The neurosciences and the search for a unified psychology: the science and esthetics of a single framework

Abstract

The search for a so-called unified or integrated theory has long served as a goal for some psychologists, even if the search is often implicit. But if the established sciences do not have an explicitly unified set of theories, then why should psychology? After examining this question again I argue that psychology is in fact reasonably unified around its methods and its commitment to functional explanations, an indeterminate functionalism. The question of the place of the neurosciences in this framework is complex. On the one hand, the neuroscientific project will not likely renew and synthesize the disparate arms of psychology. On the other hand, their reformulation of what it means to be human will exert an influence in multiple ways. One way to capture that influence is to conceptualize the brain in terms of a technology that we interact with in a manner that we do not yet fully understand. In this way we maintain both a distance from neuro-reductionism and refrain from committing to an unfettered subjectivity.

Beyond the oversocialized conception of the subject in psychology: Desire, conflict, and the problem of social order

“…This is obvious if one considers even a small sampling of such projects, such as those of Bechtel (2019), Henriques (2013), Hibberd (2014), Schiff (2017), and Staats (1996). There are also scholars who have proposed a capacious unity, either by arguing that disparate subfields are in the process of converging (Cacioppo, 2013) and that they are already more integrated than they might appear (Stam, 2015; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001), or else by emphasizing the processual elements that all modes of systematic psychological and scientific research have in common. (A recent effort of the latter type even includes artistic creation in this ensemble; see Osbeck, 2019.)…”

Adaptive Smart Technology Use: The Need for Meta-Self-Regulation

“…Part of the controversy over reading performance in literature studies stems from the inevitable complex relations we form with the environment (e.g., Jin et al, 2015 ). On the one hand, when musicians interact with their instruments like pianos for instance, or high jumpers with their bars, they adapt to factors of the interaction that all else being equal manifest little variation (e.g., Jabusch et al, 2009 ).…”

“…An assertion of attention regulation implicitly assumes that there exist mental operations beyond those evolving as bottom-up embodiment bound adaptations to the environment (though kinds of attention regulation may be closely connected to the action-perception cycle, see for instance Jin and Lee, 2013 and Jin et al, 2015 for the discussion of how the training of Kih may lead to affordance-control).…”

Theory, the Final Frontier? A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Role of Theory in Psychological Articles

“…Greenwald, 2012; Stam, 2015). The proportion should be highest, though, for the one specialty with “theory” in its name: Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology .…”

“…In the most severe cases, these practices might not only hamper the building of powerful and precise theories, but might reverse the development from already existing theories to surrogates (Gigerenzer, 2010 ). This is often contrasted with the situation in biology, where the theory of evolution is seen as such a fundamental keystone of theorizing that “nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution” (Dobzhansky, 2013 )—and even one that has appealed as a theoretical framework to psychology itself (Stam, 2015 ; and see Lloyd, 2010 ; Edelman, 2012 ).…”