J. R. Kantor

Cognition as Events and as Psychic Constructions

Because the current resurgence of the mentalistic interpretation of cognitive events runs counter to scientific norms, it prompts a thorough analysis of the source and nature of Cognitivism. As to the source, Cognitive psychology is definitely a continuation of the spiritistic way of thinking developed by the Church Fathers as early as the 2nd century B.C. The evidence of this continuity is well symbolized by the antiscientific writings of St. Augustine.What Cognitivism basically signifies is that such activities as perceiving, thinking, reasoning, and so on comprise some sort of transcendent internal entity or process not amenable to observation. Clearly events are being verbally transmuted into mystical psychic constructs. How such errors can be accounted for is by (a) the power of traditional beliefs and (b) the misunderstanding of Behavioristic doctrine. In conclusion, the article also raises the question of whether mentalism can ever be extruded from psychology, with suggestions concerning the scientific treatment of cognitive events.

Behaviorism in the History of Psychology

Behaviorism is equated with science as the study of behavior. It is, therefore, distinguished from the specialized psychological movement called Watsonian behaviorism. In the history of psychology, 6 distinct periods of behaviorism are discerned and described.

Scientific Psychology and Specious Philosophy

Many psychologists are following physicists and other scientists in turning toward philosophy for aid in solving problems. But this goes counter to the view that psychology trended toward a scientific status only after it separated itself from philosophy. The clue to the resolution of this paradox is that there are valid as well as specious philosophies. Valid philosophy of science serves helpful monitorial, coordinative, and semantic functions.

Psychology: Science or Nonscience?

Many persons still regard it as a problem whether psychology is an authentic science or at best only a profession. The writer considers the many attempts and failures to provide psychology with a scientific foundation and the primary circumstances attending the difficulties of scientizing the psychological discipline. Further, suggestions are offered as to how psychology can take its place among the physiochemical and biological sciences.

Interbehavioral Psychology and the Logic of Science

The celebration of the 200th anniversary of Kant’s Critik der reinen Vernunft offers an occasion to consider the value of naturalistic psychology for scjence and philosophy. The importance of the occasion is enhanced by the well-known fact that Kant was profoundly at home in the sciences of his day, and his work still influences the thinking of later scientists and philosophers, as well as psychologists. As Kantor (1969) has pointed out, Kant is one of the formulators of what is today the predominant model of cognitive psychology.To assess the place of objective psychology in the philosophy or logic of science it is well to focus on the Kantian doctrine of categories. As history indicates, for Kant, in his time, categories consist of psychic forms which mold sense materials to create the contents of experience and existence.Of necessity Kant operates with a metaphysical psychology. He regards the understanding, the source of categories and the basic factor in philosophical thinking, as a transcendental entity, and not the behavior of an actual person in a field along with other persons, objects, and events. Kantian psychology thus clashes with current scientific observation and practice.Naturalistic psychology envisages categories as merely descriptive or classifying terms for carrying on reflective and investigative projects. They promote an understanding of the relation between Constructions and Events, as well as the general nature of intercommunicative Behavior and Symbols.

System Structure and Scientific Psychology

Assuming that the value of a scientific discipline depends upon the metapropositions upon which it is erected, the question is raised as to the logic of scientific psychology. Prevailing psychological foundations do not appear to meet natural science criteria. It is suggested that Interbehavioral Postulates offer satisfactory Propositions for a scientific psychology.

The Institutional Foundation of a Scientific Social Psychology

How can the social sciences be solidly established?-The humanistic and social scientists in order to make their desciplines into true sciences must follow the workers in the physicochemical disciplines in extruding from their domains animatistic and other supernatural forces. For all sciences must be natural-must deal with actually observable phenomena. The social scientist wrongly assumes psychics or animistic forces, such as instincts, are guaranteed by psychologists. The psychologist today abides by the canons of natural science and studies interacting things, i.e., persons (reactions) and stumuli. Social psychology, likewise a natural discipline, studies cultural reactions and institutions. Cultural reactions and institutions both developed and modified through mutual interaction. Mutual modifications of cultural responses and institutions tend in certain directions. Any such definite tendecy we look upon as a specific historical development. Historical developments of cultural phenomena influenced and conditioned in various ways, by non-human phenomena, by human but non-psychological phenomena, by psychological but non-cultural phenomena, and finally by competing or interacting cultural phenomena. In no case, however, is any non-natural principle involved in a scientific description of social psychology. It is suggested that the same principle holds for the other phases of human phenomena which are not included in the data of social psychology.

An Essay Toward an Institutional Conception of Social Psychology

Two opposed general views prevail concerning the relation of psychology to the social sciences.-The sociologists and politicians assert that psychology is basic to their sciences. The cultural anthropologist believes that psychology cannot explain social phenomena. Both opposing views based upon an erroneous notion of a fixed and permanent human mind or nature. Anthropologists believe that the phenomena they study exist upon a higher plane than instincts which constitute mans fundamental nature. The sociologists think of complex human action as the development and outgrowth of instincts. Two conditions responsible for erroneous view of human nature.-(I) Tradition. From the time of Hobbes the doctrine has developed that man is a permanent body as in the case of physical things, and this body has properties of strife, peace, etc. (2) Physiological or parallelistic psychology, which necessitates the search for teleophysiological components of the individual as causative bases for his conduct. The imperative need for an adequate psychological conception.-Because (I) social phenomena consist in part at least of psychological facts, and because (2) most current psychological conceptions are worthless for the interpretation of social facts, we must develop a better psychology. Wundts social psychology illustrates the failure of parallelistic conceptions.-Starting with a physiological conception he cannot handle actual social responses but must appropriate the data of the ethnologist and transform them into a supposititious group mind. To illustrate with language, either Wundt explains it as the unfolding of the universal human mind, thus achieving a principle of explanation for language in general, but with no means of accounting for specific languages, or if he discusses specific languages he loses his universal psychological explanation and language must be accounted for in part by other than psychological principles. Absolutism in psychology.-Wundts social psychology really an absolutism. Also true of Freuds sex instinct psychology. An adequate psychology should be able to describe language, as well as other group phenomena as reactions common to members of a community in contact with specific circumstances.

Behaviorism: Whose image?

The thesis of this article is that Behaviorism is the core of science, the enterprise of investigating the behavior of things and events under specific controlled conditions. It is further proposed that interbehavioral psychology as the study of total behavioral fields, of which organismic actions constitute one component, best fulfills the requirements of the behavioristic enterprise in this specialized area.

An Objective Interpretation of Meanings

Paradoxical as it may seem, it is still true that the problem of meanings, which provided so much difficulty for the introspective psychologists, meets with a comparatively simple solution by the methods and materials of the objective psychologist. The introspective psychologist experienced great difficulty in the interpretation of meanings because, presumably, the latter were supposed to possess essentially an inner character, which could not be identified with mental content of any particular sort, meanings being considered still more central than sensations or images. Nor is this difficulty much minimized by the parallelistic behaviorists1 who translate the specific meaning-factor into partial movements of the eye, hand, or some muscle. For a meaning is in no sense a thing or a content either mental or physiological, but rather an act or an adjustment of the person,2 which conditions another and following reaction.