Tree of Knowledge System - How The ToK Solves The Problem of Psychology

How The ToK Solves The Problem of Psychology

The problem of psychology, according to the ToK, is its conceptual incoherence, which Henriques identifies by the following:

(1) There is no agreed upon definition.

(2) There is no agreed upon subject matter.

(3) There is a proliferation of overlapping and redundant concepts.

(4) There are a large number of paradigms with fundamentally different epistemological assumptions.

(5) Specialization continues to be increasingly emphasized at the expense of generalization and thus the problem of fragmentation only grows.

When the various conceptions of psychology (e.g., behavioral, humanistic, cognitive) are viewed through the lens of the ToK System, psychology spans two different dimensions of complexity: the mental and the cultural. In other words, the discipline has historically spanned two fundamentally separate problems:

(1) the problem of animal behavior in general, and

(2) the problem of human behavior at the individual level.

If, as previously thought, nature simply consisted of levels of complexity, psychology would not be crisply defined in relationship to biology or the social sciences. And, indeed, it is frequently suggested that psychology exists in an amorphous space between biology and the social sciences. However, with its dimension of complexity depiction, the ToK System suggests that psychology can be crisply defined as the science of mind, which is the third dimension of complexity. Furthermore, because human behavior exists in the fourth dimension, psychology must be divided into two broad scientific domains of

(1) psychological formalism and

(2) human psychology.

Psychological formalism is defined as the science of mind and corresponds to the behavior of animal objects. Human psychology is considered to be a unique subset of psychological formalism that deals with human behavior at the level of the individual. Because human behavior is immersed in the larger socio-cultural context (level four in the ToK System), human psychology is considered a hybrid discipline that merges the pure science of psychology with the social sciences. It is important to point out that there are other disciplines the ToK System would classify as “hybrids.” Molecular genetics, for example, is a hybrid between chemistry and biology and neuroscience is a hybrid between biology and psychology. As with Henriques' proposed conception of human psychology, both of these disciplines adopt an object level perspective (molecular and cellular, respectively) on phenomena that simultaneously exist as part of meta-level system processes (life and mind, respectively).

Though David A. F. Haaga "congratulate Dr. Henriques' ambitious, scholarly, provocative paper", and "found the Tree of Knowledge taxonomy, the theoretical joint points, the evolutionary history, and the levels of emergent properties highly illuminating", he asks the rhetorical questions,

If it is so difficult to define terms such as 'psychology' with such precision, why bother? Why not just agree that we all have at least a rough idea of what psychology is, and take the rest of the afternoon off? After all, if theoretical or empirical work improves our understanding of some aspect of the world or our fellow people, or improves our ability to help people enhance their physical or emotional well being, what difference does it make whether this work is considered a part of psychology, of cognitive science, of behavioral neuroscience, of public health, or what have you? This raises the question of what definitions in general are good for.

In a similar vein, Scott O. Lilienfeld, who described Henriques' effort as "thoughtful", contended that psychology is "an inherently fuzzy concept that resists precise definition" and that "attempts to define psychology likely to hamper rather than foster consilience across disciplines". Lilienfield went on further to suggest that the scientist-practitioner gap in psychology lies not in definitional issues, but in different "epistemic attitudes" between these two groups. He stated that scientists have an epistemic attitude of empiricism, (where questions regarding human nature are settled by scientific evidence), and that practitioners have an epistemic attitude of romanticism, (where questions of human nature are settled by intuition). Lilienfeld suggested that the solution to the scientist-practitioner gulf isn't definitional, but in "train future clinical scientists to appreciate the proper places of romanticism and empiricism within science".