comments:
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how psychological science works. Yes, most concepts in psychology are open, not fixed, and can be revised when new information is generated. However, these concepts have profound predictive utility. If we can predict which children will struggle in school and apply early interventions to help them, that's what matters. Furthermore, these concepts have incredible explanatory abilities. If a client comes to see me and tells me they’re having hallucinations, then it is not the time for me to get lost in the grammar of their language game; I need to understand this as, along with other considerations, a deregulation of their dopaminergic system. If a latent variable consistently explains the variance in behavior across populations, we are pragmatically justified in treating it as a real, causal entity But let’s say we take the Wettgenstein cure, as you suggest, psychological science will become anthropology (Dennett’s argument). You spend your time mapping how people use the words grief and trauma across different cultures. Still, you lose the license to look for the underlying causal mechanisms (evolutionary biological, genetic, or neurocomputational) that generate those behaviors in the first place. Read this: Qualitative Inquiry in the History of Psychology&Measuring the Mind: Conceptual Issues in Contemporary Psychometrics&Philosophy as Naïve Anthropology: Comment on Bennett and Hacker