How would one describe the difference between philosophical psychology and the philosophy of mind in the context of contemporary philosophy? The distinction certainly seems to be active, as the Jobs for Philosophers bulletin from the American Philosophical Association will publish job descriptions asking for AOSs in one or the other of these fields.

Thanks Eric Butler

-- James Eric Butler (james.butler@villanova.edu), February 16, 2003

Answers

Let me take a stab at it, and hope you receive some other answers as well. Philosophical psychology focuses on philosophical questions relevant to the study of psychology: these include classic issues of ontology/metaphysics and epistemology as well as traditional issues more generally related to philosophy of science. If you look at a book like Robert Brodie MacLeod's The Persistent Problems of Psychology (Duquesne University Press, 1975) you'll see that psychologists are especially interested in "doctrines of man" (philosophical approaches to the nature of persons") which entail answers to various philosophical questions. Another interesting summary is that by Daniel Robinson in An Intellectual History of Psychology (Macmillan, 1976 & later editions) who identified four classic philosophical problems that run through the history of psychology: the problem of knowledge, the origins of reason, the problem of conduct, and the problem of governance. Each of these "in modern dress" can be found in contemporary psychological discussions. I suspect that the major difference is that philosophers of mind engage their questions in the larger context of philosophy, while philosophical psychologists engage many of the same questions in the context of psychology (a very broad field indeed, when you look at the many divisions of APA and the psychologies they represent). Take, for example, the "problem of pain." A philosopher might be content simply to discuss the many complexities of "knowing" and "data" entailed in understanding pain (which is definitely a complex one even for philosophers)--it becomes even more complex to the applied psychologist who must find a way to understand and/or reduce pain. Thus, I suspect you'll find that the AOS ads use different language depending on whether they want someone who is primarily a philosopher engaged in abstract questions regarding the mind or someone who asks these questions in the context of the discipline of psychology, whether primarily abstract or applied. My own experience as a clinician is that many of these questions take on new meaning when one has to answer them, one way or another, in a practical situation.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), February 18, 2003.

[Posted for WS by cdg.]

Obviously there is not a huge difference between these or it might be better to say, there's a lot of overlap. But PP I would say is the philosophical examination of issues that arise in the science of psychology. So, the connectionism vs. classical cognitivism debate is more PP than P of M. The debate about dualism vs. materialism more P of M than PP. Hope that kind of helps,

(another example: the long running debate about whether or not there is image-based cognition, with people like Pylyshyn against and Kosslyn for, is a typical PP issue ...)

-- William Seager (seager@utsc.utoronto.ca), February 25, 2003.