What is relationship between epistemology and psychology?
Frege and the logical positivists sharply distinguished epistemology from psychology. However, Quine’s naturalized epistemology overturned this distinction, arguing that epistemology should become a chapter of psychology.
This is a foundational question for epistemology. Following Frege, the logical positivists relegated the context of discovery to psychology and retained the context of justification as the appropriate subject of epistemology. The following resources elaborate on what is at stake in the relationship between epistemology and psychology.
Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938).
(Book excerpt)
There is a great difference between the system of logical interconnections of thought and the actual way in which thinking processes are performed. The psychological operations of thinking are rather vague and fluctuating processes; they almost never keep to the ways prescribed by logic and may even skip whole groups of operations which would be needed for a complete exposition of the subject in question. That is valid for thinking in daily life, as well as for the mental procedure of a man of science, who is confronted by the task of finding logical interconnections between divergent ideas about newly observed facts; the scientific genius has never felt bound to the narrow steps and prescribed courses of logical reasoning. 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 carefully the task of epistemology from that of psychology. Epistemology does not regard the processes of thinking in their actual occurrence; this task is entirely left to psychology. What epistemology intends is to construct thinking processes in way in which they ought to occur if they are to be ranged in a consistent system; or to construct justifiable sets of operations which can be intercalated between the starting-point and the issue of thought-processes, replacing the real intermediate links. Epistemology thus considers a logical substitute rather than real processes.
Karl Popper, The Logical of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge, 2002).
(Book excerpt)
I said above that the work of the scientist consists in putting forward and testing theories.
The initial stage, the act of conceiving or inventing a theory, seems to me neither to call for logical analysis nor be susceptible of it. The question how it happens that a new idea occurs to a man – whether it is a musical theme, a dramatic conflict, or a scientific theory – may be of great interest to empirical psychology; but it is irrelevant to the logical analysis of scientific knowledge. This latter is concerned not with questions of fact (Kant’s quid facti?), but only with questions of justification or validity (Kant’s quid juris?). Its questions are of the following kind. Can a statement be justified? And if so, how? Is it testable? Is it logically dependent on certain other statements? Or does it perhaps contradict them? In order that a statement may be logical examined in this way, it must already have been presented to us. Someone must have formulated it, and submitted it to logical examination.
Accordingly I shall distinguish sharply between the process of conceiving a new idea, and the methods and results of examining it logically. As to the task of the logic of knowledge – in contradistinction to the psychology of knowledge – I shall proceed on the assumption that it consists solely in investigating the methods employed in those systematic tests to which every new idea must be subjected if it is to be seriously entertained.
Harvey Siegel, “Can Psychology be Relevant to Epistemology?,” Philosophy of Education: Proceedings of the Thirty-Fifth Meetings of the Philosophy of Education Society, Vol. 35 (Jan 1979), pp. 55 – 64.
(Article excerpt)
Several problems currently being discussed, both in philosophy in general and in philosophy of education in particular, have more in common than is usually supposed. These problems – which include the analysis of conceptual change, the objectivity of theory choice, and the epistemological importance of development psychology, to name a few – all crucially depend on a prior consideration: namely, on the relationship between psychology and epistemology. For example, psychology, especially development psychology, may tell us much about the development of knowledge. Epistemological considerations, conversely, may help clarify categories, terminology, and issues necessary for progress in psychological theory and practice. However, there is, I believe, one crucial interconnection which cannot be sanctioned; one respect in which psychology cannot be relevant to epistemology. Namely, I will argue in this paper, psychology cannot be relevant to epistemology insofar as epistemology is taken to be primarily concerned with the evaluation of knowledge-claims.
I begin by noting the relationship between the psychology/epistemology distinction, on the one hand; and Hans Reichenbach’s celebrated distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, on the other. (Throughout, the phrase “psychology/epistemology distinction” is to be taken as a concise substitute for “psychology cannot be relevant to the epistemological task of the evaluation of knowledge-claims.”)
Harvey Siegel, “Justification, Discovery, and the Naturalizing of Epistemology,” Philosophy of Science, Vol. 47, No. 2 (June 1980), pp. 297 – 321.
(Abstract)
Reichenbach’s well-known distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification has recently come under attack form several quarters. In this paper I attempt to reconsider the distinction and evaluate various recent criticisms of it. These criticisms fall into two main groups: those which directly challenge Reichenbach’s distinction; and those which (I argue) indirectly but no loess seriously challenge that distinction by rejecting the related distinction between psychology and epistemology, and defending the “naturalizing” of epistemology. I argue that there recent criticisms fail, and that the distinction remains an important conceptual tool necessary for an adequate understanding of the way in which scientific claims purport to appropriately portray our natural environment.
Reichenbach’s well-known distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification has recently come under attack form several quarters. In this paper I attempt to reconsider the distinction and evaluate various recent criticisms of it. These criticisms fall into two main groups: those which directly challenge Reichenbach’s distinction; and those which (I argue) indirectly but no loess seriously challenge that distinction by rejecting the related distinction between psychology and epistemology, and defending the “naturalizing” of epistemology. I argue that there recent criticisms fail, and that the distinction remains an important conceptual tool necessary for an adequate understanding of the way in which scientific claims purport to appropriately portray our natural environment.
Paul Hoyningen-Huene, “Context of Discovery and Context of Justification,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 18 (Dec 1987), pp. 505 – 515.
(Article excerpt)
It seems, therefore, that the controversy about the so-called context distinction is somehow confused. An important source of confusion is that the context distinction contains at least four or five different though related distinctions, and I will explain these distinctions in Section III. Consequently, the seemingly homogeneous context controversy will turn out to consist in a number of fairly heterogeneous controversies (Section IV). Finally, some consequences from our discussion will be drawn (Section V). I will start with some remarks on the earlier history of the distinction in question, before Reichenbach brought it to prominence.
Dissertating Outloud 