CUMMINS, 2000: “HOW DOES IT WORK?” VS. “WHAT ARE THE LAWS?”: TWO CONCEPTIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION Flashcards
Why can a hypothesis not serve as an explanation?
In psychology, we talk of explanations in the shape of an alternative hypothesis (the experimental treatment has a real effect) versus a null hypothesis (the experimental treatment has no effect). The alternative hypothesis, a law, is supposed to explain our observations. But such a hypothesis can never be a proper explanation, since this effect that is supposed to explain our observations, is still something that still needs explanation. How does this effect work in the first place?
What is a law informative about?
Laws simply tell us what happens; they do not tell us why or how
According to Cummins, what should be focus on?
According to Cummins, we need to focus on why or how things happen (why does this effect have an effect and how does that effect work?) rather than whether an effect takes place in the first place. So in psychology so far, we have focussed more on regularities or patterns that still deserve explanations, rather than on actual explanations.
What difficulties are there with laws in psychology?
Explanations in psychology will probably not be like Newtonian mechanica, in which the laws describe motion and gravity that is consistently everywhere on this earth. However, psychology rather works in situ: systems are more locally organised and not universally true.
Besides explaining effects, or psychological laws, what should psychological explanations focus on?
Besides explaining effects, or psychological laws, psychological explanations should focus on explaining capacities (e.g. the capacity to learn and speak a language, to ‘empathise, to be self-aware etc.).
The author claims that there are five possible ways to approach psychological explanations. What are these?
BDI explanations, computational symbol-processing explanations, connectionist explanations, neuroscience explanations and evolutionary explanations.
What are BDI explanations?
How beliefs, desires and intentions as explanations for our behaviour (most popular in psychology).
What is the problem with BDI explanations?
One major problem is “the Leibniz Gap”. There is a gap between those intentions and the brain, and we don’t know how they connect. We don’t have the possibility yet to connect the brain to thoughts.
What is meant by computationalism?
The brain is a computer and the mind is what it is doing. According to computationalism, capacities are specified by as a function of inputs (so what input leads to this specific capacity). So capacities should be computable. One starts with the capacity, and then tries to figure out what inputs together compute this capacity (it’s thus a topdown strategy).
What is meant by connectionism?
Connectionism is a bottom-up strategy, which starts with the building blocks (a simplified brain) and aim to create systems that will behave in a recognisably cognitive way.
How is connections a partial solution to an existing problem?
This partly solves the Leibniz gap, since it leaves out intentions etc. and focuses on the building blocks themselves.
How do we really solve Leibniz’ gap?
Neuroscience: to fix Leibniz’ gap, we have to learn more about the brain and find our explanations for our capacities there.
Distinguish between two types of neuroscience programma
The strong neuroscience programma means to discard any mentalistic concepts and focus only on neuroscientific knowledge. Weak neuroscience means neuroscience is just a form of evidence that is combined with computationalism, connectionism and BDI.
What do evolutionary explanations consist of?
Evolutionary explanation: a capacity exists because it has constituted an adaptation.
What is a difficulty with these evolution theories in psychology?
A problem in psychology is that these explanatory models are difficult to unify. In psychology, we try to explain the same phenomena from different angles.
