Psychology and the Question of Agency

197 Pages·2003·0.81 MB·English

by  Jack Martin

PSYCHOLOGY
and the question of
AGENCY
SUNY series,
ALTERNATIVES IN PSYCHOLOGY
Michael A. Wallach,
editor
Q
P S Y C H O L O G Y
and the question of
A G E N C Y
Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, Janice Thompson
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS,
ALBANY
© 2003 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, Jack, 1950–
Psychology and the question of agency / Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, and Janice
Thompson.
p. cm. — (SUNY series, alternatives in psychology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5725-7 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5726-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Autonomy (Psychology) I. Sugarman, Jeff, 1955– II. Thompson, Janice, 1964– III.
Title. IV. Series.
BF575.A88 M37 2003
155.2—dc21 2002075854
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface ix
ONE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE QUESTION OF AGENCY 1
Some Relevant Background for
` What Follows 3
Psychology’s Disavowal of Agency 8
The Basic Error 10
Method over Substance 12
Aspirations 14
TWO REDUCTIONISM IN PSYCHOLOGY 17
A Historical Sketch 18
Identity versus Requirement 20
Omissions 21
Summary and Implications 24
Research Practices and the Construction
of Pseudo-Psychological Kinds 25
Causal Woes 28
Variability and Its Statistical Treatment 29
Manufacturing and Generalizing
Psychological Entities 31
The Role of Professional Psychology 33
The Example of Self-Concept 35
Another Kind of Reductionism in
Psychology 39
An Antidote in Brief 44
vi Psychology and the Question of Agency
THREE BETWEEN HARD DETERMINISM AND RADICAL
FREEDOM 45
Definitions and Distinctions 46
A Critical Consideration of Some Notable
Attempts at Soft Determinism 49
Philosophical Considerations 50
Psychological Considerations 58
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory 59
Theory of Mind and Intentional
Self-Development 63
Theoretical Psychology of Agency 67
Hermeneutics and Agency 73
FOUR THE UNDERDETERMINATION AND IRREDUCIBILITY
OF AGENCY 81
An Argument for the Underdetermination
of Agency 82
Structure of the Argument 83
Against Full Physical–Biological
Determinism 84
Against Full Sociocultural Determinism 84
Against Randomness and Unconscious
Processes Alone 86
Agency as the Surviving, Plausible
Option 88
Contemporary Programs of Reductionism
and the Irreducibility of Agency 90
Central State Materialism 91
Supervenience and Functionalism 93
Computational Models of Mind 96
What Is Missing in Reductive
Functionalism and Computationalism? 98
Summary and Links 100
FIVE A THEORY OF SITUATED, EMERGENT, AND
DELIBERATIVE AGENCY 103
Levels of Reality 104
Being-in-the-World 104
Tiered Reality 106
Psychology and the Question of Agency vii
An Existential Starting Point and a
Brief Conception of Personhood 110
The Developmental Emergence of Situated,
Deliberative Agency and Psychological
Kinds 112
Understanding and Care within Traditions
of Living 117
Summarizing Our Theory of Agency and
Psychological Kinds 123
Implications for Understanding
Psychological Phenomena 126
A Final Word 129
SIX PUTTING AGENCY INTO PSYCHOLOGY 133
Re-envisioning Psychological Research:
Reinforcement Theory and Beyond 135
Reinforcement Theory Revisited 135
Beyond Reinforcement Theory 139
Re-envisioning Psychological Practice 141
The Nature of Psychotherapy 143
The Practice of Psychotherapy 148
The Education of Psychotherapists 151
The Sociopolitical Consequences of Situated,
Emergent, and Deliberative Agency 154
Liberalism and Communitarianism 155
The Political Disposition of a Situated,
Emergent, and Deliberative Agency 159
A Concluding Comment 165
References 167
Index 175

Preface
Most contemporary persons believe in both science and their own ability to
direct their lives, a joint commitment reflected and encouraged by disciplin-
ary and professional psychology. Nonetheless, it is by no means clear that
such a commitment can be coherently maintained. While the determinism
of science might fit well with the inevitability of death and taxes, it seems
decidedly at odds with much of our everyday experience of ourselves as
agents capable of choice and action that make a difference in our lives. On
the other hand, a certain amount of order and predictability in our physical
and social world seem necessary if we are to exercise any control over our
circumstances. After all, chaos hardly seems conducive to self-determination.
In this volume, we argue for a kind of agency that is both determined
and determining and strongly recommend that both disciplinary and profes-
sional psychology embrace such a conception as central to their inquiries
and practices. In fact, we go so far as to suggest that it is precisely because
mainstream psychology has not developed an adequate conceptualization
and theory of human agency that it has fallen prey to an overly reduction-
istic scientism that has failed to draw necessary distinctions between natural
and human phenomena. More particularly, most scientific and professional
psychology has failed to provide an adequate account of self-determination
as emergent from, yet irreducible to, its sociocultural constituents and physi-
cal–biological requirements. We maintain that such an account is exactly
what is required for a coherent conception of human agents as both deter-
mined and determining, in a manner that fits both our everyday experience
of ourselves and acceptably rigorous forms of psychological inquiry and
practice. The purpose of our book is to argue for and theoretically elaborate
this position.
Readers familiar with the philosophical canon will realize that the
conceptualization of agency with which we will be concerned is a form of
compatibilism. However, it is a kind of compatibilism that goes beyond
voluntarism alone to allow for a modest kind of origination. In other words,
our agency is not restricted to the kind of thing that the Stoic philosopher
ix