Operationism in psychology: What the debate is about, what the debate should be about

Feest, Uljana

doi:10.1002/jhbs.20079

Cited by 68 publications

(64 citation statements)

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“…First, operational definitions formulate norms for the application of central scientific concepts. Second, the methodological maxim of operationism stands for a more general norm, which calls for an explication of the conceptual assumptions implicit in a given research setting, thereby making them 12 See Feest (2005) for an analysis of historical origins of, and common misconceptions about, operationism.…”

Section: Operational Definitions and Norms Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembering (Short-Term) Memory: Oscillations of an Epistemic Thing

Feest

2011

Erkenn

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This paper provides an interpretation of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's notions of epistemic things and historical epistemology. I argue that Rheinberger's approach articulates a unique contribution to current debates about integrated HPS, and I propose some modifications and extensions of this contribution. Drawing on examples from memory research, I show that Rheinberger is right to highlight a particular feature of many objects of empirical research (''epistemic things'')-especially in the contexts of exploratory experimentation-namely our lack of knowledge about them. I argue that this analysis needs to be supplemented with an account of what scientists do know, and in particular, how they are able to attribute rudimentary empirical contours to objects of research. These contours are closely connected to paradigmatic research designs, which in turn are tied to basic methodological rules for the exploration of the purported phenomena. I suggest that we engage with such rules in order to develop our own normative (epistemological) categories, and I tie this proposal to the idea of a methodological naturalism in philosophy of science.

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Section: Operational Definitions and Norms Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Remembering (Short-Term) Memory: Oscillations of an Epistemic Thing

Feest

2011

Erkenn

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“…An account of mechanism and phenomenon types has to account for how scientists proceed in practice. Here, it might be fruitful to look at the methods of how scientists operationalize the phenomena they want to explain (operationalization might be seen as a process that starts with a rather general type description that is specified such that in the end individuals can be identified that can be investigated) (Feest [2005] and so on. One consequence of this would be that there is more than one way of dividing mechanisms and phenomena into types.…”

Section: Multiple Realization Multifunctionality and The Individuatimentioning

confidence: 99%

A Regularist Approach to Mechanistic Type-Level Explanation

Krickel

2018

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

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Most defenders of the new mechanistic approach accept ontic constraints for successful scientific explanation (Illari [2013]; Craver [2014]). The minimal claim is that scientific explanations have objective truthmakers, namely mechanisms that exist in the physical world independently of any observer and that cause or constitute the phenomena-to-be-explained. How can this idea be applied to type-level explanations? Many authors at least implicitly assume that in order for mechanisms to be the truthmakers of type-level explanation they need to be regular (Andersen [2012]; Sheredos [2015]). One problem of this assumption is that most mechanisms are (highly) stochastic in the sense that they 'fail more often than they succeed' (Bogen [2005]; Andersen [2012]). How can a mechanism type whose instances are more likely not to produce an instance of a particular phenomenon type be the truthmaker of the explanation of that particular phenomenon type? In this paper, I will give an answer to this question. I will analyze the notion of regularity and I will discuss Andersen's suggestion for how to cope with stochastic mechanisms. I will argue that her suggestion cannot account for all kinds of stochastic mechanisms and does not provide an answer as to why regularity grounds type-level explanation. According to my analysis, a mechanistic type-level explanation is true if and only if at least one of the following two conditions is satisfied: the mechanism brings about the phenomenon more often than any other phenomenon ('Comparative Regularity') or the phenomenon is more often brought about by the mechanism than by any other mechanism/causal sequence ('Comparative Reverse Regularity').

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“…These are cast in terms of a description of a typical experimental set-up thought to produce data that are indicative of the phenomenon picked out by the concept. I base my analysis of the role of operational definitions on several historical case studies where I have traced the origins of talk about operationism in psychology to psychophysics and behaviorism of the 1920s and 1930s (see Feest 2005). Based on these historical case studies I have argued that even though the psychologists in question saw themselves as closely allied with logical positivists, they in fact pursued a rather different intellectual project.…”

Section: Operational Definitions As Providing Instructions For Experimentioning

confidence: 99%

Concepts as Tools in the Experimental Generation of Knowledge in Cognitive Neuropsychology

Feest

2010

SponGe

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This paper asks (a) how new scientific objects of research are conceptualized at a point in time when little is known about them, and (b) how those conceptualizations, in turn, figure in the process of investigating the phenomena in question. Contrasting my approach with existing notions of concepts and situating it in relation to existing discussions about the epistemology of experimentation, I propose to think of concepts as research tools. I elaborate on the conception of a tool that informs my account. Narrowing my focus to phenomena in cognitive neuropsychology, I then illustrate my thesis with the example of the concept of implicit memory. This account is based on an original reconstruction of the nature and function of operationism in psychology.

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Operationism in psychology: What the debate is about, what the debate should be about

Cited by 68 publications

References 58 publications

Remembering (Short-Term) Memory: Oscillations of an Epistemic Thing

Remembering (Short-Term) Memory: Oscillations of an Epistemic Thing

A Regularist Approach to Mechanistic Type-Level Explanation

Concepts as Tools in the Experimental Generation of Knowledge in Cognitive Neuropsychology

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