Although counted in the ranks of behavioural and social sciences, psychology as an academic discipline straddles – sometimes uncomfortably – between positivistism and hermeneutics, as is definitely the case in educational psychology. However, the overwhelming majority of research in the discipline as a whole – fundamental as well as applied – is carried out within a firmly positivistic framework. Examples of the latter include psychometrics in traffic safety, social psychology in urban planning and crowd control, and clinical psychotherapy. As a case in point, the Swedish Board of Social Health recently regulated that only treatments based on cognitive behavioural therapies – as opposed to, e.g., psychodynamic therapy – will receive accreditation and subsidy. The Board motivated the decision with the need for scientific rigor in assessing the long-term effects of treatment.
These examples may be taken to imply that where human health and safety is concerned, society tends to rely on a mechanistic construction of the environment. More often than not, theories informing educational practices, on the other hand, tend to interpret the surrounding world in organismic terms. One may wonder, in a field that occupies close to a quarter of the population and that lies at the very core of future generations’ health and safety, why this is so.
Although contemporary thinkers such as Marton shun dualism and reject constructivist accounts of the learning mind, their epistemology seems best understood – and applied – from a constructivist perspective (cf. Bengtsson, 2006). The author of this report sees no irresolvable philosophical problems with dualism. This is not a statement made by a ‘naïve’ cognitivist, but rather as a modern one – what Dennett (1989) calls post-cognitivist. The criticism levelled at the information-processing paradigm since its inception by, e.g., Ryle (1948), Searle (1980), and most recently by Marton (Marton & Booth, 2000) has consistently been countered. Dualism is far from expelled from the core of cognitivism.
Dualism and methodological solipsism do not imply behaviourism, nor does quantitative accounts of behavioural change – to which cognitive psychology stands as a testament and archetypal example. Learning, even if described in positivistic terms, is far more than a simple copying or imitation of some aspect of the world. Instead, it involves a process of making the information, skill, or concept one’s own, thereby transforming it in the process, depending on the individual’s past experience and knowledge.
Mechanistic and organismic world-views do not necessarily stand in opposition. However, there seems to be an implicit notion in much of educational psychology and philosophy that mechanistic models are to crude and barren to be able capture human thinking. Nevertheless, disregarding mechanistic models on aesthetic grounds is not scientific. In addition, relevant models of human behaviour are, per definition, general and generalizability can only be attained through quantitative measures.
sid. 36-37
En något mindre pretentiös variant av denna argumentation använde jag - i ett annat sammanhang - i en (opublicerad) fotnot till en annan uppsats...
...något som kallas etnometodologi nyligen (nåja, för 10-15 år sedan) dykt upp inom den gren av AI som brukar benämnas artificiellt liv (AL). Här kan det t.ex. handla om (jag har självt gjort sådana program) att modellera komplext (mänskligt) beteende genom att först observera en vardaglig situation – paradexemplet är hur en folkmassa korsar ett övergångsställe – och sedan överföra dessa observationer till en liten uppsättning enkla och lokala (individbaserade) regler. I en simulation låter man sedan en mängd sådana (datorbaserade) individer interagera utifrån sina, sinsemellan identiska, regeluppsättningar och kan på så sätt återskapa (?) det ursprungliga fenomenet. Snacka om (ett reduktionistiskt) meta-narrativ. I like it!
Och som en av en händelse såg jag häromdagen på TV hur sådana simulationer kommer till användning vid s.k. ”crowd analysis”, t.ex. i samband med planering av tunnelbanesystem, eller utredning av olyckor på fotbollsarenor och rockkonserter. Det känns allt ganska tryggt med lite positivism ibland. I ett post-modernistiskt samhälle vore det väl tabu att tro att man kan lära sig av sina misstag...
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