Psychology as a Moral Science Perspectives on Normativity
What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world? According to a provocative new book, everything. Taking exception with current ideas in the mainstream (including cultural, evolutionary, and neuropsychology) as straying
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Psychology as a Moral Science Perspectives on Normativity
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Psychology as a Moral Science
Svend Brinkmann
Psychology as a Moral Science Perspectives on Normativity
Svend Brinkmann Department of Communication and Psychology University of Aalborg Kroghstræde 3 9220 Aalborg Denmark [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4419-7066-4 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-7067-1 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7067-1 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010935186 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
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Foreword
Since the 1970s, a steadily mounting wave of criticism has threatened to engulf what passed as psychology in the mid-twentieth century. The grounds of complaint have ranged from the irrelevance of “laboratory” psychology to any issue of everyday life, to fundamental objections to the conceptual naiveté of academic psychology, in particular the uncritical adoption of a causal metaphysics as the structuring principle of the flow of human thought, action, feeling, and perception. Among the sources of the pseudoscientific nature of mainstream experimental psychology has been a prevailing ignorance of the natural sciences adopted as ideals, and a steadfast refusal to take account of the role of moral orders in the formation and management of human life forms. The effect of 50 years of efforts at reform can now be seen in the growth of qualitative and cultural psychologies as significant components of a well-rounded and useful training in the basic elements of genuinely scientific psychology. It is scarcely credible that even a decade or two ago students could be introduced to the principles of social psychology without the central role of language as the medium of social interaction even being mentioned! Choice of pronoun can have profound consequences for a social relationship if you are French or Japanese. In this and many other psychologically relevant matters, the overwhelmingly Anglophone character of psychology has stood in the way of forging an authentic identity for psychology as a discipline. These developments should have brought the tacit subscription to a causal metaphysics under scrutiny and stimulated reflection on the ultimate consequences of tasking up th
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