什么是好的理論_基于理論心理學的視角_英文_

心理学报 2012, Vol. 44, No.1, 133−137 Acta Psychologica Sinica DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2012.00133 133 What Is a Good Theory? A Perspective from Theoretical Psychology YE Hao-Sheng1; Henderikus J. Stam2 (1 Center for Psychology and Brain Science, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006) (2 Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada) Abstract: We discuss the status of theories in psychology by addressing ourselves to a recent paper published in this journal by Hong, Chao, Yang & Rosner (2010). We argue that Hong et al. provided a restrictive version of theory in psychology that is limited by the implicit adoption of logical empiricism as the basis for their views of theory. In addressing the limitations of logical empiricism we address the broader question of just what constitutes theory and how theory might be more usefully and widely applied in the discipline. Key words: theory; theoretical psychology; post-empiricism With examples from their research on hierarchical identity, identity hegemony, and bridging identity, Hong, Chao, Yang & Rosner (2010) illustrated a four-step approach to building and testing psychological theories (selecting phenomena, finding critical commonalities, abstracting and hypothesis testing). We agree with the authors that “it is never too excessive to emphasize the value and importance of theories in social psychology” (p. 22) and consider the proposed four-step approach to be of use for psychological researchers to build and test theories as a first step in the research enterprise. The place of theory in psychology however is contested still and in our comments on their paper we wish to consider various ways in which we can understand theory in research and practice. The proposed four-step approach by Hong et al. (2010) represents one such perspective but one based upon traditional logical empiricism, sometimes referred to as just logical positivism. This perspective, while long open to debate within the philosophy of science, is still more or less widely accepted in the psychological community and constitutes normal practice for many psychologists. We say “more or less” since it is often adopted implicitly rather than explicitly. It is implied in many of the methodologies propounded by psychologists and taught to our students. There are important historical reasons for this, the discussion of which is far beyond this short commentary. However, we can sum these up by noting that the adoption of a neo-positivist viewpoint in psychology coincided in the early 20th century with the development of logical 收稿日期: 2011-03-14 * 羊城学者首席科学家资助项目(10A030S)。 通讯作者: 叶浩生, E-mail: yehaosheng@yahoo.cn positivism in philosophy, Fisher’s experimental designs and inferential statistics in the field of mathematics and the development of behaviorism in psychology (e.g., Danziger, 1990; Mills, 1998). Each of these has been influential in turn in creating the methodological and theoretical orientation so well described by Hong et al. (2010). We have no comment on the research program that Hong et al. describe since we think it should be judged on its own merits. However, the version of theory espoused by the logical empiricist project has limitations. Its limitations are such that they restrict the nature and uses of theory and hence we wish to (a) discuss why we believe this concept of theory is limited and (b) consider a number of alternatives to the description of theory that Hong et al. have presented. Hong et al.’s (2010) define theory in the following manner, “theory is defined in science ‘as a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time’” (p. 23). Furthermore, theories make it possible to predict “yet unobserved phenomena” (p. 23). This simplified (but not simplistic) definition is useful but perhaps makes a host of complexities about theory invisible. These complexities concern just what counts as theory in the first place, and avoids the question of how we are to treat theory in science (are theories representations of reality, instrumental tools, models that we don’t expect to be correct, and so on). Unfortunately the authors’ approach is one that relies heavily on one tradition only, as we have noted, the logical empiricist tradition. Although we should add that the authors do not commit themselves explicitly to any particular understanding of theory, they appear to implicitly adopt what is often referred to as the ‘received view’ in the philosophy of science (Suppe, 1989). 134 心 理 学 报 44 卷 On the received view, a good theory is one that is based on empiricism (hence observation) and logic (the generalization and induction of empirical observations). This perspective has the following characteristics: First, theory comes from the induction and abstraction of empirical facts. It is built upon facts and is an induction and generalization after (psychologists’ in this case) arduous gathering of empirical observations over time, as is stated by the authors: “for us, social psychological theories are best grounded in social phenomena” (Hong et al., p. 24). From the analysis and induction of the empirical facts thus gathered, psychologists generalize some basic principles like concepts, theories and, eventually it is hoped, laws, which may combine systematically to form some preliminary theories. This inductivist view however is itself an idealized view of science and the history of the sciences informs us otherwise. It was Karl Popper (1963) who noted the problem of induction by showing that it is far too simple to verify a theory by searching for confirmatory evidence. What is crucial for the purposes of science is the falsifiability or refutability of a theory. Knowledge argued Popper is the outcome of conjecture and criticism, not induction. Even if one disagrees with the falsifiability criterion, induction is no sure way from ‘data’ to ‘theory’. Second, in this tradition, theory is fundamentally concerned with the explanation and collection of ‘facts.’ What constitutes a fact however is not clear. From the time of Norwood Hanson’s (1958) important work, we have come to understand that data are at least to some extent ‘theory-laden.’ Although we may disagree precisely to what degree any data gathering episode is theory-laden, it is more or less given that we cannot collect data in the first instance without some strong theoretical guidance for telling us just what we deem is important. This does not mean that the data are determined beforehand. It does mean that the data-gathering enterprise, the search for ‘facts,’ is constrained and enabled by our conceptual scaffolding. Furthermore, according to the ‘received view’ what theoretical psychologists embark on is largely mediational work that requires them to establish some relationship among various empirical facts to explain contradictions and conflicts. That is, theory is a kind of supplementary work conducted after the arduous labor of data gathering has been completed. And of course, on this view theory is in turn generative of experimental hypotheses. A hypothesis presumably exists at the very outset before psychologists carry out an experiment, which is then taken as a trial to attest to the value of the hypothesis. We assume this is what Hong et al. (2010) refer to when they argue that they engage in four steps, “(1) selecting phenomena, (2) finding critical commonalities, (3) abstracting (theorizing), and (4) hypothesis testing” (p. 42). A hypothesis will take on some truth value, after having being verified by experimental testing, while if not verified, it will be cast away. Finally, on this view the development of theory is a cumulative process. Theory is tentative, not a finished product. But with the ever-continuing development and perfection of a theory, and also the constant growth of related theories, the empirically based theory will by definition come close to the truth. 1 Alternative Views of Theory Unfortunately, this neat picture of the relationship between theory and data was long ago shattered not only by historians and philosophers of science but by scientists themselves. This picture of theorizing, like the logical empiricist view on which it is based, restricts theorizing to a few well-defined activities in which few scientists ever engage. As Quine (1953/1980), and Duhem (1906/1954) before him argued, scientists are very reluctant to give up a treasured hypothesis because their data do not confirm the theory at hand. Instead, it is much more likely that adjustments will be made elsewhere in the theory so that the work of confirmation can continue. As Duhem had already noted in the early 20th century, scientists never base their predictions on a single hypothesis but on an entire set of assumptions and rules of inference. Quine furthered the case by noting that we cannot separate out a linguistic component and a factual component in determining the truth of any given statement; “science has its double dependence upon language and experience; but this duality is not significantly traceable into the statements of science taken one by one” (Quine, 1953/1980, p. 42). In other words, we do not speak of the empirical content of individual statements but theories as a whole. And theories as a whole are always open to revision in the face of conflicting evidence (see Stam, 1992). This of course does not mean that scientific progress cannot occur or that we cannot evaluate the claims of the scientist. What it does mean however is that such evaluations simply do not follow the simple prescriptive guidelines found in our textbooks or in descriptions such as those in Hong et al. (2010). 1 期 What Is a Good Theory? A Perspective from Theoretical Psychology 135 2 What is a theory? We should note that there is no canonical standard to which we can turn to explain theory to us. In the 20th century scholars have presented a number of important proposals as alternatives to the dominant version of logical empiricism. As the difficulties with logical empiricism became clearer, for example following the acceptance that the theory-observation distinction is much more complex than logical empiricists believed, some have argued that we need to return to theories as realistic claims about the world, rather than seeing them as sentences that are verifiable. Realists often use what Hilary Putnam once referred to as the ‘no miracles’ argument, namely, that ‘realism is the only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle’ (Putnam, 1975, p. 73). What this seeks to recover is the intuition that the success of science has something to do with the way the world actually is. However, realism remains controversial within the philosophy of science because of the problem posed by Laudan (1981) and others, now referred to as the ‘pessimistic induction’ or ‘pessimistic meta-induction’ problem. It argues that science has been wrong in the past and what we hold to be true today will likely turn out to be false. Indeed, on Laudan’s account realism cannot account for the fact that theories which contain theoretical terms that are non-referential can nonetheless turn out to be successful (such as the vibratory theory of heat). This does not mean that realism is wrong merely that it is unwarranted. Another alternative to logical empiricism is constructive empiricism (van Fraassen, 1980). According to this account a theory can still be understood to refer to literal entities, however it is more concerned with empirical adequacy. This is a subtle distinction meaning that it is not theories or hypotheses but models of reality that are tested in science and these models must have some relationship to a broader theory. The theory is empirically adequate according to van Fraassen if appearances “are isomorphic to the empirical substructures of some model of the theory” (Monton & Mohler, 2008). The social sciences in general and psychology in particular however suffer from an additional problem. The phenomena that we investigate are accessible to us precisely because we are apt participants in the world that entails them. Sometimes this is referred to as the distinction between human kinds and natural kinds (Hacking, 1995; 2002). Human kinds are distinguished by the fact that they are not inevitable – they are, according to Hacking, kinds of people, action, behavior, and so on. Their most important feature is that they have an effect on people since people are capable of self-knowledge and they are moral agents who will respond to the ‘kinds’ they are taken to be. Hence human kinds are subject to what Hacking (1995) called “looping effects”, later he called this “interactive kinds”, namely we respond to the knowledge of what we are by possibly becoming something different. Unlike quartz, we respond to the theories that are posited about us (see also Gergen, 2010). The uniqueness of psychology among the family of sciences then is already reflected in the varieties of theory taken up in the post-empiricist era. These include such radical departures from empiricism as phenomenology, hermeneutics and social constructionism. First, theory is not only the generalization and induction of empirical facts, but in addressing practical problems psychologists have generated numerous alternatives to a sterile empiricism. Second, theory is capable not only of explanation and prediction, but more importantly, can serve the function of criticism and reflection. On the empiricist view, theory is regarded either as a kind of tool capable of providing hypotheses that can be validated, or as consequences of logical reasoning after systematic observations. Today we accept that in the variety of the human sciences, the role of theory can also be to evaluate and criticize, and to reflect upon the kinds of categories that have come to exist in empirical work more generally. There is in fact a venerable tradition of this in psychology. Watson’s (1913) critique of the structuralism of the early 20th century was based on a conception of behaviorism that did not have an empirical program nor a viable research methodology until much later. Freud’s (1895/1977) early development of psychoanalysis was done in the absence of both patient cases and the neurological evidence Freud might have hoped for. Early attempts to produce a cognitive psychology were also more of a hope than a reality and were based on conceptual work done on computers by such early cognitive theorists such as Newell and Simon. Third, theory is not just a resource for experimental hypotheses - it could be an “invention” rather than a “discovery” derived from empirical facts. Empirical data are not independent of theory as we have noted, on the contrary, theory lays restriction on what facts can be observed and different data may be acquired in different theoretical frames. Experimenters are inclined to verify while they might not notice or just intentionally neglect other inconsistent evidence, thus always enabling opposing parties to find their own supporting data. Fourth, theory’s 136 心 理 学 报 44 卷 development is not a cumulative process. A theory is not an empirical model, but is based upon a host of assumptions and presumptions, what Kuhn (1962) called a paradigm and later called a ‘disciplinary matrix.’ Science moves, on this view, from “normal” through “revolutionary periods.” After a so-called ‘scientific revolution’ however Kuhn famously (and controversially) argued that scientific paradigms were largely incommensurable. Science is generally conservative in its approach to theory change argued Kuhn in so far as most ‘normal’ science proceeds by solving puzzles within a disciplinary matrix. Although Kuhn has been roundly criticized, his work began a systematic evaluation of the importance of historical, social and psychological influences on the sciences, including the human sciences (e.g., Smith, 1997). We hope it is now clear that from the perspective of the many different ways of approaching theory that, depending on one’s views of the place of theory in science, there are at least several different standards for validating and evaluating a good theory. In the view of logical empiricism, theory is supported only after being validated by experience for its compatibility with empirical facts. Theory is restrained by empirical methods, as stated by the authors: “the derived hypotheses would constrain the choice of method because some methods are better able to test the hypotheses than are other methods” (Hong et al., 2010, p.26). As we hope we have demonstrated, this version of theory was long ago discarded for a host of alternatives. For post-empiricism, coherence with empirical evidences is not any longer the only and critical criterion while the evaluation of a theory can be carried out at different levels and standards. The first is the standard of conceptual logic, with which it is analyzed, to wit, whether the inner factors of a theory are logically consistent with each other, whether a theory is compatible with other background theories, and whether a theory is compatible with the proposer’s epistemology and methodology. The second standard that can be used is value and ideology. All psychological theories are ideologically embedded in some sense, drawing our attention to some aspect of life rather than other aspects, and in this process the research subject is overlaid with certain values and meaning. Thus, a theory is judged by analyzing its social value and ideological function. Rhetorical and narrative analysis is the third criterion. It is believed that theory is not a truth only compatible with empirical facts, but a kind of cultural and historical construction. The scientifically acquired theory is just, in effect, a rhetorical or narrative method and, as an important part of social construction, the application of this method also holds the status of epistemology and lays a solid foundation for choosing and comparing theories. Rhetorical and narrative analysis thus becomes another important criterion in evaluating theory. Finally, social practice and application may function as another standard. Empiricists believe that theory comes from practice while, in the meantime, practice is guided by theory, which lost its foundation in the post-empiricist era. Here, theory is no longer considered to be a generalization and abstraction of experience, but a kind of discursive practice; theory usually reflects a specific form of life and the changes in this discourse would potentially bring about changes to traditional models of action. In this sense, theory is closely related to other human activities (Gergen & Zielke, 2006). Theoretical discourse is a coherent part of effective actions, and a theory can be evaluated by its coherence with practice, that is, whether the theory has promoted social practice to be more effective, more meaningful and more theoretical. Of course, we do not intend to deny the contributions of empirical perspectives. In fact, there are often two categories of theory in theoretical psychology: substantive theory in specific areas and metatheory, which concerns itself with foundational question and is hence more general. The theory illustrated by Hong et al. (2010) is a substantive theory, which is also necessary for the development of theoretical psychology. But what we have tried to emphasize is that substantive theory should keep