holism and reductionism Flashcards
what is holism?
argument which proposes that it only makes sense to study an individual system rather than its constituent parts
what was the view of gestalt psychologists?
- the system should be looked at as a whole
- any attempt to subdivide behaviour or experience into smaller units is inappropriate
- knowing about how the parts (eg. characteristics) does not help us understand the essence of that person
how is the humanistic approach holistic?
- focuses on individual’s experience, which is not something that can be reduced to, eg. biological units
- use qualitative methods to investigate the self whereby themes are analysed rather than breaking the concept into component behaviours
what is reductionism?
the belief that human behaviour is best understood by studying the smaller constituent parts and seeks to analyse behaviour in this way
what is reductionism based on?
- the scientific principle of parsimony
- this is the idea that all phenomena should be explained using the simplest principles
how can OCD be understood through the levels of explanation in psychology?
- socio-cultural level: OCD interrupts social relationships
- psychological level: the person’s experience of anxiety
- physical level: movements eg. washing one’s hands
- environmental / behavioural level: learning experiences
- physiological level: abnormal functioning in the frontal lobes
- neurochemical level: underproduction of serotonin
how does the levels of explanation work?
each level is more reductionist than the one before
how can psychology itself be placed in a hierarchy of science?
- sociology - psychology - biology - chemistry - physics
- researchers who favour reductionism would see psychology as ultimately being replaced by explanations derived from those science lower down in the hierarchy
what is biological reductionism?
a form of reductionism which attempts to explain behaviour at the lowest biological level (genes, hormones etc.)
what does biological reductionism include?
- neurochemical, physiological, evoluntionary and genetic influences
- it it based on the premise that we are biological organisms
- thus, all behaviour is at some level biological
how do biologically reductionist arguments work backwards? (eg. OCD)
- drugs that increase serotonin have been found effective in treating OCD
- low serotonin may a cause of OCD
- we have reduced OCD to the level of neurotransmitter activity
what is environmental determinism?
the attempt to explain all behaviour in terms of stimulus-response links that have been learned through experience
how is the behaviourist approach built on environmental determinism?
- proposes that all behaviour is learned and acquired through interactions with the environment
- behaviourists explain behaviour in terms of conditioning, which is focused on simple stimulus-response links, reducing behaviour to these basic elements
- eg. learning theory of attachment reduces the idea of love to a learned associated between feeder (NS) and food (UCS) resulting in pleausre (CR)
evaluation: holism approach may lack practical value
- holistic accounts of human behaviour tend to become hard to use as they become more complex
- this can present researchers with a practical dilemma
- if we accept, from a humanistic perspective, that there are many different factors that contribute to depression it becomes difficult to know which is most influential
- it is then difficult to know which to prioritise as the basis of therapy (eg.)
- therefore, holistic accounts may lack practical value whereas reductionist accounts may be better
evaluation: reductionist approach often forms the basis of a scientific approach
- to conduct well-controlled research, we need to operationalise the variables to be studied ie. break target behaviours into constituent parts
- this makes it possible to conduct experiments or record observations (behavioural categories) in a way that is objective and reliable
- eg. research in SS operationalised component behaviours such as separation anxiety
- this scientific approach gives psychology greater credibility, placing it on equal terms with the natural sciences
evaluation: reductionist approaches have been accused of oversimplifying complex phenomena, leading to reduced validity
- explanations that operate at the level of the gene or neurotransmitter do not include an analysis of the social context within which behaviour occurs, and this is where behaviour may derive its meaning
- eg. the physiological processes involved in pointing one’s finger will the be same regardless of context
- however, an analysis of these will not tell us why the finger is pointed
- this suggests that reductionist explanations can only ever form part of an explanation
evaluation: limitation of reductionism is that some behaviours can only be understood at a higher level
- often, there are aspects of social behaviour that only emerge within a group context and cannot be understood in terms of the individual group members
- eg. the effects of conformity to social roles in the prisoners and guards in the SPE could not be understood by observing the pcs as individuals
- it was the interaction between people and the behaviour of the group that was important
- there is no conformity ‘gene’ so social processes like conformity can only be explained at the level at which they occur
- this suggests that, for some behaviours, higher level explanations provide a more valid account
evaluation: brain and mind
- a reductionist account of consciousness would argue that thoughts are simply the result of what happens in our brain
- this is the basis of cognitive neuroscience: that all cognitive processes, including all that we think and feel, are associated with physical processes in the brain
- however, what neuroscientists struggle to explain the subject experience of the same neural process
- eg. thinking about the colour blue involves exactly the same region and activity in the brain as thinking about the colour red, but the thought we experience is different
- this is referred to as an ‘explanatory gap’ in brain science (levine 1983) and may suggest that thinking is at least one step beyond what is happening in the brain
