Psychologism

3. Theme’s actuality and perspectives

Neo-Kantianism was crucial in the predominance the Psychologismusstreit gained in the nineteenth century. However, it will be from the anti-psychologism of Frege and Husserl that their more important derivations in the twentieth century will come. Nevertheless, the characteristic parting of the ways between the two will shape the directions of the Psychologismusstreit. While, in the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition, Heidegger (1927 [1997]: 138) introduces a shift to the ‘factualization’ of transcendental subjectivity, in the analytical tradition, not only does the subject matter remain valid (Schlick, 1918: 117), but it continues to dominate the anti-psychologism concern, from Wittgenstein to Popper (1935: 4ff.; 2005: XXI, XXVI) and Carnap (1928: 151ff.; 1936: 36–41; 1950: 37ff., 42ff.), even giving rise to interesting controversies, such as the one taking place between these last two (Popper, 1935: 51ff.). Certainly, this does not happen without important variations: for example, Wittgenstein anti-mentalism is not Frege/Husserl Platonism and Popper’s third kingdom is no longer Frege’s (Notturno, 1985: 2). From the 1960s, however, the idea of a naturalised epistemology introduced by Quine (1969) ends up causing a resurgence of psychologism, even though, certainly, of a psychologism where the mental is no longer the private and has motivations different from those of the nineteenth century, which is why there is sometimes talk of ‘neo-psychologism’ (Pelletier et al., 2008). In this development, not only systematic-immanent factors play a decisive role (gradual abandonment of the idea of logical analysis of language, reaction to Platonism and foundationalism), but also extra-systematic factors, such as the development of cognitive sciences, on the one hand, and the evolution of logic itself with pluralism derived from the emergence of non-classical logic, on the other.