Tolman, C.W., & Lemery, C.R. (1990). How to reconcile theoretical differences in psychology. New Ideas in Psychology, 8, 397-402.

HOW TO RECONCILE THEORETICAL DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHOLOGY

Charles W. Tolman and Charles R. Lemery
University of Victoria, Canada

Abstract-- An approach to reconciling theoretical differences is described that relies not merely on appeal to more empirical data, but on putting the difference into a broad evolutionary or historical perspective. An example is given relating to the "innate vs. learned" controversy. One implication for the development of theoretical psychology is discussed.

A state of crisis in psychology has been widely recognized since the mid-1960s. At its heart is the problem of theoretical indeterminacy: There appears to be no rational ground on which differences among theories can finally be reconciled. An examination of the nature of theoretical indeterminacy reveals basic methodological problems having to do with generalization, abstraction, and definition. It is proposed here that these problems can be solved by an appropriate methodological use of development processes. An example will be given, showing how theoretical differences regarding learned and innate behaviours can be resolved. The method by which this is done is distinctly theoretical, as opposed to simply empirical. One implication is the need to recognize a sub-discipline of theoretical psychology whose task it is to resolve theoretical differences generated by empirical research and to work toward a general and unified psychological theory.

THE CRISIS OF PSYCHOLOGY, RECOGNIZED SINCE THE MID-1960s, IS ONE OF THEORETICAL INDETERMINACY

Elms wrote in 1975 that "whether [psychologists] are experiencing an identity crisis, a paradigmatic crisis of confidence, most seem agreed that a crisis is at hand" (Elms, 1975, p. 968). Others were more specific about the nature of the crisis. Giorgi, for example, wrote that "...there is a lack of unity in psychology" (Giorgi, 1976, p. 285). Catania (1973) observed:

"Students of psychology still are asked to choose theoretical sides. They see functional accounts of operant behavior pitted against ethological accounts of behavioral structure, analyses of reinforcement contingencies pitted against theories of cognitive processing, and descriptions of language as verbal behavior pitted against psycholinguistic formulations of language competence... psychologists are not even agreed on whether theirs is a science of behavior or science of mental life" (p. 434). [p. 398]

The title of Staats's book, Psychology's Crisis of Disunity (Staats, 1983) summed it up very neatly. Despite its best intentions and efforts, psychology in this century has been unable to produce a single determinate theory about anything.

THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO WAYS IN WHICH THE CRISIS WILL NOT BE RESOLVED

(a) The first of these non-solutions is to impose some kind of unifying principle ex cathedra upon the heterogeneous mass that has become psychology. This was what the positivists tried to do and they failed miserably. While Staats is quite aware of this, he appears -if I understand him correctly- to be suggesting a similar solution. He does not believe that the original positivist project was wrong, just the particular, restrictive form of its content. His alternative, called "unified positivism" (Staats, 1986) is a deliberately more liberal form of its "logical" predecessor.

But it should be obvious that such a "top-down" (philosophically idealist) solution, no matter how liberal, is bound to fail. It is like saying that theological differences among Christian sects would have a better chance of being resolved if all Christians would become Anglicans. It might work, but the solution would be a dogmatic one that is totally unsuitable, in form, for a scientific enterprise.

(b) The second non-solution is to advocate the collection of more data, as if the problem were one simply of not yet having enough empirical knowledge. This has been recognized by many psychologists. Moscovici, for instance, spoke disparagingly of the "proliferation of experimental studies lacking theoretical preoccupations" (Moscovici, 1972, p. 43). He went on to say that it was "not surprising that the empirically established facts are nothing but a heterogeneous collection" (p. 44). Harré and Secord (1972) also spoke not of a need for more data, but of a "need for a comprehensive theoretical treatment of ... [social] psychology and for a reformed methodology" (p. 1). The problem was clearly stated already in 1966 by Hilgard and Bower. After listing several problems like latent learning and peripheral vs. central mediation in learning that had not been resolved by "crucial" experiments, they concluded that: "Accumulation of knowledge means neither mere fact-gathering nor isolated hypothesis testing, but thoughtful systematic approaches to meaningful questions leading to conclusive thinking" (Hilgard & Bower, 1966, p. 583).

So, more data will not solve the problem of theoretical indeterminacy. As these and many other psychologists have seen with varying degrees of clarity, the problem is a theoretical and methodological one that will require a solution that is theoretical and methodological, not merely empirical.

TOWARD A THEORETICAL/METHODOLOGICAL SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM

(a) The first important step toward a solution is to understand what makes theories indeterminate. The suggestion that comes from Holzkamp (1978) and Ilyenkov (1982) is that theories are necessarily indeterminate when they are [p. 399] constituted by empirical generalizations based upon classification and common characters of essentially static objects. Such generalizations are identified with the abstract, while only the individual empirical objects are thought of as concrete. The problem here is this: Any empirically concrete object or population of objects is infinite in its properties and can thus be abstracted in an equally infinite number of ways. But there is nothing in the immediate object or in the process of abstraction to tell us what must be abstracted for a proper understanding. Now, in fact, we do not abstract objects infinitely. We are able somehow to judge, more or less, which abstractions are relevant and which are not. But two problems remain: First, it is not at all uncommon that two or more "relevant" abstractions appear to be contradictory (e.g., cognitive vs. environmental, innate vs. learned); second, it is often not at all clear precisely how the judgment of relevance is made. What is clear, however, is that if we remain faithful to the strictly empirical, statistical rules for generalization that will be no resolution to the problem.

Ilyenkov (1982) suggests the following simple example. If we were to apply empirical, statistical criteria alone to our understanding of the human species, we would have to conclude that its defining character is soft earlobes. But most anthropologists will rightly protest that this is irrelevant. What is relevant for them is that Homo Sapiens is a tool maker. But empirically and statistically we could never know this: We observed too many humans who do not make tools and we know of instances in which animals do. Obviously, the anthropologists have made a judgment of relevance here that is based on something other than empirical frequency counts.

(b) Continuing the example of soft earlobes vs. tool making, we might ask what it is that convinces the anthropologist of the relevance of tool making. Briefly, it is this: First, tool making is the genetically earliest activity by which the first hominids distinguished themselves from their pre-hominid ancestors; second, tool making provides a basis from which can be understood many, if not all, characteristically human traits, such as the form of the hands and jaw, social organization, transformation of objects through production, etc. In this way, tool making becomes a kind of "universal" that explains why even in a society like ours there are so many people who never in their lives make a tool. This is not an empirical, statistical universal, but a theoretical universal. It is the result not of abstracting generalization, but of concretizing generalization (see Davydov, 1984). It is a generalization that gets at the essence of the object, rather than its mere appearance.

The method by which such "concrete universals" are discovered is unquestionably empirical -data or facts are of utmost importance- but it is not merely empirical. Its distinctive characteristic as a methodology is theoretical. The [p. 400] underlying principle is quite simple: To understand anything concretely (and therefore also, as we shall see, determinately) is to understand it in its development (see Vygotsky, 1976). This might be said about anything at all in the universe. Thus already in the mid-eighteenth century Kant intuited the importance of cosmogony. The significance of evolutionary thinking in geology, biology, and related disciplines has been beyond question for an increasing number of scientists since the late nineteenth century. It should be very clear to psychologists by now that their subject matter is -so to speak- "on the move," coming from something or somewhere. This is implicitly recognized in the frequent use (not always accompanied, however, by a corresponding understanding) of the word "process." Tool making is a concrete universal because it explains how we got to be the way we are, and, reciprocally, the importance of tool making can only be understood from an account of how we became what we are.

Unlike rocks and such, or even plants and animals, human characters are produced by three distinct lines of development: Phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and historical. In short, to understand any psychological process like learning, perception, cognition, or social organization, it must be understood -if it is to be fully, concretely, and determinately comprehended- in terms of all three lines. The implication for determinacy is clear: Developmental (sometimes called "historical") methodology ("historische Herangehensweise": see, Holzkamp, 1983; Tolman, 1987) provides the criteria of relevance by which empirical generalizations can be sorted out and ranked. When we understand how different abstractions are interrelated, even when some of them appear to be contradictory, we have obviously made the first great step toward a unified theory.

(c) There are several examples of this kind of methodology [in German Critical psychology] (e.g. Holzkamp-Osterkamp, 1975; Holzkamp, 1983). We offer one here that has the advantage of accessibility in English. This is the analysis of the opposition between the "learned" and "innate" by Konrad Lorenz.

He began by noting that there were two distinct positions in American behaviorism. According to the first (represented by Hebb, 1953): "The dichotomy of behavior into innate and learned arises only from begging the question, as one can only be defined by the [formal logical] exclusion of the other" (Lorenz, 1964, p. 101). This is not so, according to Lorenz: "Both are defined by the provenance of the information which is the prerequisite of behavior being adapted to [the] environment" (p. 103). The first source of information leading to adaptive behaviour is the interaction between the species and its environment; the second is the interaction between the individual and its environment. The latter is what we normally call learning. When it is thus put into its evolutionary context a couple of things become evident. First, the only conceivable guarantee that learning will tend on the whole to be adaptive comes from the fact that it is itself shaped by the phylogenetic source of information. Second, following from the first, learning is not [logically or objectively] opposed to innateness; it is a form of innateness, an innate adaptive strategy. The conclusion to which Lorenz was drawn was that "phylogenetic adaptation must unconditionally be contained in every learning process, while the hypothesis that learning must enter [p. 401] into all phylogenetically adapted behavior is entirely unfounded" (p. 104).

The second position (represented by Lehrman, 1953) is: "No experimentation can ever ascertain how much of an animal's behavior is innate, as the possibility of its learning within the egg or in utero can never be excluded" (Lorenz, 1964, p. 102). Basically, Lorenz's response is that if it is the case that animals learn in utero (or in ovo) and this learning turns out to be adaptive, then it can only be possible if the learning is guided by phylogenetically acquired information. Once again, learning turns out to be an innate strategy.

What is notable here is that Lorenz's analysis removes the apparently [logical] contradictory [status] and competitive [objective] nature of the two categories. He does this by the application not of more data, but of the kind of "conclusive thinking" that Hilgard and Bower (1966, p. 583) recommended. Furthermore the theoretical approach to the problem is "historical," in this case evolutionary-phylogenetic. The end result is that categories previously representing apparently irreconcilable theories of the same events are now integrated by criteria of relevance into a single, potentially more powerful, account [-i.e., a somewhat more concrete theoretical conception of learning which recognizes the internal objective contradictions of and developmental relationships between, the varied empirical processes under study].

It is important to recognize here that this solution is qualitatively different from the common "additive" or "interactive" solutions. The innate and the learned do not "combine" here in any way. Learning is a developmental expression of the innate, which is in this instance conceptualized [concretely] in terms of phylogenetic information required for adaptation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORETICAL PSYCHOLOGY

To the extent that the present analysis is correct, there is hope of finding and elaborating a methodology for overcoming theoretical indeterminacy. Insofar as indeterminacy is seen to constitute a "crisis" for psychology, there is clearly an urgent need for this kind of methodology to be developed and applied. Obviously not every "front line" psychologist will want or be able to undertake such a task. For this and other reasons theoretical psychologists are uniquely prepared for it. Such a task could in fact define the mission of a distinctly theoretical psychological sub-discipline within the general psychological division of labour. Theoretical psychologists, having thus a recognized and vital role to play in the overall disciplinary picture, would then cease to be dabblers at the fringes of psychology and philosophy. They would become undeniably relevant to the overall psychological endeavour.

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Tolman, C.W. (1987). Zur Vorgeschichte der historischen Herangehensweise in der burgerlichen Psychologie. In W. Maiers, & M. Markard (Eds.). Kritische Psychologie als Subjektwissenschaft. Frankfurt: Campus.

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Related links:

Ballantyne, P.F. (1995). From Initial Abstractions to a Concrete Concept of Personality. In I. Lubek, et al. (Eds.). Recent Trends in Theoretical Psychology. Vol. 4., pp. 151-157. New York: Springer.

Ballantyne, P.F. (December, 2004). "Multiple levels of investigation and the recurring 'crisis of relevance' in psychology". Presentation to the Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University.

Tolman, C.W. (1988a). Theoretical unification in psychology: A materialist perspective (pp. 29-36). In W.J. Baker, et al. (Eds.). Recent Trends in Theoretical Psychology. New York: Springer-Verlag.