Abstract
This paper has had as its aim the instigation of renewed attention to the doctrine of reductionism, especially in terms of its implications for the relationship of physiology and psychology. Despite the empirical character of the ultimate answer, it is asserted that the questions involved in the doctrine may properly be the concern of a logical analysis. After briefly sketching four propositions which constitute essential notions of reductionism, the argument focused upon the logical possibility of a complete translatability or derivability of the concepts and laws of psychology from those of physiology. The central contention was that the latter, lacking terms to describe the behavioral environment, was logically inadequate as a base for a thoroughgoing reduction of the former. The remainder of the paper commented upon the relationship of the doctrine to the idea of a hierarchical ordering of the sciences and to the possibility of achieving a unification of science.
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Jessor, R. (1958). The problem of reductionism in psychology. Psychological Review, 65(3), 170–178.
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Notes
- 1.
Sound empirical work, of course, requires no defense, whether motivated by reductionistic aims or not. Nothing said in this paper should be interpreted as depreciating the value of empirical or theoretical efforts to bridge the gap between disciplines.
- 2.
Finer discriminations can, of course, easily be made by including the well-known “border” disciplines such as biochemistry or social psychology. But the fact that there is no sharp break between the sciences, and that it is frequently difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins, need not, in itself, challenge the autonomous existence of the several disciplines. What may be implied by ordering them in a hierarchy from lower to higher will be discussed shortly; for the moment it is only important to consider that this is one of the notions essential to the doctrine of reductionism.
- 3.
Terms in this paper referring to “position” in the hierarchy of the sciences, e.g., higher-lower, upward-downward, top-bottom, are by no means to imply any valuative judgment. The meaning of position in the hierarchy has been variously specified, for example, as referring to levels of abstraction or levels of integration, or as referring to the order of historical evolution within the universe of the subject matter of the sciences, or even to the order of historical emergence of the sciences themselves (White, 1949). As pointed out later, the concept of levels of science is not an analytically clear one (cf. Kroeber, 1952). For present purposes it is sufficient to take note of the existence in scientific discourse of such a hierarchical concept, and to recognize the traditional general ordering which places the physical sciences at the base, the biological sciences in the middle, and the social sciences at the top of the hierarchy.
- 4.
The writer assumes that the study of animal behavior by psychologists is merely propaedeutic to a science of human behavior.
- 5.
That is, the same psychological event may be served by (partly constituted of) an almost infinite variety of different physiological events.
- 6.
To achieve such a derivation requires some law connecting the biological concepts with the physical concepts. “But those connecting laws are not purely physical in character” (Hempel, 1951, p. 321). And they have the character of empirical laws.
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The author was a Social Science Research Council postdoctoral fellow at the University of California during the time in which this paper was prepared.
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Jessor, R. (2017). Explaining Behavior and Development in the Language of Psychology. In: Problem Behavior Theory and the Social Context . Advancing Responsible Adolescent Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57885-9_12
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