Capaldi E J, Proctor R W
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1364, USA.
Am J Psychol. 2000 Fall;113(3):430-54.
Logical positivism, widely regarded as the received epistemology of psychology in the first half of the 20th century, was supplanted in the 1960s by various postpositivistic, relativistic philosophies of science, most notably that of Kuhn. Recently, Laudan, a major figure in the philosophy of science, developed a novel approach called normative naturalism that provides an alternative to positivism and relativism. His central thesis is that the two are not always on opposite ends of a continuum but rather have many assumptions in common. This article brings Laudan's important views to the attention of psychologists and describes some of the unique implications of these views for the conduct of research and theory in psychology. These implications, which follow from a number of closely reasoned pragmatic arguments, include more realistic and appropriate evaluation of theory and methodology than has been suggested by logical positivism or relativism.
逻辑实证主义在20世纪上半叶被广泛视为心理学公认的认识论，但在20世纪60年代，它被各种后实证主义、相对主义的科学哲学所取代，其中最著名的是库恩的哲学。最近，科学哲学领域的重要人物劳丹提出了一种名为规范自然主义的新方法，它为实证主义和相对主义提供了一种替代方案。他的核心论点是，这两者并不总是处于连续统一体的两端，而是有许多共同的假设。本文将劳丹的重要观点介绍给心理学家，并描述了这些观点对心理学研究和理论的一些独特影响。这些影响源于一系列严密推理的实用主义论点，包括对理论和方法的评估比逻辑实证主义或相对主义所建议的更加现实和恰当。
