Against the reduction of teleology to sophisticated causal explanation

Abstract

The purpose of science is to provide an account of what is going on behind the phenomena we experience. In psychology, such a task may be approached from two different perspectives. For those espousing a naturalistic–monistic approach, it implies accounting for human behavior via an appeal to explanations by causes. To exponents of a humanistic–pluralistic approach, it will instead entail adopting a teleological outlook via an appeal to explanations by reasons. While presented as an attempt to restore the latter framework to psychological research, Arocha’s account ends up unintentionally endorsing the former, which he purports to reject. It is herein asserted that psychology requires the adoption of a genuinely teleological—that is to say, intentionalistic—framework to account for what is going on behind the observable, thereby contributing to addressing the replication crisis and laying the ground for reforming psychology.

The Early Modern Attack on Teleology and the Politics of Contemporary Psychology: Intellectual Roots of Current Dilemmas

“…Skinner, unlike Rogers, was largely an experimental thinker who had far less to say about the clinical implications of behavioral (mechanistic) explanation. More recently, Gaj (2021) has argued that psychology is divided between experimental-statistical approaches (like Skinner) and teleological explanation of individual activity (like Rogers). This divide is well captured in the distinction between mechanistic causes and teleological reasons.…”

“…This divide is well captured in the distinction between mechanistic causes and teleological reasons. Gaj (2021) argues that a genuinely teleological psychology may have to reevaluate the standards of precision implicit in experimentation: "Indeed, dependence on experimental methods… constrains the scientist to zoom out from individual and subjective properties to focus on aggregate data and the identification of general properties" (p. 440). Genuinely teleological psychology, by contrast, would mean "endorsing frameworks that focus on the personal domain of reasons driving self-determined behaviors, rather than on the domain of impersonal cause," and perhaps "reframing experiments as case studies" (Gaj, 2021, p. 441).…”

“…Genuinely teleological psychology, by contrast, would mean "endorsing frameworks that focus on the personal domain of reasons driving self-determined behaviors, rather than on the domain of impersonal cause," and perhaps "reframing experiments as case studies" (Gaj, 2021, p. 441). Gaj's (2021) insights about the limits of experimental psychology strike me as crucial. For, unless we are to be seduced by the sometimes misleading precision of psychological measurement, there must be some reckoning with the actual messiness of human life.…”