Psychologism: what is it and what does this philosophical current propose?

A summary of the characteristics of psychologism and the philosophers associated with it.

The truth about things slumbers behind the veil of appearances, in a place that can only be accessed through the safe conduct of thought. Since time immemorial, human beings have aspired to know it, in order to unravel the mystery of life and reality.

The search for unknowns about the human and the mundane has been, since the dawn of time, a distinctive element between our species and other animals; as well as the most solid proof regarding the existence of a reason, which dwells between the cisuras and the convolutions of such a refined central nervous system.

Therefore, thoughts are a phenomenon that depends on brain structures and "connects" directly with the experience and experiential orientation of those who wield them, making it very difficult to dissociate the results of thinking from the process that ultimately allows them to be achieved.

It is at this juncture that we find the philosophical current that this article will deal with: psychologism.. Its ontological and epistemological implications are of enormous depth, and for this reason they were a source of great conflict among the thinkers of the 19th century.

What is psychologism?

Psychologism is a philosophical current that arises from ontology and epistemology, which deals with our ability to grasp the truth of things and has been the target of great controversy since its conception. This perspective was particularly defended by empiricist thinkers, and postulated that all knowledge could be explained by the postulates of the psychological sciences. postulated that all knowledge could be explained by (or reduced to) the postulates of the psychological sciences. (or reduced to them). Such a way of approaching reality implies that philosophical knowledge depends on the emotional, motivational, mnesic, cognitive and creative substratum of the human beings who think about it; inhibiting access to the ideal root of it (to the principle of what they are).

In other words, all content that is thought about is subject to the limits of the mind that conceives it. Thus, all things would be understood through the filter of the processes of informational analysis and the mechanisms of cognition, being the only way to trace the content of the mind.being the only way to trace such a logic.

In fact, psychologism poses an analogy with classical logicism, through which it was intended to reduce any theory to the universal laws of logic, but postulating Psychology as the fundamental vertex of this hierarchy. In this sense, logic would become just another part of psychology, but not a reality independent of it, nor a method with which to draw conclusions beyond what is accessible through the senses and the processes of reflection itself.

Psychologism is a theoretical prism that starts from anthropocentrism when understanding the things of realityIt has been applied to many of the universal questions posed by philosophy. Its influences have expanded to numerous areas of knowledge, such as ethics or didactics; but also to mathematics, history and economics.

It supposes a modality of scientific positivism, but recognizes that potential knowledge is not alien to the perceptive limitations of the one who contemplates it, from which a theoretical contradiction difficult to resolve arises.

In short, psychologism emerges at the confluence of philosophy, scientific positivism and epistemology; and the connection with logic would come from the German ideological debate (19th century) between Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl (of which we will offer a brief outline below).

Although there is some controversy in this regard, it is considered that the concept of psychologism was coined by Johann E. Erwin Husserl. was coined by Johann E. Erdmann in the year 1870although its elementary rudiments predate this historical moment. It has also been proposed that it may have been championed by the philosopher Vincenzo Gioberti in his work on ontology (similar to Platonic idealism and in which he aspired to explain the very origin of ideas through an intuitive reflection of their essence), in which the concepts of psychologism and/or psychologicism were used to contrast the scope of his vision with a hypothetical opposite (Italian ontology versus psychologism).

In short, psychologism reduces all the "intelligible" elements of reality (which are the object of study of all the sciences and of philosophy) to the sensible, that is, to what can be perceived through the senses.

That is why knowledge could not be understood in the absence of a subject that observes it, nor of the mental processes that unfold in the situation of interaction between the observer and the observed. The subjective sense would impose insurmountable limits to the potential of knowing reality, even at the risk of confusing the product of thought with the tool by which philosophical knowledge is obtained. risk of confusing the product of thought with the tool by means of which philosophical knowledge is obtained (since they are not equivalent). (since they are not equivalent).

In the following lines we will delve into the work of some authors who defended or opposed psychologism. Many of them fiercely confronted those on the opposite side, representing one of the most remarkable dialectical polemics in the whole history of contemporary thought.

Defense of psychologism

Perhaps one of the most relevant defenders of psychologism is David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian who is among the most popular empiricists. From his very extensive work we can see the will to reduce any possible form of knowledge to what he coined as "empirical psychology", and which involved the comprehension of the sensible through the different sensory organs. In his Treatise on Human Nature (a masterpiece of the author) reduced or simplified metaphysics, ethics and the theory of knowledge to certain psychological parameters; understanding that such domains were basic to determine the direct experience with the things of the tangible world.

In his writings Hume described two forms of expression for such psychologism: gnoseological and moral.. The first of these posed that the problems of knowledge (its origin, limits and value) should be understood as forms of reaction of the mind to the action of the external, summarizing all objectivity to an epiphenomenon of mental life. The latter understood that all the notions of ethics could be explained only as theoretical constructs, since in their beginnings they were nothing more than subjective responses to the witnessing of more or less just social interactions.

Another thinker in favor of psychologism was John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher (but not a philosopher).an English philosopher (but of Scottish origin) who defended the idea that logic was not a discipline independent of the psychological branch of philosophy, but depended on it in a hierarchical sense. For this author, reasoning would be a discipline within psychology by means of which to get to know the substratum of mental life, and logic would only be the tool with which to achieve this objective. In spite of all this, the author's extensive work did not definitively clarify his position on this point, and discrepancies were found at different moments of his life.

Finally, the figure of Theodor Lipps (German philosopher focused on art and aesthetics) is also noteworthy, for whom psychology would be the essential foundation of all knowledge in the mathematical/plastic disciplines. Thus, this would be the supply of all logical precept that would sustain the capacity to know elements of reality.

Opposition to psychologism

The main opponent of the psychologistic current was, without a doubt, Edmund Husserl.. This German-born philosopher and mathematician, one of the most notorious phenomenologists of all times, expressed his opposition to this way of thinking (he considered it empty). His work analyzes in depth its advantages and disadvantages, although he seems to be more in favor (as explicitly evidenced in numerous passages of his texts) of its opposition. The author distinguishes two specific types of problems in psychologism: those related to its consequences and those related to its prejudices.

Concerning consequences, Husserl showed his concern for the showed his concern for the equalization of the empirical with the psychological, by understanding that the one and the other are not the same.He understood that the one and the other had very different aims and results. He also considered that the facts of logic and psychology should not be placed on the same plane, since this would imply that the former would have to assume the very character of the latter (which are generalizations of value, but not facts demonstrated according to a logical terminology). In fact, he remarked that no mental phenomenon could be explained by the conventional laws of a syllogism.

As for prejudices, Husserl stressed the need to differentiate "pure logic" from the fact of thinking. (rule-based), since the purpose of the former would be to achieve evidence of objective facts and that of the latter to decipher the nature of subjective and personal constructions about oneself and the world.

The main implication of this would be to discern an objective epistemological structure together with another of subjective type, complementary in the plane of internal experiences and sciences, but distinguishable at the end of the day. For the author the evidence would be an experience of truth, which translates into the fact that the internal would converge with the external in the framework of representations of the facts that would attain value of reality.

Bibliographical references:

• Gur, B. & Wiley, D. (2009). Psychologism and Instructional Technology. Educational Philosophy and Theory. 41, 307 - 331.
• Lehan, V. (2012). Why Philosophy Needs Logical Psychologism. Dialogue, 51(4), 37-45.