Natural and Human Sciences

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Natural and Human Sciences
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Natural Sciences and Human Sciences

• Is there a sharp division between human and
  natural sciences in terms of methods, concerns
  and status?
• Where does psychology fit?

The answers depend on your philosophical
position two schools of thought
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No difference in kind between Natural and Social
Sciences

• Traditional empiricists would argue that there
  is no difference and both natural and human
  sciences, to be legitimate, must use the same
  (natural science) methodology founding and
  guaranteeing their knowledge through observation
  and experiment.

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Difference in kind between Natural and Social
Sciences

• Human sciences are essentially different on
  account of the meaningfulness of human behaviour.
  Human sciences yield legitimate knowledge but
  must use different methods to the natural
  sciences.

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Causal Explanation of Human Behaviour

• J S Mill in the 19C argued that any phenomena
  displaying regular patterns were a fit subject
  for science and all natural phenomena, including
  human behaviour displayed regularities.
• The same methodological strategies must be
  employed in both cases to establish by inductive
  processes the true causal explanations of
  observed regularities.
• Human behaviour is to be explained by recourse to
  the same principles as are used to explain
  complex physical systems.

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Some problems

• In what sense can psychological processes of
  thinking, feeling etc. be reduced to
  physiological processes? Different logical
  category. But if mental events are not physical
  events how can they influence the physical world?
• Causes of human behaviour are reasons not
  mechanical causes
• Free will?

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Relative lack of success in human sciences?

• By which measure
• Empiricists explain lack of success by
• Immense complexity
• Moral and practical problems in setting up
  controlled experiments
• Phenomena rarely occur in the same form human
  behaviour subject to change reflexive
  behaviour may be changed by understandings in the
  human sciences themselves

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Overcome problems by

• Describe the facts more minutely
• Experiment where possible
• Quantify and use statistical techniques
• Put forward theoretical frameworks and test them
  according to the hypothetico-deductive model

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Peter Winch

• There is a difference in kind between the
  natural and the social sciences it is not just a
  matter of increased complexity. The phenomena of
  the natural sciences do not endow themselves with
  meaning humans, however, do endow their
  behaviour with meaning.

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• Analysis and explanation of human action must
  involve concepts of purpose and intention
• Human action is rule-following behaviour not
  causally regular behaviour as in natural sciences
• Verstehen imaginative understanding of the
  agents point of view

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Psychology a Human or a Natural Science?
Vote now
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Consequences in psychology

• Cartesian anxiety (Obsession with METHOD and
  the need for justification) has lead
  psychologists to impose inappropriate, limiting
  paradigms behaviourism cognitivism
  psychology bound by the injunctions of classical
  empiricism

The following is based on Harre, R The
rediscovery of the human mind http//www.massey.a
c.nz/alock/virtual/korea.htm
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Basic ontology
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Concept of Person
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Methodology
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Concept of Mind
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Neural Processes
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Brain
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Conclusions

• Impossible reduction of the social and
  psychological to the merely physical.
• Psychology has been diverted when attempting to
  impose faulty notions of scientific methodology
  of the natural sciences to become scientific.
• The naïve conception of the scientific
  methodology leading to true representation of the
  natural world is in any case mistaken.

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References

• Nagel, Thomas. What is it like to be a bat?
  http//members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/Nagel_Bat.html
• Parker, I. (1992) Discourse Dynamics Critical
  Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology.
  London Routledge. Chapter 5 Power an ecological
  model of text-life. http//www.discourseunit.com/p
  df/DD20PDFs/DD20Chapter205.pdf
• Social Constructionism, Discourse and Realism
  1998, Ian Parker (ed.), London, Sage.
• Lodge, D Sense and sensibility
  http//books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,823955
  ,00.html
• Harre, R The rediscovery of the human mind
  http//www.massey.ac.nz/alock/virtual/korea.htm