Comment

Positivism, Quantication and the Phenomena of Psychology

Jack Martin
Simon Fraser University
Abstract. While in general agreement with Michells (2003) observations, arguments and positions, I believe two considerations might help to contextualize his piece further. First, it is important to note just how widespread have been psychologists misunderstandings of positions and arguments in the philosophy of science, and what this says about the disciplinary isolation of psychology. Secondly, despite some common misunderstandings amongst qualitative researchers in psychology, there are good reasons for psychologists to resist both the quantitative imperative and the positivists overly narrow construal of philosophy of science. These reasons relate to important, non-quantiable characteristics of many psychological phenomena. Nonetheless, Michells article is a timely reminder to guard against the excesses and limitations that attend any version of methodolatry, quantitative or qualitative. Key Words: philosophy, positivism, psychology, quantication, science

Joel Michell (2003) provides an excellent example of how important a relevant history of ideas can be to an informed understanding of contemporary debates concerning psychological inquiry. Michell, correctly in my view, reminds us that it is a mistake to identify positivism with particular scientic research methods such as the use of quantitative measures and statistical analyses. A positivist is not committed to any particular methodology, requires a theoretical explanation that goes beyond establishing relationships between variables, and, while regarding subjective procedures as weak, does not necessarily regard ethnography, case study and other qualitative methods as subjective in any pejorative sense, especially in the social sciences. Moreover, while often depicted as assuming an absolute reality to which appropriate research methods provide privileged access, many positivists are perhaps best portrayed as instrumentalists who actually oppose the realist interpretation of science. Of course, any potential alliance between the positivists antirealism and the constructivism endorsed by
Theory & Psychology Copyright 2003 Sage Publications. Vol. 13(1): 3338 [0959-3543(200302)13:1;3338;030759]

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many contemporary qualitative researchers in psychology is undercut by the rather different paths that these groups have taken towards their antirealism, with positivists typically being much the more reluctant travelers along this road. Michell also presents a compelling case for maintaining that the quantitative imperativeanathema to qualitative researchers in psychology reects a long-standing pattern of belief in Western thought that dates back to the Pythagoreans, and gathers considerable force with the accomplishments of Enlightenment and modern natural scientists. I found his interpretations of the role of schoolmen like Duns Scotus to be particularly informative and convincing in this regard, especially with respect to softening the classical Aristotelian challenge of demonstrating how categorical, non-extensive attributes are numbers. Apparently, after Duns Scotus and Ockham, one really could be a little bit in love. At any rate, there is no need to belabor what I believe Michell already has done so well. What I do want to do in this commentary is two-fold. First, I briey want to show that it is not just some qualitative researchers in psychology who seem to have misunderstood logical positivism, empirical realism and other positions in the philosophy of science. Indeed, I think that this is one area in which psychology as a whole has consistently demonstrated an unfortunate tendency to isolate itself from highly relevant scholarly activity that falls outside of its articially narrow disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, I want, again briey, to elaborate Michells consideration of important characteristics of many psychological phenomena that make their quantication highly problematic and potentially misleading. In doing so, I hope to remind readers that many qualitative researchers in psychology have very good reasons for their methodological preferences. Moreover, some of these reasons do indeed conict with the analytic empiricists (including positivistssee Hempel, 1979) exclusive concern with the logical and systematic aspects of scientic theorizing and knowledge claims to the exclusion of psychological, sociological and historical aspects of science as a human undertaking.

Philosophy of Science for Psychologists Michell certainly is correct to describe S.S. Stevens as an inuential middleman who signicantly affected methodological thinking in psychology by interpreting the writings of philosophers of science for a receptive audience of psychologists. Indeed, Stevens and his Harvard colleague E.G. Boring did much to create and solidify psychologys methodological consensus that emerged between 1930 and 1950, and in

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many ways has continued to the present day. Stevens envisioned a psychology aimed at establishing exact functional relationships among carefully specied experimental operations. For Stevens, and for subsequent generations of psychologists, the legitimacy of any psychological concept depended on its being operationally dened in such a way as to reduce the concept (even to equate the concept) to an objective observation base that could be accessed by the entire psychological community. As Koch (1992) has shown, such an approach to operationism contrasts dramatically and profoundly with that proposed by the philosopher of science P.W. Bridgman, whose views Stevens claimed to represent. In contrast, Bridgman understood operations as cues that help us to seek and comprehend the meaning of a concept, not to comprise or constitute such meaning. Because Stevens joined the quantitative imperative to his rather crass approach to operationism, he did much to ensure that psychology would come to be characterized by many commentators as a pseudo-science that never quite manages to study what it claims to be studying (Martin, 1996). My intention here is not to suggest that Bridgmans conception of operational analysis equates to the logical positivists approach to the analysis of empirical denition, much less to champion Bridgmans particular approach. I simply want to provide yet another example of the way in which psychologys methodological consensus was based on selective readings and misinterpretations of the writings of philosophers of science, and a strategically eclectic blending of what remained with psychologists own home-grown notions of science and scientic procedure. The important point is that it is not just qualitative researchers in psychology who have misunderstood logical positivism, empirical realism and other philosophies of science. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the entire methodological consensus that emerged in mainstream American psychology during the early to middle parts of the 20th century (cf. Danziger, 1997) depended on exactly such misunderstanding. Consequently, much of what qualitative researchers in psychology are responding to is the rather crude and inaccurate way in which positivism and various neopositivisms have been portrayed within the psychological canon. Of course, this is not to excuse qualitative researchers from the scholarly responsibility of getting things right; it is only to indicate that they are indistinguishable from most of their brethren in this regard. And all of this continues at a time when most departments of psychology in North America are placing even less emphasis on the history and philosophy of psychology, and their relations to the broader history of ideas, than the little they may have done in the past. Such turning inward is precisely what has contributed greatly to psychologys unique brand of antiintellectualism, and is exactly what psychology and psychologists should attempt to avoid at all costs.

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Non-quantiable Characteristics of Psychological Phenomena Psychological phenomena are meaningful, relational, non-extensive, interactive, socioculturally and historically constituted phenomena with moral and political signicance. All of these attributes of psychological phenomena are non-quantitative. None of this is to deny that aspects/dimensions of such phenomena can be constructed along quantitative lines (witness, for example, the attitudinal measures pioneered by Thurstone and his student Likert, as mentioned by Michell). However, when this is done, the result typically is a watering-down of the phenomena of interest and, as I previously mentioned, with the predictable consequence of studying not quite what one claims to be studying. Good critical, historical, conceptual, interpretive and narrative research in psychology (all qualitative) clearly are appropriate methods for many questions concerning, and inquiries into, such phenomena. Moreover, positivism, even though it does not exclude qualitative data and methods, certainly adopts a narrow concern with logical and systematic aspects of scientic theorizing and knowledge claims that prevents adequate analysis and attention to several of the attributes of psychological phenomena I just have enumerated. For example, as many theoretical psychologists have noted (e.g. Cushman, 1995), much psychological research on self and agency has suffered from a failure to recognize the extent to which these important psychological phenomena are constituted within historical, sociocultural traditions of human life. As such, they are replete with the moral and political signicance that necessarily attends everyday life with others. Consequently, it is not just that many psychological phenomena are nonextensive in either space or time in the manner of many physical phenomena, or the related point that many such phenomena appear to be relational, rather than substantive entities (cf. Fay, 1996), or even that they interact with the categories used to study them in a way that most physical, natural phenomena do not (cf. Hacking, 1999). In addition to this already instructive list of differences between human and natural kinds that has direct bearing on matters relating to the viability and advisability of the quantitative imperative, the moral and political dimensions of psychological phenomena require a kind of critical study that must include, but go beyond, the positivists concern with logical and systematic matters internal to scientic theorizing, claims and warrants. Such study must delve into, and attempt to lay bare, basic conceptual commitments such as conceptions of evidence, standards of signicance and the social positioning of inquiry and inquirers with respect to other investigators, audiences and participants in research. Some of the important issues relating to the latter point include considerations of who is acknowledged as an expert authority and the bases for such acknowledgement; whose concerns are paramount and whose are perhaps disregarded; and how

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such imbalances might constrain and permit (perhaps promote) various kinds of relationships and actions. These are not matters internal to psychological research programs in the manner of the positivists logical analysis and rational reconstruction of the meanings of scientic terms, sentences and theories. The fact that the concerns of critical inquiry into sociocultural, moral and political dimensions of psychological research resist quantication in many ways is not the most important point here, even if positivists might agree with such a judgment. What is vitally important, and what I believe many qualitative researchers are attempting to champion, is an explicit acknowledgement that psychological phenomena are nested in historical, sociocultural, moral and political practices and signicances in such a manner as to resist positivistic notions of objectivity and narrow rationalism as entirely internal to science. Conclusion Having said all of this, there is always the danger that, in ignorance of the specic content and limitations of empirical analytic approaches to psychological science and inquiry, and with a misplaced sense of being different from (and superior to) positivistically inclined thinkers whom they misunderstand, some qualitative researchers in psychology might incline toward their own versions of methodolatry and hubris. Consequently, articles like Michells are welcome reminders to those of us who are positively inclined toward qualitative methods to be self-critically vigilant with respect to the commitments and assumptions implicit in our inquiries. If inquiry practices are misunderstood, these commitments and assumptions may be difcult to detect. The adoption of qualitative methods in psychology is no guarantee that researchers will not fall prey to well-known difculties associated with the adoption of untenable forms of objectivism and rationalism, even while championing qualitative methods in the face of the quantitative imperative. Empiricism is not exhausted by quantication. Only by understanding what positivism and other philosophies of science reasonably can be interpreted as sanctioning with respect to inquiry practices and theories can we carry forward a kind of conversation about such matters that is likely to enhance psychological inquiry in ways that are appropriately self-critical and open to alternative possibilities.
References Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychotherapy found its language. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fay, B. (1996). Contemporary philosophy of social science: A multicultural approach. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

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Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hempel, C.B. (1979). Scientic rationality: Analytic vs. pragmatic perspectives. In T.F. Geraets (Ed.), Rationality to-day (pp. 292304). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Koch, S. (1992). Psychologys Bridgman vs. Bridgmans Bridgman. Theory & Psychology, 2, 261290. Martin, J. (1996). The top ten problems of psychology. History and Philosophy of Psychology Bulletin, 8(1), 410. Michell, J. (2003). The quantitative imperative: Positivism, nave realism and the place of qualitative methods in psychology. Theory & Psychology, 13, 531. Jack Martin is Burnaby Mountain Endowed Professor at Simon Fraser University. His research interests are in the theory and history of psychology and applied psychology, especially with respect to agency, self and personhood. His publications include The Construction and Understanding of Psychotherapeutic Change (Teachers College Press, 1994), The Psychology of Human Possibility and Constraint (SUNY Press, 1999, with Jeff Sugarman) and Psychology and the Question of Agency (SUNY Press, 2003, with Jeff Sugarman and Janice Thompson). He currently is President of the American Psychological Associations Division of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Address: Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6. [email: jack_martin@sfu.ca]