History & Philosophy of Psychology

B. Kuhn, Watson, Turing, consciousness, cognitive revolution

Watson rejected the Cartesian introspective method for studying the mental world, redefining psychology as the science of behavior. His externalist movement suggested the elimination of consciousness from the field of empirical psychology, proposing a shift to objectively observable behavior. This paradigm fits Kuhn’s normal science concept as it involved solvable puzzles and shared methodologies.

The rebirth of consciousness was surprisingly stimulated by the cognitive revolution, as researchers started developing theories of mind based on computer’s logical rule-governed procedures. Although essentially a behavioral test, the imitation-game and Turing’s interest in the possibility of intelligent machines brought about the study of AI. Until then behaviorism had been flourishing. However its obvious negligence of what goes on 'inside' resulted in a persistent unsolvable “anomaly” that put the paradigm in crisis. Debate continues over whether the cognitive revolution should be considered a revolutionary science even though it offered a compelling replacement paradigm to behaviorism.

C. Freud, Kohlberg, Steinem, Gilligan, penis envy

Despite Freud’s contributions to psychoanalysis, he suggested that women are more hysteria-prone than men and unequal in moral character. His concept of penis envy suggested that a girl's discovery that she lacks a penis leads to feelings of inferiority, making her see the father as a love object, and converting this desire into a wish for a child. Feminists like Steinem thus consider him one of history's leading male chauvinists, satirically suggesting that birth-giving power makes "womb envy" more logical since an organ as external as the penis must make men weak.

In a similar demonstration of how the Cartesian internalistic perspective has...