Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Learning from experience
- 3 From here to synchrony
- 4 What to make of coincidence
- 5 The topography of intersubjective space
- 6 The two axes of psychological explanation
- 7 Pictures of psychical change
- 8 Research among equals
- 9 Validating the curriculum
- 10 Conclusion
- List of references
- Index
6 - The two axes of psychological explanation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Learning from experience
- 3 From here to synchrony
- 4 What to make of coincidence
- 5 The topography of intersubjective space
- 6 The two axes of psychological explanation
- 7 Pictures of psychical change
- 8 Research among equals
- 9 Validating the curriculum
- 10 Conclusion
- List of references
- Index
Summary
If we are to use biology to name, it should be a biology ample enough to include our whole selves, and the social world in which we are made and which we help make, not in the disciplinary imperialism that sees ever broader compass for genetic control, but rather in the attempt to reach far enough to describe … what kind of world those genes ‘go on inside of’.
(Susan Oyama, ‘How Shall I Name Thee’, 1993, p. 492)This chapter sets out the formal case for a proposal that underpins the argument of this book; that there are two axes of explanation in psychology. One has to do with the field of synchronic relations. The other has to do with the genesis of events over time ‘diachronically’. The idea that the past explains the present is fundamental in modern-day psychology. But we commit a fallacy if we assume this to be the only or the primary dimension for psychological (or any scientific) inquiry. This fallacy has long been known to philosophers as the genetic fallacy – the word ‘genetic’ being used here to mean ‘pertaining to genesis’ (unfolding over time), not just to what we now call genes (the functional units of DNA that all living beings carry on their chromosomes). According to my argument, and to philosophers of the genetic fallacy, the primary question in understanding any entity is an atemporal, synchronic one: ‘what is X?’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Psychology and Experience , pp. 113 - 132Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005