Psycho-logic: Some thoughts and after-thoughts

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2012, 53, 295–302 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2012.00951.x

Cognition and Neurosciences

Psycho-logic: Some thoughts and after-thoughts

J. SMEDSLUND

University of Oslo, Norway

Smedslund, J. (2012). Psycho-logic: Some thoughts and after-thoughts. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 295–302.

The main features of the system of psycho-logic and its historical origins, especially in the writings of Heider and Piaget, are briefly reviewed. An updatedversion of the axioms of psycho-logic, and a list of the semantic primitives of Wierzbicka are presented. Some foundational questions are discussed, includ-ing the genetically determined limitations of human knowledge, the constructive, moral, and political nature of the approach, the role of fortuitous events,the ultimate limitations of psychological knowledge (the ‘‘balloon’’ to be inflated from the inside), the role of the subjective unconscious, and the implica-tions of the approach for practice.

Key words: Psycho-logic, science of psychology, genetic limitations of knowledge.

Jan Smedslund, University of Oslo, Roahagan 9, 0754 Oslo, Norway. Tel: 22504912; e-mail: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

Here, I try to update and reformulate the most basic assumptionsunderlying the project of psycho-logic (Smedslund, 1988, 1997,2002, 2004, 2009, 2011, 2012a, 2012b) and add some furthercomments. Readers unfamiliar with the many earlier debatesabout psycho-logic may also consult Smedslund (1991) and Helst-rup, Rognes, and Vollmer (1999). I suppose that many psycholo-gists will sense both the relevance and the uncertainty of thesedebates, and the need to find solutions For the benefit of readers,both familiar with and unfamiliar with psycho-logic, I begin withan up-to-date summary.

ORIGINS AND MAIN FEATURES OF PSYCHO-LOGIC

Psycho-logic is an approach to psychology, starting from ordinarylanguage and common sense psychology, and attempting to for-mulate, organize, and further develop the conceptual system pre-sumably implicit in these. Human beings are seen as intentionalsubjective beings acting on whatever follows from the situationaland personal premises as they see them. The concept of meaningis central here. Since the meaning of something for someone iswhat follows from that something, for that person, that is, how theperson interprets his or her experiences, ‘‘psycho-logic’’ couldalmost equally well have been labeled ‘‘psycho-semantics’’(Fodor, 1987).The project was originally seen as simply aiming at making

explicit the implicit conceptual system embedded in ordinarylanguage and common sense thinking. However, it graduallybecame clear from the Wittgensteinian view, including the‘‘intrinsic contestability’’ of word meanings (Shotter, 1994), thatordinary language is resistant to the quest for precision and order.In line with a suggestion of Parrott & Harre (1991), I have cometo regard psycho-logic as a constructed technical system, that,while taking its explicit departure in the semantic primitives ofordinary language, aims at making more precise, and systemati-zing, a conceptual framework for psychology.

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Historically, psycho-logic has, at least, two main roots, namelyin the works of Fritz Heider and Jean Piaget.In his classical book, Heider noted that:

We assume implications between parts of the environment whetherin regard to the structure of space, the logic of illumination, or theperceived psychological phenomena in other persons…. As exam-ple of these formal connections underlying our naıve thinking wecan refer to the relations between can, try, and success. The state-ment that somebody who can do something and tries to do it willsucceed in doing it is analytic and does not have to be proven byexperiment. The relation between desire and enjoyment … is alsoof this character. It is likely that the interdependence of belongingand sentiment … is based on analytic statements. (Heider, 1958:297)

A contribution by Heider was to point out that common sensepsychology contains only a few basic concepts, related in waysthat are not empirical, but necessarily true.Piaget represented a view of psychology in which logic holds a

prominent place. Almost alone among his predominantly Ameri-can and British contemporaries, he emphasized the role of impli-cations (entailments) in normal psychological processes, asdistinguished from more or less behavioristic concepts of ‘‘associ-ation’’ and ‘‘connection’’. The emphasis on logic reflects a clearlysubjectivist paradigm, focusing on how the world exists for peo-ple. Piaget’s model of assimilation and accommodation, alsoentails the paradox that we can only accommodate to what isalready assimilated. Children can only learn about the world, asthey see it within their momentary conceptual framework.In numerous works Piaget pursued the idea that children’s

development, leading to the adult level of functioning, is not astraightforward empirical learning process, but consists of theunfolding of a conceptual framework into which the world isassimilated, that is, in terms of which experiences are interpretedand learning can take place. Many relations between the variousconcepts in this framework are logical, and children’s inferences

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296 J. Smedslund Scand J Psychol 53 (2012)

from these concepts gradually come to take precedence over theirdirect experiences (perceptions). From this perspective, develop-ment consists partly of a gradual unfolding of the implications ofa conceptual framework. An observation I made in a Piaget-typestudy, illustrates the preceding very well: A preschool girl hadbeen shown that two balls of dough weighed the same on a bal-ance scale. I then formed one of the balls into a snake, and asked‘‘Does this one weigh more or this one or do they weigh thesame?’’ The girl held her hands before her eyes, and said: ‘‘thatone (the ball) looks heavier, but I know they weigh the same,because we did not add anything or take anything away’’. In arelated study, I surreptitiously took away from, or added, a pieceto one of the pieces of dough and, after asking the same question,demonstrating on the scales that one piece now actually weighedmore. Several preschool children refused to accept the empiricalevidence and said: ‘‘We must have lost something on the floor’’,or ‘‘the scales have to be repaired’’ or even ‘‘you cheated!’’(Smedslund, 1961). Hence, even in fairly young children reason-ing can take precedence over direct perception, and as they growolder this becomes much more common. Recent studies of veryearly inferences and presuppositions about the minds of other per-sons (He, Bolz & Baillargeon, 2011; Low & Wang, 2011; Samson& Apperly, 2010, and others), may also be interpreted as support-ing the idea that there are genetical predispositions for understand-ing some general characteristics of other people.In his epistemological main contribution, Piaget (1950) argued

that the theme of psychology should be the study of ‘‘implicationsau sense large’’. In his view, psychological development consistsof a growing recognition of what follows and does not followfrom given observations, and of the logical possibilities andimpossibilities involved. In other words, development consists ofassimilating the world into progressively more complex meaningor inference structures. Accommodation to the world (learning)takes place only in relation to what is already assimilated. In otherwords, we can learn about the regularities of the world only in theway we interpret or understand it at the given time.A good illustration of this was a study (Smedslund, 1961)

where a person failed to learn a multiple correlation of +0.93between some visually available features and a criterion, evenafter as many as 4,800 trials with immediate feedback. This was adramatic demonstration of how human beings can only learn(accommodate to) those aspects of the world that they can assimi-late, that is, that can be incorporated into their categories.Hence, a core concept of both Heider and Piaget seems to have

been ‘‘follows from’’ or ‘‘if-then’’), which is also one of the prim-itive concepts that are assumed to be lexically represented in allhuman languages (Wierzbicka, 1996). Psycho-logic can be seenas the study of what ‘‘follows from’’ what, for persons. This is aconcept different from the natural science concept of ‘‘cause’’. Aset of premises does not cause, but implies, a conclusion, or anaction. Psycho-logic is about subjective relations (implicationsexist only for persons, whereas a cause is an objective relation thatexists independently of persons). It should be pointed out here thatthe subjective, as understood in psycho-logic, encompasses notonly what can be talked about (the reflective), but also processesthat are inaccessible to verbal analysis (the unreflective). The sub-jective includes everything that makes a difference to a person. Ifa person shows priming effects we know that the original stimuli

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were recognized, in the sense of making a difference in theperson’s activities, even though the person does not know thisreflectively, and consequently cannot talk about it. A person’s lifewould be incomprehensible if one did not allow for unreflective –that is, unconscious – processes, that can only be indirectlystudied.Another feature of thinking stems from the already mentioned

paradox implicit in Piaget’s assimilation-accommodation model,namely that one cannot accommodate to (learn about) what is notassimilated. The learning of empirical frequencies can only takeplace inside a given conceptual framework. There may also beabsolute genetically determined limits to what we can learn aboutpeople. This is well expressed in Israel’s general metaphor statingthat our task is like having to inflate a balloon from the inside(Israel, 1979). Being human restricts us to the kind of empiricalknowledge that can be achieved within our human conceptualframeworks. Psycho-logic can be seen as an attempt to describethe inside wall of the metaphoric balloon, that is, what we mustpresuppose. A seemingly important exception to this limitation,and thereby also to the balloon metaphor lies in our ability tonegate any proposition, and ask, what if it were not the case? Awell-known historical example of this is found in the developmentof the non-Euclidean geometries, that were developed on the basisof the negation of an axiom in classical geometry. However, itshould be added that this process of tentative negations ends any-how, at least in psychology, when negations turn out to be com-pletely senseless or absurd.There may be many other possibly contributing factors to the

development of psycho-logic. One lies in the work of the Norwe-gian philosopher Arne Naess (1953) on the concepts of ‘‘inter-pretation’’ and ‘‘preciseness’’, particularly his emphasis oncooperational preciseness, that is, the level of terminologicalexactness necessary for efficient communication and cooperation.This requirement also facilitates, or even necessitates, axiomatiza-tion of the conceptual system.A central and much debated feature of psycho-logic is precisely

that it is organized as an axiomatic system (Blanche, 1965;Smedslund, 2011). A search for such a system occurs almostnecessarily, when one deals with an unorganized multitude ofsentences, and especially if one cherishes the idea that these sen-tences should form a system as exact (cooperationally precise),neat, and simple as possible. Then, questions about whether ornot given sentences do or do not follow from other sentences,easily come to the fore. If a sentence implies numerous andimportant other sentences, yet cannot itself be derived from anymore basic sentences, and, in addition, is experienced as neces-sary, one has arrived at what is called an axiom. Together, the axi-oms make up a maximally simple description of how humansconstrue, or organize their view of, other humans, given an innateconceptual framework. More specific sentences (theorems) can bederived (logically proved) from the axioms. Hence, the axioms ofpsycho-logic aim to describe how we, as humans, must conceiveof other humans (the inner wall of Israel’s metaphoric balloon).Since the axioms cannot be tested logically or empirically, theycan only be tested by consensus. If everyone agrees with the for-mulation and necessity of an axiom, it can be retained and takenfor granted. Versions of the system of psycho-logic have so faralmost uniformly yielded very high consensus among English and

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Norwegian speaking persons (Smedslund, 2002) and there havealso been promising results in a pilot study with six unrelatedlanguages (Ewe, Turkish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Tamil and Norwe-gian; Smedslund, 1997a), as well as with Urdu (Smedslund,2002). However, much more work is needed both on developingan adequate methodology, and on analyzing many morelanguages.Psycho-logic is an attempt to make explicit what is already

implicit in language and common sense, and as such its usefulnessdepends on whether or not it is consensually accepted. In otherwords, the axioms are constructions applying to all human socialrealities, and should be shared by everyone. Further technical dis-cussion of the consensus-concept as a criterion of social realitylies outside the scope of this article. However, in a science of thesubjective, cross-individual and cross-cultural consensus is theonly possible test of the veridicality of general propositions. Thisindicates the extent to which our basic conceptual frameworkregarding people is common to all individuals and cultures, and,hence, also consistent with the assumption that it ultimatelydepends on genetically constituted characteristics of Homosapiens.It should be added to the above that, given my present view of

psycho-logic as a technical language to be constructed by thescientist, the requirement of strict consensus among the generalpublic may no longer be absolutely compelling. This is so becausesome distinctions and restrictions may be introduced for profes-sional purposes, and would no longer be part of the vernacular.In this case, consensus about utility among professionals wouldbe the only test. In psycho-logic, the technical question of validityis closely linked with the even more complex question ofutility. The all-important question is simply if, and when, thepropositions and distinctions of psycho-logic are judged to be use-ful by psychologists.

THE AXIOMS OF PSYCHO-LOGIC

A recent version of the axiom system is presented below, togetherwith some brief comments. The axioms are intended to summarizesome main parts of what we can take for granted about persons,without depending on empirical research. It should be noted thatthey refer to how we automatically conceive of persons, ratherthan to what persons are. In a subjectivist language, a person isnothing ‘‘in itself’’, but always as seen by someone, including theperson him/herself. This is close to what Gergen refers to as‘‘relational being’’ (Gergen, 2011).The axioms cover only a few very general features of our

built-in model of human beings. We probably know much more,a priori, than what is expressed by them. This must be a task forfuture and expanded analysis.In what follows, P and O are persons.

Axiom 1 Mentality: P takes it for granted that O can know, think,want, feel, perceive*, say and do, UNLESS, there are indicationsto the contrary. * ‘‘Perceive’’ is a composite word for ‘‘see, hear,taste, smell, and sense tactually and kinaesthetically.

This axiom implies that one may attribute all these functions toeveryone, and assume that everyone does this, unless there are


contrary indications. The question of how early young childrenmake those attributions to others, can be raised, but the answerdepends largely on the ingenuity of the researcher in devising pro-cedures suitable for diagnosing pre-verbal children. Ultimately,the question of exactly when, may be unanswerable. The samegoes for theoretical explanations of the origin of these attributions.The assumption that they are ‘‘inborn’’ covers numerous possibleand highly complex interactions between early experience andgenetically directed ‘‘unfolding’’ tendencies. As part of psychol-ogy, the axiom simply covers attributions normally made by everymember of Homo sapiens to every other member.

Axiom 2 Intentionality: P takes it for granted that what O knows,thinks, feels, perceives, says, and does, is partly* directed by whatO wants. *The other main factor is assessment of the situation(cognition).

This axiom means that everyone automatically attributes inten-tionality (‘‘aboutness’’) to everything another person says anddoes. This entails that every outcome, or occurrence of an event,is taken to involve some degree of satisfaction or dissatisfactionabout the experienced situation, and that everything the other onedoes is directed at increasing satisfaction and decreasing dissatis-faction. Again, the question of how early one may detect this pre-supposition in children, depends largely on the ingenuity of theresearcher. This axiom, like the preceding one, and the succeedingones, describes attributions we cannot avoid making. RegardingAxiom 2, there can be no observations interpreted to mean thatthe other one is doing something devoid of preference. Totalindifference would entail total absence of activity, and wouldmean that the person was absent (psychologically dead).

Axiom 3 Reflectivity: P takes it for granted that O occasionallyknows and occasionally does not know THAT O knows, thinks,wants, feels, perceives, says, and does something.

A more common term for ‘‘knowing that’’ is ‘‘conscious of’’.We assume that the other one is, or can be, conscious of ownexperiences and activity. A contribution of modern psychology isto bring into focus the fact that we are not conscious of everythingthat goes on in us, that is, that we can know, think, want, feel, per-ceive, say, or do something, without knowing that we do it. Thiswas of course sporadically realized also in earlier times, but notgenerally and systematically reflected on.This axiom means that we always assume that the other person

sometimes is, and sometimes is not, conscious of what he or sheexperiences or does.

Axiom 4 Verbality: P takes it for granted that O can always saysomething about what O knows THAT O knows, thinks, wants,feels, perceives, says, and does, and ONLY about that.

We all make this automatic assymmetric connection betweenthe other one’s talking and consciousness. Consciousness meansto know THAT you know, think, feel, etc. We can talk about whatwe are conscious of, and we cannot talk about what we are uncon-scious of. However, we also think that the other person canbe conscious of something, yet not talk about it. It is a classic

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implicative relation, there are four possibilities, but one combina-tion is missing. If someone talks about something, we infer thathe or she knows about it. We take it for granted that we cannottalk about what we do not know that we know, think, feel, etc.

Axiom 5 Learning: P takes it for granted that what O thinks willhappen after now, follows from what O thinks happened beforenow.

This is a statement in terms of semantic primitives only, of theattribution of an ability and inclination to learn. The entire linguis-tic structure, among other things the primitive concepts of‘‘now’’, ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’, entails an ability to remember andto expect based on this. We take it that everyone has a remem-bered past and an expected future. Such principles as ‘‘the Law ofEffect’’ follow from the axioms of Intentionality and Learning. Ina deeper sense, the ubiquity of learning also reflects the irrevers-ibility of psychological processes. Everything we experiencechanges us, and cannot be completely undone. To be human is tolive in time.The existence of constant readiness to learn as a universal

human trait, means that evolution has taken place in an environ-ment that has contained a significant degree of stability. This isexemplified and maximized in the rules of every human society.

Axiom 6 Responsibility: P takes it for granted that O is responsi-ble for what O says and does.

For P, it is O and no one else that should be rewarded or pun-ished for what O has done. In human social life this is quite triv-ial. Every person is responded to according to what he or she istaken to have done. It also follows from Axioms 5 and 6 that aperson is expected to take into account the anticipated reactions toown activity. We do not expect a person to regard the wind or astone as responsible for their effects, because we do not expectthe person to think that the outcome makes a difference for them.But we automatically expect everyone to hold a person responsi-ble for what he or she has done, and, therefore, growing up andliving in a society makes most people behave responsibly most ofthe time.

Axiom 7 Morality: P takes it for granted that O wants to do whatO thinks is right, and wants not to do what O thinks is wrong.

According to Wierzbicka (2006) ‘‘right’’ and ‘‘wrong’’ are notsemantic primitives, but are specific to Anglo culture and lan-guage. However, it is hard to believe that a concept or expressionsignifying conformity with, or transgression of, the rules of a soci-ety, should not somehow be built into every human language. Theclosest established primitive concepts are ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’,and a proposition that these are always present, is a corollary thatfollows directly from Axiom 2 (Intentionality). The present axiomadds to this something reflecting the inherent sociality of humanbeings. It states that humans always are sensitive not only to whatthey themselves want, but also to what the social surroundingswant. The axiom is not intended to mean that everyone alwaysbehaves morally, since people sometimes have other strongerwants. However, it means that everyone has some want to behave


morally, since this is a consequence of the socialization process(i.e. having learned the rules of one’s social group), and since it isalways inconvenient or painful to transgress the established rules,and risk punishment and exclusion from one’s group. A totallyamoral person is a fictional limiting case.

Axiom 8 Feeling: P takes it for granted that what O feels, followsfrom the relation between what O wants and what O thinks.

What the person feels is always characterized by whether, andto what extent, his or her perceived situation, relative to his or herwants, is good or bad. It may well be that this axiom is ultimatelyderivable from axioms 1 and 2. People always evaluate their situa-tions by comparing what they want with what they take to be thepresent situation. No particular classification of what people canfeel is suggested. It is known that this varies with cultures andtime periods.Since 1997, the number of axioms has been steadily reduced,

and this reflects the analytic and constructive work going on(Smedslund, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2012b). The present list is proba-bly only a phase in the development of psycho-logic. It merelyrepresents one attempt to summarize some of the presumablyinnately given human presuppositions about their fellow beings,in an axiomatic form (Smedslund, 2011). None of the theoremsthat may be derived from these axioms are included here.

SOME AFTER-THOUGHTS

Looking at psycho-logic today, I want to make a number of addi-tional comments. Reflecting on theory, as well as on my ownpractice as a clinician, has gradually led me to realize some thingsthat are neither to be found in the works of Heider and Piaget, norin my own earliest writings on the subject.I begin with looking once more at an early critical paper (Shot-

ter, 1994). In a scholarly, and well-argued way, it pointed out thatthe project of psycho-logic, despite its impressive-looking geneal-ogy in the older sciences, overlooks that the closure it recom-mends, with fixed precise concepts and explicit deductivenetworks, ‘‘is not the only closure and ordering available’’. Thearticle ends as follows: ‘‘So the choice of closure to institute isnot merely a theoretical matter, but is in fact a practical, moral,and political choice [italics mine], for it determines the opportuni-ties for action available to use corporatively and communally.’’While I appreciate the arguments in this article, and also

Shotter’s emphasis on the essentially contestable definitions ofterms in natural language, I now think there is a matter that hascome to my knowledge later, that points in favor of thepsycho-logic selected. This is the discovery of semantic primi-tives (Wierzbicka, 1996). To the extent that her findings holdup, the number of possible alternative conceptualizations ofcommon-sense psychology is sharply reduced. In Shotter’s ter-minology, there may ultimately be few alternative closures avail-able, because all humans appear to share one particular set ofcommon primitive concepts.Given the semantically primitive concepts and their implicit

logical relations, the project of psycho-logic as it stands, may stillbe defended, even while its ‘‘constructive and moral/politicalnature’’ is acknowledged. The conceptual framework suggested

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by Wierzbicka encompasses all possible descriptions of religious,political and cultural oppositions. It is a very powerful and boldposition, and an enormous amount of linguistic field work andadvanced logical analysis remain. One consequence of this newdevelopment is that the axioms of psycho-logic ought to be for-mulated exclusively in terms of, or in terms easily reducible to,the semantic primitives. I have tried to do this above, whichexplains the sometimes quaint way of writing ordinary English.The axioms as stated also contain a few terms, such as ‘‘right’’and ‘‘wrong’’, that are not yet established as semantic primitives,but that presumably can be defined in terms of the establishedones.A second after-thought that makes psycho-logic more commen-

surable with the Wittgensteinian objections, is my own (2002),and also Bandura’s (1982), emphasis on the role of fortuitousevents. The effects of such events preclude any strict order at theconcrete level of direct psychological observations, but do notpreclude order at the more abstract level of psycho-logic.Example: While there are no limits to exactly what a person mayhappen to think, want and, hence, feel, at a given moment, theremay still be more abstract rules, stating for example, that a personalways thinks, always wants, and always feels, something. Thisdoes not preclude intermediate level statistical generalizationsfrom experiments about the likelihood of certain kinds ofthoughts, wants and feelings, in certain kinds of contexts. Anexample of a relatively abstract principle is the theorem thatpersons always want to find, and look for, someone trustworthy,and that there are five conditions for personal trust (perceivedcare, understanding, own-control, self-control and relevant com-petence), that apply everywhere, even though one cannot predictthe specific content of these variables in a given case at a giventime (Smedslund, 1997b, 2002, 2004). The possibility of validabstract principles even in areas replete with fortuitous events,makes psycho-logic compatible with a view of natural languageas consisting of highly context-influenced words, albeit also con-taining fixed general-meaning components (Smedslund, 2011).The semantic primitives and the system they form is alwaysresorted to when humans describe what they experience to eachother.A third after-thought, although already partly included in psy-

cho-logic in terms of a distinction between the reflective and theunreflective (Smedslund, 1997b, 2002, 2004), has graduallybecome clearer to me. It is that while psycho-logic is exclusivelyconcerned with the subjective, this is not limited to what a personcan talk about. Many psychological processes are not consciouslyavailable, yet they are still subjective, in the sense that they existonly for the person. It is not possible to have a plausible psychol-ogy without the concept of a subjective unconscious. Subjectiveprocesses exist only for an individual. They can be diagnosedfrom what the person says, but also, if unconscious, from whatmakes a difference to the person. You have noticed an odor if itspresence or absence makes for a difference in your activity, eventhough you do not know about it. Unconscious processes can bestudied by determining what, unknown to her or him, makes adifference for some activity of a person. The axioms of psycho-logic apply also to the unconscious processes in persons. Forexample, the axiom of Mentality (see above) includes the presup-position that a person can see, and implies that a person is


automatically treated as if this were the case. If there is a differ-ence in activity linked with a visually available environmentalvariation of some kind, we infer that the person can see this varia-tion, even though he or she does not know it and cannot talkabout it. Concretely, you may move an object and observe if aperson’s eyes follow the movement. If this occurs, we infer thatthe person has seen the movement, even if he or she denies it.This, of course, is ambiguous, since it may mean either that theperson does not want to talk about what he or she has seen, ordoes not know that he or she has seen it.A fourth after-thought is this: I have gradually come to realize

that the axioms should have two qualities that were not explicitlyrecognized in the early presentations of psycho-logic.In order to qualify as an axiom, a proposition should, as also

mentioned above, be stated in terms of semantic primitives only,since it should, in principle, be translatable to any human lan-guage. Psychology should aim at transcending its exclusivelyAnglo-Saxon/Western origin. Anna Wierzbicka and collaboratorshave supplied us with English-language representatives of morethan 60 primitive concepts that appear to be lexically representedin all human languages (Wierzbicka, 1996). These concepts can-not be defined in terms of other concepts (except circularly). As anote of caution, I should add that confidence in each one of Wie-rzbicka’s semantic primitives must ultimately rest on the qualityof the relevant field work conducted by the linguistic researchersaround the world.The semantic primitives are reproduced here:

‘‘substantives’’ I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE

‘‘determiners’’ THIS, THE SAME, OTHER, SOME

‘‘quantifiers’’ ONE, TWO, MANY (MUCH), ALL

‘‘mental predicates’’ THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE,HEAR

‘‘non-mental predi cates’’ MOVE, THERE IS, (BE) ALIVE

‘‘speech’’ SAY

‘‘acions and events’’ DO, HAPPEN

‘‘evaluators’’ GOOD, BAD

‘‘descriptors’’ BIG, SMALL

‘‘time’’WHEN, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORTTIME, NOW

‘‘space’’ WHERE, UNDER, ABOVE, FAR, NEAR, SIDEINSIDE, HERE

‘‘partonomy and taxonomy’’ PART (OF), KIND (OF)

‘‘imagination and possibility’’ IF……WOULD, MAYBE

‘‘words’’ WORD

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‘‘metapredicates’’ NOT, CAN, VERY

‘‘interclausal linkers’’ IF, BECAUSE, LIKE

(Wierzbicka, 1996)

There remains an unresolved tension between the recommendedreliance on semantic primitives and the requirement of precise-ness. This comes about because many of the English termsselected by Wierzbicka as representatives of the semantic primi-tive concepts, are sometimes used in ordinary language in differ-ent ways according to context. A solution proposed byWierzbicka is to insert the words in ‘‘canonical contexts’’ (alsocomposed of representatives of the semantic primitives).This mayresult in improved precision and easier translatability. Thesecanonical sentences ‘‘can be translated – without loss and/or addi-tion of meaning – into any language whatsoever’’ (Wierzbicka,1996: 30). Some of the examples offered by Wierzbicka are:‘‘You did something bad’’, ‘‘I know when it happened’’, ‘‘I wantto see this’’.Another requirement is important, but may sound somewhat

problematic. An axiom should not only be subjectively necessar-ily true, but it should also describe how people really are. Statedin a philosophical terminology, a psycho-logical axiom should beboth a priori and contingently true (Kukla, 2001). It shoulddescribe persons in a way that we must subscribe to, because weare persons, but the descriptions should also be veridical. In otherwords, the axioms should describe predispositions to conceive ofhumans correctly.These are constraints that do not originate in experiences of

other persons, but determine how these other persons are experi-enced. Psycho-logic is a project attempting to describe the basicfeatures of how we must perceive persons, which also is how weagree about what persons really are. This is analogous toShepard’s work on the perception of the material world (1984).Psycho-logic does not originate in experiences of peoples’ behav-ior, but describes how we must experience people. Every attemptto test it empirically, already presupposes what is to be tested.Take, for example, the axiom of Intentionality (see above). Whena person acts in way A in a situation which also affords otheralternative actions, a denial of intentionality would mean that onewould deny that the person, in behaving in way A prefers to do Ato whatever alternatives that exist for him or her (not-A), that is,the person wants A more than the alternatives, etc.In real life, we appear always to perceive persons in ways that

are a result of a combination of our inborn predispositions to viewothers, our knowledge of language and culture, and our acquain-tance with the single individuals and circumstances. The charac-teristics described in the psycho-logic-axioms represent only afew very general such predispositions. One of the axioms (seeabove) is that we cannot avoid attributing to others an ability tolearn. Persons are seen as able to remember what they experience.The assumption that we have this ability cannot in itself be a mat-ter for empirical research, since it is already taken for granted inthe very act of doing such research, which presupposes that wewill learn from making observations, that is, remember them. Weavoid using a person as his or her own control in experiments,because we presuppose his or her ability to learn. The mainstream


researcher may object that the determination of exactly whatpersons learn (for the purpose of getting to know some generalprinciples), and when they forget, is more important than the meregeneral presumption of intentionality and ability to learn. A count-erargument to this is that while the determination of exactly whatis learned, and remembered in a particular situation can certainlybe important for some immediate practical purposes, the efforts tofind very general principles by means of empirical research areunlikely to succeed, given the nature of psychological phenomena(Smedslund, 2009). Every empirically established law of learningcan probably be falsified by arranging suitable alternative condi-tions (Roediger, 2008). If, and to the extent that, they are univer-sally experienced as necessary, the psycho-logic axioms may bethe most generally valid kind of principles that can be stated inpsychology. What is most frequently wanted and learned in agiven culture, or by a given individual, can be determined empiri-cally, at a given time, or in a given limited period, but beyondthis, psychological life is rather resistant to generalizations.A final after-thought is that psycho-logic illuminates the ulti-

mate limitations of being human. Being human restricts the kindof knowledge and the kind of concepts we can possibly have, andwhat is felt to be self-evident or necessary. To be true, we can rec-ognize that propositions that were once taken to be self-evident,are now regarded as false (for example ‘‘The earth is flat’’ or‘‘women are intellectually inferior to men’’). This transitionbecame possible because we can usually negate any given formu-lation and empirically study, and theoretically analyze, the impli-cations of the negation. However, the unlimited optimism ofresearchers, as regards our ability to falsify seemingly self-evidenttruths, should be tempered by a recognition of our ultimate mentallimitations as a species. We cannot negate the axioms stating thatwe perceive, that we are intentional, etc., because this is impossi-ble to live with (is experienced as absurd and self-contradictory).Hence, we must continue to live within the constraints tentativelydescribed by the axioms of psycho-logic and build our technicalconcepts on the semantic primitives of Wierzbicka, because denialof these constraints makes no sense. It appears that we cannot liveour daily lives, including conducting research, without attributingintentionality, learning ability, consciousness, etc., to persons.Since psycho-logic is intended to apply to all persons, and since

there are thousands of languages, terminology becomes important.Psycho-logic can, and probably should, rely on the linguisticresearch of Anna Wierzbicka and her collaborators (1996) for asupply of plausible basic terms. This would also facilitate transla-tion between languages. However, one should remember that,even so, psycho-logic will remain a technical suburb of naturaland culture language (Parrott & Harre, 1991), because it isadapted to suit professional requirements.At the core of the debate between psycho-logic and empirical

researchers, lies the following problematic situation. Mainstreampsychologists are doing empirical research, that is, trying to learnfrom experience about their own species, while the individualsthey study are themselves continuously learning from their ownexperiences. In other words, we are trying to predict the behaviorof persons, who themselves are trying to predict what will happen,including what we will do. This is the general type of situationinvestigated in game-theory, but, in reality, it is even more com-plicated by the frequent interference of complex fortuitous events.

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To the extent that the investigated phenomena nevertheless con-tain some limited stability, they invite empirical research, whereasto the extent that they predominantly contain irreversibly chang-ing, interactive, and fortuitous events, they invite only a prioriconceptual analysis, and abstract strategies.

CONCLUSION

A consequence of the arguments presented here is that the tradi-tional project of psychology as an empirical science is seen ascrumbling. It originated in an ideal inherited from natural science,and in the human tendency to look for invariances on which to basepredictions. A century of psychology has resulted in the develop-ment of two very different domains of activity, a statistical aca-demic domain, relying on tests and experiments, and a practicedomain, increasingly relying on tests and manuals. As argued here,the nature of psychological processes has proved to be an obstacleto both part-projects. The academic project has deteriorated byattempting to ignore the fortuitous, indefinitely complex interactivevariability of persons and situations, by creating a simplified statis-tical facade. Specifically, this involves accepting every statisticallysignificant deviation from pure chance as a ‘‘finding’’, even thoughthe usually very small differences or correlations rarely are of muchhelp in practical decisions which always depend on a very highnumber of factors. Similarly, psychological practice has deterio-rated into a multitude of diagnoses, tests, and manuals, all engulfedin statistical analysis and ignoring the complexities of personalinteraction, and the often minuscule size of the reported differencesand correlations. The gap between research reports and actualpractice is well known (Cohen, Sargent & Sechrest, 1986;Morrow-Bradley & Elliott, 1986).What remains as a possibility is an image of the psychologist

having had to abandon the former dream of arriving at bothdetailed and universally valid empirically based predictions, andrealizing that what is universally valid about human beings is onlywhat is given necessarily and a priori (from a built-in and sharedspecies-specific knowledge), and what is predictable in detail isfound only within each unique case. This amounts to a pictureof a practicing psychologist, equipped with psycho-logic(Smedslund, 2012b) and the bricoleur-model (Smedslund, 2012a),and aiming at understanding, and being of help to, ever newunique persons and institutions.Psycho-logic may be seen as trivial since it adds little new to

the understanding of human life. It is merely the outcome oforganizing and axiomatizing parts of what is usually referred to aspsychological ‘‘common sense’’. We have common-senseexplanations for almost everything that happens. Scientific psy-chologists are supposed to improve our understanding beyondcommon sense, and they have tried to do so by empirical research.Since the practically relevant outcome of this is debatable, I haveinstead formulated the bricoleur-model of practice (Smedslund,2012a). The model pictures the psychologist as encountering evernew unique clients without relying on any fixed principles, exceptthe axioms of psycho-logic, but creatively devising new interven-tions, and drawing on all kinds of relevant earlier experiences,either from practice, research, or personal life. Attempts at classifi-cation are, per definition, more or less distortive of the image ofthe client, since the unique cannot be classified. The only supports


in this practice are the axioms of psycho-logic which describe allhumans, and furthermore, the persons’ language and culture, andknowledge of the particular person and his or her particular lifesituation. The psychologist’s efforts to help clients cannot be gen-erally characterized since they are the outcome of how a uniqueprofessional person works with unique persons in unique life-situ-ations. In so far as treatments can be generally characterized at all,they involve features that can be derived from psycho-logic. Thisis particularly clear when the practice is partly characterized asthe building of mutual trust, and cooperation to find solutions(Smedslund, 2012b).Psychology cannot be an empirical science in the traditional

sense of the natural sciences. Even though persons are biologicalorganisms, and even though the study of brain processes mayappear to be close to psychology, the prospect of useful system-atic interaction between the two fields is quite problematic (Ben-nett & Hacker, 2008). The reason is that psychology is adiscipline that builds on the conceptual framework implicit inhuman language. Its roots lie in a communication system devel-oped by humans over immense periods of time to serve theirsocial life in communities. This communication system has devel-oped without modern physical science and without knowledge ofbrain processes and is, therefore, quite incommensurable with theconcepts that describe neurological processes. We are dealing herewith two incompatible ways of describing the world. There are nopractical bridges between, for instance, irony of a remark or thecontent of a quarrel, and biochemical synaptic processes. Hence,it may be a mistake to think that biochemical analysis can contrib-ute in a large scale to psychology or vice versa. The concepts andpractical contexts appear incommensurable. We need biochemicalknowledge about the way the brain functions, and we need psy-chology to understand the way people function in interaction witheach other in socially constructed realities.

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Received 5 January 2012, accepted 20 February 2012

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Psycho-logic: Some thoughts and after-thoughts