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Psychology and philosophy: Toward a realignment, 1905‐1935
Author(s) -
Smith Laurence D.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(198101)17:1<28::aid-jhbs2300170105>3.0.co;2-r
Subject(s) - behaviorism , physicalism , watson , epistemology , positivism , philosophy , logical positivism , empiricism , philosophy of psychology , philosophy of mind , psychoanalysis , psychology , metaphysics , natural language processing , computer science
In the first decade of this century, debates over whether psychology should be affiliated with philosophy or the natural sciences signaled the discipline's withdrawal from philosophy. By the 1930s, however, talk of a rapprochement between psychology and philosophy was common in the psychological literature. This paper traces the changes in philosophy which facilitated that rapprochement and examines psychology's role in the development of logical positivism. Bertrand Russell introduced Watsonian behaviorism to the Vienna Circle via his reformulation of epistemology in behavioristic terms. Under the further influence of Neurath and Popper, Carnap led the Vienna Circle to abandon Mach's phenomenalistic stance and adopt physicalist language as the basis of science. Physicalism entailed a version of behaviorism less restrictive than Watson's and was thus received favorably by many neo‐behaviorists. Whereas Thorndike and Watson had been unsympathetic toward philosophy, each of the major neo‐behaviorists (Skinner, Tolman, Hull, and Guthrie) had significant contact with the new positivist philosophy.