Psychology as a science of critical evaluation

The present confusion in the domain of psychology with respect to its subject-matter and method need not be interpreted as a failure to justify its claims to be a science. It is indeed an indication of progress that psychologists are attempting to specify precisely what is the content and method of their domain. The difficulty of this specification is of course in great part owing to the extreme complexity of mental phenomena, but in spite of this difficulty, there are indications that psychology is beginning to interpret its phenomena in accordance with the logic of science.

The fundamental purpose of science is to isolate certain phenomena, and to describe them so adequately, that their significance is understood, or that control over them is established. Science is essentially a process of critically evaluating facts and conditions, which are brought to its notice because of various human problems. Each particular science evaluates, that is, endows with meaning some specific type of phenomena. The importance of employing an adequate method of interpreting phenomena is therefore obvious, for otherwise the descriptions cannot but mislead the scientist and fail to satisfy the needs of his problems. In all sciences there is one outstanding condition of correct evaluation, and that is to keep as close as possible to observed data, and not to neglect complexity of facts, in an effort go gain simplicity of description. A comparative study of scientific procedure indicates strikingly that psychology has been the least critical of all sciences in its methods, although it should have been most cautious, because of the presence of inherent difficulties in its facts. Experience has shown that psychology must especially avoid descriptions of mental functions given exclusively in terms of external reactions, or states of consciousness. To explain a mental function we must not confine ourselves exclusively to either the mental, physiological, or physical aspects of the process studied; in an adequate treatment each phase must be included. Professor Angell has indicated how utterly unfruitful it would be to attempt to state such a process as memory in merely objective terms.1 When therefore the evaluation function is well understood and critically employed in the field of psychology, that discipline will find its place in the domain of science amply secured and safe from invasion. This paper attempts to define the function of critical evaluation as it applies in psychology, and to point out the consequences of its correct use in that discipline.

The critical evaluation function, which constitutes scientific activity, is an amplification of experienced events, and makes for a consistent control of the further progress of experience. We might say the evaluation function of science is itself a type of experience, because in the final analysis it is one of the several ways in which individuals are in contact with known objects. It is clear that upon this basis no science may start with some type of a priori classification. For example, the question whether phenomena are mechanical or teleological may be asked only after the study of the concrete facts is concluded, and it must be remembered that these terms have meaning only as functions in the interpretation of facts.

The facts of science are evaluations of phenomena; they develop through a series of stages, as the phenomena are brought under greater control of the individual. The simples forms in which the world of objects, forces, and conditions have any meaning for us, are attitudes which the organism assumes toward its surroundings. These attitudes in their simplest form are, in common with all acts of a conscious being, psychophysical, and must of course be described as such. These attitudes which are simple psychophysical adjustments, constitute the meanings of objects or other aspects of the experience eliciting the attitude. One of the simples meanings that the candle flame can have for us is the act of withdrawing our hand. The meaning cannot be detached from the act, and this leads to the statement that the meaning of the candle flame is the act. This evaluation of the experience is of course an abstraction, since it is evident that we are describing or evaluating only a partial happening. It would require a series of responses to give the entire meaning of the candle flame. The object might be described as the 'hand attraction reaction,' as 'body trembling reaction,' and in other ways. When attitudes become significant for the individual through repeated contacts or some other means, the object is evaluated in terms of the attitude. A ball is an object to throw; a dog is something to pet, or to run from. This entire process is a clarification of the meaning of the object, or more broadly of the experience-situation. When the meaning of the experience-situation becomes clearly appreciated by the individual, it becomes detached from the situation, and is handled as a fact, by some sort of symbol.

A certain definite experience is symbolized as 'partaking of food and digesting it'; this is a simplified abstraction from a complicated system of actions. In this example we observe a typical first step in detaching a meaning from an act-situation. This step involves the reference of the adjustment-behavior to some external object as its occasion. The development of knowledge concerning objects is an elaboration of their meanings, and goes on as a process of acquiring control over objects by way of controlling the possible responses to be made to them. The greatest control over objects, which is scientific control, consists in arriving at such a determination of an object's possibilities as to know for definite, limited purposes every effect that the object can bring about in the individual. Any specific purpose is the solution of a definite problem which initiates the scientific investigation. The dentist knows most of the possible effects of nitrous oxide when he discovers its anesthetic properties, and the harmlessness of after-effect. It is apparent that a scientific evaluation in its symbolization of phenomena gets farther and farther from actual effects; that is, it represents them.

As scientific knowledge advances, the control over objects is paralleled by the growing remoteness between happenings and their symbolization. The concept of force as a scientific instrument is far removed from any actual motion, thought it must in some capacity or other serve in the control of all movements. This point is further illustrated by the case of ether, which is a scientific idea or symbol, representing so many phases of experience that it does not point to any actual one. The symbolic character of a psychological description emerges in the consideration of a perceptual experience. The abstractive nature of the description seems clearly indicated by the fact that it is impossible to mention all the factors involved, and the more adequate and accurate the description the more it reproduces the experience. The ideally perfect description would involve forcing the individual who receives the description to have the original experience. The best way to describe my perception of an object is to point to the object; so some person can also perceive it.

The world of science then consists of knowledge, 'constructs,' which mean or represent conditions or objects, which bring about definite changes in the individual in contact with them. The main point to be emphasized here is the continuity which runs through from the actual occurrence to the scientific description, if that description be genuinely valid. It is clear then why the type of evaluation which obtains in physics and chemistry is not serviceable in the field of psychology. There are entirely too many differences in the two types of facts. A significant difference is that conscious behavior is much closer to the individual than physical phenomena. In the case of conscious phenomena the scientist studies his own behavior or behavior like his, while in the realm of physical phenomena the scientist studies action of an extremely different object. The meanings or symbols in the two cases differ very markedly, and cannot be thought of as equally valid in representing identical experiences. The description of conscious behavior in terms of physical symbols or ideas implies a misrepresentation of the thing or event described. When such faulty description is employed the evaluatory concepts are not derived from concrete facts, and whenever an evaluation concept does not reach back to actual happenings in the experiences of individuals, it must be rejected as a scientific tool.

The traditional failure of psychology to study critically its phenomena, and to describe them in adequate, scientific terms may be attributed to the persistence of a mistaken ideal of science. Psychologists have believed that the ideals of science were best, if not entirely, realized in the domain of the physical disciplines. In the early history of psychology this lead to faulty conceptions as to what constituted scientific description, a fact which was intimately related with current conceptions concerning the relation of psychical and physical phenomena. It must be remembered that scientific psychology developed under the auspices of the Weber-Fecnerian psychophysics. It was a peculiar turn in scientific history which made such a vast and still growing science originate form such an extraordinary and fanciful doctrine, which in the beginning gave impetus to the development of experimental psychology. This peculiar origin was not without its bad effect, since the attitude became prevalent that the material of psychology, while in some sense identical with physical things, could still be considered as separate and independent of them. This viewpoint has of course taken different shapes, while maintaining its original sense. This led psychologists to declare that the domain of psychology is assumed to get into more direct contact with its objects, and its knowledge is thought to be more concrete and immediate. this assumption continues the long entertained prejudice that we have a more immediate acquaintance with conscious phenomena, than with other facts of science.

Coincident with the adoption of a mistaken viewpoint concerning scientific description, the early, scientific psychologists, who have shaped the course of the science, fostered an unfruitful attitude concerning the methods of psychology. They assumed that psychology should accept as valid the type of analysis which is used in chemistry. Such procedure is an immediate consequence of assuming that psychology, like chemistry, deals with a homogeneous material.2 A description of its phenomena would then be exhausted by three problems to be solved in succession. "The first is the analysis of composite processes; the second is the demonstration of the combinations into which the elements discovered by analysis enter; the third is the investigation of the laws that are operative in the formation of such combinations."3 Psychology is thus made to deal with some sort of stuff which must be reduced to its simples elements, and this reduction leads to the hypostatization of certain functions. The viewpoint that psychology must work as the other sciences do, and must find similar stuff to work upon, brought with it the consequence that the experiences with which psychology concerns itself are wrongly described and hopelessly misinterpreted. The extreme, introspective psychologists reduce the mental functions to a series of psychic states, which entirely fail to represent the phenomena they are attempting to describe. The phenomena are made into abstractions that can never be found outside the descriptions.

The failure of the behavioristic psychology to achieve any advantage in the description of psychological phenomena, may be attributed to the fact that it only ostensibly gives up the wrong attitudes of the structural psychologist. The behaviorist makes a splendid attack upon the mechanics of mental states, but wants to substitute just as vicious a formalism in terms of stimulus and response. The resulting descriptions of the behaviorists are entirely lacking in the essential factors which constitute a conscious behavior,4 and consequently do not represent actual psychological phenomena. It seems unbelievable that any person investigating the actions of conscious beings, whether animals in the upper scale of development or the human individual, should attempt to reduce this behavior to reflexes and motor habits. One cannot avoid the question as to what sort of science it can be which reduces conscious behavior called emotion, to 'muscle twitching' and 'glandular secreting,' or language, to mere motor habits?5

The behaviorist apparently fails to consider sufficiently the function and purpose of a scientific method. This failure comes out in the fact that because he concluded that the introspective method was not the only direct method of ascertaining psychological facts, then it was possible to do away with all factors of behavior which implied the use of introspection. This entire procedure indicates in an excellent way the meaning and importance of an adequate method in psychology. If the inadequacy of an introspective method which was developed to investigate mental states is established, then that method must be improved in order that the actual phenomena may be studied and described. To jump to the extreme that conscious behavior can only be studied by an objective method, results in the assumption that conscious behavior is purely physiological. This procedure demonstrates the necessity of a scientist to evaluate the phenomena he deals with; so that he can solve his problems on the basis of the data involved in those problems. The critical interpretation of conscious behavior such as language, memory, thought, and emotions for example, cannot tolerate the description of these behaviors as 'states of consciousness,' or as 'muscle twitching.' These processes must be described as organic events, which are in relation to circumstances necessary for their production, and which have other events following as consequences.6 The emphasis will be placed upon the actual, concrete happening. The method will be such as to give an adequate place in the description to all the specific factors involved, whether they are muscular, glandular, neural, affective, conative, or cognitive. In the consonance with the accumulation of facts pointing to the specific adjustmental nature of conscious behavior, the description of human action will involve in addition to the factors mentioned, the particular conditions under which the acts take place. Thus, in order to describe a conscious behavior as implying a sentiment or not, the immediate conditions under which it occurs must be known. "To tell a child who is quite innocent of any feeling or sentiment, who is merely grabbing for something to put into his mouth, that he is selfish or greedy, is to requalify a mode of response in this way."7 Whether an act is the emotion of anger or not depends not only upon the muscular changes, but also upon the meanings and the affective elements involved.

We might inquire into the motives which led the behaviorist to adopt a method which totally misinterprets the phenomena with which he deals. It was the endeavor to introduce such necessity and certainty into the study of psychological phenomena; so that "the findings of psychology become the functional correlates of structure and lend themselves to explanation in physiochemical terms."8 The motive seems to be to get rigid absoluteness into psychology even at the expense of losing everything else. It is an eloquent commentary upon the behavioristic movement to have a psychiatrist speak of it as a psychology, "whose conception of vital human functioning is suggestive of nothing so much as of a fire crackling through a carpet of dry leaves. It reaches to no depths, it involves no profound smoldering sources of conflagration, it leaves no real scars beneath the surface."9 If the behavioristic attitude seems to promise so little for the solution of concrete problems of human maladjustment, there must be something radically wrong with it.

The inefficiency of behaviorism to meet the needs of a genuine understanding and control of phenomena is in part accounted for by its mistaken idea concerning the purpose of psychological science. Professor Watson, for example, asserts that the purpose of psychology is to predict the behavior of a person under definite circumstances.10 These circumstances are of course described by the behaviorist in terms of stimuli, since all behavior is a matter of response to stimuli. The purpose of psychology cannot be more unsatisfactorily stated, since the context makes it clear that Professor Watson entertains an ideal of prediction employed in physical science, and that means to reduce behavior to empty abstractions. The logical consequence of making prediction the end of psychology is to formalize and distort the meaning of responses in such the way that a physiochemical statement would do. Such concepts of responses are obviously not derived from concrete facts of experience. The only prediction possible in human behavior is the very simple anticipation of a possible uniformity in action in response to phases of experience consciously abstracted from a total situation. Nothing further than this is possible, since human actions are indefinitely more than mere muscular and glandular function. The other factors of human behavior make such actions entirely unpredictable in the sense that physical phenomena are predictable A critical reading of Professor Watson's writings on this point indicates that he really has little confidence in such prediction, and that his concepts of stimulus and response are not nearly so empty of content as he implies. In spite of this fact, however, he permits the ideal of prediction to distort his descriptions of human behavior.

Progress in psychology depends upon the correction of two conditions. In the first place, psychology must give up the attempt to describe its facts in terms of abstruse, logical abstractions. Its descriptions should be made in terms of what actually does occur, and not in terms which fail to render any exact detail of the identity and significance of conscious behavior. This is the fact with respect to 'mental states,' and 'stimulus-response' descriptions. The correction of this condition will automatically emend the second condition, namely, that so much pressure is put upon the premises of related sciences.11 Why should it be necessary for psychology bodily to borrow physiological facts in order to have any positive materials? That this has been a 'protective device' for psychology is exemplified by the large place the sensations occupy in psychological text-books and treatises. The so-called higher functions are just beginning to receive the attention they really require. The backward state of the psychology of thought is easily traceable to the prejudice which have thought a purely sensorial setting, or an exclusive, sensorially derivative origin. To illustrate some specific improvements in the description of conscious behavior, we might point out some of the factors which are almost entirely excluded from the average descriptions of memory processes.

We may begin with the matter of personal identity. In every memory situation there is a specificity of intimate details, which indicate a personally continuous experience. The possibility of memory implies a continuity of empirical facts, which are all centered about an individual. One might put this in another way, and say that the group of unified human experiences constitute the individual, so far as the memorial processes go. When I remember to pay a bill I owe, I merely complete a relation, which I began at some previous time. There is a continuous series of conditions of which any specific factor is an interrelated part. These parts of the experience are all concrete, human happenings connected by more or less traceable bonds. The contraction of the debt is part of the experience of wearing my new coat, which experience is very closely related to paying the debt. The emphasis of personal identity in the memorial situation would give us a new attitude toward that mental function, and eliminate some of the artificial difficulties. We could not consider memory as a mysterious revival of the dead past; we could not ask, "where is the idea when it is not in consciousness?" The facts of memorial retention concern the objects and events of an individual life, and since the particulars of one's experience vary in character and importance, there is a resulting competition for the occupation of the center of the experiential stage. Forgetting is the natural relegation of given particulars to the wings of this stage, while forgotten but recoverable facts are particulars of experience pushed off the stage, but still in the theater. Totally forgotten objects and events are disconnected particulars split off from the total organization of a person's experience. When any item is in any way an influence upon behavior, it is still a part of a simple experience. This influence goes on in spite of the usually successful evasion of introspective detection. These slightly functional particulars, when inadequately observed, are described as vestiges and traces of memory. As against this view we must look upon these factors of memory as ordinary, concrete events, which occur in everyday experience. In order to describe the concrete workings of an actual memory function the concepts used must be invariably derived from the actual phenomena observed. The logic of science dictates a humanistic description of human behavior; to use purely objective terms results in a falsification of the facts.12

A genuine, functional attitude would cast some light upon the problem of belief in memories. James makes memory consist of an object of any faculty, such as perception or reasoning, to which adheres the emotion of belief.13 The discussion amounts to this, that any memory object bears a peculiar, active relation to our present sensations and emotions. To go only this far is to observe the close connection between the several experiences which are included in a total memory act. The determination of what actually goes on is now cast aside, and there is undertaken the dogmatic substitution of abstractions, such as ideas, which explain nothing. Instead of carrying out the empirical continuity of different phases of a span of human experience, psychologists usually attempt to show a connection between ideas. James quotes Mill as describing the complexity of memory, which includes the idea of himself at the moment of remembering, and that of himself in the past moment of conceiving, and also containing the whole series of states of consciousness between those two moments. To the writer this relic of mental chemistry carries no significance, since he cannot conceive of anyone being an idea. A critical examination of the memory process should give us an entirely different description. My confidence in my memory is not explained by the fact that it is an idea containing other ideas. It is explained by the fact that what I remember is a part of my experience, and is brought to mind by some related object or condition of my total conscious behavior. The reality of memory is undoubted, because it is a part of an organized experience, and makes its own appeal. In this connection it must not be forgotten that there are degrees in which one experiences events. We may be absent from places, though we are present, and this fact conditions succeeding experiences.

A critical determination of the memory processes will banish those chemical relics, the ideas, from the description of memory; or there will be made a new evaluation of what is meant by an idea. It seems entirely impossible to explain memory as a meaningless mechanics, consisting of series of ideas, logically or illogically chasing themselves through the mind. To refer to James again as a leader in the direction of a functional psychology, we find him insisting that association refers to things thought of and not ideas. 14 There seems to be an appreciation that human experiences have in them more content than ideas suggest. With James this happened to be one of those flashes of genius peculiar to him which is not further developed. He correlates these things with nerve paths, and if he does at all avoid the empty dance of idea-atoms, he substitutes what is just as bad, a neural mechanics. When we consider the function of ideas in a memory process we must immediately freight those ideas heavily with human content. It is highly improbable that there should be a human, memory function unless the ideas concerned were carrying actual, human conditions. The fact of a man remembering to post his wife's letters is not explained by the contiguity of ideas, but involves a series of concrete happenings, which form an organic whole. Unfortunately, too frequently there is a dissociation of these happenings, which may be explained by the fact that the individual events group themselves in other combinations.

The peculiar mystery of the recall situation is resolved when we give up the abstract, logical entities. When a memory process is operating, some person is making use of larger part of his experience than is contained in a given moment. This is not an abstract dragging in from nowhere of an idea by another idea, by virtue of the fact that both were in the mind before. When one performs today what he promised in a past time, it is perhaps because the individual, who wished to have others think well of him, agrees to do something, and finds it naturally expedient to do it at the appointed time. The element of social pressure is extremely important. The recall function is a matter of actual arrangement of an individual's experiences under influence of definite, human conditions. To describe this experience as a connection between idea 'a,' and idea 'b' is to fail entirely to comprehend the event. To say that ideas connect themselves because of previous connections, is to create a mystery since the need arises for some explanation to account for any particular present association. The only meaningful and useful account of the facts of revival which bring about, or fail to bring about coördinated and coherent human actions must be based upon the actual contact of an individual with things and their relations. Excluding the explanations, we find in the Freudian literature many suggestions of the specific interplay of experience elements in situations of remembering and forgetting.

What is true of memory is true of all other conscious behavior. In the case of thought processes, an adequate evaluation function must take into account, besides obvious association of ideas, the intimate carriers of these ideas, whether sensational, physiological, or even factors of a more recondite sort. There must be indicated the important place of the so-called subconscious phases of the thought processes. A scientific description of the thought functions should bring out with details some of the specific conditions concerning the problem which calls out the thought behavior. The main point here, is that unless one enumerates all the necessary facts concerning a conscious behavior, the conditions of description are not satisfied. It is especially important to avoid a description of human behavior in purely mental terms. A thought process for example, is not only mental, but also physical, social, and human. It is no more conditioned by the fact that it involves images, bodily attitudes and physical facts, than by the fact that is always has as a setting some specific, problematic situation.

In general, an adequate use of the evaluation function will lead us to determine conscious behavior as it actually is, for the purposes which really guide the investigation, and not for the convenience and comfort which accrue from logical coherence. If it is necessary for the understanding of psychological phenomena to give them their neurological and physiological setting, they must be connected with those facts, but the one set of facts should never be substituted for the other. Such procedure indicates in every instance the clumsy juggling with products of false analysis. The behaviorist, who correctly points out the insufficiency of the doctrine that there is present in human behavior some kind of stuff, which is seriously characterized as unextended, existing for itself, or intangible, and which brings about appropriate responses to stimuli, is just as much at fault in reducing the entire situation to logically simple behavior processes. Any critical observation indicates that not even the simple adjustments are reducible to the physiological functions, which the extreme behaviorists attempt to make out as the sole constituents of those acts. When the complex behaviors are considered, the insufficiency of the analysis is glaring. To deny the conscious factors found in higher types of behavior, or to reduce them to the crude functioning of a nervous system, is to display unmistakable symptoms of tyroship in the manipulation of the evaluation function.

Psychology, if it is to be a science, must take its function to be that of describing actual facts. These facts are not existing objects or conditions, which await reception; neither are they assumptions imposed upon the experience studied. A fact, for the psychologist, as well as for every scientist, must be the most critical determination of existential conditions, and an evaluation of some phase of genuine experience. It is always a knowledge construct, and is more or less valuable for purposes of control and understanding, as it keeps in contact with actually existing circumstances. One of the first essentials of a scientific attitude is non-sectarianism. This makes for a determination of phenomena on their own merits. They are not strained to conform to a pre-conceived notion of what ought to exist in the domain under discussion. The evaluation function of the scientific level of experience is experience conscious of itself. It should therefore give an accurate account of its development.

Footnotes

1.

2. Cf. Titchener, 'The Psychology of Feeling and Attention,' p. 291.

3. Wundt, 'Outlines of Psychology,' 1907, p. 28.

4. Note that I do not say consciousness. Every fact of consciousness is a conscious behavior, a complex action involving always besides the mental factors, also organic, muscular, and glandular processes.

5. Watson, Journal of Philosophy, 13, 1916, p. 591. It seems clear that the behaviorist means in many cases to include more factors as constituting human behavior than he overtly asserts are present. He certainly must mean to include under the term habit a good deal besides mere muscular and glandular function. It is significant in this connection that Watson, for example, is constantly stressing the matter of terminology. This implies an acceptance of the facts of conscious behavior, if not the name.

6. Cf. Dewey, Journal of Philosophy, 15, 1918, p. 32.

7. Dewey, loc. cit., p. 34.

8. Watson, 'Behavior,' p. 28.

9. Jelliffe, Journal of Philosophy, 10, 1913, p. 269.

10. Psychological Review, 24, 1917, p. 337.

11. Cf. Angell, Psychological Review, 20, 1913, p. 268.

12. "One suspects that the thrills of young love when so portrayed will present a somewhat clinical not to say mortuary appearance." (Angell, Psychological Review, 20, 1913, p. 267.)

13. 'Principles,' ch. xvi., p. 652.

14. 'Psychology,' I, p. 554.