Farewell to Variables (Unifying Science, Culture and Society) 9798887301877, 9798887301884

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Valsiner Farewell to Variables

This book presents a novel perspective on psychology’s methodology—moving it from quantification as a given imperative to science-philosophical look at phenomena-data relationship. The idea for this volume emerged from inquiries into the history of psychology of the 18th-19th centuries where the developmental focus within German Naturphilosophie led philosophers to emphasize the dialectical nature of biological and psychological development. The nature of the natural and social worlds is curvilinear and includes knot-complexes that cannot be investigated in terms of the consensually accepted General Linear Model of the 20th century. In this the new book continues the creative search for new forms of epistemological ways of thinking that was started in 2010 in the volume Methodological Thinking in Psychology: 60 Years Gone Astray. General Liner Model and turned into metaphoric complexes that acquire life of their own in psychologists’ thinking needs to be replaced by qualitative-structural units of thinking about how human psychological organization can be presented.

Farewell to Variables

Jaan Valsiner      

 


 

 

Farewell to Variables

A Volume in: Unifying Science, Culture and Society Series Editors:

Dominik Mihalits Brady Wagoner Jaan Valsiner

Unifying Science, Culture and Society (Formerly Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures) Series Editors: Dominik Mihalits Sigmund Freud University, Austria Brady Wagoner & Jaan Valsiner Aalborg Universitet, Denmark Series Books Where Culture and Mind Meet: Principles for a Dynamic Cultural Psychology (2021) Brady Wagone & Kevin Carriere Memory in the Wild (2020) Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó de Luna & Sophie Zadeh The Road to Actualized Democracy: A Psychological Exploration (2018) Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó de Luna & Vlad Glaveanu The Psychology of Imagination: History, Theory and New Research Horizons (2017) Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó de Luna & Sarah H. Awad Integrating Experiences: Body and Mind Moving Between Contexts (2015) Brady Wagoner, Nandita Chaudhary, & Pernille Hviid Cultural Psychology and Its Future: Complementarity in a New Key (2014) Brady Wagoner, Nandita Chaudhary, & Pernille Hviid

Farewell to Variables

Jaan Valsiner

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data The CIP data for this book can be found on the Library of Congress website (loc.gov). Paperback: 979-8-88730-187-7 Hardcover: 979-8-88730-188-4 E-Book: 979-8-88730-189-1

Copyright © 2023 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Preface: About Regression and Progress—Or the Problem With Pars Pro Toto.............................................................vii Dominik Stefan Mihalits Introduction: The Mentality of a Controllable World: Why Variables Were Needed...................................................................ix Jaan Valsiner P A R T

I

ORGANIZATIONAL FICTIONS: VARIABLES THAT WE CONTROL 1. Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science: Finding Humanness Beneath, Between and Beyond Conventional Categories............................................................................ 3 Nandita Chaudhary, Mila Tuli, and Punya Pillai 2. A Psychology of the Ordinary: A First Theoretical Sketch................. 21 Bo Allesøe Christensen 3. Don’t Mind the Variables........................................................................ 45 Svend Brinkmann 4. The Hidden Assumptions of Variable-based Social Science................ 59 Henrik Skaug Sætra v

vi • CONTENTS P A R T

I I

WAYS OF USES OF THE NOTION OF VARIABLES 5. Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology: Notes on a Critical and Conceptual Debate........................................... 75 Julio César Ossa and Jean Nikola Cudina 6. No Variables in Classroom: Understanding Learning by a Qualitative Analytical Tool................................................................... 111 João Roberto Ratis Tenório da Silva P A R T

I I I

GOING BEYOND THE VARIABLES: NEW PERSPECTIVES 7.  Mind Is Movement: We Need More Than Static Representations to Understand It......................................................... 137 Raffaele De Luca Picione and Sergio Salvatore 8. Psychology Between Qualitative and Quantitative Phenomena: On the Different Strati of Introspection............................................... 159 Natalie Rodax 9.  New Perspectives in Ecosystemic Psychology: Developmental Mereotopology............................................................. 183 Luca Tateo and Giuseppina Marsico 10. Sayonara Variable, Konnichiwa Equifinality Point: Semiotic Cultural Psychology Teaches Us What Colorful Really Means.........201 Tatsuya Sato, Yuko Yasuda, Misato Fukuyama, Daina Ishii, Ayae Kido, Yasuhiro Omi, and Yoshiyuki Watanabe 11.  General Conclusion: A Respectful Farewell to the Illusion of Quantified Objectivity........................................................................... 215 Jaan Valsiner

SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

ABOUT REGRESSION AND PROGRESS—OR THE PROBLEM WITH PARS PRO TOTO Dominik Stefan Mihalits Sigmund Freud PrivatUniversität

Farewell to Variables is a non-complex book about dealing with complexity. This statement, at first sight possibly an oxymoron or at least “close to” it. I immediately had the impulse of deleting it from here, did so, as it seemed catchy but incorrect at same time, and finally after revising it all, I typed it again. It might better describe the intention and contents of this book, as any other formulation I came across during the process of writing. But why might it be like that? To be able in making my point clear, I kindly ask for some patience and would like to move to the point, where I was able to locate the initial problem: University as an institution itself. Having the opportunity in teaching students in psychology at diverse levels (undergraduate, graduate, etc. …) and being faculty staff and part of administration at the same time, I tend to see some parallels in structures of non-complex environments. Everybody, students as well as teachers (and I do not exclude myself at this point, still guilty!), seem to have some tendency towards happiness as long as questions are being asked and corresponding answers might be found and given. Nevertheless, in my own observations while teaching, I need Farewell to Variables, pages vii–viii. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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viii  •  DOMINIK STEFAN MIHALITS

to state clearly that the most provoking questions allowing mental progress in thinking seem to be those to which nobody is able to give clear answers. Allowing to start such demanding processes in thinking needs time, something nobody seems to have left anymore nowadays. It seems as there is no interest in complexity left, which is in some way understandable, as manyfold information can be easily found online, only seconds away of accessing it via the last generation of smart devices. Reducing complexity seems to bring comfort. But there also seems to be a misunderstanding happening at this point, too. Most information provided gets shown totally (over-)simplified: Exemplarily, nowadays you find service providers that advertise to make complex scientific books understandable as audio books, grasping the core content within a few minutes. As well as people do not any longer read newspapers, but stick to short headlines to get informed about what is happening in the world and at same time everybody reduces the communication of their emotional excitations by using a core bundle of pictograms, so-called smileys, a basic function within all kind of messenger services. There are many more examples to state, but I think it is already clear that one should think that due to all this services, human beings need to have saved so much time in life. But where is it? Well, I doubt it is like that and state critically: I wish back complexity. In other words, university should be about problems solving strategies. A goal that this book aims to have, too: More precisely, authors question the usefulness of variables in research fields, such as those in our example of psychology, dealing with issues within “hypercomplex” subject areas from the ground up, and consequently clearly points out their recognized limitations. The authors of this book, coming from diverse traditions, research fields and interests, exemplify how today’s tendency towards lived pragmatism for the sake of fulfilling funding based research projects do not necessarily lead to innovation. “Answering the answerable” seems to be the credo of psychology’s research in the 21st century within an ongoing circulus vitiosus. The easy seems to seek for the even easier. Therefore, it will be shown that decreasing complexity is always in trade with phenomenal loss in translation. In addition, authors detect that it’s time to actively engage with complexity to serve the need in better understanding of human needs. This has followed in an ever increasing fragmentation of the subject of psychology and its methods, which one would like to counter by writing this book and raising voices for the need in searching for alternatives. It seems it is the “regression” that makes true “progress” only possible. A step backwards means here, the attempt to transfer the artificial, representative constructs again purposefully into the complexity of the everyday life. Thus, a corresponding continuation is needed, since this new attempt at knowledge must leave pure research practice and also find far-reaching anchorage in teaching. In short: The regression in classrooms and teaching seems to be unavoidable, since it is there that these people have to be trained, who are to put what has been discussed here into practice in the future—if there is to be progress in psychology again in the future.

INTRODUCTION

THE MENTALITY OF A CONTROLLABLE WORLD Why Variables Were Needed Jaan Valsiner Aalborg University

We try to control our worlds. And we depend on the worlds to give us constant surprises in these efforts. Our success means our failure—the effort to control the uncontrollable leads to the need to conceptualize these failures as if these are successes. This presentational need leads us to formulation of the notion of variables. The issue of presenting the known and possible elements in a field became evident in late 16th century when the French mathematician Francois Viete started to represent known and unknown numbers by letters. Viète’s convention was to use consonants for known values, and vowels for unknowns—very much in parallel with language utterances. Following him, Rene Descartes invented the rule of presenting unknowns in mathematical equations by x, y, z and the knowns by a, b, c. Thus equations like x= a + b provides the mathematicians with the making of an unknown known via a simple calculation. It was in the 18th century that Leonhard Euler introduced the abstract notion of function—y = f(x)—which has become used in psychology in the form of Kurt Lewin’s general idea of B(ehavior)= f (Person, Environment). This general formulation has been widespread in psychology over the 20th century—yet without further elaboration what the notion “funcFarewell to Variables, pages ix–xv. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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x • JAAN VALSINER

tion of” means in abstract terms in psychology. What has happened is exclusive separation of the person from environment in the thinking of psychologists while focusing on the unifying miraculous term “function”: The division of the actions of socially situated persons into separate individual and external components provided the framework for a general atomization of the features of both the individual and the situation. The latter had become an “environment” for the independent individual. A pursuit of universally valid natural scientific laws most often took the form of establishing empirical associations between separate individual and environmental “variables” or “factors.” (Danziger, 1990, p. 187)

So—psychologists divide the whole (person-in-environment) into the exclusively separated units (person and environment). Then they treat the “and” as a function, and assume that—like in mathematics—that word change gives us new understanding. For mathematics leaving the “function of” unelaborated is sufficient for its further argumentation. Mathematics strives towards abstraction while psychology as science is constantly lost between the need to abstract and provide concrete solutions. FILLING IN THE “FUNCTION OF”: RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN VARIABLES How can we make sense of the generic notion Y=f(x)? If Y and x are considered as conditions operating in a system the answer is trivial—“The roof is the function of the house” is merely a re-statement that the roof is part of the house that stands in its static condition and fulfills important functions. The roof and the house are constant parts of the architectural whole. They are not variables. A roof that varies its form under the influence of external stimulation (rain, snow) is not productive for the functions of the house—even if it proves the causal link of rain pressure on the particular rain-protecting structure. If the mathematical notion of variable is strictly defined, then psychologists use of the term— or “variables discourse”—is devoid of such rigor. The entrance into psychology of the term came slowly in the beginning of the 20th century, together with the proliferation of the statistical thinking. It got a strong impetus in the 1920s and was especially rapid in its taking over psychology in the 1930s (Danziger, 1997, pp. 163–176). Interestingly its major social carrier was not experimental psychology (where the manipulation of the independent variable would be a practical step, and its concomitant impact on the dependent variable a reasonable empirical question), but from the rapidly advancing personality study perspectives in American psychology. There is no possibility to manipulate “personality variables” which by their nature should be viewed as constants. Neither are such variables assumed to change under changes in the context—my introversion as my core personality feature is not supposed to turn into extraversion under constant participation in jovial drinking and chatting rituals with my fellow persons. Yet by the 1950s psychologists in North America were busy interacting with one another using the “variables discourse” labelling any possible detectable element taken out from the whole as a “variable.”

The Mentality of a Controllable World • xi

CONTRASTING THREE TERMS: INDETERMINATE, VARIABLE, AND CONSTANT In mathematical terms the distinction is clear: If x may have any one of a specific set of values it is called an indeterminate. If, on the other hand, it is supposed to take these values successively in any specific order, it is called a variable. (Fine, 1911, p. 750)

Here the values are not static givens (such as fixed parts of a whole) but conditions which possibly can be different at times—changing themselves or be changed. This possibility is the starting point for talking about variables. Yet the possibility needs not be actualized and a given value in a domain may remain in its present state (e.g. “2” in the domain 1, 2, 3).The fixed variable “2” is constant. Constant is thus an arrested variable in a domain 1, 2, 3 that is indeterminate. It becomes variable if we add direction to the possible change within the domain (1→2→3): We are free at any time to assign to an indeterminate or variable any particular value which belongs to its domain; but it then ceases to be an indeterminate or a variable and becomes a constant (Fine, 1911, p. 750)

This is strict view that starts from the setting up of the domain of possibilities within which the determinate set of constants can be posited. Thus, in a domain of 1…3 (which is limited by 1 and 3) any assignment of a real number (e.g. 2 or 2.73) fixes a constant within the domain. Thus if x is free to take any of the values 1, 2, 3, and these only, it is an indeterminate and the assemblage 1, 2, 3 is its domain: it becomes a variable if we think of it as taking successively the value 1, the value 2, the value 3, the value 1 &c. (Fine, 1911, p. 750 added emphasis)

Thus—thinking in variables involves superimposing upon static possibilities the temporal movement between constants within the domain of the indeterminate. The indeterminate is the field within which both constants can be posited (e.g., “let x be 2 in the domain 1,2,3) and variables presupposed (e.g. “let x be first 2 and then 3 in the domain 1,2,3) VARIETIES OF VARIABLES1 Variable whose possible values depend on some other variable lead us to the distinction made between “dependent” and “independent” variables—widely used in experimental psychology where some conditions of the experiment can be purposefully changed by the researcher (independent variable) so as to study the impact of this change on the other (dependent) variable. The property of a vari1

I will not discuss the issue of the random variable in psychological research. Its functions remain in the scope of statistical theories and their abstract constructions and bear no relationships to the practices of variables attribution in psychological research practices.

xii • JAAN VALSINER

able to be dependent or independent depends often on the point of view and is not intrinsic to the phenomena that are being investigated. In fact, any experiment requires that the factors (“variables”) involved in them are inherently interdependent (see Brinkmann, in this volume)—the domain within which causal impacts are to be studied needs their connection—beyond which the experimental change of one of the variables (designated as independent) could be reasonably studied as bringing about some change in the “dependent” variable. No matter how much I might try to use my capacity to meditate to keep the climate on Earth to become warmer I fail—my mind is not systemically linked with the ozone layer above the South Pole. Yet my systematic meditation may lead to my feeling that my feet— systemic parts of my body—are becoming warmer. Thus, in an abstract summary— a dependent variable is a variable that is implicitly a function of another (or several other) variables. An independent variable is a variable that is not dependent—by which our vernacular means that it can be modulated independently of the system to which it belongs so as to see how the system—as defined by the selected parameters (dependent variables) change. This leads to the inevitable paradox—in order for a factor of interest to researcher it needs to be part of the system that is being studied (that is—dependent on the systemic relations) but for the purposes of experimental manipulation it should not be that. So the researcher pretends that by selecting factor X as an independent variable (system-free) she (or he) is actually introducing manipulations in X (freely) which then—by some miracle—become reflective of the systemic dependency of the effects of such manipulation. We select X out of the systemic structure, assume that it is independent (since we can change it for research purposes) and that its “effects” are going to tell us something about two dependencies of the experiment—upon the experimental manipulation, and upon the role of the changed factor in its systemic organization. The reality of psychological systems sets constraints upon the freedom to select the independent and dependent variables. Some features of the systems studied do not allow for manipulation. In psychology researchers often operate with factors that in fact cannot be changed in practice, even if in abstract terms one can contemplate such transformation. A psychologist who uses gender as “independent variable” in one’s studies is obviously not performing sex change surgeries in their research participants, but would look at obtained differences between genders (dependent variable change) as if this resulted from the change from male to female or vice versa, in all of the research participants. Gender is de facto an “index variable” (constant) that becomes in abstraction treated as if it is an independent variable. A similar status of transfer of an index into an “independent” variable can be observed in the case of using Socio-Economic Status as a factor in psychological studies. It could become a true independent variable (if the researcher introduces programs to make poor people rich, or millionaires to become paupers), but in all practices it remains an index of the economic status of the

The Mentality of a Controllable World • xiii

person at the given time. Differently rich and poor persons are then viewed as if cases of one turning into the other in a generalized abstract person. So we see a game of “hide-and-seek” played by the researchers—the assumption of change for the individual is embedded in the contrast between individuals—only to be interpreted again in generic models pertaining to individuals (Valsiner, 1986). The mental game of treating constants as if these could be variables in a particular domain creates an epistemological act of violence towards the phenomena that are of systemic kind. It also leads to the overlooking of the non-ergodic nature of the psychological systems that renders the interpretation of inter-individual variability (inj samples) as if it were isomorphic with intraindividual variability (within individuals over time—Molenaar et al., 2002). The demonstration of non-ergodicity of psychological systems has major implications for the use of existing empirical evidence—no sample-based claim of relationships (correlational or causal) is transferrable to the application contexts involving individual cases. The whole machinery of studying psychological issues using samples to populations generalization tactics are thus proven to produce data of limited or no applied value2. Two other types of variables are important to note in our entrance into the variables discourse—these of intervening variable and moderating variable3. The former of these illustrates the futility of the Stimulus à Response model, introducing in between the two some intervening counterparts. Where would these intervening factors come from? Two sources are obvious—from the systemic relationships of both the independent and dependent variables. The pretense of their standing out independently is thus lost, and the systemic conditions intervene in the S à R relation, as a surprise for the researcher. The second source of intervening conditions is more profound—the active resistance by the human beings to modifications of their life worlds—which the variation of the independent variable is from the receiver’s viewpoint. All biological systems resist to incoming pressures—a realization from the vend of 18th century Naturphilosophie. So the realistic scheme of any study makes the intervention by resistance central to our research efforts (Chaudhary & Valsiner, 2017). Human beings create their personal counter-interpretations to any manipulation of the independent variable which guide the various resistance tactics. So, the usual scheme accepting intervening or moderator variables—S→O→R needs to be re-written as Sà→O→R where O represents the organism’s resistance to the stimulation. Kurt Danziger provided a direct comparison of the epistemologies of the social sciences and physics: In the social sciences the command to look for variables was taken to mean that phenomena ought to be investigated in terms of their variation—in Psychology, typically, inter-individual variation. Had physicists proceeded like this they would have attempted to study the differences between a variety of falling bodies , or the differences among a variety of warm bodies. Fortunately this was not their approach , for had it been, it is highly improbable that they would ever have arrived at the law of gravity or the principles of thermodynamics” (Danziger, 1997, p. 178). 3 The moderating variable entails decisions about variables assumed to be in the middle of regression solutions between independent and dependent variables. 2 “

xiv • JAAN VALSINER

WHY FAREWELL TO VARIABLES? The goal of our efforts in this book is to demonstrate how the variables discourse that has dominated psychology in the past century is better left behind and replaced by some alternative. Why has it been harmful for psychology’s development to use variables discourse? And what are the alternatives? My answer to the first question is simple—the assumption of the independence of the independent and dependent variables as that fits the Stimulus à Response model that prevails in research overlooks the most central issue of psychological phenomena—their systemic organization (Sato, et al., 2007). Psychology has since its beginnings struggled with the ways to conceptualize parts whole relationships in systems under study. This has led to prioritizing the separability of such parts as elements, relieving them from their systemic interdependencies, means eliminating the central focus of the study by replacing it with peripheral manipulations. The crucial nature of the whole is thus eliminated from the first step the researcher takes. The road to making sense of the systemic generality of psychological systems becomes substituted by the myriad of SR relations, or of vast correlational relations that become interpreted in ways that go beyond the data (Valsiner, 1986). Furthermore—all psychological functions operate at the border of what is possible in contrast to the non-possible (Glaveanu, 2021) which indicates a second order systemic relation: the system can be studied in contrast to its possible (but non-existing) counterpart. My happiness with X in my life space is not merely the systemic nature of that feeling as it is, but also its contrast with what it could be (but, fortunately, is not—non-X). This focus on the reality of the currently non-real is completely absent in the current research discourses in psychology. Of course this substation of the central issues by peripheric manipulations has been the hostage for social organization of psychological science over the 20th century. Starting from the “behaviorist revolt” of 1913 and continued into the focus on “evidence based” psychological science by the end of the century (Lamiell, 2019, pp. 125–131), supported by the making of tools into theories (Gigerenzer, 1991). The advantages of the Gestalt- and Genzheit-perspective in psychology that were developed in the beginning of the 20th century (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008) were lost in the transition of the discipline from German to English language base, and its corresponding disinterest in the systemic organization of psychological processes. What are the alternatives? This is the question we try to collectively explore in this book, and it is up to the readers to decide if our inventions here lead us all out of the stalemate psychology has moved itself via the “variables discourse.” One aspect for finding alternatives is clear—the focus on parts whole relationships in systemic organization of the human psyche needs to be preserved in the research process. But how? There are various existing possibilities—Dynamic Systems Theory (van Geert, 1998) as well as the Trajectory Equifinality Approach (Sato et al., 2016). They differ in both theoretical assumptions and em-

The Mentality of a Controllable World • xv

pirical method construction strategies. Innovation in all of these is needed—and this volume should give us some leads. REFERENCES Chaudhary, N., & Valsiner, J. (2017). Rhythms of resistance: A way forward. In N. Chaudhary, P. Hviid, G. Marsico, & J. W. Villadsen (Eds.), Resistance in everyday life: Constructing cultural experiences (pp. 319–328). Springer Nature. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject. Cambridge University Press. Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology found its language. Sage. Diriwächter, R., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2008). Striving for the whole: Creating theoretical syntheses. Transaction Publishers. Fine, H. B. (1911). Variables, In J. M. Baldwin (Ed.), Dictionary of philosophy and psychology (2nd ed.). Macmillan. Gigerenzer, G. (1991). From tools to theories: A heuristic of discovery in cognitive psychology. Psychological Review, 98, 2, 254–267. Glaveanu, V. P. (2021). The possible: A sociocultural theory. Oxford University Press. Lamiell, J. T. (2019). Psychology’s misuse of statistics and persistent dismissal of its critics. Palgrave Macmillan. Molenaar, P. C. M., Huizinga, H. M., & Nesselroade, J. (2002). The relationship between the structure of inter-individual and intra-individual variability. In U. Staudinger & U. Lindenberger (Eds.), Understanding human development (pp. 339–360). Klüwer. Sato, T., Mori, N., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2016). Making of the future: The trajectory equifinality approach in cultural psychology. Information Age Publishers. Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kido, A., Arakawa, A., Mizoguchi, H., & Valsiner, J. (2007). Sampling reconsidered: Idiographic science and the analyses of personal life trajectories. In J. Valsiner, J., & A. Rosa, A. (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of socio-cultural psychology (pp. 82–106). Cambridge University Press. Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? Information Age Publishers. Valsiner, J. (1986). Between groups and individuals: Psychologists’ and laypersons’ interpretations of correlational findings. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The individual subject and scientific psychology (pp. 113–152). Plenum. van Geert, P. (1998). We almost had a great future behind us: the contribution of non-linear dynamics to developmental-science-in the making. Developmental Science, 1(1), 143–159.

PART I ORGANIZATIONAL FICTIONS: VARIABLES THAT WE CONTROL

CHAPTER 1

VARIABLES AS OBSTACLES TO PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Finding Humanness Beneath, Between and Beyond Conventional Categories Nandita Chaudhary, Mila Tuli, and Punya Pillai University of Delhi

PSYCHOLOGY: THE SEARCH FOR COHERENCE Mainstream psychology has been dominated by data-driven attempts at establishing the field of variables and constructs and relationships between them. However, equally forcefully, scholars have attempted to bring coherence and integration into the discipline with matched enthusiasm. In the words of Hampden-Turner (1982): [T]he contents (of this volume) are limited by my own strained comprehension and the gaps in my knowledge and also by my search for an overall coherence which has deterred me from making a mere collection of separate pieces. I confess to finding academic arbiters of who is “in” and “out” repellent, and, in a field as embryonic as psychology, both pretentious and blinkered. I have no such ambitions. I have made Farewell to Variables, pages 3–20. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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4  •  NANDITA CHAUDHARY, MILA TULI, & PUNYA PILLAI a start in the process of putting bits and pieces of Humpty-Dumpty together again because it needs to be done and too few are even trying. (p. 11, Emphasis ours).

To study something in detail, science has taught us to reduce its size and scope to smaller bits of manageable information. This exercise has worked well in separating stars and substances in the physical world, and there was really no reason to doubt that it would also do the same for the social sciences. We now live in a world of science where increased specialization is the mantra for progress in all fields from medicine to astronomy. FROM VARIATION TO VARIABLES: HOW THE DISCIPLINE WAS HIJACKED BY STATISTICS Variation is a natural expression of living things for which visible evidence is abundantly available. Unlike machine products that work on the principle of identical output, natural processes ensure that no two members of the same species are exactly alike. Among human beings, even identical twins have minute differences by which they can be told apart. Variables were identified in experimentally oriented psychological research to refer to human traits that could be identified, separated, and arranged on the assumption of influence in an experimental setting. To take an example, the impact of ambient noise on test performance among students guides research to set-up experimental conditions to verify the assumption. The larger model within which such separation and causation is possible can be noted as the General Liner Model of Psychology and despite the same original meaning, variables deal with only one specific type of variation where difference is evaluated by measurement. The onset of interest in variables and theory construction have advanced somewhat separately. However, as the term became popular around the 1920s, statistical procedures like correlational studies gained prominence (Walker, 1929). It was decades later that the statistical definition of variables started to appear in the form of psychological constructs, and there was no turning back. Another outcome of the statistical separation of variables was the designation of independent, dependent, and intervening variables. Around the 1940s, a few decades after the introduction of variables, the term intervening variable entered the discourse and “a new language of psychological experimentation was introduced” (Danziger & Dzinas, 1997, p. 2). It was not long before these terms became fashionable in journal articles and academic discourse, an attempt to make the shallowness of the experimental tradition sound more profound than it was and position the social sciences as being more in control of the discipline (Burgess, 1929). The largely descriptive terms began to gather a more fundamental place in the discourse, as constructs that referred to existing psychological phenomena, making these terms unquestionable, immutable, and universal, endowing them with causal efficacy and overdetermined meanings.

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 5

The notion that psychological reality is pre-structured in the form of variables, as in the case of the “anxiety variable,” after which its constituent variables are resolved came about (Mandler et al., 1958). This was a case of placing the cart before the horse. These problems of variable construction have remained and even intensified through the advancement of mythical categories and synthetic procedures and as Danziger and Dzinas (1997) argue, “it is fatally easy for discussion of statistical effects to slide imperceptibly into talk about the effects of the real powers of psychological variables with causal powers” (p. 47). These assumptions remain implicit and unexamined since scholars were never questioned about what they mean by the term “variable.” This outcome of a method-driven psychology has alienated real phenomena to the extent that mainstream psychology became an artificially constructed body of measurable phenomena. This is not science, and as we will argue, not ethical either. Assumptions have been made that everything that exists psychologically, exists as variables. Although this supported discussions about phenomena, it is far from a sufficient approach to the study of real-world processes. While questioning the “independence” of independent variables, Anandalakshmy (1974, 2008) remarks that flexibility in methods of analysis is a must for the social sciences as social systems are not fixed, otherwise, reasoning would take a syllogistic form based on deductive logic: The person is an Indian and therefore she must be collectivistic! Since deductive logic avoids the question “What is the purpose of the question?,” one is unlikely to get useful information (Anandalakshmy, 2008, p. 17). Thus, both on grounds of semantic differences as well as diversity in social systems, using ideal-type concepts in empirical investigations can be misleading by eliminating “latent, deviant, and minority alternatives” (p. 19). Such errors are abundantly available in the use of “caste” as an independent variable in India. The excessive reliance on empirical data among social scientists who “are amorous of devices and suspicious of theories,” it is valuable to examine the philosophical basis of one’s research occasionally (Anandalakshmy, 2008). Despite the fact that this article, first presented at the IACCP conference in Hong Kong in 1972, there has been very little attention to these assertions, undoubtedly a case of silencing of dissent from the mainstream, in spite of the strength of the critique. Yet, Anandalakshmy was not alone in her dissent, as we will argue. THE LANGUAGE OF VARIABLES AND THE VARIATION OF LANGUAGE The fact that variables are interlaced in language, and given the fact that languages have different landscapes of meaning, any variable will, by the delicate but significant separation of epistemology and ontology, be bound within a local meaning system. Variables are fundamentally local. Let us take a few prominent examples of this and its consequences on psychological study. As Wierzbicka (1997) argues, semantics is crucial to understanding people because of the intimate linkage between words and worldviews. We argue

6  •  NANDITA CHAUDHARY, MILA TULI, & PUNYA PILLAI

that it is only by accepting differences in local meanings that genuine generalization can be achieved, since anything else will either be forced or fake. This is true not just for international relations, but also within culture differences in language use and meaning. According to Wierzbicka (1997), three important processes need to be emphasized. Firstly, that culturally important objects need to be lexicalized, labelled, and organized with abundance precisely because they carry significance for people. This emphasis is not necessarily recognized by outsiders even if they understand the language. The use of nuanced kin terminology in Indian languages is a case in point. For instance, terms for relatives from the mother’s side are clearly distinguished from those from the father’s side, each marked by age and gender. The network of family relationships is delicately organized to guide affiliations and affections that terms like uncle and aunt, grandmother and grandfather would be too imprecise to work. For an Indian socialized in this nuanced complexity, hearing the reference to grandmother or uncle, would be too vague and necessitate the following questions: “Mother’s side or father’s?,” “Real or cousins?” and finally, “Are you close to them?” Besides this, some kin terms carry heavier meanings. In Hindi, the word masi, the term for mother’s sister, is particularly significant since it means‚ like mother, someone who is also a potential primary caregiver in case of mother absence as the practice of sororate marriages1 was popular in traditional families. Another instance of cultural emphasis is the expression in Hindi called Mamta (Chaudhary & Bhargava, 2006). This term instantly invokes emotional overtones as it refers to the special bond of love of a mother towards her child. Yet underneath the surface there are important nuances of contested and abducted meanings over time and use. Whatever else may be said about the expression, there is no denying the instant connection of the mother-child relationship as special, despite the fact of multiple mothering, sibling care and the involvement of the larger group in the care of children. Chaudhary (2013) has argued that multiple mothering may, in fact, not be a contradiction, but a support for the belief that mothers are so important that families need back-up plans in case something goes wrong. The other two principles Wierzbicka (1997) states relates to the frequency of words in important domains as well as key words of core cultural values. The connection between the three processes is evident. Thus, key words, frequency and elaboration are features of cultural worlds. To extend this proposal to the landscape of psychological phenomena, we can argue, as Valsiner (2000) states based on the Graz tradition of Alexius Meinong, that as soon as a concept X is created, there is also its alternative, non-X. However, this non-X is not simply an opposition, but a separation that in fact includes the concept of X since without it, non-X lacks meaning. This feature of mutuality and connection between separate terms Valsiner calls inclusive separation. This feature of meaning-making is key to the understanding of the landscape of variables in psychology. If we combine 1

Marriage with the wife’s sister in case of death or infertility

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 7

Wierzbicka’s (1997) notion of keywords with Valsiner’s (2000) process of inclusive separation, we can arrive at the idea that languages prioritize specific key words, whose alternate terms emerge in parallel. It is how we treat these terms that creates complications. Since the study of psychology consists of the use of constructs rather than concrete objects, these features of language use cannot be ignored. Variables facilitate the artificial separation of human phenomena for the purpose of catching them and making them measurable and manipulable. This does not in any way justify the unedited application of ideas to other cultural settings because of the difference in landscape. HOW VARIABLES OBSTRUCT COLLABORATIONS If we accept the mutuality of language and culture, it becomes quite evident that any discussion of psychological phenomena has to accept that the elaboration of mental processes will be culture dependent. Psychology is a universal discipline, a fact that has been a key feature of its origin, but the popularity of positivism and data-driven psychological practice has interfered with intercultural collaboration. Regarding his experience with teaching psychology in Indonesia, Danziger (1997) wrote in his popular volume Naming the Mind, that the taxonomy, terminology and meaning of constructs considered standard in the North American framework in which he was trained, failed to make sense to local scholars. The book is an outcome of this struggle to understand the separation of domains in different language traditions. This applies to all cultural traditions outside of the West. The domination of subjects and scholars from these traditions has been adequately exposed in several important essays (Henrich, 2020; Henrich et al., 2010). What such an overwhelming dependence on local data has resulted in over the years is a dominance of ideas and preoccupations of a Middle-class, Western, White ideology, and simultaneously silencing or distorting other ways of understanding human nature. In this regard, the separation of variables and their labeling needs attention if we are to expand the discipline with a global vision. In fact, one can be truly international only when the local is understood and explained in context. Psychology is, by its very nature, cultural and also developmental. Let us take a few prominent examples from the teaching and practice of psychology in India. If the local is treated as global, emerging from any cultural origin, it prohibits dialogue since there is an effort to maneuver meaning in culturally specific ways. Recognizing the diversity in meaning and discussing it is the key to dialogue, and consequently, generalization, social justice and genuine collaboration. Affluence has had an important role to play in the distribution of ideas and material in Psychology. There are plenty of instances where tools prepared within a specific ideological framework have been promoted to apply, label, and classify people from everywhere. The term Western Psychology is too restricted to make sense to this discussion, but we will use this simplified label to discuss data-driven psychology emerging

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from the US even though it is, in itself, an overextension of the term. After all, “Western Psychology” does not accurately reflect human processes even within the West if we take into consideration gender, race, region, class, and country. Even an apparently simple term like “Freedom” Tyler argues, has been an idea of “White Freedom” (Tyler, 2021). There is no denying that the oppression of nonwhite persons through the history of civilization has been a key phenomenon in controlling international relations, a dominance that non-whites tended to negotiate through performances of white-ness (Fannon, 1952/1967). Echoes of this are heard the world over as Western trends are modelled the world over, in speech, business, fashion and lifestyle, also in psychology! We believe that it is important to use accurate and relevant labels rather than glossing over exactly what it is at the root of our strivings. Maybe then, finally, we will be able to overcome the hegemony by simply ignoring what does not carry the weight of validity, justice, fairness and equality in the social sciences. To be fair, the West is a construction of our imagination as much as the Orient has been. Such simplistic polarization may have applied in the past, and persists in guiding trends, but there is an urgent need to dissolve false categories if we are to progress towards psychology for social justice. No one cultural ideology has all the solutions, and so, including multiple cultural perspectives are as important as inter-disciplinary ones. After all, the only way to be truly global is by paying attention to the local, not dismissing it. The Global South too must abandon their persistent positioning of the West as affluent since a similar dynamic of domination and hegemony is as much an intracultural problem as it is an international one. Selected affiliation with traditions also needs critical examination, what Nandy refers to as critical traditionalism (Nandy, 1984). Yet, for now, the false opposition between the East and West is being used to enter a debate about how other traditions have been ignored, silenced, or even misrepresented. Let us examine Psychology’s international model more closely. PSYCHOLOGY’S INTERNATIONAL MODEL Systems of knowledge are based on self-evident rules that define epistemological limits for specific time-place coordinates. Guided by formal and informal relationships rather than universality, ideas emerge from circumstances from which they draw meaning and significance. Theories are maps based on hidden assumptions, and an important problem is to make the origins visible and open to scrutiny. Cultural variation is a problem for mainstream psychology since the assumptions of psychic unity and universality are hard to reconcile with differences observed in outcomes and observations. To deal with this issue, different scholars positioned themselves differently. Cultural variation has been interpreted variously. The artificial separation of “culture” from “psychology” has been a problem for the advancement of the discipline, since reality repeatedly demonstrates that the two processes are characterized by “inclusive separation” (Valsiner & Van

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 9

der Veer, 2000). However, cultural differences and their outcomes are significant for norms and standards (Aptekar & Stöklin, 1997; Burman, 1994) as well as expectations and developmental pathways, which compel us to question popular proposals like Attachment Theory, that fail to explain experiences of non-Western childcare arrangements (Keller, 2013; Keller & Chaudhary, 2017). Mainstream Psychology has not dealt very well with cultural differences, despite the large number of excellent research studies and scholarly articles about development and culture. As a science, psychology proposes to deal with observable phenomena and empirically verifiable facts, gathered objectively through experimental methods. However, the development and advancement of theories is sometimes opaque as these have emerged through the use of specific methods (like intelligence, creativity, for example). Metaphors emerge from the use of tools and techniques that soon become reified though promotion and propaganda. In this enterprise, variables are central to the expansion of the field. For instance, despite the many problems that intelligence testing has faced, testing today is very much like the original tests of intelligence, leaning very heavily on specific mental processes and information. Sternberg has argued that despite adequate endorsement the popularity of the term has persisted through entrenchment, industries, fear of change, academic laziness, persistence of socioeconomic hierarchy, quantitative precision fallacy, and financial interests (Sternberg, 2019). It seems that once our imagination is captured by a term, there is entrenchment in the idea and a great deal of effort is required to set it aside. One important way to audit our academic vocabulary is to travel through other ideologies and expressions of human nature. In collaboration with Dzinas, Danziger (Danziger & Dzinas, 1997) explains that variables became extremely popular around the 1950s, especially in Personality Studies and Social Psychology and there emerged “a growing tendency to describe psychological research in terms of the manipulation of variables” (p. 43), to the extent that the term variable has become synonymous with research, after which the separation of independent, dependent, confounding, and intervening variables becomes necessary. Variables can refer to mental processes, physical attributes, social conditions, or demographic details. However, it is the self-evident, obvious and unquestioned assumptions of variables as facts that exist outside of historical specificity, that need to be reviewed. To question something that has become so fundamental to psychology is to question the discipline itself, it seems. This entrenchment makes scrutiny harder to achieve. Yet, because of the cultural and historic specificity of the variable the questions are urgently needed, since despite the critique from so many scholars, the variable has survived and students are still examined on their independent and dependent variable and operational definitions, without which a research study may not be considered to achieve scientific standards. This uncritical creation of variables in research became industries to be promoted through tools and techniques, manuals and text-books, leading to greater entrenchment, the reluctance to break away and the desire to gain entry into hal-

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lowed spaces of the scientific community have perpetuated a powerful cycle of affiliation with terminology. Despite strong criticisms levelled from so many different sources, the enterprise of psychology “…‘neurotically’ defends its status as an ‘empirical science’….” (Valsiner, 2019, p. 430). The enterprise has reached a critical mass and become too large to dismantle. Otherwise, powerful dissenters like Kurt Danziger, Gustav Jahoda and others would have made a strong impact on mainstream ideas with their influential words. Criticisms were small enough to be ignored and scientists could either join or remain unrecognized. WHY WE NEED TO TRANSCEND VARIABLES Danziger and Dzinas (1997) argue that the metatheoretical, taken for granted nature of variables is against the basic principles of scientific exploration since if one cannot question something, it falls out of the domain of science. Variables position psychological phenomena as a collection of static constructs that carry very specific, erroneous assumptions about human conduct, mentality and relationships. Psychological phenomena are dynamic arrangements of personal adjustments to situational challenges and constraints. The factor of time and context, that is developmental and situational factors are foundational to how we process reality and act on it. Thus, variables will always remain restrictive, whatever the context. Selected variables, once identified and popularized, became reified into industries of practice and assessments that proved counterproductive over the decades of their use, as in the case of Intelligence. These are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg but are prominent enough to get the point across. In a later section, we use examples from indigenous Indian psychology to examine the epistemic conflict between ideological traditions. Perhaps intelligence is a concept that is recognizable in all cultures of the world. Yet, unsurprisingly, the components of being quick-witted or clever, or knowledgeable, are distinctly different in different cultures. The problem with treating intelligence as universal is not the issue, but to treat it as uniform is. If intelligence necessarily includes the capacity for understanding and problem solving, the ability to adapt to the environment, if we consider prominent definitions, the context would be a key component of an intelligent act. In response to questions where answers are predetermined along a specific line of thought creates hurdles for managing responses. As in the classic case of answering questions in cross-cultural studies of intelligence, Scribner (1976) described several studies where local explanations were examined and analyzed. What is considered clever in one culture is in one instance seen as a way that “a stupid person might do it” (p. 315). THE “PROBLEM” OF CULTURAL VARIATION Linguistic semantics is a verifiable way of studying cultural patterns. One important range of ideas which were hard to contend with was cultural variation since

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 11

this approach permits a dialogue between conceptually different worlds by exposing meaning-making. Since words do not have “true meanings” as we assume (During, 1991), believing otherwise can confound the process and products of research and theory construction. The problem becomes even more confounded when words of the same language, like English, however universally recognized, do have different connotations in different versions of the language. According to Wierzbicka (1997) we will, in fact, better understand cultures if this inherent quality of words is accepted and studied with rigor and depth. The abundance of surveys and measurements have told us very little about culture (Wuthnow et al., 1984). Unfortunately, the approach taken by data-driven psychology is the opposite, that is, tending to treat meanings as if they are universal and universally understood in the same way as intended by the theorist/researcher. One must travel through a new language to best understand how deeply words, meanings, conversations, and worlds overlap, leaving the outsider quite unable to grasp the nuances of social interaction and personal conduct. Katherine Russell Rich does exactly that in her entertaining volume on Dreaming in Hindi, her mid-life encounters with a new world through a new language (Rich, 2010). If experiments were limited to laboratories run by university departments, the cycle of validation was easy. However, if recognition is to be gained, then scholars needed their ideas to work for people everywhere. For cross-cultural or cultural extension, collaborations were characterized by vertical rather than horizontal collaborations (Sinha, 1990), implying that research projects are originated in Western Universities from which location, research staff is recruited for offshore data gathering, either directly, through local collaborations or online. Local sites were used simply as passive locations for testing Western theories. The ground for cultural collaborations has been highly imbalanced, thereby collapsing people’s views and performances into pre-set labels emerging from the central offices. Local scholars were needed for operational and language translations, whereas all other steps including interpretation and report-writing, were the prerogative of the central team. There are very few welcome exceptions to this pattern in cultural collaborations in psychological research. Despite the many years since Sinha and others raised these critiques (Danziger, 1997; Jahoda, 1995; Scribner, 1976) the scene remains quite unchanged although the lip-service to participatory research may have improved (Chaudhary, 2018). This trend helped to keep the original variables and their definitions untouched by cultural mismatch. The industry of psychology survived and thrived on this hegemony. International aid agencies have taken this a step further to recommend and impose childcare and family practices based on Western research without any thought to ethics of interventions (Scheidecker et al., 2021). From the perspective of teaching and research in the African subcontinent, Oppong (2019) writes that local psychology has been dominated by external theories and research. This “contributes to ...[E]pistemic injustice and epistemological violence while depriving Africans of epistemic agency. This is largely because psychology has remained and continues

12  •  NANDITA CHAUDHARY, MILA TULI, & PUNYA PILLAI to remain Eurocentric. However, the continual Eurocentric hegemony is not entirely imposed but internalized. This has made this Eurocentric hegemony self-perpetuating with African involvement (p. 292).

This entanglement is perpetuated by local scholars as well, since a self-perpetuating dynamic prevails that obstructs with the task of culturally grounded meaning making. Since psychology is a reflexive subject, cross-national transfers require local cultural heritage and the social circumstances to be given priority (Serpell, 2019). The connections with colonialism are very powerful resulting in the denial of African (or any other) cultural beliefs to analyze African behavior (Oppong, 2019). SELECTED PERSPECTIVES FROM INDIGENOUS INDIAN PSYCHOLOGY In this section, we will raise specific ideas from indigenous Indian psychology to explain how local ideas are silenced when an alien ideology is imposed. Examples from beliefs about social relationships, emotions, learning and intelligence, selfhood and individualism-collectivism will be used as cases. Although these examples are significant, the caution that needs to be maintained about traditions. The important point is to inform oneself, examine the content and retain what is significant in view of our contemporary positions, rather than keeping romantic view about the past being the best. Critical traditionalism, as Nandy (1987) argued is an important precaution to retain ethical and scientific distance. For this reasons, indigenous Indian ideas are not meant only for its residents, but can provide an expansion of psychology, as long as one doesn’t believe that is the only right way of viewing life. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS AND ATTACHMENT India has a strong tradition in family relationships and the notion of the family life cycle in Hindu ideology focuses on an individual’s journey from infant solipsism to the end of life with waxing and waning social distance. With strong family traditions and approaches to identity, selfhood and otherness, the local understanding of the core importance of social relationships deeply contrasts with the coverage in individual psychology. In fact, the sequence of an idealized life constitutes a dynamic arrangement between self and others. From the playful intensity of a child, the young person moves through a period of learning and scholarship. This is followed by the life of a householder where family obligations and intimacy become the focus of life. The gradual separation from others and ultimate detachment of the elderly marks a clear ideal towards the preparation for death. The Ashrama theory of individual and social development is key to understanding the Hindu life-cycle. If we take the notion of individualism and collectivism that has been used to label communities, when the life-cycle is examined, the fluctuating and complex arrangements of prescribed social relationships, the gradual distanc-

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 13

ing from family issues becomes muted. For Indians, the label of collectivism has always been a confounding one, as it just does not apply. Furthermore, if family form is taken as a basic unit, the extensive diversity of forms of family challenges the use of nuclear unit, normative in the developmental sciences, inappropriate. LANGUAGES AND THEIR USE IN RESEARCH India is home to several hundred surviving languages, and unschooled multilingualism is the norm. A psychology of language that treats multilingualism as an exception that requires special input will always fail in understanding and addressing issues related to language use (Devy, 2014; Mohanty, 2006). Educational policy in contemporary Indian society has heatedly debated the issue of medium of instruction. With English being inherited as a language of success, there are many post-colonial problems in mother-tongue usage in school. Every time a policy on early schooling in the first language is raised, dissenters argue about the inclusion of English, since after all, a child is capable of handling many languages in parallel (Kirpal, 2021). The problem is far from being solved regarding educational practice, but there is no denying that despite the loss of many indigenous tongues, plurality and diversity in speech is a prominent feature of Indian society (Devy, 2014). As one can imagine, for the study of language or the use of language for data gathering through conversation, narratives and discourse, the landscape of research gathering, measurement and assessment is even more complicated. LEARNING Indigenous Indian theories of learning are abundant and detailed, focusing on context and collaboration, with a high emphasis on domain specific ways of learning. Intelligence is understood as contextual, distributed, and social awareness is an important criterion of intelligent conduct (Srivastava & Misra, 2007). …[I]n addition to giving importance to cognitive abilities, [this view] also takes into account affective and motivational concepts in a major way. Also, the Indian concept of intelligence is more close to the…concept of wisdom, which includes procedural knowledge, relativism and is capable of dealing with uncertainty...To a large extent, it overlaps with the characteristics of prudence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence and practical intelligence. (Srivastava & Misra, 2007, p. 213)

Regarding processes of learning, in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, knowledge or truth (according to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism) has three dimensions, tirupati: the knower (pramAtr), the knowable (prameya) and the process by which we learn (pramAna), of which there are six types: pratyaksh—sensation, anuman—presumption, upaman—analogy, anuplabdhi—awareness of absence, arthapatti—contradiction (with what is already known) and finally, shabd—words (Bilimoria, 1993). It is disheartening to note that such elaborate philosophical

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speculations have not found much mention in the teaching and research in psychology. This is only one of the many theoretical perspectives. EMOTIONS The Natyashastra, a Hindu text on the performing arts, dwells in great detail with aesthetics and emotion. With extensive explorations of the structure and manifestation of emotions, this ancient Hindu source (around 500 BCE), has had a powerful impact on Indian performing arts, dance, music, and literature. A comprehensive analysis of the text is beyond the scope of this chapter, but a brief examination of the theory of emotions, feeling and expression, of great value in performance, is mentioned. The most important departure from the academic study of emotions is that there are no positive or negative emotions since the context and meaning of emotional feeling and expression are believed to determine emotional experience. The Rasa theory of emotions is defined and developed through the study of theatrical expressions in classical dance and theatre. The actualization of Rasa is believed to result from the union of sthaibhavas (stable emotions), vibhavas (situations), anubhavas (experiences), and vyabhikaribhavas (mental states), each of which need to be considered before an emotional state or expression can be fully understood (Ramaprasad, 2013). For instance, bursting into laughter in a situation that predisposes a person to sadness would be marked by inappropriateness and discrepancy, which would further prompt a scrutiny of a person’s mental condition. Although focused on performance, there is a clear separation of the aesthetics of theatre and real life, where the latter is characterized by cultivated dramatic expressions and arousal. The rasa theory of emotion arises only when a scholar is specifically interested in the ancient text or its contemporary relevance, for psychology, perhaps the linkages with religious texts have rendered such sources out-of-bounds. SELF AND OTHERS Some of the oldest sources of human speculation of self-knowledge lie in ancient Indian texts. Although now widely available from Indian philosophy, Sanskrit scholarship, history, and cultural anthropology, remain outside the main discourse about the self, being relegated to minor mentions (Misra & Paranjpe, 2012; Paranjpe, 2002). There are some prominent differences in the Indian understanding of the self that could benefit the study of identity and selfhood universally. The project of self and identity in the psychology focus on personality studies, identity formation and the sense of self. The emphasis on self-actualization became a focus of Maslow’s theory, whereas Indian Vedanta philosophy focused on self-realization. Scholarship in the field of Yoga recommends breathing exercises that control the flow of thought through the management of one’s breath, with significance for the study of the self, self-knowledge and an inward orientation. This aspect of yogic ideology and practice has become increasingly popular the world over the

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 15

past several decades, branching into fields like mindfulness, but remains outside the domain of academic psychology. There are a few academic articles related to the therapeutic benefit of yoga that appear as journal articles, but the knowledge base and philosophy behind yoga remain unnoticed, except by a handful of Indian psychologists trying to raise awareness. The popularity of yogic exercise is undeniable as the number of yoga studios and accessories expands, evidently because it is experienced as benefiting people, yet in academic circles there is reluctance to accept this is a core issue. Yoga is not a form of physical exercise as many users believe, it is an ancient, deep and profound ideology of the union of self with spirituality, knowledge and truth. On the APA website, a search for “yoga” lists 300 odd articles that discuss fitness routines as therapy, and other medical and psychological benefits of Yoga, while the core ideas of yoga and self-realization are largely ignored. The theory of Yoga is deeply personal, and in this sense, Indian ideology (as also seen in the Individual life cycle and the theory of karma) can be found to be deeply individualistic, a fact that is completely at odds with the view of Indians as collectivistic. In the following section, we explain why indigenous ideas from Indian philosophical traditions have been ignored even by Indian scholars. THE POPULARITY OF WESTERN VARIABLES IN INDIAN PSYCHOLOGY Psychology in India did not evolve as an integral part of social progress, rather, psychologists trained from British or American schools returned to establish higher education under the colonial influence with a preference to pursue “culturallyblind psychology,” assumed to be a universal science. These scholars believed they were contributing to an internationally recognized discipline. Departures from local beliefs and practices were construed as errors, and thus ignored for the greater cause of science (Nandy, 1974). Unfortunately, this trend resulted in the silencing of a long-standing tradition of speculation about human nature, mental activity and proposition of psychological well-being (Misra & Paranjpe, 2012). References to culture remain largely limited to textboxes in textbooks (Chaudhary & Sriram, 2020), supported by aggressive marketing by publishers of costly psychological tests. In order to be progressive, University departments spend precious funds on the purchase of equipment like intelligence tests that adopt the framework of variables. This has kept a significant portion of psychology teaching and research bound within variables, constructs and theories that are basically unfamiliar. The fractured identities that had become a way of dealing with the long period of colonization, became an effective strategy to deal with such separations between personal and academic life. The large reserve of scholarship in Indian traditions concerning consciousness, learning, identity, emotions and selfhood were ignored. Further, the ways in which diversity, multiplicity of languages, religion, ethnicity and other aspects of culture also remained unattended in academic psychology because they did not fit within the paradigms and struc-

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tures of mainstream psychology. This has been a tremendous loss of scholarship for local scholars, but also a loss for psychology as a discipline. Because of the internal diversity and external distance, Indians do not fit well into psychology’s model, and this fact is mostly ignored by theory and research. THE HEGEMONY OF VARIABLES: THE CASE OF EDUCATED INDIANS Urban educated and progressive Indians have been eager to dissociate themselves from being bound by the practices of orthodox Hinduism and found greater comfort in Western theory and practice than to look “backwards.” These associations were deeply internalized during colonial times. Besides this, India’s ethnic, religious, and linguistic landscape prevented any one tradition from gaining prominence so much so that after the British Raj, English became commonly accepted as the language of progress because the different regions failed to reach an agreement about which language should be nominated! With English as the official language in schools, Universities and the corporate world, the politics of regional differences thus permitted the use of English as the binding language rather than Hindi that is specific to the Northern region (and Bollywood cinema). A debate that repeatedly emerges in the public domain, is that the disagreement with any of the hundreds of local languages allows English to flourish, in addition to the recognition of its value as an international lingua franca as well as a local language. Another opposition for accepting indigenous ideas into the social sciences came from India’s left-leaning academics who resisted any inclusion of religious ideas into teaching or research because of the association with orthodoxy. This is not a claim for a blanket acceptance of traditional ideas, but the scholarship is undeniable and significant and has important potential contributions as the discipline struggles for unification and universalization. The applications of psychology theories and practice are even more closely bound to the use of variables. Given that most international projects for assessments, evaluations, interventions, or therapy, have an impact on policy and practice through institutional services like schools, aid agencies, and hospitals, practical applications of psychological theory and research needs a major review to promote a more socially just and culturally appropriate application of its research. Similar verbal reports do not at all reflect similar psychological states, as in the case of well-being (Kagan, 2012). As human beings, we cannot help adopting the meaning systems within which we grow up. About mental well-being, Kagan writes: The results of scientific research can never be the sole bases for deciding what is psychologically optimal for all children in all cultures. During all historical eras. Each person must make his or her own ethical evaluations of what is best, and this judgement is more often based on sentiments that arise from existing social condi-

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 17 tions rather than logically consistent proofs, semantically coherent arguments, or correspondence with observations.

Another place where research standards and science procedures where quantitative approaches and the language of variables dominate are Institutional Ethics Committees. These committees follow the same version of science, namely using the natural sciences and Western psychology as its model. Each committee is required to have members from different disciplines, and the medical, legal, and natural sciences are common categories. In this group, research in the human sciences becomes an issue where scholars in the pursuit of projects that do not follow the narrow definition of science as defined in the natural sciences, and global research as defined by institutions in the West. This has increasingly become a problem as demands for quantitative analysis, statistical procedures and “accurately” defined variables are placed on research in the social sciences. Institutional Ethics Committees have become gatekeepers of what research in psychology should look like, and they rely heavily on the idea that psychology is a study of variables. MOVING BEYOND VARIABLES: PSYCHOLOGY FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE Data driven psychology is no longer acceptable as a universal discipline because there is a failure to include cultural others. The dependence on variables that have been established along the course of advancement of quantitative statistical studies have become reified, and there is little attempt to questions their existence. Western psychology as it is taught, practiced and publicized is, in fact, a local science. Looking towards other cultural traditions can provide an important insight into other ways of looking at human nature. Despite a range of scholarship on Indian indigenous sources, there has been a failure in the attempt to upload these ideas to a global platform and the resistance for this comes from internal as well as external sources. To be fully aware of the consequences of our decisions and actions, we must question everything, because if it cannot be questioned, it is not science. Practices based on psychological research must be regularly audited: variables, measures, methods, therapies, interventions. We will do well, therefore, to expand the lens, view culture/context as constitutive, accept multiple solutions not singular models and democratize the research process. To make changes, perhaps we must work like “detectives to first discover key ideas behind well-referenced discourse flow of persuasive rhetoric” where theoretical arguments have become replaced with “links with literature” (Valsiner, 2019, p. 431). We must find strategies to join the movement towards a collaborative and comprehensive science of human psychology. Such endeavors are not merely new emergent branches of the field but consist of an enterprise to position research in ways that are adequate and appropriate for studying complex and changing aspects of human phenomena by breaking away from the axioms of the physical sciences (Valsiner, 2019) and the hegemony of mainstream psychology.

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Essentially, in the deconstruction lies the construal of phenomena. While variables are isolating of human psychological phenomena, breaking these up into theirs constituent parts, human experience and behaviour in real time and space are on a continuum and their discrete parts are neither seen nor recognized to be critical in everyday life. Research that goes beyond the isolating variable can claim to have got a glimpse of the seamless human phenomena. We must remain true to the micro narratives of cultures as we thread together our search for meaning, even as we are guided by and eventually aim at constructing the grand narrative of human life. The variable joyride has brought us to the place where we stand, and its critical use and disuse will only take us further. Research must take this brave plunge, discarding the comfort of the known-till-now and the familiar, for uncharted territories of human developmental and cultural phenomena that beckon. REFERENCES Anandalakshmy, S. (1974). How independent is the independent variable: Problems and perspectives from New Delhi. In L. M. Dawson & W. J. Lonner (Eds.), Readings in cross-cultural psychology. Proceedings of the IACCP conference, 1972. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Anandalakshmy, S. (2008). How independent is the independent variable? In S. Anandalakshmy, N. Chaudharym & N. Sharma (Eds.), Researching families and children: Culturally appropriate methods. (pp. 7–16). Sage. Aptekar, L., & Stöklin, D. (1997). Children in particularly difficult circumstances. In J. W. Berry, P. R. Dasen, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology, Vol. 2. Basic processes and human development. (pp. 377–412). Allyn & Bacon. Bilimoria, P. (1993). Pramāṇa epistemology: Some recent developments. In G. Fløistad (Ed.), Asian philosophy. Contemporary philosophy (A new survey) (vol 7). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2510-9_7 Burgess, E. W. (1929). Basic social data. In T. V. Smith & I. D. White (Eds.), Chicago: An experiment in social science research (pp. 47–66). University of Chicago Press. Burman, E. (1994). Deconstructing developmental psychology. Routledge. Chaudhary, N. (2013). Parent beliefs, socialization practices and children’s development in Indian families: A Report. University Grants Commission. Chaudhary, N. (2018). Cross-cultural psychology as a solution to global inequality: Optimism, overconfidence or naiveté? An invited commentary on ‘The Positive Role of Culture: What Cross-Cultural Psychology Has to Offer to Developmental Aid Effectiveness Research’, By Symen A. Brouwers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(4), 535–544. Chaudhary, N., & Bhargava, P. (2006). Mamta: The transformation of meaning in everyday usage. Contributions to Indian sociology, 40(3), 343–373. doi:10.1177/006996670604000303 Chaudhary, N., & Sriram, S. (2020). Psychology in the backyards of the world: Experiences from India. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 51(2), 113–133. Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How Psychology found its language. Sage.

Variables as Obstacles to Psychological Science • 19 Danziger, K., & Dzinas, K. (1997). How psychology got its variables. Canadian Psychology, 38(1), 43–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0708-5591.38.1.43 Devy, G. N. (2014). The being of bhasha: A general introduction. Orient BlackSwan. During, S. (1991). New historicism. Text and Performance Quarterly, 11(3), 171–189. Fannon, F. (1952/1967). Black skin, white masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). Grove Press. Hampden-Turner, C. (1982). Maps of the mind. Macmillian. Henrich, J. (2020). The weirdest people in the world: How the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. Allen Lane. Henrich, J., Heine, H. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. Jahoda, G. (1995). The ancestry of a model. Culture & Psychology, 1, 11–24. Kagan, J. (2012). Psychology’s ghosts. The crisis in the profession and the way back. Yale University Press. Keller, H. (2013). Attachment and culture. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 44(2), 175–194. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022112472253 Keller, H., & Chaudhary, N. (2017). Is the mother essential for attachment: Models of care in different cultures. In, H. Keller & K. Bard (Eds.), Contextualizing attachment: The cultural nature of attachment. M.I.T. Press. Kirpal, V. (2021). An equal chance? The Hindu. October 16, 2021. doi: An equal chance?— The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/an-equal-chance/article37018500.ece Mandler, G., Mandler, J. M., & Uviller, E. T. (1958). Auto nomic feedback: The perception of autonomic activity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 56, 367–373. Misra, G., & Paranjpe, A. (2012). Psychology in modern India. In, R. W. Rieber (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the history of psychological theories (pp. 881–892). Springer on-line. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_422 Mohanty, A. (2006). Multilingualism of the unequals and predicaments of education in India: Mother tongue or other tongue? In O. Garcia, T. Skutnabb-Kangas, & M. Torres-Guzman (Eds.), Imagining multi-lingual schools: Languages in education and glocalisation. (pp. 262–283). Multilingual Matters. Nandy, A. (1974). The non-paradigmatic crisis in Indian psychology: Reflections on a recipient culture science. Indian Journal of Psychology, 49, 1–20. Nandy, A. (1984). Reconstructing childhood: A critique of the ideology of adulthood. Alternatives, 10(3), 359–375. Nandy, A. (1987). Cultural frames for social transformation: A credo. Alternatives: Global, Local and Political, 12, 113–123. https://doi.org/10.1177/030437548701200105 Oppong, S. (2019). Overcoming obstacles to a truly global psychological theory, research, and praxis in Africa. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 29(4), 292–300. doi:10.1080 /14330237.2019.1647497 Paranjpe, A. (2002). Self and identity in modern psychology and Indian thought. Springer. Ramaprasad, D. (2013). Emotions: An Indian perspective. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 55(2), 153–156. Rich, K. R. (2010). Dreaming in Hindi: Coming awake in another language. Tranquebar. Scheidecker, G., Oppong, S., Chaudhary, N., & Keller, H. (2021). How overstated scientific claims undermine ethical principles in parenting interventions. British Medical Journal Global Health, 6, e007323. DOI: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021- 007323

20  •  NANDITA CHAUDHARY, MILA TULI, & PUNYA PILLAI Scribner, S. (1976). Situating the experiment in cross-cultural research. In K. E. Reigel & G. A. Meacham (Eds.), The developing individual in a changing world. Merton. Serpell, R. (2019). Introduction to the special section by the guest editor. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 29(4), 289–29. DOI:10.1080/14330237.2019.1654202 Sinha, D. (1990) Concept of psychological well-being: Western and Indian perspectives. National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences. Journal, 8, 1–11. Srivastava, A. K., & Misra, G. (2007). Rethinking Intelligence: Conceptualizing human intelligence in cultural context. Concept. Sternberg, R. (2019). Time bomb: How the Western conception of intelligence is taking down humanity. SRCD Keynote, Baltimore, 22nd March, 2019, SRCD. Tyler, S. (2021). White freedom: The history of an idea. Princeton University Press. Valsiner, J. (2000). Data as representations: contextualizing qualitative and quantitative research strategies. Social Science Information, 39(1), 99–113. Valsiner, J. (2019). Culture & Psychology: 25 constructive years. Culture and Psychology, 25(4), 429–469. Valsiner, J., & Van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind: Construction of the idea. Cambridge University Press. Walker, M. (1929). Studies in the history of statistical method. Williams & Wilkins Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding cultures through their key words. Oxford University Press. Wuthnow, R., Hunter, J. D., Bergesen, A., & Kurzweil, E. (1984). Cultural analysis: The work of Pepter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michael Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

CHAPTER 2

A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ORDINARY A First Theoretical Sketch Bo Allesøe Christensen Aalborg University

In this chapter I aim to delineate a focus on the ordinary as an important concept for a psychology not in the spell of variables. It traces the idea back to the ordinary language philosophers in the mid-20th century, and its development in Harré and Secord’s classic book on social behaviour and in the ensuing reception of ordinary language philosophy. The chapter ends with an example of two ways of understanding the notion of “other minds” showing that a psychology based on ordinary language philosophy must tie concepts to experiences, as psychological expressions are not only something people live with but live in. On the website for a forthcoming book by the American psychiatrist Daniel Barron, the psychology for the 21st century is described in the following way1: Reading Our Minds takes us to a psychiatric hospital, where Barron evaluates a young woman with psychosis, and shows how his exam is limited by his own ability to ask questions and observe, and by his patient’s ability to sense, interpret, and 1

https://www.harvard.com/book/reading_our_minds/

Farewell to Variables, pages 21–43. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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22 • BO ALLESØE CHRISTENSEN report her experience. Barron shows why psychiatry must move beyond conversation—and how sensors, measurements, and algorithms might progress psychiatric practice. At once pioneering and engaging, Reading Our Minds introduces readers to the Big Data technologies that might revolutionize the way we evaluate, diagnose, and treat mental illness and bring psychiatry firmly into the fold of 21st-century medical science.

Despite the obvious reservations about our possibility of attributing meaning to a book not yet published, this brief description is still instructive when it comes to understanding certain strands of contemporary psychology. What seems terrifying, and disregarding the psychiatrist’s questioning of his own abilities, is moving beyond human conversation, and using sensors, and algorithms, i.e. big data technologies, for diagnosing and treating people. Why is the conversation not working? It seems it is limited by possibilities of expressions, either by questioning or reporting. But we are not told whether efforts developing the conversation or new means of expression was initiated. Instead, technological means are presented as the solution, leaving us with the question of why machines will do a better job understanding patients than developing new methods or theories of therapeutic conversation? Now, compare this to the description of another book2, this time by an anthropologist, Veena Das, investigating victims and survivors of violent riots in India. In a major departure from much anthropological inquiry, Das asks how this violence has entered “the recesses of the ordinary” instead of viewing it as an interruption of life to which we simply bear witness. Das engages with anthropological work on collective violence, rumor, sectarian conflict, new kinship, and state and bureaucracy as she embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of the relations among violence, gender, and subjectivity.

Das has emphasized in her work with survivors of riots (leaving severe mental effects), that life is recovered not by appealing to the realm of the transcendent but through a descent into the ordinary. She ties this to the possibilities of expression, of using words as manifesting voice as that which gives life or animates words. She describes how the survivors try to reinhabit the world, making it their own by finding a voice both inside and outside the different means of expression, the genres, available for a descent. Sometimes these survivors succeeded, while other times they became voiceless, not in the sense of not having any words, but the words were frozen, without life and emptied of any experience. The juxtaposition gives us two highly different versions of understanding humans and their psychology. One by developing a sensitivity towards the everyday of people, the other by disclaiming the conversation (therapeutic, ordinary, human?) trying to replace it (or most of it) by technologies analyzing humans as the 21st century everyday psychiatry. The former showing a sensibility towards 2

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520247451/life-and-words

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the complex but concrete psychological lives of people, the latter representing an abstract and technologized understanding of human psychology. In this chapter, I will discuss abstract versus concrete understandings of the psychological human being. My focus will be on a less addressed way of thinking about psychology, namely by exploring the concept of the ordinary as the background against which the abstract and concrete makes sense. Let us use a text from the history of philosophy to present a first departure of this. In Hegel’s beautiful little text, Who thinks abstractly, the who is anyone emphasizing one attribute of a person, and claiming this attribute as the essence of this person. Here is one of Hegel’s examples: A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something not much better! This is the corruption of morals that is prevalent in the upper classes, a priest may add, knowing the bottom of things and human hearts. (Hegel, 1989, p. 116)

The different perspectives taken on the murderer are all possible due to processes of abstraction, of elevating different traits of the murderer at the expense of others. Abstract thinking, according to Hegel, moves on many levels here—the populace versus the murderer, the ladies versus the handsome murderer, the populace versus the ladies, the priest versus the upper class—hence implicitly the scientists and contemporaries of Hegel. Now, one could think that what these “whos” are missing is learning to contextualize, or concretize, as Hegel puts it. Because after the above quote Hegel claims that the one who knows …traces the development of the criminal’s mind: he finds in his history, in his education, a bad family relationship between his father and mother, some tremendous harshness after this human being had done some minor wrong, so he became embittered against the social order—a first reaction to this that in effect expelled him and henceforth did not make it possible for him to preserve himself except through crime. (ibid.)

However, claiming that Hegel is thus replacing the abstraction with a sole focus on concretizing would be missing his point, for he is not aiming at replacing one hypostatization (the abstraction) with another kind of objectification (pure contextualization). The point of appealing to the development of the criminal’s mind and its connection with his personal and social history, is reminding us of the complexities in relating the concrete and abstract. Hence, if we focus on the abstract, “he is a murderer,” we need to qualify this by understanding this particular “he” becoming a murderer. But also, if we focus on the particular action of this individual, we realize certain abstract distinctions are already in place helping to qualify and sometimes disqualify judgments. Hegel is not making an excuse for

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the murderer—it is still a fact he is a murderer—but he refuses to let this fact annul all other distinctions—like being handsome—capable of being asserted about this human being. It is saying there is nothing extra-ordinary in this: high and low, common people and scientists are all metaphysicians making distinctions, judging, asserting, acknowledging, and sometimes refusing to acknowledge what is human in a human being. It is this relation between knowing someone and acknowledging this person as well I will try to describe in the following. INSIGHTS FROM ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY The aim here is developing psychological thinking by appealing to the ordinary, how psychology in a post-positivist and post-experimental sense can benefit from considerations on and from the ordinary. The idea is, that any question of psychological sense is not truly separable, not even theoretically, from the question of how we relate to others and conduct ourselves in relation to them. It makes sense only when it is sensible, i.e. attuning to a life form we might share or can share, and acknowledging that what we say or do, is dependent upon that life form. This dependence, furthermore, makes our sense making practices vulnerable—because any meaning making is not up to us to acknowledge, we are dependent upon the world and others to make sense, and not necessarily others we agree with. Hence, the ordinary is not the same as everydayness if we by that imply the common, a shared web of beliefs. Everydayness can, of course, be said to be part of the ordinary, but not the other way around. As Laugier expresses it The ordinary does not exactly mean the common. We no more know what is common than what is ordinary to us: it is not determined by a web of beliefs or shared dispositions. (Laugier, 2018, p. 278)

Unlike the everydayness—perhaps akin to the lifeworld—and not a reservoir of common shared meaning, it is rather a recognition that meaning is always up for grasps, that, according to Laugier (ibid.), the ordinary is always a source of anxiety to the validity of what we say and do. We will pinpoint the ordinary more in the following. The people doing abstract thinking, as shown in Hegel’s example, therefore fail to acknowledge their own vulnerability—as seeing the murderer as a person with a history, one they might know, be related to, or perhaps asking how they will react if put in the same situation—rendering themselves unintelligible thereby. Unintelligible, but still understandable, in the sense of failing to manifest an understanding of fellow human beings as minded and telling beings—as psychological creatures. From this point of view, we might say, dealing with psychological puzzlements benefit more from developing a sensitivity towards actual occasions where what is at issue is expressed, than retreating to either a theoretical safe haven building

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speculative castles in the sky or doing quantitative studies. One tradition picking up on developing a sensitivity towards occasions, is the ordinary language philosophy (OLP) in the middle of the 20th century, and some of its modern protagonists. I am thinking here of L. Wittgenstein (2009), J. Austin, G. Ryle (1949), and P. Strawson (2004) and recent development in authors like Stanley Cavell, Sandra Laugier, Charles Travis and Veena Das (to mention a few). One person, arguably part of both the earlier and later tradition, is Rom Harré. Being a student of both Austin and Ryle, and one of the first to introduce Wittgenstein as an important interlocutor in psychology. Harré’s development of new approaches to psychology—perhaps most widespread is positioning theory—is inheriting many ideas from OLP. In the following I will therefore start out with tracing Harré’s critique of variables, both in his work with Paul Secord and later. As we will see, Harré argues explicitly by appealing to our ordinary language and its capacity to provide us with understandings of psychological concepts. This idea, part of OLP, served as part of the background for the later development of positioning theory, as well as other ways of inheriting the OLP tradition which will be touched upon next. Lastly, I will give an example of how OLP can be used to understand the concept of “other minds,” first in Austin and then developed additionally in Cavell. HARRÉ AND THE CRITIQUE OF VARIABLES: THE MECHANICAL MODEL OF MAN AND CONCEPTUAL NAIVETY Harré and Secord’s classic on social psychology (Harré & Secord, 1972) contains several insights forgotten or perhaps ignored by much contemporary psychology. For the purpose here, two points will be emphasised. The first point asks about the adequacy of the “model” of the human being we base our psychological investigations on, the second whether the meaning of the central concepts we use in describing psychological states are thoroughly understood. Harré and Secord describe what they take as the shortcomings of psychology anno 1972 as consisting of three fundamental ideas. These ideas serve as the background of the experimental psychology, Harré and Secord want to argue against and replace with a new conception of psychology. These three ideas are, “…a mechanistic model of man, a Humean conception of cause that places stress on external stimuli, and a related methodology based upon the logical and epistemological theories of logical positivism.” (1972, p. 29). At the time, the more a given behavioral science tried to fit itself to these ideas, the more of a “real” science it was taken to be. Obviously this exemplifies scientism, reducing humans to a question of mechanism, excluding any sense of normativity for a focus on (a simplified view of) causes, adopting the myth of the “neutral observer” as the dominant scientific attitude and relegating qualitative studies as non-scientific. Behind the mechanical

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model of man lies a view trying to understand “…subjects as mechanism that, like less complex physical objects, respond to the push and pull of forces exerted by the experimenter or the environment.” (Harré & Secord, 1972, pp. 30–31) In other words, people are treated like objects passively affected by their surroundings. The push and pull of forces alluded to in the quote is where the Humean notion of cause comes in. Causation is here the regular sequence of one kind of event and another which usually follows: “Hume thought of causation as essentially a statistical relation between independent events, analyzable in terms of the constant conjunction of pairs of events, one of each kind, under varying conditions and circumstances.” (Harré & Secord, 1972, p. 31). All psychological factors can thereby be explained as caused by certain kinds of event, all one needs is to find out which kind. Perceptions, desires, motives etc., can all be explained by their causally antecedent conditions, and as Harré and Secord claims, this is a “…picture of the human actor as a helpless spectator carried along on the flood tide of physical causes.” (ibid., p. 32) Figuring out the exact antecedent conditions providing a cause, demands a method capable of investigating this. The two first ideas here put severe ontological and epistemological constraints on what kind of method is suitable: it must be capable of viewing people as mechanical and gain knowledge by explaining how people’s reactions were effects of previous causes. For Harré and Secord a first description of this method implied analyzing psychological phenomena …into dependent and independent variables, and the investigation then consist in the manipulation of the independent variable and the observation and correlation of the subsequent changes in the dependent variable or variables. (Harré & Secord, 1972, p. 30)

Though this is a description of the prevalent experimental practice in psychology at the time, it is pretty much the same idea of seeking causal explanations through manipulation (experimental as well as statistical), while still recognizing the experimental or statistical uncertainty, that we deal with today. Now, for Harré and Secord claimed this method was based on a logical positivist metaphysics, and specifically its criterion of meaning as tied to scientific language: This amounted to the idea that the meaning of the terms appearing in science is given by the way the statements in which they figure could be verified. Ordinary language was viewed as unfit for scientific use, and attempts were made to develop systems of concepts, satisfying these principles, that would be appropriate for science. (1972, p. 32)

As is well-known, the logical positivists’s ideal language for use in science consisted of terms corresponding to observational facts, with the observing of these facts based on a crude empiricist sense-data epistemology. In short, observational

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facts was to be put in language which could be verified. This, of course, is part of the story leading to behaviorism. Now, what we need to notice here, is the conception of a right way (language) of describing or explaining the scientific phenomena but which cannot consist of ordinary language because it is imprecise and vague, and hence cannot be operationalised in the positivist sense. Now many different criticisms have been made of the three characteristics of psychology above. I want to single out one critical point by Harré and Secord, namely that it amounts to an exaggerated emphasis on empirical data at the expense of conceptualisation. This misplaced emphasis stems from the point just described about language and verification. For verification to take place within this crude observational empiricism, operational definitions of the central terms were to be made. This meant that conceptualizations and theories were understood merely as organizational tools. But, …the fact is that operations can never be a substitute for the concepts to which they are related. They can relate to them only in some specified fashion that leaves the one conceptually independent of the other. (Harré & Secord, 1972, pp. 36–37)

Here the conceptual naivety occurs, for thinking that concepts can be exhaustively understood by operationalizing them, is misunderstanding how concepts are interwoven with many other concepts and in many different situations3. FROM THE MECHANISTIC MODEL TO AGENCY For Harré and Secord the mechanistic model of humans cannot be all there is to say. No scientist would deny that the mechanistic framework occasionally can be used for describing what is happening, “…like when things happen to a person, which are not part of his ongoing, self-determined pattern of actions.” (ibid., p. 39) A self-determined pattern of actions is a way of claiming that people are not primarily passive, but active agents in their own and others’ lives. Things don’t just happen to people. People make things happen, things matter to people: they are significant, meaningful, and occur in a social and not only a natural/causal context. Hence, what we do is “…inextricably bound up with the nature and limits of language and with the fabric of society.” (ibid.) The conceptual naivety is exemplified by Harré and Secord as action not captured by understanding it as a reaction, a response due to some stimuli, but as intentional, i.e. tied up in a field of meaning involving considerations about what it means to do the action in a right 3

Compare Wittgenstein in PI§372 “The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by its being a “young science”; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather, with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology, there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case, conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think that we have the means of getting rid of the problems which trouble us; but problem and method pass one another by.”

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or wrong way. We are asked to compare the following two sentences: “His arm extended straight out of the car window” and “He signaled a left turn.” The former describes what seems like a regular movement, the latter makes it an action, the point being that “…when we describe actions in terms of movements, we lose the real significance of the action as part of human social life.” (ibid.) Again, the point is not that we cannot use or imagine a situation where the first sentence is used (as a macabre example, think “Come again, how did he break his arm on the signal pole?”). The point is that we are wrong if we think this kind of description can serve as a neutral description or essence of the action of putting your arm out of the car window. Describing and understand the meaning of an action is relating it to one or more occasions in which this action occurs. So, conceptual naivety means “… failure to appreciate the immense complexity of the concepts involved…” (ibid., p. 45), and to do appreciate this immense complexity we need to turn to ordinary language, or better ordinary meaning making. Both as a way of making sense of the psychological phenomena we wish to describe and analyse and acting as a foil for developing our conceptions and theories4. From this brief description we can already see some of the concepts which will be incorporated in Harré and collaborators’ development of positioning theory. Attention to language in use means a focus on the concreteness of speakers (the positioning), understanding language as intentional and not a causal matter of stimulus-response (the normativity of positions, i.e. they are connected to considerations of right/wrong and not truth/false), and the use of language understood as a conversation between people (the narrative dimension). This is no surprise, because Harré and Secord’s arguments against the conceptual naivety of logical positivism and for analysis of ordinary language, has a background in OLP. ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY (OLP): A HISTORY IN THREE PHASES The usual depiction of OLP describes it as a movement occurring as a reaction against the prevailing mathematical-logical orientation of the predominant part of European philosophy at the beginning of 20th century. It established itself in the 30s in Great Britain, in Cambridge and Oxford, and was the main attraction within philosophy until the middle of the 60s where it evaporates as quickly as it began. 4

It needs to be stressed here, that this is not an argument for some sort of naïve common-sense realism as in dogmatic common-sense realism versus an enlightened scientific conception. As Hacker claims “It is rather a matter of clarifying the conceptual connections between certain scientific descriptions and explanations of phenomena and the description of the data explained, hence a matter for philosophical investigation and argument” (Hacker, 1996, p. 238). Understood this way, as Hacker points out, then it is far from obvious that a scientific view on the world is coherent, and if coherent incompatible with our ordinary descriptions.

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Often, it is claimed, the disappearance was due to a few figures like Ernst Gellner and Paul Grice attacking its foundations vehemently (Soames, 2003). This description tends to overlook the internal differences between people categorized as OL philosophers, since none of these understood themselves as part of a unified group or movement. As Crary and de Lara (2019, p. 332) remarks, “G. J. Warnock once reflected that ‘being an ordinary language philosopher seems always to have been something of which one was accused, rather than something which one claimed.” Furthermore, it downplays the continuing influence the movement had and still have. One trajectory of which we have already touched upon, namely Harré’s development of the ethogenic approach and later positioning theory within social psychology. In the following I will—against the prevalent depiction just sketched—briefly describe what I take to be several phases in the development of OLP including some of the internal differences between the protagonists. Phase One: Against Positivism and Ideal Language The first phase of OLP was marked by its arguments against and distance to a view contemporary with the beginning of OLP, namely the early days of analytical philosophy and the development of logical positivism. The idea was that an ideal language for representing the world was needed because ordinary language was considered too vague and misleading in fulfilling this representing function. Briefly put—and proposed by the “fathers” of analytical philosophy, Frege, Moore, Russell—a method for analyzing or rewriting and thereby clarifying philosophical problematic terms was needed, and symbolic logic could fulfil this purpose. Initially used for structuring arguments, this kind of logic was now seen as being useful for structuring natural language as well, bringing out the logical form of sentences, i.e. the structure of a given sentence in terms of which it represents the world in a “true” manner. Thus, beneath the surface grammar of ordinary propositions were logical forms which could be brought out and presented in an ideal (symbolic) language. The hope was, then, that using this ideal language we would be able to analyse, or “rewrite” all ordinary propositions in a way dispensing with the vague and misleading character of ordinary language and thus be able to tell when propositions were really true or not (Parker-Ryan, 2012). This was the main idea behind attempts to work out an ideal language, be it Russell’s theory of descriptions, the picture theory in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus or the logical positivists attempts for creating an ideal version of language based on the principle of verification5. 5

This, of course, is what following Rorty (1962) has been termed the linguistic turn, i.e. that addressing problems we need to turn to analysis of the language in which these problems occur. I would like to underscore, that in the OLP the attention to language implies attention to the context of and the occasions for the use of this language as well. Hence, the attention given to language is broader than the linguistic analysis connected with Frege, Russell and Moore. However, OLP might still be prone to focus too exclusively on vocalized or verbalized language/speech. Thus, there is a need to understand the linguistic turn—if one still wants to call it linguistic—as involving all our symbolic

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This idea of an ideal language is the critical point of departure for the OLP. Instead of an ideal language, OLP aimed at resolving confusion by paying more attention to how language was used and, in this process, a greater understanding of people and the world they are part of would occur (for a recent attempt to argue against Ideal language, see Beaver & Stanley, 2019). However, instead of claiming that one could solve problems by looking at ordinary language, the idea was rather that one could get a sense of why this occurred as a problem in the first place and answering this often would lead to the dissolution of the self-same problem (e.g., Wisdom, 1936). In other words, the interest revolved around understanding why something was claimed to be a problem or a relevant question, rather than providing solutions or answers to these. Roughly, then, the early phase aimed at replacing the notion of addressing problems by formalizing them, with a focus on the use of language as the best way to understand any given problem. Thus, it is no surprise that this early phase is related to Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge in the beginning of 1930s and the circle of students and friends connected with and influenced by him (e.g., John Wisdom, Norman Malcolm, Alice Ambrose and Morris Lazerowits) and the beginning of his work away from the Tractatus towards the Philosophical Investigations. Phase Two: Classic OLP The second phase consists in developing specific versions of OLP and often with the protagonists, including the later Wittgenstein, John Austin, Gilbert Ryle, and Peter Strawson, in disagreement with one another. However, we can bring out some commonalities using Parker-Ryan (2012), Baz (2016) and Crary and de Lara (2019). First of all, and following Crary and de Lara (2019, p. 320) we might ask whether the knowledge produced by OLP isn’t a case of what in contemporary epistemology is termed epistemic contextualism, i.e. that whether a proposition qualifies as knowledge depends on the context in which it is uttered. If we understand the piece of knowledge as “…knowledge is a state that consists in some kind of relation between a subject and some fact such that, whatever else additionally she may be doing in producing sentences such as “I know that...,” she is invariably representing this relation.” (ibid), then this is not OLP. For the point of claiming “I know,” might as well be to reassure, acknowledge, or protest against something, and not only claiming to know some fact. Presenting knowledge expressed in sentences as a relation between a person and some fact, borders therefore on idealizing one use of language at the cost of all others. As Austin claims, behaviour (Wittgenstein hints at it when he uses gestures as examples). We might express it in the following way, that our conceptuality is not exhausted by our linguistic capacities. In this sense, the linguistic turn has more to do with accepting that our means of expression generically influences our ways of thinking about a meaningful but inexhaustible reality. Analyzing ordinary language would therefore imply analyzing all the means of expression we use in making ourselves and the surroundings meaningful to ourselves and others.

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overlooking these other possibilities for understanding how we use “know” in claims is a descriptive fallacy, namely disregarding as unimportant that …many specially perplexing words embedded in apparently descriptive statements do not serve to indicate some specially odd additional feature on the reality reported, but to indicate (not to report) the circumstances in which the statement is made or reservations to which it is subject or the way in which it is to be taken and the like. (Austin, 1962, p. 3)

So, describing the use of claims involving (psychological) knowledge presents us with a much more nuanced understanding of what is at stake. Second, many critics of OLP (Gellner, 1959; Nyiri, 1982) have understood the turn to the ordinary and phrases like our theoretical capacities ought to “leave everything as it is” as a form of conservatism, leaving no room for rational scrutiny. When we are involved only in passive description of uses of concepts, then implicitly we are accepting whatever affair it is we are describing. Several interconnected themes are to be untangled here. First, as Crary (2018) has argued this is not a negation of rational scrutiny, but we must see it in the proper fashion. For Crary OLP is instead widely rational in the sense that analyzing uses of concepts …are capable of serving as “guides to human action” in that they both reveal to the agents who hold them “what their true interests are” and emancipate agents in the sense of free[ing them] from a kind of coercion which is at least partly self-imposed. (Crary, 2018, p. 12)

Hence, OLP reminds us of aspects of our life and world, aspects we have not seen clearly or noticed before, because certain theoretical commitments and ambitions have blocked our view of them. We force our words and concepts on the world, instead of letting the circumstances we engage in illuminate our theoretical stances. In the words of Baz, “We need to be brought to re-turn to those aspects and features of our life with words in order to see them clearly.” (2016, p. 120). Hence, for OLP the focus is not only on the world we try to make sense of, it is simultaneously focusing on the world as something we make sense in. Hence, analysis and change go together, we might say. The knowledge we achieve analytically is not only a representation of the world, but serves as a guide, a presentation, for change in the world. Second, since the aim is more of an elucidation of being clear of why certain problems or questions present themselves to us, OLP will claim that what we need is not necessarily more answers in the form of theses or theories. Theories tend to simplify the complex relationship we have with the world and the symbolic articulations of this relationship, and often essentialize central concepts as having reified meanings across different contexts and situations. Part of what often gets us in trouble in the first place, is holding on to the a priori status of certain theories and concepts without rationally scrutinizing or critically analyzing, whether that

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is how they are used or can be used in the cases investigated. Thus, theorizing can lead us to get lost with the words and concepts we use. As Baz claims That we can sometimes get lost with our words, and that appeal to the ordinary and normal use of words can help us find our way again, or find that we have no clear way, is part of normal practice, part of what any theory would need to explain. (2016, p. 126)

Instead of understanding theorization as some process of generalization or abstraction, we might instead claim that OLP wants us scrutinizing the fine discriminations and judging already made in our ordinary language and behaviour—how our theoretical capabilities are working implicitly or immanently within our lives. Let us turn to the third overall characteristic which is also a case of how theorizing can get us into trouble. OLP is often attributed the thesis “meaning is use,” epitomized in Austin’s book How to do things with words, but as we will see this is not to be understood as a use theory of meaning. Third, what OLP claims, when the connection between meaning and use is emphasized, is not a matter of proposing a thesis or theory explaining how our use of words (or more generally symbols) somehow determines what we mean by them. The idea is not that by connecting different words or concepts with different contexts, we can then get an overview of how these words or concepts are used. Rather it is pointing to our sensibility in “language.” As Crary and de Lara claims what OLP want us to do is: …to attend to the use we make of words because they want us to register that, in trafficking in language, we inevitably draw on our sense of the importance of similarities that tie new contexts in which words are used to older contexts of their employment. Their thought is that we ourselves are thus implicated in every step of thought and speech. (Crary & de Lara, 2019, p. 321)

So, the use in question is not something we propose and then investigate how it is empirically with how people use words, i.e. what words people tend to use under what types of objectively defined circumstances. Rather, the use in question is normative: it refers to what people achieve by using words. Thus, the significance of the use of words and concepts is not whether they represent or refer to a contextualized world truthfully or not. The significance has more to do with whether this achievement was in vain or not, whether the work we want our words to do failed or not. In the words of Austin: Ordinary language breaks down in extraordinary cases. (In such cases, the cause of the breakdown is semantical.) Now no doubt an ideal language would not break down, whatever happened. In doing physics, for example, where our language is tightened up in order precisely to describe complicated and unusual cases concisely, we prepare linguistically for the worst. In ordinary language we do not: words fail

A Psychology of the Ordinary • 33 us. If we talk as though an ordinary must be like an ideal language, we shall misrepresent the facts. (1979, p. 36)

Note here, that Austin is not claiming that one cannot operate with an idealized language, only it cannot be used on all kinds of language use. Baz sums it up as “The OLPer’s appeal to use is best understood, not as an assertion of empirical fact…but rather as an invitation to her audience…to see whether they share her sense of what makes (what) sense and under what conditions.” (2016, p. 121— original italics) The invitation, thus, is an invitation to understand our life with words and concepts, with how we use psychological concepts and words to express, claim, state etc. something about ourselves and others as minded beings, and whether our use is successful or not. The idea that meaning is connected to use understood here, is not one of describing the use of words and concepts as a matter of following rules (e.g., Kripke, 1982; McDowell, 1984), for example learning grammatical and social rules for expressing pain behavior. As Wittgenstein claimed our word use “is not everywhere bounded by rules” (PI§68), understood as a rule or norm determinism. Rather, he was thereby emphasizing the intelligibility of creative extensions of uses from one context to another (e.g., expressing pain for being allowed to skip school). We cannot, therefore, understand meaning as use in contractual terms, that a particular meaning obliges us to use the word in a certain way only—when you grasp the meaning of “pain” then you use it to refer to pain and not pleasure. Word and conceptual meaning are both reproductive and creative. Hence, there is always the possibility that the meaning is lost, that we fail to establish meaning. Our ordinary psychological claims, then, are not always given but also something to be discovered. However, when we do succeed in establishing meaning then this connects with, as Cavell claims, …our sharing routes of interest and feeling, modes of response, senses of humor and of significance and of fulfillment, of what is outrageous, of what is similar to what else, what a rebuke, what forgiveness, of when an utterance is an assertion, when an appeal, when an explanation— all the whirl of organism Wittgenstein calls “forms of life.” (1969, p. 52)

Hence, while people do live lives of habit, custom, norms and duties, and often know very well what the ordinariness of their lives consists of, accurate descriptions through words and symbols of this ordinariness often elude the people living it. Thus, the ordinary is posed as a question rather than an answer. The sensibility in language, referred to before, is thus an ability to sense (asking for, addressing, pointing towards, expressing silently but also seeing, listening, wording, voicing) the (lack of) humanness in a situation, by understanding or failing to understand the use of psychological expressions (words, concepts, symbols, gestures etc.) as something that matters within human life.

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Phase Three: Expanding OLP The third phase is characterized by bringing discussions of the ordinary away from what seems like narrow (but not irrelevant) philosophical discussions (like discussions of what it means to say “I know”) and using and developing the insights of OLP’ers within different fields like anthropology (Das, 2020), literary studies (Felman, 1983; Moi, 2017), education (Saito & Standish, 2012), performativity studies (e.g., Butler, 2015; Derrida, 1988), and as already mentioned the early ethogenics by Harré and Secord (1972, 84ff), plus the later development of positioning theory. One particular important figure here is Stanley Cavell forming a bridgehead between the second and third phase, writing both about OLP and developing it by extending its focus encompassing studies in Hollywood film, Shakespeare, photography, art and media. We will return to Cavell in a moment. Before that, let us see if we can pinpoint the ordinary and the language (understood broadly as encompassing all kinds of human expressions) it is expressed through, and we can use Moi’s excellent description as an inspiration (Moi, 2017, pp. 161–162). First, a focus on ordinary language is not a focus on achieving a literal or objective description of language “as it really is.” As in positioning theory, the use of language always requires judgment, and reveals both how the world is seen from a particular perspective/position and what interests and values matters for this perspective. Second, by language is not meant a particular language (e.g., creative, scientific, etc.), nor our everyday talk of the town. Hence, it is not to be understood as tied to a specific socioeconomic group, nor as some simplified version of a standard language (like Danish is basically a vocabulary and book of grammatical rules). Ordinary language is “…language that works, language that helps us to draw useful distinctions, carry out tasks, engage fruitfully with others—in short, language as the medium in which we live our lives…” (Moi, 2017, p. 161). Third, there is no opposite ordinary language. When we stop paying attention to the ordinary, we end up in trouble. When we try to abstract away from the ordinary use, focusing for example on meaning of something as essential, language goes—as Wittgenstein remarks—on holiday. Moving from meaning as essence towards meaning in use is giving us a sensitivity for the different kinds of occasions in which language is used. Ordinary language is therefore not opposed to specialist vocabularies like mathematics, physics, nor to the “extraordinary” (which we have quite ordinary criteria for applying as a concept). Specialized vocabularies are also ordinary, they contain words, concepts, distinctions working like other words, concepts and distinctions for the practitioners using these vocabularies. Fourth, ordinary language thus teaches us differences. It teaches us words, concepts, gestures etc., of significance for engaging with the world in different ways. We can be taught these words and concepts by practitioners thereby being initiated into how to discriminate and judge the world as a physicist, or chemist, and eventually be able to use these terms in new contexts as well. But always with the risk of failure, of not being understood. With that let us move on to an example.

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PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ORDINARY, AN EXAMPLE: OTHER MINDS One “problem”—in quotation marks, because OLP would question whether this is actually a problem, and if then for whom and in what this occurs as a problem—occupying philosophy of psychology for a long time, is what is known as the question of other minds. This is interesting not just for historical reasons, but because some of the same arguments can be brought to bear on recent discussions of similar issues, eg. the arguments for and against the theory of mind, and issues in perception of others. As Leudar and Costall (2004, p. 601) for example claim, behind the “problem of other minds” lies a distinction between mind and materiality often connected with Cartesianism: human bodies are in space and operate according to mechanical laws, whereas mind is not in space and its operations are not subject to mechanical laws. The workings of the mind cannot be witnessed by other people, only by the individual mindful person herself. The mind therefore is private, whereas the body is public. Contemporary psychology often presents itself as having left this dualism, but as Leudar and Costall points out, “Yet, even though it explains mind as mechanism and claims to be materialist rather than dualist, it inherits the problem of other minds in distinguishing mind from behaviour and accepting that mental states are private.” (2004, p. 602) Leudar and Costall present a very forceful critique of the Theory of Mind as a solution to the problem of other minds, namely it presupposes the Cartesian dualism when appealing to people’s theorizing as providing an inferential understanding of behaviour as a sign pointing towards hidden structures of the mind. Instead, they notice that “Everyday language use is not Cartesian in the manner of scientific psychology but is instead a practical matter…” (ibid., p. 602), implying thereby that no appeal to theoretical inferences—presenting an over-rationalized and intellectualized picture of the mind—is needed to understand other minds. We can analyse and understand the situations where questions about other minds come up instead. Once again we are therefore reminded of the importance of understanding ordinary language and let us briefly bring out some points from Austin and Cavell on the notion of other minds as a final example. Another way of formulating a consequence of the Cartesianism (and the Theory of Mind) presented by Leudar and Costall is that it still leaves us in the shadows of skepticism. Distinguishing mind from behaviour and understanding mental states as private almost leaves the question “Do we really know that other person” unanswered. Can we be certain, when ascribing a psychological state to another person, that our inference from the person’s overt behaviour to her covert inner state of mind is correct? We will address this question in two steps. First, an oftenused answer will be given to this question exemplified by Austin, and second, we will briefly present some of Cavell’s thoughts on this making it more complex.

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Austin and the Bitterns One much discussed example of addressing how we know other minds, is questioning “How do we know somebody is in pain?.” One predominant way of answering this question, is pointing towards the fulfilment of certain criteria for somebody being in pain. These criteria are normative in the sense that the criteria determine what it counts for understanding somebody to be in pain. Genuine painbehaviour is, for example, expressed by showing teeth while climbing a mountain in Tour de France, a toddler crying out loud upon falling, or a young man being kicked but withholding sound on the football field when in presence of girls. In all these cases, the “ordinary language” (again understood in a broad fashion) present us with criteria for understanding the pain as genuine. Austin (1946) presents a position like this. First, Austin claims that knowing other minds is like knowing things in the world. In both cases, as we will see, the same criteria are tied to the same processes of knowing. Second, Austin emphasises the difference between believing and knowing expressed through our speaking about knowing or believing (1946, p. 46). If a person fails to provide an adequate answer to “How do you know,” we will often claim the person really does not know. But if asked “Why do you believe,” then a failure in answering implies that the person simply ought not to believe, not that the person does not believe. Using “I know” when talking is thus different than “I believe” in the sense that when we claim, “I know” then we imply that we cannot be wrong. ”If I know, I can’t be wrong. You can always show I don’t know by showing I am wrong, or may be wrong, or that I didn’t know by showing that I might have been wrong.” (ibid., p. 47) Based on this distinction Austin goes on to use an example of what it would take for me to know whether a bittern is present in the bottom of the garden. And here he comes up with some basic conditions for claiming to know there is a bittern, I must have: 1. 2. 3. 4.

been trained in an environment where I could become familiar with bitterns had a certain opportunity in the current case learned to recognize or tell bitterns succeeded in recognizing or telling this as a bittern.” (ibid., p. 48)

All these conditions imply, that I am in a position to know about bitterns, and I can recognize one right here and now. I can therefore discriminate generally among things that some are bitterns, and that the particular thing right here in front of me is a bittern. Put epistemologically what we claim to know, it seems according to Austin, is knowledge about both the kind of thing in question as well as the specific thing in question. Thus, similar to a classificatory distinction between types and tokens, it implies being able to tell whether anything is of this or that type, and whether this specific kind is a token of this or that kind. Hence, to know is to be experienced and being able to tell in particular circumstances based on this experience. We can of course be wrong in particular tellings of whether the bird

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in question actually is a bittern, but “…we are often right to say we know even in cases where we turn out subsequently to have been mistaken and indeed we seem always, or practically always, liable to be mistaken.” (ibid., p. 66) What Austin is trying to articulate here, it seems, is that despite being wrong we claim we know because we can list a number of reasons for us to know this is a bittern (I might be wrong in this particular instance but it makes no sense to say I am generally wrong) but sometimes reality is just not on our side. As he writes a little later, ”It is naturally always possible (‘humanly’ possible) that I may be mistaken or may break my word, but that by itself is no bar against using the expressions ‘I know’ and ‘I promise’ as we do in fact use them.” (Austin, 1946, p. 66) Austin’s point is, then, that the same kind of relationship between experience and acumen applies to persons we claim to know. Our knowledge of the particular state a person is in, …depends on how familiar we have been in our past experience with this type of person, and indeed with this individual, in this type of situation. If we have no great familiarity, then we hesitate to say we know: indeed, we can’t be expected to say (tell). On the other hand, if we have had the necessary experience, then we can, in favorable current circumstances, say we know: we certainly can recognize when some near relative of ours is angrier than we have ever seen him. (ibid., p. 72)

Despite this being an application of the epistemological distinction described above, types of people and situations and the familiarity with particular persons we know, we might think that our uncertainty is greater in cases involving persons. That we are more liable to make mistakes here, and doubt whether we really understand other minds. Austin (1946, p. 80) list three doubts which might arise, first, when someone might deceive us, pretending to have pain when not really. Second, when misunderstandings occur between people, and third, we might worry whether some action of another person is deliberate or only involuntary. However, as Austin notes when cases like this occur, “There are (more or less roughly) established procedures for dealing with suspected cases of deception or of misunderstanding or of inadvertence.” (1946, p. 80). Hence, procedures for dealing with these kinds of doubt or skepticism is a natural part of the way we ordinarily understand each other. We therefore withhold endorsements until we are sure or set up “tests,” for example to make sure children are not pretending to be sick so they can stay at home and play games. So, for Austin there is no suggestion that we never know what people’s emotions or thoughts are, nor that in particular cases we “…might be wrong for no special reason or no special way.” (1946, p. 81) As Leudar and Costall (2004, p. 602) claim Austin analyzed the problem of other minds and shrewdly set it aside. Knowing, failing to know and doubting each other’s minds are just regular features of our ordinary practices without any extraordinariness attached to them. They happen. Often without any need for justifications, but sometimes justifica-

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tions and explanations are called for, but still as a regular feature of an ordinary practice. Cavell and the Wince Now, Stanley Cavell agrees very much with Austin’s analysis, but he is also developing it. And I will here present one such developmental trajectory in three steps. First, Cavell notices a difference between Austin and Wittgenstein’s respective ways of thinking about criteria (of what it means to know some other mind). In Cavell’s interpretation of Austin, knowing something or the state someone is in, is being able to recognize a particular instance of a class of specific objects, i.e. a species of some well-known object of a particular person being in a state of pain6. As Cavell claims “…If you do not know the (non-grammatical) criteria of an Austinian object (can’t identify it, name it) then you lack a piece of information, a bit of knowledge, and you can be told its name, told what it is, told what it is (officially) called.” (1979, p. 77) For Cavell, Austin’s way of understanding what it means to recognize someone is too intellectualized, in much the same manner Wittgenstein’s critiqued the Augustinian picture of language learning in the opening of the Philosophical Investigations. It turns on having some piece of information (the pointing towards something and calling out its name for Augustin) enabling the “judgement” of something as a particular instance of something general, eg. whether another person is (a particular instance of being) in (what we understand generally as) pain. But, for Cavell and Wittgenstein, this just happens without questioning how this information became meaningful or about something in the first place. Second, according to Cavell Wittgenstein offers a different view on criteria in the sense that if you do not have any criteria “…then you lack, as it were, not only a piece of information or knowledge, but the possibility of acquiring any information about such objects überhaupt…” (ibid., p. 77) What Cavell is implying here is not some sort of transcendental interpretation of Wittgenstein—that certain conditions are working a priori as possibilities for us to know that objects must exist. The point is rather that Austin’s argumentation presupposes what it claims to describe: you cannot use the information Austin thinks is needed, because you have nothing to, so to say, use it on. To what can a child attach the name New York, when the child’s world contains no cities, asks Cavell and concludes …you cannot be told the name of that object, because there is as yet no object of that kind for you to attach a forthcoming name to: the possibility of finding out what it is officially called is not yet open to you…You have to know certain things about an object in order to know anything (else) about it (about it). (ibid.)

The certainness alluded to here is understood as more exhaustive and thorough than Austin’s intellectualized version of criteria. It involves understanding our 6

I think Cavell underplays the experiential part in Austin’s account but will not touch upon that here.

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“mindedness” as consisting of concrete practical interaction among and with people. It is not just minds trying to comprehend the world around them in terms of establishing an edifying schematic overview; understanding somebody’s pain is not like playing chess. It is much more vulnerable, depending on recognition and allows for failure of understanding as well. Third, Cavell understands this more comprehensive and concrete practical interaction as a relation between knowing and acknowledging. Knowing other minds, that somebody is in pain, is acknowledging (or failing to acknowledge/ unwillingness to etc.) people as in pain, i.e. concretely responding to people as in pain. Knowing that somebody is in pain, is therefore not just like knowing a fact presented through conceptual criteria. It must take a concrete form, finding an expression whether in acknowledging or failing to acknowledge the pain. So, the response to a toddler crying is picking up and comforting, or to your son claiming to have a headache wanting to stay home from school is saying that gaming or watching tv is no good when you have a headache. This seems straightforward, but for Cavell this expresses something profound about how we psychologically understand each other. This comes out in his elaboration on criteria in Austin. Cavell claims that “…we wanted the wince to take us all the way to the other’s pain itself, but it seems to stop at the body. The feeling is: The wince itself is one thing, the pain itself something else; the one can’t be the other.” (ibid., p. 81) Focusing on conceptual criteria leaves out the pain in the wince, by making the wince an informational indicator about pain. But that cannot be the whole of the psychological state of either expressing, understanding, and knowing pain. The wince is the pain, so to say, not a something we use to infer a pain from. It is the expression serving as the call for me to act. Cavell refers here to Wittgenstein,” That the human body is the best picture of the human soul” (ibid., p. 83), meaning the way we interact is through our embodiment. But this is not implying the body as a vessel for our psychological states. That would put us right back in the Cartesian distinction between mind and body, which was the problem we started out to avoid. As Cavell claims “the human body is the best picture of the human soul—not, I feel like adding, primarily because it represents the soul but because it expresses it. The body is the field of expression of the soul. The body is of the soul; it is the soul’s; a human soul has a human body.” (ibid, p. 356) What is the implication of this? Well, it means that our minded being is “outside” in a world between us. And as such our minds are vulnerable, accessible, to be seen or hidden, misinterpreted, understood, avoided, acknowledged etc. With this in-betweenness a multitude of complicated and precarious factors arrive. There is the question of my own expression, my capacity and means to make myself known to the world around me. This depends on the possibility of others seeing me, and I can therefore also choose to hide, retreating from expressions not accepting the vulnerability of being seen, or feigning my behavior. I can, of course, also succeed, expressing myself honestly. People responding to me is then also a case of expression. Response in the sense that seeing somebody

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in pain, presents them with a call—knowledge of somebody in pain means they must acknowledge it—a call for comforting, healing etc., or not, “…to make the fabric whole again which the pain tore through, or to know that this is impossible. That is knowing what pain is.” (ibid., p. 82) Responding as a case of expression is also characterized by vulnerability and can be done as an acknowledgment or as an avoidance. Avoidance as withdrawing from responding out of lack of means of expression, of skepticism towards the other, or by failure to understand. To withhold, or hedge, our concepts of psychological states from a given creature, on the ground that our criteria cannot reach to the inner life of the creature, is specifically to withhold the source of my idea that living beings are things that feel; it is to withhold myself, to reject my response to anything as a living being. (Cavell, 1979, p. 83)

Thus, for Cavell the problem of other minds is not an epistemological problem of understanding how one mind connects with another as if our minded being is separate from each other from the outset. As Cavell claims “…we are separate, but not necessarily separated (by something); that we are, each of us, bodies, i.e., embodied; each is this one and not that, each here and not there, each now and not then.” (ibid., p. 369) So withholding, as in the quote, is a failure of recognizing the sharedness of a human form of life. Hence, what comes between us is something we are answerable to, for causing or continuing it; for denying or affirming it. Hence, the epistemological problem becomes a question of recognizing or acknowledging the other’s expression and agency to express. Knowledge then becomes a matter of recognizing social dependence. What the problem of “other minds” turns out to be then, is not about whether separate minds can ever know each other. It is recognizing that our mindedness is surrendered to the other, and the other is responsible in acknowledging this. Our knowing each other is basically a question of how we live our lives socially, how it is built and nurtured as well as fractured and broken. It is recognizing that we are, so to speak, at one another’s mercy in gaining knowledge of ourselves and each other through expressions. And this present us with a predicament because there is always the possibility of not being understood, of being ignored, of being avoided, of not being capable of acknowledging or expressing. As Cavell claims “In everyday life the lives of others are neither here nor there; they drift between their own inexpressiveness and my inaccuracy in responding to them” (1979, p. 84). The Cartesian or the Theorist of Mind we started out with above wants to avoid this predicament by retreating to a self-sufficient and independent I separated from the “mess” around us, and thereby providing a secure epistemic foundation. Cavell (and partly Austin) wants us instead to recognize dependency as the condition for knowledge. Our ordinary minded lives are more like social “projects,” not in the contemporary management sense, but etymologically as both being thrown into the world as dependent beings, and we throw our minds into this world as well, in the sense

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of trying to convey to others through our expressions what matters. Knowing ourselves and each other is therefore more of a task than securing an epistemic foundation, because it is necessarily tied up with what is embodied rather than hidden, what is risky rather than safe, and what is dependent rather than independent. Thus, Cavell emphasizes the aspect of the ordinary in distinction to the everyday we saw above. Our dependence on each other, the uncanniness of the ordinary as Cavell terms it, is not a common shared web of beliefs functioning as a secure epistemic foundation (as a cultural counterpart to the Cartesian independent I) it is rather a source of both anxiety and comfort regarding what we say and do. Not recognizing the dependency is avoiding recognizing our minds as essentially social minds, it is abandoning the task of understanding our minded being as something which is established for better and worse. IT’S SO OBVIOUS? So, I have tried here to present a first sketch of approaching a psychology without focusing on variables, but instead developing our sensitivity to the situations where we use words, symbols, in short, expressions with psychological import. I have taken my departure in Harré and Secord’s neo-classical book, with its focus on everyday language taken from the tradition of ordinary language philosophy. I tried to present a more nuanced picture of the development of OLP and sharpen the sense of ordinary by contrasting it with everydayness: the latter presupposing the everyday as a reservoir of meaning whereas the former presents meaning making as a continuous task always facing the danger of failure. Lastly, I have given an example of why it still can be relevant to consult OLP when addressing problems within contemporary psychology. The example shows psychology not just as a work of detached comprehension but as an effort of making life livable, and this places specific demands on the conceptual work of psychology. Because no sharp boundary between experience and concepts exists, i.e. experience is “glued” to our concepts and does not evaporate in the process of generating pure thought or theory, psychological concepts, words and expressions do not and cannot live in some frictionless space of pure thought or theory. We need to think of words and expressions as something we are not just living with but also living in, as not only tools we use but as the availability we have to each other, and a psychology of the ordinary reminds us of that. Even so, inheriting OLP is obviously not an uncritical matter but needs to be pondered and developed. To begin with, the predominantly linguistic focus should be rethought to encompass human expressions in toto. The limits of the use of the concept of normativity engaged with in contemporary psychology should be delineated, since many of our responses and recognitions fall between the natural and the normative. And lastly, understanding how the leading of our words and concepts back to the ordinary is a form of therapeutic

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process providing an opportunity to understand the already given in a new way, i.e., between reproducing and inventing the given anew. REFERENCES Austin, J. L. (1979). Other minds. In J. O. Urmson & G. J. Warnock (Eds.), Philosophical papers (pp. 44–84). Oxford University Press Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford University Press. Baz, A. (2016). Ordinary language philosophy. In H. Cappelen, T. S. Gendler, & J. Hawthorne (Eds.) The Oxford handbook of philosophical methodology (pp. 112–129). Oxford University Press. Beaver, D., & Stanley, J. (2019). Toward a non-ideal philosophy of language. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 39(2), 503–547. Butler, J. (2015). Notes toward a performative theory of assembly. Harvard University Press. Cavell, S. (1979). The claim of reason. Clarendon Press Crary, A. (2018). Wittgenstein goes to Frankfurt (and finds something useful to say). Nordic Wittgenstein Review, 7(1), 7–41 Crary, A., & de Lara, J. (2019). Who’s afraid of ordinary language philosophy? A Plea for reviving a wrongly reviled philosophical tradition. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 39(2), 317–339. Das, V. (2020). Textures of the ordinary. Fordham University press Derrida, J. (1988). Limited Inc. Northwestern University Press. Felman, S. (1983). The scandal of the speaking body: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or seduction in two languages. Stanford University Press. Gellner, E. (1959). Words and things: An examination of, and an attack on, linguistic philosophy. Beacon Press. Hacker, P. (1996). Wittgenstein’s place in twentieth-century analytical philosophy. WileyBlackwell. Harré, R., & Secord, P. (1972). The explanation of social behaviour. Basil Blackwell. Hegel, G. W. F. (1989). Who thinks abstractly. In W. Kaufmann (Ed.) Hegel, texts and commentary (pp. 114–118). Anchor Books. Kripke, S. (1982). Wittgenstein on rules and private language. Harvard University Press. Leudar, I., & Costall, I. (2004). On the persistence of the ‘problem of other minds’ in psychology. Theory and Psychology, 14(5), 601–621. Laugier, S. (2011). Matter and mind: Cavell’s (concept of) importance. MLN, 126(5), 994–1003. Laugier, S. (2018). Wittgenstein. Ordinary language as lifeform. In C. Martin (Ed.), Language, form of life, and logic: Investigations after Wittgenstein pp. 277–304). De Gruyter. McDowell, J. (March 1984). Wittgenstein on following a rule. Synthese, 58 (4), 325–363. Moi, T. (2017). Revolution of the ordinary. University of Chicago Press. Mulhall, S. (1994). Stanley Cavell. Philosophy’s recounting of the ordinary. Oxford University Press. Nyíri, J. C. (1982). Wittgenstein’s later work in relation to conservatism. In A. Kenny & B. McGuinness (Eds.), Wittgenstein and his times. University of Chicago Press.

A Psychology of the Ordinary • 43 Parker-Ryan, S. (2012). Ordinary language philosophy. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/ord-lang/ Rorty, R. (Ed.). (1992 [1967]). The linguistic turn. The University of Chicago Press. Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. Hutchinson. Saito, N., & Standish, P. (2012). Stanley Cavell and the education of grownups. Fordham University Press Strawson, P. F. (2004 [1971]). Logico-linguistic papers. Ashgate. Toomela, A., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2010). Methodological thinking in psychology: 60 years gone astray? IAP. Wisdom, J. (1936). Philosophical perplexity. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 37, 71–88. Wittgenstein, L. (2009[1953]). Philosophical INvestigations (rev. 4th ed.). P.M.S. Hacker & J. Schulte (Eds.). Wiley-Blackwell (shortened PI).

CHAPTER 3

DON’T MIND THE VARIABLES Svend Brinkmann University of Aalborg, Denmark

In this chapter, I will draw on Sartre´s distinction between groups and series to outline a severely limited use of the notion of variable in psychology. Karpatschof (2006) has used Sartre’s distinction to discuss basic methodological problems concerning choice of methods in psychology. When human beings are considered as parts of series, there is a legitimate use for quantitative methods and its whole apparatus of variables, but few psychological phenomena display this kind of seriality. Most psychological phenomena concern human beings as part of groups with full contextuality, and here a qualitative approach is needed. Instead of independent and dependent variables that operate causally, we have acting persons who live in a normative space of reasons. The methodological debate about quantitative and qualitative methods is really a superficial discussion with much deeper ontological questions below. The choice of methods should reflect the nature of the subject-matter, but, as Gigerenzer (1996) has argued, there is a process in scientific psychology that often turns this on its head: Methodological tools become transformed into theories about the subject-matter. We thus face a situation where a de-contextualized psychology of variables has moved from methods into the mind itself, reconfiguring it as a mechanism of interacting variables, which makes the development of an adequate psychology difficult if not impossible. Farewell to Variables, pages 45–58. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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I have the privilege of being a professor of both general psychology and qualitative methods. It is thus a key task of my work to study the nature of the mind as such (general psychology), and also contribute to the development of systematic ways in which psychology can adequately study the workings of the mind (methodology). Although I mainly conduct qualitative studies, I am more broadly interested in the relationship between the subject-matter of psychology and the methods that have been developed to study this subject-matter. In this chapter, I shall analyze and discuss this very relationship and argue that it is not a neutral one. By that I mean that the methods of psychology seem to have influenced our understanding of the subject-matter, and since the dominant methodological approaches in psychology have been quantitative and variable-oriented, the result has been that many psychological theories of the mind have mirrored such orientations, resulting in a view of the mind as “a machine of variables” for lack of a better word. This is not to say that there is no place at all for variables in psychology, and a goal of this chapter is to articulate when and how it is legitimate to address psychological problems through the notion of variables. This is done by reflecting ontologically on the nature of psychology’s subject-matter. In what follows, I shall develop my argument by first discussing the basic notion of the variable, before entering the debate on quantitative and qualitative methods. I shall draw on the distinction from Jean-Paul Sartre (1976) between series and groups and argue for a restricted place for the variable in psychological research in the context of series. In the final sections of the chapter, I turn directly to the relation between methodological tools and ideas about the mind and reflect on how the former have come to influence the latter, to some extent resulting in an impoverished image of the human mind as a “variable machine.” WHAT ARE VARIABLES AND WHY ARE THEY PROBLEMATIC? The Cambridge Dictionary defines a variable simply as “a number, amount, or situation that can change.” A variable is thus something that varies when it is affected or determined by other factors, which again are typically understood as further variables in the context of scientific experiments. Thus, in the (human and social) sciences, it is common to speak of dependent and independent variables, something every first year student in psychology will also learn about. Dependent variables are those singled out in an experiment and studied under the hypothesis that their value depend on other variables, while independent variables are not seen as depending on other variables in the experimental situation. It is important to bear in mind that such variables are isolated analytically with the purpose of answering specific research questions, because in real life there are strictly speaking no independent variables, since any process, situation or action necessarily depends on a host of other factors. To give a recent concrete example: Almost 300.000 pupils from Danish schools have participated in a large-scale study of competencies and well-being (Knoop, et al., 2018). The study was survey-based, and one of the variables that interested

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the researchers (who work from the perspective of positive psychology) was optimism. Optimism was operationalized as an independent variable, and thus as a factor affecting dependent variables such as well-being. The study found a significant positive correlation between optimism and well-being. This means that more optimistic pupils tend to feel better and score higher on well-being scales. More optimistic pupils also tend to have higher satisfaction with their schools. Although this is an interesting finding, it nevertheless makes visible some of the weaknesses of variable-oriented approaches in psychology. One problem concerns the risk that the independent and dependent variables may not in reality be independent of each other. In that case, researchers may believe that they investigate a causal relationship between factors in the world, whereas, in reality, they simply confirm—tautologically—a conceptual relationship. In this case, questions from the survey like “the teaching makes me want to learn more” and “I am doing well in school” were taken as indicators of optimism, but it is difficult to see why the exact same questions could not just as easily be taken as indicators of satisfaction or well-being, i.e., expressing the dependent variable. So no wonder that there is a correlation between optimism and well-being, if the two are already conceptually related as “variables.” Jan Smedslund has made similar observations of variable-oriented research in psychology in general. Smedslund has argued for decades that although psychology aims to comport itself as an empirical science that studies relations between independent variables, in reality it more often just confirms conceptual relations between semantic categories (Smedslund, 2009). Instead, according to Smedslund, psychology ought to be interested in conceptual relations head on, but most of the discipline proceeds by studying these in the guise of causal relations between variables, often leading to pseudoscience (see also Brinkmann, 2014). In Smedlund’s view, there is thus a mismatch between the current (causal) research methods and the nature of psychological phenomena, because of the fact that the latter, according to Smedslund, take part in shared conceptual meaning systems and therefore are normative. It is simply misguided to study meanings causally— as interacting variables—and, if one proceeds to do so anyway, the result is what Smedslund calls pseudo-empirical work. Smedslund gives an example that makes the problem even more obvious than in the case I just cited: If psychologists study an alleged causal relation between finding oneself in an unexpected situation (independent variable) and the experience of surprise (dependent variable), then they are clearly doing pseudo-empirical research, because there is not an empirical between variables, but rather a conceptual relation between the meaning of “unexpected situation” and the emotion of surprise: What we mean by surprise just is whatever we may feel in an unexpected situation. There is an internal and conceptual relation between the two, just as there is, Smedslund argues, between a remarkably large number of other so-called psychological “variables.”

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Another problem—seen in the example of optimism and well-being—concerns the difficulty of determining which variable is actually the dependent one. In other words, once we are interested in causality between variables, then how can we determine the causal direction? Even if we could separate the two variables as independent factors operating in the world, might it not be possible that well-being leads to optimism rather than the other way around? As any first-year student will know: Correlation is not necessarily causality. The positive psychologists are mainly interested in boosting pupils’ optimism in order to advance their learning and well-being, but what if the pupils’ optimism in fact depended on their well-being, which might be more difficult to affect by educational interventions? That this is not a far-fetched idea is seen in the fact that pupils in the study are more pessimistic in those areas of the country where the general income level is low, and more optimistic where people are generally wealthier. The researchers state that they do not know why this is so, but it may in fact be very simple: Children who grow up in relative poverty will naturally develop lower expectations to life because of the experiences they have had. Statistically, they will do worse in school, earn less money and live shorter lives. In my view, it is naïve to explain this with a lack of optimism—as some isolated variable—when it is much more evident to explain it by looking at the life conditions of the children. By isolating discrete variables in this way, the eyes of researchers—and the public—may in fact be led away from the conditions of life that may be addressed politically, and instead toward specific psychological factors that do not actually explain much, if anything at all. In a society that is influenced by individualism, it is common to try to isolate variables within the individual that can then be boosted in order to achieve ulterior outcomes. Developing optimism, a growth-mindset, self-esteem, positivity etc. are often highlighted as key to success for children in schools and employees at work. This overlooks the fact that the causal arrow may go in the opposite direction, and that it might be better to discard mechanistic model of causality altogether in favor of a more dynamic understanding of complex systems of children-in-schools-in-societies, for example, which leads to the abandonment of simple variable-approaches. In the case of optimism and well-being in schools, many things are taken for granted, which can be questioned: Not only that optimism and well-being are adequately distinguishable in a way that warrants a causal interpretation, but also that these are measurable entities with causal powers in the first place. It is a case of “entification” (Valsiner, 2007), which involves transforming a trait, temperament, emotion, or some other psychological phenomenon into a “thing,” typically with alleged causal powers to affect actions. I believe that sciences that operate with variables typically tend to subscribe to entification as well, and although this may seem to be explanatory, it is more often provides pseudo-explanations (“treating the sign as if it were an implicit essence of the phenomenon,” as Valsiner has explained the fallacy of entification (200, p. 125).

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But do these problems related to variable-thinking in psychology mean that we should leave variables behind altogether? Should we follow other sciences, where it is evident that the relevant subject-matter cannot be understood through the notion of variables? Social anthropologists, for example, do not reduce the cultural practices under scrutiny to interacting variables. Historians also do not think in terms of variables very often, but rather in terms of dynamical forces and narratives. My answer is that we can keep a much restricted use of variables in psychology, and I shall try to explain this in the next section by introducing a distinction between series and groups. SERIES AND GROUPS It has been a basic scientific principle since Aristotle that the nature of the subject matter enjoys primacy over methods, and should dictate which methods to use. One should consider what one wants to know before determining how one best comes to know it (see also Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015). In recent decades, the overarching choice to make in the human and social sciences has been between quantitative and qualitative methods. There is much to say about the difference between studying the world in a way that makes it susceptible to statistical and quantitative operations versus studying the experiences, meanings and values qualitatively. However, one should be careful not to accept the quantitative-qualitative divide at face value, since it sits on top of more fundamental questions about the nature of the mind and the world. Still, it seems fair to conclude that variable-thinking has in broad terms gone hand in hand with quantitative methods, since the relationship between independent and dependent variables is typically captured through numbers, whereas many of the critiques of variable-approaches have recommended qualitative methods instead. The discussion is more complex than one should think, for some qualitative research does employ a notion of variables, although not in numerical forms. Some qualitative research projects aim to test a hypothesis by seeing how different variables influence each other, and there is an ongoing methodological debate concerning the feasibility of this approach. In addition, all quantitative variables are of course also loaded with meaning, since a measurement of some effects is by definition a measurement of something. So, the borders are more fuzzy than one might think, but in general terms, we do have the different scientific approaches of quantitative methods of variables and qualitative methods of meanings, experiences and norms. How can we decide when to use which methods? The Danish statistician, methodologist and psychologist Benny Karpatschof provides an answer. He also begins from the premise that the choice between quantitative and qualitative methods should be grounded in the nature of the subject matter of interest (Karpatschof, 2006, 2007). Inspired by Sartre’s (1976) distinction in the Critique of Dialectical Reason between groups and series, Karpatschof argues that there is a fundamental ontological difference between phenomena that exist contextually, in social groups with complex social interaction

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(e.g., in a group working together), and phenomena that exist as part of individual behavior in series, where people act in parallel ways, but independently of each other (e.g., when waiting in line at the bus stop). Phenomena characterized by seriality are atomized, and personal individuality is relatively unimportant, whereas uniqueness is important for phenomena characterized by contextuality. Karpatschof’s point is that quantitative methods are suitable for investigating serialized phenomena (i.e., those aspects of persons that are salient when they are regarded as parts of series), and qualitative methods are suitable for investigating contextualized phenomena, where persons are considered as members of social groups in Sartre’s sense. Sartre’s (1976) chief purpose in articulating the concept of seriality was originally to analyze unorganized class existence, where people are members of society in quite anonymous ways in relations of structures of production and consumption. He thus wanted to direct our attention to the material surroundings of people that determine their membership of certain series. According to this analysis, one can be “working class,” for example, because of material life conditions, even if one does not recognize this as something that provides one with identity. If people only see themselves as parts of series, however, they are easily alienated and “unified passively by the objects around which their actions are oriented or by the objectified results of the material effects actions of the actions of the others.” (Young, 1994, p. 724). However, Sartre thought that groups could emerge from series when people come to recognize themselves and one another as in a unified relation with one another: “Members of the group mutually acknowledge that together they undertake a common project” (p. 723), and are thus not simply “grouped together” passively from the outside, but identify with the group and the projects it carries out collectively. If workers unite and organize collectively to improve their working conditions, they form a genuine group to which they belong only as long as they identify with this collective and take part in its project. One can thus be a member of a series without knowing or acknowledging it, but this is different in the context of groups. Karpatschof further recounts the story of how societies have become increasingly serialized with the transition from premodern societies, organized through organic group relations, to modern bureaucratized societies. This transition created a need—and a possibility—for statistical information about the population. Statistics originally developed as a “science of the state” with the purpose of governing populations (see Rose, 1996). From this perspective, it is no coincidence that social anthropologists often work primarily with qualitative methods (since it is often societies with little seriality that are the subject matter of ethnographic studies), whereas sociology has been a much more quantitative discipline based on statistics with the study of modern, highly serialized societies. From this historical perspective, we may add that qualitative methods have again come to the fore in the increasingly deregulated consumer societies of a postmodern age,

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centered on an experiential economy, which require contextualized qualitative methods of inquiry (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015). On the basis of the ontological distinction between series and groups, Karpatschof concludes that in psychology, quantitative methods are suitable only for the study of basic perceptual phenomena and various serialized societal phenomena, but all other areas demand the use of qualitative methods due to the concreteness, contextuality and nonseriality of the subject matters (Karpatschof, 2006, p. 48). As Gibson (1986) and others in the tradition of ecological psychology have emphasized, there are certain properties of visual perception that are related to “anonymous” relations between bodies, movement and depth, enabling a form of direct perception that is universal across otherwise important human differences. In this sense, such phenomena can be considered as serialized. The same applies to studies of, say, the demographics of psychopathology, where one may find relevant statistical correlations between levels of poverty and psychiatric symptoms, for example. Much important work can be done by looking at variables in this manner and considering the phenomena as serialized. But Karpatschof’s point is that whenever we incorporate the actor´s own view and self-understanding, we need to think in terms of contexts and groups and thus employ qualitative methods. This can be related to what Giddens (1976) once called the double hermeneutics of the human and social sciences: We interpret a social reality that is already interpreted by the actors that we study. We cannot understand the actors without taking into account how they understand and identify themselves. Their self-understanding may in turn be influenced by how researchers interpret their self-interpretations giving rise to a kind of “triple hermeneutics,” and this is simply a basic condition for the human sciences (Brinkmann, 2005). In a foundational text on qualitative psychology, Harré (2004) developed a similar argument to the effect that since psychological and other social phenomena are collective discursive acts, meaningful performances by skilled human actors (“group phenomena” in the words of Sartre and Karpatschof), qualitative researchers should simply dismiss the objection from mainstream psychology that their methods are “unscientific.” They should point out that “it is the qualitative techniques and the metaphysical presumptions that back them that come much closer [than mainstream psychology] to meeting the ideals of the natural sciences.” (p. 4). According to Harré, qualitative methods are scientific because they are adequate to investigate a qualitative human world. The phenomena of this world, the lifeworld, are contextual, and the experiencing actors, whom we study, are parts of groups that can only be understood through qualitative approaches and not by seeing their actions and experiences as serialized to be studied as “dependent variables.” I have recently turned to the Norwegian philosopher Hans Skjervheim (1957) in order to understand what it means to relate to others, not as dependent variables, but rather as living and responsive persons belonging to collectives or groups in the Sartrean sense. Our primary mode of relating to the other is what Skjervheim

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called participation. We are primarily participants in a relationship rather than spectators, who objectify the other, e.g. by conceiving of him or her as reaction to causal forces. As participants, we normally take seriously what other human beings say, and we do not as a rule ignore the normative claims of the statements of others, or look at them in terms of the causes (psychological or sociological) that may have brought the person to entertain his or her beliefs. It is a common human experience that we can relate to other people both as participants (thus taking seriously their knowledge claims) and as spectators (thus objectifying their behaviors by seeking the causes and motivations behind people’s utterances), and Skjervheim’s argument emphasizes the fact that the former attitude normally enjoys primacy in human interaction, not least for ethical reasons. We simply ought to take seriously what the other says before we might ask why he or she is saying it. We ought to treat the other as a person, as an agent, and not as a variable. However, there might be reasons to think of seriality in more edifying terms. The feminist phenomenologist and political theorist Iris Marion Young developed this argument in the mid-1990s in a discussion of feminism (Young, 1994), and it is worth revisiting today. She was interested in the dilemma for feminist theory that arose from the fact that, on the one hand, without some sense in which “woman” is the name of collective that we can refer to and mobilize, there is nothing specific to feminist politics. But, on the other hand, efforts to identify the attributes of that collective will always leave out some women, since members of the category are positioned differently in the social world. Because it has assumed that women form a single group with common experiences, Young claims, much feminist theorizing has exhibited privileged points of view by unwittingly taking the experience of white middle-class heterosexual women as representative for all women (p. 715). To solve this dilemma—that we need on the one hand a category of women for political purposes, but that this category is formed by a privileged perspective on womanhood on the other—Young argued for reconceptualizing collectivity or the meaning of social groups as what Sartre described as serial collectivity (p. 714). That is, we can understand gender as referring to a social series rather than a group. This is an important correction to my critique of seriality, if it is true that it can be emancipatory to employ this kind of objectifying category. Young follows Sartre in seeing class as a serialized phenomenon. As serialized, she says, class lies as a historical and materialized background to individual lives, and this also applies to gender. Conceptualizing gender as seriality does not involve identifying specific attributes that all women have. There is a unity to the series of women, according to Young, but it is what she calls “a passive unity,” one that does not arise from the individuals referred to as women, but rather positions them through the material organization of social relations, in particular structured by the sexual division of labor. Referring to women as a series is thus to name a set of structural constraints and relations that may function without individuals being aware of it. Once people form a collective around the project of challenging and changing these constraints, they form a group. Young also com-

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pares this with what may happen at the bus stop. When those who have waited for the bus too long begin complaining to each other and discussing possible courses of action, they become a group in fusion, arising out of a seriality that is given by the objective circumstances of their lives. As self-conscious collectives of persons with a common objective that they pursue together, Young tells us, groups arise on the basis of and in response to a serialized condition. Another way of putting it is to say that although human relations are primarily conceived in the participant mode, using Skjervheim’s distinction, there can be legitimate ethico-political reasons for installing the spectator’s gaze on oneself and others, if this is what enables one to understand the material conditions under which one lives. It might be the exception to the rule, but it can be liberating to think of oneself as a dependent variable, although this can never become the primary mode of self- or other-relation. THE MIND AS A MACHINE OF VARIABLES: FROM QUANTITATIVE TOOLS TO THEORIES OF THE MIND Although Young’s perspective provides an important addition to the discussion by emphasizing the potentials of series and variables to be something other than repressive, I will in this final section return to the problematic effects of a variableapproach to our understandings of subjectivity and the human mind. Subjectivity is in many ways affected by the practices and discourses available in the given culture (Brinkmann, 2005). Philosopher of science Ian Hacking (1995) has referred to this as “looping effects” when classifications from the sciences are taken up by those classified when they try to understanding themselves, which may lead to changes in their action patters. I will focus on one specific way that looping effects may happen, which has been called “from tools to theories,” since this is particularly relevant to look at if one wants to understand how quantitative measures of variables come to influence the subjectivities they are meant to address, perhaps leading to an understanding of the mind itself as a machine of variables. In Danziger’s classic on the constitution of the psychological subject, he argued that at first a specific kind of subject was created in psychological laboratories that was since exported to the rest of the world (Danziger, 1990). According to this analysis, it was the very methods in psychology—particularly experiments and tests—which led psychologists to devise new models of human beings, which again became part of the self-understanding of these human beings. Danziger has argued that the subjects studied by psychologists came to see themselves in terms of psychologists’ research methods. Psychology’s quantitative methods were “ontologized,” i.e. read into the structure of the subject matter they were meant to investigate (see Brinkmann, 2011, on which the following sections are based). A main point emerging from Danziger’s history of the subject in psychology is that from the very beginning of the twentieth century, psychology became an applied science, and an extremely successful one, which became involved in the constitution of its subjects. It happened for example with the development and

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spread of the mental test. Francis Galton was the main figure behind the institution of testing in Britain. In 1884 he charged every person who came to be tested (“measured”) in his laboratory the sum of three pence, and more than 9000 people showed up. But, as Danziger (1990) remarks, Galton’s interest in devising his “antropometric measurement” was not financial, but how the data could be useful in his eugenics program (p. 56). Galton was one of the leading architects in the “scientific racism” of the nineteenth century (Richards, 1996, p. 164), and he was very much interested in practical social planning. The Galtonian mental tests later became part of school life in the form of scientifically based examinations (p. 109), and they entered clinics, factories, and the military (Rose, 1999). The applied aspects of psychology gradually led to a psychologization of society. Psychological practices did not spread because of a theoretical insight into what the mind is like. Rather, it was its specific investigative methods that made everyone see her- or himself in psychology’s image. It was the very methods in psychology—variable-oriented tools like experiments and tests—which led psychologists to devise new models of human beings, which again became part of the self-understanding of these human beings. The subjects came to see themselves in terms of psychologists’ research methods, which means that psychology’s variables were ontologized. This ontologization process happens when psychology identifies its measures with the objects investigated. The categories of stimulus and response represent an instructive example (Danziger, 1996, p. 21). Stimulus and response are intelligible and common as units of measurement in psychology—something like a micro version of independent and dependent variables—but a lot of work has to be done by psychologists in order to crystallize such units in experimental practices. Neither our phenomenological experiences nor our stream of behavior come neatly and automatically arranged into these units. They are not given to pick up in nature. Imagining and arranging human lives in terms of stimuli and responses demands a highly constricted experimental environment. But, Danziger remarks, “stimuli and responses were always discussed as though they were features of the objective world and not artefacts of psychological procedure” (p. 21). These units, produced and employed by psychologists, were then identified with the “ultimate building blocks of reality” (p. 21). And when human beings begin to interpret their own and others’ behavior in light of what psychology tells them are the ultimate building blocks of psychological reality, then we have come full circle in the looping process whereby methods are ontologized. Modern investigations of mental life (psychology and psychiatry) began life with an object of investigation inherited from a certain cultural and philosophical tradition (Danziger, 1996), and from there, psychology went on: … to apply certain procedures of experimentation and quantification to the study of the preexisting object. But once the disciplinary apparatus of investigation had been institutionalized, the possibility emerged of allowing this apparatus, rather than tradition, to define the objects of psychological science. (Danziger, 1996, p. 22)

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Often the procedures came to dictate the theoretical formulations rather than the other way around (Danziger, 1996). The clearest example of psychology having identified its methods with its objects is probably found in statistics. Statistics originally emerged, as I have already remarked above, as a “science of state” (Rose, 1996, p. 111), as a technology intended to gather information about the states’ populations in order to govern them. Hacking (1990) has argued that in the nineteenth century, with the development of statistical tools (largely due to psychologists such as Galton and Spearman), the belief spread that statistical laws expressed real laws inherent in social life. Statistical laws were no longer understood as simply expressing underlying deterministic events, for “statistical regularity underlay the apparently disorderly variability of phenomena” (Rose, 1996, p. 112). Statistics were ontologized—the world itself was seen as ordered statistically, like a network of interacting variables. Statistical inference methods have been known for a long time. In 1710, John Arbuthnot proved the existence of God by using an early significance test (Gigerenzer, 1996, p. 43). In the 19th century, astronomers began using significance tests, and Adolphe Quetelet decided to apply statistics to the study of social phenomena. This was an ideological revolution, because it showed that “Man is born, grows up, and dies according to certain laws which have never been studied” (Quetelet quoted in Menand, 2002, p. 187). It is not humans themselves, but underlying statistical laws or variables that determine our actions, Quetelet believed: “It is society that prepares the crime and the guilty person is only the instrument who executes it” (p. 188). Here the view of the person as a dependent variable is very clearly expressed. The T-test, now known to every psychology student in the world, was published in 1908, and more complex methods such as ANOVA emerged in the 1920s (Gigerenzer, 1996). In 1955, statistics were used in more than 80% of the experimental articles in leading psychological journals, and several journal editors turned significance testing into a sine qua non to have submitted manuscripts published. Gigerenzer (1996) has demonstrated how statistics influenced the development of the theoretical concepts of psychology. In contrast to traditional theory of science, where “the context of discovery,” i.e. the circumstances leading to a scientific discovery, are (or should be) sharply separated from “the context of justification,” i.e. the normative justification for the correctness of the discovery, Gigerenzer believes that scientific discoveries in psychology have very often come from “tools of justification”—especially statistics: “Discovery is inspired by justification,” as he puts it (p. 46). After the introduction of statistical methods in psychology, it was very obvious to conceptualize the very object of psychology—the human being and its mind—as a statistician operating on variables. Gigerenzer describes, among other things, how a concrete statistical hypothesis-testing method (Nyman-Pearson) inspired and was transformed into a large number of theories of cognitive processes, including recollection, eyewitness accounts, and the ability to discriminate between random and non-random patterns (p. 41). Gigerenzer

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concludes that “After the institutionalization of inferential statistics, a broad range of cognitive processes, conscious and unconscious, elementary and complex, was reinterpreted as involving‘ intuitive statistics’” (p. 39). As early as the 1940s, Egon Brunswik had claimed that man is an “intuitive statistician” (Smith, 1997, p. 838), and with the advent of the digital computer, it became difficult to see that it could be any different. Much modern psychology and cognitive science are based on the fact that the computer is the most viable model of how the human mind functions, and recently the global best-selling historian Yuval Noah Harari has based his account of the human past and future on the premise that minds and organisms simply are algorithms (Harari, 2017). Algorithms are no longer just units of operation in digital computers, but how the mind works and what we are. We can let Danziger summarize (more than 30 years ago) how quantitative variable-thinking has gradually gained hegemony in psychological methodology and theory: The more rigidly the demands of a particular statistical methodology were enforced, the more effectively were ideas that did not fit the underlying model removed from serious consideration. Such ideas had first to be translated into a theoretical language that conformed to the reigning model before they could be seriously considered. In other words, they had to be eviscerated to the point where they no longer constituted a threat to the dominant system of preconceptions guiding investigative practices. The final stage of this process was reached when the statistical models on which psychologists had based their own practice were duplicated in their theories about human cognition in general. (Danziger, 1990, p. 155)

What began as a useful methodological tool ended up dictating how theoretical concepts of human psychology could be formulated at all. And through looping effects, we have all come to understand ourselves as intuitive statisticians, as dependent variables, as members of series that are affected by underlying causes. By first understanding statistics and quantification as the royal road to psychological truths, and secondly understanding humans as variables, human rationality is narrowed to a means-end rationality, since the methods used are about procedures and algorithms rather than goals and values. As intuitive statisticians, humans can calculate the probability of realizing their goals and preferences, but have no opportunity to assess whether the goals and preferences are worth realizing. For this is not a statistical or methodological question, but a moral one. And morality is something qualitative, and not quantitative. A mind described as a machine works mechanically and causally, but never normatively and morally. This whole story is an example of how a quantitative image of human beings becomes a mirror of these human beings who begin to constitute themselves as such on macro cultural scales. It is a looping effect of human kinds, or macro ontologization of variable-oriented scientific methods. Moral properties are qualities of actions, and these are not captured by a science based on variables. The problem becomes really serious if it is true that we live in a society, where a value-

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neutral and amoral psychology helps to shape our ability to understand and justify our actions. In the words of Edmund Husserl (1954, p. 4), we run the risk that pure factual sciences make pure factual people. We risk that a narrowed rationality of action, as it exists in psychology, based on variables rather than values—means rather than goals—becomes the folk psychological way of understanding, assessing and justifying actions by which moral life is impoverished. CONCLUSIONS I began this chapter with reflections on the notion of variable, and its relation to methodological debates about qualitative and quantitative research. Based on Sartre´s distinction between groups and series, I argued that there is a place for variable-thinking in psychology, although this place is much more restricted than most current members of its scientific community tend to imagine. If we want to understand how humans act, think and feel, we cannot approach them in terms of variables, but we need instead to engage in participant relationships with people, something that has been argued and practiced for decades within the areas of qualitative psychology. It is important, however, that the notion of series, based on structural characteristics of the conditions under which people live, can still be mobilized in ethico-political discussions. The last part of the chapter concerned the issue of how methodological tools of quantification, variables, and statistics have gradually come to inform our understandings of humans and their minds as such. And when such understandings are taken up by people—in the process of triple hermeneutics—and inform numerous practices in a psychological society (spheres of education, family life and work, for example), there is a risk that people come to think of themselves in these terms. We may become spectators to our own lives and those of others, rather than being participants. That is why I gave the text the title: Don’t mind the variables! Don´t let the idea of variables put us under a dangerous spell that will eliminate normativity, reasons, and agency from the human mind, since such dimensions are constitutive of mental life and thus the subject-matter of psychology. So let us not throw variables away in psychology, for they can be useful, but let us realize that the fundamental psychological reality is made up of persons who act and interpret their own lives and are engaged in participant relations with their fellow human beings. This is not a matter of variables, but of a human life. REFERENCES Brinkmann, S. (2005). Human kinds and looping effects in psychology: Foucauldian and hermeneutic perspectives. Theory & Psychology, 15, 769–791. Brinkmann, S. (2011). Psychology as a moral science: Perspectives on normativity. Springer. Brinkmann, S. (2014). Onlookers and actors in the drama of existence: Complementarity in cultural psychology and its existential aspects. In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, &

58 • SVEND BRINKMANN P. Hviid (Eds.), Cultural psychology and its future: Complementarity in a new key. Information Age Publishing. Brinkmann, S., & Kvale, S. (2015). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (3rd ed.). Sage. Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge University Press. Danziger, K. (1996). The practice of psychological discourse. In C. F. Graumann & K. J. Gergen (Eds.), Historical dimensions of psychological discourse. Cambridge University Press. Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. (First published 1979). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Giddens, A. (1976). New rules of sociological method. Hutchinson. Gigerenzer, G. (1996). From tools to theories: Discovery in cognitive psychology. In C.F. Graumann & K. J. Gergen (Eds.), Historical dimensions of psychological discourse. Cambridge University Press. Hacking, I. (1990). The taming of chance. Cambridge University Press. Hacking, I. (1995). Rewriting the soul. Princeton University Press. Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow. Vintage. Harré, R. (2004). Staking our claim for qualitative psychology as science. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1, 3–14. Husserl, E. (1954). Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die tranzendentale Phänomenologie. Martinus Nijhoff. Karpatschof, B. (2006). Udforskning i psykologien I—De kvantitative metoder. Akademisk Forlag. Karpatschof, B. (2007). Bringing quality and meaning to quantitative data, bringing quantitative evidence to qualitative observation. Nordic Psychology, 59, 191–209. Knoop, H. H., Holstein, B. E., Viskum, H., Lindskov, J. M., & Pedersen, R. V. (2018). Elevoptimisme og trivsel i skolen. Dansk Center for Undervisningsmiljø. Menand, L. (2002). The metaphysical club. Flamingo Richards, G. (1996). Putting psychology in its place: An introduction from a critical historical perspective. Routledge. Rose, N. (1996). Power and subjectivity: Critical history and psychology. In C. F. Graumann & K. J. Gergen (Eds.), Historical dimensions of psychological discourse (pp. 103–124). Cambridge University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self (2nd. ed.). Free Association Books. Sartre, J.-P. (1976). Critique of dialectical reason. New Left Books. Skjervheim, H. (1957). Deltaker og tilskodar [Participant and spectator]. Oslo University Press. Smedslund, J. (2009). The mismatch between current research methods and the nature of psychological phenomena: What researchers must learn from practitioners. Theory & Psychology, 19, 778–794. Smith, R. (1997). The Norton history of the human sciences. W.W. Norton & Co. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies: Foundations of cultural psychology. Sage. Young, I. M. (1994). Gender as seriality: Thinking about women as a social collective. Signs, 19, 713–738.

CHAPTER 4

THE HIDDEN ASSUMPTIONS OF VARIABLE-BASED SOCIAL SCIENCE Henrik Skaug Sætra Østfold University College

Talk of variables and the quest for causal relationships characterizes much of modern science. This is also the case in the social sciences, where variables are presented as instruments for identifying central characteristics of individuals. But what are the underlying assumptions employed to describe human beings and their social worlds by way of variables? I argue that methodological individualism and the study of closed systems are central assumptions associated with a variable-based approach to social science. These are foundational ontological and epistemological questions, and I critique the variable-based approach to human beings and their social worlds by emphasizing the relational character of human existence, and the openness of the systems involving human beings. I do so by way of select examples of alternative approaches to social science. I present Bhaskar’s critical realism, Koestler’s concept of the holon and Arne Næss’s relational total-field image ontology to show how different approaches to the human social world enable us to understand ourselves and our existence in ways obscured by the variable-based approach. Farewell to Variables, pages 59–72. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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INTRODUCTION Talk of variables and the quest for causal relationships abound in modern science. This is also the case for the social sciences, where variables are presented as key instruments for identifying various central characteristics of individuals. But what are the underlying assumptions employed to describe human beings and their social worlds by way of variables? There are a range of problems related to what Valsiner (2019) refers to as the “discourse of variables.” First, he points to how variables tend to imply causality, and how this has arguably led to problems both related to an overly reductive empirical approach to social mechanisms and phenomena (Valsiner, 2019), and the debilitating effect this has had on “the clarity of theoretical thought” (Valsiner & Brinkmann, 2016). Secondly, he argues that the discourse about variables elevates the researcher into an illusory position of power and control (Valsiner & Sato, 2006). Finally, and related to the illusion of power conjured up by variables, they also lead to a situation in which constructs such as gender and socioeconomic status, etc. can seemingly be manipulated and controlled by the social scientist (Valsiner, 2019). In addition, the rise of variable-based social science is tightly associated with a shift from theoretical and qualitative social science to an empirical and quantitative approach modelled on the natural sciences (Sætra, 2019). This relates to one of the most fundamental debates in the philosophy of the social sciences, and the critique of variables is motivated by the belief that such a focus makes researchers blind to a wide range of crucially important social phenomena. For example, Toomela (2008) presents a passionate defence for theory and qualitative methods in psychology, as the use of statistics and other “convenient methodological tools” tends to promote the collection of facts that arguably have no meaning when not coupled with a sound theoretical and qualitative approach. This also relates tightly to the older debate in psychology, in which behaviorism was criticized for excluding vitally important swaths of phenomena in order to produce science on the basis of observable behaviour (Koestler, 1967). The preceding concerns are linked to the topic of this chapter, but my focus is slightly different. I focus on how variables tend to separate wholes into parts, and by that create fictional units of analysis which are in reality connected to broader systems. This is also emphasized by Toomela’s (2008) statement that “it should be taken into account that elements in a whole cannot be independent in principle.” I focus in particular on how methodological individualism and the study of closed systems are central assumptions associated with a variable-based approach to social science and argue that these assumptions have a range of negative implications related to what they make us overlook. These assumptions are built on foundational ontological and epistemological perspectives, and I critique the variable-based approach to human beings and their social worlds by emphasizing the relational character of human existence, and the openness of the systems involving human beings. This critique is developed

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by presenting concepts derived from three theories that emphasize what is missed when variables rule the social scientific discourse. These are Bhaskar’s critical realism (Archer et al., 2013), Koestler’s concept of the holon (Koestler, 1967), and Arne Næss’s relational total-field image ontology (Næss, 1989). These concepts are used to show how different approaches to human social worlds enable us to understand ourselves and our existence in ways obscured by the variable-based approach. First, I present a brief account of how variables are discussed in social science methodology textbooks, to highlight any potential underlying assumptions associated with the use of variables. I then present the notions of open systems, holons, and the relational total-field image in the next section. Finally, I conclude by examining the potential for using these concepts to critique a narrow variablebased social science and its potential for generating meaningful insight and a deeper and more actionable understanding of human phenomena. DEFINING VARIABLES DEFINING HUMANS In quantitative research, we redefine all concepts into the language of variables. … the redefinition often requires only a slight change in definition. (Lawrence Neuman, 2011)

Before discussing the problems of variables, I briefly present how variables are defined and presented in a selection of introductory social science methodology texts. This enables me both to define the concept, but more importantly, to examine how variables are built on a quite specific philosophy of science and how a variable-focused discourse by necessity entails smuggling in a range of underlying assumptions. A variable is a concept or its empirical measure that varies (Lawrence Neuman, 2011), and the necessity of focusing on measurability in order to be scientific is routinely stated (Le Roy, 2013). A characteristic that does not vary is not a variable but a constant (Bordens & Abbott, 2011), and variability is said to be “extremely important in research,” as the “basic goal of scientific research is to explain variation in one variable by relating it to variation in one or more other variables” (Le Roy, 2013, p. 27). As variables describe concepts, it’s worth noting that the variable-based approach requires concepts that are “fixed or invariable in nature” (Adler & Clark, 2011). When the concepts defy such requirements, researchers will through conceptualization make them fixed and invariable (Adler & Clark, 2011). Variables are used to describe traits that vary between comparable entities, or in entities over time (Adler & Clark, 2011). Stones, for example, can be described by the variables weight, volume, or type. The same variables might also apply to animals, and even human beings, and the cases or units dealt with in the social sciences tend to be humans or social constructs such as households, cities, schools, etc. (Bryman, 2012). Types of humans could be, for example, men and women,

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differentiated by their variation of the variables sex or gender. Variables such as race and ethnicity have also been widely used to distinguish groups of individuals from each other. Type variables tend to distinguish groups, but other variables, and particularly combination of variables, are also used to distinguish individuals from each other. The levels or categories used to describe how a particular entity scores on a variable are the variable’s attributes (Lawrence Neuman, 2011). An entity’s sex, for example, has traditionally been assigned to male or female. However, this is rapidly changing, as a change in the perception of the validity and/or legitimacy of classifying individuals by biological sex has given way to a wide range of ways to assign individuals to a self-identified gender (Westbrook & Saperstein, 2015). Furthermore, there are no nature-given or objective ways to categorize such attributes, and this provides the researchers with great influence over how entities are described and how various phenomena are understood. Hair colour, for example, can be described by many or few intuitive categories, or it could in theory be described by highly complex and finely graduated representations based on numerical values according to a colour system, for example. Variables are also associated with levels of measurement (Lawrence Neuman, 2011). This relates to the granularity with which we can measure a variable, and in simplified form, variables can be nominal (allow us to distinguish between types), ordinal (allows us to order values), interval (allows us to identify distance between values), and ratio-level (like interval, but has a true zero-level) (Adler & Clark, 2011). Interval and ratio variables are called continuous, while nominal and ordinal are discrete variables (Lawrence Neuman, 2011). Purely quantitative researchers and textbooks on statistics, for example, tend to distinguish between qualitative variables—sex, post codes, etc.—and quantitative variables, with which one can meaningfully perform a far larger number of mathematical operations (Weiss, 1999). The various types of variables could lead the reader of research to assume that the type of variable represents something fundamental. However, how a variable is presented is in essence a more or less arbitrary choice made by the researcher. Without seeming to realize it, Lawrence Neuman (2011, p. 218) admits as much when he states that “how we conceptualize construct carries serious implications” for how we can measure and what we can learn through statistical analysis. I’ll add that how we conceptualize also fundamentally shapes our own and others’ understanding of the world, which is arguably far more serious (Sætra, 2021). Furthermore, variables in the social sciences, despite their presumed accuracy, tend to entail a fundamental lack of respect for making measures correspond to reality. For example, when a person has a desire to use sophisticated statistical tools, but does not have sufficiently granular variables, Lawrence Neuman (2011, p. 219) states that we can simply “treat related constructs with slightly different definitions and assumptions as being continuous,” thereby solving our technical problem by changing what we examine. Similarly, Bordens and Abbott (2011,

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p. 64) discuss how in order to give a term or concept used in research “precise meaning,” we must operationally define it “in terms of the operations required to measure it.” This explicitly suggests to any student or researcher that concepts must be hollowed out and reduced to something which they are not. Variables must become a shell consisting merely of the observable, while the name of the concept is retained and suggests to anyone reading research based on this that it still refers to something meaningful. Bordens and Abbott (2011) admit that this results in lost validity, and that different ways to operationally define concepts leads to different answers. Too bad, as this must be done, or else “the question cannot be answered meaningfully” (Bordens & Abbott, 2011, p. 65). I argue that changing concepts to such shells also strips the research of meaning, echoing Cicourel’s notion of “measurement by fiat,” which refers to the assumed nature of the concepts measured once operationalized. This is even more evident when researchers conjure up indexes: Frankenstein’s monsters of quantitative research methods, created by lumping various variables together and subsequently assuming that they represent something real. Indexes are often treated as continuous variables even when their constituent variables are not (Lawrence Neuman, 2011). The example of sex and gender demonstrates several things of importance. First of all, that a range of human attributes, and even variables themselves, are quite simply social constructs subject to continual change. This is in direct opposition to the purported objectivity often assumed to be generated by quantitively variable-based science. It also relates to the critique mentioned in the introduction, that variables give researchers an illusion of power to manipulate and vary qualities of the entities studied (Valsiner, 2019). While the critique is right to point out that variables are not levers with which to control the actual world, the nonmaterial basis of socially constructed variables does indeed give researchers great power to influence how we perceive humans and our societies. Which variables are included, what the variables are called, and what attributes they can take all fundamentally shape our perception of reality (Sætra, 2018). This relates to what Koestler (1967), in his critique of behaviorism, calls ratomorphy. The concept describes how research aimed solely at observable behaviour, which tends to equate aspects of humans with that of other animals, shapes how we perceive humans. When we study rats in order to understand human motivation, only those variables and attributes that are observable and shared are included, and all of a sudden—with the stroke of a pen, or some experiments— researchers turn humans into a kind of rat by excluding all aspects (a) not observable and (b) not present in rats. In a recent article I developed the notion of robotomorphy (Sætra, 2021), which describes how we today tend to turn humans into a form of machine. Through our efforts to model machines on humans, we tend to reduce humans into what we imagine machines to be potentially capable of. Through the computational metaphor and a range of other concepts that use the machine to mirror humanity, the variables and attributes used to study humans are

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gradually turned into a set of variables that fit with the overlap between humans and machines. This, again, excludes a vitally important set of human phenomena, particularly those linked with experience and relations (Sætra, 2021). Moving on, variables are more than a way to categorize and label entities, as they are also used to understand how entities relate to one another. Not in a way intuitively recognizable to humans as what it means to relate, however, but how entities are causally related, referring to how one variable directly or indirectly influences another (Bordens & Abbott, 2011). This gives rise to three key types of variables: independent, intervening, and dependent. An independent variable is “the cause variable, or the force or condition that acts on something else” (Lawrence Neuman, 2011, p. 178). In addition, and highlighting Valsiner’s (2019) points about purported control, the independent variable is often described as a variable “whose values are chosen and set by the experimenter” (Bordens & Abbott, 2011, p. 109). While this might be the case in experiments, the term is also used outside of experimental research, such as when political scientists use the terms independent variables, explanation, and causality as they tinker with preexisting data in statistical software (Le Roy, 2013). Despite mandatory disclaimers about the problems of saying that we have explained something or proven causality in the social sciences (Adler & Clark, 2011; Le Roy, 2013), the textbooks go on to show how we can reveal causality and thus explain social phenomena. The basic suggestion of control might consequently seep into the general understanding of what an independent variable is, and that it is legitimate to attempt to choose and manipulate them at will. When researchers imagine that some variable X directly causes a change in variable Y, this makes Y the dependent variable—the “effect, result, or outcome” (Lawrence Neuman, 2011, p. 179). Reality is not always quite so tidy, however, and sometimes other variables are identified between a cause and an effect. These are the intervening variables, and they supposedly help explain how X causes Y, often by establishing the “link” or “chain” between them (Lawrence Neuman, 2011). When a change in X is systematically associated with a change in Y, we have good reason to say that they are correlated (Bordens & Abbott, 2011). Moving from that to saying that X causes Y, however, is an altogether different and more difficult matter (Sætra, 2019; Valsiner, 2019), and one that we do not need to problematize further in order to describe the assumptions I focus on in this chapter. What must be emphasized, however, is that the very notion of pursuing insight into relations and causation based on individual-based variables is often premised on the idea that social science is dealing with closed systems—a concept that will be developed in the next section. This emerges clearly from the very notion of independent variables, which are described as “’independent of’ prior causes that have acted on it” (Lawrence Neuman, 2011, p. 179). While antecedent and spurious variables imply that researchers will not always focus explicitly on all variables (Adler & Clark, 2011), the basic assumption is that such variables can

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be controlled for and that whatever surrounds the variables singled out by some hypothesis can indeed be bracketed. This suggests that we are in fact observing and playing with the ultimate cause of whatever effect we perceive, and that we can dissect a part of a larger system in order to examine effects that do not go beyond the variables in question. When students are introduced to variable-based science, they are actually presented with the scientific equivalent of a polaroid camera with a scalpel attached. From an intuitive understanding of human beings as complex and tightly interrelated, they grow to see the world through an apparatus through which they can press a button that freezes all motion in the system and simultaneously cuts everything apart. From the rich and deep impressions of motions and exchanges between complex parts of larger systems, researchers end up with cardboard-like caricatures of humans by which anyone would struggle to make any real sense— apart from by describing how they look, what they weigh, etc. Just like we would approach a stone. In order to understand humans and their sociality, we need more. We need to understand the nature of open systems, the need to preserve the continual exchanges in such systems, and not least to realize that we cannot cut away parts from their relations without simultaneously making ourselves blind to what humans really are (Toomela, 2008). This resembles the criticism levied by Blumer (1956, p. 658) that variable-based science excludes “the process of interpretation or definition” that is fundamental to understanding human group life. This approach, as I argued above, “creates a sense of a static social world” (Bryman, 2012, p. 179). While Blumer and Bryman emphasise the omission of interpretation and the separation of social phenomena from individuals, this chapter further develops why and how the separation of individuals from their relations and the systems they are part of is problematic. Variables are usually portrayed as belonging to the domain of quantitative research (Lawrence Neuman, 2011), and textbooks thus tend to bracket the impact of variables as they are portrayed as mere tools which influence a particular kind of research. However, the impact of variables goes beyond this domain, as it potentially influences how researchers and others fundamentally perceive entities in general. This is not a topic I’ll emphasize here, as it connects closely with the aforementioned debates related to what science, and reality, really is, and the balance of power between theory and qualitative approaches and quantitative natural science inspired research (Toomela, 2008). BEYOND THE VARIABLE I have argued that variables shape our reality, and that this shaping is not entirely positive. My goal, however, is not to argue that using variables for particular endeavors is wrong, but rather that the language of variables and the associated perception of what counts as science has usurped far too much land in the world of science and research. In the following I focus on two areas I consider to be of particular importance for regaining some connection between social science and

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the worlds we experience. These relate to the pervasiveness of open systems and the foundational relational nature of human beings. Human Affairs in Notoriously Open Systems Part of the problem of isolating entities from their surroundings and pursuing insight based on the entities’ variables is that by so doing we will always be examining something quite remote from the real phenomena of interest. The variable-based approach tends to promote a static conception of both individuals and human social interaction, and I focus on the latter first. In order to use variables in a meaningful sense, entities must be distinguished from each other, and strict borders between the entity and everything else must be clearly established. Some of the problems associated with this will be detailed in the next section, but a related problem is how variables in the next step are conducive to erecting barriers not just between entities, but between observable contexts and everything else. Whenever variables are used to seek causal explanations, a key requirement is to establish control of all variables in order to isolate the relationship between the dependent and independent variable. This requires the scientist to assume that we observe what Bertalanffy (1969) refers to as a closed system. A closed system is a demarcated system in which there is no interaction or transactions crossing the barriers of the system. The system is, in effect, isolated (Bertalanffy, 1969). The system is self-contained, and as a consequence, it is supposedly possible to control other variables to such a degree that causality can be established. Closed systems are systems in which we may observe regularities, and the causal powers at work are contained within the system. A key tenet in theories such as Bhaskar’s transcendental (or critical) realism is, however, that human social interaction occurs in notoriously open systems. Such systems “bleed,” and we have no real control, or ability to observe directly, the various factors that cause, or countervail, the effects or mechanisms we attempt to measure or explain, as these operate on what critical realists refer to as the real domain or level (Davidsen, 2005, 2010). Furthermore, it’s not just social systems that are notoriously open. Bertalanffy (1969) notes that if we are to consider any living organism a unit of analysis, this will always be an open system, as no living organism is entirely self-contained. The stratification and differentiation of the world is crucial in critical realism. Reality is conceived of as consisting of three “layers,” that are inherently different: the real, the actual and the empirical (Davidsen, 2005). The real, or “deep,” layer contains the underlying causal powers and mechanisms, but this layer is unobservable for us. These mechanisms cause “[e]vents and states of affairs” we can observe at the actual level, and what we actually observe exists on the empirical level (Davidsen, 2010, p. 77). Transfactuality points to the primacy of the “domain of the real” over the actual and the empirical. Natural laws operating at the real level operate independently of how they appear in the closed systems we observe at the actual level; if we ignore this fact, we run the risk of actualism—

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“collapsing and homogenizing reality” (Bhaskar, 1998a, p. xii). These considerations relate directly to the preceding discussion of conceptual shifts through the conceptualisation of variables and indexes, and also to the notion that causality can be established through observations in the empirical domain. The stratification in nature translates to a differentiation also in science through disciplines. A true reductionist methodological individualist may claim that there is only one science: the one of human nature and individual action. A critical realist, however, points to emergence and the fact that there are several strata in nature, and emergent properties makes the different strata “real” and proper objects of science and study—“the higher-order structure is real and worthy of scientific investigation in its own right” (Bhaskar, 1998a, p. xiii). This supports a pluralistic approach to science, and also suggests that science is far more than only the empirically oriented natural science-inspired disciplines. Due to the fact that open systems characterize the real level, Bhaskar points to the need for “experimentation or analogous procedures.” We may establish “closed systems” in experiments, but we must hold that the causal laws we identify also prevail “outside the contexts under which the sequence of events is generated” (Bhaskar, 1998b, p. 25). Causal laws are independent of human activity, so what we claim to have discovered are not transitive social products but intransitive processes that would still be going on if we had not found them—we found and did not create them (if we perform our experiments and inferences correctly) (Bhaskar, 1998b, p. 26). Further, when we measure or find constant conjunctions at the actual or empirical level, we must not deceive ourselves into believing we’ve necessarily uncovered something that is at the real level; the measured conjunctions are “produced not found” (Bhaskar, 1998a, pp. xii–xiii). Social phenomena—and reality—are not closed systems, which means our ambitions when it comes to discovering laws and regularities must be lowered (Davidsen, 2005). This approach is radically different from the one that can be derived from the social science textbooks discussed earlier. The use of contrastives is put forth as an important methodological tool by Bhaskar and Lawson (1998). They explain it as seeking descriptive statements comparing phenomena in the form of “x rather than y.” The claim is that these kinds of statements, which may for example state why cooperation is higher in society x than in society y, are less demanding and more suitable for social science than statements trying to explain the exact level of cooperation in one society; TABLE 4.1.  The Domains of Critical Realism (Bhaskar, 1998b). Domain of the Real

Domain of the Actual

Mechanisms

v

Events

v

v

Experiences

v

v

Domain of the Empirical

v

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the latter form requires “an exhaustive list of all the causal factors bearing upon the [phenomenon, while] the contrastive question requires that we identify only the causes responsible for the difference” (Bhaskar & Lawson, 1998, p. 12). The practical aims of critical realism may appear modest, but this is a natural result of their ontology and epistemology, as we “do not and could not explain the complete causal conditions of any social or other phenomenon” (Bhaskar & Lawson, 1998, p. 12), due to the open systems at work and our lack of empirical access to the real domain (Lawson, 1998). KNOTS IN THE RELATIONAL TOTAL-FIELD AND HOLONS The next group of concepts that both undermines the prevalent reliance on variables, while simultaneously providing alternative ways of perceiving and analyzing individuals, revolves around the notion that humans are not completely isolated beings. Several concepts express this notion in slightly different ways, and I here focus on Arne Næss’ relational total-field image and Arthur Koestler’s notion of holons. Both of these perspectives describe aspects of what could be labelled a relational ontological approach to human beings. Such approaches are based on the idea that individuals are not isolated beings that happen to relate to each other (or not), but, rather, that relations are the fundamental aspect that shapes and constitutes what we come to perceive as individuals. Relata—that which relates to others—is argued to be preceded by relations (Barad, 2007), and we thus flip the conventional approach to individuals as determined by their individual properties and see relations as first and primary. Such an approach represents key tenets of deconstruction (Gunkel, 2021), which is a useful approach for identifying the consequences of implicit assumptions smuggled in by a variablebased discourse of science. Variables belong to discrete entities, and when we use variables to describe human beings, this entails severing them from their relations—dissecting them from the systems of which they are a part. While dissection can serve constructive functions in certain settings, when done to understand humans and society, this is, instead, counter-productive to the generation of understanding. As Buber (1970) noted in his examination of how humans relate to each other, human beings are complete and situated, and as soon as we reduce them to values on the variables of individuals, we somehow dehumanize them and lose the ability to relate to them as a you, and must instead see them as an it. Humans are, in this sense, like music and verse, he argues. The unity is what constitutes what is meaningful, and any attempt to “pull and tear” to create a multiplicity from this unity entails an important loss of perspective and ability to makes sense of the whole (Buber, 1970). Variables and mainstream approaches to the scientific study of human beings routinely isolate humans from what make them meaningful, and this results in a loss of “world feeling” generated by an awareness to context and relations (Buber, 1970). Methodological individualists might argue that their goal is only to temporarily dissect individuals, in order to put them back together to understand the hu-

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mans-in-relationships. However, by dissecting individuals from relations, scientists are left with a two-dimensional and dead representation of superficial aspects of these individuals. Regardless of the level of compositional ability the scientists imagine themselves to have, the re-composition of these cardboard humans will never re-generate a society of “yous.” It will remain a wildly simplified caricature of human society in which barely recognizable things posing as humans become the scientists’ dollhouse, in which any meaning or insight is projected onto it by the scientists themselves. Arne Næss (1973) suggests that we should approach humans by seeing them as part of a relational total-field image. Rather than believing that individuals are ontological self-sufficient units, we see all organisms as “knots in the field of intrinsic relations” (Næss, 1973, p. 95). An intrinsic relation, he argues, is something that is constitutive of the entity in question. Without these relations the entity would not be the same, which entails that whoever tries to analyse an individual without accounting for these relations is in fact analyzing a non-thing—a figment of the imagination generated by the methodological approach chosen. This highlights how the variable-based approach to human beings is not simply likely to lead to impoverished science, but that it also serves to mislead and distort our conception of human beings in general. As scientists promote their research and gain acceptance for their methods and results, and as students are subsequently taught what humans are and how they can be studied through a variable-based approach, humans are increasingly perceived as individuals in a certain setting, and not the knots in a larger system that Næss urged us to see them as. He understood that it is sometimes useful to speak of entities as if they were a “thing-in-milieu,” but this only generates “superficial or preliminary” communications regarding humans, and we would do well to move beyond this whenever we have a chance (Næss, 1973, p. 95). Related to this relatively extreme relationism in which everything is seen as a part of something larger is Koestler’s (1967) notion of holons. As we have seen, critical realists promote ontological and epistemological pluralism, and urge us to see the various levels of reality as legitimate units of examination, while no level or perspective alone is sufficient to understand how things really are. This fits well with the concept of holons, which highlights how everything around us— and us—are both parts and, in a sense, wholes at the same time. I say in a sense, because according to Koestler “’wholes’ and ‘parts’ in this absolute sense just do not exist anywhere, either in the domain of living organisms or of social organizations” (Koestler, 1967, p. 64). What we have, instead, are holons, which Koestler—as Næss—refers to as nodes “on the hierarchic tree which behave partly as wholes or wholly as parts,” according to our perspective (Koestler, 1967, p. 64). He likens this to how speech cannot be separated into distinct elementary units without losing something important in the process. Simultaneously, however, words, phonemes, and phrases are also in a sense irreducible, and thus holons—

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or intermediary structures. So are, Koestler (1967, p. 64) says, “cells, tissues, organs; families, clans, tribes.” The problem is not, then, that we at times perceive and examine artificial wholes. The problem is that variable-based science makes it easy to forget the pluralism of levels of explanation and perspectives which are required if we are to avoid reducing science to a one-dimensional triviality. What the concept of holons add to the notion of Næss’ relational total-field is the concept of hierarchy. Even if everything is in a certain sense a part, and a node, the structure of nodes is not flat, but hierarchical. Certain nodes exist within or are made up of other nodes, and this perspective marries the concept of nodes with the pluralism of critical realism. The concept of holons also foregrounds the fact that no matter what sort of unit we examine, it can easily lead us astray if we imagine it to be a pure whole—or a closed system. When humans, or social constructs, are the units of analysis, we must keep in mind that the activities and characteristics we perceive are not wholly constituted by its parts, as atomists and methodological individualists will have us imagine. Rather, the understanding of parts is one aspect, but equally important is the interactions of the holon with other holons on the same hierarchical level, and also how it relates to higher level holons (Koestler, 1967). Humans and our social constructs are, in short, irreducible and must be understood by our relations to other nodes in a hierarchical system of holons. The variables-based discourse examined in the early parts of this chapter obscures and discourages such a perspective on human social activity, and in turn impoverishes the social sciences. SUMMARY This chapter has shown how variables tend to promote a particular conception of human beings and their social world. In this world dissection and isolation are key instruments used to create a world that is both comprehensible and measurable. This world does not, however, provide a very comprehensive account of human affairs, and I have argued that it is deeply problematic that such a thin slice of complex reality is increasingly often seen as the only legitimate manifestation of science. I have focused on introductory textbooks in social science methodology, and in particular how variables are presented and discussed. This account is, naturally, quite simplistic, and proponents of variable-based quantitively social science might legitimately argue that they do not really believe that the world is as simple as it is made out in their research traditions. Furthermore, they might argue that their approach to variables is instrumental, and that they are aware of the fact that there is more to life and reality. Nevertheless, how we approach the analysis of the social world and what we argue to be legitimate science has real and serious effects for how we perceive ourselves as human beings and our relationships. It foregrounds certain aspects of social reality, and obscures others. More seriously, however, is the fact that much of what is foregrounded is in reality the figments of the researchers’ imagination.

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In the latter part of the chapter, I introduced certain concepts that are arguably crucially important counterweights to those used in variables-based science. These relate to how no unit of analysis is, or consists in, truly closed systems. Critical realism’s notion of a stratified reality, and the difference between the real, actual, and empirical domain, helps identify and foreground how what we perceive is not sufficient, and that we must always keep in mind that empirically observable phenomena are constituted by mechanisms operating at a deeper level, and that open systems are ubiquitous in human affairs. The second group of concepts relates to the relational foundation of human existence and sociality. While variable-based science tends to see individuals as isolated units of analysis, I have used the theories of Buber, Næss, and Koestler to argue that humans are in fact inextricably linked to both other humans and a wide range of other nodes—or holons—that surround us. Understanding humans requires that we also understand these relations. Variables are a useful fiction, and the key take-away is that we must keep in mind that they are just that, and that other perspectives and approaches are necessary for generating meaningful insight into human affairs. In the discourse of variables, a confounding variable is one that might distort the researcher’s search for causal mechanisms. In a deeper sense, however, variables themselves are confounding, and distort our understanding of ourselves and crucial phenomena of human existence that are not amenable to an empirical, isolationist, and reductionist social science. REFERENCES Adler, E. S., & Clark, R. (2011). An invitation to social research: How it’s done (4 ed.). Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T., & Norrie, A. (2013). Critical realism: Essential readings: Routledge. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke university Press. Bertalanffy, L. v. (1969). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. George Braziller. Bhaskar, R. (1998a). General introduction. In M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier, T. Lawson, & A. Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism: Essential readings (pp. ix–xxiv). Routledge. Bhaskar, R. (1998b). Philosophy and scientific realism. In M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier, T. Lawson, & A. Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism: Essential readings (pp. 16–47). Routledge. Bhaskar, R., & Lawson, T. (1998). Introduction: Basic texts and developments. In M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier, T. Lawson, & A. Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism: Essential readings (pp. 3–15). Routledge. Blumer, H. (1956). Sociological analysis and the” variable.” American Sociological Review, 21(6), 683–690. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/2088418 Bordens, K. S., & Abbott, B. B. (2011). Research design and methods: A process approach (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

72  •  HENRIK SKAUG SÆTRA Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods (4 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buber, M. (1970). I and Thouh. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Davidsen, B.-I. (2005). Arguing critical realism: The case of economics. Journal of Critical Realism, 4(2), 291–314. Davidsen, B.-I. (2010). Towards a critical realist-inspired economic methodology. Journal of Philosophical Economics, 3(2), 74–96. Gunkel, D. J. (2021). Deconstruction. MIT Press. Koestler, A. (1967). The ghost in the machine. Pan Books Ltd. Lawrence Neuman, W. (2011). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (7th ed.). Pearson. Lawson, T. (1998). Economic science without experimentation. In M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier, T. Lawson, & A. Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism: Essential readings (pp. 144–186). Routledge. Le Roy, M. K. (2013). Research methods in political science: An introduction using MicroCase (8th ed.). Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Næss, A. (1973). The shallow and the deep, long‐range ecology movement. A summary. Inquiry, 16(1–4), 95–100. Næss, A. (1989). Ecology, community and lifestyle: outline of an ecosophy: Cambridge University Press. Sætra, H. S. (2018). Science as a vocation in the era of big data: The philosophy of science behind big data and humanity’s continued part in science. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 52(4), 508–522. Sætra, H. S. (2019). Explaining social phenomena: Emergence and levels of explanation. In Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences (pp. 169–185). Springer. Sætra, H. S. (2021). Robotomorphy: Becoming our creations. AI and Ethics, 2, 5–13, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00092-x Toomela, A. (2008). Variables in psychology: A critique of quantitative psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 42(3), 245–265. doi:https://doi. org/10.1007/s12124-008-9059-6 Valsiner, J. (2019). From causality to catalysis in the social sciences. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), Social philosophy of science for the social sciences (pp. 125–146). Springer. Valsiner, J., & Brinkmann, S. (2016). Beyond the “variables”: Developing metalanguage for psychology. In S. H. Klempe & S. R. (Eds.), Centrality of history for theory construction in psychology (pp. 75–90). Springer. Valsiner, J., & Sato, T. (2006). Historically structured sampling (HSS): How can psychology’s methodology become tuned in to the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology? In J. Straub, D. Weidemann, C. Kölbl, & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning. Transcript. Weiss, N. A. (1999). Introductory statistics (7 ed.). Pearson, Addison Wesly. Westbrook, L., & Saperstein, A. (2015). New categories are not enough: Rethinking the measurement of sex and gender in social surveys. Gender & Society, 29(4), 534– 560. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243215584758

PART II WAYS OF USES OF THE NOTION OF VARIABLES

CHAPTER 5

FAREWELL TO VARIABLES IN STUDIES OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Notes on a Critical and Conceptual Debate Julio César Ossa Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia

Jean Nikola Cudina Independent Academic

A STARTING POINT: THE EROSION OF DETERMINISM AND THE PLURALITY OF REASONING STYLES The erosion of determinism constitutes a fundamental antecedent for understanding the rationality with which certain forms of doing science have been adopted since the 20th century. The 20th century witnessed an important conceptual change that would set a precedent for the development of scientific knowledge thanks to the work of physicists and philosophers who argued that the world “is not deterministic,” emphasizing the idea that the events that occur in the world are Farewell to Variables, pages 75–109. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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not determined by established, prescribed, and instituted principles or laws. More specifically, “The past is not determined by what happens in the present” hence Karl Popper’s famous phrase “There is no such thing as a history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.” The erosion of determinism emerges as a transition process to conceive the idea of a causal world. The idea of a causal world marked a revolt in that it allowed us to conceive of a complex world, including the idea of chance and the fortuitous as a relevant phenomenon that could be approached. The idea of a causal world implied a way of relating to the environment and understanding the phenomena around us. Hence, in Hume’s terms, causal relations represent a “necessary relation” to understand the dynamic and dialogical nature of the causeeffect relationship. The advancement of science in the twentieth century witnessed the development of knowledge dependent on a notion and discourse about causality. This notion in scientific research that “something” causes another “thing” took root in academic domains and in the case of psychology it was no different (Valsiner, 2019). This conceptual principle constitutes the path that promoted multiple styles of reasoning that forged the way in which certain plural practices and styles of reasoning were adopted in different domains of science (Bueno, 2012). The erosion of determinism constitutes a construct that serves as a frame of reference—to examine in this chapter—aspects concerning the advancement and progress of scientific knowledge in general and in our case to specify aspects of scientific research in developmental psychology studies. This construct has been outlined by the philosopher of science Ian Hacking to provide a theoretical frame of reference and thus analyze the ways in which, within certain fields of knowledge, ways of approaching, understanding, and investigating phenomena are produced. More particularly, the historiographical and analytical analyses of Hacking (1990) suggest that the diversification of scientific methods that developed in modern Europe reflected a practice and a mentality advocated by actively seeking “problems to formulate and solve.” According to this generalized consensus, the varieties of scientific methods and reasoning styles of these methods can be distinguished along six central axes: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The simple postulation established in the mathematical sciences Experimental exploration and measurement of more complex observable relationships Hypothetical construction of analogical models The order of the variety by comparison and taxonomy Statistical analysis of the regularities of populations and the calculation of probabilities. The historical derivation of genetic development.

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It is important to mention that on the principles of the mentioned axes (1, 2, 3) methods are forged under the primacy of a science that addresses the regularities of the individual and in the remaining axes (4, 5, 6) a science that addresses the regularities of the population by ordering them in space and time is categorized (Hacking, 1990). The underlying argument Hacking establishes through the erosion of determinism is that in the domains of modern science “determinism” has been subverted to the mastery and domestication of events and it is there at that point that a frame of reference is created to address the ways in which seemingly chance or irregular events have been subjected to the causal principles of natural or social laws. The erosion of determinism as a starting point entailed collateral damage to the development of modern science, specifically about scientific practice based on the consensus of “formulate and solve,” which ended up deriving in a neglect of the theoretical and complex dimension. In short, scientific practice trapped in the discourse of causality led to making scientific practice a praxis exercised with an incipient discourse supported by theory. Efforts to reduce the complexity of phenomena as an object of study by attributing their causality to many “dependent variables and independent variables” have had their debilitating effects on the clarity of theoretical thinking (Valsiner & Brinkmann, 2016). This starting point is coupled with a major phenomenon that has emerged from scientific practice since the mid-twentieth century: the proliferation and exponential growth of scientific research through the different channels of communication. As a result, we are witnessing a crossroads that heralds a major epistemic crisis that needs to be observed. This is the crisis that derives from the accelerated and enormous growth of studies and research that are supported by the incipient and weak structures of theoretical thought. We start from the premise that scientific research in development studies is heir to a complex program of knowledge that was concerned with the dynamic and integral study of the processes of transformation of structures and not of variables. We are witnessing the reign of “specialized” research concentrated on the analysis of “causal” variables that determine development processes. The latter has completely blurred a project that was concerned with cultivating a theory of knowledge, an epistemology of scientific research in development studies. Therefore, we are witnessing, in Bachelard terms, a sort of “epistemic obstacle” in the face of this crisis (Bachelard, 1934/2013). The field of scientific research in development studies requires a transition from a science that exercises a horizontal praxis—supported by the excessive growth of empirical and applied research—to a vertical praxis, which obliges us to pay attention to the adjustments between theory, methodology and empirical work (Valsiner, 2004). It is for this reason that we consider it fundamental in a manifesto attempt to affirm the “ Farewell to variables in developmental psychology studies.”

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A FRAMING POINTS. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY A necessary framing point leads us to reject the generalized idea, agreed upon by some academic sectors, that psychology is an autonomous science. On the contrary, this framing point leads us to emphasize the thesis that psychology is a science in which its praxis is articulated with other disciplines (Gobet, 2018). We can affirm that the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary constitute dimensions that are articulated with psychological praxis. But at the same time, psychology is above all a science that has its own concepts, theories, and methods. It is based on this principle that psychology as a science brings a richness and all the necessary ingredients to highlight the imminent relationship that is woven between psychology and philosophy. A framing point reaffirms a central principle: it is inevitable that philosophy influences the development of psychology. This is partly because scientific research constitutes a diverse practice that is exercised in multiple ways, each of which is underwritten by general philosophical principles and conceptions (Tuomela, 1977). More specifically, the various approaches to psychology and the way in which they address theoretical, conceptual, or empirical issues arise from a complex framework and structure that is widely characterized. Figure 5.2 shows an explanatory scheme of the approaches to scientific research in psychology and their philosophical components adapted from the scheme of Mario Bunge (1997). The philosophical components that constitute a psychological approach are part of an integral scheme that supports scientific research and its generation of knowledge in different moments, where a) General framework constitutes the set of general hypotheses on the phenomena to be addressed, as well as the ways of knowing it; b) Issues represent the problems that emerge and are to be addressed; c) Methodics constitutes the set of methods and ways of addressing the problems (where empirical evidence is also included without being limited or dependent on them) and d) Aims represent the objectives, goals and ultimate purposes that derive from the research itself. The aim is always to describe and explain the findings through laws. This framing point is essential insofar as it allows us to reinforce a fundamental argument: scientific research emanating from psychology from the diversity of its approaches must never be deprived of philosophical assumptions. Philosophical assumptions emerge in the first nucleus of each psychological approach (General framework) formed by a network of ontological hypotheses about the nature of the phenomena and objects addressed, in the same way that gnoseological hypotheses emerge about the scope of knowledge derived from these objects. Beyond being essential, the dimension of the general framework in any research approach oversees guiding the research problems and the way to deal with them, as well as contributing to the consolidation of general goals in the research process (Bunge, 2004).

Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology • 79

FIGURE 5.1.  Psychological Approach and Philosophical Components. Source: Own elaboration based on Bunge (1997)

We start from this framing point, because it is from this premise that scientific research in developmental studies was forged based on an epistemic project whose main guiding light was Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Piaget’s complex and extensive work was forged based on an epistemic system essential to address theoretically, conceptually, and methodologically the qualitative development of intellectual structures (Flavell, 1963). Scientific research in developmental studies harbors a philosophical assumption that goes beyond a simple isolated approach to the functions and contents that define and shape cognitive structures. To be more precise, we start from this point of departure because we find in Piaget a fundamental aspect and that is the premise that knowledge, far from being a “state,” is above all a “process.” The conceptual transformation from conceiving knowledge as a state to knowledge as a process led to reaffirming new questions about the relationship between epistemology and development, including the relationship between the psychological formation of ideas and operations. Developmental epistemology is first and foremost a theory of knowledge (Piaget, 1972). The horizontal growth of scientific research in development studies ended up trivializing this project and its crisis is imminent. In this chapter, we present some findings to contribute to a pending call “to reconstruct the discipline and field of development studies beyond its foolish deconstruction” (Valsiner, 2004). Articulated with this proposal, a necessary path for scientific research in development studies in this new decade is to say goodbye to variables as causal and explanatory attributes in development processes.

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THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES With the purpose of analyzing the progress of developmental psychology, we propose in this chapter an analysis exercise, in which Piagetian developmental theory is the fundamental input. This is done through the concept of “Equilibrium” and is defined as the state in which -the child- is more sensitive to the influences of the environment. Life and knowledge are defined by assimilation, a quality of independent and stable whole, tending to the conservation of the existing organization (Piaget, et al., 1977/1981, p. 11). It is precisely the “sensitive” character that we want to explore in developmental psychology. How sensitive is this field of psychology to assimilate “functionally” the psychological reality of development and how are the theoretical structures nourished by these “new findings”? We are interested in observing whether in developmental psychology there are formal and lasting forms of equilibrium and especially in investigating those mechanisms of “overcoming old structures by the construction of new structures” (Piaget, et al., 1977/1981, p. 12). This analysis, from one form of equilibrium to the next, necessarily leads to the question of those “coping mechanisms” that have been part of the journey of psychological research. What are those functional aspects of developmental psychology that most strongly link the structures of its knowledge base to its genesis and source of change? It is known from the reflections of the International Center for Genetic Epistemology that there are two methods linked to the analysis of structures. The first is formal analysis, derived from the analysis of the current state of knowledge in a given science. The second method is the critical-historical one, oriented to the process of genesis of knowledge and its transformation throughout history. The articulation between these two methods is what constitutes a crucial part of Piagetian genetic epistemology. This articulation must be complemented by the analysis of the psychological phenomena that constitute the mental universe of the subjects of knowledge. The epistemological reflection that Piaget called the method of direct analysis has the function of posing the problems related to the new discoveries of science. In this sense, it is fundamental to take up again what Valsiner (2004) stated regarding the way in which developmental psychology studies the transformation of thought structures. In the case of a developmental approach to structure transformation, psychological experiments cannot be understood as involving a simple change (by the experimenter) of “independent” variables to test their “effect” on those that are “dependent.” (Valsiner, 2004, p. 153)

From the dynamics of the possible Piaget affirmed that “an achievement is the source of two contrary effects: a creative novelty and at the same time a virtual

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gap. In the concrete context of a scientific research, this complementarity of discoveries and new gaps is evident in the field of explanations: Once the reasons B of event A have been found, they immediately raise the problems of the reasons C of B and so on (Piaget, et al., 1977/1981, p. 160). Having said this, the state of knowledge of developmental psychology, by virtue of the disaggregation of its studies and its inclination towards empirical results, seems to be in a virtual gap, since the knowledge achieved in the field does not seem to be prolonged in a renewed exercise. This process of progress, in the state of knowledge of developmental psychology, is made without the sensitivity of a generalizing assimilation that would allow the integration and preservation of an organization, which is independent and stable over time. From the perspective of the method of formalizing analysis, a method that, according to Piaget, extends the direct analysis of knowledge processes by formalizing the structures involved in knowledge and studying their formal validity. How are the structures involved in the field of developmental psychology revealed from this perspective? According to Valsiner (2004) “very few theories within psychology measure up to what Kurt Lewin considers fundamental to a theory.” These criteria are “coherence with its axioms and sensitivity to the phenomena that are the object of its study” (Valsiner, 2004, p. 149). What is the sensitivity that developmental studies have been gathering, over time, to account for developmental processes? The above question necessarily refers to the psychogenetic method proposed by Piaget as a fundamental part of epistemological research. It seems that more and more empirical data accumulate, and creative novelties seem to be very scarce, thus deepening the virtual gap, since these acquired data are not prolonged in a renewed exercise of inquiry that nourishes, in turn, the structures of a theory of development. The following is a detailed exposition of this argument based on the outline of some findings derived from a documentary analysis. METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THIS WORK The purpose of this study is to carry out a conceptual, analytical, and documentary analysis of the nature of methodological advances in development studies over the last sixty years. The conceptual discussion is oriented to debate the way in which changes in development processes have been conceived and shaped. For the documentary analysis, a sample of studies on developmental psychology indexed in the Scopus database is taken. A sample of (n=1680) documents between articles (n=1421); review articles (n=124) and book chapters (n=135) constitute the empirical corpus for the documentary analysis. The Scopus database was used as a source because it is the most important database for indexing specialized and peer-reviewed literature and, at the same time, it offers a global view of global scientific research and production. The empirical corpus corresponds to publications from 1960–2021. The terms “Child development” or “Development of children’s” were used as search criteria in the indexed area of psychology. Once the study sample was constituted, the

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empirical corpus was divided into three periods for analysis, namely: a) developmental studies in the periods 1960–1980; b) developmental studies in the periods 1981–2000 and c) developmental studies in the periods 2001–2021. The division of these three periods of analysis by 20 years allows us to examine changes, trajectories, and advances in the nature of development studies. For each categorized period of the empirical corpus of the study, four types and procedures of analysis were carried out, namely: 1) Reference Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS) analysis that allows us to reveal theoretical and conceptual influences through academic reference sources (Marx et al., 2014). This procedure identifies significant reference works that have allowed the conceptualization of scientific research in development studies. 2) A co-citation analysis was carried out to identify thematic similarities based on the relationship between two or more articles cited together. This procedure makes it possible to identify and group the most representative authors of a field of knowledge through cluster grouping. The graphical representation of the authors represented is done by means of a map of academic networks with the Vosviewer tool (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). 3) A word co-occurrence analysis was carried out to identify the terms and concepts associated with development studies. The co-occurrence analysis is a process that allows us to identify the concepts associated with the key words indexed in the publications that constitute the empirical corpus. This analysis is represented through a map of academic social networks and allows us to infer theoretical lines associated with these concepts through clustering (Flis & van Eck, 2018). 4) Finally, a sample of five articles—the five most cited articles in each period of analysis—was taken to deepen a review of the nature of the most significant development studies (in terms of citation) in each period and to observe the ways in which they conceive and study development in a particular way. The integration of each of these analyses in the research phases allows us to demonstrate the uses and theoretical approaches that emerge from scientific research in development studies. Specifically, this documentary analysis provides us with inputs to feed a theoretical discussion on the ways in which development studies have been thought and conceived in the last six decades. It is important to take into consideration that for each period of analysis the outline of the findings leads us to an interpretation of the data in terms of four central questions that articulate the thesis of this chapter: The exponential growth of scientific research in developmental studies, dependent on empirical studies and the approach to specialized and causal variables that affect development, ended up trivializing a theoretical and conceptual program derived from Piaget’s genetic epistemology. This conceptual program oversees analyzing the growth and processes of knowledge both at the individual level (developmental psychology) and at the sociohistorical level (history of science). Although such an explanation appears to be psychological in nature, it is not merely empirical, but also normative (Piaget, 1972). Therefore, genetic epistemology should not be subordinated exclusively

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to the empiricism that emerges from psychological research -conceived in a strict sense- but also normative, since psychology is a factual and normative science and, therefore, similar to certain types of contemporary philosophy of science (Kitchener, 1985). Consequently, the data presented here are an effort to discuss the “vertical integration” of scientific research in development studies. Our critique and discussion of research with variables is an effort to call attention to the expansionism of empirical activities that has been orchestrated in development studies. In addition to other practices already announced we are witnessing a “Hollywoodization” of development theories and their impact (Valsiner, 2004). In the last six decades of scientific research in development studies What have been the seminal works that have influenced development studies? What theoretical strands have fed into development research? What concepts and terminology are articulated with scientific research in development studies? How does one approach the study of development? A point of tension of the uses of causal variables in developmental studies. The outline of the findings is an effort to answer these questions. RESULTS The results of this documentary analysis will be presented in three moments according to the periods of analysis categorized in the empirical corpus of the study. For each period of analysis, the findings found from the RPYS, co-citation, co-occurrence and content analyses will be presented in detail, which provide important information on the nature of scientific research in development studies. Development Studies in the Period 1960–1980. Outline of Findings A reference analysis (n=1342) of the developmental studies published in this period (n=180) using the Reference Publication Years Spectroscopy (RPYS) software reveals a citation frequency with fluctuations over time that is important to review. For this period, there is evidence of a citation behavior of published works from the late 20s to the 40s. After that, there is an increase in the rate of citation of works published after the 40s until the 70s. The 1970s constitutes the highest peak of published works that have influenced developmental studies in this period, followed by the 1980s. Figure 5.2 shows the graphical representation of the periods in which the seminal, historical and influential works in the scientific research of development studies in this period. In this period, we can highlight at least seven (7) works that have been significant for research in development studies. Table 5.1 shows these works in detail. Piaget’s work, although extensive, in this period two significant works stand out and constitute an effort to try to explain knowledge, and in particular scientific knowledge, based on its history, its socio-genesis and, especially, the psychological origins of the notions and operations on which it is based marked a path to nurture a field and research in developmental studies. The work from a

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FIGURE 5.2.  RPYS Representative Works in Development Studies 1960–1980. Source: Own elaboration

psychoanalytic perspective of Anna Freud and Renné Spitz to an understanding of childhood development is highlighted. From a neurocognitive perspective, the work of A. Luria is important, and from an ecological model approach to human development, the work of Bronfenbrenner and the work of Bruner are important to nurture and conceptualize in a central way the research on cognitive development. When reviewing in detail a co-citation analysis of the most representative authors in development studies, we find important elements that need to be discussed. Figure 5.3 shows the map of the authors with the greatest theoretical and conceptual influence in development studies. Figure 5.3 shows the conformation of at least four theoretical influences that nurtured the advance of research and development studies in this period. The first cluster (red) represents a dispersed cluster and includes the work of scholars such as Mark R. Rosenzweig (1922–2009) who introduced the term “enriched environment” which refers to the process by which the environmental context determines and influences the cognitive and behavioral processes of the subject (Rosenzweig, 1984). This is a term that has been elaborated and adopted in several studies in the North American context. From a cognitive neuroscience approach, the work of Colin Blakmore, who has contributed to the study of early embryonic processes, and in turn, the work of Robert L. Isaacson (1928–2015), who, from a psycho-

Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology • 85 TABLE 5.1.  Seminal Works Development Studies 1960–1980 Authors Jean Piaget

Works Judgement and reasoning in the child (1928*)

Cited 120

Genetic epistemology (1970*)

85

Anna Freud

Normality and pathology in childhood: Assessments of development (1966*)

96

Renné Spitz

The first year of life: A psychoanalytic study of normal and deviant development of object relations (1965*)

89

Alexander Luria

Traumatic aphasia: Its syndromes, psychology, and treatment (1970*)

72

Urie Bronfenbrenner

The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design (1979*)

61

Jerome Bruner et al.,

Studies in Cognitive Growth (1966*)

57

Source: Own elaboration * Constitutes the year of publication in English.

FIGURE 5.3.  Theoretical Influences of Development Studies 1960–1980. Source: Own elaboration

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biological approach, stood out for his work on the limbic system of the brain. His pioneering work made it possible to understand the various manifestations of cognitive development responsible for the processes of cognition, behavior, and emotional activity (Isaacson & Kimble, 1972). In the second cluster (Blue) we find the representative theoretical influence of Piaget and his epistemic system, which in addition to being closely related to the seminal works that have impacted scientific research in developmental studies in this period, are grouped with works by Paul B. Baltes (1939–2006) who influenced in approaching a conception of development of multidimensional, multidirectional and multicausal nature. In a syncretic manner, Baltes’ conception of development is understood as a continuous process of change that is forged by genetic-biological and sociocultural influences of a formative and normative nature (Baltes et al., 1990). In the same perspective, we find the work of Klaus F. Riegel (1925–1977) who energized in the North American context the idea of conceiving the nature of development studies within the framework of a dialectical perspective that gives value to research in development studies, as it contributes to analyze the dynamics of changes and activities in development instead of static and balanced components, recognizing the interdependence of the development of the subject with the historical changes of society (Riegel, 1975, 1976). In the third cluster (green), a representative theoretical reference appears, leveraged by the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005) based on his ecological system theory, which is based on a model where micro and macro social instances (contexts) determine the developmental processes of the subject (Bronfenbrenner, 1992; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). On the other hand, there is the legacy of Michael Rutter (1933–2022) who energized much of the research on the autism spectrum, which constitutes one of the most active areas of research in neurodevelopmental disorders. Pioneering works on autism were based on the thesis that this syndrome was caused by a genetic alteration in the X chromosome, hence many works were based on longitudinal designs and applied on a large scale to evaluate development (Rutter, 2008). In this cluster, the research of Harold Ireton, who has contributed with screening and assessment tools for intervention work with parents, stands out. The standardized evaluation questionnaires for parents “Child Development Inventory” and the “Child Development Review” as well as the different systems for integrating observations on child development have nurtured a diversity of studies applied to work with children, parents and professionals and have been used to work in different population contexts and, in turn, have been implemented in various professional training courses (Larsen & Juhasz, 1986). In the fourth cluster (yellow) are the representative works of Stella Chess (1914–2007) and her husband Alexander Thomas. Their research pioneered a causal theory to explain the ways in which maternal attachments to the child’s “temperament” can lead to anxiety or behavioral problems in child development (Chess & Thomas, 1996). This theory of temperament in the child was derived

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from the famous longitudinal research in New York (1956–1977). In the same cluster, there is the legacy of Lauretta Bender (1897–19887) who is commonly known as the creator of the “Bender Visuomotor Gestalt Test” which is used to this day as an instrument of clinical use and application to evaluate visuomotor development in children and to detect cognitive lesions in adults. The theoretical influences in these four clusters are for the moment a relevant aspect, as they allow us to infer in broad strokes the nature of scientific research in developmental studies in this period. In general terms, the four clusters announce studies in the framework of four areas of work that have influenced the progress of research in this period, namely, the areas of: 1) cognitive neuroscience; 2) psychobiology—genetic epistemology; 3) dialectical-contextual; 4) clinical psychology. Figure 5.4 shows a map of terms derived from a word co-occurrence analysis of research in this period. The map of concepts associated with scientific research in developmental studies for this period shows the grouping of terms linked to at least six clusters that reflect the diversity of approaches and perspectives in which developmental studies have been approached. The first cluster (red) corresponds to terminologies associated with a clinical approach. Thus, we find the approach to developmental studies from

FIGURE 5.4.  Concepts Associated With Development Studies 1960–1980. Source: Own elaboration

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the perspective of clinical designs and case studies. Some terms and keywords associated with this perspective are personality development (n=11); Psychoanalytic theory (13); Mother child relationship (10); Child rearing (12); transference (n=10); Family (n=11); Personality (n=13); Object attachment (n=10). The second cluster (green) mainly exposes the concept of Child, and, in turn, this concept serves as a hinge concept that announces a network of terms that reflect the complexity with which child psychology has been approached as an object of study. Some of the terms in this cluster are Morality (10); behavior disorder (n=10); human relation (n=9); interpersonal relations (n=10); society (n=10). On the other hand, the third cluster (blue) fundamentally exposes the concept of development in a network of relations with several concepts, namely: concept formation (n=10); intelligence (10); language development (n=11); mental test (n=10); teaching (n=11). The fourth cluster (yellow) groups terms such as self-concept (n=10); ego development (10); socialization (n=10); social environment (n=10); child behavior (n=9) that are articulated with the whole network of concepts linked to developmental studies. The fifth cluster (purple) is the central cluster of the Child Development concept and in this cluster, we find terms such as preschool child (n=31); Psychological aspect (n=10); Central nervous system (n=11); Diagnosis (n=9); handicapped child (n=8). The sixth cluster (light blue) places the concept of Infant (n=25) in a determinant way and from there terms such as cognition (10); motor activity (n=10); motor performance (n=11); motor skills (n=9) and physiology (n=10) are articulated. Finally, cluster seven (orange) groups a series of scattered terms covering topics such as perception (n=8); attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (n=8); Learning (n=8); perception (n=7); brain dysfunction (n=7). To discuss the preponderance of the approach to variables as a causal aspect of the nature of scientific research in development studies, we present below the papers with the greatest impact—in terms of citation—in this period. In this period, the articles with the greatest impact in terms of citation obey empirical research oriented to carry out the evaluation of cognitive development in children, with the exception of Lamb’s study (1975) which focuses on social development. Within the framework of these investigations, cognitive development is conceptualized on the basis of different theories that support the study variables, on the one hand, the wide range of theories of humor that have been identified (Schmidt & Williams, 1971), which denote a complex psychologicalhuman phenomenon that manages to account for different cognitive components related to wit and the capacity to perceive and appreciate; in the emotional order that is related to sensations of well-being and joy; in the behavioral order that is implied by observing the facial expressions of laughter or joy and if it is the case, analyzing the postural changes at physiological level (Goldstein & McGhee, 1972). On the other hand, hypothesis testing has been carried out through experimental situations to delve in detail into the process of measuring cognitive development through the relationship that the child establishes with objects, delv-

Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology • 89 TABLE 5.2.  Top 5 Articles With the Highest Impact 1960–1980 Author/Year

Thematic Reference by Author

Variables

Zigler, et al. (1966) Cognitive processes in the development

Humor (understanding of humor through experimental test design)

Strohner and Nelson Cognitive processes in the (1974) development

Syntactic Strategies, Probabilities (experimental design using task comprehension situations)

Lamb (1975)

Social development in the Child Parental relationship (Validation of hypothesis “parents play a vital role in the socialization of the child”

Friedman (1977)

Cognitive processes in the development; Logical capabilities of the child; reconstruction of time systems

Kendall and Wilcox Self-control in the Child (1979)

Time (application of problem solving for processes of classification, seriation, and variety) Cognitive-behavioral self-control (Development of a rating scale to measure self-control in children).

Source: Own elaboration Note: the articles shown have more than 50 citations.

ing into an understanding of “probable” and “congruent events” in the processes of mastering verbal production and comprehension (Strohner & Nelson, 1974). Also, developmental “patterns” have been described from children’s ability to make logical deductions from time about the relative succession or duration of events (Friedman, 1977). Research in developmental studies has described the processes of children’s understanding of conventional time systems to account for patterns of cognitive development based on the mastery of specific temporal systems (Springer, 1952). It is important to emphasize that the nature of methodological designs in developmental studies in this period shows an effort to order, specify and enrich the knowledge derived from the nature of developmental studies in general and from research applied to cognitive development studies. This period heralds the period in which methods were thought beyond the trivialized idea of informing, to help form and build a framework of theoretically supported knowledge. As Piaget already announced “epistemology constitutes the theory of validated knowledge” and the epistemology of developmental studies by its nature represents a process and in turn, constitutes a discipline that obliges to address questions of both fact and “validity” in order to determine the ways in which the knowledge derived from scientific research on development reaches an agreement with the real world and in turn, to establish the relationships that are woven between subject-object (Piaget, 1972). Hence, the methodological approach to developmental studies in this period seems to be employed under the premise of an attitude advocated to

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the detailed exploration of the complexity of cognitive development studies and not as a resource that announces a set of rules to solve problems. Developmental Studies in the Period 1981–2000. Outline of Findings A sample of n=338 studies containing 13,251 references cited according to the RPYS analysis were published in this analysis period. In this period, the fluctuations in citation behavior announce important milestones. On the one hand, we find a constant trajectory over time starting from 1900 to 1965. Then, there are important peaks from the second half of the 1960s until 1979 and then, a third moment that comes in the decade 1980–1990. Figure 5.5 shows in detail the citation dynamics in this period. In terms of citation behavior, we can highlight for this period four seminal works that have been significant in scientific research in developmental studies (see Table 5.3). In this period significant works appear such as the work of Albert Bandura (1925–2021), which has been used from a framework of the so-called “social cognition” to analyze the dynamic interactions that are woven between the effects of “thought” and “action” to achieve change processes at a personal and social level.

FIGURE 5.5.  RPYS Representative Works in Development Studies 1981–2000. Source: Own elaboration

Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology • 91 TABLE 5.3.  Seminal works on development studies 1981–2000 Authors

Work

Cited

Albert Bandura

Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory (1986)134

Jean Piaget

The construction of reality in the child (1954)

116

John Dewey

The quest for certainty (1929)

94

Lev S. Vygotsky Mind in society: Development of higher psychological processes (1978) 87 Source: Own elaboration

On the other hand, Piaget’s work is highlighted, where his findings are outlined to explain the study of sensorimotor intelligence and practice in the first years of child development. This is a complex process of assimilation of the child’s external environment that allows the elaboration of increasingly mobile thought schemes capable of inter-coordination (Piaget, 1954). The work of John Dewey (1859–1952) represents a philosophical treatise that starts from a discussion based on the genetic analysis that has led different philosophers in the search for certainty to explain the dynamics that emerge from scientific knowledge to derive from there a “theory of ideas in the world” (Dewey, 1929). It is important to mention that the work of Lev S. Vygotsky (1896–1934) represents one of the most important works in the scientific research of developmental studies (Valsiner, 2021); however, it is important to highlight that it is only until this period that allusion is made to his celebrated work on the analysis of higher psychic functions. In the previous period (1960–1980) there is no trace of mention -in terms of citation- to his work. Despite the fact that there was already evidence of perspectives of thinking about the study of development from a socio-historical approach. Vygotsky was concerned with the implications of socialization processes in development and learning and more concretely assured that there is a complex and dialectical process in both processes defined as the zone of proximal development and the zone of potential development (Vygotsky, 1978). In reviewing the theoretical influences that emerge in this period, we find at least seven significant theoretical lines in scientific research in development studies. Figure 5.6 presents the representative authors grouped by cluster. The first cluster (Red) articulates the work of Harold Ireton on screening and assessment tools for intervention work with parents. In this line, the work of Carolle Howes has influenced the area of social development in the child. Her research has investigated the social interaction skills that children establish with their peers and friends and, in turn, has examined communication skills based on simulation games (Howes, 1990). In turn, the work of Jeanne Brooks-Gunn has nurtured an area of work in developmental psychology in contexts (neighborhoods, communities, and poverty) in turn, in the advancement of public policies and programs

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FIGURE 5.6.  Theoretical Influences of Development Studies 1981–2000. Source: Own elaboration

for early childhood and the family and in the advance analysis of large national studies of long-term follow-up of children, youth and families (Brooks-Gunn et al., 2000). In this same cluster, it is worth highlighting the work of Sandra Wood Scarr (1936–2021) whose “Human Behavior Genetic” theory was used to explain the relationship between genes and the environment in children’s intelligence and performance. Scarr’s work led to the design of numerous research and theories focused on addressing the specificity and detailed measurement of environmental influences to understand the interaction of the individual and his or her context. The second cluster (green) is a line of work influenced by Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach to human development and is linked to the work of Jay Belsky and Michael Lamb in the field of child development and family studies, emphasizing the importance of the relationships that are woven between parent-child during infancy and the first years of life. The third cluster (blue) shows a transition that differs theoretically from the conceptual line that was developed in the previous period (1960–1980) from the perspective of Michael Rutter and is strengthened in this period of analysis. This line of work by Rutter is linked to the work of Alan Sroufe, who has set guidelines for research models applied through a longitudinal approach that allows examining the continuity and changes in childhood development (Sroufe, 2005). The work of Tiffany Field also appears in a significant way, who has energized re-

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search on the effects of alternative therapies and early stimulation processes with the purpose of preventing prematurity in mothers, improving growth and development in premature children and, at the same time, alternatives for the prevention of attention deficit disorders (Field et al., 1980). In turn, the work of E. Mark Cummings has focused on addressing the relationships woven between adaptive and non-adaptive family processes and development. This has allowed the development of studies that address the relationships between family and community contexts and child development in early childhood through the theory of emotional security (Cummings et al., 2005). The fourth cluster (yellow) is represented by the influences left by the work of Gavriel Salomon (1938–1916) on developmental studies in educational contexts. His work was pioneering in addressing communication methods, cognition processes and learning, and in turn, has influenced the design of cognitive tools to evaluate technically mediated learning processes (Salomon, 1994). There is also the work of Barbara Rogoff, who has been an author who has contributed to strengthen the thesis of conceiving cognitive development as a process intrinsically mediated by the sociocultural context -principle- which supports the theory of situational learning (Rogoff et al., 1998). In this same cluster, the work of James R. Connell appears with representation. His line of research has focused on identifying the variables that influence the processes of behavioral change in community contexts and on the generalized diffusion of interventions based on tests and school contexts (Connell, 1972). In the fifth cluster (purple) we find the works that have influenced scientific research in developmental studies starting with the theory of mind and the introduction of the concept of metacognition by John Hurley Flavell and Henry Wellman. Their work clearly energized developmental studies research and, together with Josef Perner, has advanced towards the theoretical foundation of the concept of metacognition and, in turn, has contributed to research on the understanding of the representational mind. The sixth cluster (light blue) constitutes Piaget’s legacy and for this period, Robert S. Siegler’s research is articulated with the theory of overlapping waves to explain cognitive development. This dynamic perspective of development starts from the principle that the child resorts to a series of “processing strategies” between old and new information over time to adjust cognition processes and in turn, these strategies of the child increase and decrease over time (Siegler, 1996). In this same cluster are articulated the works of Juan Pascual-Leone who has worked on the theoretical and methodological advance to propose a general organic-causal theory that allows explaining working memory and executive functions as a function of development to shed light and broaden a discussion on the nature of human intelligence (Pascual-Leone, 1987). There is also the legacy of Robbie Case (1944–2000) who nurtured this line of research by introducing the theory of executive control and central conceptual structures (Case, 1987). Importantly, the theoretical influences that emerge from this cluster correspond

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to the theoretical advances of authors who are framed in what is referred to in the literature as the “neo-Piagetian” perspective of developmental studies. The seventh cluster (orange) constitutes a theoretical line from the sociohistorical and cultural perspective of development studies. It includes the legacy of Vygotsky and articulates authors such as Henri Wallon (1879–1962) who was a pioneer in conceptualizing development studies research from a dialectical materialism approach. The latter constitutes a valuable conceptual frame of reference in that approaching the analysis of development from a dialectical model implies the introduction of concepts that define the necessary interpersonal, emotional and attitudinal links of the child for a comprehensive approach to developmental studies. For Wallon, the dialectical approach gives psychology its stability and meaning and, in turn, allows psychology to be “liberated” from the “alternatives of elementary materialism” or “insipid idealism, crude substantialism or hopeless irrationalism” (Netchine-Grynberg, 1991; Wallon, 1972). From this perspective, a theoretically and conceptually ambitious program was constructed for the advancement of developmental scientific research and Lev. S. Vygotsky represented the ultimate direction. Figure 5.7 presents the map of concepts associated with scientific research in development studies in this period. From this map of concepts, we can characterize at least five clusters where the terms are grouped. The concept maps for this period allow us to glimpse the continuity and growt—in terms of frequency—of concepts used in the previous period. The first cluster (red) groups in a preponderant way the concept of Infant (n=60); Psychological aspect (n=55); personality development (n=52); Social environment (n=44); mother-child relationship (n=44); ego development (n=40); maternal behavior (n=39); mother (n=35); object attachment (20); object relation (n=20). The second cluster (green) groups in a cross-sectional manner the concepts of Child (n=111); child development (n=120); Development (n=117); Child psychology (n=105); and from this concept framework are associated terms such as language development (n=85); psychological model (n=50); learning (n=48); problem solving (n=45); psychometry (n=40); Psychological tests (n=39); semantic (n=28); speech (n=25). The third cluster (blue) gathers terms such as adolescent (n=57); social adjustment (n=55); social adaptation (n=52); social behavior (n=47); social chance (n=36); social development (n=35); social interaction (n=30); socialization (n=27); socio economic factors (n=22). The fourth cluster (yellow) groups terms that involve the approach to developmental studies based on child-parent relationship links. Thus, terms such as adult (n=57); family (n=52); family life (48); family relation (n=46); father child relations (n=40); child parent relation (38); parental behavior (n=32); parenting (n=29); in vitro fertilization (25); assisted reproduction (n=22); artificial insemination (20) and analysis of variance (n=20). The fifth cluster (purple) involves a series of terms associated with disability and developmental disorders. Thus, the concepts of Developmental disabilities

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FIGURE 5.7.  Concepts Associated With Development Studies 1981–2000. Source: Own elaboration

(n=45); developmental disorder (n=46) are located as the concepts of greatest reference in this cluster and, in turn, are linked to concepts such as Education (n=41); child disability (n=40); child health care (n=39); community mental health (n=39); social support (n=38). The concepts consigned in this period seem to indicate a terminology associated with variables of studies to approach analysis of development research. Let us now take a detailed look at the studies with the greatest impact and the way in which variables are used as a causal aspect of the nature of scientific research in development studies. Table 5.4 shows the top 5 most cited articles in this period. For this period, the articles with the greatest impact introduce us to a series of discussions on some variables that affect child development, and these debates have opened a field of research that has been growing exponentially in the last two decades. In general terms, child development has expanded a range of variables of a causal nature that influence and, in their absence, determine the child’s develop-

96  •  JULIO CÉSAR OSSA & JEAN NIKOLA CUDINA TABLE 5.4.  Top 5 Highest Impact Articles 1981–2000 Author

Thematic Reference by Author

Variables

Howes et al. (1992)

Social Development

Center-Based Child Care

Cummings and Davies (1994)

Child Development

Maternal Depression

Macksoud and Aber (1996)

Psychosocial Development

War Experiences

McLoyd (1998)

Child Development

Socioeconomic Disadvantage

Whitehurst and Lonigan (1998) Child Development

Emergent Literacy

Source: Own elaboration Note: The articles shown are publications with more than 150 citations.

ment. On the one hand, the important relationship between the quality of childcare and children’s social and cognitive development has been taken for granted (Phillips et al., 1987). This close relationship has been conceived in such a deterministic and causal way that it has also been taken for granted that children with high quality childcare experiences tend to score “well” over children in “low” quality childcare (Howes et al., 1992). The idea of thinking of child development as a given “fact” has exponentially increased the scientific investigation of developmental studies and the idea of paying attention to details has been abandoned. The articles shown in Table 5.4 reflect this. We have, then, a conception of child development that is determined by external factors that impact on the child. Thus, for example, the mother’s depression is a factor that affects her child’s developmental performance or assessment (Cummings & Davies, 1994); The psychosocial development of the child is an aspect that is highly altered in contexts of violence, war, or extreme poverty (Macksoud & Lawrence, 1996; McLoyd, 1998). The underlying problem of this simplistic perspective lies in the reproduction of methodological works that end up trivializing complex philosophical assumptions of a gnoseological and ontological nature. The question of development and its evaluation is never taken for granted. Therefore, we are witnessing the reproduction of empirical studies that explain the causes of child developmental performance. Development Studies in the Period 2001–2021. Outline of Findings For this period of analysis, a sample of n=1,155 studies on development were recorded. If we review this rate of production, the academic production registered in this period is 69.0%. In the last two decades, the expansionism of scientific research in development studies is a resounding fact. In this period of analysis, at least 61,595 cited references have been recorded. Figure 5.8 shows the citation dynamics through the RPYS analysis. For this period of analysis, it is important to mention that the citation behavior reflects some central milestones in the years 1969, 1975, 1978 and 1984. This figure highlights the phenomenon of the expansionism of scientific research in

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FIGURE 5.8.  RPYS Representative Works in Development Studies 2001–2021. Source: Own elaboration

development studies from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1990s. The frequency of works in this period is traced by an exponential growth curve. A detailed review of the seminal works recorded in this period reveals at least four (see Table 5.5). For this period, it becomes evident the change in the transition of the impact that can have a conceptual work such as the work of Lev. S. Vygotsky and John Bowlby (1907–1990), the latter with his conceptualizations of “attachment theory” to address child development and transition to “models” and “scales” of measurement to address research in developmental studies as reflected in the work of Arnold Sameroff, Betty M. Caldwell, and Robert Bredley. Next, let us look at the theoretical influences that are supported in development studies for this period (See Figure 5.9). The theoretical influences shown in the map above reveal the formation of at least six central clusters. The first cluster (Red) is representative of Janne BrooksGunn’s research within the framework of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s model perspective. This cluster articulates the work of Greg J. Duncan who has conducted longitudinal research involving a comparison of the relationship between children’s early “skills” and “behaviors,” contrasted with later results in adulthood based on the impact of intervention programs in early childhood using meta-analysis

98  •  JULIO CÉSAR OSSA & JEAN NIKOLA CUDINA TABLE 5.5.  Seminal Papers Development Studies 2001–2021 Author

Works

Cited

John Bowlby

Attachment and loss (1969)

147

Arnold Sameroff

The Transactional Model of Development (2009)

113

Lev S. Vygotsky

Mind in society: Development of higher psychological processes (1978)

96

Betty M. Caldwell & Robert H. Bradley

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (1985)

88

Source: Own elaboration

methodologies (Duncan et al., 2010). In this same perspective, the work of Betty M. Caldwell (1924–2016) and Robert H. Bradley addressed and studied the role of early childhood education and emphasized the importance of parental involvement within the school. Both created an observation instrument that is commonly used to “measure” the child’s home environments from birth to age 15 and in turn, this instrument provides partial scores of “cognitive stimulations” and emotional support (Totsika & Sylva, 2004).

FIGURE 5.9.  Theoretical Influences of Development Studies 2001–2021. Source: Own elaboration

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The second cluster (green) is representative of the line of work of E. Mark Cummings with the theory of emotional security. The works of Jay Belsky and Michael Lamb are intertwined in this line. The works of Kenneth A. Dodge also appear, who has favored the methodological advance to carry out transformation processes in school interventions that contribute to improve children’s social skills and, in turn, to advance intervention proposals in early childhood to prevent child abuse and promote early child development (Appleyard et al., 2011). The third cluster (blue) shows as the main path of this cluster the work of Lynne Murray within the framework of child psychology. Her line of research has addressed the impact of parental psychiatric disorders on child development. This perspective articulates the work of Alan Stein who has developed intervention strategies aimed at “stimulating” and “improving” early child development based on causal variables that have an impact on development, namely: physical illness, psychological disorders, eating disorders, poverty, and malnutrition (Stein, et al., 2009). The fourth cluster (yellow) brings together the legacy that influenced the work of Vygotsky and Piaget. Together with the works of John Hurley Flavell and Henry Wellman, which energized the studies on Metacognition and theory of mind. The fifth cluster (purple) presents the research of Michael Rutters and, in turn, is articulated with the research of Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg who has focused her research on the approach to attachment and emotion regulation in the parent-child relationship, focusing specifically on the “neurological processes” that emerge in parenting and development (Bakermans-Kranenburg, et al., 2003). In this perspective, the work of Marinus Van Ljzendoorn has addressed the social, psychological and neurobiological “determinants” present in parenting, with special emphasis on attachment and emotion regulation. Finally, the sixth cluster (light blue) significantly reflects the work of Dante Cicchetti who in recent decades has conceptualized an “integrative” theory of development that describes and explains a complex “range” involved in human psychological functioning (Cicchetti & Hinshaw, 2002). This complex range involves domains such as addressing “developmental psychopathology” and among others, focuses on addressing the developmental “consequences” of child maltreatment. In this perspective, the work of Alan Sroufe and Ann S. Masten, who are known for their research involving resilience processes in child development, stands out. Their studies cover the adaptive processes and positive outcomes of children and their families whose environments are threatened by adversity (Masten & Tellegen, 2012). Let us now look at the concepts derived from the scientific research of developmental studies in this period. Figure 5.10 shows the map of the most representative concepts of development studies. For this period, we can group at least five clusters. For this period of analysis, the conceptual diversity linked to developmental studies is extensive and diverse, if compared to the periods of analysis previously

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FIGURE 5.10.  Concepts Associated With Development Studies 2001–2021. Source: Own elaboration

presented. In this period, the conceptual links that are woven with the concept of Child Development (n=345) can be glimpsed in an expanded manner. Each of the clusters share close relationships with the concept of Child Development, which could reinforce the idea of a field that has been expanding over the last two decades. To summarize the diversity of concepts, we will present the most representative concepts that are linked to the concept of Child Development. In the first cluster, from a childcare and well-being perspective, concepts such as child health (n=34); child well-being (n=33); childcare (n=32); community (n=13); depression (n=36); developmental psychology (n=16); family functioning (n=14); marital conflict (n=17); maternal employment (n=15); socioeconomic status (n=20) appear. From a mental health prevention perspective, in the second cluster, concepts such as child maltreatment (n=16); prevention (n=24); education (n=31); foster care (n=26); measurement (n=19); mental health (n=32); neighborhood (n=14); neurodevelopment (n=15) are articulated. On the other hand, from

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an approach to early child development, concepts such as Adoption (n=18); attachment theory (n=24); cognition (n=25); early child development (n=42); early childhood education (n=41); assessment (n=24); executive function (n=14); intervention (n=21) are articulated in the third cluster. From a cognitive approach in developmental studies, the fourth cluster links concepts such as cognitive development (n=37); social cognition (n=14); social development (n=18); theory of mind (n=17); working memory (n=14); longitudinal study (n=11). The fifth cluster groups concepts such as child development accounts (n=22); parenting practices (n=14); parental stress (n=13); protective factors (n=14); savings (n=4); social policy (n=13); socioemotional development (n=18). The concepts reported in this period expose a range of concepts and terms consistent with the growth in development studies research in the last two decades. The following is a detailed look at the studies with the greatest impact and the way in which variables are used as a causal aspect of the nature of scientific research in development studies in this period. The articles with the greatest impact in this period seem to be the reflection of an event that has been occurring since the eighties and nineties with the notion of conceiving the idea of child development as a given fact (Ipso Facto) but with an added value. That is to involve in developmental studies complex variables that are approached and studied in a sophisticated way from longitudinal designs, inferential studies, analysis of variance, scales and dazzling measurement instruments that announce little about the possibility of conceptualizing and captivating a theory of knowledge derived from scientific research in developmental studies. Therefore, the most consumed mainstream studies—in terms of citation—are the result of sophisticated models of methodological designs to be validated and reproduced. TABLE 5.6.  Top 5 Highest Impact Research 2001–2021 Author

Thematic Reference by Author

Robert H. Bradley and Robert F. Corwyn (2002)

Child Development

Socioeconomic Status

Linver, M. R., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Kohen, D. E. (2002)

Child Development

Family processes

Monique Sénéchal & Jo-Anne LeFevre (2003)

Child Development

Parental Involvement

Pamela M. Cole, Sarah E. Martin & Tracy A. Dennis (2004)

Child Development

Emotion Regulation

Ann S. Masten & Angela J. Narayan

Child Development

Context of Disaster, War, Terrorism

Source: Own elaboration Note: the articles displayed exceed 400 citations.

Variables

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This event highlights a major problem that ends up trivializing Piaget’s epistemic project towards an epistemology and theory of knowledge. This is the problem of the “crucial question” of validity. The crucial question of validity alludes to the “existence” of an attribute (variables) that causally influence the outcome and process of measurement. This principle makes a claim of an ontological rather than an epistemic order in that “something” is claimed about what things inhabit reality and the ways in which they relate to each other (Boorsboom et al., 2004). The idea of development as a given fact Ipso facto that has taken hold in this period from development research, announces us of a profoundly advanced science that abandoned the place of the epistemic and that with the help of its methods delves into ontological premises that involve the existence of phenomena as their causal influences. More forcefully, research in development studies in the last two decades assumed a pragmatic project to learn to pose and solve scientific problems, that is, as announced by T. Kuhn, that of studying and imitating paradigms or models of successful research. DISCUSSION The findings of this study show us elements that allow us to highlight a crisis within the scientific research of development studies based on what has been called “vertical growth of science” and with it we expose at least two fundamental problems that announce a notion of epistemic obstacle within the field of development studies. We outline these problems with the purpose of proposing plausible solutions for scientific research in development studies. In the first place, it is important to emphasize that we are generally witnessing a phenomenon of exponential growth of science (vertical growth) of such magnitude that the empirical data emerging from scientific research in the last two decades rests on a seductive range of models and methodological designs that proliferate and are reproduced according to the needs of each research “project.” The underlying problem with this phenomenon is that the field of developmental studies is in a “twilight zone” overshadowed by the excessive volume of data drawn from research designed to specifically assess different areas of child development. The growth of these data and empirical designs is not commensurate with the growth of diverse theories that would allow these data and research findings to be meaningfully organized. The theoretical support of development studies in the periods of analysis allows us to glimpse the emergence of some theories—attachment theory, humor theory, ecological theory of human development, among others—to support the findings; however, in the last two decades the pragmatism of sticking to a methodological design has reigned and little is known about new theories that conceptualize the studies. This excessive amount of data and empirical research tells us nothing about the progress of science. In particular, the proliferation of studies and research on development tells us nothing about progress. Consequently, we are witnessing a “stagnation” and to think about the progress of scientific research on develop-

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ment in this new decade, it is essential and urgent to return to the fundamental questions of broader concepts of an epistemic nature such as theory and paradigm (Bunge, 2004). More specifically, psychologists in general and developmental psychologists need to ask honest, curiosity-driven questions. Questions constitute an element for examining research processes. This is impeccably noted by Lucas Mazur: What is it that captures our genuine wonder, where the recognition of our ignorance simultaneously evokes the belief that we can overcome it? It is there that we find the liminal space between the known and the yet unknown (Mazur, 2020). This brings us to a second aspect to highlight. Psychologists interested in the study of development need to be involved in examining the advances and progress of scientific developmental research. This is to address the question of inquiring into the scientific status of developmental psychology as an empirical science. More specifically, this constitutes a transition from practices that foster the growth of a vertical science to practices that are conducive to nurturing the growth of a horizontal science where the study of theoretical innovations, methodological advances, and empirical research are addressed to ensure processes of adjustment and cohesion for the field of developmental psychology. This premise constituted Piaget’s legacy for strengthening a genetic epistemology that contributes to the strengthening of a theory of knowledge. To contribute from the research practice to the horizontal growth of developmental science is to strengthen and to versify in the field of epistemology. Developmental psychologists have a pending debt in this field. The developmental psychologist removed from the scientific issues of the present claims its importance for the field, examining the history and ideas that nurtured the scientific research of developmental studies in the past. This is one way to intervene in the epistemic obstacle facing developmental studies today. CONCLUSIONS From the discussion argument that raises the imperative need to advocate practices that allow us to advance towards the horizontal growth of scientific research on development, we would like to conclude with a central point that seeks to feed the conceptual debate for this objective, namely: that of overcoming the use and abuse of causal variables in development studies. This dependence on the use of causal variables is, in our opinion, responsible for at least three fundamental problems. First, we expose the problem of relativism that has taken root in scientific research in development studies. The last two decades have witnessed the growth of studies, methodological designs and models that seek to provide “causal explanations” for evaluation, accounts, or “low” and “high” performance in development. Concretely, a causal model to explain development is based on the function of a “structured” set of representations that attract certain elements of the “causal process” that end up influencing the child’s developmental processes. A causal

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model encompasses the set of conditions, structures, laws, regularities, and any other element of reality that “plays a role in bringing about the things caused” (Strevens, 2021, p. 93). Second, we address the problem of the volume of empirical data that relegates the field of developmental psychology to a “twilight zone” with background confusions. The data set provided on developmental research from the perspective of causal models can take multiple forms and conditions. In some cases, the model is deterministic, which implies dealing with a series of descriptive facts about the nature of development. In other cases, the models are stochastic, leading to a distribution of “probabilities” over a range of “possibilities.” Sometimes the models are not accurate in that they fail to give precise probabilities over the range of possibilities and attribute less well-defined elements to the assessment of development, such as an interval or qualitative probability (Kushnir & Gopnik, 2005; Ossa, 2013; Ossa & Puche-Navarro, 2010; Siegler, 2002). The underlying confusion lies in the fact that the forms and varieties of causal models with which development is investigated in many cases depend on the notion of probability that establishes predictive “success.” It is well known that the mathematical interpretation of probability is characterized by the mandate of determinism mediated by interpretations of subjective order (Franklin, 2015; Vasudevan, 2018). In practice, this is driven by a “fluid sense” of probability that mixes “subjective belief and objective frequencies with the help of associationism psychology” (Gigerenzer, et al., 1990). Consequently, many developmental psychologists believe that it is necessary to change causality to possibility. As we have discussed in this study, the last two decades of scientific research in developmental studies suggest that it is more appropriate to speak of events or circumstances that “make possible” the child’s development, rather than saying that they cause it. In the third place, this is nothing more than a confusion of the “academic jargon” used now of exposing the ideas and M. Bunge already warned us of this situation. The concept of causality denotes in essence three meanings and is used to designate 1) a category (corresponding to the causal link); 2) a principle (the general law of causality), and 3) a doctrine, namely, that which sustains the universal validity of the causal principle (Bunge, 2009, p. 39). The first definition establishes the category of “causation” that obeys the causal relationship in general, as well as any causal link (for example, in contexts of extreme violence and war, the psychosocial development of the child is compromised). The second definition leads to the law of causality, namely “The same cause always produces the same effect” and at this point, it is important to restrict the notion of causal law to statements of causal determination (Thus, for example, the genetic alteration of the X chromosome generates irreversible damage in the neurodevelopment of the child). With the third definition, the kingdom of “causalism” spreads, which is based on formulations such as “Development is not possible without a cause” or “The development of the child has no reason to exist without a cause.” The lack

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of creativity in questions about development lies in the fact that they are subordinated to the doctrine of causality. The nature of development is complex, and it is arbitrary to advance the idea of a vertical growth of developmental psychology by ignoring these reflections on the variables that are addressed in causal models within the scientific research of developmental studies. Succinctly, developmental research must be about creative, dynamic, and meaningful formulations and approaches. The most important lesson that psychology must teach—and in the case of developmental psychology it is no different—is that human beings “are not causally determined complex machines, but active persons who can conduct their lives with reference to (moral) norms and carry out their projects” (Valsiner & Brinkmann, 2016, p. 87). Finally, we can conclude that development, more than a concept, is a poetic image (Bachelard, 1960/2014) that engenders the very meaning of life, and that it is necessary to awaken the conscience of those who study it and transcend the domain of variables in a dream-like manner. Thinking and reflecting on development through methodologies that capture the meaning of the phenomena and that allow to re-describe its nature in the great theoretical structures is fundamental, and thereby achieve progress in the purposes of a psychology in which development is its fundamental core (Valsiner, 2017). A rêverie [ensoñación] goes beyond the “good methods of the psychologist who describes those he observes, who measures levels, who classifies types, who sees the imagination being born in children, without ever examining, to tell the truth, how it dies in the common man” (Bachelard, 1960/2014, pp. 10–11). A rêverie of development will necessarily lead to more creative ways of representing the very fabric of development, an aspect that we will develop in another publication. REFERENCES Appleyard, K., Berlin, L. J., Rosanbalm, K. D., & Dodge, K. A. (2011). Preventing early child maltreatment: implications from a longitudinal study of maternal abuse history, substance use problems, and offspring victimization. Prevention Science the Official Journal of the Society for Prevention Research, 12(2), 139–149. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11121-010-0193-2 Bachelard, G. (1934/2013). La formation de l’esprit scientifique [Formation of the scientific mind] (duodécima reimpresión). Siglo XXI. Bachelard, G. (1960/2014). La poétique de la rêverie [The poetic of reverse] (séptima reimpresión). Fondo de Cultura Económica. Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Juffer, F. (2003). Less is more: Meta-analyses of sensitivity and attachment interventions in early childhood. Psychological Bulletin, 129(2), 195–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.2.195 Baltes, P. B., Featherman, D. L., & Lerner, R. M. (1990). Life-span development and behavior. Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315807584 Boorsboom, D., Mallenbergh, G. J., & van Heerden, J. (2004). The concept of validity. Psychological Review, 111(4), 1061–1071. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033295X.111.4.1061

106  •  JULIO CÉSAR OSSA & JEAN NIKOLA CUDINA Bronfenbrenner, U. (1992). Ecological systems theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.), Six theories of child development: Revised formulations and current issues (pp. 187–249). Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P. A. (1998). The ecology of developmental processes. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Theoretical models of human development (pp. 993–1028). John Wiley & Sons Inc. Brooks-Gunn, J., Berlin, L. J., & Fuligni, A. S. (2000). Early childhood intervention programs: What about the family? In J. P. Shonkoff & S. J. Meisels (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood intervention (pp. 549–588). Cambridge University Press. https:// doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511529320.026 Bueno, O. (2012). Styles of reasoning: A pluralist view. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 43, 657–665. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2012.07.008 Bunge, M. (1997). Filosofía de la psicología [Philosophy of psychology]. In M. Bunge (Ed.), Epistemology [Epistemology] (pp. 123–132). Ciudad de México. Siglo XXI. Bunge, M. (2004). How does it work? The search for explanatory mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34(2), 182–210. Doi: 10.1177/0048393103262550 Bunge, M. (2009). Causality and modern science. Transaction Publishers. Case, R. (1987). The structure and process of intellectual development. International Journal of Psychology, 22(5–6), 571–607. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207598708246796 Chess, S., & Thomas, A. (1996). Temperament: Theory and practice. Brunner/Mazel. Cicchetti, D., & Hinshaw, S. P. (2002). Prevention and intervention science: contributions to developmental theory. Development and Psychopathology, 14(4), 667–671. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954579402004017 Connell, R. (1972). Political socialization in the American family: the evidence re-examined. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(3), 323–333. Cummings, E. M., & Davies, P. T. (1994). Maternal depression and child development. J. Child Psychol. Psychiat, 35(1), 73–112. Cummings, E. M., Keller, P. S., & Davies, P. T. (2005). Towards a family process model of maternal and paternal depressive symptoms: Exploring multiple relations with child and family functioning. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines, 46(5), 479–489. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00368.x Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty. Minton Balch. Duncan, G. J., Ziol-Guest, K. M., & Kalil, A. (2010). Early-childhood poverty and adult attainment, behavior, and health. Child Development, 81(1), 306–325. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01396.x Field, T. M., Widmayer, S. M., Stringer, S., & Ignatoff, E. (1980). Teenage, lower-class, Black mothers and their preterm infants: An intervention and developmental followup. Child Development, 51(2), 426–436. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129276 Flavell, J. H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. Litton Educational Publishing. Flis, I., & van Eck, N. J. (2018). Framing psychology as a discipline (1950–1999): A largescale term co-occurrence analysis of scientific literature in psychology. History of Psychology, 21(4), 334–362. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000067 Franklin, J. (2015). The science of conjecture: Evidence and probability before pascal. Johns Hopkins University Press. Friedman, E. R. (1977). Judgments of time intervals by young children. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 45(3), 715–720.

Farewell to Variables in Studies of Developmental Psychology • 107 Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krüger, L. (1990). The empire of chance: How probability changed science and everyday life. Cambridge University Press. Gobet, F. (2018). The future of expertise: The need for a multidisciplinary Approach. Journal of Expertise, 1(2), 107–113. Goldstein, J. H., & McGhee, P. E. (1972). Psychology of humor. Academic Press. Hacking, I. (1990). The taming of chance. Cambridge University Press. Howes, C. (1990). Social status and friendship from kindergarten to third grade. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 11(3), 321–330. https://doi.org/10.1016/01933973(90)90013-A Howes, C., Phillips, D. A., & Whitebook, M. (1992). Thresholds of quality: Implications for the social development of children in center-based child care. Child Development, 63(2), 449–460. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131491 Isaacson, R. L., & Kimble, D. P. (1972). Lesions of the limbic system: Their effects upon hypotheses and frustration. Behavioral Biology, 7(6), 767–793. Doi: https://doi. org/10.1016/S0091-6773(72)80170-6 Kitchener, R. F. (1985). Genetic epistemology, history of science and genetic psychology. Synthese, 65, 3–31. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00484885 Kushnir, T., & Gopnik, A. (2005). Young children infer causal strength from probabilities and interventions. Psychological Science, 16(9), 678–683. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-9280.2005.01595.x Lamb, M. E. (1975). Fathers: Forgotten contributors to child development. Human Development, 18(4), 245–266. Larsen, J. J., & Juhasz, A. M. (1986). The knowledge of child development inventory. Adolescence, 21(81), 39–54. Macksoud, M. S., & Aber, J. L. (1996). The war experiences and psychosocial development of children in Lebanon. Child Development, 67(1), 70–88. https://doi. org/10.2307/1131687 Macksoud, M. S. & Lawrence, A. J. (1996). The war experience and psychosocial development of children in Lebanon. Child Development, 70–88. https://doi. org/10.2307/1131687 Marx, W., Bornmann, L., Barth, A., & Leydesdorff, L. (2014). Detecting the historical roots of research fields by publication year spectroscopy (RPYS). Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(4), 751–764. https://doi. org/10.1002/asi.23089. Masten, A. S., & Tellegen, A. (2012). Resilience in developmental psychopathology: Contributions of the Project Competence Longitudinal Study. Development and Psychopathology, 24(2), 345–361. https://doi.org/10.1017/S095457941200003X Mazur, L. B. (2020). Progress in psychological science. The importance of informed ignorance and curiosity-driven questions. Integr. psych. behav. 54, 613–624. Doi: https:// doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09538-z McLoyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53(2), 185–204. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.53.2.185 Netchine-Grynberg, G. (1991). The theories of Henri Wallon: From act to thought. Human Development, 34(6), 363–379. https://doi.org/10.1159/000277072

108  •  JULIO CÉSAR OSSA & JEAN NIKOLA CUDINA Ossa, J. C. (2013). Matrices de transición y patrones de variabilidad cognitiva [Transition matrix and patterns of cognitive variability]. Universitas Psychologica, 12(2), 559–570. Ossa, J. C., & Puche-Navarro, R. (2010). Modelos bayesianos y funcionamientos inferenciales complejos [Bayes’ models and complex inferential functioning]. Acta Colombiana de Psicología, 13(2), 119–128. Pascual-Leone, J. (1987). Organismic processes for neo-Piagetian theories: A dialectical causal account of cognitive development. International Journal of Psychology, 22(5–6), 531–570. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207598708246795 Phillips, D., McCartney, K., & Scarr, S. (1987). Child-care quality and children’s social development. Developmental Psychology, 23(4), 537–543. https://doi. org/10.1037/0012-1649.23.4.537 Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. Basic Book. Piaget, J. (1972). Psychology and epistemology. Towards a Theory of knowledge. Penguin Books. Piaget, J., Inhelder, B., García, R., & Vonèche, J. (Eds.). (1977/1981). Epistemología genética y equilibración [Psychology and epistemology. Towards a theory of knowledge]. Madrid: Fundamentos. Riegel, K. F. (1975). Toward a dialectical theory of development. Human Development, 18(1–2), 50–64. https://doi.org/10.1159/000271475 Riegel, K. F. (1976). The dialectics of human development. American Psychologist, 31(10), 689–700. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.31.10.689 Rogoff, B., Matusov, E., & White, C. (1998). Models of teaching and learning. In D. R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The handbook of education and human development. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631211860.1998.00019.x Rosenzweig, M. R. (1984). Experience, memory, and the brain. American Psychologist, 39(4), 365–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.39.4.365 Rutter, M. (2008). Developing concepts in developmental psychopathology. In J. J. Hudziak (Ed.), Developmental psychopathology and wellness: Genetic and environmental influences (pp. 3–22). American Psychiatric Publishing. Salomon, G. (1994). Interaction of media, cognition, and learning: An exploration of how symbolic forms cultivate mental skills and affect knowledge acquisition. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203052945 Schmidt, H. E., & Williams, D. I. (1971). The evolution of theories of humour. Journal of Behavioural Science, 1(3), 95–106. Siegler, R. S. (1996). Emerging minds: The process of change in children’s thinking. Oxford University Press. Siegler, R. S. (2002). Variability and infant development. Infant Behavior & Development, 25(4), 550–557. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(02)00150-9 Springer, D. (1952). Development in young children of an understanding of time and the clock. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 80, 83–96. Sroufe L. A. (2005). Attachment and development: a prospective, longitudinal study from birth to adulthood. Attachment & Human Development, 7(4), 349–367. https://doi. org/10.1080/14616730500365928 Stein, A., Lehtonen, A., Harvey, A. G., Nicol-Harper, R., & Craske, M. (2009). The influence of postnatal psychiatric disorder on child development. Is maternal preoccupa-

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CHAPTER 6

NO VARIABLES IN CLASSROOM Understanding Learning by a Qualitative Analytical Tool João Roberto Ratis Tenório da Silva Federal University of Pernambuco

As a rule, numbers, measures and variables are related to a truly scientific work. Viewed this way, there is a tendency to use statistical data to answer research questions that do not fit quantitative approaches. In the majority of researches in Human Sciences, for example, there is the need to answer questions about subjects, meanings, processes or to describe events, practices and beliefs. Therefore, to take measures without an interpretative work guided by a theory seems to be limited to understanding certain kinds of human phenomena. Valsiner (2014a) raises the discussion about the problem that psychology becomes an arena for a “complex social game of a fashion of appearing scientific” with many works concerned with measures and variables. The problem with this is the limitation to grasp important issues in Psychology studying the nature of human beings. Considering that human beings are an open system in constant interaction with their environment, Valsiner (2014a) claims that Developmental and Cultural Psychology concerns have an issue in common, that is, how to capture the emergence of new phenomena? Moreover, Cultural Psychology of Dynamic Semiosis (CPDS) has the specific focus on understanding the emergence of new Farewell to Variables, pages 111–133. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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phenomena through the construction, use and maintenance of signs. In this context, it is necessary to develop qualitative methodologies that enable us to capture complex phenomena related to the dynamic interaction of human beings in their sociocultural context, making meaning in and about the world. We find similar issues in other fields of Human Sciences, such as Science Education research. Devetak et al. (2010) discuss the importance of qualitative research in Science Education since most times the issues are related to the comprehension of the process and do not the product of learning. So, qualitative approaches can be used in Science Education research since they are related to research problems, providing an important guideline for the researcher in selecting the appropriate method design. Wagoner and Jensen (2014) also argue for the importance of idiographic research in Education, more specifically, to understand the learning process. The authors claim that most research on learning is based on “average outcomes or at best, average scores in pre and post-tests (repeated measure design)” (p. 01). Yet according to Wagoner and Jensen (2014) “such a focus on group averages consistently neglects exploration of the different trajectories of change found in a research sample, while also failing to answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ these different changes have occurred.” (p. 01). In this sense, Wagoner and Jessen introduce the microgenetic methodology to investigate qualitatively mechanisms of change in the learning process. To achieve this, the authors also claim the importance of studies of single cases, as only with single cases it is possible to attain a detailed reconstruction of phenomena resulting in a deep understanding of the process. In face of this, I adopt the idea discussed by Valsiner (2014a) when he presents the individual-socioecological reference frame that could be usable in CPDS research because it adds the role of external guidance by goal-oriented others— people, institutions, etc. to its structure. It fits the human condition, allowing the researcher to investigate psychological phenomena under the influence and guidance of cultural elements from the environment. In order to take learning as a meaning-making process according to the sociocultural approach (Vygotsky, 1962) mediated by cultural signs, research in Science Education also needs a framework that considers these elements, due to the social nature of the learning process influenced by the interaction between subjects in their sociocultural environment. I also consider that methodologies that propose a deep understanding of the phenomena, as the microgenetic methodology, are especially important in both CPDS and Science Education research, given to the reason that the investigation in the learning process and in other educational issues, taking into account the relations between students, teachers, knowledge and sociocultural elements, can represent an interface between CPDS and Science Education. From this perspective, the aim of this chapter is to propose a qualitative analytical tool called Learning Pathway Model (LPM) that integrates the possibility of carrying out a microgenetic analysis of the learning process, in an individualsocioecological framework. The goal of the LPM is to draw a learning pathway to investigate single cases in classroom or in experimental research designs in order

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to understand how students can make meaning of concepts in Natural Sciences (Chemistry, Physics or Biology) through the observation of transition in between different levels of abstraction in their ideas. The microgenetic dimension of the LPM makes it possible to classify the ideas of the students into some categories that represent different levels of abstraction. For that, it is necessary to apply a few theoretical approaches to enable us to carry out this categorization. In this respect, the LPM is based on Vygotsky’s idea of everyday and scientific concepts and Valsiner’s notion of pleromatization and schematization. Vygotsky (1962) discusses the difference between scientific and everyday concepts. For him, everyday concepts are built in daily life without explicit instruction. On the other hand, scientific concepts are built under a formal instruction at school. Even presenting differences, Vygotsky (1962) argues that everyday concepts play an important role in the formation of scientific ones, acting as a base for the meaning-making of new concepts at school in formal instruction. The main difference between every day and scientific concepts is their nature in terms of abstraction. Everyday concepts are related to more concrete experiences in daily life and are formed in a spontaneous way by subjects interacting in their sociocultural context. Scientific concepts, on the other hand, are related to symbolic or linguistic signs. Moreover, they are formalized at a body of knowledge, being organized into definitions based on empirical evidence and scientific theories. Valsiner (2006) presents an approach to differentiate levels of abstraction in meaning-making in human life. In his study, he describes two parallel lines of sign mediation: schematization and pleromatization. Schematization is characterized by verbal generalized signs, such as concrete signs as symbols, icons and indexes. Schematization lies in the language field (both verbal and non-verbal) and represents signs produced in the environment related to concrete objects or ideas. Pleromatization is represented by hipergeneralized signs that are also related to concrete objects in the world but represent a complex field of meaning. Hipergeneralized signs can be externalized through generalized signs (schematization) when the subject reduces the complexity of the object into a single sign. Pleromatization guides subjects in an affective way by hypergeneralized forms of symbolic, indexical or iconic representations. In this regard, the LPM takes place between these theoretical approaches to understand how students can transit in between every day and scientific concepts through pleromatization and schematization. The goal is to observe the learning pathway towards future, as a time dependent process. The using of LPM is based on recorded phenomena in audio or video. Then, the analysis is on recorded data as a phenomenon that be part of the past. Thus, characterizing a post-factum method (Valsiner, 2014a). As an illustration of the use of LPM, I will present the analysis of three single cases in which pairs of students talk about the concept of a chemical substance in order to answer a few questions. The dialogue between the students was record-

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ed, transcripted and analyzed with the LPM to observe the levels of abstraction achieved by them in the meaning-making process in their learning pathway. The proposition of the LPM has the goal of contributing to the qualitative research in both CPDS and Science Education research in order to deeply understand the learning pathway of students, enable us to intervene in this process with the proposal of teaching methods that can improve it. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK In Natural Sciences development, knowledge is acquired through human intervention in the environment, when humans try to answer questions about a phenomenon. As the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard claims “toute connaissance est une réponse à une question. S’il n’y a pas eu de question, il ne peut y avoir connaissance scientifique” (p. 14). Normally, this knowledge is built starting from concrete phenomena, through observation, empirical experiments and, afterwards, it is synthesized in an abstract way with the use of theories, models and other kinds of semiotic representations. This reflects most research in Natural Sciences. However, this is not a rule, since there is the development of fields in which the starting point is not a concrete phenomenon, but abstract mathematical models as, for instance, the research in Quantum Mechanics. An illustration about this is the research to identify the sub particle Boson of Higgs with the particle accelerators called Large Hadron Collide (LHC). Even with empirical support of the LHC, the starting point is some theoretical model proposed in mathematical language.1 Learning scientific concepts in Natural Sciences at school is quite different from the pathway in the construction of scientific knowledge by research. In classroom, as a rule, the starting point is an abstract model expressed by symbolic, iconic or indexical signs in the teacher’s speech or in textbooks based on some knowledge already stabilized and consensual in the scientific context. Outside school, students also learn in a different way. All the time subjects are making meaning in and about the world by interaction in their environment. From this point of view, there are the development of everyday concepts, that will represent prior knowledge (sometimes informal knowledge) that students will present and confront with scientific knowledge in the learning process at school. This way, according to Vygotsky’s discussion, there are two kinds of concepts: every day and scientific concepts. Everyday Concepts X Scientific Concepts Learning is characterized by the building of new meanings, that is, the emergence of novelty (Silva & Lyra, 2020; Zittoun et al., 2011). Taking into account 1

In 2013 an experiment with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) found the boson of Higgs, a subparticle of the matter that had its existence premeditated by theoretical approaches by Peter Higgs in 1960s < https://www.livescience.com/27888-newfoundparticle-is-higgs.html> accessed 07/02/2020.

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the sociocultural approach (Vygotsky, 1962), learning is also related to the capacity to generalize and to abstract ideas from the concrete world. Vygotsky (1962) discusses this thought from the idea of the existence of scientific and everyday concepts. For him, everyday concepts are built in daily life without explicit instruction. Moreover, they develop from bottom to top, that is, from concrete experience to generalization and abstraction. On the other hand, scientific or non-spontaneous concepts are built under a formal instruction at school and they develop from top to bottom, that is, from symbolic or linguistic abstraction to concrete everyday phenomena (Vygotsky, 1962). For instance, in a Chemistry class, students can learn about the properties of substances from the speech of the teacher and the different kinds of representations in textbooks and, afterwards, experience a real property in a concrete world (i.e., to see boiling water at home and to relate it with the boiling point of the water learned at school). In everyday life, children can learn about boiling water from the concrete experience they come across when water is boiling in the kitchen to prepare food. From the intervention of an adult, children can abstract the idea that water or other kinds of liquid can boil if temperature rises. Scientific concepts are more sophisticated and organized in a system of classification and definition (i.e., pure water boils at 212°F or 100°C at the sea level), while everyday concepts are not connected in a system and are based on a personal experience of the world (i.e., water boils at high temperatures). Despite these differences, everyday concepts are important in the learning process because they provide a base for the development of scientific concepts. I summarized these features in Table 6.1. It is important to consider that in the learning pathway, students can go from everyday concepts to scientific concepts and vice versa all the time, transiting also from bottom to top and from top to bottom. In this sense, while students build meanings on a scientific subject, they can grasp levels of abstraction that can be interpreted by Valsiner’s notion of schematization and pleromatization. Pleromatization x Schematization Valsiner (2006, 2014b) presents an approach to differentiate levels of abstraction in meaning-making. In his study, he describes a movement from schematization to pleromatization that represents semiotic mediation in two parallel lines. Schematization is characterized by verbal generalized signs that are related to phenomena in the concrete world (i.e., concrete signs such as symbols, icons and indexes). Pleromatization is represented by hypergeneralizing signs (Valsiner, 2006) that are not related to a complex field of meaning. Sign mediation through pleromatization and schematization is the basis of the human potential capacity to make meaning of the world. Both pleromatization and schematization can be expressed by symbolic, iconic and indexical signs. While schematization describes the process of reduction of a complex object into a generalized sign/category, pleroma-

116  •  JOÃO ROBERTO RATIS TENÓRIO DA SILVA TABLE 6.1.  Differences between every day and scientific concepts

Everyday Concepts

Direction

System Information

Example

Bottom to top— In everyday life, children can Everyday concepts Some chemical from concrete learn about the existence of are not consubstances experience to the states of matter (solid, nected in a (materials) generalization liquid and gaseous) observsystem and are soft while and abstraction. ing rocks, drinking water or are based on a other ones can even breathing the oxygen in personal expebe hard and the air, but without a formal rience of the wet. classification. world.

Scientific Concepts

Top to bottom— Students can learn about the Scientific concepts Matter is classified from symbolic formal classification of the are more soby its molecuor linguistic states of matter—solid, liquid phisticated and lar structure abstraction to and gaseous—and relate organized in a in solid, liquid concrete everythem to empirical experience system of clasand gaseous. day phenomena. in their daily life. sification and definition.

tization represents the wholeness of the phenomena, relating it to a complex sign field guiding feelings and thought (Valsiner, 2006). Schematization: Making the World Intelligible Schematization can be understood as all kinds of representations in concrete world through signs which reduce an object into a category. According to Fossa (2017), Valsiner based the concept of schematization on the concept of schematism by Kant. This concept is related to the process in which an object can be expressed through a concept (or scheme) in a homogeneous way (Kant, 1883). Yet concerning Kant, Fossa (2017) argues that the concept must represent the object without the necessity of an explanation. There is also a relation to imagination through the utilization of iconic mental images to represent an idea of phenomena enabling its externalization in the concrete world. Valsiner (2006) states that schematization is a kind of mediation that overwhelm the world of human experiences into a simplified scheme. Therefore, we talk about the world using schematic signs that “encode” the complexity of the objects into a formal-logical category that replaces the complexity itself. Within this framework, according to Valsiner (2006), “through schematization the simplified human world becomes open to social control, and loses in its richness of affective and mental, personal and interpersonal, heterogeneity” (p. 02). The loss of richness is characterized by the synthesis created that makes the category somewhat representative of the object being performed (Fossa, 2017). For instance, the symbolic sign of the word HOUSE synthetizes all the features of the object house, representing all kinds of houses that exist in the world (i.e., wooden houses, brick houses, small houses, mansions, and so on). The symbolic

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sign HOUSE reduces any complexity of the object into a single representation of the word (category) denoted through its meaning. As claims Fossa, the scheme makes the synthesis of a sensation representable. In other words, the synthesis of a category represents a homogenized form of reality. In classroom at school, most times schematization is highlighted by verbal language used by the teacher and students or by the use of representational schemes to describe processes, phenomena or theories. The symbolic representation of a water molecule (H2O), for instance, is a schematic sign that mediates the meaning-making concerning the chemical substance called water and reduces the complexity of the object (water molecule) to a conceptual category “H—2—O” (molecular formula). Scientific diagrams (Figure 6.1) are also examples of schematic sings that reduce the richness of a phenomena to a single category through the homogenization of complexity. In Figure 6.1, there is a representation of changes of the states of matter as a schematic sign that synthetizes the complexity of the process of change that involves the microscopic disposition of the molecule in the system, the degree of agitation of the molecules and energy balances. All these elements are homogenized in the graphic representation, that, however, communicates that something is happening to the substance. Pleromatization: Richness, Wholeness and Feelings According to Valsiner (2006), verbal language is focused on symbolic signs. Normally, we communicate a homogenized (schematic) form of the objects

FIGURE 6.1.  Diagram of States of Matter and Their Changes—Schematic Sign Expressing and Reducing a Complex Phenomenon

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through language. So, the expression of the complexity and richness of reality is limited through language. This expression can be made possible through use of complex pictorial signs in a pleromatic way, to represent the totality of the reality. Fossa (2017) states that Valsiner takes the idea of the Greek concept of pleroma that means totality, wholeness and completeness to describe the sign mediation through Pleromatization. Pleromatization acts opposite of schematization towards the representation of complex forms of the object in a heterogenic way (Valsiner, 2014). The complexity is related to the wholeness of the object that represents a complex sign field of meanings, moving people from their feelings. The complex field of meanings can be represented by complex signs, hybrid forms that combine iconic, indexical and symbolic semiotic dimensions. This, according to Fossa (2017), allows human beings to experience the heterogeneity of the “cognitive-affective life and congregate a complex system of meanings, images and affections” (p. 96). For instance, the famous painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (Figure 6.2), from the fifteenth century, presents a complex sign field represented by its aesthetics of each metaphoric image related to mythology stories. The painting expresses the richness of the artistic movement in that age associated with allegoric religious figures as a whole and the fullness of meanings. Pleromatization represents a more complex process in which a field of meaning is represented by hypergeneralized signs guided by affective movements. Over

FIGURE 6.2.  The Birth of Venus—Sandro Botticelli. Circa 1490—fullness of meanings. Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-birth-of-venus/ MQEeq50LABEBVg?hl=pt-BR> Accessed 07/02/2020

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the years, people have been moved by these hypergeneralized signs as hybrid forms of iconic, indexical and symbolic features (schematic signs in the painting as seen in Figure 6.2) through the wholeness of meanings that Botticelli wanted to express. It is not possible to put into words all the significance or majesty of the painting in Figure 6.2 based on the intentionality of the painter. Therefore, this fullness in a feeling of inability to put them into words (goes down to schematizartion) represents a semiotic mediation through pleromatization, in which the painting makes people feel sadness, emptiness or enthusiasm. The heterogeneity associated with this is represented when different people build different meanings about the painting and put them into words through schematic signs and individual homogenized forms of explanation. In classroom at school, pleromatization can mediate the learning process when it “forces” students to think about important scientific issues through the motivational feeling produced by hypergeneralized signs presented in schematic forms in Natural Sciences. For instance, the motivation of students in study topics related to experiments in lab is well-known (Gilbert & Reiner, 2000; Lehrer et al., 2001). Mediation through pleromatization, in this case, can be justified by the feelings of beauty or astonishment provoked in students through the demonstration of a chemical experiment (Figure 6.3). The feeling of astonishment in face of a chemical reaction, as shown in Figure 6.3, can guide students to seek for a reasonable explanation for the phenomena, moving them on a cognitive-affective pathway in the learning process. The image of the chemical reaction is a pleromatic sign that represents a complex phenomenon involving energetic balance, reactivity between the chemical species and stoichiometric parameters in an image of fullness rich in meanings.

FIGURE 6.3.  Children Amazed and Having Fun With a Chemical Experiment Can Express Hypergeneralized Signs. Source: Adobe Stock

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It is important to highlight that there is a relation between schematization and pleromatization. Fossa (2017) states that schematic and pleromatic signs are both expressed in vocalized language and in internal language (Fossa, 2017). Moreover, Valsiner (2006) shows how mediation through pleromatization can be made possible by schematic signs (as discussed in the example in Figure 6.2). Nevertheless, in some moments, it is possible to identify when one process is in evidence over the other one. In the Learning Pathway Model tool proposed in this chapter, the goal is to observe the learning pathway of a scientific concept through the analysis of the predominance of one of these kinds of signs in the meaning-making process and by taking into account the transition between scientific and everyday concepts through schematization and pleromatization. A QUALITATIVE ANALYTICAL TOOL TO DESCRIBE A LEARNING PATHWAY Based on Vygotsky’s theory on every day and scientific concepts (1962) and Valsiner’s theory on schematization and pleromatization (2006), a qualitative analytical tool called Learning Pathway Model has been proposed to describe the learning pathway of students from dialogues based on scientific issues. This tool, associated with the theories cited, enables us to observe the transitions in between three levels of abstraction through schematization and pleromatizartion, presented in Figure 6.4. The proposition of the LPM was inspired in Valsiners’ model (2006) of hierarchy in the meaning-making process, in which schematization and pleromatization

FIGURE 6.4.  Analytical Tool to Investigate the Abstraction Levels of Scientific Concepts

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represent a range of functions of signs encompassing their use through pre-verbal, verbal (generalized) and hipergeneralized forms. Figure 6.1 shows the potential abstraction levels in the learning pathway that students can achieve during the meaning-making process. The tool is divided in two parts: the first one (A, B and C) is related to the abstraction of the concept towards what is accepted according to the scientific view; the second one (A′, B′ and C′) is related to the abstraction of the concept towards what is wrong when compared with the scientific view, informal conceptions related to scientific concepts or misconceptions. This division is based on the idea that in the learning process students can transit in between many kinds of ideas (scientific or not) and on the important role of misconceptions in the learning of scientific concepts (Hamza & Wickman, 2008). Schematization and pleromatization comprise a range that depends on the nature of the sign and on how people interact with it. While schematization ranges between B and B′, the range of pleromatization is wider, comprising all the levels from C to C′. To move to A, B, C or A′, B′, C′ sign mediation can transit on axis “X,” where the student tries to establish some relation with macroscopic phenomena in order to connect every day and scientific concepts. At last, A, B, C and A′, B′, C′ are defined as: • A—A′: first level—use of concrete signs to represent an idea (i.e. the substance of water represented by an iconic image of a cup with small molecules); • B—B′: second level—use of verbal language to represent an idea (i.e. verbal explanation about the difference between simple and compound substances); • C—C′: third level—students are able to solve a scientific problem but they are not capable of verbalizing it through generalized signs and explain how the problem has been solved or justify their answers. Also, students can have a “feeling” that guides them in direction to a definition related with the scientific subject. As represented in Figure 6.4, it is important to highlight that these levels of abstraction coexist in verbal and non-verbal language, similar to the notion that schematization and pleromatization are both expressed in vocalized language and in internal language (Fossa, 2017). Therefore, it is possible to observe the predominance of one level over the other ones in specific moments of a microgenetic analysis by applying the LPM. The central idea of the tool is to enable us to follow the learning pathway of students through the classification of ideas externalized by them based on Vygostky’s and Valsiner’s theoretical approaches. Consequently, the LPM keeps a descriptive and analytical nature to deal with qualitative data.

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Next, to illustrate how the LPM can be used, three episodes extracted from a large qualitative data2 will be shown: a transcription of dialogues between students in order to answer questions about the concept of substance in Chemistry. ILLUSTRATIONS Six elementary school students called by their fictional names Marcus & Connor, Kara & Alice and Hank & Luther participated in a case study. Data was collected from the audio and video recordings of dialogues during the process of resolution of questions about the concept of chemical substance represented in each episode: • Episode 1: Difference between mixture, substance and element—Marcus and Connor discussed about the difference between mixture, substance and element from semiotic representations used by the teacher. • Episode 2: Substances in daily life—Kara and Alice talk about the possibility of Oxygen to be an example of substance found in daily life. • Episode 3: What is a chemical substance?—Hank and Luther try to find a definition for substance according to a scientific view. The questions were answered after the students had watched 10 minutes of a video lesson about chemical substances. Then a microgenetic analysis (Wagoner, 2009; Wagoner & Jensen, 2014) of the dialogue of the students was carried out by using the LPM to observe the learning pathway and analyze the transition between levels of abstraction. Episode 1—Difference Between Mixture, Substance and Element: Connor and Marcus Marcus and Connor were talking about the difference between mixture, substance, and element in order to answer a question that had been asked to them previously. To answer it, they used as reference a representation presented by the teacher (Figure 6.5) in the video lesson. At that point of the video lesson, the teacher was presenting the difference between mixture, substance and element through iconic representations. The representations used by the teacher (Figure 6.5) mediated the meaningmaking process while Marcus and Connor tried to elucidate the differences in between the chemical species (Table 6.1). In Table 6.1, one can observe that the semiotic representations used by the teacher played an important role in the discussion to differentiate mixture, element, and substance. These semiotic representations are in Level A in the analytical tool because they are pre-verbal signs and in agreement with the scientific view. However, it is also possible to identify a hipergeneralized sign (Level C) in Turn 1 of the dialogue, when Marcus seems to have a feeling that he knows what 2

Found in Silva (2018) and extracts in Silva and Lyra (2020).

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FIGURE 6.5.  Representations for: (1) Mixture; (2) Compound Substance; (3) Simple Substance; (4) Mixture

TABLE 6.1.  Marcus and Connor’s Dialogue About the Representations Used by the Teacher in the Video Lesson Turn

Dialogue

1 Marcus

There was ... there was a painting that read so ... there were some ... some balls like that, remember? The first ball had two balls (makes movements pretending to draw the balls on the table with his finger) and a third one (taps the finger that was drawing on the table). Then he said that the third ... it ... it ... how can I say it? The third one is different from the first one (makes hand movements) because it had a lot of things (inaudible) and it was a substance ... it was a substance

2 Connor

Mixture

3 Marcus

Mixture

4 Connor

It’s not ... it’s because it had ... it had ... it was in a cube (it is shaped like a cube with both hands) and there were kind of two substances there ... in that substance there were... two identical balls ... and the other one had three. This is a mixture of two elements. Then he appeared and showed “it is a mixture.” Then in the other one there were ... three ... three things ... only one was set upright and the two were lain down, but the one (inaudible)

5 Marcus

I think ... one elemen... one element is ... just one one ... just one ... just one ... just one element right? I forgot the name...

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the teacher said and tries to remember it by drawing movements with his finger on the table. In this sense, we can say that the movement begins in Turn 1 Level A and Level C. When Marcus tries to remember the definition used by the teacher by “drawing” the molecules with his finger on the table, he expresses a pleromatic feeling that he knows the answer and he goes down to schematization through corporal language. In the end of Turn 1, Marcus claims that the representation that he was trying to remember could be a substance. When Marcus verbalizes based on the semiotic representation, he goes down to Level B′—schematization—with a wrong answer in relation to the scientific view. Actually, the difference between the balls in the representation used by the teacher characterizes a mixture (Connor, in Turn 2, corrects Marcus’ answer). This semiotic mediation in Turn 1 helps Connor elucidate an idea about the differentiation between mixture, element and substance in Turn 4. Apparently, he understands the difference between these chemical species. In this context, the dialogue rises to Level B—schematization—when the couple verbalizes the correct idea about the given problem, synthetizing the complexity of the concept into a definition. Marcus remains in Level B when he tries to define simple substances as species composed of one type of element (Turn 5), therefore putting the concept in a scientific category. In Figure 6.6, the movement of abstraction through the levels is presented. In Figure 6.6, one can truly notice a little piece of the learning pathway related to the whole meaning-making process of the pair of students while they were discussing the difference between mixture, substance and element. In terms of Chemistry, the difference between them lies in relation to the organization of the atoms and molecules in the composition of the system. For example, a system

FIGURE 6.6.  Abstraction Levels in the Scientific Meaning-Making Process of Marcus and Connor—Difference Between Mixture, Substance and Element

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with only H2O molecules is a system that contains the substance water. However, whenever there are other kinds of molecules besides water in the system (i.e. oxygen gas—O2—solved in the water), the system contains a mixture. At last, there are elements in the composition of the molecules of the substances. The molecule of water (H2O) is formed by the elements oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H). Even these differences had been discussed in the video lesson, the participants were not expected to elaborate a sophisticated definition to describe chemical species. However, in Table 6.1, an effort to give meaning to the iconic representations used by the teacher (Figure 6.5) in order to understand the difference between mixture, substance and element can be observed. This effort, microgeneticaly, conduces Marcus and Connor through pleromatic and schematic signs represented in Figure 6.6 by levels C, A, B′ and B. The misconception externalized by Marcus in level B′ also plays an important role in the meaning- making process, being part of the whole process, in which new meanings emerge and are (re)elaborated during the dialogue. Episode 2—Substances in Daily Life: Kara and Alice In this episode, Kara and Alice are discussing about possible examples of chemical substances that we can find in daily life. In Table 6.2 bellow, their dialogue is presented. In the dialogue in Table 6.2, we can observe that the movement (Figure 6.7) begins on Level B—schematization—from the attempt to externalize correctly examples of simple substances (Oxygen and Sulfur—Turns 3 to 7). From Turn 8, Alice starts to go down to a concrete experience, claiming that Oxygen is found in daily life. The justification presented by Kara in Turn 9 represents an attempt to establish a relationship between the concrete phenomena (the breathing of OxyTABLE 6.2.  Kara and Alice’s Dialogue About Examples of Chemical Substances in Daily Life Turn

Dialogue

1

Kara

Simple substance (write again) ... simple substance what?

2

Alice

Uh ...

3

Kara

Oxygen ...

4

Alice

Oxygen ... is ... write...

5

Kara

Oxygen gas ...

6

Alice

Yeah ... whatever the name is

7

Kara

It has sulfur too ...

8

Alice

We find oxygen gas in daily life (smiling)

9

Kara

Quite obvious! It’s the air we breathe!

10

Alice

Yeah ...

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FIGURE 6.7.  Abstraction Levels in the Scientific Meaning-Making Process of Kara and Alice—An Example of Simple Substance

gen) and the abstract idea (categorization) of the classification of Oxygen as a simple substance. In the piece of the learning pathway presented in Figure 6.7, one can observe that during Turns 8 and 9 Kara and Alice remain on axis “X,” discussing about a concrete experience (the breathing of Oxygen). As discussed before, the levels represented in the LPM can coexist and one can highlight a predominance, in this case, the predominance of the discussion of a concrete phenomenon. Nevertheless, one can claim that in this moment they were also in level B, expressing their ideas through verbal language (schematic signs). The point that is important to be highlighted is that the meaning-making process, once again, is supported by the transitions in between abstraction levels, in which, in this case, an everyday concept (breathing of oxygen) plays a role of scaffolding to Kara and Alice making meaning of a scientific concept (the classification of the oxygen as substance). Episode 3—What is a Chemical Substance? Luther and Hank Luther and Hank were looking for a formal (scholar) definition for the concept of substance. Moreover, they had to give three examples of substances that one finds in daily life. In Table 6.3, a piece of the dialogue between the participants in which they tried to answer the question is presented. In the dialogue between Hank and Luther an effort to remember and elaborate a definition for substance is possible to be observed most of the time. In what concerns to the learning pathway in the meaning-making process, one can remark on the start of the movement in Turn 3. In this Turn, Luther begins to think about a possible response, but does not complete his phrase “It is….” This can represent

No Variables in Classroom • 127 TABLE 6.3.  Hank and Luther Try to Answer What a Chemical Substance Is Turn

Dialogue

1 Hank

What is a chemical substance ? Give three examples of substances that you find in your daily routine. (Reading the question.)

2 Hank

What is a chemical substance, Luther?

3 Luther

It is…

4 Hank

Give three examples of substances that you find in your daily routine.

5 Luther

A chemical substance is H2O

6 Hank

Chemical substance ...

7 Luther

H2O... two ...

8 Hank

No , hey ... you have to say what it is, right?

9 Luther

What it means, I know.

10 Hank

So, you explain here what it is ...

11 Luther

Hank? Don’t you know?

12 Hank

No ...

13 Luther

Chemical substance is ... is ...

14

(Silence)

15 Luther

Chemical substances ...

16

(Silence)

17 Luther

My God...

18

(Silence)

19 Luther

Put there... chemical substances are ... they are…

20 Hank

They are...

21 Luther

They are ... damn, man ... yeah ... I think it is ... that ... difference between mixture , element ... being ... they are not ...

22 Hank

What?

23 Luther

They do not mix ... (inaudible ) they are always the same ...

24 Hank

(inaudible ) of substances ...

25 Luther

Chemical ... chemical ...

26 Hank

That make up ...

27 Luther

That make up one same ... one same ... it has one name… H is what? Only H?

28 Hank

It’s hydrogen ...

29 Luther

No ... I know ... but H ... hydrogen is what? It is...

30 Hank

An atom ...

31 Luther

Which is formed by just ... by atoms ... is ... equivalent ... equal

32 Hank

No , put ... this here is different ... It is a substance.

33 Luther

And what is that? A chemical substance.

34 Hank

A chemical substance ... It’s different.

35 Hank

There .. is the same , right? They are compound ... but they have... like ... (inaudible)

36 Luther

Got it .. got it .. got it ... compound and simple

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a feeling that probably he knows the answer, but he is not able to externalize a definition in a way that he wants to (through schematic signs). In this sense, we have a pleromatic sign guiding his thought. In Turn 4, Hank reads again the final part of the question and, afterwards, in Turn 5, Luther goes down to axis “X” passing by schematization, after he had begun his thought in Turn 3. Between Turns 5 and 8, it is possible to observe that Luther tries to define the concept of substance presenting a concrete example instead of synthetizing the concept in a formal definition. In this regard, he seeks for a support in the concrete example of water (H2O) to define substance in Turn 5: “A chemical substance is H2O.” In Turn 8, Hank reminds Luther that the question is what a substance IS (so his answer does not work here). Pleromatic signs are also represented by moments of silence in Turns 14, 16 and 18. Moments of silence, during this dialogue, are followed by a pleromatic feeling that the answer is very “close” to be achieved (i.e. Luther in Turn 21— “They are ... damn, man ... yeah ... I think it is ... that ... difference between mixture, element ... being ... they are not…”). In addition to this, it is also important to highlight the mediation through pleromatization related to the schematic sign presented in the expression “My God” claimed by Luther in Turn 17. This expression can represent a feeling of dissatisfaction that moves the participants to an effort to elaborate a definition for the concept of substance. In Turns 26 to 30, an attempt of Luther to classify hydrogen as substance in order to establish a link with a concrete example (similar to the example of H2O in Turn 5) can be observed. This effort conducts the participants to the final part of dialogue, in which they go down to schematization. In Turn 27, the participants begin a “climbing” to define substance, establishing some relations: atoms = equivalent—equals—substance—compound—compound and simple substances. This pathway is guided by pleromatic signs, represented for the feeling that they were very “close” to achieve the correct answer, until the moment that they were able to externalize through schematization in Turn 36, when Luther presents the categorization of the concept of substance: compound and simple— abstract categories that synthetize a few attributes of the composition of the substances. It is important to highlight that they did not come up with a final answer for this question. Even so, in the dialogue we could notice how the scientific idea of chemical substance was developed in the participants’ speech through pleromatic and schematic signs, in which scientific and everyday concepts were put in relationship. Another point to highlight is the one between Turns 12 and 35 when Hank and Luther begin a constant movement of transition between pleromatization and schematization. While pleromatic signs were guiding the participants to come to an answer, all the time they tried to externalize something through verbal language, representing schematic signs (Red area in the Figure 6.5.). In light of this, we have the following learning pathway represented in Figure 6.8.

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FIGURE 6.8.  Learning pathway of Luther and Hank: What Is a Chemical Substance?

In Figure 6.8, there is a piece of the learning pathway related to the dialogue presented in Table 6.3. Moreover, applying the LPM, it is possible to observe the transition between levels of ideas with the predominance of: • Pleromatization in level C—Turn 3 and Turns 12 to 35—when Hank and Luther were moved by pleromatic signs represented by feelings that the correct answer was close to be grasped; • Concrete level—Turns 5 to 8 and specifically in Turn 27—when Hank and Luther based their reasoning on concrete examples to define the concept of substance; • Schematization in level B—Turn 36—when Hank and Luther were able to externalize that there is a differentiation in the concept of substance in abstract categories related to the microscopic composition of molecules. CONSIDERATIONS The first aim of this chapter was to discuss the importance of qualitative research in studies about the complex nature of cognitive processes in human beings. More specifically, this chapter presents how important qualitative methodologies are to understand the nature of a learning process, that represents an object of study in an interface between Cultural Psychology of Dynamic Semiosis (CPDS) and Science Education fields. The second aim was to discuss the importance of a proposition of an analytical tool to understand the learning pathway of students in the meaning-making

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process in issues related to Natural Sciences, such as Chemistry, Physics and Biology. In this sense, the Learning Pathway Model (LPM) was presented, which was proposed based on: 1.

2.

3.

The microgenetic method to investigate a learning process (Wagoner & Jensen, 2015): The analysis is based on the observation of emergence of novelty that characterizes little developmental changes in the “here and now” that reflect an ontological level of changes. An individual-socioecological reference frame (Valsiner, 2014a): To what concerns learning as a cultural phenomenon, the individualsocioecological frame entails the look at the ongoing exchange relations of the organism with the environment adding the constructive focus on elements (tools and signs) that modify the relation between human beings and their cultural context. Then, there is also a focus on the “role of external guidance by goal oriented other people, institutions, etc.” (Valsiner, 2014b, p. 270). The post-factum method (Valsiner, 2014a): In the post-factum method the goal is to observe the phenomenon as a process time dependent process, observing from recorded data that belongs to the past, but hints towards the future.

In order to observe the appliance of the LPM to analyze the learning process, I used an extract of a large qualitative data in which the goal was to understand the meaning-making of the concept of substance normally studied in the elementary and high school Chemistry syllabus. In this context, three episodes were observed in the analysis carried out, each one related to a question about the concept of substance. During the analysis it was possible to observe how the participants externalized ideas about the concept of substance based on their own experiences and influenced by the video lesson watched earlier. With this in mind, the participants tried to answer the questions in a scientific way, trying to associate it with their prior knowledge. This effort reflected in concrete and abstract ideas that represented every day and scientific knowledge about the concept of substance. The transitions in between the levels of abstraction was possible through the use of the LPM in the analysis, through which it was also possible to have access to the transitions of ideas in between levels of across time. To illustrate this possibility with the LPM a few pieces of the learning pathway traced with the tool were presented, expressing moments of schematic and pleromatic mediations (Valsiner, 2006). In this regard, it is important to highlight a few features of the meaning-making process observed in the LPM:

No Variables in Classroom • 131

1.

2.

Sometimes students transit in between every day and scientific concepts (in Vygotsky’s terms) to establish a relationship between abstract ideas and concrete phenomena. An example of this can be seen in episodes 2 and 3. In the first one, we observe that Kara and Alice tried to relate the concrete phenomenon of the breathing of oxygen to the scientific concept of substance, in which the phenomenon (breathing) is a justification to the abstract categorization: oxygen is a substance (category) because we can breathe it (phenomenon). In the second case, at some moments, Luther and Hank tried to give a definition to substance from the relation to concrete examples. Firstly, Luther defines substance as water, reducing the features of a large category into a single substance. The same happens with Hank, when he defines substance as hydrogen. These attempts represent an effort to give a meaning to substance relating it to known elements. During the dialogue they reach the idea that water and hydrogen are kinds of substances, which can be simple or compound substances. These examples show that the movement proposed in Vygotsky’s idea of concepts formed from bottom to top and vice versa is not unique in the meaning-making process. That is, an everyday concept, is formed from bottom (concrete examples) to top (abstract categorization), but in a formal learning context, the movement bottom—top moves back and forth to enable students to use prior knowledge (normally everyday concepts) and scientific ideas (scientific concepts) taught at school; Pleromatization and schematization were presented in moments when participants achieved abstraction levels from the externalization of their ideas through semiotic tools, such as pre-verbal sings, verbal signs and hipergeneralized signs (Valsiner, 2006). In episode 1, for example, Marcus and Connor started to think about the differentiation in substance, mixture and element through the mediation of a schematic sign represented by iconic representations used by the teacher in the explanation. Based on this representation, pleromatic signs emerged represented by the feeling that guided them in order to remember the meanings of the spheres drawn by the teacher to explain the difference between substance, mixture and element. Each attempt to express this difference was made by the use of schematic signs throughout verbal language. In episode 3, it was possible to observe that pleromatization and schematization played an important role in the meaning-making process to define the concept of substance. Almost all the time Hank and Luther expressed their ideas through schematic signs in the verbal language guided by the pleromatic feeling that the answer was very “close.” During the dialogue it was possible to notice that gradually their ideas became more sophisticated until they externalized the difference between simple and compound substances. Reducing the rich complexity of the concept of substance into simple and compound schematic categories shows how

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a scientific concept can be represented by schematic signs in order to communicate an idea. Therefore, it is important to consider that the movement between abstract/ concrete ideas and schematization/pleromatization is constant in the meaningmaking process playing an essential role in the learning process. This outcome is important to understand the potential learning pathway of the students. The LPM proposed here presented a suitable way to carry out this kind of micro-analysis starting from the speech of students. Another point to highlight is the importance of the mistakes in this process (Hamza & Wickman, 2008; Shuell, 1987). This justifies the existence of the underside of the tool (A′, B′, C′). During the meaning-making of a scientific matter, commonly misconceptions will appear as part of the whole learning process. Sometimes the misconceptions can represent a prior knowledge that will be useful for students to make sense of scientific concepts, as explains Shuell (1987). Thus, it is important to take the mistakes or misconceptions as part of a reflexive movement in which the student negotiates meanings during the dialogue in an inter and intrapsychological process. In an intrapsychological level it was possible to observe new meanings through self-reflection about the topic discussed in each question about the concept of substance. In an interpsychological level it was possible to observe the social nature of learning through the mutual contribution of participants to answer the questions. The observation of the social nature of learning ratifies classic theories, such as the one of Vygotsky about learning as a socially mediated process (Described in his model of Zone of Proximal Development.) and the semiotic perspectives, by Vygostky (1962) and those developed in the field of Semiotic Cultural Psychology (Valsiner, 2007, 2014b), which consider learning as a semiotically mediated process, that is, meanings that are built through signs. All features pointed out about the meaning-making process were possible due to the application of a qualitative methodology in order to deeply understand the nature of the object of study. The use of the LPM allowed a microgenetic analysis of the dialogues of the participants to observe the learning pathway and the transition in between different levels of abstraction. The use of the LPM is recommended for qualitative studies in which data comes from verbal language to observe the emergence of new meanings in a microgenetic level mediated through pleromatic and schematic signs. REFERENCES Bachelard, G. (1938). La formation de I’esprit scientifque [The formation of the scientific spirit]. Association, Montreal. (Vrin: París). Devetak, I., Glažar, S. A., & Vogrinc, J. (2010). The role of qualitative research in science education. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 6(1), 77–84.

No Variables in Classroom • 133 Fossa, P. (2017). Pleromatization, phyisiognomization and metaphoricity: A theoretical articulation of sense making processes of Valsiner, Werner and McNeill. Psicologia USP, 28(1), 93–101. Gilbert, J. K., & Reiner, M. (2000). Thought experiments in science education: Potential and current realization. International Journal of Science Education, 22(3), 265–283. Hamza, K. M., & Wickman, P. O. (2008). Describing and analyzing learning in action: An empirical study of the importance of misconceptions in learning science. Science Education, 92(1), 141–164. Kant, E. (1883). Crítica a la razón pura [Critique of pure reason]. Porrúa. Lehrer, R., Schauble, L., & Petrosino, A. J. (2001). Reconsidering the role of experiment in science education. In K. Crowley, C. D. Schunn, & T. Okada (Eds.), Designing for science: Implications from everyday, classroom, and professional settings (pp. 251–278). Lawrence Erlbaum. Shuell, T. J. (1987). Cognitive psychology and conceptual change: implications for teaching science. Science Education, 71(2), 239–250. Silva, J. R. R. T. (2018). Memória e Aprendizagem: construção de significados sobre substância química [Memory and Learning: The meaning-making about chemical substance]. Ph.D. Dissertation, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil. Silva, J. R. R. T., & Lyra, M. C. D. P. (2020). Learning the concept of chemical substance: the role of reconstructive memory. Human Arenas, 3(1), 99–118. Valsiner, J. (2006). The overwhelming world: Functions of pleromatization in creating diversity in cultural and natural constructions. International Summer School of Semiotic and Structural Studies, Finland, 12, 1–21. http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/ IMATRA%20presentatoion%20(6-07-06).pdfAcessed: Accessed: 27/03/2020. Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. Foundations of cultural psychology, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. Valsiner, J. (2014a). Needed for cultural psychology: Methodology in a new key. Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 3–30. Valsiner, J. (2014b). An invitation to cultural psychology. Sage. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. MIT Press. Wagoner, B. (2009). The experimental methodology of constructive microgenesis. In Dynamic process methodology in the social and developmental sciences (pp. 99–121). Springer. Wagoner, B., & Jensen, E. (2014). Microgenetic evaluation: Studying learning in motion. Yearbook of Idiographic Science: Reflexivity and change. Information Age Publishers. Zittoun, T., Valsiner, J., Vedeler, D., Salgado, J., Gonçalves, M., & Ferring, D. (2011). Melodies of living: developmental science of human life course. Cambridge University Press.

PART III GOING BEYOND THE VARIABLES: NEW PERSPECTIVES

CHAPTER 7

MIND IS MOVEMENT We Need More Than Static Representations to Understand It Raffaele De Luca Picione Università Giustino Fortunato, Benevento, Italy

Sergio Salvatore Università La Sapienza, Roma, Italy

Standard cognitive science adopts a representational and computational view of cognition (e.g., Bickhard, 2009; Borghi & Caruana, 2015; Clark, 2001), which is grounded on an assumption of substantial ontology. Such assumption is implicit in the amodal nature that this family of theories attributed to symbols (Fodor, 1983; for a critical discussion of the amodal model of cognitive symbols, see Barsalou, 1999, 2010, 2016). Indeed, insofar as cognitive symbols are amodal, this means that one has to assume that the sensorial input has to be translated from the physical to the symbolic format (so called “transduction,” cf. Pylyshyn, 1984). And this then means that the sensorial input must have its own structure—indeed, a translation is possible only if there is something to translate—in turn mirroring the structure of the external object causing it (Bickhard, 2009). Needless to say, mainstream cognitive models are not extraneous to the idea that cognitive processing shapes actively the sensorial input, going beyond the Farewell to Variables, pages 137–157. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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information held in it in order to make the experience meaningful. On the other hand, this idea acquires its meaning within and by reason of the more general assumption of the objects’ ontological autonomy. Indeed, once framed within this general metaphysical assumption, the activeness of the cognitive system comes to be meant in terms of inferential way of working—i.e. the re-construction of the external stimulus within the mind based on the partial information held in the sensorial input. As Tong (2018) stated recently as to visual perception—“much of what the visual system must do is interpretive and inferential in nature” (p. 6). Incidentally, this view of the inner experience as reconstruction of the external reality is inherent to the literal meaning of “representation”—something that is presented another time (re-presented). This epistemological view can be tracked back in most research paradigms adopted in the field, which are based on the use of stimuli which are considered self-contained, discrete entities, therefore having an invariant meaning across individuals and circumstances (Witt, 2018). In other words, when any participant is exposed to the stimulus S (e.g., a light, a sound, an image on the screen), it is assumed that she/he responses to the same entity (S) and—thanks to the procedures of control- only to it. And this is so because of the more general assumption that S exists in itself in the world as a self-contained entity and therefore it is experienced as such. On the other hand, if it were not so, namely if one gave up with the assumption that the world holds self-contained entities standing out of there before and independently to the act of perceiving/interpreting them, then the ontological autonomy of S would fade away and with it the fundamental pillars grounding the assumption that all participants exposed to S response to the same event (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010). In sum, the substantial ontology assumption provides representationalist and computationalist cognitive psychology with (a) the metaphysical foundation of its scientific program, (b) with a general normative criterion, and (c) a methodological framework. Indeed, insofar as the reality is a set of self-contained objects, (a) the study of cognition is the modelling of how the mind is able to re-present them; (b) the ontological status of any representation lays in the relation between its content and the piece of the world it refers to; (c) and this legitimates to consider the information conveyed by the stimuli as invariant and defined in advances. The broad success of standard cognitive science has meant that substance ontology is taken for granted as a fact from which mainstream psychological science cannot extricate itself. On the other hand, there are a number of good reasons to get rid of it. Substance ontology is inconsistent with the current scientific epistemology and prevents the development of psychological science, because it raises some tricky problems hampering the recognition of important facets of the cognitive mechanism underpinning subjective experience. Moreover, the belief of a world made up of substances is inconsistent with the subjective experience of certain circumstances.

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Once the limits of substance ontology are specified, the alternative that emerges is process ontology (Fronterotta et al., 2018; Salvatore, 2018), namely the idea that the object represented is not the encoding of a self-contained, pre-existing piece of the world endowed with its own independent substance, but the emergent output of the act of cognition, the latter seen as the dynamics coupling between the agent and the environment of its action. Historical and contemporary theories, coming from psychology as well as philosophy, theoretical biology and semiotics (Husserl, 1893–1917/1991; see also Fronterotta et al., 2018; Gabriel, 2015; Manzotti, 2006; Maturana & Varela, 1980; Patterson, 2013; Varela et al., 1991) argue convincingly or at any rate imply a process ontology as a valid alternative to substance ontology. Our aim in this paper is to provide conceptual arguments in favor of the adoption of the processual ontology as grounds of psychology science and to highlight some major theoretical and methodological implications of this choice. To this end, first, the three arguments against substantial ontology mentioned above are briefly discussed (§2); then, the historical background of processual ontology is outlined (§3) and major methodological implications for psychology science are highlighted with special attention paid to the role of variables, the core issue of the current volume (§4). ARGUMENTS TO MOVE BEYOND SUBSTANTIAL ONTOLOGY Theoretical Arguments In his manifest of interactivism, Bickhard (2009) claims explicitly for replacing the substance ontology underpinning standard cognitive theories with process ontology—with his words: “(…) what the world basically is organizations of process” (p. 86). Bickhard provides several arguments in support of such a claim. First, the whole scientific thought has evolved in the terms of the replacement of substantial to process ontology; second, physics teaches that what can be considered endowed with substance are the quantum field—i.e. a process, not the particles emerging from it; third, only process ontology enables to model emergent phenomena, which are the core of psychological phenomena; finally, process ontology enables to avoid the severe conceptual problems associated with the assumption of entity endowed with substantiality. For the sake of the current discussion, it is worth considering the major problem Bickhard attributes to standard cognitive model: the issue of causality. In accordance with the view of the world as made up of autonomous entities, the perception is conceived of as the effect caused by the object on the sensorial apparatus, in analogy with the Aristotelian image of the ring which determine the form (but not other facets) of the soft wax impressed. Now, this view raises two main problems. On the one hand, given that cause and effect are related in terms of necessity (i.e., if there is the cause, then the effect cannot but be), the view of the representation as caused by the object is unable to explain the normativity of the former, namely the fact that the rep-

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resentation can be correct or incorrect. Second, Bickhard underlines that it is not possible to circumscribe the causality to just the stimulus of the representation, because the stimulus is inscribed in a network of causal linkages with an infinite set of other present and past components of the field. This means that the capacity to produce an effect is not a quality that belongs to the discrete elements in themselves, being rather a global property of the field. As consequence of that, to explain the representation of the object “X” as the effect of X means to confound what has to be explained with what explains. In other words, the fact that is just X to produce an effect rather than the infinite set of alternatives is what has to be explained, not the explanation. Causality is transitive: if X causes Y, and Y causes Z, then X causes Z. So if there is a causal relationship between the impression in the wax and the ring as it is now, there are also causal relationships with: the quantum activities in the ring, with whatever is pressing the ring, with the ring a second ago, with the ring a year ago, with the materials out of which the ring is constructed, with the stellar processes that constructed those materials, and so on. In the case of vision, relationships with the light similarly proliferate—to include relationships with the table from which it reflects, the table an hour ago, the trees from which the table is constructed, the sunlight from which the trees grew, and so on. Which of these is to be the crucial representational relationship? How does the perceiver “know” what that special relationship is (supposed to be) with? This last question is the representational question all over again: so the entire account is fundamentally circular. (p. 90)

Enactivism (Varela et al., 1991) develops the basic notion of operational closure (Maturana & Varela, 1980) in philosophical and psychological key, in so doing providing further arguments for preferring a processual rather than a substantial ontology. The main point is the recognition of the fact that once cognition is interpreted as an operationally closed system, representations are constitutive of the reality, rather than being maps of a pre-given and independent world. This is so because the operational closure consists of the fact that the observer is engaged in reproducing its inner organization, namely in keeping coherency within own states over time. The observer operates so by defining a phenomenic domain, namely a set of relations and distinctions within the interaction with the world. From the standpoint of the observer, the environment consists of this phenomenic domain; therefore, to conceive the cognitive system as an operationally closed system means that the environment is not a pre-given self-contained entity, but a niche—an Umwelt, in Von Uexküll’s term (von Uexküll, 1920/1926)—constituted by the components of the physical world the observer defines as relevant in order to regulate own organization. And this is another way to say that the object represented is not what explains the representation, but what has to be explained in the terms of its being the by-product of the cognitive system’s inner organization. Manzotti (2006) provides an insightful illustration of this reversion—the rainbow. Such an optical phenomenon is not an entity of the world—there is not an object out-there corresponding to the perception of it. The perception is due

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to the fact that the cognitive system encompasses the refraction of the light rays in its phenomenic domain—namely, it lends itself to be perturbed by this physical component of the world—and therefore operates in order to manage its own organization accordingly. Similarly, Fronterotta et al. (2018) adopt a radical process ontology in order to frame a new version of monism (processual monism) able to overcome problems other versions of monism encounter when asked to deal with the qualia issue. Following quantum physics, and partially consistently with the synthesis between idealism and realism advanced recently by the philosopher Gabriel (2015), they propose to consider the structure of the world in negative terms, namely as an infinite set of constraints (a “neg-form,” in their term). The neg-form determines what is not possible, and therefore what can possible, but not what must be. Thus, a neg-form is an on-going potential state, “waiting” for” processes of instantiation, which are brought about by the encounter with a living being. The living being interacts with the world through and in the terms of one of the possible cognitive domains, each of them consisting of a given subset of constraints made pertinent with respect to the whole infinite sets of constraints making up the world. Objects emerges from such a process of pertinentization, because a stable pattern of connection the object consists of can be defined only within the terms of a limited cluster of constraints. Living beings can operate in the terms of several cognitive domains, each of them endowed with specific properties, therefore each of them making pertinent a different subset of constraints of the neg-form, thus instantiating a different form of reality from the whole. According to this frame, mind and body represent two realities instantiated by two different cognitive domains. Processual Ontology and Constitution of the Experience The shift from substance to process ontology has deep implications. It means a complete inversion between explanans—i.e. what explains—and explanandum— i.e. what has to be explained (Bickhard, 2009; Salvatore, 2012): according to the process ontology, the subjective sense of substantiality of the representation is not the mirror of the inherent ontological status of the external object, but the emergent product of meaning-making. In other words, we do not represent objects as endowed with substance because they have substance (substantiality as explanans); rather, we represent objects as endowed with substance because of the fact that our cognitive apparatus provides them with this basic meaning ([sense of] substantiality as explanandum). Leeuwenberg & van der Helm express clearly such a view claiming that objects are the output, rather than the input of perception (and one can generalize to cognition tout court): “The goal of perception is not to establish properties of given objects but to establish objects from properties of the given retinal image” (Leeuwenberg & van der Helm, 2013, p. 1) A fundamental consequence of this upheaval is that it leads us to see the cognitive system as endowed with a constitutive function. According to standard cognitive science, cognition plays an attributive function only—namely, it associates

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semantic predicates to pre-given entities of the external words—i.e. O (the object) is (belongs to the category) P (predicate): e.g. the apple (O) is red (S). Instead, the constitutive function is the process through which the object comes to be experienced as an entity of the world—namely it is constituted as a phenomenological object. Accordingly, the constitutive function comes before the attributive function, both from a logical and functional standpoint; indeed, in order to attribute a predicate to the object, there must be the object to which the attribution is addressed. Salvatore (2019) has recently proposed to distinguish the two functions by denoting them differently—meaning-making and sense-making, referred to attributive and constitutive function, respectively. The constitutive function of cognition can be traced in terms of its fundamental output, consisting of two basic qualities that characterize the subjective experience of the object. On the one hand, the object is intended and therefore experienced as endowed with substantiality, namely as a cluster of qualities persisting across space and time (e.g., Patterson, 2013); on the other hand, the object is experienced as endowed with value of life (Salvatore, 2012), namely as a fact of the world having existential relevance for the subject (in this, distinguishable from contents of imagination). Thus, modelling the constitutive function of cognition means to understand the cognitive mechanisms that underpin the mind’s capacity to generate the subjective meaning of substantiality and value of life of the object experienced. Insofar as such a subjective sense is the grounds of the subject’s being in the world (Gallagher, 2005; Salvatore, 2019), the cognitive process producing it is worth considering constitutive: a sort of big-bang of psychological life (Salvatore, 2016, Chaps. 2 and 3) which, differently from what happens with the physical universe, happens again and again at every moment. Phenomenological Arguments In very many circumstances, we feel what we experience is something that corresponds to entities standing outside our mind, existing before and independently from us. This deep feeling is more than a quality we attribute to inner representations: it is a pre-noetic, embodied belief (Gallagher, 2005), which grounds our intimate sense of being in the world, the experience of having an inner life structurally isomorphic—and therefore coupled with—the external reality (Salvatore, 2012, 2016). On the other hand, though the pre-noetic feeling of the substantiality of objects is so rooted in the sense of self, several forms of experience challenge its obviousness directly or indirectly. In so doing, they provide cues for recognizing that the sense of substantiality emerges from meaning-making, rather than being the mirror of an inherent property of the world. A classical instance of these challenges is provided by visual effects like Kanizsa’s triangle in Figure 7.1 (Kanizsa, 1979). A further example, which is literally always before our eyes, is the blind spot (the natural scotoma), an area of the retina corresponding to the optic disk where

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FIGURE 7.1.  A Simple Homemade Version of Kanizsa’s triangle: There Are No Drawn Edges Of Triangle, but an Observer is Able to See a Triangle Shape

no photoreceptors exist due to the exit of retinal neurons forming the optic nerve. However, we do not perceive a black spot in our visual field when we look through one eye, thanks to the so-called perceptual “filling-in” process (Brown, & Thurmond, 1993; Kawabata, 1982). In cases like these, it is evident that the perceptual system does not encode the information held in the stimulus; rather, it goes beyond the information given and constitutes the perceptual object in accordance to the Gestalt criteria (Kanizsa, 1975; Wertheimer, 1923/2012; see Wagemans, 2018 for a review). Another source of challenge to the inherent ontological substantiality of objects is provided by the fact that in many circumstances (in particular, in familiar contexts) we do not perceive objects, but meanings—one could say; we perceive objects “filled” with their interpretation (Patterson, 2013). For instance, we do not perceive a piece of paper and then we interpret it as a banknote; rather, we perceive the banknote directly and immediately, as a self-contained entity having an inherent existential salience (i.e. value of life, Salvatore, 2012). And the same happens with stones, cars, pens, screwdrivers, books, computers and so forth (Searle, 1995). However, it is obvious that there are not such things as banknotes, stones and cars in the physical world; therefore, the subjective sense of substantiality in terms of which we experience them has to be considered the output of sense-making, working from the very beginning of the elaboration of the experience, strictly intertwined with perception. The perception of action provides further evidence of the fact that the sense of substantiality is the product rather than the cause of sense-making. One perceives that a person is running, not that she is moving her legs rhythmically and quickly.

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Incidentally, the literature on mirror neurons (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004) supports the idea that what is perceived is not the physical movement– namely, what one is allowed to consider the content of the sensorial input—per se, but its pragmatic functional meaning—i.e. the purposeful action carried out by the physical movement. For instance, Umiltà et al. (2001) described a subset of premotor mirror neurons that also discharged during the observation of partially hidden actions, coding the action outcome even in the absence of the complete visual information about it. Now, as above, the action is not a self-contained entity of the physical world. An action is a set of relations among occurrences over time, set and kept active by sense-making. Accordingly, it is the sense-making that shapes the action as an object of experience and provides it with the sense of substantiality and value of life. Finally, it is worth noting a further source of challenge, that in a sense is the opposite of those provided by Kanizsa’s triangle and blind spot, namely the circumstances when the phenomenological object fades away in spite of the persistency of the sensorial input. In its dramatic form, this phenomenon characterizes the psychopathological condition of derealization. Persons affected by such a condition are able to represent the external reality (faces, objects, actions), yet they feel such representation in a sort of dreamlike fashion, void of existential value, as if they were empty forms moving on a screen (Coons, 1996). However, one need not arrive at the psychopathological extreme of the continuum in order to pick up instances of derealization. Indeed, probably everyone has experienced an attenuated form of this phenomenon when, having ceased to identify with the film, they have started to see images passing over the screen as mere shapes, void of any reference to the reality they refer to. In forms of experience of this kind, one can see the relevance of the constitutive function of cognition in the negative, namely in terms of what happens when such a function is weakened. In other circumstances, the sense of substantiality is kept, yet the sense of value of life is lost. An instance of circumstances of this kind is provided by how people experience the sufferance of other human beings in abstract terms (e.g., as collateral effects, migration fluxes, genocide) void of existential power—as a story-format, rather than facts of the world. From a complementary standpoint, one can refer to the well-known and largely studied case of Phineas Gage (Damasio et al., 1994). As a result of an incident at work, Phineas Gage had severe neurobiological damage at the level of the neural circuits involved in the computation of emotional information. Phineas did not lose higher cognitive function—he was still able to perceive, recognize, and calculate, yet he became unable to plan his action and regulate himself (he lost his job for this). According to one the most reputable interpretations, as a result of the injury, Phineas become unable to experience the subjective, emotional meaning of his representation (Damasio, 1999). In the terms of the current discussion, he kept the sense of substantiality—i.e. he retained the ability to experience events, objects and facts as real—yet void of value of life, as if they were merely conjectural, lacking subjective sense.

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PROCESS ONTOLOGY. HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Kant’s critique of the pure reason (Kant, 1781/1998) represents an obliged point of reference of the view of the mind as constitutive of the experience implies in process ontology. The distinction between phenomenic reality and noumenon and the interpretation of time and space as a-priori intuitions lead to a radical reversal of perspective: the subject does not experience space and time as the result of the fact that they are inherent qualities of the world in se; rather, the space and time are the (transcendental) subject’s modes of organization of the experience, namely, the way in terms of which the subject provides a form to the experience. From a complementary standpoint, one can refer to the Brentano’s claim of the intentionality of psychological phenomena (Brentano, 1874/1995). According to him, what is specific of any psychological process is the fact that it addresses an object, always and however, the so-called intentional object: any perception, feeling, thought, cannot but be about something. The implication of this quality of psychological processes is that the intentional object has a content of being that is independent from its ontological status, namely it stands as content of the consciousness regardless the extensional properties it possesses -i.e. even if it is void of existence. As underlined by Meinog, (Albertazzi et al., 2001; cf. Valsiner, 2009, also) the object subsist before and regardless its existence, as shown by the very fact that the existence is a contingent quality (it can be given or not) whose attribution implies an object to which to attribute it (on the primacy of the subsistence over existence, already recognized by philosophy in the Middle Ages, see Eco, 2009). Now, for what is relevant here, the claim that the quality of existence is not necessary for the subsistence of the intentional object implies that the consciousness does not relies on the extensional properties of the object (i.e., to its phenomenic existence) and therefore it has to be able to constitute its content from within. Husserl’s concept of presentification is based on and developed such a transcendental capacity of consciousness: “Reproduction” is the presentification [Vergegenwärtigung] of inner consciousness, which is opposed to the original course of impressions. The presentification of an objective process cannot be called reproduction. The event in nature is not reproduced […] it stands before consciousness with the character of presentification. (Hua X, 1966, p. 128)

Such a notion deserves a particular interest inasmuch presentification is an intentional process underlying both in phantasy and in perception. According to the father of the phenomenology, phantasy does not consist of a present content presentifying an absent object. He argues that phantasy intends its object as directly as perception intends the perceptual object. The point at stake is that phantasy and perception (and memory as well) have the same intentional structure and are subject to the same temporal synthesis of the consciousness. So, the relation

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between reproduction and presentification can be formulated by an eidetic law of intentional implications: each reproduction (R) of a perception (W) of an object (a) equals the presentification (V) of the same object: R(Wa)=V(a) (Jansen, 2005, p. 230). As conceived by authors considered above, the constitutive function is a property of the transcendental subject: it reflects the universal, invariant, structural and necessary way of minds’ functioning. Differently from this view, Peirce’s semiotics provides the way to model presentification in terms of sense-making. According to Peirce, the meaning is not held and conveyed by the sign; rather, it lies in the way the sign is interpreted by the following one. And this implies that the meaning emerges from the within the relations among signs, rather as the way of mirroring the extensional properties of the object. This view of the separation between the representation (the sign) and its object (the thing) is well expressed by the following famous definition: Namely, a sign is something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C. (Peirce, 1902/1976, pp. 20–21)

Thus, the meaning of the sign does not lie in its correspondence with the object, but in the relation among signs, namely in the equivalence of their correspondence with the object (i.e. A stand for C as B stands for C). The person does not have direct access to the object—she/he experience the object through and in the terms of the way signs relate with each other. The meaning does not come from the world, it emerges from inside the semiosis. The Constitution of Experience in Psychology The lines of thought outlined above draws a parallel course in the psychological field. The Gestalt movement represents the modelling of the basic psychological processes—first of all those involved in perception—substantiating the transcendental view of the mind. In this context, it is worth mentioning an early diatribe in the field of Gestalt theory between the School of Graz (Meinong, Ehrenhfels, Benussi) and the School of Berlin (Wertheimer, Koffka, Köhler). The former distinguishes a lower psychological level (presentation) and a higher one (thoughts, desires, volition). The central point of the dispute is that the School of Graz argues that Gestaltic qualities (Gestalten) are of higher level, namely productions of psychic activity and not primitive and original data of perception as claimed by the School of Berlin. The view of the objects as output rather than input of the perception (Leeuwenberg & van der Helm, 2013; see § 2.2) is exemplificative of the former approach. More in general, the rich tradition of studies on perceptual organization (Wagemans, 2018) witnesses the contemporary vitality of the Gestalt approach

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and with it of the idea of the constitutive role played by cognition, modelled in terms of organization. If one grants that the smallest, lowest-level visual elements are likely to be the outputs of retinal receptors and that the largest, highest level elements are the consciously experienced, meaningful environmental scenes and events that human observers use to plan and execute behaviors in their physical and social environments, then the fundamental question of perceptual organization is nothing less than this: how does the visual system manage to get from locally meaningless receptor outputs to globally meaningful scenes and events in the observer’s perceived environment? (Palmer, 2015, p. v)

On the other hand, this tradition remains confined programmatically within the domain of perception, and it assumes that the constitution of the experience has to be explained by the transcendental mechanisms of the visual (or other sensory) system. As stated programmatically by an advocacy of this line of research, the meaning is the output of the perceptual constitution of the experience, but it does not partake to it. (…), nearly the only aspects of perception typically excluded from discussions of perceptual organization are very low level sensory processing (such as detecting lines and edges) and very high-level pattern recognition (such as recognizing objects and scenes). (Palmer, 2015, p. v)

Embodied cognition makes a step ahead in the direction of a view of meaning making integrating perception and cognition. This development of cognitive psychology emerged in last twenty years is grounded on the pragmatist framework developed by Peirce and other authors as Dewey and James (for a review of the historical roots of embodied cognition, e.g., Lindblom, 2015). Embodied cognition does not make explicit claim on processual ontology. However, the situated, pragmatic, dynamic qualities these theories recognize to the mind suggest implicitly that cognitive processes do not limit to compute already given information, but they have somehow to constitute it. More specifically, three concepts which are at the core of the embodiment are relevant to be underline here. A.

According to Embodied Cognition theories, perception and more in general cognition are strictly intertwined with action. This is so in accordance to two complementary standpoints. On the one hand, representation of the object is grounded on the agent’s body interaction with it. In other words, what one perceives of the reality is—at least partially—the re-enactment/simulation of the sensory-motor states associate with the action performed on it. On the other hand, cognition is at the service of the action (Barsalou, 2020); one could say: cognition is a functional component of action; as Lindblom (2015) stated in reference to the spe-

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B.

C.

cific form of action consisting of sociality, “cognition and social interaction are (sometimes) the very same process” (p. 258). Embodied cognition states that the “high level” cognitive processes share the same underpinning neural systems with perception and control of the action (e.g., Barsalou, 2010; Gallagher, 2005). This means that the sensory-motor patterns are already forms of (pre-symbolic) meaning which are able to “extract” knowledge from situations. From a complementary standpoint, this means that the embodied sense-making cannot be separated from perception: it partakes to shape the experience from the very beginning (e.g., Galetzka, 2017; Schnall, 2017). Embodied cognition conceives of representations as inherently global, namely they are alleged to map the whole dynamic situation the agent is engaged with, rather than discrete objects within it. This is clearly due to the fact that representations are (multi-)modal—i.e. they are made up of sensory-motor patterns; as result of that, they concern the whole set of elements and qualities of the situation the agent’s body makes experience of. This characteristic of the embodied representation is well shown by the concept of perceptual symbol, proposed in a seminal work by Barsalou (1999). A perceptual symbol is the record of the neural pattern underpinning the sensory-motor perceptive state of a given object, which is activated to simulate the perceived entity in its absence. What is relevant is to note that according to Barsalou (see also Barsalou, 2016), the perceptive state does not concerns the perceived object only, but the whole situation the object is part of; moreover, the perceptual state encompasses the inner states associated with the agent’s interaction with the situation too. On the other hand, the record does not hold all the infinite set of information of the originate perceptual state; rather, only a subset element of the original perceptual state is selected and stored and used in the simulation.

These three characteristics together imply that the cognitive system plays a constitutive function with respect to experience. First, given that the cognitive system is designed for supporting the action (cf. point A, above), the embodied agent does not process discrete, pre-given object, but events, namely courses of actions unfolding over time. Now, an event has not an ontological autonomy—it is not out-there in the field; rather it is a pattern of relations that is constituted by and in the terms of certain meaning (for the view of meaning as instantiation of relation, see Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012; see also Salvatore, 2016). For instance, take the agent that is producing this text in this moment—what is the situation it is facing? It is typing on the computer keyboard, it is writing, it is building an article, it is promoting an idea, it is seeking academic accomplishment and so forth so on. All these are events in terms of which the agent can mean and therefore experience the situation –no ontological constraint makes one event more actual than

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the others; the agent’s experience is a matter of the meaning—i.e. the pattern of temporal dynamic relation made relevant— grounding and shaping the perceptual and pragmatic engagement with the situation. Second, what said just above is consistent with the embodied cognition’s view that sense-making operates from the beginning of the experience. Indeed, the more meaning and perception are intertwined (point B; cf. paragraph “phenomenological cues” too), the more the meaning “enters” the cognitive system at the begin (Galetzka, 2017; see below), therefore the more it is plausible to consider it as constitutive, rather than attributive only. Third, this thesis finds further support in the fact that the knowledge is based on modal representation that for their embodied nature can encompass all infinite set of facets of the situation (point C). Indeed, insofar this is so (as explicated in the concept of perceptual symbol, Barsalou, 1999), embodied symbols have to involve a process of drastic reduction of the overwhelming information that, if addressed, would prevent the chance to have any meaningful experience (see below for a discussion). To summarize the discussion of this paragraph, several historical lines of thought coming from different disciplines converge in supporting the constitutive function of cognition, namely the idea the cognitive system constitutes from the within the object, on the basis and within the constraints of the world. This view is complementary with assuming the processual ontology as frame– the cognitive system can constitutes (and takes evolutionary vantage from) the object because the object is not an entity standing out there, but the emergent product of the interaction between the cognitive system organization and the constraints given by the environmental dynamic. Methodological Considerations In other works, some of us have highlighted the conceptual implications related to the adoption of the processual ontology as epistemological framework of psychology (De Luca Picione, 2016; Salvatore, 2016). The major point that is here relevant to be mentioned is that the processual ontology implies that the persistence of psychological phenomena, qualities and characteristics, have to be considered emergent properties. For instance, according to perspective, sensemaking (the dynamics) generates the meaning, rather than the opposite (Salvatore, 2016, 2019). Again, emotions are not primitive states of the mind, but the output of the on-going interpretation of the on-going variation of the affective state of the body (Barrett Feldman, 2006); similarly, the symbolic content of the cultural milieu (e.g. beliefs, attitudes, values) emerges from the action, rather than being the cause of it (Andriola et al., 2019). In the final analysis, the processual ontology implies to reverse the link between elements and relations. Whereas the common sense sees that elements comes before and comprise the relation they enter, the processual ontology enables the scientific view to see the primacy of relations and to recognize that they constitute elements. This could prove to be counterintuitive; but this impression is

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due to the fact that common sense leads to see elements as self-contained entities, and therefore necessarily primitive with respect to relations. On the contrary, if one assumes that the world is made by potentials that come at being through their entering relation with each other—as quantum physics taught us—the constitutiveness of relation makes sense (Fronterotta et al., 2018). Dynamics of Emergence. Methodological Implications Any emergent property implies an underpinning dynamics (e.g. Haken, 2004)—namely a pattern of relations among a set of local states of the world that persists over time through the constant variation of the states themselves (for a similar view, see Maturana & Varela, 1980). Counting is an example of dynamics—the states (i.e., the numbers stated one after the other) vary in order to make their sequential relation persist (Salvatore, 2019). More precisely, through the changes of local states, what changes are the relations among them, and this is the way through which the second-order relation (i.e., the relation of relations) persists. Thus, a dynamics can be defined as a stable meta-relation qualifying a pattern of local states (Salvatore, 2018). And this is the same that any dynamics is at the same time a form of variation and a form of persistence (Salvatore, 2013) The definition of dynamics provided above leads to conceives the relation between emergent property and underpinning dynamics in terms of identity, rather than of cause-effect (for a discussion, see Kim, 2003). This means that the emergent property is not a new, self-contained state of the world brought about by the underpinning dynamics, and, once generated, operating separately from the latter. Rather, the emergent property is the on-going reproduction of the meta-relation the dynamics consists of—namely the mode in terms of which dynamics reproduce itself across time. In brief, the emergent property is the inherent organization of the dynamics, rather than its output (for a similar view, see Haken, 2004), alike the vortex that is not something else from the molecules of the fluid, but the inherent organization of their spatial relations across time. The identity conception of the emergence has relevant methodological implications. In what follows we highlights two major points. First, insofar as the emergent property consists of the inherent organization of the dynamics, the former has to be conceptualized in holistic terms, namely as a global quality of the whole dynamics. This calls for changing mind in the way of investigating psychological phenomena, moving from the explanation to modelling and from the efficient to formal causality. To explain a phenomenon means to identify the (efficient) cause underpinning its functioning and qualities. Yet, as discussed above, psychological phenomena are not self-contained entities that are affected by other self-contained entities and that affect further entities in their turn, as balls interacting with each other on the billiard. Rather, being it a metastable pattern of a global dynamics, any psychological phenomenon is understood insofar such global dynamics is modelled, namely represented in its inherent logic of functioning (Salvatore, 2016; for a similar view, Heft, 2013). In other words,

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we need to understand the rule of the game, rather than to accumulate pictures of the local interactions shaped by the game. Second, temporality is constitutive of the understanding of psychological phenomena for the very reason that temporality is constitutive of the psychological phenomena. This means that time is not the mere container where dynamics unfolds; rather, the time is the logical space of the meta-relation the dynamics consists of. Accordingly, structural and evolutive models cannot be seen as counterposed—the structure of the dynamics is the form of its temporality; therefore, to model it means to draw the trajectory of its variation across time thanks to which the structure is made persistent. The Issue of Variables The two methodological implications discussed in the previous paragraph are relevant for the discourse on variables which is at the core of the volume hosting this paper. In what follows, we focus on two criteria that can help to guide the way of using variables in accordance to the methodological framework outlined above. A.

A) Theory-driven variables. In psychology science the use of extensional variable is largely prevalent. With “extensional variables” is here intended a kind of indicators whose meaning is given by the state of the world the indicator refers to. For instance, the variable “trust in democracy” is intended as the representation of an object/state (the attitude of trusting in democracy) of the actual social world (Norris & Inglehart, 2019); again, the therapeutic alliance is intended as an actual quality of the clinical exchange, as weight, color are characteristics of objects (Horvath & Luborsky, 1993); variables measuring motivation are intended as representing forces that are active in the reality as well, and this is even more evident in the case of variables referring directly to behaviors (e.g., variables concerning aggressive behaviour, cooperation, individualism, gambling and so on so forth). Extensional variables can be useful to address some basic research questions—e.g. is a therapy able to improve the patient’s adjustment?; yet they are not sufficient to grasp emergence dynamics, because, a dynamics is not a given object of the world ready to be represented in terms of its phenomenic content of by means of proxies of it; rather, as said above, a dynamics is a sets of field relations among states of the worlds that requires a theoretical model to be represented. According to this perspective, it is worth introducing a distinction between modelist and latent constructs. Indeed, the meaning of extensional variables not necessarily consists of its direct content—the notion of “latent” is used to denote variables that use their manifest content as a proxy of a construct that is not directly observable. Take a customer satisfaction questionnaire. Each items has a manifest

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B.

content—namely the item “what is the level of satisfaction for the facet X” means the level of satisfaction for the facet A; at the same time, the questionnaire enables to detect the latent components of satisfactions (e.g., appropriateness, loyalty, experience; cf. Ciavolino et al., 2019) by means of a Principal Component Analysis applied to the whole response matrix. These components are not directly observable—for this reason are usually named “latent”; yet they are however considered as piece of the world standing out there, though not graspable by the eyes but requiring the mediation of an instrument to be detected. In sum, latent variables are extensional variables however, though, as micro-organisms and radio waves, requires proxies and instruments interpreting them, to be grasped. On the contrary, modelist variables variable do not refer to the world, but to the theoretical model of it—they are constructs, each state of which represents one of the possible states of the theoretical model. This means that a modelist variable is defined and can be deployed only within and for the sake of the theoretical framework in terms of which the dynamics of interest is modelled. The dimensionality of the phase space of the communicational exchange is an example of modelist variable. This construct has been used as the indicator of the dynamics of emergence of a shared frame of sense between participants to a communicational exchange (Salvatore et al., 2006/2009). This variable is modelist in the sense that it does not refer to a direct characteristic of the communicational change (e.g., the frequency and type of words used); rather, it is built through three recursive steps: first, a phrases * words has been used to represent the communicational exchange—this step can be seen as a form of representation of the manifest content of the phenomenon under investigation; second, the matrix have been subjected to multidimensional analysis, and in so doing a factorial space has been obtained—this second step can be interpreted as a way to move on the latent constructs underpinning the manifest content; third, the factorial space has been interpreted as the phase space of the communication exchange and, accordingly, its dimensionality has been used as variable—in this case, the dimensionality is a modelist variable because it concerns a property being inherent to the authors’ theoretical model of the communicational exchange (e.g., Salvatore, 2016), void of any direct (whatever manifest or latent) correspondence to a state/object of the world. B) Inherent temporal variables. Needless to say, psychological research takes the time into account. Yet, the largely prevalent way to do so is to consider it as an external parameter of observation, used to rank the observation and in so doing to map the variation of the phenomenon under observation between one and another chronological point. In the final analysis, the time is introduced at the level of elaboration of the

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variables’ information content (i.e., by comparing two instant states), while the variables in themselves are generally referred to temporally discrete states. As here intended, the temporality is a different conception of time—namely the idea that time is not only the logical space within which a phenomenon unfolds, but it is constitutive the dynamics (see § 4.1). Consistently with this view, a temporal variable is a variable that represents the inherent temporality of the dynamics. In other words, a temporal variable is an indicator holding within it the information related to the temporal shape of the dynamics under investigation The Discursive Flow Analysis (DFA; Salvatore et al., 2010) is an instance of what we intend for temporal variable. The DFA focuses on the flow of meaning that unfolds during a communicational exchange. More specifically, it estimates the probability of transition between meanings, namely the probability that after the meaning m occurs the meanings n, o, p… The probability of transition is already an inherent temporal indicator, given that the time is endogenous to its definition. However, the DFA uses this indicator in modelist terms (see point A, above)—indeed, it represents the communicational exchange by means of a network whose nodes are the meanings active in the communication, and the strength of links among the nodes are the probability of transition among the corresponding meanings. Indicators of the network’s structure (e.g., network’s density) and activity (incidence of nodes having a regulative function) are the ultimate variables used for the analysis of the communicational exchange. Both these type of variables (structure and activity indicators) are inherent temporal, because each of them holds within itself the information concerning a facet of the temporal organization of the dynamics modelling the communicational exchange—e.g. the network density maps the temporal interconnectivity among meanings, therefore the capacity of the communicational exchange of using the time to generate patterns of meaning having a narrower or broader spectrum of uncertainty/openness to novelty. CONCLUSIONS In previous pages we have spent some arguments in favor of the adoption of the processual ontology as epistemological framework of psychology science. We have provided phenomenological and theoretical arguments to highlight the limit of substantial ontology, that still remains the more or less implicit frame of a large part of psychology research. On this basis, we have discussed the methodological implications of processual ontology, with specific focus on the notion of emergent dynamics and temporality. In the final part of the work we have focused on the core issue of the present volume—the destiny of variables in psychology. On the grounds of the methodological discussion provided in the previous pages, we have proposed two general criteria—modelist and temporal variables—that

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we consider useful guideline to rethink the use of variables in accordance to a processual-oriented psychology research. Mainstream psychology has sacralized a certain conception and practice of variables, without taking into account the many criticisms and warnings highlighting the oversimplified assumptions and the logic and computational shortcomings related to quantification of psychological constructs. We mean this work as a contribution to avoid the risk of making a specular, complementary mistake—to demonize variables in themselves, as if the only possible conception of them were the way they are practiced by mainstream research. Variables do not exist as a whole set—there are different conceptions, modes of design and use them—psychology science, as any human enterprise, growth by fostering its development from the dialectics of differences. REFERENCES Albertazzi, L., Jacquette, D., & Poli, R. (2001). The School of Alexius Meinong. Aldershot. Andriola, V., Been, W., Cremaschi, M., Fini, V., Matsopoulos, A., Willet, J., & Salvatore, S. (2019). Policies and sensemaking. In S. Salvatore, V. Fini, T. Mannarini, J. Valsiner. & G. A. Veltri (Eds.), Symbolic universes in time of (post) crisis. The future of European societies (pp. 271–291). Switzerland: Springer. Barrett Feldman, L. (2006). Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev., 10, 20–46. Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behav. Brain. Sci., 22, 577–609. Barsalou, L. W. (2010). Grounded cognition: Past, present, and future. Top. Cogn. Sci., 2, 716–724. Barsalou, L. W. (2016). Situated conceptualization: Theory and applications. In Y. Coello, & M. H. Fischer (Eds.), Foundations of embodied cognition: Perceptual and emotional embodiment (pp. 11–37). Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Barsalou, L. W. (2020). Categories at the interface of cognition and action. In Fiorentini, I., Goria, E., & Mauri, C. (Eds.), Building categories in interaction: Linguistic resources at work. John Benjamins. Bickhard, M. H. (2009). Interactivism: A manifesto. New Ideas in Psychology, 27(1), 85– 95. Borghi, A. M., & Caruana, F. (2015). Embodiment theory. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 7, pp. 420– 426). Elsevier. Brentano, F. (1874/1995). Psychology from an empirical standpoint. Routledge. Brown, R. J., & Thurmond, J. B. (1993). Preattentive and cognitive effects on perceptual completion at the blind spot. Percept. Psychophys., 53(2), 200–209. Ciavolino, E., Lagetto, G., Montinari, A., Al-Nasser, A. D., Al-Omari, A. I., Zaterini, M. J., & Salvatore, S. (2020). Customer satisfaction and service domains: A further development of PROSERV. Quality & Quantity, 54(5), 1429–1444. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11135-019-00888-4 Ciavolino, E., Salvatore, S., Mossi, P., & Lagetto, G. (2019). High-order PLS path model for multi-group analysis: The prosumership service quality model. Quality & Quantity, 53(5), 2371–2384.

Mind Is Movement • 155 Clark, A. (2001). Mindware. An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science. Oxford University Press. Coons, P. M. (1996). Depersonalization and derealization. In L. K. Michaelson & W. J. Ray (Eds.), Handbook of dissociation: Theoretical, empirical, and clinical perspectives (pp. 291–306). Plenum. Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens. Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt. Damasio, H., Grabowski, T., Frank, R., Galaburda, A. M., & Damasio, A. R. (1994). The return of Phineas Gage: Clues about the brain from the skull of a famous patient. Science, 264(5162), 1102–1105. De Luca Picione, R. (2016). The foundation of psychology as a theory-driven science. The centrality of sensemaking process to renew the discipline. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50(3), 532–542. Eco, U. (2009). On the ontology of fictional characters: A semiotic approach. ΣημειωτκήSign Systems Studies, 37(1–2), 82–98. Fodor, J. A. (1983). The modulary of mind. An essay on faculty psychology. The MIT Press. Fronterotta, F., Di Letizia, R., & Salvatore, S. (2018). Processual monism: A fresh look at the mind-body problem. Minds and Matter, 16(2), 167–194. Gabriel, M. (2015). Fields of sense: A new realist ontology. Edinburgh University Press. Galetzka, C. (2017). The story so far: How embodied cognition advances our understanding of meaning-making. Front. Psychol., 8, 1315. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford University Press. Haken, H. (2004). Synergetic computers and cognition: A top-down approach to neural nets. Springer Science & Business Media. Heft, H. (2013). Environment, cognition, and culture: Reconsidering the cognitive map. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 33, 14–25. Horvath, A. O., & Luborsky, L. (1993). The role of the therapeutic alliance in psychotherapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 61(4), 561. Hua X (1966). Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917) [On the phenomenology of inner time consciousness]. In R. Boehm (Ed.), Martinus Nijhoff; On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917) (J. Brough, Trans.). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, E. (1893–1917/1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time. Kluwer. Jansen, J. (2005). Phantasy’s systematic place in Husserl’s work: On the condition of possibility for a phenomenology of experience. In R. Bernet & D. Welton (Eds.), Edmund Husserl: Critical assessments of leading philosophers (pp. 221–243). Routledge. Kanizsa, G. (1975). “Pragnanz” as on obstacle to problem-solving. Ital. J. Psychol., 2, 417–425. Kanizsa, G. (1979). Organization in vision: Essays on gestalt perception. Praeger Publishers. Kant, I. (1781/1998). Critique of pure reason. Cambridge University Press. Kawabata, N. (1982). Visual information processing at the blind spot. Percept. Mot. Skills, 55(1), 95–104. Kim, J. (2003): Blocking causal drainage and other maintenance chores with mental causation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67, 151–176.

156  •  RAFFAELE DE LUCA PICIONE & SERGIO SALVATORE Leeuwenberg, E., & Van der Helm, P. A. (2013). Structural information theory: The simplicity of visual form. Cambridge University Press. Lindblom, J. (2015). Embodied social cognition (Vol. 26). Springer. Manzotti, R. (2006). A process oriented view of conscious perception. J. Conscious. Stud., 13, 7–41. Maturana, M. R., & Varela, J. F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition. The realization of the living. Reidel Publishing Co. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. Palmer, S. E. (2015). Foreword. In J. Wagemans (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of perceptual organization (pp. V–IX). Oxford University Press Patterson, J. (2013). Three forms of meaning and the management of complexity. In K. D. Markman, T. Proulx, & M. J. Lindberg (Ed.), The psychology of meaning (pp. 17–48). American Psychological Association. Peirce, Ch. S. (1902/1976). The new elements of mathematics by Charles S. Peirce. C. Eisele (Ed.). Mouton Publishers. [Original version: 1902]. Proulx, T., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). The five “A” s of meaning maintenance: Finding meaning in the theories of sense-making. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 317–335. Pylyshyn, Z. (1984). Computation and cognition. The MIT Press. Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annu. Rev. Neurosci., 27, 169–192. Salvatore, S. (2012). Social life of the sign: Sensemaking in society. In J. Valsiner (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology (pp. 241–254). Oxford Press. Salvatore, S. (2013). The reciprocal inherency of self and context. Notes for a semiotic model of the constitution of experience. Interacções, 9(24), 20–50. https://doi. org/10.25755/int.2840 Salvatore, S. (2016). Psychology in black and white. The project of a theory-driven science. InfoAge Publishing. Salvatore, S. (2018). Cultural psychology as the science of sensemaking: A semiotic-cultural framework for psychology. In A. Rosa & J. Valsiner (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (2nd ed., pp 35–48). Cambridge University Press. Salvatore, S. (2019, on line first). Beyond the meaning given. The meaning as explanandum. Integrative Psychological. Behavior Science, 53(4), 632–643. Salvatore, S., Gelo, O., Gennaro, A., Manzo, S., & Al Radaideh, A. (2010). Looking at the psychotherapy process as an intersubjective dynamic of meaning-making: A case study with discourse flow analysis. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 23(3), 195–230. Salvatore, S., Tebaldi, C., & Poti, S. (2009). The discursive dynamics of sensemaking. In S. Salvatore, J. Valsiner, S. Strout, & J. Clegg (Eds.), Yearbook of idiographic science (Vol. 1, pp. 39–72). Firera Publishing. First published 2006, in International Journal of Idiographic Science [On Line Journal], Article 3. Retrieved June 28, 2007, from http://www.valsiner.com/articles/salvatore.htm. Salvatore, S., & Valsiner, J. (2010). Between the general and the unique. Theory & Psychology, 20(6), 817–833. Schnall, S. (2017). Social and contextual constraints on embodied perception. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(2), 325–340.

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CHAPTER 8

PSYCHOLOGY BETWEEN QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE PHENOMENA On the Different Strata of Introspection Natalie Rodax Sigmund Freud University

In this chapter I discuss the question that currently arises in both qualitative and quantitative research is a methodological one, namely when “fixation” on a score (or an objectifiable factor) becomes necessary and when fixation obscures the view for something else (and of course vice versa) and how research could be conducted beyond a disciplinary dualism. I will use the example of early approaches to introspection research, to show that depending on the level of self-observation we chose, we may find mutually exclusive properties, but this must not necessarily mean that this is a bias due to the method but that this was part of (contradictory) “being” we put to test. I conclude that current introspection needs to clarify the different strata of introspective reality to realize the potential of being an integrating framework to psychological research.

Farewell to Variables, pages 159–181. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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PREAMBLE When I was a psychology student, I attended a lecture on early approaches of neuroscience. The presenter—the Austrian professor Giselher Guttmann1—talked about his pioneering works together with Hubert Rohracher at the very beginnings of this research field. As he continued to (critically) shed light on how to conduct neuroscientific experiments on such controversial “topics” as “the free will,” or “consciousness,” he brought me to questioning how neuroscientists would even define consciousness—in German Bewusstsein2—in the first place. When asking him, he first paused, and then answered: “The dean of this faculty once asked me this too, and I will answer the same to you as I did to him: It is just about the second part of the word, it is simply ‘Sein’ (‘being’).” As tempting as this solution may sound, “being” alone is of course contradictory too. It is remarkable that Aristotle seems to have anticipated as early as 350 B.C.E that it was indeed a central characteristic of the study of “being qua being” that “[...] all things are either contraries or composed of contraries, and unity and plurality are the starting-points of all contraries” (Aristotle, 2004, book gamma, 1005a). The methodological problem that derives from Aristotle’s statement— which I seek to argue in this text—seems to be currently valid for psychology that sees itself as the “study of the mind and behaviour” (American Psychological Association, 2021), as it attacks the quality criterion of the consistency of scientific statements: If “being” (“Sein”) was contradictory, composed of dualities, how can we do systematic psychological science about it? I.  METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS: TO FIND AN OUTCOME, WE MUST FIXATE? The attempted solution is to date a largely quantitative, natural-scientific one: psychological research marks a special discipline that is supposed to measure “the mind” predominantly objectively—for instance, by means of standardized, psychological tests that operationalize the psychological into subsets (variables) that can be systematically varied and thus related to each other (cf., Valsiner, 2017). This aims at solving the problem in two ways: a) systematic, external measurement makes it possible to meet quality criteria of good scientific practice (objectivity, reliability, validity); b) systematic, external measurement makes it possible Guttmann is a pioneer of neuroscientific research in Austria: 1973, he succeeded Rohracher to the chair of “General and Experimental Psychology,” in 1975, he became the dean of the “Faculty of Philosophy” and in 1976 the dean of the “Faculty of Basic and Integrative Sciences” at the University of Vienna. In 1992, he became full member of the Division of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Department of Physiology. He was founding rector of the Private Universität im Fürstentum Liechtenstein (UFL) and to day continues his academic work at Sigmund Freud University (SFU), as professor emeritus. He conducted numerous experimental studies using the EEG, established a neuropsychological laboratory and thereby significantly advanced the development of EEG research. 2 The German word is composed of two parts – Bewusst-Sein (literally translated: conscious-being). 1

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to define scores that can “fixate” features of the psychological for a scientific statement. For example—If the score of the Beck Depression Inventory is 30 points or higher, psychologists could classify it as a severe depressive symptomatology (Beck et al., 1988). This excludes the possibility that the person being measured is only mildly depressed or not depressed at all and thus can be tested further for— for instance—symptom reduction after treatment. At the same time, this score and thus fixation is a version of abstraction: A person’s (abnormity of) feelings, her*his directly experienced sentiments and its reference to her*his Umwelt are— similar as how Fuchs (2021, p. 93) argues for the case of neuroscientific “fixation” of identifying brain areas that would constitute a person’s “pain” or “thoughts”— not a “locatable object at all.” We could add at this point that fixating “depression” to a score thus at the same time abstracts the phenomenon. Within psychological research, the need to fixate on one factor to the exclusion of another—which can create a “logic” in the data (if this score is low, complementarily, this should be significantly increased)—is also seen in general psychological research, for instance in the psychology of emotions. This can be illustrated by the theory of moral emotions: To develop a model of moral emotions, Haidt (2003) proposed to distinguish between emotion families that characterize moral feelings. For my example, it is primarily the dimension of “self-interested” and “disinterested,” on which Haidt bases his model of emotion families and which seem to make emotions moral, that is of interest: Haidt (2003, pp. 853–854) suggests that the degree of disinterestedness of an elicitor constitutes the moral in an emotion. By this he means emotions are moral, when they have less to do directly with concerns for the self, but with the affective evaluation of a social situation the person is not concretely involved in. Imagine a situation where you are going by one of the old Viennese trams (Straßenbahn) that have steep steps stairs to enter or leave the tram. From another wagon, you watch another person, directly standing at the exit/entrance doors, not helping an elderly person who cannot climb down the stairs. Following this model, the anger you are now feeling about the other person who disregards her duty to help is moral according to Haidt’s model, precisely because the elicitor is not self-interested but disinterested. From a methodological point of view, one can conclude that a high score on one dimension (disinterested) suggests that the score on the complementary dimension (self-interested) must be low—otherwise there would be a contradiction in the data. In fact, however, Walach and Römer (2011) point out that psychological phenomena substantially encompass contradictions where both mutually excluding dimensions work through human-beings’ actions at the same time. Referring back to my example on moral emotions sketched above, we for instance could hypothesize that the anger felt is also self-interested, since the person evaluating the situation in the other wagon has just come out of a job situation in which her direct supervisor treated her badly, and she is actually looking for an opportunity

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to vent her very own anger.3 That is, psychological models must deal with the fact that fixating values on scales abstract a person’s “being” leading away from dualities that are “natural” to a psychosocial day-to-day practice. It results as task for psychology then to also ask for the methodological framework that could account for the simultaneity of mutually exclusive factors, dualities. II.  IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOLOGY AS AN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE. Walach (2020) provides one suggestion to provide such methodological framework by borrowing from physics—specifically from quantum mechanics—and uses the concept of complementarity. Bohr (e.g., 1937, p. 293) coined complementarity to theoretically create a basis to scientifically speak of contradictory properties (“concept of position,” “concept of momentum”) of one and the same object, depending on the experimental measurement setting from which it would be observed. Walach and Römer (2011, p. 91) suggest a broader derivative where it is exactly the mutually exclusive properties that address the object as whole. To make his case, Walach (2020) uses ambiguous images, e.g. the one of the old and the young lady (see Figure 8.1), to draw on the metaphor of the optical illusion and show that one can either see an elegant young woman, who looks away from you; or one could see a rather old-looking woman; the chin of the young becomes the nose of the old woman, the necklace becomes the mouth—and so on. Historically seen, one does not have to go as far back as to Descartes’ (book six of his meditations, Descartes, 1996/1641) substance dualism, which contoured subsequent debates around psychophysical interactions (the question of how “mind” and “body” were related) to realize, that the contradictory faces of mental phenomena have had a firm grip not only on psychology as a scientific field, but also on the development of the discipline in terms of university policy (the continuous teaching of the subject, the examination of the subject, the emergence of generally binding textbooks, the establishment of professorships, the promotion of junior scholars, see Gundlach, 2004). As Benetka (2002, 2021) argues, the natural scientific positioning that psychology (in demarcation from a “human psychology”) so strongly claims for itself, must be understood historically in relation to and as reaction for establishing as one of the single sciences. From this follows that aside from (methodical) questions that challenged psychology as a scientific field, it was also a socio-political development that “subject identities” evolved as counter-programmes that rebel against the natural sciences’ narrowing focus. The fact that psychology’s natural versus human “identities” cannot simply complement each other goes well beyond conceptual issues regarding psychol3

This example bases on my work for the international research cluster “Ressentiment and Change Potential in Europe” and especially on fruitful discussions with my colleagues Markus Wrbouschek and Katharina Hametner with whom I have worked on the complexity of moral emotions using the example of ressentiment (see for instance Rodax et al., 2021).

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FIGURE 8.1.  Ambiguous Image (the old and the young lady). Note. The figure shows two models: The three-dimensional one (on the left) shows fixation on a score as ontological statement (“this is moderate depression”); the model at the transition to four-dimensionality (on the right) shows how a fixated score becomes a starting point for further inquiry that opens up a plurality of new (qualitative) vectors, including contradictions (double- arrow) but at the same time producing a changing Gestalt that is yet to be.

ogy’s methods, showing also a struggle with socio-political power arrangements (institutional location, allocation of resources, power of interpretation in debates, etc.) that keep on exerting their power today. I argue that the dualist view on psychology as natural science versus as human science is not a mere historical artefact but is also currently reflected in method debates between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms in psychology. Although the vast majority of psychologists will argue that natural scientific psychology and associated third-person quantitative approaches lead psychology, qualitative psychology/ies (e.g., Freeman, 2018) currently seem to be emerging more visibly and powerful than before as an alternative “identity” to extend the narrow natural scientific focus by using a phenomenological foundation to access subjective experience. For instance, there recently was the first Conference of the Association of European Qualitative Researchers in Psychology (equip2021.

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gr, n.d.). This also goes hand in hand with (1) the founding of societies or finding entrance in existing societies (e.g., in the UK, cf. Riley et al., 2019), (2) the anchoring in study programmes (undergraduate, graduate, e.g. Widdicomb, 2021) and (3) the recognition of non-natural-scientific theses (e.g., Stankovic, 2021). III.  CURRENT METHOD DEBATES IN ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY BETWEEN QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH. Against the backdrop of the aforesaid, however, scholars should be cautious about whether the extending focus of an alternative “identity” alone helps in solving the problem of finding an integrating research practice to the incompatible nature of psychological phenomena. For qualitative research also must deal with the question on when to “fixate” data to transfer them into a theory and should explicitly ask whether theory resp. concepts can indeed “emerge” from rich data. Grounding on methodologies that developed in the social sciences (e.g., sociology from which Grounded Theory developed, Glaser & Strauss, 1967), qualitative psychology/ies borrow from methods that widely treasure the richness of openly conducted, verbal data. Here, there is a reverse problem to what I tried to sketch at the beginning with my excursus to the moral emotions: Instead of reducing inflexibly to (e.g., two) opposing factors, there is the danger of getting lost in the depth of linguistic, symbol-laden data, not managing to reduce it meaningfully to the essentials. Qualitative scholars recognize this problem, which is why Glaser and Strauss (1967) at some point speak about “theoretical sensitivity” to highlight the problem of identifying the relevant concepts in one’s data when it is actually about not forcing theory upon data (see also Kelle, 2007, p. 136). However, it still remains a key issue: Willig’s key note at the aforementioned conference EQuiP in 2021—in my understanding—pointed exactly to this: As she asked what makes psychological qualitative research research, she inter alia demanded that qualitative research in psychology must make a contribution to the development of scientific knowledge production. This point in particular—she emphasised—was central: the possibility to draw conclusions (or we could also say: fixating relevant concepts) from qualitative studies would often be questioned. She clarifies that qualitative research is research precisely when scholars make a conclusive claim about their results. As I have tried to show so far, the methodological question of how to deal with the incompatibility—the contradictory nature—of psychological properties occupies both: natural scientific and human psychology/ies, as it arises in both qualitative and quantitative research programmes: When does fixation on a point (a score that excludes other scores) or a concept become necessary, when does fixation obscure (similar to the reversal image of the “old” and the “young” woman) the view for something else (and of course vice versa—just like in the reversal image). Figure 8.2 shows the two models and points to their mutual problem: While the first model on the left allows for measurement and provides a concrete result

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FIGURE 8.2.  Fixation vs. Complexification

(a score that corresponds to a statement on a mental state that is), the second one on the right allows for exploring how a score becomes a starting for further understanding what this might actually mean; while the first model offers a coherent structure within a given model, but reduces a phenomenon (e.g., depression) to its anatomy (a syndrome), the second one opens the view for how the phenomenon becomes, but at the same disturbs the coherent structure, making it a Gestalt that is yet to grasp. IV.  A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE ROLE OF INTROSPECTION THEN AND NOW. It is interesting that in her keynote, Willig (2021) brings up a version of a historic Kantian question—certainly in a field that Kant (2004/1786) would have never considered “eigentliche Wissenschaft” (natural science proper) in the first place. Kant argued that natural science proper was natural science proper (Willig (2021) asked: what makes qualitative research “research”?) when there is a “pure part, on which the apodictic certainty that reason seeks therein can be based” (Kant, 2004/1786, par. 469). Following Kant’s line of reasoning, this foregrounds his argument that it is natural science proper when mathematics—a condition for assessing a priori relations—would apply to the object (Benetka, 2002, p. 33; Pickren & Rutherford, 2010, pp. 44–45). Psychological research however would not allow for such an application, as mathematics rests on two dimensions—time and space—and mental objects existed only in time, not in space (i.e., they have no physical, material substance) acc. to Kant.

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A look at the beginnings of psychological research practice in the Germanspeaking world now allows us to understand the roots of this method/methodology question in psychology that still seems to prevail today. Years before the first psychological laboratory was established in 1879 by Wundt, scholars have already begun to define the field of psychological science: Succeeding Kant in Königsberg, Herbart started the attempt to ground psychological research on mathematics. It was his Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik (Psychology as Science, Newly Grounded on Experience, Metaphysics, and Mathematics) (Herbart, 1824, p. 25) which early on set the direction in which it was to go for so long, namely invalidating Kant’s critique of psychology (1989/1781) in favor of a natural scientific justification of psychological research. Interestingly, this was right from the start a debate of the method—mostly only secondarily followed by a debate of methodology— namely the search for the second dimension so that mathematics would, against Kant’s viewpoint, apply (Benetka, 2002, pp. 36–40). Indeed, this need of making psychological science applicable to mathematics already contains the restrictive focus that was practiced in this line of academic (!) discipline formation: If this was to find a convincing realization, the objects necessarily had to exclude what was phenomenal about mental objects. Initially, only a small group enforced and demanded this strict programme and the associated restriction of methods to the “simply” fixable/controllable, i.e. standardizable by measurement (this was Wundt’s campaign in the early beginnings); however, the objective operationalizability of mental objects has rarely enjoyed a larger audience and application than in today’s psychological academia albeit in a very different way as originally proposed. The Attempt of Thinking Phenomenology Natural Scientifically If we seek to find approaches that already at that the beginnings of psychology aimed at rather integrative perspectives on psychological research, I suggest that we move forward a little in time and change our focus from Kant and Herbart to scholars such as Lotze4 who was Stumpf’s doctorate supervisor in. Both have been occupied with the analysis of auditive perception, but both chose slightly different approaches. While Stumpf employed an empirical approach (resulting in his Tonpsychologie (tonepsychology), Stumpf, 1883, 1890), Lotze (1852) positioned his research more centrally, that means between the sciences (empirical single sciences and philosophy, see e.g. Milkov, 2015a, 2021). I will not go into detail into the early theory of auditive perception per se, as this is not the focus of this text. What I want to highlight instead is how Lotze analyzed the mental object 4

Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) habilitated at both the Faculty of Philosophy (1840) and the Faculty of Medicine (1839) of Leipzig University. Early on (e.g., Lotze, 1841), he began to analyse how natural scientific principles and metaphysical concepts were to be integrated. A detailed description of his biography with a focus on his intellectual work can be found in Woodward (2015).

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he is interested in—auditive perception—in a way that does not mutually oppose quantitative and qualitive properties of the mental object. On the one hand, he refers to a physiological fact, the oscillation frequency of the sound waves: Even if the frequency ratios cannot be consciously perceived as Kaiser-el-Safti (2015b, pp. 87, 108) points out in her reading of Lotze, he argues physically when he assumes that they remain dependent on “the excursion distance of the moving particles” (§. 19. Proportionen zwischen Reiz und Empfindung, 1905). On the other hand, and at the same time, the moment of hearing the tone’s pitch—he further analyses—has a peculiar form of perception of tones (…) in that we indicate by this expression that their differences are neither simply quantitative nor purely qualitative, that they rather consist in qualities that naturally arrange themselves in an ascending scale, in the higher members of which a progress is felt in any case, without, however, being able to be pointed to a certain progressing element. (Lotze, 1852, §. 19. Proportionen zwischen Reiz und Empfindung, para. 190)

I propose that this quote is relevant in two respects: 1) Lotze identifies something that one and the same mental object (auditory processing, Tonhöhenhören) can be fixated on a scale (the “excursion distance of the moving particles”) and also un-fixated as he recognizes a quality that could be a perceived as increase without a detectable “progressing element.” 2) Methodologically, it follows that there cannot be an “either-or” (an objective measurement that fixates the physical component or a metaphysical description, as it is neither “neither simply quantitative nor purely qualitative”). In this respect, I suggest that we can establish a link to more recent debate of philosophy of science in psychology namely Walach’s and Römer’s (2011) reflections of generalized non-locality, I mentioned in the previous section: Complementarity following Bohr conceptualized that—for instance—light could exist as particle and could as well as exist as wave (it has a “local and a global observables,” Walach & Römer, 2011, p. 89) depending on the physical set-up from which it was accessed; before assessing the object, its state is assumed undefined and would only then come to the fore in a distinct state when it was measured from a certain point (non-locality). Following Walach’s and Römer’s (2011, p. 89) line of reasoning, changing the state of the observed is thus not a bias due to the observation method, but describes the object in different existing states. The Empirical End of Doing Phenomenology Natural Scientifically Informed? What is important for the purpose of my argument is that Lotze’s approach was not yet an empirical one. His PhD student Stumpf (1883, 1890) was one of the first to attempt an empirical study in the field of auditive perception, grounding 5

The original quote is German and was translated into English by the author of this text.

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much of his empirical work on Brentano’s (2015/1874) Psychology from An Empirical Standpoint foundation (see also Benetka, 2002). Importantly, “empirical” in these early attempts means “experiential.” But how could he access the empirical, respectively experiential data? Only now does a concept come into play that I had intentionally not introduced so far, even though it graces the title of this text and which was, of course, already a topic with Kant as well—and that is the method of self-observation respectively introspection. I have not introduced it up until now, because I did not aim at introducing it as the methodological problem of this text—which I view prior to introspection—but I will now argue that innovations of introspection serve as an example that can provide us with a perspective that can empirically grasp opposing mental states because it is innately both: qualitative and quantitative. In the following, I will start by (a) giving some more historical context on the empirical starts of integrative introspective methods, (b) will then proceed with current attempts of applying introspection and (c) will close by addressing how I assess their potential for doing psychological research within an integrative framework. Integrative Versions of Introspection at the Beginning In her essay Reflexion und Introspektion (reflection and introspection), Kaiserel-Safti (2015a) addresses the philosophical context in which Stumpf developed his empirical account on tonepsychology and by this opens a distinction between philosophical reflection and empirical introspection. Introspection in this respect is different from reflection as it is first and foremost a form of empirical observation that allows enquiring the auditory sense, at least with Stumpf. But how was introspection employed at that time? At this point we must shortly refer to Kant once again. Additionally to requiring mathematics as “via regia” to scientific knowledge to establish natural science proper, Kant strongly rejected introspection as self-observation. His objection was close to something that I had already addressed indirectly a few lines above, when I reflected on the physical debates on measuring the light: To Kant, self-observation would change the observed mental object and thus observer and observed must not coincide. Hence, self-observation was impossible, as it is the method that distorts the object (and not a particularity of the mental object) in Kant’s critique. Brentano (2015/1874, p. 30)—habilitating 1866 at Würzburg University and subsequently teaching there—raised a similar objection to introspection in principle by arguing that it was the immediacy that made self-observation impossible. One could not at the same time be angry and observe the anger as the observation would to a certain degree “cool it down.”6 6

I would like to make a brief digression at this point: Recalling my preamble of this text which assumes that “being” or “mental objects” can be contradictory could also be used to state that can be characterised by the fact that simultaneities constitute one and the same phenomenon. As an example, I would like to refer to Bion’s self-analysis from the First World War. He writes: “The behaviour, facial expression, and poverty of conversation could give an impression of depression and even fear at the prospect of battle. Fear there certainly was; fear of fear was, I think, common to all—officers

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However, Brentano oriented towards an empirical (experiential) approach (Antonelli, 2008, p. XII) as this problem to him did not mean that there is no access to inner mental experience at all. And so, he also established a way to solve the introspection problem: By drawing on one’s memory, we could employ retrospection and observe mental objects shortly after they were experienced, i.e. introspection as observation in the sense of “perceived-reflect-report” becomes reportable immediately after the event. This went hand in hand with Brentano’s meta-theory of intentionality: Brentano (2015/1874) defined it as the main characteristic of mental objects, by which they could be distinguished from physical phenomena that a factual object does not necessarily have to exist to become a mental object; it becomes an object with the mental activity of thinking of an object7. There is no need for a factual object and thus the mental act of imagining exists primarily; he therefore also speaks of mental phenomena rather than mental objects. With this, Brentano lay the groundwork for the subsequent—today known as Würzburg school’s thought psychology—focus on the mental act (Akt) rather than the mental content (Inhalt) (we elaborated this argument more strongly and men” (Bion, 1997, p. 204). I would not take this as an articulation of a self-observed feeling, but as a retrospective (self-)analysis of it; only in this form, it can become self-report. Prior to this, it was a non-reflexive state that brought Bion to act upon it, as the state produced “the inability to admit it to anyone.” We could distinguish this form from the reflection presented in the book (“perceived-reflect-report” in retrospect) as “perceive-observe-act” in the very situation. 7 It should not go unmentioned that there were further developments of this that received much recognition in retrospect, especially in the English-speaking world: Meinong (1853–1920)—Brentano’s student and Ehrenfels’ doctoral supervisor—(co-)founded the Graz School of Gestalt theory. In 1891, for example, Meinong further developed Ehrenfels’ (1890) Über Gestaltqualitäten.This lays the foundation for the so-called “production theory” (Produktionstheorie): Starting from Ehrenfels ideas, Meinong further distinguished between “inferiora” and “superiora,” thus emphasising the difference between elements of perception (inferiora), which have real correspondences, and the mental act, the processes (superiora), which produce a kind of “Gestalt impression” (Gestaltvorstellung) and which are existentially different from the elements (Fabian, 2005, p. 72).     This was not the only argument that Meinong’s presented and with this centrally pioneered current integrative approaches: What already seems to be inherent is the distinction between “what exists” (actual sense perception) and products of mental processes that does not necessarily have an equivalent in reality. For example, nonexistent objects can exist mentally as representation, such as golden mountains (here I refer to Meinong’s debate with Russel (1904–1920, for a detailed systematic review of this see Smith, 1985)). Interestingly, Meinong (1904) distinguished existing objects, subsistent objects and nonexistent, nonsubsistent objects. I agree with Smith’s (1985, p. 307) interpretation, which suggests that—in their debate—Russel often included nonexistent objects among subsistent objects, thereby overlooking a central analytical distinction in Meinong’s theory: the distinction between subsistent and nonexistent lies precisely in the fact that subsistent objects are there (bestehen) but are not “real”; nonexistent objects, however, go beyond this—they neither “are” nor are they “are they not.” Interestingly, looking at Meinongs empirical studies, he never arrived at the interview situation e.g., Bühler (1907) has employed trying to access thinking «in relation» that would be very close to Meinong’s proposal. Meinong’s students (e.g., Benussi, Witasek) however remained focussed on sense perception and its processing. A methodological review of their approaches and how this stands to considerations of experiential layers of introspection proposed in this text might be a worthwhile investigation in the future.

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in Rodax and Benetka (2021) by identifying a shift from the what to the how). As a consequence, Brentano’s empirical experimenting was first and foremost a phenomenology that aimed at being experientially testable (this is why the heading of this section says: the attempt of doing phenomenology natural scientifically informed). The “test” did thus look very different from scholars who followed the Herbartian line (e.g. Ebbinghaus, Fechner). It was more about forming a hypothesis on a mental phenomenon (e.g. an optic illusion), setting up testable objections and putting them under scrutiny with the help of simple experiential tests (Benetka, 2002, p. 208). It was also in Würzburg, where Brentano and Stumpf (still in contact with Lotze!) started their intellectual exchange (Baumgartner & Baumgartner, 1999). While Brentano did only “small” empirical “Demonstrationsexperimente” (demonstration experiments) himself (Benetka, 2002, p. 207), it was Stumpf who examined the auditory perception by aiming at a comprehensive empirical attempt. Stumpf (1890a) did his empirical experiments—similar to Brentano and other than in the Wundtian tradition (cf., Brock, 1991) not strictly in a controlled setting such as the laboratory (on the specific controlled laboratory setting in the sense of Wundt see e.g., Rodax & Benetka, 2021)—but did experiment series with his students on the organ in a cathedral. For instance, he examined the “Stufen der Tonreihe” (stages of the tone series) as follows: Four series of experiments were carried out (on 4, 7, 13 and 26 July) in the Domkirche zu Halle (cathedral in Halle). I did not immediately go for all of these series and in the individual sound regions by which they differed but let the observations in each series and the doubts and questions that remained afterwards determine me to further series and to the choice of new experimental circumstances. (…) Since some gentlemen, after the first series, stated that they were influenced in their judgements by the reverberation in the church, which was indeed quite noticeable, in that a tone would often emerge in it and they subsequently noticed the duality: so in the later series, at the same time as releasing the two keys 1), I always played a low chord, which also did not contain the previous tones as overtones; whereby the resonance of the latter were made imperceptible. (Stumpf, 1890a, pp. 159–160)8

These experiments relied on the judgements of the “gentlemen’s” hearing whose auditory perception was tested (a version of retrospection as proposed by Brentano). Stumpf himself talked about his test participants frequently as “Urteilende” (judges, e.g., Stumpf, 1890a, p. 160). Milkov (2015b) suggests that in the notion of “judgement,” we can see Lotze’s influence: “Lotze, in particular, insisted that judgment is not an association of two presentations. […] To Stumpf, too, the judgment plays a prime role in of our perception of sounds, colors and spaces; and also in our emotions and volition” (p. 106). Stumpf also worked on more than one experimental set-up and did also conduct self-observation himself (Brock, 1991, p. 110). 8

The original quote is German and was translated into English by the author of this text.

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What was central to his purposes was that the subjects were musically skilled and well-educated9. Thus, Stumpf (1890a) exposed his subjects to severe criticism if they had not proven themselves musically adept. For instance, he writes: “1. utmost incompetence—with, by the way, normal hearing acuity and intelligence—I found in Mr. stud. (now Dr) W. Kessle who is already mentioned above 158” (Stumpf, 1890a, p. 362). Stumpf himself was musically well-educated, played several instruments and composed himself. Not surprisingly, the educated test person became a pivotal point in his empirical approach. Something that, in other respect, comes up again with his PhD student Lewin and there is discussed further (“Educating the subject in proper self-observation and the control of psychological descriptive information,” Lewin, 1981, pp. 153–212). Stumpf this way fixated the observer in the manifold of auditory perception and by this “fixation” allowing new trajectories to be discovered. Brentano’s phenomenological foundations and Stumpf’s empirical efforts again had an influence on the Würzburg School of thought psychology, which was subsequently established under the leadership of Külpe. Often only perceived as a coherent group of researchers with Bühler’s approach (1907), the Würzburg School was a heterogeneous endeavor from the beginning—more so than is often perceived today. For this text, I want to shortly dwell on Bühler’s approach, although much could also be said about Marbe’s (e.g., 1901) line of research (it is indeed quite different, and often neglected in the reception of Würzburg school) or Ach’s (1905) early refinement of Brentano’s retrospection by his concept of perseveration that Benetka and Slunecko consider central (2021, pp. 24–25). Both, however, would take us further away at this point from the question posed in this text of how introspection might be an example of researching mutually exclusive states of mental objects. Therefore, I would now like to refer briefly to Bühler, who, as Kusch (2001, p. 65) suggests, is the first one to empirically challenge a dualism that Wundt argued for, namely that introspection was only then applicable to mental objects when they were 1) simple (e.g., simple, content-related associations), and 2) objectifiable by (reaction time) measurement (using exact technical equipment). For anything else, Wundt presents an opposing research programme (Völkerpsychologie) on “higher psychological processes and development” (Wundt, 1918, § 3). This was what Würzburg School, first and foremost Bühler (1907), centrally challenged by using introspection as a form of “Ausfragemethode” (interrogation method, Wundt, 1908) and applied it to a higher mental object, namely the mental act (!) of thinking. Even though scholars today 9

This indeed also was an objection Stumpf raised to Wundt’s experiments on the sense of hearing. Stumpf first criticised Wundt’s student’s (Lorenz) experiments who found contradictory results to Stumpf’s experiments for being musically “naïve” and wrote: “The musical person alone is also capable of varying a given middle tone in clear imaginative conception and of forming a judgement, whether he would come closer to the middle by a higher pitch” (Stumpf, 1890b, p. 456, English translation by the author of this text). For a review of the Wundt-Stumpf debate in respect of the expert status of the research subject see Brock (1991).

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challenge whether Würzburg scholars actually addressed acts (Hackert & Weger, 2018, p. 221), I want to highlight their attempt to overcome controversies on the untameable complex mental object by drawing on a subject’s self-report. Bühler’s method is quickly told: He views objective measurement as secondary and rather cultivates the introspective conversation as a “midwife” of self-observation (the significant status of the conversation is also very generally why Kusch (2001, pp. 62–64) calls Külpe—in contrast to Wundt—an “interlocutor”). He presents a cognitive dilemma, such as a complicated philosophical aphorism together with the question whether he (indeed only men where his research subjects!) understands the aphorism. Afterwards, he asked the subject to inspy how he came to this decision; the self-reports where then recorded (although Bühler himself has only published little about the recording process itself, cf. Benetka & Slunecko, 2021) with Bühler (1907, p. 300) considering himself the “editor of their statements.” For example: (Do you understand?) “Where is an ocean one still can drown in? That is the slogan of our times.”—Yes (11’’).—“First, reverberation of the words, then a pause. Then a thought emerged linked to the internally spoken word ‘depth’; something, a great powerful idea to which one can give one’s whole soul, and with that I understood it (the words are explications of originally wordless thoughts.)”

While much has been written about what is difficult of this approach (at the time Wundt (e.g., 1908; Friedrich, 2008), it shows similar to Stumpf (who however—one could argue—researched less complex phenomena, auditory perception, thus had another research focus/object) how important self-reports can become to psychological research. It is certainly not inner perception as Hackert and Weger note (2018, p. 226) but especially as my reflections on Lotze and Stumpf show, introspection might bear doing both: a sensory detection of a tone (that—we could add with Lotze—could be in concordance with an external measurable) and a qualifying Urteil (judgement, as a form of self-report). Depending on the level of observation we chose, we may find mutually exclusive properties, but this must not necessarily mean that this is a bias due to the method but that this was part of the “being” we put to test. Indeed, tone and judgement (Urteil) come together in the experience, as we can see in the different judgments of noise versus tone versus tune. Current Approaches to the Method of Introspection Today, introspection indeed marks the margins of psychological research though being up and coming at some small special areas, as I will note at the end of this text. To explain its marginalized position, reference is often made to Danziger, who argued so convincingly in 1980 that introspection was largely regarded as an approach to a pre-scientific, historically marginalized research method, not least because there were so many different versions of introspection. As a result, scholars necessarily had to research “past” each other. His argumentation should

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still be a warning to us today when we write for the use of introspection in contemporary psychological research, because also recently, it plays on the most diverse strata of self-observing reality: The French version “l’entretien d’explicitation” which goes back to Vermersch (1999), aims at getting to the bottom of the implicit knowledge stocks of the professional practice, to which introspective dialogue is needed in order to gain access at all. Here, it is primarily the introspective dialogue conducted by the psychologist that generates data. It is not necessarily about the articulation of a state of conscious perception (direct self-observation), but about the introspective uncovering of knowledge embedded in practice. In this case, self-observation takes place guided by the (trained!) interviewer using a specifically shaped dialogue. In terms of the specifically shaped dialogue, this approach borrows from psychotherapy (Vermersch, 2019). The knowledge from the interview situation is produced by both, the interviewer and the interviewee, as it comes from the fact that one person (the interviewer) is the “facilitator” who gets the interviewee to verbalize inner processes. In this way, this method focusses a version of introspective experience that is first and foremost oriented towards a guided self-analysis. This is in a sense a continuation of something that could already be seen in Bühler’s approach, namely that the social aspect of the situation—the exchange between two persons—is explicitly used to promote self-analysis. However, the approach is different from Bühler’s when we look at who was trained: In Bühler’s case, the research subjects were privy to and trained in the method of self-observation. This was also the case with Stumpf—the skills of the self-observing listener were fixed to explore the richness of his musical perception. With Vermersch it is the other way round—the person who leads the conversation—the researcher—must receive special conversational training. This seems to be a central distinguishing moment, characterizing the sociality of current research situations. Also employing dialogue—but in another way!—the method of Dialogic Introspection (e.g., Burkart, 2018) uses a group setting of participants. All group members experience the same stimulus (e.g., a film sequence in the context of media reception research), and after their individual articulation of the experience perceived by the subject, the method uses the group. By the variation of other perspectives of the experience in the group, participants deepen their exploration of the perception of conscious inner processes. No explicit distinction is made here between direct self-observation and remembered self-observation. I suggest that through the variation of perspectives in the group, a classification of one’s own experience (self-observation) can take place that goes beyond the mere articulation of an (conscious) inner process, thus becomes self-analysis again, but very different to l’entretien d’explicitation, as it is not a dialogue centered on one individual but a polyphonic canon of perception—can this still be considered data of the second person? I have no immediate answer to this question and therefore propose that the relationship of the polyphonic processes and its meaning for the quality of the data needs to be further assessed. I think, this is similar to

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Deterding’s (2008, p. 331) comment when he states that here is a “leap” in the method which, however, he still suspects somewhere else than I outline above (he talks about the leap “made from introspied experiences to underlying cognitive processes”10). I suggest that this form of collective introspection might be primarily suitable to research objects that are already inherently collective. Choir singing could serve as an example: A group of people performing in unison but at the same time, they are monitoring their own and others performing. Whether there is such a thing as collective introspection should also be object of future methodological analyses. A method where dialogue is less central, is the method of descriptive experience sampling (DES, e.g., Hurlburt & Akhter, 2006; Hurlburt & Heavy, 2006) that sets the principle of openness central. That means this approach employs a device that is carried by the research subject that by beep signal allows a kind of random sampling of mental “objects” throughout the day, embedded in everyday practice. When the beep signal sounds, the research subjects shall note down their very last, immediate traces of consciousness (direct self-observation, no time limit, no researcher as investigator). This is followed by an expositional interview at some later point (after six episodes of recording observations due to beeping) that aims at detailing the accuracy of the report on the experience (accurate content-based self-statement). In my reading of the method, I did not find explicit reference as to what value self-analysis/-reflection takes. This approach could be positioned as a form of ontogenetic version of introspection: It is about reporting momentary insight producing single statements on a current, given mental representation. This would stand in contrast to e.g. Bühler’s approach to introspection that was sketched above that includes the dynamics between ontological statements (thinking in relation—from content to act). With this, Bühler’s approach represents a microgenetic version of introspection, meaning that it zooms in on the processes of how one instance of self-observation links to another. Additionally, there is the method of systematic self-observation (SSO, Rodriguez & Ryave, 2002) that focusses the level of practice again (but not relying on dialogue, as suggested by Vermersch). After setting a focus on a concrete, everyday (inter)action, research subjects are asked to as naturally as possible engage in this (inter)action when it occurs in day-to-day life and afterwards, noting down descriptions of it. This is aims at a written statement of self-observation by pre-setting a task (for instance: please describe “your actions done and words said” (Rodriguez & Ryave, 2002, p. 2) when “admitting to someone that you are afraid of something,” (p. 11).The written report should however avoid reflections about these situations in the sense of reporting inner states such as emotions or thoughts. It is the aim of the method to get insight “naturally” occurring (inter) action by consciously identifying (!) specific situations and describing them by 10

The original German quote was translated into English by the author of this text.

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writing it down, meaning that the “self-observing” act is a form of pre-oriented intentionality that results in self-exploration. That self-observation and self-analysis in the written report do not coincide in this version of self-exploration could be limited especially by people who have a strongly reflective approach to everyday practice. Whether and how this impacts the kind of data it produces is an open methodological question. Clarifying the Different Strata of Introspective Reality to Realize the Potential of Being an Integrating Framework When aiming at assessing the value of current introspective research against the backdrop of Danziger’s (1980) historical attestation of the (too) many strata of reality that it tackled under the heading of one and the same concept (introspection), I argue that we need to determine what value self-reports have in introspective research: This goes hand in hand with determining the relationship between self-observation as an articulation of directly, consciously experienced psychological (sensory) experience and the meta-observational classification of this—self-analysis—that together merge into a self-report. A crucial issue that comes with this—examining the significance of a selfreport—was already 2003 posed in the context of cognitive science by Jack and Roepstorff namely, “why trust the subject?”—and we could add: why trust selfreports that stem from self-analysis? They argue in favor of trusting the subject, by inter alia presenting an ethical line of reasoning: When we don’t trust the subject, why should the subject trust us? Interestingly, I view this a central point in answering my question from the beginning namely, can we “do” psychological research beyond and above “getting lost” in the richness of qualitative data or the rigidness of standardized score values, obscuring contradictory “being.” In other words: Can scientific knowledge be derived from self-reports (including self-observation and self-analysis in contrast to the more trustful objective measurement) and when does a fixation of a self-report distort the research object by fixating it because it would exclude contradictory modes of being, both of which are parts of being. Against the backdrop of my text, I conclude by agreeing with Weger and Wagemann (2015a, b) and Deterding (2008) when they suggest that introspective methods experience a renaissance, specifically in the field of cognitive memory research. However, this does not yet methodologically clarify the relationship between the articulation of an immediate sensation (self-perception in the sense of Wundt), as a kind of trace of experience that can be reflected in our remembering (something Ach has foregrounded), its classification (self-analysis in the sense of Stumpf—judging a tone based on a sensation that comes about in a trained—expert—manner), its product (self-report, in the sense of Bühler, understanding the philosophical aphorism and examining how one arrived at it) and lastly, when considering current versions of introspection (DES and SSO sketched above)

176 • NATALIE RODAX TABLE 8.1.  Introspection Divided Into Different Strata Orientation to Self

Point of Access

Data Accessed

Process Level

Perception

Immediate

Sense-data

Fixated, non-genetic

Analysis

Retrospective

Meta-observation

Complexifying, microgenetic / fixated ontogenetic

Report

Retrospective

Relating meta-observation Complexifying, microgenetic / fixated ontogenetic

Exploration

Pre-oriented intentionality, Pre-oriented intentionality Fixated, ontogenetic retrospective

a form of self-exploration (that again opens the field for self-perception, selfanalysis, and self-report but which has not yet been fully exploited). I therefore argue that introspective methods play at least on four strata of experience: (1) self-perception, (2) self-analysis, (3) self-report and (4) self-exploration11. Table 8.1 shows how the four different strata divide again in terms of orientation to the self, the point of access, the kind of data accessed. V. GENERAL CONCLUSION Both research paradigms—the quantitative and qualitative one—are subjected to the same methodological problem, namely the issue of fixation—how to fixate to find an outcome (issue of the humanistic psychology/ies) versus how to not obscure the actual nature of the phenomenon by abstracting it to an objectifiable score (issue of natural scientific psychology). Using the example of early approaches to auditory perception, I argued that one and the same mental object (auditory perception) can be fixated by an objectifiable measure and also unfixated (the judgement of perception). These states are dualities—opposites of parts in one and the same whole. Introspective approaches can have the potential to address dualities, as they can play on at least four strata of experience: (1) self-perception, (2) self-analysis, (3) self-report and (4) self-exploration. While self-perception may be objectifiable by measurement, a self-report could lead to further trajectories that give access to another level of (mental) process. To develop introspection’s potential further for current research in psychology, it now needs to be clarified how the distinguished strata interrelate and how we can fixate what introspection is not. This will allow for an understanding what it can do for both: Qualitative as quantitative phenomena of psychological research. 11

Especially with (1) and (4), it should also be discussed how this relates to the concept of self-reference (Popper, 1954). I leave that point open to further discussion.

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CHAPTER 9

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN ECOSYSTEMIC PSYCHOLOGY Developmental Mereotopology Luca Tateo University of Oslo

Giuseppina Marsico University of Salerno

In this chapter we develop a dialogue between cultural psychology, developmental mereotopology and semiotics. Social sciences are still considering human beings as detached from their ecosystem, opposing individual and environment, biology and culture. Psychic life is neither the outcome of a genetic program nor the mere inner representation of the social world. Several attempts to build ecological psychology have not fully overcome the issue of environment as independent variable. Through the concept of developmental system, the chapter finally defines psychology as the study of ecosystems: the unique local configurations of humans and non-humans: the local cultural solution to general existential problems. Knowledge is a deep existential problem for human beings. The ultimate meaning of knowledge is the awareness of life’s finitude and the knowledge of those uncanny boundaries before and after life. At the same time, the sense of finitude Farewell to Variables, pages 183–200. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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provokes a quest for understanding our place within the cosmos (Bateson & Bateson, 1987). The original sin does not reside in the capability of knowledge, other living beings can be acknowledged to be able to produce and transmit knowledge, it is rather about self-awareness. A part of the humankind has developed a solution to this question that places the human in control and a step up the rest of living beings. Another part of the humankind has chosen to place itself within the other beings at the same level. It is not by coincidence that all religions present the acquisition of knowledge as either a curse or a blessing, but no one remains indifferent to it. The monotheistic Abrahamic religions seem to consider knowledge as a curse, since it makes humans aware of their finitude and ultimately puts them into a special realm detached from nature. Other religions, such as Hinduism or Buddhism, consider knowledge as a blessing since it brings humans beyond the phenomenological ephemeral appearance. Yet, Western-European cultures since the 17th Century managed to turn the curse of exclusion into a form of power and a striving to gain control and possession over the realm humans were once excluded. The idea of knowledge as capability to act and control opened the way to the development of Anthropocene. Hindu philosophy considers different types of living beings and each one can have knowledge limited to his own world. Very similar to the idea of von Uexküll and Bateson that the environment is represented by the set of relationships of the organism. In other words, the world is everything with which one organism has relations of perception and action. In the history of humankind, the relation with the environment has been meaningful conveyed in what is commonly called “culture”: “a constructive modification of the natural course of affairs” that implies to act “destructively towards nature—yet within the act of destruction is the act of construction. This can take the form of some kind of goal-directed cultivation of features or properties of objects—be those plants, domesticated animals, or children—in the process of their development.” (Valsiner, 2008, p. 273) Recently, we have become aware that the constructive/destructive dialectics of culture that has been developed in a specific part of the world in a particular time span—namely the national states of the Global North, between Europe and North America with their colonial policies—was not the only possible way. On the contrary, it has been thriving despite its toxic nature because it was the most violent and aggressive towards the environment. It has been “naturalized” as the only form of human advancement because it systematically devalued other forms of knowledge and physically annihilating those collectivities who were living different ways of relating to the environment (Duncan, 2018; Reiter, 2021). The positivist ethics that considers knowledge and control as power has been exposed by the decolonizing epistemology that shows how often power decides what constitutes knowledge through aggressive control (Reiter, 2021).

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LOCATING ONESELF IN KNOWLEDGE The separation of the domain of culture from the domain on nature—positioning of human beings as epistemic subjects and the nature as epistemic object—has generated two types of further existential and epistemological problems. First, what is our position as human beings in between culture and nature? Ecopsychology has adamantly proved the fact that after few centuries of modernity the existential separation from the natural realm is producing generalized distress (Duncan, 2018). We are ambivalent towards this separation: we feel at the same time superiority and longing; power and anguish. Second, once we have located ourselves as external to nature and we have exiled ourselves from the non-human, then how can we be sure to have access to experience of the things as such? If a lion could speak, we would not understand it, claimed Wittgenstein (2010), because language is not a universal conveyer of meaning but is rooted in our contextual experience of the world. A number of different cultures would completely disagree with this statement (Duncan, 2018). For instance, people from one of the First Nations would say that is possible to communicate with beings different from us, as we do share the language and the world we inhabit. Of course, we need to build the right conditions to communicate, including a listening attitude (Guimarães & Simão, 2021). Besides, those very same persons would blame the Global North cultures to have lost such capability to communicate. This objection would indeed expose the epistemological problem we have created in the Global North: once we have separated the realm of culture from the realm of nature, the realm of mind from the realm of matter, how do we put them together again? This has been one of the major concern of Gregory Bateson (1972, 1979). He thought that the schism was operated when Descartes formalized the different explanatory principles of mind and matter. Thus, one cannot use the former to explain the latter, otherwise that would be a form of animism, falling under the power of religious superstition. The language of matter, as Galileo stated, is mathematic. Descartes established the practice of using intersecting coordinates to represent two or more interacting variables or represent the course of one variable over time (Hoffmeyer, 2008). The idea implies that we can always create a discrete description of material phenomena and locate them in space and time. This idea has been extremely successful and constitutes the basis of the scientific emphasis on quantity, especially in social sciences. Until quantum physics showed what wealth of phenomena cannot be actually represented and located by simple means of variables and coordinates over space and time. Besides, a system of coordinates is not absolute, but it is constructed from a particular point of view. Those coordinates do not only represent something else: they represent also us as observers. The principle of complementarity in quantum physics has proved that observation is a form of relation, thus the observer becomes part of a system with the object of observation. Once happened, this cannot be led back to the initial situation, because both the subject and the object have changed, becoming part of

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a whole (Tateo & Marsico, 2014). Thinking in variables is groundless because it systematically ignores the researcher as variable. However, the very success of this procedure has blinded social scientists to its shortcomings (Hoffmeyer, 2008). Bateson (1972) noticed that some phenomena—such as contrast, frequency, symmetry, correspondence, relation, congruence and conformity—cannot be simply described in terms of quantities. They are, as Bateson noted, variables of zero dimensions and cannot be located (Bateson, 1972, p. 408). Yet, “all communicative processes in nature depend upon discontinuities of this kind.” (Hoffmeyer, 2008, p. 29) Indeed, as Valsiner (2008) pointed out, the way human make sense of the world is not just by a schematic reduction of the complexity, but also through the “making of hyper-abundant fields of meaning that are generalized into vague overwhelming meanings that are used instantly and “intuitively.”” (Valsiner, 2008, p. 283) If we try to reduce complexity to schematic coordinates of few variables, we are selectively excluding a large part of meaning and we are exiling the knower from the system. By Bateson (1972), we are excluding the constitutive element of life itself: relations and differences. A living being is the one able to produce and interpret descriptions of the world (that is relations) based on the detection of differences (Bateson & Bateson, 1987), and this happens through complementary movements of schematization and pleromatization (Valsiner, 2008). PLEROMA AND CREATURA In his posthumous book (Bateson & Bateson, 1987), Gregory Bateson presented his theory of the articulation and reconciliation between the mind and matter. He proposed two different ways of understanding the world. At a certain level of functioning, the non-living matter is governed by the transfer of energy and it is regulated by relationship of forces that we can describe as universal laws. This level of organization, called Pleroma from the Ancient Greek word meaning fullness, has no void and includes the chemical and electrical processes. There is only causation but no knowledge. As the processes occur by cause and effect relationships, it does not use nor contain any information. A stone will exist through some geochemical processes and will be subject to physical laws that can be described by variables. On the other hand, there is a world of phenomena that “are among themselves governed and determined by difference, distinction, and information” (Bateson & Bateson, 1987, p. 18). Creatura is the world of phenomena governed by information. It is the world of living-system, self-organizing, hierarchical, open-systems at different levels of complexity. On the one hand all of Creatura exists within and through Pleroma; The use of the term Creatura affirms the presence of certain organizational and communicational characteristics—which are themselves not material. On the other hand, knowledge of Pleroma exists only in Creatura. We can meet the two only in combination, never

New Perspectives in Ecosystemic Psychology • 187 separately. The laws of physics and chemistry are by no means irrelevant to the Creatura—they continue to apply—but they are not sufficient for explanation (Bateson & Bateson, 1987, 18).

Bateson’s attempt was exactly that of articulating living and non-living phenomena based on the concept of interpretation. A stone makes no decision because there is no information involved. If a phenomenon implies information, then we are in presence of a living system. Current reductionism, one could say, consists of the attempt to flatten Creatura to Pleroma, which is explaining interpretation through direct causation, as for instance in neurophysiological reductionism. Hoffmeyer (2008) noted the interesting relationship between Bateson’s description and the concept of semiosis. Indeed, when information and interpretation are implied a semiotic process is at work. Semiosis is a triadic relationship (Hoffmeyer, 2008). Information does not exist as such without someone interpreting it. Thus, a variable that represents a difference in magnitude of a parameter is meaningful only in relation to the interpreter. Variables do not exist in reality as such: they are interpretations, which is way to comprehend related things as relationships (Hoffmeyer, 2008). Pleroma and Creatura are two different types of systemic organization. A planet system, for instance, is a system in equilibrium in which an observer can spot an organization caused by physical and chemical laws. Changes may occur according to predictable laws, such as the atomic decay or the laws of thermodynamics. This type of organization is governed by exchange of energy and no information is needed by the parts of the system in order to keep or change the equilibrium. When we say instead that this is our solar system, we are acknowledging a different type of relationship. Relationships in the world of Creatura have to do with the capability of producing and interpreting information, changing, and making anticipations. Thus, regularities in Creatura are constructed from the point of view of an observer, not merely undergone. Living beings have progressively adapted their circadian rhythms and their bodies to the regularities they perceived in the movement of the planets, to the point of being able to make predictions based on such constructed regularities. This cannot be described by the same laws that we use to describe the world of Pleroma. Whereas Pleroma can be understood in terms of variables, Creatura can be understood in terms of differences. According to Hoffmeyer (2008), living forms differentiate on the basis of their semiotic freedom, which is on the capacity to respond to signs through the production of different interpretants. Human beings have a high degree of semiotic freedom, to the point that they can produce high order interpretants, chains of mediation, interpretants on the interpretation, and also externalize and transmit interpretants. Thus, the phenomenal word of humans is filled with a wealth of signs complexes of indexical, iconic and symbolic kind. Semiotic freedom parallels with the complexity of the life world. Human culture is one of the most complex life worlds to the extent that it combines existing and non-existing objects that are spread along a past-present-future temporal line. Producing interpretants of such a complex environment requires the capability of both aboutness and precision.

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PLEROMATIC AND SCHEMATIC The human life world is social by nature and experiences are encoded in a number of different ways. Many of the meanings that we produce and share—we need to abstract and to generalize them in some way to use them in different times and places—are encoded in ways that allow both a certain degree of precision and a certain degree of aboutness. In any case, human semiosis must be able to work in both ways. Take for example the sign “speed”: a pilot needs to produce an interpretant with a high degree of precision; while a person using a mixer can stick to an interpretant that is limited to “high” and “low” aboutness. There are two parallel ways to produce abstractions: “making of abbreviated symbols (words, conventional graphic signs—schemata) or making of hyper-abundant fields of meaning that are generalized into vague overwhelming meanings that are used instantly and “intuitively.” (Valsiner, 2008, pp. 282–83) They both are required in social interactions. For instance, a statement like “my hearth is beating very fast” should be used in an intuitive and vague way when addressing a potential romantic partner. It would make no sense to respond to this metaphorical declaration of love: “how many hearth beats per minute?” Instead, the same response in a hospital emergency room would perfectly make sense. According to Valsiner (2008), signs follow two trajectories. They can move along the abbreviation trajectory and become schemata: simplified replicas of the object they present. Signs can also move towards “greater generalized complexity” and become pleromata (again from pleroma) “hyper-rich depictions of reality that stand for some other realities (or unrealities)” (Valsiner, 2008, p. 283). Valsiner (2008) develops the concept first in relation to iconic signs: “The immediate perception of an object can thus become either less rich in detail (schematizing) or more rich (pleromatizing) in detail than its original object, while becoming an icon” (p. 283). However, the two trajectories of pleromatization and schematization also apply to a number of different symbols. As in the example of the “hearth,” we need both trajectories to produce meaning in the social interactions (Figure 9.1). Just imagine a world in which signs only have a restricted and unambiguous meaning: communication would be impossible. Alternatively, imagine a language in which words only have vague and wide meanings: it would be equally impossible to carry out a number of coordinated activities. Aboutness is a dimension of semiotic freedom, but only if it works in parallel with the capability to produce unambiguous interpretants. An organism able to produce only one of the trajectories would be disadvantaged in a changing environment. An example is provided by the immune system. During the current Covid-19 pandemic, we are discovering how the human immune system is not a mere repository of viral signs. The different ways in which the immune system is producing effective and durable reactions to the Covid-19 variants is teaching us that our lymphocytes (B cells and T cells) work with a variable balance between the

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FIGURE 9.1.  Semiotic Making of Cultural Categories (schematization) and Diffuse Sign-Fields (pleromatization) in Human Social Action (Valsiner, 2008, p. 284)

capability of recognizing a specific threat and a certain degree of aboutness (Willyard, 2022). This can be understood if we consider the semiotic process of interpretation produced by those cells. Indeed, a completely schematic interpretation would make the prompt reaction to virus variants impossible. Therefore, a certain degree of pleromatic interpretation is necessary, but not too much, otherwise the immune system would be generically reactive to any potential threat, without being selective (Weisbruch, 2006). According to Bateson (1979), difference is the main feature of living beings way of relating to the environment. Nevertheless, difference in itself is nothing without the attribution of a value to such a difference (Valsiner, 2008). The world of Creatura is also the world of value attribution. Human everyday interactions are also a balanced combination of schematization and pleromatization and of the attribution of value to the objects of semiosis. Furthermore, schematization and pleromatization can be viewed as processes of semiosis that are always present as two parts of the same whole. Schematization results in the making of categorical distinction (e.g. “This is A” as extracted from some complex experience), while pleromatization generalizes meaning from the non-A counterpart field of the full meaning (A and non-A). (Valsiner, 2008, p. 283)

When we produce an interpretant through schematization “this is A,” we immediately imply the existence of a whole complementary pleromatized field of meaning “non-A” (Tateo, 2016). This is for example a basic mechanism of political control. Once a ruler starts to talk about “us” as “patriots” or “good people,” it immediately implies the existence of “non-us,” “non-patriots,” “non-good people.” To be useful, the non-A field must be purposefully pleromatic as it must be able to contain a range of infinite potential options (e.g. “migrants”; “communists”;

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“muslims”; “gays,” etc.). This facilitates the internalization of generalized social values: the feeling of trust and belonging in a political entity and the generalized mistrust against a marginalized social category without any apparent practical reason are constructed in this way. “Our socialized intuition operates through pleromatic signs, while our social discourse works with the help of schematic signs” (Valsiner, 2008, p. 284) THE PLEROMA IN SOCIAL SCIENCES Both Bateson and Valsiner use the concept of “pleroma” (fullness), but in opposite ways (Figure 9.2). For Bateson, the word of Pleroma is full in the sense that it does not allow space for interpretation. In the world of Pleroma, the phenomena do not have any semiotic freedom; this is the realm of inanimate (Hoffmeyer, 2008). A planet has no “choice” but following the laws of physics. For Valsiner (2008), Pleromatization is instead a fundamental characteristic of human semiosis. Pleromatized signs are full in the sense that they afford a large semiotic freedom while conveying a density of meaning that cannot be fully expressed, but must be felt. The world of Creatura is characterized by a different quality of systemic relationships. Indeed the capability of living organisms to respond and anticipate the environmental conditions (Hoffmeyer, 2008) implies the capability to change and reorganize the whole/part relationships. The simplest example is the foreground/ background relation. An organism must be able to reorganize its experience of the world rapidly shifting the attention from an element to the other, for instance distinguishing a potential prey or predator against a background. In the world of Creatura, part/whole relationships are dynamic and developmental.

FIGURE 9.2.  Bateson and Valsiner uses of Pleroma

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This was for instance the intuition of Vygotsky about the development of higher mental functions (Valsiner & van der Veer, 2014). The stages of mental development are characterized by qualitative reorganizations of the different mental functions that always constitute parts of a whole (Vygotsky, 1997). Thus, a certain function that was playing a central role and hierarchically superordinate at a certain age of development, can later become less relevant for the interaction with environment and another can instead become central, for instance at the age of entering formal education. Dynamic part/whole relationships and their qualitative aspects are thus central in the study of living phenomena, especially human phenomena. Any time social sciences focus on the reduction of systemic relationships down to interaction between variables, they are instead treating the world of Creatura as if it was Pleroma. Schematization is indeed a reasonable way to describe the world of Pleroma, as it is based on the production of point-like signs that reduce the semiotic freedom and allow precision. Much of social sciences, instead, treat all kind of signs as if they were only schematic signs. For instance, the creation of any type of scale forms a convention in which a sign is understood only in its schematic meaning and can thus be attributed an integer number (Table 9.1). The items of the Likert scales in Table 9.1 are clearly attempts to schematize pleromatic meanings (Valsiner, 2008) and turn them into measurable variables. Indeed, the properties of signs such as “difficult times,” “difficult situations” of “ways to replace the losses” are defined by those features “such as contrast, frequency, symmetry, correspondence, relation, congruence and conformity” that, TABLE 9.1.  Items from Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS) BRS Items 1. I tend to bounce back quickly after hard times 2. I have a hard time making it through stressful events 3. It does not take me long to recover from a stressful event 4. It is hard for me to snap back when something bad happens 5. I usually come through difficult times with little trouble 6. I tend to take a long time to get over set−backs in my life BRCS Items 1. I look for creative ways to alter difficult situations 2. Regardless of what happens to me, I believe I can control my reaction to it 3. I believe that I can grow in positive ways by dealing with difficult situations 4. I actively look for ways to replace the losses I encounter in life Source: (Fung, 2020, p. 1268)

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according to Bateson (1972, p. 408), are “variables of zero dimensions” that cannot be simply described in terms of quantities. Another important tenet, which both Bateson and Valsiner highlight, is the inseparability of organism and environment. In a certain sense, the concepts of organism and environment are analytical abstractions that mimic the subject/object epistemological relationships in the Descartes theory of knowledge. In the realm of Creatura phenomena, organism and environment are in a part/whole relationship. This is why, according to Duncan (2018), Bateson’s theory of Creatura and Pleroma can provide a new perspective to articulate the relationship between human and non-human forms of life with the environment. An ecological perspective does not only acknowledge the fact that the observer influences the phenomenon, but also that the phenomenon influences the observer. The logical consequence of an ecosystemic approach based on the principle of complementarity is that in social sciences there can be no such a thing as an independent observer (Tateo & Marsico, 2014). So, what kind of epistemology do social sciences must develop to capture the complexity of the human phenomena, based on Bateson’s and Valsiner’s accounts? ECOSYSTEMIC THINKING So far, we have discussed some principles that according to Bateson and Valsiner, characterize the living processes. First, the whole/part relationships: living systems are characterized by a changing hierarchical integration of relationships. Second, the semiosis: living systems are characterized by the capability to produce and interpret signs with different degrees of semiotic freedom. Third, the balance between pleromatic and schematic meanings, which allows the dialectics between stability and change in meaning. Fourth, the whole/parts relationships are isometric to both the organism and the organism/environment relationships, thus as one cannot consider a part of an organism detached from the whole, one cannot consider an organism detached from the environment. All the four principles together constitute the foundation of an ecosystemic epistemology. We will add a fifth principle: the human observer is in a whole/parts relationship with the phenomena (Tateo & Marsico, 2014). To bring social sciences into the world of Creatura implies an epistemology that can account for the dynamic system of whole/part relationships. Indeed, the ecological approach, flourished after Bateson’s theory, resulted for example in the systemic family therapy (Boscolo et al., 1987). However, if one follows Hoffmeyer’s (2008) suggestion of a further integration between Bateson’s theory and semiotics, a step ahead can be imagined. The whole/part relations have some dynamic qualities consisting of relations that change over time and cannot be schematized into simple variables. Taking another example from ecology, one can imagine an old forest as a complex example of dynamic wholeness (Duncan, 2018). A forest is a complex system including different species of vegetal and animal organisms that cannot be replicated just by planting new trees. The whole is a system in dynamic equilibrium, maintaining

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homeostatic stability and holographic properties (the system can maintain dynamic equilibrium even if the size of the whole is increased or reduced). Finally, the system can maintain homeostasis from different pathways through equifinality (Duncan, 2018). One cannot describe the system only by schematically listing a number of elements as in the taxonomic perspective (e.g. soil, temperature, number of organisms of the different species, etc.). Equally, one cannot but arbitrarily define the borders of the system (e.g. when the forest ends). Besides, when humans enter the forest they can perceive another Gestalt quality: its unique atmosphere (Böhme & Thibaud, 2016), which is as real as the trees and affects the person’s experience. Now, imagine a human intervention that alters the relationship between the elements. Note that it is indifferent whether the intervention is made with destructive or constructive intent. The system will reorganize in such a way that will first tend to find a new dynamic equilibrium unless the change is not so extended that it will require a phase change. The ways in which the system responds (i.e. a process of semiosis) can be different but cannot be observed if not considering the whole. Besides, the human observer would consider the temporal dimension from her perspective, overlooking the fact that the system has its own temporality. For instance, the Covid–19 pandemic has shown that human temporality is focused on short-term consequences and solutions, while the zoonotic diseases such as the SARSCOV-2 can develop characteristics that allow it to adapt over very long or very short time span (Willyard, 2022). In this sense, the whole history of the struggle between humankind and infective agents is based “on the mistaken belief that it’s possible to kill off one part of an ecosystem without any other systemic impact.” (Duncan, 2018, p. 92) The whole current ecological crisis can be considered an outcome of the Global North epistemological blindness to the long-term consequences for the ecosystemic dynamics (Duncan, 2018; Reiter, 2021). Let’s transfer the example of the forest to human systems, considering for instance the process of education. We need to draw epistemological foundations able to account for the dynamic development of the whole/parts relationships of the “edusystem” (Tateo, 2019). Like a forest, a school has some ecosystemic properties that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts, including some special Gestalt qualities such as a special “atmosphere.” The complexity of a school ecosystem cannot be schematized by isolating some short-term variables (e.g. performance metrics). We need a perspective which is able to account for the whole/ part relationships development over time. Such a proposal has been formulated as Developmental Mereotopology (Marsico, 2015; Marsico & Varzi, 2016). DEVELOPMENTAL MEREOTOPOLOGY Developmental Mereotopology is an edge interdisciplinary research area, in the study of person-context relationship, focusing on the concept of border. Mereotopology is a part of contemporary philosophy dealing with the part-whole relationships. The question of qualitative forms of borders is very central in mereotopol-

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ogy as directly involved in the representation and organization of the organism’s surrounding world. It faces, from an ontological point of view, the question of the relationship between a border and the thing it bounds that is also a fundamental issue in psychology, which has always been dealing with the problem of explaining the relationship between organism and context as the core, which is the core of the ecological perspective in psychology. The parts-whole relationship is one of the basic problems of Mereotopology (Varzi, 1996, 1998) that provides tools for an ontological analysis of formal structures of parts and whole. Mereotopology combines two different though interconnected conceptual apparatuses: a mereological domain that deals with the concept of parthood and a topological component concerned with the concept of wholeness. According to Varzi (1997, 1998, 2015) there is no general agreement upon what kind of principles connect the two components. Nevertheless, some structural axioms, although still controversial, have been settled to grasp the relationship between parts and whole, whereas parthood is conceived as a partial ordering and wholeness is based on the connection. Nevertheless, Mereotopology, as an ontological perspective studying the forms, is more interested in their existence rather than in their emergence. Contemporary psychology instead needs a new theoretical and methodological framework to study the complex phenomena unfolding over time. Thus, Developmental Mereotopology (DM) takes some of Ganzheitspsychologie’s theoretical framework (Diriwächter, 2004, 2008), which assumed the irreducible totality as unit of analysis. The parts/whole relationships must be conceptualized in terms of process of particular configuration. Thus, if the whole is not based on isolated parts, the parts are not independent and merely related each other but they are interwoven into each other. The challenging task for the DM is, then, to study the developmental of totalities in their transformative synthesis. The unit of analysis of DM is the particular dynamic configuration of whole/ parts relationships, its genesis and history, as well as its development in the irreversible time. The core concept of DP is the triplet “A+border+non-A,” whereas it constitutes the minimal logic complex of united opposites to define dynamic system (Josephs et al., 1999). The triplet is indeed the minimal configuration that allows a dynamic movement (Tateo, 2016). It can be observed from any of its components that exist, appear and disappear altogether. The easiest way to observe the minimal complex is by identifying a bordering phenomenon (Español & Marsico, 2021). For instance, in the evolution of life forms, the turning points leading to major evolutionary transitions are considered the emergence of new configurations between “entities that were capable of independent replication before the transition” and then “can replicate only as part of a larger unit after it, termed mutual dependence, interdependence, or contingent irreversibility.” (West et al., 2015, p. 10113) Such a unit (Figure 9.3) is characterized by fitness-maximizing processes

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FIGURE 9.3.  A major evolutionary transition involves two steps: first, the formation of a cooperative group; second, the transition to a new level of organism, with division of labour, interdependence, and coordination of the parts. (West, Fisher, Gardner & Kiers, 2015, p. 10113)

(cooperation overrules competition) that define the individual (or organism) in its own right. In evolutionary terms, the emergence of a major evolutionary transition is observable starting from the creation of a bounded system (parts/whole higher-level organization) defined by a border with its complementary non-A (for instance the eukaryotic cells bounded by a nuclear envelope). The phenomena within the world of Creatura are characterized by such emergent organization which is time asymmetrical. Once the new whole is created, it cannot be undone without provoking the end of the system itself. While energy in the world of Pleroma can lead to reversible transformations (e.g. a chemical compound can be solved once again in its simple components and the made a compound once again), information in Creatura is based on irreversible time. Developmental Mereotopology accounts for those characteristics of living systems, such as psychological systems and their relationship with the environment. The whole is defined by the history of its relational properties between the elements of the triplet “A+border+non-A”: dynamic equilibrium; homeostatic stability; holographic properties and equifinality. When applied to the study of human psychological phenomena, DM implies a fundamental shift on the way we observe and understand human experience. First, central tendencies are no longer the only elements that characterize a phenomenon. A phenomenon is defined by the triplet, so observation must focus on the border, where the dynamic between “A” and “non-A” is more visible. Second, person/environment ecosystemic relationships become the minimal unit of analysis. Third, temporality is fundamental, as dynamic stability is nothing but the other side of change. An ecosystem is stable only apparently if observed on the surface. Dynamic stability means a constant effort to maintain “similar” con-

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ditions. Constant stability is a feature of Pleroma. Life is a continuous tension. Thus, change is assumed as an axiom. Fourth, part cannot be studied separately as the loose by definition the systemic properties. Therefore, observation can only happen in ecological setting. Finally, holography and equifinality imply that we must look at the process rather than the outcome. Indeed, phenomena at different scale can be related. Studying the microgenetic production of meaning can lead to generalizable knowledge about the whole. On the other hand, similar outcomes of dynamic equilibrium can be achieved for very different paths and forms of hierarchical organization between parts. DEVELOPMENTAL MEREOTOPOLOGY AND MEANING-MAKING DM also helps to understand that the history of development of a whole is characterized by bounded aboutness; that is a complementary work of pleromatization (multiplication of the semiotic freedom) and schematization (definition of boundaries that delimit the triplet and hierarchic relations). We will provide an example of semiotic process in which this happens. The artistic movement of Northern Modernism involved several artists from Scandinavia and Germany by the end of the 19th Century. Northern Modernists were inspired by Nietzsche’s vitalism philosophy and Freud psychoanalysis, in open opposition with the Neoclassicism interpretation of Greco-Roman heritage as linear, clean and rational (Stępnik, 2017). The goal of Northern Modernists was that of representing the power of life, abundant, redundant, creative, naked, emotional, generative and strong as incarnated by the Norse mythology and iconography. This vision was often located in parks to emphasize the relationship with living nature but also the pedagogical and political sense of the art (Stępnik, 2017). One of the most relevant examples of Northern Modernism is the complex of sculptures by Gustav Vigeland (1869–1943) located in the Frogner Park in Oslo (Figure 9.4). The complex is composed by 36 figures residing on the elevated part of the park, representing a “circle of life” theme. The complex is a very nice example of representation of the world of Creatura and of ecosystemic properties. It is composed through a movement of pleromatization (dotted arrows) that conveys an affective experience. The proliferation of figures that become more crowded as the gaze advances towards the central monolith. At the same time, the complex is organized according to a whole/parts relationship that constitutes a Gestalt (full arrows). Without the schematization of spatial hierarchical relationships (through ascending and centripetal movement), the pleromatic proliferation of figures would appear chaotic and meaningless. At the same time, each part (the single figures) has a fractal and holographic feature (Figure 9.5). Indeed, each group of figures is a whole in itself, telling a story about the manifold of human relationships during the life course. Each group is in itself made of whole/parts, in which the parts are different types of human beings (elder, young,

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FIGURE 9.4.  The Monolith complex in Frogner Park, Oslo. Photo Public domain by Andrew Shiva, 2016. Retrieved February 11th, 2022, from URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NOR-2016-Frogner_Park-Vigeland_InstallationThe_Monolith.jpg

FIGURE 9.5.  Back to Back—Vigeland Park, Oslo. Photo by Ignaz Wiradi, Public domain, Retrieved February 11th, 2022, from URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Back_to_Back_-_Vigeland_Park,_Oslo.jpg

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male, female, happy, sad, desperate, etc.) interacting. Besides, the meaning of the whole/parts relation changes depending on the perspective we take to identify the border of the unit. One can consider the whole group (the border is inside outside the circle of the elevation); one can consider the concentric circles (the border become steps of an ascendant initiation); or one can consider the rays of the circle (the border becomes the ascending line of statues as a narrative sequence). Finally, one can consider the single figure, and then the border becomes the basement of each group. The message conveyed by Vigeland is that life is an ordered and cyclical swarming of life that goes from birth to death and then starts again with a new birth. Such a deep and overwhelming meaning could not have been neither uttered nor understood in terms of single elements (or variables), because it mimics the dynamic mereotopological properties of Creatura. CONCLUSION In the realm of Creatura, organism and environment are in a part/whole relationship. Bateson’s theory of Creatura and Pleroma constitutes an example of the irreducible unit of analysis as theorized by the Ganzheitspsychologie. In this view the relationship between human and non-human forms of life with the environment must be analyzed not as an accumulation of elements, but as synthesis trough transformation. The Developmental Mereotopology, that ultimately recaps the past neglected idea of Holism, may constitute the ground for a new ecosystemic epistemology of psychology. It provides the intellectual tools to investigate the primacy of the whole and the genetic totality transformation process. This employs the idea that any higher totality, as the human-non human relations, develops from one whole to another whole. The reality of complex phenomena address by ecosystemic psychology leads to the need of reflecting upon the world in holistic terms as a fundamental outlook on life. REFERENCES Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Ballantine Books. Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. E. P. Dutton. Bateson, G., & Bateson, M. C. (1987). Angels fear: Towards an epistemology of the sacred. Macmillan. Böhme, G., & Thibaud, J. P. (2016). The aesthetics of atmospheres. Routledge. Boscolo, L., Cecchin, G., Hoffman, L., & Penn, P. (1987). Milan systemic family therapy: Conversations in theory and practice. Basic Books. Diriwächter, R. (2004). Völkerpsychologie: The synthesis that never was. Culture & Psychology, 10(1), 85–109. Diriwächter, R. (2008). Genetic Ganzheitspsychologie. In R. Diriwächter & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Striving for the whole: Creating theoretical syntheses (pp. 21–45). Transaction Publishers.

New Perspectives in Ecosystemic Psychology • 199 Duncan, R. (2018). Nature in mind: Systemic thinking and imagination in ecopsychology and mental health. Routledge. Español, A., & Marsico, G. (2021). Psychology of borders: An integral proposal to understand border phenomena in human life. Theory & Psychology, 31(5), 665–674. Fung, S-F. (2020). Validity of the brief resilience scale and brief resilient coping scale in a Chinese sample. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(4),1265. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041265 Hoffmeyer, J. (2008). From thing to relation. On Bateson’s bioanthropology. In J. Hoffmeyer (Ed.), A legacy for living systems (pp. 27–44). Springer. Josephs, I. E., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction. In J. Brandtstätdter & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Action & self-development (pp. 257–282). Sage. Marsico, G. (2015). Developing with time: Defining a temporal mereotopology. In L. M. Simaõ, D. S. Guimaraẽs, & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Temporality: Culture in the flow of human experience (pp. 1–18). IAP. Marsico, G., & Varzi, A. (2016).Psychological and social borders: Regulating relationships. In J., Valsiner, G., Marsico, N. Chaudhary, T., Sato, & V., Dazzani, (Eds). (2016). Psychology as a science of human being: The Yokohama manifesto, Annals of Theoretical Psychology, 13, (pp. 327–335). Springer. Reiter, B. (2021). Decolonizing the social sciences and humanities: An Anti-Elitism Manifesto. Routledge. Silva Guimarães, D., & Simão, L. M. (2021). Dialogical metapsychology in semioticcultural constructivism: Open perspectives for an indigenous psychology. Human Arenas, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-021-00246-7 Stępnik, M. (2017). Modernist sculpture parks and their ideological contexts—On the basis of the oeuvres by Gustav Vigeland, Bernhard Hoetger and Einar Jónsson. Estetyka i Krytyka, 47(4), 143–169. Tateo, L. (2016). Toward a cogenetic cultural psychology. Culture & Psychology, 22(3), 433–447. Tateo, L. (2019). Afterword on educational dilemmas. In L. Tateo (Ed.), Educational dilemmas: A cultural psychological perspective (pp. 193–195). Routledge. Tateo, L., & Marsico, G. (2014). Open complementarity in cultural psychology. In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, & P. Hviid (Eds.), Cultural psychology and its future: Complementarity in a new key (pp. 77–91). IAP. Valsiner, J. (2008). The social and the cultural: Where do they meet? In T. Sugiman,. K. Gergen, W. Wagner, & Y. Yamada (Eds.), Meaning in action (pp. 273–287). Springer. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2014). Encountering the border: Vygotsky’s zona blizaishego razvitya and its implications for theory of development. In Yasnitsky, A., van der Veer, R. & Ferrari, M. (Eds,.) The Cambridge handbook of culturalhistorical psychology (pp. 148–174). Cambridge University Press. Varzi, A. C. (1996). Parts, wholes, and part-whole relations: The prospects of mereotopology. Data and Knowledge Engineering, 20: 259–286. Varzi, A. C. (1997). Boundaries, continuity, and contact. Noûs, 31, 26–58. Varzi, A. C. (1998). Basic problems of mereotopology. In N. Guarino (Ed.), Formal ontology in information systems (pp. 29–38). IOS Press.

200  •  LUCA TATEO & GIUSEPPINA MARSICO Varzi, A. C. (2015), Mereology. In E. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, (Spring 2015 Edition). Stanford. Vygotsky, L. S. (1997). The collected works of LS Vygotsky: The history of the development of higher mental functions (Vol. 4). Springer. Weisbruch, G. (2006). The complex adaptive systems approach to biology. In B. Feltz, M. Crommelinck, & P. Goujon (Eds.), Self-organization and emergence in life science (pp. 7–28). Springer West, S. A., Fisher, R. M., Gardner, A., & Kiers, E. T. (2015). Major evolutionary transitions in individuality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(33) 10112-10119; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1421402112 Willyard, C. (2022). What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity. Nature, 602, 22–25. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00214-3 Wittgenstein, L. (2010). Philosophical investigations. London: John Wiley & Sons.

CHAPTER 10

SAYONARA VARIABLE, KONNICHIWA EQUIFINALITY POINT Semiotic Cultural Psychology Teaches Us What Colorful Really Means Tatsuya Sato, Yuko Yasuda, Misato Fukuyama, Daina Ishii Ritsumeikan University

Ayae Kido Kansai University

Yasuhiro Omi University of Yamanashi

Yoshiyuki Watanabe Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine

In this chapter, we discuss the (negative) impact of variables on psychology and the possibility of describing diversity using the Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA). This model constitutes a decisive step toward overcoming the fixation of psychological science on the “dictatorship of variables.” American psychology introduced variables into psychology, and there was a desire to capture inter-individFarewell to Variables, pages 201–214. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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202 • SATO et al. ual differences in a way that was made normative by the label scientific. We need to stop thinking on variables. That said, if giving up variables means not dealing with intra- and inter-individual differences, then it is simply outdated psychology in the age of globalization. Even if we discard variables, we must treat the diversity of individuals as appropriate. TEA has the potential to differ from the assumptions of variable psychology. The basic concept of TEA and the new possibilities of semiotic cultural psychology are discussed.

1. INTRODUCTION Diversity and inclusion (D&I)are currently being touted, but there are also major pitfalls in D&I. Most importantly, the D&I has no concept of time. It is true that diversity has been overlooked and should be valued. However, simply discussing, diversity can lead to psychological knowledge of no usability. Diversity may be linked to the expansion of entropy. An emphasis on diversity without regard of time necessarily fails, as any practical application occurs in time. Due to the limited cognitive capacity of humans, it is difficult to perceive complex things as complex and categorization occurs. Categorization creates stereotypes that become prejudices, and prejudices may create exclusionary behavior. In other words, discrimination may occur. When we encountered human diversity in the modern era, people have a history of seeking simple standard solutions to complex problems and using simplified measures. This was a time when the social status system collapsed in Europe and a diverse range of people immigrated from Europe to the new continent of North America. It was a time when European countries sought colonies in the Southern Hemisphere and, in the United States, the oppression of indigenous people took place in the name of settling in the West. Some may think that the D&I era was not what it used to be. However, history repeats itself, as the saying goes, and the pandemic we thought was a 20th-century (around 1920)story raged into the 21st century, just as it did in the 1910s. The Crimean Peninsula was again at war. Human assessment and psychometrics will also not be immune to what occurred in the 20th century. When we encounter those that lack a sense of order and the unknown, we feel uneasy and try to see things as simply as possible. On this basis, the fact that D&I is recognized as a common value may appear to be an appropriate progression in the age of globalization. However, this is why we need to learn from the history of failure to tolerate diversity, and we need to grasp the substantive progress of D&I in light of that history. If we only use the slogan “allow diversity,” a human perception s y s t e m that cannot tolerate diversity will end up putting diversity together in a way that is easier to understand. This is merely a typology, which arose in the 1920s. Beyond this typology is the trait theory. The focus on typologies and traits is continuous in the history of psychology. In this chapter, after a historical review of theories and measures of individual differences that seem to capture diversity but suppress it, we examine some ways

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of understanding humans that incorporate time. Such work should bury the concept of variables and shed light on the importance of multi-trajectories for future equifinality. 2.  LESSONS FROM THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 2-1.  Modernity and Psychology Psychology originally began as a “discipline” for understanding the universal nature of the human mind. Initially, aspects of human nature were considered in the categories of God and man. During this period, individual differences were non-existent and were identified as errors or biases. In 19th century, psychophysics by Fechner in Germany and experimental psychology by Wundt in Germany did not address individual differences. The scholars who focused on individual differences were Galton in the United Kingdom and Cattell in the United States around the end of the century. Around the same time, the field of abnormal psychology began to develop. We should note that interest in mental abnormalities and retardation has a longer history than in psychology. The establishment of psychology as a discipline made it possible to apply its methods to various fields. Both mental abnormalities and mental retardation complement the interests of clinical psychologists. In the applied field, the emphasis is on the actual human presence in front of us rather than on the creation of general theories. Going back in time, at the end of the 17th century, the British Locke, in his book Human Understanding, proposed that the mind is innate [tabula rasa] and that experiences through sense organs are recorded in its notebooks. He also tried to think that ideas are formed by the connection (association) of experiences and that they can be perceived and judged. Locke held that mentally deranged people were those who had incorrectly linked multiple ideas while retarded people were those who were unable to link them. In other words, from an empiricist standpoint, he tried to explain the workings of normal, abnormal, and retarded minds. Clearly, he did not make up this theory on the spur of the moment but inductively developed it based on his observations. Viva! Empiricism! The modern era and psychology are accomplices to each other as the concept of aptitude would have been useless if the status system remained solid. In many cases, the family background determined who would be employed in which profession, and there was no room for the concept of aptitude. Under the feudal system, children born into a farming family had to take over the family farm, and the eldest son of the samurai had no choice but to become a samurai too. Watson’s bold statement that a dozen healthy infants could be raised to be anything was in keeping with the spirit of the modern age. If we were in the 21st century, there would be no need to limit the word to “healthy.” Viva! Environmentalism!

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2-2.  French Public Education and Binet’s Mental Test In France, which became a republic after the Revolution of 1789, access to education was considered a right. The state, rather than the church, was then made responsible for education–an ideal that did not take shape until around 1900. In France, 99% of all municipalities had public primary schools by the beginning of 1900. There are three principles of modern primary education: (1) Free education, (2) compulsory education, and (3) religious neutrality (secularity). Most French children studied in primary schools, which was an excellent achievement. This is where the contact zone of education and psychology was born. Although retarded children probably existed before, they were treated in French public education not as cut-offs, but were given special education. More importantly, the need arose to know exactly who was retarded. Efforts to measure intellectual ability dated back to the 19th-century phrenology, and although there were proposals for a mental test by Cattell, they were, to put it mildly, unsuccessful. Binet in France worked to solve the real problem of understanding children with disabilities in public education, leading to the development of a useful mental test. Binet developed a test for understanding the individual in front of him. At that time, these variables did not come into play. 2-3.  War, Psychology, and Individual Differences When the First World War began in 1914, the United States, which had initially been neutral, changed its attitude. The American Psychological Society was asked to help in war efforts by mobilizing various sciences. The aim was to utilize psychology in the selection of military personnel, motivation for military service, and mental health on the battlefield. Robert Yerkes and his members developed the Army Alpha and Army Beta intelligence tests. These tests were administered to 1,750,000 US military enlistees and servicemen during World War I. The results of this intelligence test were later analyzed according to the country of origin of the soldier. They were then used to draw inferences regarding where immigrants were more intelligent. Furthermore, the idea was developed that people from countries with low average intelligence test scores would not be accepted as immigrants. In other words, this resulted in a restricted immigration policy. This is contrary to the spirit of Binet’s mental test. Woodworth also brought in the idea of screening to eliminate applicants who were prone to neurosis. In the post-war period, this developed into personality testing. In Germany, at that time, Carl, G. Jung and Ernst Kretchmer took a typological view of personality. Typology is the understanding of Charachter in several typologies. A typology is nothing more than a methodological concept that links the understanding of the individual with that of the universal. Kretschmer became interested in the relationship between physique and psychosis in the course of seeing many patients and published Physique and Person-

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ality (Kretschmer, 1921). Jung also published the Psychology of Types (Psychologische Typen) in 1921. Additionally, Spranger advocated a typology of attitude and value with types of men (Original title Lebensformen; Spranger, 1921). As described above, it can be said that until the 1920s, the understanding of diversity assumed the causes of diversity and attempted to apply knowledge in practice, rather than taking diversity as it was. 2-4.  Discourse on Variables in the 1930s A disciple of Cattell, Edward Thorndike, developed the educational measurement movement, and, in an article in 1918, “Whatever exists at all exists in some amount... To know it thoroughly involves knowing its quantity as well as its quality.” He believed that the learning process and outcomes of pupils should be viewed objectively (rather than subjectively by teachers). He described the importance of quantitatively treating the effects of education and intelligence, which led psychologists to treat intelligence as a variable. According to Danziger (1997), variables began to play a significant role in the psychological discourse in the early 1930s. Tolman (1932)was the first to systematically use the concept of a variable . By using the concept of variables, he not only separated his neo-behaviorist framework from the stale reflective paradigm but also successfully linked it to the emerging Gestalt and correlational psychology. He then introduced a mediating variable to the previous S (stimulus)–R (reaction) scheme of reflection and put forth the S (stimulus)–O (organism)–R (reaction) scheme. For example, incorporating hunger as a mediating variable increased the accuracy of predictions when rats ate food. Hungry rats eat, but if they are not hungry, they will not behave as such. The mediating variable improved the explanation. The accuracy of the experiment was then improved by controlling hunger in the next experiment. Furthermore, the concept of variables was introduced into social and personality psychology. Murray (1938) published his explorations of personality. He sought to understand individual personalities in terms of needs and pressures with an emphasis on social needs and motivations. The book includes a chapter on the variables of personality. This book was the result of a “psychological clinic” established at Harvard University in 1927. Thus, in the United States, the idea of variables was introduced in cognitiveoriented neo-behaviorism and clinically oriented personality inquiries, which eventually supported the unity of psychology. The development of statistical methods that underpin these trends should not be forgotten. The impact of the establishment of variable empires in psychology on the development of psycho-statistics. What is the effect of chopping up an individual, which means undividable, on variables?

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The first is understanding human beings as a group of variables. Using the concept of variables, an individual is perceived as a rich human being with diverse properties. Second, the variation in the values of variables was treated not as an error from the mean, but as information that captures diversity. Third, it gave value to the study of psycho-statistics and, above all, helped create a sense of unity in psychology. Thus, taking a course in psycho-statistics alongside the experimental training developed by Titchener became mandatory for psychology students. From the perspective of statistics, statistics specific to economics, to sociology, and to psychology worked together to advance statistics. Techniques such as random sampling, which were unnecessary for early experiments in perceptual psychology, became necessary when large amounts of data were used in social psychology. The development of psycho-statistics can now be briefly described as follows: 1900 Pearson’s development of descriptive statistics and bridge to inferential statistics Chi-Square distribution 1904 Factor analysis of intelligence; two-factor and multi-factor theories 1908 Yeast counts and t-distribution for Guinness beer 1910 Establishment of classical test theory 1925 Advances in attitude measurement methods 1935 From eyeball statistics to inferential statistics Fisher and experimental design Thus, the method of quantifying mental phenomena and treating them as numbers became widespread in all areas of psychology, and the concept of variables came to be governed. One of the weaknesses of the variables is that they cannot deal with what does not vary. Everyone thinks and what everyone does cannot take on multiple values as a variable, and, therefore, has no value as a variable. For example, it is known that Japanese women experience passive make-up during events such as the Shichi-Go-San Festival before they voluntarily apply makeup (Kido, 2011; in Japanese). The Shichi-Go-San Festival is the festival for 7, 5, and 3 year-old children in Japan. Such passive experiences cannot be treated as “variables” because everyone experiences them, and important experiences need to be left out. Variables such as instruments cannot deal with culturally crucial events that everyone experiences. TEA, as discussed below, can then treat these experiences as obligatory passage points.

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3.  TO SAY GOOD BYE TO THE VARIABLES 3-1.  From Cross-Cultural Psychology Using Variables to Authentic Cultural Psychology That Does Not Emphasize Differences Recall that intelligence test scores were roughly compared according to a person’s place of birth. Therefore, this variable (place of birth) plays two roles. First, the mediating variable of origin is more predictive of intelligence test scores. In this case, a person’s intelligence test scores can be more accurately predicted using the mediating variable of the place of origin. The fact that predictions can be made leads to the theoretical view that different places of origin may have different attributes. There has always been controversy, not only about intelligence test scores, but also about whether “nature” or “nurture” is more dominant. It is now accepted that the intelligence test included several cultural items, which only lowered the scores of those unfamiliar with the culture or those who had only been there for a short time. The method of naive comparisons of intelligence test scores was an aspect of nature’s experiment, looking at events that could not be manipulated by experimentation. This could be considered the beginning of cross-cultural psychology. Cross-cultural psychology focuses on broadband differences in human attributes, as in the work of Marcus and Kitayama (1991) and Nisbett (2003) has found some success. However, it should be noted that these methods, owing to their approach of treating culture as an independent variable, can highlight multicultural differences (not sameness) more than necessary. It is well known that, although there are differences in the means of height comparisons between men and women, there is a large overlap between the two. However, comparison by sex amplifies the differences between the two categories of biological sex. Treating multiple cultures as independent variables amplifies the differences between cultures and homogenizes the nature of multicultural members. Hence, in the self-construal theory (Markus & Kitayama, 1991), the differences between the two cultures are emphasized more than necessary. It emphasized the difference between the predominance of the interdependent self in Western cultures, including the United States, and the predominance of the interoperative self in Asian cultures, including Japan. Regarding the dangers of such ideas, see Takano and Sogon (2008). Cross-cultural psychology often employs (but is not necessarily limited to) the traditional strategy of group comparisons to establish knowledge about cultures (Valsiner, 2003, Fig.1). It is assumed that a person who “belongs to” cross-cultural psychology has become contaminated by “variable psychology” (Toomela, 2008). In cross-cultural psychology, first, a variable is introduced into the external category distinction as an independent variable, and second, a psychological

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variable is introduced as a dependent variable, which is compared to each independent variable. In other words, we can say that we are dominated by variables. One way of escaping such domination is through cultural psychology, which originated with Vygotsky and semiotic cultural psychology. Incidentally, there are two types of cultural psychology: activity-oriented and sign-oriented. Valsiner, a leading exponent of the latter, or semiotic cultural psychology, proposes that culture belongs to a person. Culture in Vygotskian cultural psychology plays a different role from the culture in cross-cultural psychology. Culture can be seen as a systemic organizer of individuals’ psychological systems. Thus, we have to say that culture “belongs to” the person. At the first glance, this seems counter-intuitive—how can something that designates a collective entity “belong to” each individual person (Sato et al., 2014). How does culture belong to one person? Cultural psychologists answer that culture belongs to a person through their involvement in social institutions and through the notion of the human use of signs—linking this psychology with semiotics. Thus, cultural psychology begins with the sampling of a person together with their participation in social institutions (Valsiner, 2001, p. 36). The inquiry of the sign was formulated simultaneously and yet apart around the same period; these were semiotics and semiology. Semiotics, based on symbols as a way of thinking, is represented by Peirce, while semiology, which has linguistic origins, is represented by Saussure. Saussurean semiology and Peircean semiotics share the concept of a sign representing something else. However, they are not psychological. Note that both do not deal with the human psyche, that is, mental functions, as their purpose is to study the properties of signs or symbols. Vygotsky placed symbols in the context of psychology, influenced by Gestalt psychologist Köhler’s work on insight learning. 3-2.  Think Culturally for Saying Good-Bye to the Notion of a Variable This kind of issue is quite sensitive and hence worth considering from a crosscultural psychology perspective, people who eat whales are barbarians and people who do not are barbarians, which means that whether you eat whales functions as an independent variable. Whether they are barbaric or not functions as a dependent variable. This is the downside of categorization by a variable: differences are emphasized and conflicts are encouraged. What does semiotic cultural psychology say to this? Semiotic cultural psychology holds that it is the function of the signifier to treat one thing as something else, and that the function of such a signifier works intrapsychic. It follows that there is no good or bad in the symbolization of an object as food. It is impossible to assume that a person belongs to a single culture. People need to acquire multiple cultures at various levels. The difference between cross-cultural psychology and semiotic cultural psychology can be expressed as follows.

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FIGURE 10.1.  Comparison of Cross-Cultural Psychology and Cultural Psychology

From a cross-cultural psychological point of view, the two people at the bottom left (A, B) are monochromatic, and when several of them get together, they become colorful. From a cultural psychological point of view, the two people in the bottom right (C, D) have different sign systems, and everyone is colorful. In addition, it is possible to describe two different people as partially having the same sign system. Cultural psychology’s understanding of human beings better captures the real meaning of colorfulness. Japanese sometimes uses the term “half” to describe the attributes of a child whose parents have different nationalities. This means having a half of different nationalities. The concept of “half” is based on the premise that there are multiple incompatible categories. The premise of the concept of “half” approximates the premise of cross-cultural psychology. Cross-cultural psychology not only divides people, but also risks dividing one person. Many people in Japan suffer from this problem. It is, to put it bluntly, the thought of destruction. Therefore, it was necessary to eliminate this premise. Furthermore, cultural psychology celebrates human diversity. The notion of “double” suggests that multiple categories are complementary; they are multiple categories in which transactions occur. The idea of a half is more closely related to comparative cultural psychology, whereas the idea of double is more closely related to semiotic cultural psychology. Can individuals with diverse sign systems become dis-ordered? The idea of multicollinearity dispels the aporia. Multilinearity means that many radial paths are starting from a point and reaching a goal. Here, the concept of time is included. Time does not exist in diversity; however, it does exist in our multilinearity. This is because the movement from a starting point to an endpoint always requires time. In this section, we introduce the concept of equifinality.

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The concept of equifinality originated in the general system model proposed by Bertalanffy (1968), which means that the same and/or a similar final state may be reached from different initial conditions and in different ways. Bertalanffy preferred equifinality better than “goal,” because the notion of equifinality does not represent a termination point. Considering that equifinality is a characteristic of an open system, it is important to have a view of human beings that sees them as an open system. The Trajectory Equifinality Approach (TEA) is a methodology that views human beings as open systems and depicts them as beings with equifinality and ordered diversity. 3-3.  The Characteristics of TEA TEA is a semiotic cultural psychology methodology that has emerged from pocket money research (Takahashi & Yamamoto, 2020).Specifically, it is a qualitative analytical method that was first applied to depict the parent-child relationship when children receive pocket money (Sato, 2011; Valsiner & Sato, 2006). Trajectories up to the equifinality point (EFP) represent the actual history of the individual. However, at the same time, trajectories that were not realized also need to be drawn. Here, trajectories that were not realized also seem to be a part of an individual’s life course. The focus on equifinality would be to realize a variable-free understanding of human beings, which would lead to the abandonment of single-line trajectory thinking and causal thinking. The person is what he or she will be (such as the zone of proximal development; ZPD), just as the trajectory is who he or she is. It is unnecessary to consider stage theories, such as developmental stages, because, by drawing a trajectory, variables become unnecessary because a variation in trajectory means a variation of human being. Although SDGs have led to the use of slogans such as “acknowledge diversity” and “diversity and inclusion,” diversity has significant drawbacks. One of these is the risk that increased entropy (disorder) puts pressure on human cognitive capacity, resulting in rampant simplification. The other is that time and changes over time are not considered; therefore, in the end, only the diversity of internal entities can be described. It is important to understand the diversity of everyone, not as an internal attribute but as a diversity of trajectories. The insertion of time into diversity may lead to a further increase in entropy (disorder), as in the epigenetic landscape model of Waddington (1956). The diversity of people is good, as it may lead to laissez-faire inclusion. Therefore, equifinality as a common value is necessary. 3-4 From Diversity to Diversity With Irreversible Time Equifinality presupposes a plural-trajectory, so when inserting time into diversity, placing equifinality ahead of a multi-trajectory makes it possible to reduce entropy and bring about ordering.

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FIGURE 10.2.  Waddington’s Epigenetic Landscape Model (1956)

Figure 10.3 shows an image of the ordering of objects with irreversible time. The left figure in Figure 10.3 depicts a piece that is diverse in terms of pattern and shape. Is it difficult to recognize this diversity. Therefore, we tend to categorize them by focusing on patterns or shapes. We then classified the pieces according to the categories we focused on, minimizing the differences within categories and treating them homogeneously, and maximizing the differences between categories and treating them confrontationally. By contrast, the figure on the right in Figure 10.3 adds the dimension of irreversible time and depicts each piece as moving toward a common goal or equifi-

FIGURE 10.3.  Diversity (left) and Diversity with Irreversible Time (right)

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FIGURE 10.4.  Two Ways of Child-Rearing to an Equifinality

nality. It is important to be able to envision the plural trajectories toward equifinality because even though we may not be able to identify the characteristics of each piece well, we can see that they are not antagonistic if we recognize that they are all working toward the same goal. We recognize that each piece is complementary. The slogan “embrace diversity” or “accept diversity” promotes stereotypes because of the limited cognitive capacity of humans. Adding a plural trajectory to equifinality makes it possible to imagine each position as complementary. Equifinality is a way of thinking that truly celebrates diversity. The idea of equifinality or plural-trajectory thinking achieves complementarity rather than dichotomy. Let us take the example of swaddling, a childcare method in which the baby is wrapped around with a cloth. This method was seen in Europe until the 18th century, when French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly criticized swaddling as a form of abandonment. He was of the view that children should be free to be active and that mothers should keep a close watch on them. In other words, there is a dichotomy between free-range parenting and swaddling. To a certain extent, we attempt to decry swaddling as outdated and old-fashioned. However, what if we consider these two child-rearing methods to be different ways of raising children? If there are multiple ways to achieve one goal of raising a healthy child, there is no need to think of one as superior or inferior to the other. 4.  CONCLUDING REMARKS Exploring commonalities is more important than amplifying divisions and conflicts using variables to acknowledge the differences between others. To search for something in common, we need to add another dimension, that is, time. It is time to advocate for the idea of multiple trajectories by adding the dimension of time to the notion of diversity. Semiotic cultural psychology and its meth-

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odology, TEA, is the answer. Psychology based on TEA allows us to escape the dominance of variables and enter inclusion. Historically, psychology has gained a unifying umbrella using “variables.” However, in the case of psychology dealing with culture, differentiation has been amplified by the double dominance of external and internal variables. This is known as cross-cultural psychology. Semiotic cultural psychology has the basic “These (in German)” that “culture belongs to the person.” Based on the “These,” what happens if we allow the internal sign system of everyone to differ? Divisive and exclusionary thinking of dividing people into cultural and national categories ceases. It is not surprising that different cultures, i.e., sign systems can exist simultaneously within an individual. D&I, which has become popular in the 21st century, includes the idea of acknowledging others even if you do not understand them, which can induce thoughtlessness. This may be better than the attitude of exclusion, because we do not understand it. More important, however, is to understand the diversity of those who seem different from us with the added dimension of time. To accomplish this, it may be to emphasize that many people, including ourselves, have the same value and/or same equifinality. Here we use “same” not “similar” because we should have “tolerance of Ambiguity (Frenkel-Brunswik, 1949).” By making the “same” wider rather than narrower, diversity can be recognized as plural trajectories leading to the same equifinality. Adding a time dimension to diversity is to recognize the plural trajectories of the EFP, and such thinking is required in this era of globalization. Let us say one last time! Sayonara Variable, Konnichiwa Equifinality Point! Good bye Variables, hello Equifinality Point! Farvel Variables, goddag Equifinality Point! Hüvasti Variables, tere Equifinality Point! REFERENCES Bertalanffy, L. von. (1968). General systems theory. Braziller. Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind; How psychology found its language. Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: SAGE. Frenkel-Brunswik, E. (1949). Intolerance of ambiguity as an emotional and perceptual personality variable. Journal of Personality, 18, 108–143. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1949.tb01236.x Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychologische Typen [Psychological types]. Rascher. Kido, A. (2011). A cultural perspective on the role of makeup in the different settings in Japan and the United States among Japanese female students. Japanese Journal of Qualitative Psychology, 10, 79–96. (In Japanese) https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jaqp/10/1/10_79/_pdf/-char/ja

214 • SATO et al. Kretschmer, E. (1921). Körperbau und Charakter: Untersuchungen zum Konstitutionsproblem und zur Lehre von den Temperamenten [Physique and character: An investigation of the nature of constitution and of the Theory of Temperament]. Springer. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. Murray, H. (1938). Exploration in personality. Oxford University Press. Nisbett, R. (2003). The geography of thought: How Asians and westerners think differently...and why. Free Press. Sato, T. (2011). Minding money: How understanding of value is culturally promoted. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 45(1),116–31. doi: 10.1007/s12124010-9142-7. PMID: 20730516. Sato, T., Yasuda, Y., Kanzaki, M., & Valsiner, J. (2014). From describing to reconstructing life trajectories: How the TEA (Trajectory Equifinality Approach) explicates context-dependent human phenomena. In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary, & P. Hviid (Eds.), Cultural psychology and its future—Complementarity in a new key (pp. 93–104). Information Age Publishing. Spranger, E. (1921). Lebensformen. Geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie und Ethik der Persönlichkeit. 2., völlig neu bearbeitete und erweiterte Auflage [Types of men: The psychology and ethics of personality]. Niemeyer, Halle (Saale) Takahashi, N., & Yamamoto, T. (Eds.). (2020). Children and money; Cultural developmental psychology of pocket money. Information Age Publishing Takano, Y., & Sogon, S. (2008). Are Japanese more collectivistic than Americans?: Examining conformity in in-groups and the reference-group effect. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, 39, 237–250. Thorndike, E. L. (1918). The nature, purposes, and general methods of measurements of educational products. Seventeenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 16–24. https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/1744-7984 Toomela, A. (2008). Variables in psychology: A critique of quantitative psychology. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 42(3), 245–265. Valsiner, J. (2001). Comparative study of human cultural development. Infancia y Aprendizaje Valsiner, J. (2003). Culture and its transfer: Ways of creating general knowledge through the study of cultural particulars. In W. J. Lonner, D. L. Dinnel, S. A. Hayes, & D. N. Sattler (Eds.), Online readings in psychology and culture (Unit 2, Chapter 12), (https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1013), The Online Readings in Psychology and Culture. Valsiner, J., & Sato, T. (2006). Historically structured sampling (HSS): How can psychology’s methodology become tuned in to the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology? In J. Straub, D. Weidemann, C. Kölbl & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning, pp. 215–251. Bielefeld: transcript. Waddington, C. H. (1956). The genetic assimilation of the bithorax phenotype. Evolution 10, 1–13.

CHAPTER 11

GENERAL CONCLUSION A Respectful Farewell to the Illusion of Quantified Objectivity Jaan Valsiner Aalborg University

Variables were the sign of politically motivated quantification ethos in the human sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries. The practice of quantification in the Occidental sciences from 18th century onwards set the stage for mixing up personal and societal levels of psychological phenomena through the limitations of the use of real numbers—in contrast to imaginary numbers—has introduced to the science of psychology. The models for such trust in numbers were everywhere in the commercial activities of the societies in the 19th century. What is at stake? A real number comes to our cognitive uses with the halo of some contextual objectivity. Hence the act of quantification is a semiotic assertion (“assigning numbers to phenomena”) that bring to the phenomena thus abstracted the implicit added value (“objectivity”). We easily succumb to the implicit acceptance of such feeling of objectivity—which in itself is a semiotic illusion.

Farewell to Variables, pages 215–222. Copyright © 2023 by Information Age Publishing www.infoagepub.com All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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QUANTIFIED PSYCHOLOGICAL OBJECTS AS A SEMIOTIC ILLUSION The act of quantification is that of sign construction in semiotic sense. In terms of C. S. Peirce such assertion is a perfect example of how a sign (a number) is made to stand in in some capacity for a phenomenon (non-number). But how can we be certain that such sign construction is adequate? How do we know that a particular vague feeling of mine—if I am required to give it number “4” for the ephemeral “happiness” (out of allowed “7” on a scale)—differs from a possible other assignment (“3” or “5”) in terms of representing my “true happiness”? The latter vague and field-like nature of the feeling that captures me in full is turned into a point-like sign “4”—by my own decision in my mind, and under the influence of the 7-point frame of a rating scale (Wagoner & Valsiner, 2005). Something more is implied here. That something more is the setting up the trajectory of meaningful reflection. In semiotic terms of Charles Sanders Peirce that would be interpretant, or—a pathway for creating a cascade of interpretants in a particular direction. Furthermore, the act of quantification is an act of inserting normatively prescribed interpretant—which is the arena of social control over the distinction of science from non-science. A particular representation—data—are expected to be interpreted in way X rather than non-X. Psychology’s prescribed interpretants tend to have rigid borders that makes it a “normal science” (in Kuhn’s terms) thus protecting psychology as science from potential innovations. Consider the imperative of interpreting a higher “score” (number) of some index as “better” (or “worse”) than a lower “score”—superimposing a competitive social norm on the numbers—rather than a different frame, for instance—that on non-conformity (“higher number is a deviant number”). PARADOXES OF SETTING UP PRESCRIBED INTERPRETANTS Prescription of interpretants is paradoxical in its nature—it constrains the specific sign construction to a particular domain based on a normative system that is set up before the actual sign construction and its proliferation in time. The decision is made on the basis of the axiomatic given (meta-code in the Methodology Cycle, see Figure 11.1) and hence pre-determines the kind of empirical knowledge that can come out of the research efforts. As the meta-code can be set up on multiple grounds—based on the understanding of the phenomena, or on the ideological basis of the given research tradition—it implies a variable component beyond the striving towards Wissenschaft. Religious and later political axiomatic systems are powerful framer for the direction in which the prescription of interpretants proceeds1. Rodax (in chapter 8) discussed the ‘fixation’ on a score—which becomes 1

Johannes Kepler did his best to follow the meta-code that the form of planetary moves should be circular—failing to map the empirical observation to that model—and finally reached the breakthrough by realizing that orbits are elliptical (Valsiner, 2022). This modified the divine wisdom that prescribed circularity and introduced its more fitting general notion of elliptic orbits.

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presented as an objectifiable factor. Such fixation obscures the view for something else—namely the dynamic side of the phenomena: a rating fixed as “4” on a 7-point rating scale reminds “blind” as to the particular direction of movement (3 → 4 → 5 in contrast to 5 → 4 → 3). The issue of capturing the dynamic nature of phenomena as a conceptual limit of the variables discourse is elaborated by Nandita Chaudhary and her colleagues (Chapter 1) by contrasting the noun (“variable”) with the phenomena of variation. The assuming of the static meta-code (see Figure 11.1)—phenomena can be studied by looking at relationships between variables—rules the study of variation out from the research focus. One of the meta-codes in existing psychological discourse about variables entails the axiomatic notion that—after the researcher defines them- the independent and dependent variables must be not bound to each other, thus allowing to trace the “effect” upon the other. Brinkmann in chapter 3 challenged that notion— the independent and dependent variables need not in reality be independent of each other. The blindness of the researcher to this possibility leads to the stream of interpretants that all overlook the systemic nature of the phenomena. Within systemic organization the different factors (designated as “variables”) can be linked through various systemic connections and the elementaristic logic of direct causality (A caused B) simply cannot be assumed. Thus, a cycle (B) → A → B → A) where the A → B link is being studied as if it does not belong to this simple system leads to reification of the inherent “powers” in A as causally determining B, rather than getting input from the very B it is supposed to causally influence, and the reality of systemic amplification or attenuation of the state of B in the cycle. The second limitation of the independent à dependent variable assignment is the tautological nature of empirical findings to confirm what we conceptually preknow already. This pseudo-empirical (Smedslund, 1995) nature of much of psy-

FIGURE 11.1.  The Methodology Cycle

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chology is emphasized by Brinkmann as well. We presume that parents are more powerful than children and treat “parental child handling tactics” as “independent variable” and children’s responses as “dependent variable.” This closes the door to acquiring new knowledge of how children’s actions—as they develop—lead to changes in the parenting actions. The assumption that the powerful are dominant may be wrong—yet it can set up the whole research tradition of “effects of parenting” in contrast to the complementary “children educating parents” direction of knowledge search in empirical work. Or—as nicely expressed in chapter 1—human decision making would take a syllogistic form based on deductive logic: “This person is an Indian and therefore she must be collectivistic!” Such deductive move stops further inquiry into the particular person. Furthermore, it reifies the homogeneous assumption about the class (of “all Indians” being similar), overlooking systemic variety. VERGEGENWÄRTIGUNG AS PARTICIPATION De Luca Picione and Salvatore (Chapter 7) make use of Husserl’s concept of Vergegenwärtigung—ambiguously translated into English as presentification—as a productive alternative for the variables discourse. It is a self-reflexive notion— in one’s personal history making the person in the present reflects upon one’s previous state in order to create one’s next step towards the future. Similarities with the TEA approach (Sato et al., 2016) are notable here. This opens the door for any development. Linking this notion with Brinkmann’s warning (“Don´t let the idea of variables put us under a dangerous spell that will eliminate normativity, reasons, and agency from the human mind”), the theoretical replacement of variables (as equivalent to things) by self-reflexive dynamic structures of presentation of self to one’s own self in time would maintain the focus on variation in irreversible time. The fundamental psychological reality is made up of persons who act and interpret their own lives and are engaged in participant relations with their fellow human beings. We participate in our own development—coordinating it with that of others. Overlooking this nature of human development would be an act of “epistemological violence” (chapter 1) towards understanding. The meta-code construction (Figure 11.1) entails the basic decision about what kinds of systemic organization—if any—we need to axiomatically presume. The realities of human experience create the necessity to assume an open systems perspective. Henryk Saetra (chapter 4 ) adds to it the qualifier “notorious.” Saetra brings in Arne Næss’ relational total-field image and combines it with Arthur Koestler’s notion of holons. These two notions lead to relational ontological approach to human beings which is fully in line with the open systems idea. Næss notion of “knots in the field of intrinsic relations” imply a network-based field that is knowable via explication of the knots and implying their fields around them— which touch upon each other’s borders. Arthur Koestler’s invention of the notion of holon—something that is simultaneously a whole in itself, and a part of some other—hierarchically higher—

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whole—is an effort to resolve the parts whole relationship that has plagued the thinking of psychologists. By doing it through the suggestion of hierarchical dynamics—where the lower level system AB is simultaneously part of the higher level system (AB)çèC and so on (further in hierarchy) solves the problem of inclusiveness of the context within AB. As Saetra points out, the structure of nodes is not flat, but hierarchical. Some nodes exist within or are made up of other nodes. Under these conditions separate variables cannot exist. How can psychology live without variables? Bo Allesoe Christiansen (chapter 2) presented a first sketch of approaching a psychology without focusing on variables, and replacing it by analysis of situations where we use words, symbols, in short, expressions with psychological import. He develops further Rom Harré and Paul Secord’s work. Psychology here is an effort of making life livable, and this places specific demands on the conceptual work of psychology. Because no sharp boundary between experience and concepts exists, i.e. experience is “glued” to our concepts and does not evaporate. Yet the move to narrative presentation of this experience begins building the border with it. That border is of inclusive separation kind, and sets the stage for constructing new abstract models of the phenomena where the hierarchically structured nodes organize the boundary processes. Borders grow. They become established—differentiating the different parts of the given system (inclusive separation) and different systems from one another (exclusive separation). They also vanish—and the system vanishes with them (cogenetic logic— Herbst, 1995). Figure 11.2 illustrates the general process of creating a contour—border—in the flow of dynamic processes that entail transition between homogeneous and heterogeneous states of a field with a multitude of parts for which direction of the movement is discernible. The collective nature of the movements alternates between convergence (homogeneous set of similar directions, left side of Figure 11.2) and divergence (heterogeneity of the directions—middle part of Figure 11.2). The border is born when out of the divergence state a new but oppositional homogeneous field is formed (right side of Figure 11.2). The undifferentiated field has become divided between two mutually opposite homogeneous parts. The border itself has no determined contour but becomes perceivable as the space

FIGURE 11.2.  Birth of a border (convergence-divergence-countervergence)

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between the opposing parts. Border requires oppositional relation between two parts of the system—a mere pause or a blank between the temporally unfolding similarly directed (convergent) processes is not a border. Thus, an insert in the flow of speech —hesitancy (“hmmm”)—is not a border but a pause: I do not know how to say it…. Hmmm… maybe this way

The ongoing speech does not entail simultaneity, hence pauses cannot become borders. Developmental mereotopology deals with basic processes of border making, maintenance, and disappearance. As such its closest real world examples come from the emergence of membrane structures in developmental biology. These membranes are borders between opposed and united adjacent cells. It is part of the ecosystemic general perspective the five axioms of which were elaborated in chapter 9 (Tateo and Marsico) The Aboutness of the Borders Aboutness is a dimension of semiotic freedom, but only if it works in parallel with the capability to produce unambiguous interpretants. An organism able to produce only one of the trajectories would be disadvantaged in a changing environment. An example is provided by the immune system—it needs to operate to defend the organism from previously unknown challenges on the basis of generalized knowledge (biological generalization by the organism) based on past encounters with the invading challengers. Aboutness is surrounded by fluid borders that differentiate between different atmospheres—each of which constitutes a Ganzheit-quality. When persons move over an open field or sail over an ocean their full perceptual and affective domain is completely enclosed in the environmental field conditions. But when humans enter the forest they can perceive another Ganzheit-quality: its unique atmosphere —which is as real as the trees and affects the person experience. Yet the experience is describable only in general— seemingly vague—discourse. However, I want to argue here that this vagueness is only seeming—it merely reflects the reality of the ways in which the already known and not yet known sides of the experience in irreversible time. The various efforts in developmental science to elaborate Lev Vygotsky’s notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (Valsiner & van der Veer, 1993, 2014) have mostly failed as the depiction of the future in concrete terms is inevitably a failure. If personenvironment ecosystemic relationships become the minimal unit of analysis then the notion of variables becomes substituted by “border units” that entail the border limits together with at least two direction vectors within these limits (Figure 11.3) The number and mutual orientation of the vectors can vary and change (Figure 11.2), but the crucial feature relevant here is that the conditions of the ecosystemic development are established by the relations of the vectors. They can converge in

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FIGURE 11.3.  The Border Units—Minimal Gestalts for Analytic Units

the same location (and the border becomes open in the direction and location of their convergence). They can confront each other (and the border is non-passable). GENERAL CONCLUSION: SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS It turns out that I was ready to edit this volume already a quarter century ago. In my Guided Mind—dedicated to semiotic structure of the self—I suggested that the variables discourse be replaced by a wholistic structural one: …experiments cannot be viewed as entailing simple changing of “independent” variables to check their “effect” upon the “dependent” ones. In fact, there cannot be “variables” in the strict sense of the term (i.e., quantitative entities that can be varied at will, independently from one another). Instead, the experimental situation is constructed (and reconstructed) by the experimenter in its total structure. (Valsiner, 1998, pp. 396–397)

This volume then gives the reader a glimpse of development of the ideas over the past few decades. The ecosystemic perspective brought to the volume by Luca Tateo and Pina Marsico (chapter 9) becomes innovative as it links the eco-system with boundary-system, thus bringing the organic metaphor of membrane to the center of psychological methodology discourses. Developmental mereotopology is thus the new direction that goes beyond the philosophical ruminations by mereologists and topologists to the real life practices of developing persons who are permanently operating on the border of their pasts and their futures. In final summary— the problem of variables is not in the mathematical idea in itself, but the impacts of its interpretation by human sciences. Losing the full structure of human psychological phenomena and its transformation by “attaching numbers” to it inhibits the advancement of the field. Ganzheit-type qualitative structures replace the role of variables in psychological science. REFERENCES Herbst, D. (1995). What happens if we make a distinction. In T. Kindermann & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Development of person-context relations. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Sato, T., Mori, N., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). (2016). Making of the future: The Trajectory Equifnality Approach in Cultural Psychology. Information Age Publishers.

222 • JAAN VALSINER Smedslund, J. (1995). Psychologic: Common sense and the pseudoempirical. In J. Smith, L van Langenhoeve, & R. Harre (Eds.), Re-thinking psychology. Sage. Valsiner, J. (1998). The guide never knows...Jed mind. Harvard University Press. Valsiner, J. (Ed.) (2022). Sensuous unity of art and science: the times of Rudolf II. Information Age Publishers. Valsiner, J., & Van der Veer, R. (1993). The encoding of distance: The concept of the zone of proximal development and its interpretations. In R. R. Cocking & K. A. Renninger (Eds.), The development and meaning of psychological distance (pp. 35–62). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2014). Encountering the border: Vygotsky’s zona blizaishego razvitya and its implications for theory of development. In A. Yasnitsky, R. van der Veer, & M. Ferrari (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of cultural-historical psychology (pp. 148–173). Cambridge University Press. Wagoner, B., & Valsiner, J. (2005). Rating tasks in psychology: from static ontology to dialogical synthesis of meaning. In A. Gülerce, A. Hofmeister, I. Staeuble, G. Saunders & J. Kaye (Eds.), Contemporary theorizing in psychology: Global perspectives (pp. 197–213). Captus Press.