Why Psychology Cannot be an Empirical Science

The limit of human intelligence

In 1998, Fields medallist Stephen Smale [Smale (1998) [1]] proposed his famous eighteen problems to the mathematicians of this century. The statement of his eighteenth problem is simple but very important. The statement of his problem is, "What are the limits of intelligence, both artificial and human?". To answer the limit of human intelligence, in this paper, we introduce cognitive-consequence space and cognitive-consequence topology, and mainly prove that deductive and non-deductive parts of a human mind will never be empty. It proves a human being will continue to think and solve problems using both deductive and non-deductive inferences as long as they are alive. Hence, we conclude that human intelligence is limitless. We also introduce cognitive closure, cognitive similarity distance, cognitive limit point, cognitive-continuous function, consequence ideal, consequence filter, Gödel's incompleteness black hole, and study related properties. We also provide suitable justifications to show that cognitive consequence topological space is not similar to that of any existing topological space because it connects cognitive space and consequence operator in one frame to find the limit of human intelligence. Moreover, we also provide justifications to state that artificial intelligence has limitations. Thus, we conclude that human intelligence will always remain superior to artificial intelligence.

Human Capital Creation: A Collective Psychological, Social, Organizational and Religious Perspective

Psychological, social, cultural, emotional, and organizational perspectives consistently highlight human capital's importance in the literature. We argue that the collective view of different capitals with self-notion is essential for establishing impression, image, and self-esteem. According to the review findings, religious capital could predict context-specific psychological, cultural, social, emotional, and organizational capital. This acknowledgment can assist academics in better understanding how religion, social psychology, and other capitals co-create value in human capital development. This study includes several possible future paths and notes remarkable qualities that can enhance human capital value development research.

Epistemic circularity and measurement validity in quantitative psychology: insights from Fechner's psychophysics

The validity of psychological measurement is crucially connected to a peculiar form of epistemic circularity. This circularity can be a threat when there are no independent ways to assess whether a certain procedure is actually measuring the intended target of measurement. This paper focuses on how Fechner addressed the measurement circularity that emerged in his psychophysical research. First, I show that Fechner's approach to the problem of circular measurement involved a core idealizing assumption of a shared human physiology. Second, I assess Fechner's approach to this issue against the backdrop of his own epistemology of measurement and the measurement context of his time. Third, I claim that, from a coherentist and historically-situated perspective, Fechner's quantification can be regarded as a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. To conclude, I draw from these insights some general epistemological reflections that are relevant to current quantitative psychology.

Rhetoric of psychological measurement theory and practice

Metascience scholars have long been concerned with tracking the use of rhetorical language in scientific discourse, oftentimes to analyze the legitimacy and validity of scientific claim-making. Psychology, however, has only recently become the explicit target of such metascientific scholarship, much of which has been in response to the recent crises surrounding replicability of quantitative research findings and questionable research practices. The focus of this paper is on the rhetoric of psychological measurement and validity scholarship, in both the theoretical and methodological and empirical literatures. We examine various discourse practices in published psychological measurement and validity literature, including: (a) clear instances of rhetoric (i.e., persuasion or performance); (b) common or rote expressions and tropes (e.g., perfunctory claims or declarations); (c) metaphors and other "literary" styles; and (d) ambiguous, confusing, or unjustifiable claims. The methodological approach we use is informed by a combination of conceptual analysis and exploratory grounded theory, the latter of which we used to identify relevant themes within the published psychological discourse. Examples of both constructive and useful or misleading and potentially harmful discourse practices will be given. Our objectives are both to contribute to the critical methodological literature on psychological measurement and connect metascience in psychology to broader interdisciplinary examinations of science discourse.

The Dialogical Self of Taoistic Dynamics: How scientists and practitioners can trigger the discovery of a harmonious self

In the present paper, I relate the Dialogical Self Theory with the philosophy of Taoism. For that purpose, I instance the premises of Taoism such as that human being use open ideograms (signs and symbols) that grow constantly in their meaning, that the meaning of life can be only unraveled if the unity of opposites is integrated in one's worldview and that the human being listens to his natural intuition and does not force himself to do things (wuwei = effortless action which has its origins in Laozi's TaoTeChing). When those premises are applied to the Dialogical Self Theory, psychologists can help people to develop a harmonious self because the self is operationalized as an open system that is constantly in flux of meaning. Hidden I-positions might be shifted to the foreground while helping the human being to listen to a multitude of positions and to not act in a rigid fashion. In order for scientists and practitioners to use the insights of what I call the Dialogical Self of Taoistic Dynamics, I propose an open interview guide that could help people to realize their harmonious pluralistic self.

Work from home: A behavioral model of Indonesian education workers' productivity during Covid-19

Although it is not a new phenomenon, many present employees have not previously encountered it. The Covid-19 outbreak has turned the concept of Work from Home (WFH) into a legally regulated and severely enforced norm, which is now in effect. This idea is vital for developing practical organizational policies and procedures in the future in specific educational sectors pertinent to academics. The effectiveness of an individual's ability to cope with WFH was evaluated using a theoretical framework created to measure productivity. The model was evaluated on individuals from a top-ranking public university in Indonesia, chosen as the target population. A total number of 556 respondents responded to the survey questionnaire. AMOS was used to analyze statistical responses related to job crafting, work stress, organizational support, boredom, work engagement, productivity, and mental health. The structural equation analysis, also known as the SEM, was used for this work's measurement model. The findings revealed that the productive conduct of teaching teachers and staff played a substantial role in the success of the work-from-home situation. Conclusions The findings of this study indicate that the indicators used to measure productive behavior while working from home are accurate. As a result, the hypothesis has been proven correct. The study's ecological implications are explained in the relevant sections of this paper.

Rating scales institutionalise a network of logical errors and conceptual problems in research practices: A rigorous analysis showing ways to tackle psychology's crises

This article explores in-depth the metatheoretical and methodological foundations on which rating scales-by their very conception, design and application-are built and traces their historical origins. It brings together independent lines of critique from different scholars and disciplines to map out the problem landscape, which centres on the failed distinction between psychology's study phenomena (e.g., experiences, everyday constructs) and the means of their exploration (e.g., terms, data, scientific constructs)-psychologists' cardinal error. Rigorous analyses reveal a dense network of 12 complexes of problematic concepts, misconceived assumptions and fallacies that support each other, making it difficult to be identified and recognised by those (unwittingly) relying on them (e.g., various forms of reductionism, logical errors of operationalism, constructification, naïve use of language, quantificationism, statisticism, result-based data generation, misconceived nomotheticism). Through the popularity of rating scales for efficient quantitative data generation, uncritically interpreted as psychological measurement, these problems have become institutionalised in a wide range of research practices and perpetuate psychology's crises (e.g., replication, confidence, validation, generalizability). The article provides an in-depth understanding that is needed to get to the root of these problems, which preclude not just measurement but also the scientific exploration of psychology's study phenomena and thus its development as a science. From each of the 12 problem complexes; specific theoretical concepts, methodologies and methods are derived as well as key directions of development. The analyses-based on three central axioms for transdisciplinary research on individuals, (1) complexity, (2) complementarity and (3) anthropogenicity-highlight that psychologists must (further) develop an explicit metatheory and unambiguous terminology as well as concepts and theories that conceive individuals as living beings, open self-organising systems with complementary phenomena and dynamic interrelations across their multi-layered systemic contexts-thus, theories not simply of elemental properties and structures but of processes, relations, dynamicity, subjectivity, emergence, catalysis and transformation. Philosophical and theoretical foundations of approaches suited for exploring these phenomena must be developed together with methods of data generation and methods of data analysis that are appropriately adapted to the peculiarities of psychologists' study phenomena (e.g., intra-individual variation, momentariness, contextuality). Psychology can profit greatly from its unique position at the intersection of many other disciplines and can learn from their advancements to develop research practices that are suited to tackle its crises holistically.

Is psychological science progressing? Explained variance in PsycINFO articles during the period 1956 to 2022

We aimed to numerically assess the progress of modern psychological science. Average explained variance in 1565 included articles was 42.8 percent, and this was constant during 1956 to 2022. We explored whether this could be explained by a combination of methodological conventions with the semantic properties of the involved variables. Using latent semantic analysis (LSA) on a random sample of 50 studies from the 1,565, we were able to replicate the possible semantic factor structures of 205 constructs reported in the corresponding articles. We argue that the methodological conventions pertaining to factor structures will lock the possible explained variance within mathematical constraints that will make most statistics cluster around 40 percent explained variance. Hypotheses with close to 100 percent semantic truth value will never be part of any assumed empirical study. Nor will hypotheses approaching zero truth value. Hypotheses with around 40 percent truth value will probably be experienced as empirical and plausible and, consequently, as good candidates for psychological research. Therefore, to the extent that the findings were indeed produced by semantic structures, they could have been known without collecting data. Finally, we try to explain why psychology had to abandon an individual, causal method and switch to studying whether associations among variables at the group level differ from chance. Psychological processes take place in indefinitely complex and irreversibly changing contexts. The prevalent research paradigm seems bound to producing theoretical statements that explain each other to around 40%. Any theoretical progress would need to address and transcend this barrier.

The Tangled Knots of Neuroscientific Experimentation

The experimental method has promoted the popularity of neuroscientific research on the human mind. In this interdisciplinary enterprise, the experimental method, with its roots in natural science and experimental psychology, is often uncritically accepted as the royal road to investigate the human mind not only by neuroscientists, but by many philosophers as well, especially those inclined to some form of naturalism. It is rarely disputed that experiments reveal actual states of nature (here: of mind and/or brain). Experimental results are used to picture the human person or subject as an illusionary construct resulting from neuronal interactions. The present paper sketches some of the limitations of neuroscientific experiments in order to demonstrate that cognitive neuroscience is far from relying on firm methodological grounds. Numerous issues still have to be solved, some of which date back to the early days of modern science. At least, to make experiments work, many theoretical presuppositions have to be accepted and decisions of relevance have to be made in the scientific process. This implies that all scientific endeavor is constituted by persons making free decisions for good reasons, despite all reductionist claims to the contrary. The fact that we as scientists have to distinguish relevant from irrelevant aspects of experimental procedures is also crucial for dealing with the current replicability crisis in the life sciences including neuroscience.

The Intelligent Attitude: What Is Missing from Intelligence Tests

Intelligence, like creativity and wisdom, has an attitudinal component as well as an ability-based one. The attitudinal component is at least as important as the ability-based one. Theories of intelligence, in ignoring the attitudinal component of intelligence, have failed to account fully or accurately for why so many people who have relatively high levels of intelligence as an ability fail fully to deploy their ability, especially toward positive ends. The article reviews the need to view intelligence as comprising an attitude as well as an ability, and surveys reasons why people's lack of an intelligent attitude hinders their deployment of intelligence. Suggestions are made for how things could change in a positive way.

Cultural psychological implications of Hermann Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel (glass bead game)

In the present article, I dissect key elements of Hermann Hesse’s famous novel, the Glass Bead Game (Glasperlenspiel) in order to make them fertile for Cultural Psychology. I originate from the idea that the Glass Bead Game can be understood as a universal language that relies on open ideographs, thus signs that can be combined and structured for multiple purposes. Yet, this universal language is not solely a play; it has an educational drive to educate the mind and to help the individual reaching inner harmony. This play comes into being only when listening to the play of other people interacting with me and me meditating upon the multiple meaning making opportunities of it. I argue that such a perspective is in close accordance with the actual task of Cultural Psychology helping to unravel how people do relate to their environments and the impact that results from this ecological interaction. However, I appeal interested readers in trying to better institutionalize such a cultural psychological purpose of serving the individual in order for Cultural Psychology to be a sustainable and long-lasting science unlike the Glass Bead Game that became an end in itself.

Meaningfulness beyond Meaning-Making. Cultural Psychological Aspects of the Donor Portrait

Art is a rich area in which to study psychological life through the lens of cultural psychology. While any kind of art can be studied within cultural psychology, in the current piece we argue that an art form known as the donor portrait, and more particularly a subcategory thereof known as the contact portrait, visually depicts core aspects of our psychological lives that constitute matters of fundamental interest within cultural psychology. After briefly discussing this particular art form, we focus on how these portraits visually depict four core aspects of cultural psychology. We first explore how the contact portrait navigates the “frontier problem” found at the intersection of individuality and commonality. We then examine how contact portraits catalyze, but do not cause, the viewer’s emotional engagement. The third aspect concerns the human struggle to make sense out of an unknown future. Finally, we discuss the search for meaningfulness beyond meaning-making depicted within these images and lying at the core of our psychological lives. These characteristics of the contact portrait attest to our human striving towards what lies beyond our current state, something that finds expression in the idea of Schaufrömmigkeit—a pious, humble need to see that which is ultimately unseeable.

The importance of cultural psychological perspectives in pain research: Towards the palliation of Cartesian anxiety

Despite widespread awareness of the psychological dimensions of pain, researchers often and easily slip into essentializing understandings that treat pain as a purely physiological experience that can be isolated within experimental research. This drive towards scientific objectivity, while at times of tremendous utility, can also limit our understanding of pain to reductionistic conceptualizations that in effect deny the subjective and even the psychological dimensions of pain. In other words, researchers often attempt to understand pain by means of empirical, scientific explanations, while being simultaneously aware that such an approach cannot grasp the phenomenon in its entirety. This yearning for deeper, ontological understanding in a world that admits of only empirical, scientific explanations has been called Cartesian anxiety. In the current study, it is argued that cultural psychology can help to alleviate this Cartesian anxiety by helping us to appreciate the psychological aspects of pain as dynamic processes of meaning making.

Where is the Trouble in Pseudo-empirical Research?

Smedslund (Psychol Inq 2(4):325-338, 1991) has demonstrated that much of the experimental research in psychology is pseudo-empirical-empirically testing what can be determined a priori based on the meanings of everyday psychological terminology. The present article shows how Smedslund's general perspective is consistent with certain aspects of a theoretical model of the narrative form, and how the latter provides a useful lens for making sense of pseudo-empiricism. This raises a paradox: While something along the lines of the narrative element of 'trouble' is required as a premise for research, trouble is not possible in the context of questions of the general relation between everyday psychological concepts. This paradox is resolved by showing how certain methodological and discursive characteristics of research-specifically, the reification and abstraction of psychological terminology, quantification, and the statistical analysis of group-level results function to obscure the absence (and impossibility) of trouble and/or to create the illusion of its presence.

Imagination in General Psychology: Thinking with Luca Tateo's "A Theory of Imagining, Knowing, and Understanding"

How should we understand imagination within the broader framework of general psychology? Turning to Luca Tateo's (2020) recent book, A theory of imagining, knowing, and understanding, I begin with asking what imagination is. The question leads to seeing the interplay between imagination, perception, and conceptual organization. Identifying the affective dimension of imagination and how imagination operates within a discursive reality, I explore the links between imagination and general psychology, with reference to Activity Theory, fundamental psychological categories, and normativity. Drawing on themes from general psychology can extend the study of imagination, while the study of imagination can in turn inform general psychology. Finally, I address some of the implications of this study for epistemology, education, and critical thinking.

Where is semiotic-cultural constructivism in psychology heading? Contemporary reflections on the trajectory of an approach to cultural psychology

This article aims to discuss the relationship between personal cultural experience and knowledge construction in psychology, from the perspective of the Semiotic-Cultural Constructivism. The thoughts here presented are, at the same time, from within psychology and about psychology. The researcher is culturally situated and science is a field of production of cultural works that aims to create perspectives of knowledge about the world. Researchers can and must create some detachment from their field of study to be able to understand the course of their own knowledge constructions. This detachment is achieved through a historical–philosophical view on the theoretical–methodological propositions of their field of research. As a case study, we selected for analysis the field’s pioneer productions, from the years 1982 to 2004. The material showed that the rationality that characterizes scientific research is directed, in this field, to creating semiotic resources for further developing reflexivity in psychology, as a recursive and open-ended process. The theoretical–methodological work of the researcher concerns its own personal cultural experience and the tradition of the already constructed knowledge, selected to a dialogue about the ethical implications of human action. Therefore, advances in psychological knowledge construction cannot be addressed from an external, allegedly neutral point of view, focused on the efficacy of the instruments resulting from the said “scientific progress.”

The Practice of Experimental Psychology: An Inevitably Postmodern Endeavor

The aim of psychology is to understand the human mind and behavior. In contemporary psychology, the method of choice to accomplish this incredibly complex endeavor is the experiment. This dominance has shaped the whole discipline from the self-concept as an empirical science and its very epistemological and theoretical foundations, via research practice and the scientific discourse to teaching. Experimental psychology is grounded in the scientific method and positivism, and these principles, which are characteristic for modern thinking, are still upheld. Despite this apparently stalwart adherence to modern principles, experimental psychology exhibits a number of aspects which can best be described as facets of postmodern thinking although they are hardly acknowledged as such. Many psychologists take pride in being “real natural scientists” because they conduct experiments, but it is particularly difficult for psychologists to evade certain elements of postmodern thinking in view of the specific nature of their subject matter. Postmodernism as a philosophy emerged in the 20th century as a response to the perceived inadequacy of the modern approach and as a means to understand the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the times. Therefore, postmodernism offers both valuable insights into the very nature of experimental psychology and fruitful ideas on improving experimental practice to better reflect the complexities and ambiguities of human mind and behavior. Analyzing experimental psychology along postmodern lines begins by discussing the implications of transferring the scientific method from fields with rather narrowly defined phenomena—the natural sciences—to a much broader and more heterogeneous class of complex phenomena, namely the human mind and behavior. This ostensibly modern experimental approach is, however, per se riddled with postmodern elements: (re-)creating phenomena in an experimental setting, including the hermeneutic processes of generating hypotheses and interpreting results, is no carbon copy of “reality” but rather an active construction which reflects irrevocably the pre-existing ideas of the investigator. These aspects, analyzed by using postmodern concepts like hyperreality and simulacra, did not seep in gradually but have been present since the very inception of experimental psychology, and they are necessarily inherent in its philosophy of science. We illustrate this theoretical analysis with the help of two examples, namely experiments on free will and visual working memory. The postmodern perspective reveals some pitfalls in the practice of experimental psychology. Furthermore, we suggest that accepting the inherently fuzzy nature of theoretical constructs in psychology and thinking more along postmodern lines would actually clarify many theoretical problems in experimental psychology.

Statements About the Pervasiveness of Behavior Require Data About the Pervasiveness of Behavior

Despite recent close attention to issues related to the reliability of psychological research (e.g., the replication crisis), issues of the validity of this research have not been considered to the same extent. This paper highlights an issue that calls into question the validity of the common research practice of studying samples of individuals, and using sample-based statistics to infer generalizations that are applied not only to the parent population, but to individuals. The lack of ergodicity in human data means that such generalizations are not justified. This problem is illustrated with respect to two common scenarios in psychological research that raise questions for the sorts of theories that are typically proposed to explain human behavior and cognition. The paper presents a method of data analysis that requires closer attention to the range of behaviors exhibited by individuals in our research to determine the pervasiveness of effects observed in sample data. Such an approach to data analysis will produce results that are more in tune with the types of generalizations typical in reports of psychological research than mainstream analysis methods.

Staying with Questions and Resisting Quick Answers: Commentary on Zagaria, Andò, and Zennaro

In their target article, Zagaria et al. (Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 2020) highlight the fragmented state of mainstream Psychology. Their diagnosis begins with an analysis of how core psychological terms are treated in introductory textbooks. To remedy the state of affairs, they propose using evolutionary psychology to unify Psychology. In the present commentary, I join the authors' critical stance, while also raising several questions: (1) Can we adopt an evolutionary meta-theory and still demand that our core concepts have fixed meaning? (2) Can evolutionary theory apply to the normative dimension of the sociocultural domain? (3) Can evolutionary theory account for the critique of psychological science? These questions, I believe, point out several gaps in the target article that require further attention. I argue that unless we identify the essential differences between mainstream psychology and contrarian psychology, we repeat the mistakes of mainstream psychology under a new guise.

On the Foundations of Psychology: the Problem Is Grammatical, Not Theoretical

Zagaria et al. (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, X 1-44, 2020) argue that psychology is a science marked by theoretical chaos and that it is possible to rectify this by letting the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology serve as a foundation for psychology at large. While agreeing to the fact that psychology lacks direction, I maintain that this problem is not theoretical and hence, not rectifiable through the postulations of a theory. Following Wittgenstein, I argue that the disorganised state of psychology is due to an insufficient sensitivity to the meaning of psychological terms in ordinary language. In short, psychology's problem is grammatical. Hence, what needs to be done is to examine the grammar of psychological concepts. Many scholars have contributed to this kind of examination but few as extensively as Harré, who stressed the primacy of the concept of a person for discourses about human mental powers and their exercise. This is the Taxonomic Priority Principle. Grounding psychological research in evolutionary theory would amount to a violation of it and thus, I claim that it is mistaken to do so. The approach best suited to administer this principle is that of cultural psychology.

Progress in Psychological Science. The Importance of Informed Ignorance and Curiosity-Driven Questions

In recent decades we have seen an exponential growth in the amount of data gathered within psychological research without a corresponding growth of theory that could meaningfully organize these research findings. For this reason, considerable attention today is given to discussions of such broader, higher-order concepts as theory and paradigm. However, another area important to consider is the nature of the questions psychologists are asking. Key to any discussion about the scientific status of psychology or about progress in the field (scientific or otherwise) is the nature of the questions that inspire psychological research. Psychologists concerned about scientific progress and the growth of theory in the field would be well served by more robust conversations about the nature of the questions being asked. Honest, curiosity-driven questions-questions that admit to our ignorance and that express an active and optimistic yearning for what we do not yet know-can help to propel psychology forward in a manner similar to the development of theory or paradigm. However, existing as it does in the "twilight zone" between the natural sciences and the humanities, psychology is fertile ground for questions of wide-ranging natures, and thus the nature of progress in the field can be variously understood, not all of which will be "scientific." Recent psychological research in three areas (cognition, memory, and disorders/differences of sex development) are discussed as examples of how curiosity-driven questions being asked from a position of informed ignorance can lead to progress in the field.

Multitasking as distraction: A conceptual analysis of media multitasking research

The word “multitasking” gets thrown around a lot these days. For years it was touted as the cognitive default for a new generation of digital natives, but psychologists are increasingly warning us against its harmful effects on many different forms of human activity. What exactly is meant by the concept of multitasking, however, remains peculiarly taken-for-granted. The purpose of this article is therefore to analyze, evaluate, and interpret how the word “multitasking” is currently being used in scientific practice. Taking departure in the domain of media multitasking research, the article reveals an unacknowledged normativity in the empirical research literature: Multitasking does not in fact denote a quantitative enumeration of tasks, but a qualitative distinction between on- and off-task activity. In other words, multitasking is functionally equivalent to distraction. This article discusses how this insight challenges the scientific rationality of current media multitasking research and concludes with implications for future research.

Building Blocks of Psychology: on Remaking the Unkept Promises of Early Schools

The appeal and popularity of "building blocks", i.e., simple and dissociable elements of behavior and experience, persists in psychological research. We begin our assessment of this research strategy with an historical review of structuralism (as espoused by E. B. Titchener) and behaviorism (espoused by J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner), two movements that held the assumption in their attempts to provide a systematic and unified discipline. We point out the ways in which the elementism of the two schools selected, framed, and excluded topics of study. After the historical review, we turn to contemporary literature and highlight the persistence of research into building blocks and the associated framing and exclusions in psychological research. The assumption that complex categories of human psychology can be understood in terms of their elementary components and simplest forms seems indefensible. In specific cases, therefore, reliance on the assumption requires justification. Finally, we review alternative strategies that bypass the commitment to building blocks.

Agency, Chance, and the Scientific Status of Psychology

Psychologists generally reject the reductionist, physicalist, "nothing but" stance of the natural sciences. At the same time they consider their discipline a science and wonder why it does not enjoy the status (and funding) of the natural sciences. Ferguson American Psychologist, 70, 527-542 (2015), Lilienfeld American Psychologist, 67, 111-129 (2012), and Schwartz et al. American Psychologist, 71, 52-70 (2016) are among those who adopt a soft naturalism of nonreductive physicalism which declares, or implies, that when it comes to humans, there is more than what the natural sciences can unravel. They envision psychology as scientific in the epistemological sense of generating reproducible results, but reject the reductive ontology of science which currently points to the undeterminable chance of quantum theory as the closest physics has come to the beginnings and what might loosely be called the foundation of the universe (e.g., Bridgman Harper's, 158, 443-451 1929; Eddington 1948). The case made here is that any science, including a psychological one, must be based on a naturalist ontology. This implies restricting the term science to disciplines which not only meet epistemological criteria like reproducibility, but which also adopt-on the ontological level-the parsimonious assumption that at present it makes sense to think that "there is nothing but time and chance" (e.g., Cox and Forshaw 2011; Crease and Goldhaber 2014; Rorty 1989). From this perspective, psychology emerges as two distinct disciplines, one a natural science, the other a human science in the broad sense of science as scientia.

Towards a cultural psychology of science

In the present article the general guidelines for a cultural psychology of science are proposed and discussed. In order to do so, the first section of this article presents a literature review of philosophical, sociological, and psychological studies of science during the 20th century. Through this review, it becomes clear that the existing studies of science have either neglected the personal role of the scientist, or subsumed it under collective elements, or reduced it to cognitive styles and personality traits. To overcome this shortcoming, the cultural psychology of science proposes to understand the scientist as a purpose-oriented person that constructively transforms culturally available meanings in order to create novel scientific knowledge. This new theoretical synthesis is presented and exemplified through four aspects that define the personal dimension of science. In sum, this work looks to emphasize the crucial, driving role of the person of the scientists for the creation of novel scientific knowledge.

A Plea for Scientific Ambitions: Reply to Commentaries from Martin Wieser, Nikolai Veresov, Asger Neumann, and Peter Krøjgaard

The paper is a reply to commentaries to "Activity theories and the Ontology of Psychology: Learning from Danish and Russian Experiences" (Mammen and Mironenko 2015). At the same time it is an attempt to reply to more general issues raised by the commentators and an attempt to further develop some general ideas from our paper with a focus on the introduction of the new analytical concepts sense and choice categories. These concepts have been elaborated in an axiomatic frame in (Mammen 2016) and the present paper is thus also pointing forwards to that and supporting it with examples from research on adult human relations of love and affection and on infant cognitive development. A few examples from myth and literature are referred to also. The ambition is to introduce new analytical tools across schools and domains of psychology which open for theoretical inclusion of new phenomena and re-structuring of well-known ones. The hope is to surmount some problems, as e.g. the dilemma between dualism and reductionism, which have been obstacles in the search for conceptual and methodological coherence in psychology. In the first place the hope is also to sharpen the analytical, critical and practical potential of psychology as a science. The ambition is not, here and now, to develop a comprehensive general theory as a container for the huge amount of empirical results collected using very heterogeneous criteria for what belongs to the domain of psychology and very heterogeneous conceptual frames. Here we still need some patience following the lesson from natural science, step by step including new domains as the conceptual and practical frames are expanding, but on the other hand not excluding anything apriori.

Behaviour versus performance: The veiled commitment of experimental psychology

The use and teaching of experimentation in psychology ought to accompany a discussion of what is within and what is beyond the reach of the method. I address this question by outlining the necessary restrictions that are prerequisite for conducting an experiment. The restrictions include establishing a fixed goal, the fulfillment of which represents successful participation in the experiment, a finite set of possible expressions for satisfying the goal, and a fixed assignment between each possible expression and how it should be performed. These restrictions entail rules that determine what counts as good participation (evaluation), and rules that determine whether a behaviour counts as participation at all (inclusion). Participants’ conformity to the rules makes experimentation possible and, more importantly, maintains the experimenter’s attention on features of performance. This selective attention, in turn, neglects participants’ capacities for adopting and violating rules, and possible alterations in their goals and interpretations. While these capacities fall beyond the scope of experimental psychology, their recognition is necessary for encountering what is not already understood at the start of a research project.

Reproducibility in Psychological Science: When Do Psychological Phenomena Exist?

Scientific evidence has recently been used to assert that certain psychological phenomena do not exist. Such claims, however, cannot be made because (1) scientific method itself is seriously limited (i.e., it can never prove a negative); (2) non-existence of phenomena would require a complete absence of both logical (theoretical) and empirical support; even if empirical support is weak, logical and theoretical support can be strong; (3) statistical data are only one piece of evidence and cannot be used to reduce psychological phenomena to statistical phenomena; and (4) psychological phenomena vary across time, situations and persons. The human mind is unreproducible from one situation to another. Psychological phenomena are not particles that can decisively be tested and discovered. Therefore, a declaration that a phenomenon is not real is not only theoretically and empirically unjustified but runs counter to the propositional and provisional nature of scientific knowledge. There are only "temporary winners" and no "final truths" in scientific knowledge. Psychology is a science of subtleties in human affect, cognition and behavior. Its phenomena fluctuate with conditions and may sometimes be difficult to detect and reproduce empirically. When strictly applied, reproducibility is an overstated and even questionable concept in psychological science. Furthermore, statistical measures (e.g., effect size) are poor indicators of the theoretical importance and relevance of phenomena (cf. "deliberate practice" vs. "talent" in expert performance), not to mention whether phenomena are real or unreal. To better understand psychological phenomena, their theoretical and empirical properties should be examined via multiple parameters and criteria. Ten such parameters are suggested.

Individual personality is best understood as process, not structure: A Confucian-inspired perspective

A structural approach to understanding personality, which is rooted in a being or substance ontology, is most useful for making between individual and group comparisons. In contrast, a process-centric approach, which is anchored in a Becoming or event-based ontology, is most helpful for understanding individual personality process and variation. A process-centric model, using classical Confucianism as a starting point, has a number of advantages in that it (1) integrates persons and situations, (2) is inherently relational, which implies an aesthetic dimension to personality development and functioning, (3) focuses on the uniqueness of individual personalities, (4) views qualitative and quantitative inquiry as complementary and of equal scientific value, and (5) encourages intra- and inter-disciplinary collaborations.

Psychology is not primarily Empirical Science: A Comparison of Cultures in the Lexical Hypothesis Tradition as a Failure of Introspection

A large part of psychology has become an empirical science that assumes that there might exist one set of research methods suitable for psychological research in all human cultures. Research questions, methods, and theories formulated from one cultural perspective are not thoroughly introspectively examined when being used in another cultural environment. This leads to research that answers questions that are not meaningful in such environments. Research coming from the lexical hypothesis tradition is given as an example. The original research in English language decided that the lexicon was enough to represent language structures for the purpose of examining how language reflects personality; however, some languages might use specific grammatical structures to reflect personality, so the lexicon is not enough to adequately represent these languages. Despite this, researchers still follow the research method developed for the English language. The Czech and Korean languages are examples of this approach. A solution to this problem is the thorough use of introspection during the formulation of research questions.

Activity Theory: Quest for the Unattainable and Hope for the Future (Reply to Commentaries)

In reference to commentaries on the paper (Mammen and Mironenko, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 49(4):681-713, 2015) some clarifications are introduced concerning the general landmarks and objectives in the development of psychological science, in respect to which activity theories (AT) can be assessed and evaluated. Contemporary psychological science is developing along the path of integration, as part of the emerging global world. AT has some special value and importance in this respect. It can contribute to the development of the emerging multi-paradigmatic system of the global psychological science because it combines two aspirations, which are rarely combined in psychological theories: a) consistent focus on scientific method, objectivity and conclusiveness; b) the pursuit of a holistic and complete, not simplified and not one-sided comprehension of the subject. The former provides good bases for dialogue with "objective" psychological approaches, close to natural sciences. The latter is suggesting dialogue with teleological humanitarian psychologies. Therefore, AT can engage in networking with a wide range of theories, facilitating the integration of psychological knowledge. It can contribute to resolve the much discussed collision of reductionist "scientific" theoretical models and loose "comprehensive" descriptions in contemporary psychological science. Developing dialogue and cooperation with other schools is of special importance for the RAT, which should return to the international science, where it was rooted, overcoming the language and conceptual barriers. Some new considerations are suggested regarding the theory of the two types of categories of Jens Mammen.