Deus ex machina

I agree with Nicole in that Psychology is a domain that provides evidence in support of claims, but may not in itself be able to propose how thing ought to be. However, I think this statement is certainly underestimating the importance of psychological methodology within philosophical discourse. In order to illustrate this I will use the example that Nicole provides. Yes, psychology does not tell us that mentally disabled persons should not be euthanized. But, is this telling action even required? In a lot of cases, just from using an elementary level of reasoning, it should be evident what decisions should be made based of psychological data.

I think that it should also be noted that, without psychological data, many of the decisions that Nicole outlines could not be made appropriately. For example, without Psychological research methods, we would understand the human mind well enough to make decisions about how we ought to act in many cases. The process of providing evidence for these axiological claims are as important as making the claims themselves.

“However, you see, psychology has not told us that it is wrong to euthanize people with down syndrome”

I thought this statement was intriguing because it seems to be much more contentious then it looks on the surface. It seems that the veracity of this statement is dependent upon what the word told denotes in this situation. It could be argued that psychology does in fact tell us that it is wrong to euthanize disabled persons because of the data that it has provided. Of course, it does not explicitly state what we ought to do, but the data may contain the implicit implication of the action that should be taken. Furthermore, as I previously stated, without this data, it would not be clearly known what type of rights disabled persons are due.

One last point that I think should be made regarding psychology and its importance within philosophical discourse. It is important that we do not forget that the field of psychology developed directly out of philosophy. The first psychologists were in fact, primarily philosophers. For example, one of the founders of psychology, William James, was a philosopher before he was a psychologist. These things should not be forgotten when we are evaluating the importance of psychology within philosophical discourse. Psychology is, in essence, a major sub domain within philosophy.

In Response to Corey

I had read a previous response to this post, written by Brett, which I certainly agreed with. However, I also wanted to comment on a specific area of this same post.

“but to what harm does it cause fans of literature to have several different ways to analyze the work?”

By itself, I do not think it is very problematic to have multiple interpretations of a piece of literature. However, it think it is highly problematic for all interpretations to be viewed equally. In other words, I think that, when interpreting a piece of literature, certain factors need to be taken into account. Furthermore, the author’s intention needs to be one of these central factors. It is not as though there needs to be one, distinct, correct interpretation. However, I think that the author’s intention should certainly be brought into all considerations. In my view, if a reader interprets a certain work in a new way; and, this new interpretation could not have been something that the author considered when writing the piece; this consideration should not hold as much weight in discussions of that work. With that said, I do think it is fallacious to assume that author’s intentions are always the correct way to interpret the work, I think that these intentions should be the major factor when interpreting a work. Allowing any interpretation to hold the same way seems to have the same level of problematicity as labeling art as anything and everything. Allowing every interpretation to be accepted seems to make the process of interpreting works of literature minuscule in importance.