Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) thought-provoking article questions the fruitfulness of a normativistic approach to thinking in experimental psychology, but their considerations are directly related to an inherently philosophical question: Is thinking a normative affair at all? Are the reasoning processes of an agent to be held accountable towards certain norms? It is not obvious what the answer should be. Thinking seems to differ from obviously non-normative phenomena, such as the behavior of physical objects, but there are also important dissimilarities with obviously normative phenomena, such as human public actions; in particular, while public actions typically have practical consequences, thinking as such is a private affair which only has practical consequences once translated into actions. Now, whether a given class of phenomena, such as thinking processes, does or does not fall within the realm of normativity is a question belonging to meta-ethics (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1998; Wedgwood Reference Wedgwood2007), as it involves a discussion of the very nature of normativity.
In fact, a negative answer to this philosophical question would be sufficient but not necessary to establish the methodological thesis defended by the authors: even if thinking turns out to be a normative phenomenon, their plea for a descriptivist approach in psychology may still stand. Just as sociology is descriptive and law is prescriptive concerning human actions, a normative approach to thinking may be more appropriately undertaken elsewhere, not within psychology, as they argue.
In this short commentary, I cannot offer a thorough examination of the philosophical question. Instead, I shall briefly present the historical origins of the views that thinking belongs to the realm of normativity and that logic constitutes the appropriate normative system (logicism). These views are firmly engrained, but the present exercise of conceptual archeology – outlining the substantive and even contentious assumptions behind them – suggests that they are far from uncontroversial. Thus, my analysis can be seen as lending support to E&E's claims, but in fact it does not settle the issue definitively. Historical analysis shows that the particular conceptual and philosophical background underpinning normativism and logicism as targeted by the authors may be contentious, but it does not offer the final word on the philosophical question.
For most of its existence, logic was thought to be primarily the art or science of correct arguing and disputing, that is, as regulating multi-agent situations taking place in the public sphere. In the Latin Middle Ages, logica was synonymous with dialectica, and the 16th century author Domingos de Soto writes: “Dialectic is the art or science of disputing” (de Soto 1539–Reference de Soto1540, f. iii rb). This is in stark contrast with the now standard definitions of logic as “the branch of philosophy that treats of the forms of thinking in general” (Oxford English Dictionary) or as “the science of correct reasoning” (Webster). When did logic cease to provide the norms for the public, multi-agent situations of debating, and come to regard the private, mono-agent situations of thinking? The main person responsible for this transformation seems to have been Kant, but the terrain had been well prepared by Descartes (tellingly, the author of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind). Indeed, in the preface to Principles of Philosophy, commenting on the ideal education for a student, Descartes writes:
After that, he should study logic. I do not mean the logic of the Schools, for this is strictly speaking nothing but a dialectic which teaches ways of expounding to others what one already knows […]. I mean instead the kind of logic which teaches us to direct our reason with a view to discovering the truths of which we are ignorant. (Descartes Reference Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch1985, p. 186)
But Descartes rejected the traditional conception of logic of his time (scholastic logic) as the appropriate guide for correct thinking; so in E&E's terms, he was a normativist but not a logicist regarding thinking. It was Kant, in the 18th century, who then laid down the foundations for the still pervasive close association between thought, logic, and normativity by internalizing some of the key concepts of the logic of his time.
As discussed by Longuenesse (Reference Longuenesse1998), Kant takes as his starting point the transcendental question, “What are the a priori conditions for the representations of objects in general?”, and reconfigures the logic of his time so as to render it useful for his transcendental project. In particular, he selectively absorbs the notions of “judgment,” “form,” and “categories” as found in the logical textbooks of the time, and puts them to use so as to describe the very conditions of possibility of our thinking and perceiving. The concept of judgment, for example, traditionally used to refer to linguistic claims made by speakers in the public sphere, is transformed by Kant into the mental act of the understanding involved in the apperception of objects. With Kant, logic no longer primarily concerns argumentation; instead, it concerns the inner mental activities of the lonesome thinking subject. Moreover, rejecting the psychological descriptivism of Wolff, Kant insisted on the normative import of the rules of thought as described by logic. According to him, (general) logic deals with “absolutely necessary rules of thought without which there can be no employment whatsoever of the understanding” (Kant 1781/1787/Reference Kant and Kemp Smith1929, Critique of Pure Reason, p. A52/B76).
Crucially, thus, the ideas that thinking belongs to the realm of normative phenomena and that logic provides the canons for correct thinking are essentially Kantian theses, which are intimately related to his critical project and to transcendental idealism (as argued in MacFarlane Reference MacFarlane2000). But if we do not endorse transcendental idealism (and most of us do not), then we have no reason to accept uncritically this particular conception of thinking as a normative affair and the role of logic as the appropriate normative system. The historical connection between Kant and the tradition in experimental psychology in question is in fact rather straightforward: it goes in any case through Piaget, who was clearly under strong Kantian influence (Hergenhahn Reference Hergenhahn2009, p. 624). We can thus conclude that the history of normativism and logicism offers no obvious reasons to endorse these positions, in particular with respect to psychological research.
You have
Access
Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) thought-provoking article questions the fruitfulness of a normativistic approach to thinking in experimental psychology, but their considerations are directly related to an inherently philosophical question: Is thinking a normative affair at all? Are the reasoning processes of an agent to be held accountable towards certain norms? It is not obvious what the answer should be. Thinking seems to differ from obviously non-normative phenomena, such as the behavior of physical objects, but there are also important dissimilarities with obviously normative phenomena, such as human public actions; in particular, while public actions typically have practical consequences, thinking as such is a private affair which only has practical consequences once translated into actions. Now, whether a given class of phenomena, such as thinking processes, does or does not fall within the realm of normativity is a question belonging to meta-ethics (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1998; Wedgwood Reference Wedgwood2007), as it involves a discussion of the very nature of normativity.
In fact, a negative answer to this philosophical question would be sufficient but not necessary to establish the methodological thesis defended by the authors: even if thinking turns out to be a normative phenomenon, their plea for a descriptivist approach in psychology may still stand. Just as sociology is descriptive and law is prescriptive concerning human actions, a normative approach to thinking may be more appropriately undertaken elsewhere, not within psychology, as they argue.
In this short commentary, I cannot offer a thorough examination of the philosophical question. Instead, I shall briefly present the historical origins of the views that thinking belongs to the realm of normativity and that logic constitutes the appropriate normative system (logicism). These views are firmly engrained, but the present exercise of conceptual archeology – outlining the substantive and even contentious assumptions behind them – suggests that they are far from uncontroversial. Thus, my analysis can be seen as lending support to E&E's claims, but in fact it does not settle the issue definitively. Historical analysis shows that the particular conceptual and philosophical background underpinning normativism and logicism as targeted by the authors may be contentious, but it does not offer the final word on the philosophical question.
For most of its existence, logic was thought to be primarily the art or science of correct arguing and disputing, that is, as regulating multi-agent situations taking place in the public sphere. In the Latin Middle Ages, logica was synonymous with dialectica, and the 16th century author Domingos de Soto writes: “Dialectic is the art or science of disputing” (de Soto 1539–Reference de Soto1540, f. iii rb). This is in stark contrast with the now standard definitions of logic as “the branch of philosophy that treats of the forms of thinking in general” (Oxford English Dictionary) or as “the science of correct reasoning” (Webster). When did logic cease to provide the norms for the public, multi-agent situations of debating, and come to regard the private, mono-agent situations of thinking? The main person responsible for this transformation seems to have been Kant, but the terrain had been well prepared by Descartes (tellingly, the author of the Rules for the Direction of the Mind). Indeed, in the preface to Principles of Philosophy, commenting on the ideal education for a student, Descartes writes:
After that, he should study logic. I do not mean the logic of the Schools, for this is strictly speaking nothing but a dialectic which teaches ways of expounding to others what one already knows […]. I mean instead the kind of logic which teaches us to direct our reason with a view to discovering the truths of which we are ignorant. (Descartes Reference Descartes, Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch1985, p. 186)
But Descartes rejected the traditional conception of logic of his time (scholastic logic) as the appropriate guide for correct thinking; so in E&E's terms, he was a normativist but not a logicist regarding thinking. It was Kant, in the 18th century, who then laid down the foundations for the still pervasive close association between thought, logic, and normativity by internalizing some of the key concepts of the logic of his time.
As discussed by Longuenesse (Reference Longuenesse1998), Kant takes as his starting point the transcendental question, “What are the a priori conditions for the representations of objects in general?”, and reconfigures the logic of his time so as to render it useful for his transcendental project. In particular, he selectively absorbs the notions of “judgment,” “form,” and “categories” as found in the logical textbooks of the time, and puts them to use so as to describe the very conditions of possibility of our thinking and perceiving. The concept of judgment, for example, traditionally used to refer to linguistic claims made by speakers in the public sphere, is transformed by Kant into the mental act of the understanding involved in the apperception of objects. With Kant, logic no longer primarily concerns argumentation; instead, it concerns the inner mental activities of the lonesome thinking subject. Moreover, rejecting the psychological descriptivism of Wolff, Kant insisted on the normative import of the rules of thought as described by logic. According to him, (general) logic deals with “absolutely necessary rules of thought without which there can be no employment whatsoever of the understanding” (Kant 1781/1787/Reference Kant and Kemp Smith1929, Critique of Pure Reason, p. A52/B76).
Crucially, thus, the ideas that thinking belongs to the realm of normative phenomena and that logic provides the canons for correct thinking are essentially Kantian theses, which are intimately related to his critical project and to transcendental idealism (as argued in MacFarlane Reference MacFarlane2000). But if we do not endorse transcendental idealism (and most of us do not), then we have no reason to accept uncritically this particular conception of thinking as a normative affair and the role of logic as the appropriate normative system. The historical connection between Kant and the tradition in experimental psychology in question is in fact rather straightforward: it goes in any case through Piaget, who was clearly under strong Kantian influence (Hergenhahn Reference Hergenhahn2009, p. 624). We can thus conclude that the history of normativism and logicism offers no obvious reasons to endorse these positions, in particular with respect to psychological research.