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Human Mind, Sciences and Culture - On Possibilities and Limits of Psychological Sciences

최호영 1

1고려대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

There are two important points of view from which one looks at the history of psychology, as it exists for about 130 years as an independent scientific discipline: In the so-called mainstream psychology, psychology is considered to be a discipline that is continuously developing toward a scientific understanding of human minds and behaviors. But for some non-mainstream groups of psychologists the history of psychology was and is a process of incessant conflicts between objects and methods of psychological research. From this point of view I have discussed two methodological problems which seem to be prevalent in contemporary psychological research activities. First, so-called 'psychological common sense', namely 'the set of all psychological statements which are true by virtue of the meanings of their constituent words' cannot be, by definition, empirically researched. If the fact is ignored, then a sort of pseudo-empirical research outcomes are highly probable. Second, many psychologists have a great difficulty in adequately treating normative phenomena in human self-understandings and everyday activities. In the face of these (and other) problems it seems to be advisable to pursuit methodological renewal of psychological sciences on the principle of the primacy of culture over sciences.

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