Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:50:43.436Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Empirical Basis and Theoretical Structure of Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Kenneth W. Spence
Kenneth W. Spence*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In accepting the invitation of your society to discuss some aspects of the philosophy of science, particularly as they might bear on the problems of an experimental psychologist, I should like from the start to make it very clear that I do not consider myself a philosopher, not even an amateur one. Like most empirical scientists, particularly of the laboratory variety, I usually take it for granted that my world is real and that the things I perceive as existing in it can be investigated by my empirical methods. I seem to get along quite well with this unpremeditated, common-sense realism, and, for the most part, I go along minding my own experimental business. As the psychologists among you may know, however, every once in a while I seem to have to abandon this happy, naive state and let myself get involved in questions about my science, the kinds of questions that are more properly the business of the philosopher of science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , April 1957 , pp. 97 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © 1957, The Williams & Wilkins Company

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

An address given to a joint meeting of philosophers and psychologists of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Asheville, March, 1956.

References

1. Allport, G. Becoming: Basic considerations for a psychology of personality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955.Google Scholar
2. Bergmann, G. Outline of an empiricist philosophy of physics (Concluded). Amer. J. Physics. 1943, 11, 335–342.Google Scholar
3. Bergmann, G., & Spence, K. W. Operationism and theory in psychology. Psychol. Rev., 1941, 48, 1–14.Google Scholar
4. Bruner, J. S. & Krech, D. Perception and personality. Discussion by Tolman, pp. 48–51. Durham: Duke University Press, 1950.Google Scholar
5. Carnap, R. Der logische Aufbau der Well. Leipsig: F. Meiner, 1928.Google Scholar
6. Carnap, R. The unity of science. London: Keegan Paul. 1934.Google Scholar
7. Carnap, R. Testability and meaning. Philos. Sci., 1936, 3, 419–471, 1937, 4, 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. Ginsberg, A. Hypothetical constructs and intervening variables. Psychol. Rev., 1954, 61, 119–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Hempel, C. G. The logical analysis of psychology. Reprinted in Feigl, H., & Sellers, W. Readings in philosophical analysis. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949.Google Scholar
10. Hull, C. L. Principles of behavior. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943.Google Scholar
11. MacCorquodale, K., & Meehl, P. E. On a distinction between hypothetical constructs and intervening variables. Psychol. Rev., 1948, 55, 95–107.Google Scholar
12. Spence, K. W. The nature of theory construction in contemporary psychology. Psychol. Rev., 1944, 51, 47–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13. Spence, K. W. The postulates and methods of behaviorism. Psychol. Rev., 1948, 55, 67–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. Spence, K. W. Mathematical formulations of learning phenomena. Psychol. Rev., 1952, 59, 152–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15. Spence, K. W. Mathematical theories of learning. J. gen. Psychol., 1953, 49, 283–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16. Tolman, E. C. Operational behaviorism and current trends in psychology. Proc. 25th Anniv. Celebration Inaug. Grad. Stud., Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1936, pp. 89–103.Google Scholar
17. Watson, J. B. Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychol. Rev., 1913, 20, 158–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar