Psychologism

1.3. Arguments and counterarguments

Despite the number of texts produced and the temporal extension of the controversy about psychologism, the basic arguments offered by both contenders are relatively few and tend to repeat monotonously.

Psychologism arguments are of two orders:

At the base of these arguments and other similar ones, there is always the conviction, explicit or implicit, that the only direct and immediate objects of my knowledge are immanent states of consciousness (my ideas or Vorstellungen) (Sigwart, 1873–8 [1904]: 6–7; Erdmann, 1892: 35, 147–8; Wundt, 1893: 12; Lipps, 1893: 2). This presupposition, which has its roots in the Cartesian turn to subjectivity and the empiric reading of such a turn (Locke, 1689–90 [1950]: II, 167), is what has often been called ‘the principle of immanence’ (Blumenberg, 1959: 989–97) and implies the denial of all forms of direct realism.

All anti-psychologism presupposes a dualism that it is unable to mediate. This dualism can take two basic forms, namely, between a psychological subject and abstract objects, or between a psychological subject and a transcendental subject. Psychologism, however, does not need to face this problem because, in principle, the psychological subject’s access to his objects is explained by itself (Bolzano-Exner, 1834 [1935]: 74–5, 78; Palagy, 1902: 37; Husserl, 1903 [1979]: 154; Natorp, 1901: 282; Husserl 1913a [1975]: 19; Natorp, 1918: 432–3; Bauch, 1917: 136, 142; Kerry, 1887: 305; Frege, 1893: XIXff.; 1897: 63–4).

Anti-psychologism arguments are of five basic types.

Due to the fact that the controversy surrounding psychologism was not reduced to a denial or affirmation of abstract entities, but necessarily led to the question of the possibility of apprehension of them, it is understandable that criticism of psychologism is prolonged in a non-arbitrary way in the proposal of a new theory of subjectivity, which takes into account the requirements of anti-psychologism. An essential aspect of it will be to show that the anti-psychologism does not face dualism as an insurmountable problem (Natorp, 1888, 1912a; Husserl, 1900 [1975]).

Based on the above, we arrive at an essential point to correctly understand the discussion about psychologism, namely that its systematic structure cannot be reduced to mere conceptual distinctions or purely formal argumentative chains, because the development of a theory of subjectivity was essentially linked to the question of its correct description and, eventually, of the explanation of the appropriate methodological principles for such description. It is no coincidence that Husserlian phenomenology arises and remains linked throughout its development to the question of psychologism. The Prolegomena cannot be considered as a closed unit in themselves, for they are only the first volume of LUs. Forgetting this leads to the famous and misguided criticism that Husserl rejects psychologism in the first volume, to fall back to it in the second. To give a concrete example of what we are saying, note that, from the purely conceptual distinction between two senses of Vorstellung, we proceed to the establishment of a descriptive difference between act and content, between content and object, to the complication of structure analysis of content, distinguishing real and ideal content, content as an object of the act and as a mediator of the relationship to the object, etc. Criticism of the idea of ​​evidence is an important aspect of an alternative description of subjectivity too. Husserl’s case being paradigmatic of what we say, it is, certainly, not the only one (Moore, 1903: 25).