Philosophy of Psychology ed. by S. C. Brown (review)

414 BOOK REVIEWS Philosophy of Psychology. Ed. by S. C. BROWN. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974. Pp. 362. $16.50. This book presents the papers and discussions of a "conference on the Philosophy of Psychology at the University of Kent in 1971 " sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. (Preface) The Philosophy of Psychology which is here endorsed as a topic of contemporary interest in the dialogue between philosophers and psychologists from Britain, Canada, and the United States consists mainly in a defence of opposing views on certain aspects of problems discussed in today's so-called philosophy of mind. The problems assigned as topics for the six symposia of the meeting are listed as parts of the book. Part One: "Psychology as the Science of Human Behavior " (3 ff.) offers first in Sigmund Koch's paper, " Psychology as Science," a psychologist 's critical look at the condition of his discipline. Prof. Koch who is known as an expert analyst of methodological and theoretical problems of psychological studies intends to extend his earlier critical attitude towards different forms of behaviorism to an investigation of the meaning of the hundred-year history of psychology as science. As a result of his evaluation he finds " that psychology cannot be a coherent science, or indeed a coherent field of scholarship." (21) The application of the methods of physical sciences to the empirical study of man, that John Stuart Mill had recommended as a recipe for curing the backward state of psychology, could obviously yield fruit only in subfields of this science, such as physiological and biological psychology. In a study of genuinely psychological problems as, for instance, of perception, cognition, motivation , learning, creativity, development, and conditions of the healthy and pathological personality the analytic pattern of the physical sciences is not meaningfully and fruitfully applicable. So it is not surprising that the occasional germane facts or sparks of insight which "a massive hundredyear effort to erect a discipline" (6) had produced, "the bits and pieces into which psychology falls," (22) cannot be considered as a science. Psychology is " a discipline of deceit " ; its literature " consisting of an endless set of advertisements for the emptiest concepts, the most inflated theories, the most trivial 'findings,' and the most fetishistic yet heuristically selfdefeating methods in scholarly history." (27) The second paper of this section, Donald Davidson's "Psychology as Philosophy" (41 ff.), which was supposed to comment on this view of psyas science, seems to confirm Prof. Koch's evaluation of the scientific status of psychological endeavors. Human actions are essentially intentional. When described in psychological terms, i.e., " a system of concepts in part determined by the structure of beliefs and desires of the agent himself ," (42) they "resist incorporation into a closed deterministic system." BOOK REVIEWS 415 (42 f.) This "nomological irreducibility of the psychological means, ... that the social sciences cannot be expected to develop in ways parallel to the physical sciences nor can we expect even to be able to explain and predict human behavior with the kind of precision that is possible in principle for physical phenomena." (42) Since Prof. Davidson admits that his personal experience of the inability to predict and theoretically to explain the results of his psychological experiments led him to give up his career as an experimental psychologist (48) and to turn philosopher, Richard Peters in his Chairman's Remarks (53 ff.) is primarily interested in an answer to his question whether the title of the paper is intended to imply that " the study of philosophy is the appropriate way of pursuing an interest in the explanation of behavior." (55) In the answer to these Remarks that Prof. Davidson gives during the Discussion (60 ff.), he agrees with the Chairman about the possibility of modest rather piecemeal types of psychological inquiry and denies that his paper was intended as an attack on psychology or its right to be called a science. Only the unique character of this science was to be emphasized. And since propositional attitudes, the specific object of psychology, refer to questions that belong also to the traditional concern of philosophy, the title of his paper seemed to him to be justified. Various objections are raised against...