor of almost any theory (assuming adequate ingenuity on the part of the scientist), he argued that the essence of scientific method consists in proposing hypotheses and specifying in advance what observations would count as falsifying the theory. Science progresses by elimination of all hypotheses that do not stand up to such testing.
Popper is known to psychologists, first, because he used psychoanalysis as one of his prime examples of pseudoscience. He claimed that psychoanalytic theory was so flexible that any instance of human behavior could be explained in its terms, and hence it was not a falsifiable theory.
A second and much more important contribution was Popper's work on probability theory, which has been incorporated into the statistical methodologies so important to the behavioral sciences. His motivation was to solve the problem of how to falsify a hypothesis that is presented in probabilistic terms rather than as a universal statement. That is, we know that one white raven falsifies the claim that all ravens are black, but how can one falsify the claim that 25 percent of all swans are black, short of catching and examining them all?
Popper is also important for the purpose of introducing Lakatos. Kuhn's famous work on paradigm shifts in science was largely a reaction against Popper's tidy account of scientific rationality, and Lakatos's work was a development of Popper's (although Popper was distinctly unappreciative) which was intended to counter the perceived irrationalism of Kuhn's reaction. I speak of the perceived irrationality of Kuhn's position; I believe his work is better seen as a statement to the effect that the actual history of science does not support the neopositivist view of scientific rationality, given the assumption that science as practiced is, in the main, rational. Kuhn's major innovation was to show that theory choice in science depends upon factors other than observation and logic. He described the history of science as a succession of paradigms (standard examples of problem solutions in a field) that carry with them laws, theories, applications, and instrumentation. Those who share the view of science associated with a particular paradigm share the same rules and standards for scientific practice, but when paradigms change, so do these standards. Kuhn's contribution to the understanding of theory confirmation was to show that it is the paradigm as a whole - that is, exemplar along with associated theories, standards, and so forth (later termed a "disciplinary matrix") - that is accepted by scientists, and that the acceptance of a paradigm involves at the same time acceptance of a certain domain of data that are interpreted in terms of the paradigm's view of the world. Thus, there is no pool of independent data that allows scientists to arbitrate between competing paradigms. This lack of a common pool of data is easily illustrated in psychology: compare the notes of a psychoanalytic therapist and the records of response rates of rats in a Skinner box.
Once a paradigm is accepted, its basic laws and theories are not subjected to testing, as Popper and Hempel claimed, but rather they are assumed and used for solving the many problems that a paradigm encounters. Thus, a comprehensive view of the subject matter is accepted all at once and is maintained "dogmatically" until its problem-solving ability is seen to be outweighed by anomalies and a new paradigm appears to take its place.
Lakatos's most influential piece in philosophy of science is titled "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes." Here he made it plain that he intended to continue in the positive (rather than critical) tradition of Popper, while taking account of criticisms of Popper's work by historicist philosophers of science. On Lakatos's view, scientific rationality requires the specification of a criterion for choice between competing "research programs." A research program consists of a set of theories and a body of data. One theory, the "hard core," is central to the research program. Conjoined to the core is a set of auxiliary hypotheses that together add enough information to allow the data to be related to the theory. Auxiliary hypotheses include statements of initial conditions, lower-level theories that apply the core theory in different kinds of cases, and also theories of observation or of instrumentation that justify the research methods appropriate to that program and its subject matter. The auxiliary hypotheses form a "protective belt" around the hard core since they are to be modified when potentially falsifying data are found. A research program, then, is a series of networks of theories whose core remains the same while auxiliary hypotheses are successively modified, replaced, or amplified in order to account for problematic observations.
Lakatos claimed that the history of science is best understood not in terms of successive paradigms, as Kuhn proposed, but rather in terms of competing research programs. Some of these programs Lakatos described as "progressive" and others as "degenerating." A degenerating research program is one whose core theory is saved by ad hoc modifications of the protective belt - mere face-saving devices, or linguistic tricks, as Lakatos called them.
Rather than spell out Lakatos's criteria for progress in technical detail, I quote a clever story he invented to illustrate his point:
The story is about an imaginary case of planetary misbehavior. A physicist of the pre-Einstein era takes Newton's mechanics and his law of gravitation, (N), the accepted initial conditions, I, and calculates, with their help, the path of a newly discovered small planet, p. But the planet deviates from the calculated path. Does our Newtonian physicist consider that the deviation was forbidden by Newton's theory and therefore that, once established, it refutes the theory N? No. He suggests that there must be a hitherto unknown planet p' which perturbs the path of p. He calculates the mass orbit, etc., of this hypothetical planet and then asks an experimental astronomer to test his hypothesis. The planet p' is so small that even the biggest available telescopes cannot possibly observe it: the experimental astronomer applies for a research grant to build yet a bigger one. In three years' time the new telescope is ready. Were the unknown planet p' to be discovered, it would be hailed as a new victory of Newtonian science. But it is not. Does our scientist abandon Newton's theory and his idea of the perturbing planet? No. He suggests that a cloud of cosmic dust hides the planet from us. He calculates the location and properties of this cloud and asks for a research grant to send up a satellite to test his calculations. Were the satellite's instruments (possibly new ones, based on a little-tested theory) to record the existence of the conjectural cloud, the result would be hailed as an outstanding victory for Newtonian science. But the cloud is not found. Does our scientist abandon Newton's theory, together with the idea of the perturbing planet and the idea of the cloud which hides it? No. He suggests that....
Lakatos's point is to highlight the difference it would make to our evaluation of this story if one of these additional hypotheses were actually confirmed. He claims that it is just such surprising facts - he calls them novel facts-that distinguish a progressive program from one that is just making up excuses for itself.
Lakatos distinguished, as Kuhn did, between mature and immature science. Kuhn claimed that mature sciences can be recognized by the fact that they operate under the guidance of a single set of assumptions. As noted above, one of the discussions in psychology has been whether psychology is in this sense a mature science, since there are competing theoretical standpoints. Richard Gorsuch argues persuasively that there is an accepted paradigm in experimental psychology. Lakatos, however, frees psychologists from having to worry about this debate, since he sees progress in even the most exalted sciences as driven by the competition among different research programs. His account of maturity instead focuses on the concept of a positive heuristic.
In mature science, according to Lakatos, a research program includes both a negative and a positive heuristic, which are plans for future development of the program. The negative heuristic is simply the plan (or methodological rule) to avoid falsification of the hard core-to direct potentially falsifying data against the auxiliary hypotheses and make suitable modifications there. This aspect of the heuristic takes account of the fact, emphasized by both Paul Feyerabend and Kuhn, that comprehensive theories need time to develop before they can be judged; progress in science requires a certain amount of "dogmatism." Both mature and immature programs are characterized by a negative heuristic-without the decision to pursue and defend some central theory, there is no program at all.
(Continues...)
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