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A Nietzschian and Foucaultian Critique of Psychology
Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought ^ | 1993?

Posted on 07/20/2003 8:20:07 PM PDT by unspun

A Nietzschian and Foucaultian
Critique of Psychology

Psychology and Nihilism:
A genealogical critique
of the computational model of mind

by Fred J. Evans
Albany: SUNY Press, 1993
ISBN 0-7914-1249-0 $49.95 hardcover
ISBN 0-7914-1250-4 $16.95 softcover

Critiques of psychology are and have been legion throughout its relatively short life as an institutionalized discipline. In fact, it has been frequently noted in recent years that psychology is in a "crisis" even though such claims go back to Karl Bühler's (1929) well known book or even to the very founding of the discipline in the closing decades of the nineteenth-century. Typically the crisis is purported to be one of unity, the self-proclaimed science of psychology was and remains a plethora of positions which rarely, if ever, lend themselves to a single scientific view on the terms of the logical empiricist notion of the unity of science. For many who, like me, are not self-proclaimed "scientists" on this view, this cacophony is exactly as it should be and, if Fred Evans has his way, that is how it will remain.

Evans takes on the current core of psychology - cognitivism - by adopting what he calls a "genealogical psychology." This is the "evaluative interpretation of discursive positions " that includes the identification and evaluation of the "voice" of that discourse (p. 207). A voice is akin to Bakhtin's notion of utterance, the central element of language. "Utterances are the basic elements of the discursive positions or voices that make up a dialogue" (p. 191). One immediate consequence is that meaning is always constituted in a dialogue or in an interplay of voices. There is no univocal identity to discover since utterances point endlessly to new revisions of themselves. On this dialogical view, linguistic agency belongs to "voices, which are always more than their enunciators and less than social discourse" (p. 195). The voices exist as discursive positions which also identify the enunciators. Simultaneously, as enunciators we are always capable of maintaining or resisting discursive positions in the fabric of social life.

Evans, however, only presents his conceptions of genealogical psychology and the interplay of voices in the closing chapters of his book. The bulk of the book works its way towards this position by a powerful and sustained critique of cognitive psychology. In fact, the first eight chapters develop a genealogical psychology of cognitivism, a psychology that seeks not consensus but the continuation of a dialogue that was in danger of hardening into a single, oracular voice. In all of the critical literature in psychology there has rarely been such a damning statement of the technocratic rationality that lies behind the enterprises of cognitive psychology and cognitive science and serves as the "operative goal of the society and individuals that they presumably serve" (p. 213). If the book consisted only of the critique it would already have served the community of critical psychologists well.

Unlike more conventional critiques of cognitive psychology from within the discipline or without (typically from philosophy), Evans is concerned to show how the enterprise is not only incoherent and circular from within but that it stands as the culmination of Western nihilism. For Evans, the computational model of mind is "the culmination of immaculate perception and domination-observation, of what we shall refer to as the analytic observer or analytic perspective. . . we shall show that the self constructed by cognitive psychology is a 'proto-technocrat' and the formalization and universalization of the 'last man'" (p. 49-50).

Evans's genealogical critique, is a Nietzschian and Foucaultian reading of the development of the computational model of mind, equating the emergence of technologies of mind with the transformation of the Enlightenment ideals into an administrative, technocratic passive nihilism. Although supplanting behaviorism, cognitive psychology formalized and mechanized reason. Technocratic rationality was defined precisely around Turing's notion of an "effective procedure" and the eventual mechanization and instantiation of these procedures in the computer. On Turing's account any rational behavior is an effective procedure or capable of being characterized by an algorithm and such procedures can be imitated by a Turing machine of which the computer is an example. On these grounds Evans argues that cognitive psychology is an advance over behaviorism in a "perverse manner." Behaviorism left us with a mind which it did not acknowledge but could also not encapsulate within its theories and programs. Cognitivism is formulated on computational rules and legislates "in advance what features of the world can count as inputs to the system and what objectives can count as the goals of such a system" (p. 70-71). The system is strictly administrative and removed from the world, however, making "cognitive psychology's humanism" a "ruse or strategy for completing the implicit program of behaviorism, that is, for establishing the hegemony of technocratic rationality" (p. 71).

Evans is not content however to critique the technocratic rationality of cognitive psychology but demonstrates that the philosophy of science which supports this enterprise is itself a variant of the received view of logical empiricism. Moreover, this methodology, while providing cognitive psychology with a "neutral" and "objective" basis, already presupposes what cognitive psychology has purportedly discovered, namely the "privileged status of the analytic observer." On Evans's account there are two circularities in cognitive psychology: "the greater circularity of first defining science in terms of one's psychological theory and then claiming that this science is an independent source of verification for one's theory; and the 'lesser circle' of designing experiments that artifactually produce the behavior they are supposed to discover" (p. 99).

Evans's critique proceeds from an internal and methodological analysis of particular programs in cognitive psychology to the broader social, historical problems inherent in the attempts to discipline the body and make it adaptable to a world in which it is required to become part of an administrative society and live within the real of new information technologies. What makes this analysis so compelling is its completeness. While there have been multiple critiques of cognitive psychology and cognitive science more generally that argue against its inherent disciplinary functions, few critics have tackled the literature from inside as well. It is these sections of the book that are most dense and perhaps less interesting for the non-psychologist. Evans chose several theorists from cognitive psychology, most notably Johnson-Laird, and shows how, on their own arguments, their cognitive systems simply do not allow one to understand the simplest of sentences nor the operations of metaphors in everyday discursive practices.

In short, Evans argues that the widespread acceptance of the computer model of mind is due to three factors: the prevalence of analytic discourse, the hegemony of a technocratic rationality fostered by a technocratic elite, and cognitivism's intrinsic Nietzschian notion of the passive nihilism of the "last man."

Cognitive psychologists should read this book, if only to understand their own failures. Nevertheless cognitive psychology is not a monolithic enterprise - it too consists of competing voices attempting to scramble to the top of the pyramid that is scientific prestige. Evans is aware of this of course but his choice of examples are already severely dated. This in no way diminishes the power of his argument for by simple extrapolation, much of what he says about Johnson-Laird is still relevant and true for present-day cognitivists. Nevertheless, because of the fluidity of key notions in cognitive psychology (e.g., representation, cognition, consciousness) what is accepted one year has been turned over the next. For example, in response to various critiques of what John Haugeland has now termed "Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence," psychologists have not only turned to connectionism (or parallel distributed processing models) but have argued that perhaps the mind is not encapsulated and disembodied after all. Instead mind is seen as a form of activity and meaning is a form of "situated action" (Bem & Keijzer, in press; special issue of Cognitive Science, 17, 1993, no. 1). Apparently, recognizing body and world simultaneously have led some to believe that cognitive psychology can be given a new lease on life, even if that lease comes with the attempt to import into cognitivism what it cannot, on a strict computational account, support. In this sense then, Evans's book is both dated yet at the same time it will no doubt be a crucial work in the literature which has been critical of the cognitive enterprise and to which a few cognitivists have responded.

Whereas the timeliness of the examples do not detract from the argument, what does is Evans's conflation of the pretense of cognitive psychology to be a technocratic rationality with its limited achievements. What has and will change us is our immersion in an information society, driven by rapid changes in knowledge networks and the continual eradication of boundaries between the academy and the world of the corporation. Cognitivism champions this movement and on this count Evans is correct to argue that it adheres to a technocratic rationality. But when cognitivism fails in, for instance, capturing accurately the cognitive processes of workers, administrators, the public, and so on, the world's technocrats do not stand by and admire the marvels of cognitive models of mind. Indeed, cognitive psychology must continually adapt to the world of informatics in order to succeed. Evans is too quick to identify cognitive psychology with this technocratic landscape rather than understanding it as a response. He might have been more nuanced or perhaps asked a more reflexive question. Cognitive psychologists, like many social scientists attempting to make it in the marketplace of ideas, must continually fight a rearguard as well as a promotional battle. With critics like Evans and Dreyfus (1993) nipping at their heels, the cognitivists are forever adjusting their theories to counter the worst of their academic enemies. At the same time they must gloss over their worst problems to sell their wares. When they face the world (and their world can include non-cognitivist colleagues in the academy, granting agencies, publishers, and so on) as spokespersons they present a unified and powerful science. This is the one Evans saw and has rightly critiqued. On his own account of genealogical psychology, the wave of discourse (cognitivism) "carries the risk of dissolution into 'Babel'" but is also "part of the community's diachronic movement toward unity" and "embodies nihilistic or oracular tendencies" (p. 209). This much, at least, counts for cognitive psychology as well as his own genealogical psychology. By crediting cognitive psychology with more influence than it might possibly have, Evans was able to motivate a powerful critique. The critique itself however dictates that he be less impressed with the status of this self-proclaimed science.

Finally, not all cognitive models have been solely or simply influenced by the analogy of the computer or the impressive logic of the Turing machine. As Gigerenzer has noted, psychology in the US has frequently relied on an implicit "tools-to-theories heuristic" (e.g., Gigerenzer et al., 1989). By this he means that the development of some new techniques and tools which have their origins outside psychology are converted into theories of cognition once they have become familiar objects or analytic strategies. Although the computer is one familiar case of this heuristic, other cognitive models in psychology have been cobbled together out of modern developments in statistics. Once these statistics became familiar as a tool for analyzing experimental results they were institutionalized and became, after a time, a model for rationality itself in, for example, various theories of perception, judgment and decision-making. Although Evans would be correct if he were to claim (as I am assuming he would) that these theories too adhere to a technocratic rationality, their attraction for psychologists is not a function of any computational logic they might have but is the outcome precisely of the already familiar statistical models which support these theories.

Like other critics who hail from the discipline itself and have adopted a Bakhtinian alternative (e.g., Shotter, 1993), Evans reminds us that entire traditions for understanding people in their everyday worlds (as opposed to predicting their activities in special institutional circumstances) have been neglected in our psychologies. In reminding us, he revives the possibility of recovering these traditions for our own discursive positions, for entering into conversations with those who have tried to find a place for psychology outside the realm of a strictly natural science model. By showing us how such a psychology might be conducted, Evans breaks through the nihilism which still holds the mainstream of psychology in thrall. Such a careful work deserves a careful reading.

References

  • Bem, S. & Keijzer, F. (in press). Recent changes in the concept of cognition. Theory & Psychology.
  • Bühler, K. (1929). Der krise der psychologie. (2nd ed.) Jena: Von Gustav Fischer.
  • Dreyfus, H. L. (1993). What computers still can't do: A critique of artificial reason. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., & Krüger, L. (1989). The empire of chance: How probability changed science and everyday life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural politics of everyday life. Buckingham and Toronto: Open University Press and University of Toronto Press.
  • Reviewed by Henderikus J. Stam
    Department of Psychology
    University of Calgary
    Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4


    TOPICS: Philosophy
    KEYWORDS: computationalmodel; conscious; consciousness; philosophy; psychology
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    To: unspun
    Like other critics who hail from the discipline itself and have adopted a Bakhtinian alternative (e.g., Shotter, 1993), Evans reminds us that entire traditions for understanding people in their everyday worlds (as opposed to predicting their activities in special institutional circumstances) have been neglected in our psychologies.

    It's important to make the word "psychology" plural. Otherwise, we might not know there is more than one school of thought within the discipline. I mean, people could get the wrong idea! </sarcasm>

    Idiot pomos.

    21 posted on 07/20/2003 10:34:07 PM PDT by xm177e2 (Stalinists, Maoists, Ba'athists, Pacifists: Why are they always on the same side?)
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    To: unspun
    As I have said before, "I am all 'thralled' out."
    22 posted on 07/20/2003 10:38:55 PM PDT by Old Professer
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    To: RLK
    So wasteful - B.S.
    23 posted on 07/20/2003 10:40:13 PM PDT by Old Professer
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    To: unspun
    Heurism is not for the meek.
    24 posted on 07/20/2003 10:41:11 PM PDT by Old Professer
    [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

    To: xm177e2
    Many a penny has been found among the dung.
    25 posted on 07/20/2003 10:42:32 PM PDT by Old Professer
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    To: unspun
    More mental masturbation. Some day we will all look back on these threads and feel like idiots. And it will be the doers rather than the thinkers that will put us in our place.

    Heh. I spent my entire weekend working on patent paperwork. I must be cranky.

    26 posted on 07/20/2003 10:44:02 PM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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    To: RLK
    Actually I get a charge out of the Post-Modernist "arguments", and they are not that complicated. They always sound like a parody, but are supposed to be serious.

    There are maybe twenty or thirty words that have special meaning, "voices", "discourse", etc. He is talking about the competition for funding and prestige in "psychology" academia.

    Just read the thing again. It is funny. What a doofus.

    27 posted on 07/20/2003 10:44:23 PM PDT by Iris7
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    To: xm177e2
    Many a penny has been found among the dung.

    That sounds so good I'm going to copyright it.

    28 posted on 07/20/2003 10:44:38 PM PDT by Old Professer
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    To: unspun
    This looks like a good one to wade through slowly (but it's getting too late for tonight) so I bump it now as a means of finding it later....
    .....when I've got my hip boots on! (hehehe!) Just kidding.
    29 posted on 07/20/2003 10:46:34 PM PDT by budwiesest (Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.)
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    To: unspun
    You, sir, have a very droll sense of humor!
    30 posted on 07/20/2003 10:50:32 PM PDT by Iris7
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    To: Old Professer
    Many a penny has been found among the dung.

    Working minimum wage would be more rewarding than digging through turds for pennies. I would wonder about the "good fortune" of finding a penny in a pile of manure. (Yes, I know. Metaphor.)

    Sounds like a game show idea that Fox would buy into...

    31 posted on 07/20/2003 10:53:39 PM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
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    To: RLK
    " If you look, for example, at liberal sociology, it is an entire system of thought or pseudoscience which has been devised to avoid analysis of problem, but which pretends to analyze those problems."

    Ayn Rand couldn't have said it better.

    yitbos

    32 posted on 07/20/2003 10:59:04 PM PDT by bruinbirdman (Joe McCarthy was right)
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    To: tortoise
    It wasn't a simple metaphor; it was a silly wordplay; let it roll off the tongue, so to speak.
    33 posted on 07/20/2003 11:05:22 PM PDT by Old Professer
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    To: tortoise
    More mental masturbation. Some day we will all look back on these threads and feel like idiots. And it will be the doers rather than the thinkers that will put us in our place.

    You mean physical masturbators?

    34 posted on 07/21/2003 8:04:06 AM PDT by unspun ("Do everything in love." | No I don't look anything like her but I do like to hear "Unspun w/ AnnaZ")
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    To: Iris7
    "They always sound like a parody..."

    I see it as an intellectual cargo-cult. They think that the use of Greek and Latin-rooted neologisms lends gravitas to their logorrhea.

    I guess they impress each other. ;^)
    35 posted on 07/21/2003 8:25:06 AM PDT by headsonpikes
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    To: xm177e2; RLK; Old_Professor; Iris7; bruinbirdman
    Postmodernists/deconstructionists, creationists, cultists, etc. are at war with real science. Of course, science will win.

    Since when are people who refuse to close their minds to what our founders called "self evident truths" at war with science? People of our tradition of western thought came up with science! It is only the materialists (the most famous of which is either Charles Darwin or Karl Marx) who came later and have created a kind of intellectual bannana republic coup, whereby the natural sciences are perverted and overextended towards ontology and at the same time the intellect is castrated of the consideration of what is not "physical."

    36 posted on 07/21/2003 8:37:46 AM PDT by unspun ("Do everything in love." | No I don't look anything like her but I do like to hear "Unspun w/ AnnaZ")
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    To: headsonpikes
    It is better to be educated than not.
    37 posted on 07/21/2003 8:38:30 AM PDT by unspun ("Do everything in love." | No I don't look anything like her but I do like to hear "Unspun w/ AnnaZ")
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    To: unspun
    Not computational, not statistical. Organic. It shall be called the pluralvocal identity and become as famous as any other momentarily famous theory of mind.
    38 posted on 07/21/2003 9:01:31 AM PDT by RightWhale (Destroy the dark; restore the light)
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    To: unspun
    "It is better to be educated than not."

    I thank my lucky stars for the excellent philosophy department I discovered as a youth. It was 'bombs away' on meaningless bombast such as the ideological spewing in the article posted.

    The so-called 'social sciences' constitute an intellectual fraud on a mass scale.
    39 posted on 07/21/2003 9:03:41 AM PDT by headsonpikes
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    To: headsonpikes
    the use of Greek and Latin-rooted neologisms

    Stick with the Greek. There are twice as many useful prefices and suffices available from Greek in common use.

    40 posted on 07/21/2003 9:16:19 AM PDT by RightWhale (Destroy the dark; restore the light)
    [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]


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