Amyna Cummings- Section 4
Philosophy of Psychology
Philosophy of psychology refers to the issues at the theoretical foundations of psychology. Questions of psychological investigation methods may include: What conclusions can be drawn from null hypothesis tests? Can personal experiences, such as emotion or desires, be measured? Are self-reports a reliable data-gathering method? Other questions are philosophical about the nature of the mind such as: Are humans rational creatures? What psychological phenomena comes up to the standard required for calling it knowledge? Although philosophy and psychology are closely related fields, there are still concerns of whether it was appropriate to incorporate philosophical methods into psychology. Some of these concerns are whether the study of psychology is autonomous from the brain and whether it is certainly "wired" a certain way and can actually offer possible cognitive theories. Another concern of the philosophy of psychology is to evaluate cognitive psychology's use of mental states could be compared with behaviorism. Philosophy of psychology is a generally new field, but is still examined in depth. It began in the 19th century after philosophers who were also psychologists, Aristotle and Freud for example, began using their psychology background to have philosophical thoughts. Therefore, concerning itself with many fields and ideas of psychology and philosophical inquires.
Actually, "philosophy of psychology" is a lot older than psychology per se, which grew out of it.
ReplyDeleteYou've raised a lot of good questions, you should be able to devote quite a few words to answering them in your next post.
This is only about 200 words, so you'll need to do more next time.