People Make Sense: Foundations for a Human Science

127.  The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.

128. If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them.

        Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

By the early 1960’s it was clear to many that the intellectual foundations of psychology were in shambles.  Psychology looked like a collection of separate antagonistic systems. At best, theories and practices coexisted the way people respect their neighbor’s different but incorrect religion. Worse, what should be basic concepts: person, behavior, language and world were without systematic explication or interconnection. Psychology had experimental methods and conceptual confusion. It was a mess.  In many ways, it still is.

Descriptive Psychology was created as a way out akin to Wittgenstein's aim to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.

How can we achieve the necessary sorting out without tossing the baby with the bathwater?

What does a coherent psychology require? First, a conceptual foundation. Theory comes second.  We need a clear and sufficiently elaborate conceptualization of the subject matter before we can organize empirical data and before we can systematically compare the theories that exist or might follow. We need to know if we are arguing about the same thing or trying to understand something else. Without shared concepts, we are clueless. 

We need common ground seldom achieved through shared definitions, since most of the significant concepts defy definition and invite disagreement.  We need something else.

Peter Ossorio recognized this confusion and decided, “Sometimes it is better just to make a fresh start.” Starting over involved clarifying and organizing concepts rather than building new theory. It required establishing a framework that would allow all empirical possibilities a place.  The goal was to be precise and systematic while not foreclosing on the full range of what actually happens or possibly could.   The fresh start involved replacing a self-defeating concern with definition with the methods of Paradigm Case Formulation and Parametric Analysis. It also involved a rigorous adherence to a set of policies implemented through explicit reminders in the form of maxims to direct and maintain descriptive clarity and logical coherence.

Here’s four slogans and nine maxims that can help orient a coherent psychology. They come from Place (1998/2012) and The Behavior of Persons (2006/2013).

Four Slogans:

1. The world makes sense, and so do people. They make sense now.

    (They already make sense to begin with.)

2. It's one world. Everything fits together. Everything is related to everything else.

3. Things are what they are and not something else instead.

4. Don't count on the world being simpler than it has to be.

Let’s start with a raw fact.  If we didn’t generally understand people, life would be chaotic. We could not cooperate.  You could not understand this sentence. Understanding people is the central competence involved in being a person.

Misunderstanding is the exception, not the rule.  It has to be.  Misunderstanding only makes sense in contrast to things being ordinarily understandable.  Before disagreement and misunderstanding can be identified there has to be a shared means of negotiation based on a common appreciation of what understandable action looks like in a coherent world. We have to know how to adequately get along and communicate before we can identify its absence.  

We have the potential to understand the stranger we don't yet grasp. We can find shared social practices.  We can recognize shared opportunities and vulnerabilities. 

Another assertion. The world consists of objects, processes, events, concepts and states of affairs that we recognize, more or less,  in common. We demonstrate that recognition through a competent use of these distinctions.  Our common ground is that we know how to act on these distinctions and how to do so together. If we had no shared relationship to these states of affairs, we would have nothing to say. They have a place in our lives because we can act on the differences they make. Their meanings and significance  follows from their effective use. 

If, "all is maya", then maya is a distinction we could not make. (But that is different than insisting we have it right).

Another Wittgenstein reminder: Concepts are tools judged by their use in action. Effective action follows from basic competence and requires a complicated toolbox to construct different things. Things differ irregularly. Actions vary in an irregular fashion. So must description. The “essence” of all this is expressed through the careful use of an adequately complex grammar. Our descriptive and scientific resources must be up to this task. They often haven't.

More considerations: Everything does not boil down to the same thing. Persons, languages, actions, and worlds are not really just machines, organisms, contexts, or formulations.  The world, although entirely inter-connected, varies in an irregular manner.  This is reflected in the range of expression that our natural ordinary language attempts. A vast collection of concepts is already available to construct a sensible understanding.

Sometimes we need to invent new concepts, and action and speech will get technical.  

The range of required tools for description will vary from simple to enormously complex.  The devil is in the details. Reasons for action range in complexity. If this is not acknowledged, motivation will not be understood.  Reductionism has been a pox on psychology. The world and our actions are as potentially differentiated as the composer or decomposer can imagine.

Our competence in becoming a person requires a vast array of conceptual tools in the service of understanding people, their actions, languages and worlds. Somehow, normal infants growing into adults, supported by family, community and culture, acquire these competencies.  People acquire them by engaging in each other's practices.

There is a natural grammar we implicitly employ when recognizing something makes sense. It's natural, so there's nothing else to notice, we just keep on doing what we're doing. This is part of the intrinsic competence required for speech and action.  The job of Descriptive Psychology is to make this competence explicit, to explicitly identify the central concepts and formulate the implicit rules.

Whether acknowledged or not by our religions, philosophies and sciences, people live in significant accordance with these slogans.  Bear in mind, “living in accordance” is not constrained by what we say. We say all sorts of strange things.

Nine maxims, part of the early history of Descriptive Psychology, make explicit some of the rules for a reasonable account of behavior.  They are explicit reminders of how to make sense. The following nine are a fraction of the current collection but they provide a good orientation.  And, like a well-formed formula, they are tautological.

Nine Maxims:

   

1.  A person takes it that things are as they seem unless he has reason to think otherwise.

Maxim one provides the reminder that people act on how it seems to them.  It requires building a case if they are to be dissuaded.

2.  If a person recognizes an opportunity to get something she wants, she has a reason to try to get it.

Maxim two is the reminder that behavior follows not just from motive but also from opportunity. The behavior occurs now because the opportunity, correctly or incorrectly identified, is occurring now.

3.  If a person has a reason to do something, he will do it unless he has a stronger reason not to.

Maxim three is the reminder of the multiple perspectives that go into the appraisal of what a situation or circumstance calls for.  There may be reasons not to pursue an otherwise desired course of action.

4.  If a person has two reasons for doing X, she has a stronger reason for doing X than if she had only one of these reasons.

Maxim four holds for any number of additional reasons and is the reminder of the multiple reasons people often have for doing what they do.

5.  If a situation calls for a person to do something he can't do, he will do something he can do.

Maxim five reminds us that behavior is an expression of a person’s current values, knowledge and competencies and not what an observer believes ought to be the case.  People may not always do the best they can, but their action is always based on their appraisal of themselves and their circumstances. Not ours.

6.  A person acquires facts by observation (and thought).

How could it be otherwise?

7.  A person acquires concepts and skills by practice and experience in some of the social practices that involve the use of the concept or the exercise of the skill.

Maxim seven reminds us that skill, competence or know-how has a learning history and requires the opportunity to practice. In the absence of such practice a person may know what is called for but be unable to effectively act on that knowledge. 

8.  If a person has a given person characteristic, she acquired it in one of the ways it can be acquired, i.e., by having the prior capacity and an appropriate intervening history.

Where maxim seven refers to the development of competence, maxim eight provides the logical structure for the development of personal characteristics and individual differences.

9.  Given the relevant competence, behavior goes right if it doesn't go wrong in one of the ways it can go wrong.

Maxim nine simply restates what it means to be competent. Once competence has been acquired, successful behavior requires no explanation but failures do.

These maxims are components of a pre-empirical structure for behavioral science and offer guidance for sound description.  If a description is adequate, as Wittgenstein pointed out, there may be no need for further explanation. But there might.  When more explanation is needed, theory might serve the purpose.


Another basic introduction is found in the posting: A Short Course in Descriptive Psychology.  The Person Concept, Peter Ossorio's  grounding for the behavioral sciences, the interdependent  concepts of Individual Person, Behavior, Language, and World can be found here: The Person Concept. 

The previous posting, Intentional Action, Empathy and Psychotherapy, provides a Parametric Analysis of Intentional Action. The posting, The Problem of Other Possible Persons, provides a Paradigm Case Formulation of persons.

Further thoughts on People Make Sense regarding motivation and money can be found in a November posting.

For a collection of Descriptive Psychology resources and discussion please visit our Facebook page.

(To say people are understandable is not to deny that in the absence of enough shared social practices other people seem strange.  The solution is to not be a stranger.)