Cognitive Psychology and Hermeneutics: Two Irreconcilable Approaches?

Widdershoven’s stated aim is to show that cognitive science leaves out the intersubjective and historical nature of meaning making and interpretation and that this has important consequences for theory and practice in psychopathology and psychotherapy. I think that it is unlikely that Bolton and Hill will find this line of criticism problematic for the account that they offer in Mind, Meaning, and Mental Disorder (1996, hereafter MMMD). Their ambition to develop an explanatory theory involving what they term intentional causation is inevitably incompatible with an account that seeks to explore in depth the phenomenology of mental disorder. I will begin by sketching what I take to be Widdershoven’s main worries with the explanatory theory advocated by Bolton and Hill. Then I will show why I think that these worries will not concern them. I do have reservations about the way in which Bolton and Hill use intentional predicates and whether the intentional stance is as successful for irrational behavior as they need it to be. I will conclude by suggesting that there is no reason why cognitive psychology and hermeneutics cannot peacefully coexist and perform their distinctive tasks but that meaningful dialogue between them is unlikely.

Widdershoven notes that cognitive psychology and hermeneutics share a theoretical interest in meaning and action. He notes that for hermeneutics the nature of meaning-making is regarded differently, “Meaning is not conceptualized as cognitive representation, but as practical understanding. Action can be explained by making explicit the practical meaning-making (or style) which it embodies.”

The problem here is that not only does hermeneutics understand “meaning-making” in a way different from Bolton, Hill, and Dennett, but also that meaning plays a fundamentally different role in their explanations of human behavior. Hermeneutics is essentially interested in the phenomenology of meaning and action. The emphasis is on the understanding and interpretation of action, rather than coming up with strategies for its prediction.

Dennett, and presumably Bolton and Hill, are not interested in phenomenology or how it is that people construct meaning within a socio-historical context. In The Intentional Stance (1987) Dennett is interested in showing that the use of intentional idioms or propositional attitudes is a very effective predictive strategy for figuring out what people will do. It’s worth bearing in mind why Dennett and others have advocated the intentional stance for predicting behavior. Psychology is primarily concerned with the study of behavior, and while very few have denied the existence of intentional states and the mind, how they could play a role in the scientific explanation of behavior was far from clear. Difficulties of this sort were part of what led behaviorists to attempt the modification and prediction of behavior purely on the basis of schedules of reinforcement. So for those who wanted to see the mental play a role in psychological and ethological theory, the intentional stance was a breath of fresh air.

The difference in the ambitions of Widdershoven and the cognitivists come out clearly in his epistemic views, “The central insight of hermeneutics is that all knowledge is interpretation. Knowledge presupposes a point of view, a preunderstanding.” Although Bolton, Hill, and Dennett would all agree that there is an interpretative element to using the intentional stance (how could there not be?), they would disagree strongly that knowledge is just interpretation. The selling point of the intentional stance is its predictive power as well as its ability to help us understand. If the view that knowledge is simply interpretation is a fundamental commitment of hermeneutics, it will create problems for any dialogue with cognitive psychology—ironically, because of the fundamental points of view, or projects that Bolton, Hill, and Dennett have, they are unlikely to be convinced by an appeal for better phenomenology.

Widdershoven claims that “[e]very tradition uncovers truth, but also covers it up. It makes some phenomena visible and obliterates others. . . .” His discussion of Gadamer’s distinction between three different kinds of knowledge of the other is a very interesting analysis of different attitudes that we might take to persons and is similar to the distinction that Strawson draws between reactive and...