Lateral Promotion
Okay, let’s discuss this question of whether Freud is a philosopher, and whether it matters. Should we just all agree to call him a philosopher whether he is one or not because hey who cares? If so, why? If not, why not?
For one thing there is the question of what words mean. Is it useful for them to have such a broad meaning and application that they mean nothing? Or is it more useful for them to have a narrower, more precise meaning, so that we know what we’re talking about when we use them and so that we have some chance of talking about roughly the same thing as opposed to thinking we’re talking about roughly the same thing when in fact we are talking about diametrically opposed things. Surely it makes a difference in discussions of, say Freud and truth-claims and philosophy, if by ‘philosopher’ one party means, say, someone who tries to justify her arguments, and another party means, say, someone who has some ideas about things and talks about them well.
This reminds me (parenthetically) of a discussion on Front Row yesterday, a brief chat about the meaning of the words ‘arts’ and ‘culture’. Mark Lawson and David Crystal noted that art has to be ‘inclusive’ rather than ‘elitist’ and that that means more and more activities have to be included in the arts. Why is that though? one wonders, or at least I do. What does ‘inclusive’ mean, for one thing. Does it mean that various activities will feel hurt and excluded if they are not called ‘arts’? Or that people who enjoy doing them or consuming them will? Or both, or something different? And for another thing, why is that an argument for broadening the definition when it’s not in other areas? Cutting up a chicken for dinner isn’t called surgery. Wandering around aimlessly isn’t called gymnastics or polar exploration. Why are the arts expected to be ‘inclusive’ when other fields are not? Sport is not, for one example. Sport is allowed, in fact encouraged, to be ‘elitist’ – so why is it different for the arts? I wonder.
So, back to philosophy. Is there a difference between a philosopher and a ‘thinker’? Is that a useful distinction? Or are the two categories simply identical. But ‘thinker’ is a pretty broad category, isn’t it? And – correct me if I’m wrong – doesn’t it imply a certain flexibility, a certain license? Aren’t philosophers in fact expected to justify their assertions as opposed to just making them? If they don’t, aren’t other philsophers quick to point that dereliction out to them? Doesn’t the phrase ‘That doesn’t follow’ turn up?
The trouble with Freud as a philosopher is that he was so very wrong in his own field, his truth-claims have been subject to such thorough and exhaustive examination and found so profoundly wanting, that it seems more than a little fraudulent to airlift him out of science and drop him into philosophy, which as a discipline tends to be quite keen on the truth. It’s as if the idea were ‘Well, Freud made a mess of things in his own field but he was so profound and he wrote so well that we can’t just write him off, so we’ll just move him sideways. Now, where to. Literature? Hmm – no, that won’t do, literary theory is too demanding and rigorous, we can’t just slide people in with no training. Okay, philosophy then. They won’t mind. And if they do mind, tough – it’s about time philosophy became more inclusive and less elitist.’
Is that what happened? Who knows. It would be interesting to find out…
First, sports: The sheer obviousness of the criteria for excellence (high scores) and the incredible monetary rewards for winning go a long way to explain why this form of elitism is acceptable in the US. In the arts, the rewards can be just as great but the criteria are no longer obvious. “Art” is a success word, like “science”. If you believe that what you are doing is good, then you want people to show the proper respect; thus, Intelligent Design wants to be science and nearly anything can become art.
Second, Freud: In one of the comments on the Burke post, Richard said
“Harold Bloom once made a rather good case to the effect that there were very few concepts in Freud that hadn’t been at least implicit in Western culture”
For the sake of argument, let’s say that Freud’s accomplishment was in fact to make explicit the implicit or, in other words, to identify some of the culture’s assumptions. Is there a term for someone who does this? If not, is “philosopher” broad enough to include it? Is this what Nietzsche did? In such a case, which is the truth claim: “this is the assumption” or “this assumption is true”?
Cultural critic? That’s a perfectly respectable thing to be, I think. Indeed, in some ways a much better thing to be than a philosopher, which some philosophers I’ve read might not disagree with. I kind of do think that’s what Nietzsche did – but as I said, I also haven’t read all of him. I have an idea that he did make something like an argument in some of his work – that it’s not all just assertion. At any rate, I don’t think philosophy is broad enough to include it. At least…we can all call ourselves philosophers, of course, but then there will be philosophers lurking on street corners to point out that we’re not…
Are philosophers in the business of just making arguments? No, they’re in the business of thinking. Admittedly, the activity of thinking is not peculiar to philosophers, but philosophy as a dscipline has long since lost any self-grounding, “autonomous” authority, and any special provenance of its own. So thinking is just about all that philosophers as such do. Of course, the old Paramedian identity between thought and being has also long since disappeared. But that too is another task for thinking. The presentation of their thinking may take the form of works that are organized by sequences of arguments, or not. At any rate, the deeper “argument” of many major philosophical works is often not contained in the explicitly argumentative passages. The 17th century vogue for the Euclidian method is the exception, not the rule.
Did Freud get many things significantly wrong? Duh! But that he was completely and damnably wrong about everything and in relation to and relative to what is not argued here, just dogmatically asserted. More relevantly, was he at all interestingly and significantly wrong, following out Nietzsche’s maxim that one can learn infinitely more from the errors of great minds than from the truth’s of small minds? Aristotle and Kant, after all, were significantly wrong. I myself do not put much stock in Freud and his alleged greatness; I think his work contains any number of conceptual muddles in its premises and don’t remotely buy into the notion of the “Unconscious” as the causal determinant of “mind” and behavior. But still, the large place of Freud and psychoanalysis on the intellectual agenda of the 20th century would seem to require some accounting for, other than the assertion that, well, he was just obviously wrong. I’ve always taken it as a compensation for unmet intellectual, cultural and spiritual needs, as well as, a prop for bourgeois ideology, with its cult of the individual. But really, nobody is all that unique.
Don’t say ‘Duh!’ It’s irritating. And as for ‘just dogmatically asserted’ – what’s that in your eye? Looks kind of like a beam.
Try looking at the recommended books and links in the Freud In Focus, try looking at Allen Esterson’s articles on the front page – they’ll tell you in what way Freud’s ‘truth-claims have been subject to such thorough and exhaustive examination and found so profoundly wanting.’ I’m not making an independent argument, I’m drawing on the work of these scholars, and commenting on the radio programme I listened to.
‘Are philosophers in the business of just making arguments? No, they’re in the business of thinking.’
My, what a dogmatic assertion. Furthermore, I didn’t say philosphers were ‘just’ in the ‘business’ of making arguments. What I said was, ‘a good many philosophers do think that indifference to truth claims and argument means it ain’t philosophy.’ That is by no means to say that making arguments is or should be all philosphers do.
As always – you need to slow down, take a deep breath, write less, read more slowly and carefully, think more, and only then write, slowly and with care. You will get better results that way.
OB:
Actually, I did post on the previous thread in response to your non-responsive nonsequitur that Freud was not a psychologist, but that post got swallowed up somehow in cyberspace and I had to go to dinner with relatives. When I mentioned at dinner what had happened to my post and the comment my post was in response to, my brother-in-law, who is a MSW therapist, let out one of his trademark cackles. When I got back from dinner, I did not feel like trying to reconstitute my lost post, but posted the above, which was carried over from some of your comments in the last thread. Specifically, you said that Nietzsche does not argue, but just makes assertions. I’m not a big Nietzsche fan, but that’s just the sort of thing Nieztsche’s rebarbative style was designed to catch out. Richard put his finger on it, when he remarked about the question of whether there is such-and-such a presupposition at play is different from the question of whether the presupposition is true. In fact, whether the conditions by which something can be either true or false are themselves capable of being judged true or false is one of the core conundrums of 20th century philosophy, connected up with reflections on the nature of truth, meaning and language. And, again, for the billionth time, there are different kinds of validity claims, as well as differences in levels and kinds within any discourse pertaining to one kind of validity claim. Further, different kinds of validity claims may be cross-implicated with one another, such that it does not make entire sense to demand that matters be decided on a singular basis.
Much of what you post reads as if you thought that a traditional “correspondance theory” of truth could and should still obtain, that truth is our secure possession, based on the correct appreciation of the facts and the proper methodology. And the constant suggestion is that we should all be scandalized, if any other attitude or disposition is evinced. And not only do you evince little reflection upon the “will-to-power”, the presuppositions, of such a view, but you don’t seem to fully own the polemical nature of your claims. In this case, the implication is that anyone who deviates from a standard line of empiricist criticisms of Freud deserves thereby to have their rationality and good faith brought into question. There is no effort here to put Freud in historical perspective, as to where he came from and what the possible alternatives were, nor is there any effort to analyse why he may have seemed in some measure to be persuasive- (in particular, you seem to miss his renewal of the Feuerbachian critique of religion)-, nor is there any cognizance shown of developments in thinking of these matters since, especially the fact that orthodox psychoanalysis has long since decomposed into a number of different schools/paradigms of clinical theory and practice, let alone all the other types of psychotherapy that have staked their claims since. (You also seem to miss the distinction between medical practice and scientific theory, though one standard line of criticism has to do with the application of the medical model to non-physical ills.) Now, as I already stated, I think that there is much that is sophistical and conceptually muddled in Freud’s work. And the cult of the founder, as fearless leader, in psychoanalytic orthodoxy is an easy mark. But, as I stated in my lost post, the real empirical scandal is the relative lack of follow-up studies, with respect to the efficacy of various psychotherapeutic “treatments”. Still, that racket is far less disturbing to me than the endless peddling of pharmaceuticals by capitialist/corporate interests, in the name of sheer adjustment to the requirements of functionality, without any right or opportunity to talk back.
Also stated in my lost post, I think that psychology is an inflated grab-bag category and that most of what is tossed into it would more properly be accounted for in biological, social, ethical, cognitive, linguistic, existential, etc. terms. When all that is subtracted out, what remains is largely a descriptive discipline, without explanatory means. (I have no idea what you think the “correct” science of psychology is, but heaven help us all, if it is Ev Psych!) If there is a properly systematic, empirical science covering these matters, from which results are to be expected, it is called neurobiology. But that is a complex business only a few decades old and , no doubt, a lot of the old ideas and prejudices will be recycled through it.
I think it high time that the idea that it is only these mush-brained humanities types, who wouldn’t recognize a fact or a rigorous argument, even if it begged for change from them on the street, who would lend any credence to such nonsense, was put to rest. I must admit that I don’t get the idea of psychoanalytic literary criticism. Do literary works need therapy? Does psychoanalytic theory capture the complexion and point of literary works? Or is it that literary works do a better job of it than psychoanalysis? At any rate, the “correct” response to the apparent excesses of the broadcast that you complained of is that psychoanalytic claims, whatever there validity, pertain to the clinical context, in which the actual interaction occurs, and do not generalize outside that context. But the question of what to call Freud is really trivial. (Aside from the fact that you elide historical semantics: was James Clerk Maxwell a “natural philosopher”? He certainly thought of himself as one, as well as being a perfect Christianly gentleman.) The really relevant question is whether Freud was at all interestingly wrong. Unless, in your zeal for correctness, you rule that out of court.
The Gospel citation was a nice touch though.
“You also seem to miss the distinction between medical practice and scientific theory, though one standard line of criticism has to do with the application of the medical model to non-physical ills.”
How about an objection to using psychological theories to treat physical ills?
“I must admit that I don’t get the idea of psychoanalytic literary criticism. Do literary works need therapy? Does psychoanalytic theory capture the complexion and point of literary works? Or is it that literary works do a better job of it than psychoanalysis?”
Maybe the prevalence and dominance of Freudian ideas means that much 20th Century literature can only be understood with reference to psychoanalysis (if you subscribe to the fantastically outré notion that the thinking of the author ise relevant that is).
“I think that psychology is an inflated grab-bag category and that most of what is tossed into it would more properly be accounted for in biological, social, ethical, cognitive, linguistic, existential, etc. terms. When all that is subtracted out, what remains is largely a descriptive discipline, without explanatory means.”
I might agree with the latter sentiments about much of psychology being non-explanatory but what do you mean that psychology could be ‘more properly be accounted for in biological, social, ethical, cognitive, linguistic, existential, etc. terms’? ‘Biological’, ‘social’, ‘cognitive’ and ‘linguistic’ are just terms used to subdivide psychology anyway, and what on earth would the ‘ethical’ or ‘existential’ aspects of psychology be?
Why not say that biology could be better thought of in ethological, ecological, ethical, biochemical, paleontological, existential, etc. terms?!
Nice job of keeping your comments short and concise, John. For the 2 billionth time, I’m just not going to read a whole book every time you’re moved to comment. I don’t have time, or inclination either.
PM:
The case of psychological treatments for physical ills is already granted. I myself know from fairly direct empirical tellings of such abuses. On the other hand, modern-day clinical practice with a pyschoanalytic orientation largely consists in pychoanalytically informed psychotherapy and not in the full-blown S&M ritual of yore.
The point about psychology is that it treats of human beings and the supposed mysteries of their “inner” workings. So what would the existential and ethical matters be that might effect those ever so hidden and esoteric inner workings? The point is that not all matters concerning human existence are reducible to a cognitive attitude and to be encompassed by a “systematic” science. Rubber-chicken omnicompetence is not actually desirable. I think that is something that could be said against psychoanalysis and its supposed “philosophy”.
As for literature, Kafka read Freud with great interest and, though he thought some of it may well be true, he concluded that his own case was incurable, (i.e. there were things Freud didn’t know of.) So which would you rather read: Kafka, Freud, or a Freudian interpretation of Kafka?I myself prefer Kafka. No one else does absurdity and paradox with such naively serious aplomb and with such humane affection.
OB:
I know. Fine by me. I would not want to interfere with your vatic inspirations. But I’ve noticed I’m not the only one here whose comments have word-counts that exceed fingers and toes.
Doesn’t the out of favour good and bad distinction remedy the problem? So you might think F a bad philosopher but a philosopher nonetheless. Ditto scientist. You feel he failed to meet all your expectations of a profecient practacioner but that doesn’t seem to me to make him not one. Are all ancient metaphysical speculators not philosophers because you think them as proven wrong?
PM,
>> What on earth would the ‘ethical’ or
>> ‘existential’ aspects of psychology
>> be?
Ethical – see the experiments such as those testing conformity, action in positions of power, following orders etc largely motivated by the question of how those involved in the holocaust could have been.
Existential – could be understood as investigating and treating the feelings of angst, analysing the act choosing etc
Doesn’t the out of favour good and bad distinction remedy the problem? So you might think F a bad philosopher but a philosopher nonetheless. Ditto scientist. You feel he failed to meet all your expectations of a profecient practacioner but that doesn’t seem to me to make him not one. Are all ancient metaphysical speculators not philosophers because you think them as proven wrong?
PM,
>> What on earth would the ‘ethical’ or
>> ‘existential’ aspects of psychology
>> be?
Ethical – see the experiments such as those testing conformity, action in positions of power, following orders etc largely motivated by the question of how those involved in the holocaust could have been.
Existential – could be understood as investigating and treating the feelings of angst, analysing the act choosing etc
JCH:
“The point about psychology is that it treats of human beings and the supposed mysteries of their “inner” workings. So what would the existential and ethical matters be that might effect those ever so hidden and esoteric inner workings? The point is that not all matters concerning human existence are reducible to a cognitive attitude and to be encompassed by a “systematic” science. Rubber-chicken omnicompetence is not actually desirable. I think that is something that could be said against psychoanalysis and its supposed “philosophy”.”
What?
DW:
“Ethical – see the experiments such as those testing conformity, action in positions of power, following orders etc largely motivated by the question of how those involved in the holocaust could have been.”
By ‘ethical aspect’ I was refering to the -subset- of psychological study that could be better thought of as part of ethics (as per jch), ‘aspect’ was an unfortunate word to use. The above is an ethical consequence, consideration or motivation for the experiment, it does not, however, make the experiment part of ‘ethics’.
“Existential – could be understood as investigating and treating the feelings of angst, analysing the act choosing etc”
In what way does this create a field separate from investigating and treating the feelings of anxiety or depression? In what way is this a seperate domain from the rest of psychology as per jch?
Further re: dividing psychology into ‘ethical’ or ‘existential’ – you could classify works of art by colour or scientific papers by the first word but that wouldn’t be very meaningful.
Right, John, while we’re at it – I’m tired of this. Drop the snide tone, the air of superiority, the condescension. I’m going to start editing your posts if you don’t. “Vatic inspirations” nothing. Be civil or be quiet.
A reader mentioned to me the other day that an admirable feature of B&W is the decorum. He’s right. You’re lowering the tone, so stop doing that.
PM:
I previously responded before work, but when I pressed post, my remarks got swallowed up again in cyberspace. I’m tired, but I’ll try again, as succinctly as I can. I am skeptical of there being a valid, general science called psychology. I’m taking a philosophical line of anti-psychologism, which is not peculiar to me, though my version may be peculiar. There exist various objective sciences and there exist human beings with their various mental capacities, properties and experiences, which are connected up with their behaviors. The usual line of thinking seems to be that all those things which can not be dealt with and explained as physical reality are thereby consigned to the realm of psychology, which is an inner realm, but which is to be treated of in the manner of an objective science. The aim seems to be that, if such a science of psychology were achieved, then, in effect, there would be a completion and totalization of science, as a cognitive accounting for everything. Psychological theories usually start by presupposing some norm, whether cognitive, behavioral, or social, which is the standard of correctness and rationality, and observing the empirical deviations from that norm, which are then to be submitted to a reduction to the terms of some law-like regularity, so as to overcome their apparent irrationality and bring it under the cognitive mastery and rationality of the supposed science. This strike me as secondary elaboration. The norm and its purview are not themselves asked for their justification and the supposed irrationality of the phenomena that are connected to it are not allowed to be questioned as to what other ways they may make sense. But most of all, it is the assumption that the various phenomena labeled psychological belong to such an interior realm that is questionable. This assumption ultimately derives from the subjectivist turn in modern philosophy that Descartes initiated, and, when that subjectivist turn in conceptually dismantled, things begin to look rather different. This is not at all to say that humans and their mental characteristics don’t exist. It is rather to say that human beings are already part of the world, that they are already exterior to themselves in existing in and in relation to that world. Thus the mental features of humans are emergent properties of physical neuronal activity. But still more to the point many features of human existence, while both real and open to modes of inquiry and understanding, are not amenable to scientific treatment and, in particular, are not really psychological in nature. Thus humans feel the need to justify the existence in the world, their actions and their personal identity. That is not a psychological matter, but has its own different reasonable basis and “logic” of inquiry, understanding and justification, to which psychological considerations or “reasons” can add little. Similarly, cognition is a matter of asserting statements that can be either true or false and of providing other such statements to support or justify such cognitive truth claims. There might be any number of different psychological processes or pathways by which such a cognitive truth claim might be arrived at, but none of that would effect whether the claim was true or not, nor the basis of its justification.Thirdly, there are facts of life and death that human beings have to deal with, such as temporality, limitation and failure, contigency, choice and the insuperability and irreversibility of fate. How these existential matters effect them and how they deal with them is not a psychological matter, not something adventitious, merely subjective, or imaginary, but a real set of factors with rationales of their own. Finally, language and meaning themselves are not psychological matters. Meanings are not subjective, nor are they experiences. And even when words refer to the experiences of “inner” life, that is because of the correlations and behavioral coordinations between speakers of a language, which is clearly not an interior matter. But because of the inherited philosophical/cultural matrix of categories that we inherit from the dominant subjectivist tradition of modern philosophy, all such matters are routinely tossed in to a grab-bag notion of psychology. But the expectation that psychology could ever master and explain all these matters scientifically seems to me excessive. Such psychology, like its doppelgaenger, epistemology, strikes me as a theoretical fantasy that by recourse to theoretical mastery we can evade the risks, needs and responsibilities of actual life, which theoretical tack is not coincidentally an evasion of our exposure to and confrontation with others, in the name of a self-enclosed interiority.
I’ll try and keep this short for all concerned.
JCH:
“The usual line of thinking seems to be that all those things which can not be dealt with and explained as physical reality are thereby consigned to the realm of psychology, which is an inner realm, but which is to be treated of in the manner of an objective science. The aim seems to be that, if such a science of psychology were achieved, then, in effect, there would be a completion and totalization of science, as a cognitive accounting for everything.”
Is that really the usual line of thinking? There was me thinking that psychology was the study of mental processes and phenomena. Now I see it covers “all those things which can not be dealt with and explained as physical reality” – so everything other than the physical sciences in your view? I don’t think so.
“Psychological theories usually start by presupposing some norm, whether cognitive, behavioral, or social, which is the standard of correctness and rationality, and observing the empirical deviations from that norm”
Absolute rubbish. Do you have any idea what psychology is?
“…which are then to be submitted to a reduction to the terms of some law-like regularity, so as to overcome their apparent irrationality and bring it under the cognitive mastery and rationality of the supposed science.”
That probably sounded quite clever to you when you wrote it. Unfortunately it sounds stupid to everyone else.
“But most of all, it is the assumption that the various phenomena labeled psychological belong to such an interior realm that is questionable…This is not at all to say that humans and their mental characteristics don’t exist. It is rather to say that human beings are already part of the world, that they are already exterior to themselves in existing in and in relation to that world. Thus the mental features of humans are emergent properties of physical neuronal activity.”
Again, probably sounded clever to you but it only seems to be you that thinks psychology depends on mental processes being divorced from the physical world, questions about an ‘interior realm’ are irelevant to the status of psychology as a science, it labpured under the influence of behavourism for decades for God’s sake!
“But still more to the point many features of human existence, while both real and open to modes of inquiry and understanding, are not amenable to scientific treatment and, in particular, are not really psychological in nature. Thus humans feel the need to justify the existence in the world, their actions and their personal identity. That is not a psychological matter, but has its own different reasonable basis and “logic” of inquiry, understanding and justification, to which psychological considerations or “reasons” can add little.”
Sounds like you’re making some kind of play for the validity of folk psychology, but it is hard to tell. Whether you are, or are not, it is again irrelevant whether there are ‘valid’ modes of enquiry into the human condition other than psychology – you are claiming the non-status of psychology as a science, not the validity of other modes of enquiry.
“Similarly, cognition is a matter of asserting statements that can be either true or false and of providing other such statements to support or justify such cognitive truth claims.”
No it isn’t. You just made that up!
I’ll end there, I think I must echo JS, you sound just like an undergraduate or new graduate student that has just discovered Wittgenstein, or even a new philosopher version of the ELISA program maybe? I don’t think you know anything about psychology as a science but you are happy to wade in with several feet of pseudo-philosophical ramblings on the topic. Stop!
I’m sorry if I can not make myself understood. However, the problem is not always entirely mine. I am well aware that there are vast reems of stuff published under the rubric of psychology and am not claiming that everything under such auspices is bunk. However, claims for a science of psychology are over-inflated and overextended, and that results in much poorly thought through bunk.
Psychology in the modern sense actually began with Kant’s split between the transcendental ego and the empirical ego. Kant did not actually thing a science of psychology was possible, because he thought all science must be mathematically formalized to be scientific and he did not see how that was possible in psychology, but he allow for the theoretical possibility. Psychologistic thinking in Europe grew in scope throughout the 19th century, until the late 19th century was virtually a swamp of psychologism. (That is the context from which Freud originated.) This naturally gave rise to a counterreaction. Husserl’s phenomenology began as a critique of psychologism in epistemology and something of the same motivation gave rise to Frege’s logic. The brief formula that I gave concerning the hypostatization of some norm of rational correctness and the reduction of the supposed irrationality of phenonema to the regularities of the psychological norm can be observed in many different kinds of psychological theories and amounts to a kind of petitio principii. It omits the consideration that, though mental processes may be ingredient in the phenonmena, they may have a complexion and rationale quite other than the psychological, that is, than the provenance of “inner” thoughts, motives, experiences, feelings, etc. And this notion of a psychological realm has everything to do with the subject/object split and with the privileging of the cognitive attitude as the exclusive hallmark of rationality. (There have been centuries of reems published on the idea that, if we could just get our account of perception right, we could connect up our knowledge with the external world!) But rationality is a broader and more basic notion than science, which is variously specialized in cognitive claims pertaining to different domains, and much of the underlying motivation for psychological projects consists in the idea that, if we could just get our psychological accounts right, then the rational mastery of the world solely in terms of a cognitive attitude toward it, would, in principle, be complete. But that notion is just a scientistic compensatory mechanism.
As for psychology having been “labpured” (?) under behavioralism, behavioralism, in my book, would be a prime example of exactly the sort of conceptual nonsense that psychologism tends to give rise to. (And again, saying that a study is “objective” does not in any way serve to root out the paradoxes of the subject/object split, but, by unthinkingly objectifying such matters, one can merely compound them.) But I did state somewhere here, (whether it was in a lost post or not, I don’t remember) that, if there is a proper science for matters deemed psychological, it is called neurobiology. For that precise descriptions of various mental phenomena are needed, which would be the provenance of empirical psychological study, else it would not be clear what any explanations count as explanations of, and one could readily fall prey to reductionist fallacies.
As for the matter of cognition, yes, cognition is a matter of making statements raising cognitive validity claims within our cognitive practices and various procedures to support and justify them. This is not a matter of some supposed psychological process by which such statements are arrived at and psychology would have nothing to contribute to the process by which they were justified, nor would psychology somehow increase the tenability of our knowledge. (In the first instance, cognition is a matter of understanding the meaning and purport of such statements and that is not at all a psychological process.) Now it may well be that there are rooted biases or tendencies in our thinking, due to the structure of neural processes or whatnot, and one could submit such matters to study. But that is not such a problem, since we do arrive at justified knowledge anyway, such that its basis is independent of any such initial biases and such error-detection contributes nothing to their validity. So no, that is not just something I made up. It is a piece of clear thinking. (The resort to psychological processes as required for an account of knowledge is a piece of rank subjectivism.)
As for your imputation that ordinary understandings are mere “folk psychology”, a fairly common academic mannerism, that is precisely the sort of supercilious scientistic-intellectualistic evasion that I am criticizing, (as if only the purely rarefied, abstract and counterintuitive aspects of scientific or academic thinking counted as rational.) Among other things, such an imputation fatally fails to recognize how much even the most sophisticated scientific understandings derive from, relate to, and remain dependent on an enduring framework of ordinary understandings, (which is not to claim that these latter are ahistorical.) The case is similar with people who insist on discussing their interpersonal relationships in Freudian or other psychological jargon. It is simply not effective.
My initial claim was not that all psychology is bunkum and that there exist no valid studies under its auspices. My claim was that psychologistic thinking is over-inflated and over-extended and that the imperial claims of psychology both derive from and are a source of temptation to a false framework of rational accounting. (The initial context was Freud and psychoanalysis, with claims or implications being made that, whereas Freud was pure bunkum, correct psychology would do so much better and assure us of our nice tidy rational universe.) Perhaps you have some sort of extra investment in psychology. (Psychology degrees are the most commonly issued undergraduate scrip.) But if you ignore any historical/intellectual inquiry into the origins and development of conceptions and problematics, then, of course, you can bask superciliously and contentedly in the prevailing intellectual mythologies and ideologies of the day, while enjoying you assured conviction of rational superiority.
I don’t want to get into a pissing contest here, but, aside from the issue of sloppy typing and sloppy reading, the quality of your response to my “pseudo-philosophical ramblings” would seem to indicate that my level of philosophical literacy is just a smidgeon better than yours.
“(The initial context was Freud and psychoanalysis, with claims or implications being made that, whereas Freud was pure bunkum, correct psychology would do so much better and assure us of our nice tidy rational universe.)”
That still is the context. That’s what this discussion is about. And as for your putative “claims” and “implications” – that’s just nonsense, and condescending nonsense at that. No one claimed any such thing. One can say that Freud was entirely wrong about everything including his own hat size, without thereby making any claims about psychology or meta-psychology much less any nice tidy rational universe.
And another thing. That post is 1056 words. That’s more than the maximum for my column at TPM. We publish some articles that are shorter than that. That’s more than is necessary or desirable.
“What Freud did was not psychology- and, more to the point, psychology was not what Freud did.” OB
JCH:
Did you notice that you failed to provide any examples to back up your claims about psychology? Although you did point out a spelling mistake, bravo!
John,
Okay, fair point. I did make a claim about psychology, you’re quite right. But does it follow from that that I am also making any claim about a nice tidy rational universe?
To put it another way, what are you claiming? That in order to accept or be aware that humans are irrational, one has to think Freud was right? That thinking Freud was wrong precludes thinking humans are irrational? If so, why?
JCH:
As your “level of philosophical literacy is just a smidgeon better than” mine I assume you are simply having a bit of fun when you say
‘As for your imputation that ordinary understandings are mere “folk psychology”, a fairly common academic mannerism, that is precisely the sort of supercilious scientistic-intellectualistic evasion that I am criticizing, (as if only the purely rarefied, abstract and counterintuitive aspects of scientific or academic thinking counted as rational.)’
My imputation indeed, as if it wasn’t common parlance in the philosophy of mind.
It’s prabably too late in the thread for this to do much good, but I just remembered an excellent book on what psychology does well and does not do well.
“House of Cards: psychology and psychotherapy built on myth” by Robyn M. Dawes, 1994.
OB:
O.K. I think I can put this fairly succinctly. My core objection with your apparent way of thinking involves the “totalization” of scientific naturalism as a worldview. By “totalization”, I do not mean some sort of omniscience or complete knowledge, free of revision, but simply an assumption of, in principle, continuity with such scientific knowledge and naturalism. I don’t have any problem with the naturalism of natural science itself,- (though there would be some argument about whether such naturalism should be applied reflexively to the project of such science itself)-, but I think that such a naturalistic view is inherently limited and incomplete. There are really two related issues here. One is that I see the “project” of modern science and technology as being rooted and having some continuity with the “project” of Western metaphysics, originating with the Greeks, inspite of all the admittedly vast changes since, and I view the “totalization” of scientific naturalism as containing significant metaphysical residues. (This view is, of course, partly due to my reading background, including the evil Heidegger, and what I take from it.) In particular, the assumptions that remain are that knowledge is the sine qua non of rationality and that knowledge is the supreme justification of existence. The second issue is that such a “totalization” occludes and rules out-of-court any number of questions that I would take to be reasonable and even essential to what is rational. What is our need for knowledge and what does our knowledge actually get us? (Stanley Cavell put his version of that question this way: “Why are we so disappointed with our knowledge?”) What are the limits of our knowledge and its basis of validity? What other human concerns belong to or are amenable to human reason? How does “reason” deal with the irrational? And, last but certainly not least, how is human freedom possible in a causally determined real world? (Kant was probably the first to have raised squarely this last question, which is one of the reasons why he was and remains a crucial turning point in the emergence of modern thinking, no matter how much one may reject the terms in which he posed the question and his “solutions”.) It’s in this light that the claim I made about psychology, as an overinflated grab-bag category in which excessive expectations are invested, had relevance. I see such a notion of psychology as being required by the effort to “totalize” the naturalistic, cognitive attitude. In effect, such psychology, because it is a science and therefore cognitive, a means of cognitive mastery, as occupying the old ghostly place of the metaphysical “noesis noesikos”, thought thinking itself, the completion of the project of metaphysical closure. So the argumentative move I was attempting was to take down this overinflated notion of psychology, so as to get back to finite human reality and what is possible to human reason. Hence I cited a number of considerations, which, while no doubt engaged variously with human mentality, are nonetheless not really incorporated by a psychology that privileges the cognitive attitude. Once that is granted, let’s get back to Freud the bounder and his “abominable mess”. From that vantage point, the tempest in a teapot of psychoanalysis is less of a black hat and white hat issue, but more open and manysided.
John, Yes, that is fairly concise, also clear – thanks!
I don’t buy the argument though, it won’t surprise you to hear. I think it relies on a radical misrepresentation of science and ‘reason’ for one thing – it relies on caricatures of them. This caricature is a very popular one right now. It amounts to (as I see it) equating all of science and all empirical inquiry with the most dogmatic versions of logical positivism. There seems to be a kind of equivalency move – which equates saying, for instance, ‘That idea is not well-supported by the evidence’ or ‘There is no evidence for that claim’ with saying ‘There is nothing further to be said about that subject.’ But the two are not the same.
And furthermore, even if your claims were granted, I disagree that it would follow that psychoanalysis ‘is’ more open and manysided. Does it follow from your view of the matter that all claims and ‘narratives’ are open and manysided? Fairies, witches, alien abductions? Anything and everything? If so, then I think you’re wrong. If not, then why should Freud’s claims? A priori, I mean, which seems to be how you’re putting it. You say it ‘is’ more open and manysided, not that it seems to be or appears or could be taken to be.
Well, that was a fine piece of misreading. I did not say that psychoanalysis “is” open and many-sided. I was arguing that, if one took down the overinflated claims and expectations of psychologism in general and recognized that most of the problems, difficulties and concerns of human life are not fundamentally psychological in nature, then the discussion and criticism of Freud and psychoanalysis could be more open and many-sided. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not defending Freud here. (And you just posted a rather good review of what seemed to be a rather good book on therapy that was such a more open and many-sided discussion on the matter.) And, anyway, a more effective line of criticism against psychoanalysis is not that it is not scientifically true, but that it is therapeutically ineffective, with its overweening sense of omni-competence, its tendency to make trouble where there is none and to overlook other sorts of trouble, and its dogmatic, rigid, authoritarian and coercive approach. But, at any rate, in that last post, I was trying to work out what I find philosophically irritating in your m.o. (You know when you’re working physically for a long time and a muscle or ligament gets pulled out of joint, that sort of slight, vibrating, twingey nerve pain?That’s the feeling I get.) You recurrently seem to hold to an identity of reason=science=truth=reality, which is too simple, and then, when someone fails to adhere to the real truth, of which you are somehow in secure possession, point to that as a scandalous outrage, which you polemically impute to some dodginess or duplicity in the other. Leaving aside that there are other sorts of normative concerns than truth and that others might not be quite so scandalized by its violation, the polemical charge could just as much be seen as resulting from a lack of reflection on your own presuppositions, and a consequent narrowness of your view on the matter.
Yes, you’re probably right about the misreading; sorry. I had another look later and thought I had perhaps read too quickly. On the other hand, did I really misread you on the many-sided question? Could the fault be with the way you said it – if I read it in a way that is not what you intended?
“From that vantage point, the tempest in a teapot of psychoanalysis is less of a black hat and white hat issue, but more open and manysided.”
You didn’t actually say “could be,” you said “is”.
“You recurrently seem to hold to an identity of reason=science=truth=reality, which is too simple”
Well, that’s a misreading then. Of course I don’t think reason=truth, or that truth=reality, or that reason=reality – I don’t think any of those equations you ascribe to me. I’d have to be a half-wit to do so – they’re sort of meaningless, just for one thing. Of course, I may well be a half-wit; lots of people think so; but I protest that I’m not such a half-wit as that.
“of which you are somehow in secure possession”
That’s just snideness again. It is possible to make an argument without making snide remarks. Try to do so.
“there are other sorts of normative concerns than truth”
No kidding. But truth happens to be the chief normative concern of this particular site, as we make quite clear.
“the polemical charge could just as much be seen as resulting from a lack of reflection on your own presuppositions, and a consequent narrowness of your view on the matter.”
Of course it could. And a cat could look at a king, too. But you seem to have a mistaken idea of what my presuppositions are – or else you did a bad job of articulating them – so your version of my presuppositions doesn’t do much to help you make your case.
OB:
Again, I used the word “seem”. And as for snideness, well, I’ve noticed that I’m not the only one around here who could be exposed to such an accusation. But the point I was making did not have to be interpreted in such an ad hominem fashion; it could have been taken as a more gnerealized point about the absence of monopoly in matters of truth and the possibility that positions are more or less interesting intrications of true and false. As for the Freud mess, in particular, it is very hard to know what to make of his claims, as they are claims about fantasies and that is a very elusive domain, which problem is only compounded by Freud’s own tendencies toward a scientistic literalism. More generally, the point is that truth claims themselves are never purely factual, but have normative dependencies. The notion of “value-free” science is mistaken, not only because science is itself a distinct rational value, but because the suspension of certain sorts of normative considerations and value-judgments is itself a norm of scientific procedures, in order for science to get about its business, whereas the various domains of science each develop distinct norms about what sorts of statements and procedures are allowable and relevant to its domain. But this normative infra-structure is not and can not be epistemologically guaranteed, and whenever scientific claims or results are returned from their specialized, abstracted realm and applied, they inevitably cross-sect with other sorts of considerations and normative concerns.
What? Again, you used the word ‘seem’ about what, when, where, and what is that observation in response to? You used the word ‘of’ too, but what of it? As for snideness, notice whatever you like; it’s your snideness I’m talking about – though you have at least improved. (No, the point you made couldn’t have been taken as a more generalized point – the word ‘you’ prevented that.)
Have I said anything about ‘value-free science’? I strongly doubt it; that doesn’t sound like my vocabulary. So I’m not sure what you’re correcting when you say it’s a mistaken notion. And did I say truth claims are purely factual? I don’t think so – so the same applies. It’s translation again. You re-cast what I say and then flail at what I haven’t said. Stick to what I do say, why don’t you. You talk about how irritating you find what I say – but you never actually do address what I say, you address something else. So your irritation seems kind of self-induced. Or to put it another way, I’m not saying anything as dense and flat-footed as what you keep attributing to me. That too gets irritating, you know.
So – what’s your point? What kinds of ‘normative considerations and value-judgments’ do you think should not be suspended in order for science to go about its business? What role do you think normative considerations and value-judgments should play in science? And what does ‘epistemologically guaranteed’ mean? And what does ‘they inevitably cross-sect with other sorts of considerations and normative concerns’ mean, and what follows from it? And how is any of what you say incompatible with saying that Freud’s claims were not based on evidence?
Yes, me again. Sorry for my philological inexactitude: “seem” as is “You recurrently seem to hold to an identity…”. But let’s reverse the factitiously imputed identity: reason is not soley concerned with cognitive truth; science, a product of reason, is not the uniquely authoritative source of reason and truth; truth, though cross-implicated with the notion of reality, is not the same as reality; the two notions are on different levels and the notion of truth admits of different kinds and levels; reality is never in anyone’s secure and exclusive possession. The lack of epistemological guarantee means that the normative “infrastructure” of truth may fail and stand in need of substantial revision, as has happened any number of times historically; there is no way to certify it or preclude this from happening theoretically. The point about scientific truths being cross-implicated with other concerns and norms when applied occurs whenever they are brought into any general reasonable discussion and questions of the legitimacy of belief arise. (The usual distinction in the philosophy of science is between the contexts of discovery, justification and application; it is only the context of justification that admits in some degree of the traditional notion of the “autonomy” of science.) As for evidence for Freud’s claims, well, standards of evidence are not themselves self-evident. I did attempt the half-thought above that the domain to which those claims apply is that of fantasy, which is by definition unreal and non-objective, but that Freud nonetheless attributes to such fantasy a “causal” role, which is deeply odd. But the context of psychoanalytic claims is the clinical situation itself, and they really have no bearing outside that. On this Freud himself was thoroughly muddled, constructing theories in the place of clinical descriptions. (The famous “death instinct” is a case in point, as it actually records a clinical impasse in the attempt at therapy, which Freud ascribes to a “primal” drive, when probably what was really the case was that his patients were just deeply and desperately depressed and resistant to his recurrent misinterpretation of their state of mind and needs.) But the notion that psychoanalysis is a hermenteutic rather than a science is not a dodge; rather psychoanalysis is precisely a method of interpretation that has no other evidential access than that and depends upon a reflective process in the patient in accepting or rejecting such interpretations. So the actual evidential basis would be whether it is an effective therapy and whether its schemas of interpretation effectively move the therapy along to an effective conclusion or resolution, which is slightly paradoxical, because the interpretations would then disappear into what they obviate. But I would guess the state of evidence on the efficacy of psychoanalysis as a therapy is not good. (I did read the last Jonathon Lear piece that you posted in your special archive or dossier; while I could readily pick apart a number of the claims or points that he made, he did not strike me as a stupid or irrational fellow.)
[Edit]
Well, just for one thing – “But the context of psychoanalytic claims is the clinical situation itself, and they really have no bearing outside that.”
But of course they are used “outside that” – for instance as underpinning for the whole “recovered memory” movement.
And, yet again, if you listen to the ‘In Our Time’ broadcast, you will find that the Freudians there make very firm, unhedged and unqualified, putatively factual statements about what Freud discovered and what psychoanalysis shows. So it seems to me that most of what you’ve been saying is simply beside the point – addresses different issues.