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We agree with Arocha’s criticism of psychological science’s reliance on statistical procedures that factor out intraindividual variability and the complex dynamics inherent to behavior, as well as with his call for the adoption of a metatheoretical framework that embraces such variability. However, we disagree that scientific realism provides such a framework, given its reductive privileging of certain forms of explanation over others. We advocate, instead, a process-relational paradigm and the explanatory pluralism that it supports, allowing psychological science to more dynamically, and realistically, model individual human behavior.

This article aims to examine the relation between psychology and metaphysics. Despite psychology’s claim of being an exact science, like physics, it contains an implicit commitment to metaphysical assumptions, such as ahistorical universalism, ontological dualism, abstract individualism, and the fragmentation of the human mind. This paper proposes a dialectical perspective as a way to overcome the unidimensional examination of psychological phenomena as the sum of independent, fixed, and static elements. By revealing the shortcomings of reductionism and elementarism, dialectics highlight the complex and dynamic nature of psychological processes and provide an original way of conceptualizing crucial theoretical and methodological issues of psychology as a discipline.

Kalis and Borsboom (2020) defend their realism about folk psychology against my challenge to provide a grounding argument for the correctness of folk psychological explanation (Oude Maatman, 2020). In this reply, I show how their clarified realism in fact vindicates this challenge, as it heavily relies on the predictive success of folk psychology. I then proceed by describing how their realist interpretation of “intentional content” complicates the usability of network theory, and show that both their antireductionism and realism are grounded in an empirical gamble against alternatives. I end with a brief defense of my own version of network theory.

Borsboom et al. (2019) argue that the network theory of mental disorders, if correct, blocks the biological reduction of mental disorders. This is mainly argued through a partial reformulation of network theory which combines multiple realizability of symptoms with a realist interpretation of folk psychological explanations. In this article, I argue that (a) the latter is problematic and that (b) the combination of these arguments voids the previous predictive and explanatory power of network theory. I then present a novel way in which network theory could avoid biological reductionism by considering folk psychology not as a fact, but as a structuring cause of causal connections between intentional state symptoms, together with culture and time period. Drawing from this, a novel principle for network theory is proposed, which allows it to retain force against reductionism while also retaining predictive and explanatory power.

The discipline of psychology grew out of European philosophy into a unique discipline that retained reductionist assumptions regarding knowledge production and ways-of-being. Born out of dissatisfaction with the dominance and ineffectiveness of Anglo-European/American assumptions in psychology, and how the discipline obscured culturally unique ways-of-being and producing knowledge, Indigenous scholars are working to decolonize psychology. This article contributes to this Indigenous project by exploring the ways in which dominant reductionist philosophies in psychology today theorize away Indigenous peoples’ understanding of being. Drawing on the continental and existential philosophical tradition, and Māori (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) knowledge of being, we provide a critique of how the self has been recast in psychology through a reductionist perspective. We set dominant theorizing and knowledge production regarding the self in psychology against the backdrop of processes of colonization, industrialization, urbanization, and the need for the development of Indigenous psychologies to meet the needs of Indigenous peoples.

The new orthodoxy in much of contemporary psychology would have progress and theoretical development increasingly dependent on technologies designed to reveal aspects of central nervous system function. The goal (by now a rather superannuated one) is to replace an allegedly primitive “folk psychology” with direct assessments of the allegedly causal processes by which the contents of folk psychology are generated. There are, however, cogent arguments to the effect that this rationale is both flawed and operating in the wrong direction.

Many scientific psychologists (implicitly) adopt a vertical worldview. This worldview assumes a layered supervening ontology and thereby invites a reductionist stance on explanation. In the present article we direct attention to an alternative attitude towards reality, the horizontal worldview. We draw on Wittgenstein as an example of this alternative attitude. In his later writings Wittgenstein showed his readers how to resist the urge to derive underlying principles about reality by tirelessly reorienting inquiry “sideways,” to the surrounding circumstances that were excluded from consideration. We go on to identify similar horizontal thinking in scientific psychology and demonstrate its merits by discussing Gibson’s approach to visual perception, a Heideggerian approach to skill acquisition, and by discussing psychological traits and the use of concepts. By clarifying the particular surrounding circumstances that a vertical view neglects to consider, a horizontal attitude can render a vertical analysis superfluous.

The validity of functional explanations as they are commonly used in psychology has recently come under attack. Kim’s supervenience argument purports to prove that higher-level generalizations have no causal powers of their own, and hence are explanatorily irrelevant. In a nutshell, the supervenience argument forces us to either embrace epiphenomenalism of higher-level properties, or accept Kim’s specific brand of reductionism. However, with the current emphasis on mechanistic explanations, the literature on explanation in psychology has undergone some drastic changes. It could be argued, therefore, that Kim’s argument targets an outdated concept of functional explanations. In any case, these developments warrant a reassessment of the implications of his argument, which is the purpose of the present paper. First, we argue that the metaphysics behind the supervenience argument is incompatible with that of mechanisms. Second, we argue that Kim’s proposed brand of reductionism does not accurately describe the explanatory practices of cognitive science.

This paper examines the neurobiological explanatory trend in psychology, including the related and tacit roles of ontological materialism and reductionism. In addition, the role of Cartesian dualism in both psychology and cognitive neuroscience is explored. In both, the complex relationships between mind/brain and mind/body tend to be conceptualized through the framework of either ontic dualism or attribute dualism, both of which ultimately constrain notions of embodiment. Alternatively, this paper understands the body as the inseparable unity of being-in-the-world from which the Cartesian dichotomy of “mind” and “body” is abstracted. This alternative surpasses the constraints of dualism and reframes embodiment as intentionality incarnate and ultimately as “flesh.” The body, understood phenomenologically, emerges not as a “what” but as a “ what—how”—the manifestation in extension of our intentionality, the flesh of our projects in and of the world. We argue that this understanding is indispensable to a properly psychological perspective on embodiment.

In his recent book The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Fodor argues that computational modeling of global cognitive processes, such as abductive everyday reasoning, has not been successful. In this article the problem is analyzed in the framework of algorithmic information theory. It is argued that the failed approaches are characterized by shallow reductionism, which is rejected in favor of deep reductionism and nonreductionism.

This paper explores three connected claims about the interrelation of psychology and neuroscience that occur in discussions within theoretical psychology. The first and second claims are that neuroscience cannot offer a complete account of human psychology because it can show only correlations between neural events and cognitive or behavioral events. The third claim is that neuroscience ultimately is incomplete or irrelevant to psychological accounts since it is silent on crucial cultural and historical issues relevant to human knowledge and action. We argue that all of these claims are false, not because neuroscience can replace psychology, but because each discipline should be seen to complement and support the other.

We propose a classification and critical review of organic selection, or the Baldwin effect, and its wide range of current uses. From a constructivist viewpoint we criticize the usual reductionistic interpretation of organic selection: the replacement of a habit by an instinct. We argue that organic selection is better understood as a theory closely connected to a constructivist psychology. Such a constructivist psychology was created and developed by Baldwin in order to explain the ontogenetic construction of novel and adaptive behaviours. We apply this approach to the analysis of current interpretations of organic selection by Neo-Darwinism, genetic assimilation, biosemiotics, complex systems theory, social heredity and epigenetic theory.

This paper outlines the earliest writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: his proposals in the early 1930s which study a synthesis of science and philosophy as well as his first text, The Structure of Behavior (completed in 1938, published in 1942). The first section of the paper traces the historical development of his thought from a simple championing of the sciences (in contrast to the dominant neo-Kantian philosophy of the time) to a strongly critical stance toward any kind of reductionism in psychology. The second section describes how Merleau-Pomty’s critique of psychology’s overestimation of the ability to localize the causes of behavior leads him to limit the reach of scientific psychology. In conclusion, it outlines how his early idea of structure in psychology is offered as a solution to poles of naïve materialism in the sciences and abstract intellectualism in philosophy.

Reductionism in psychology is often linked with the mind-body problem. This paper reviews the reductionism debate and concludes that many of its controversies can indeed be traced to the relation between reduction and the metaphysical mind-body problem. It is proposed that reductionism, by bridging different theories, rather should be considered as a scientific stance which favours interdisciplinary co-operation. This perspective on reductionism throws a new light on the classical model of reduction, which may capture important aspects of intertheoretic reductions if it is recognized that the bridges between theories do not need to comply completely with the classical conditions. These ideas are illustrated by analysing an example of reductionistic research concerning the psychology and neuropsychology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

The recent social constructionist and narrative approaches to subjectivity and psychotherapy tend to exclude psychoanalysis as essentialist and reductionist. This paper revisits psychoanalytic theory, and particularly Lacanian psychoanalysis, and discusses its relevance for a semiotic understanding of subjectivity. It draws upon Lacan's and Bakhtin's theories to outline a theory of subjectivity as a constellation of linguistically produced and enacted positions and of transference as a semiotic articulation in the therapeutic setting of dialogical patterns deriving from the client's past. The therapeutic exchange is theorized as a process of shared exploration and mutual appropriation of positions, voices and languages. These processes are illustrated through a micro-analysis of extracts from one session of a long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The analysis traces the movement of the encounter from the articulation of a transferential dialogical pattern to the development of increasingly strong reflexive positions. It focuses on the interplay of utterances between therapist and client, demonstrating the micro-processes through which subjectivity is articulated and transformed in psychotherapy practice.

The paper discusses the flaws in the solutions proposed by philosophical positions of constructivism and naturalism of the mind-body and mind-reality problems to which Cartesian dualism gives rise. It is argued that subscribing—explicitly or implicitly—to the assumptions of these philosophical positions by two research traditions within current academic psychology, that is, social constructionism and cognitive neuroscience, the flaws and problems that these positions inherit cease to be of merely `philosophical' interest, but become flaws in the foundations of the science of psychology. More importantly, the aim is to show how arguments in refutation of the assumptions of naturalism and constructivism in turn suggest and point to tenable alternative assumptions about the relation between mind and reality and between mind and body, which—as a matter of principle—must be taken for granted by both philosophy and psychology.

Functional explanation, for long the mainstay of psychology's autonomy, has recently come under attack. It is sometimes argued that higher-level generalizations are causally impotent, and do not really explain anything. Presumably only the reduction of higher-level patterns to underlying causal physical properties, and the specifying of lower-level, local causal mechanisms, provides genuine explanations. Two lines of argument are critically discussed: causal exclusion and multiple realization. These bear upon the credibility of functional explanation, and upon the presumed explanatory superiority of causal mechanisms over functional higher-level generalizations. It is argued that the causal exclusion argument conflates metaphysics with explanation, and that, rather than pointing towards reductionism, multiple realization indicates the indispensability of higher (functional) generalizations, alongside lower (causal) explanations; the choice for higher or lower level depends on context and explanatory interest. The notion of screening-off suggests a criterion for the legitimacy of higher-level characterizations. A brief example from the history of genetics is discussed to illustrate these ideas. This leads to a plea for pluralism in explanation.

In this paper, two recent interpretations of current work in behavioral genetics are rejected. Genetic reductionism, the view according to which genetic properties are causally sufficient for phenotypic traits, is dismissed because it ignores the fact that there are not only causal pathways from DNA to phenotype but also pathways that feed back from, for instance, the cytoplasm or the outside world to the genetic material. The complexity of development is acknowledged in the view known as developmentalism, which claims that a complex causal network of genetic and non-genetic factors is responsible for phenotypic outcomes. However, genetic explanations, at least in some contexts, do seem to have a privileged status. Heuristic identity theory appears to offer a more adequate interpretation for behavioral genetics. It is in many cases very illuminating to hypothetically identify phenotypic traits with genetic properties. We claim that McCauley and Bechtel's proposal calls for at least two constraints to avoid a wild proliferation of implausible identities. First, more emphasis should be placed on explanatory failures. Second, the most interesting identifications are those that make ‘qualitative leaps’, that is, they must apply across distinct levels of analysis. © 2001, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

What is the theological significance of the philosophy of mind and debates on reductionism? Religious experience is rooted in processes in the brain (e.g. d'Aquili). Understanding this may offer the theologian some arguments against dismissive accounts of religion, but it challenges claims regarding a non-natural referent. Problems with treating the world-God relationship as analogous to the one between brain and mind (as Philip Clayton does) are pointed out. The idea that Christians must side with irreducibilists in the philosophy of mind is criticized. Ontological irreducibility seems theologically unnecessary, as God can be the creator of a world with one, two or any other number of aspects. Epistemological irreducibility is insufficient for such a theology, as it comes with a naturalistic understanding of human nature. Thus, contemporary philosophy of mind may be an ally in arguing against an easy dismissal of religious practices and convictions, but at the same time it challenges a supernaturalist view of religion.

Explanatory pluralism holds that the sorts of comprehensive theoretical and ontological economies that microreductionists and New Wave reductionists envision and antireductionists fear offer misleading views of both scientific practice and scientific progress. Both advocates and foes of employing reductionist strategies at the interface of psychology and neuroscience have overplayed the alleged economies that interlevel connections (including identities) justify while overlooking their fundamental role in promoting scientific research. A brief review of research on visual processing provides support for the explanatory pluralist's general model of cross-scientific relations and discloses the valuable heuristic role hypothetical identities play in cross-scientific research. That model also supplies grounds for hesitation about the correlation objection to the psychophysical identity theory and complaints about an explanatory gap in physicalist accounts of consciousness. These takes on psycho-neural connections miss both the sorts of considerations that motivate hypothetical identities in science and their fundamental contribution to progressive research. Thus, their focus on the contributions of research at multiple levels of analysis does not bar explanatory pluralists from considering heuristic identity theory (HIT). Arguably, it encourages it.

This introduction provides a brief sketch of explanatory pluralism and related issues. It is argued that traditional ideas in the philosophy of science about connections between levels of explanation, autonomy and reduction are too simple to account for the multifaceted explanatory relations between psychology and its neighboring disciplines. Explanatory pluralism holds that theories at different levels can co-evolve and mutually influence each other, without reduction of the higher-level theory to the lower-level one. Establishing bridges between cognitive psychological and neuro-physiological theories may suggest problems and solutions, and thus foster further development, both ways. The ideas put forward in this Symposium provide resources for a pluralistic view on psychological explanation, and militate against the `single-plot story' that physiological reductionism holds up as an ideal to psychology.

Contemporary reductionism nowadays comes in various strengths and flavors, ranging from restricted claims concerning the token identity of physical and mental events up to the more orthodox claims about the reducibility of psychological laws. This paper first provides a taxonomy of different versions of reductionism arranged in order of decreasing strength. Against this backdrop it is argued that classical arguments in favor of an absolute autonomy of psychology and of the special sciences fall far short of their intended conclusion. Instead the paper develops what it takes to be more promising arguments based on the notion of multiple supervenience that underwrite the notion of explanatory pluralism and make room for a systems account of higher-order processes sanctioning downward causation without violating the laws of micro-physics.

Recently, investigators in behavioral genetics have found loci on the genome (so-called ‘quantitative trait loci’ or QTLs) that are associated with complex mental traits, such as anxiety or novelty seeking. The interpretation of these findings raises interesting theoretical questions. At first sight, the discovery of ‘genes-for-personality’ seems to support genetic determinism and reductionism. Genetic determinism is the view that the phenotype is precoded in or determined by the genotype. However, evidence from developmental biology and neural modeling indicates that development is a result of interactive processes at many levels, not only the genome, so that geneticism must be rejected. Identifying QTLs and perhaps also the causal paths in the tangle of top-down and bottom-up influences between genome, organism and environment is best seen as a simplification. It amounts to considerably less than reduction in the classical sense of replacement via bridge laws or elimination. It is argued that higher (psychological and physiological) levels are functionally characterized and are irreducible to molecular-genetic levels. Therefore, it is to be expected that ideas about inter-level relations may be useful in clarifying the relation between loci on the genome (QTLs), gene products, the nervous system, behavior and personality, and to help identify the contribution of genetic factors in behavioral genetics. © 2000, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

Locating a revised, multiple and shifting conceptualization of racism, the paper outlines ways in which Marxist theorizing may challenge the individualism and reductionism which are characteristic of mainstream psychology. Approaches to racism from emerging alternatives to main-stream social psychology in the form of two contrasting streams, inter-group theorizing and social constructionism, are sketched, along with a few remarks on psychoanalysis. A revised Marxism drawing on Cornel West's notion of genealogical materialism offers a broader vision which could potentially merge progressive elements from the psychological realm with a thoroughgoing materialism, and point towards an appropriately critical stance against racism.

Responses to my critique of social constructionism (Fisher, 1995b) aver not only that my concepts of self appear dualistic, re-evoking Cartesian and neo-Cartesian dualities, but also that my claims about the self lack evidence. Freeman, Gergen, Harré, Hermans and Shotter (all 1995) reassert consciousness and conscience as social constructions. Yet, their reductionism splits mind from body. I argue to the contrary-that mind and body interrelate within the same metaphysical structuring and without such splits as Harré's proposed metaphysical/ontological. Ironically, constructionist reduction of the self to a derivation within social context multiplies dualities and disjunctions for two reasons: the use of reduction to theorize about the self, and the focus on rhetoric-not only as context for the metaphysical structuring of theoretical concepts, but also as substitute for logic in evaluating theory. I reject as fallacy the argument that it is my burden of proof to show evidence for the psychobiology of self and consciousness-that there isn't any self if I don't `show' it. Within a strategy of metaphor instead of reduction, I offer the concept of `empty set' as offset to the `empty self' of constructionists. I reassert that including biological need and assimilative functions of the self is necessary to account for agency and potentiality.