The case against psychology, and for philosophy

The American New Age was an attempt to find in a pop psychology the elements of a new religion. It was destined to fail just for that reason.

There is no science that can tell people how to live a good life or how our society can be improved. Only a philosophy can do that. A religion, or an artwork, can suggest all kinds of possibilities, but by itself it cannot decide them. People are left with their preferences.

Or with beliefs that are backed by some theory or story (that is, history). The study of history explains many things but authorizes nothing, justifies nothing. People who mostly learn by studying history will know much about the world and its people, but if you ask them what they believe to be true and affirm, they will tend to be evasive, because the study of the past can at best illuminate those questions without answering them. Social and natural science are similar, except that they do generate positive theories. The theories tell us what some aspect of the world is like. They may even tell us what certain kinds of things "are." They explain. The study of law cannot tell us what is right because it rests on principles that can be elucidated but not justified; those that can be are simply not law's primary facts, which are given in constitutions perhaps, but justified only in a philosophy of law. Psychology is a science many people believe in, but it rarely tells us anything except what is wrong with some people, others or ourselves. True, it can positively describe some kind of "mental health," but cannot say why that normative state, whatever it includes, is good and we should want it. A philosophy can, if it argues that we should want to be "healthy," perhaps because then we will be happy, and that is good. But there are lots of people who claim to be happy or enforce happiness, usually in connection with some particular idea of what it is or involves, and who posit conclusions that seem far indeed from being self-evident truths.

The only discipline of thought (one that works in language, with statements held to be true - and not, say, just expressions of a state of mind) that can tell us how we should want to live our lives is philosophy. This is because it is the only discipline that always questions its presuppositions, instead of resting on claims that are held true by authority. (That of the experts who "know," or their "science," which, considered as such, is little different from religion when it posits dogmas and demands belief in them independently of rational examination, which is implied in a belief's being mandated). Art and art criticism can much illuminate our thinking, but these discourses posit possibilities that may interest us but that they cannot decide on.

Psychology in particular is a cynical science, because it really is only negative. It can only posit ideas of health that are either unreflectively justified and perhaps even badly understood, or merely indicate the absence of illness, or both.

Suppose we had a society that was organized around business. The task of business is to get things done, and as well, meaning as effectively and perhaps efficiently, as possible. The choice of what things are to be done can be left to "democracy," but this either begs the question of justification or answers it by presupposing that the good is what is willed by those to whom it applies. This is easily preferred to its negation, which is the tyranny of some ruling in accordance with their own will over other people in potential discord with and opposition to theirs, but it rests on the empty tautology that the good, for any person or subject, is what they will. This means that people should want what they want. Thus democracy becomes a legitimation for a technological society organized in terms of the business that is doing effectively what needs to be done in order to get what the sovereign people want.

Suppose too that this society has "sciences" that enable its managing experts to solve problems that occur in the process of getting things done. Those problems could be technical economic ones, they could be other "political" problems of management, or they could be problems with some of the people who are involved in doing the things that need to be done. In this last case, this science would be a psychology. It would be essentially an abnormal psychology. That is because it would target for interventions those people to whom is attributed failures to get things done as effectively (or efficiently, and profitably) as might otherwise be the case. These failures could be called dysfunctions, and the individuals themselves may be said to have behavior, or motivating thoughts, affects, or motivating tendencies (an "illness," a biological disposition judged inferior to the tasks in question that the persons are supposed to perform), that are "dysfunctional." That would be what is wrong with them (note that this is not the same as unhappiness, whatever happiness and its lack are defined to be or consist of; note that this too might turn out to be a rather empty concept; maybe it means successful in getting what one wants, so that functionality of a system, organization, enterprise, or project would be theoretically dependent on the well-functioning lives of individuals: the team will achieve what it "wants" or needs if and only if the individuals get what they want, which will likely mean that their own desires will be configured to "autonomously" coincide with the needs of the enterprise, organization, task or project, or system.

People will be called out if they make mistakes, do something judged inappropriate (our cancel culture is a very corporate-oriented phenomenon), or fail. That failure might already "feel" unhappy, but if not, it is very likely sanctioned so that the individual will be made to feel unhappy as a result.

And an (abnormal) psychology would be the principal tool in this, serving the purpose of a set of correctional procedures.

I suggest that what is wrong with this is that it would be unhappy, it would be sad. Why? Because a priori in this system any remarkable event that is not useful for the enterprise will be by definition unhappy. The psychology will drive treatments designed to repair the behavior of those persons whose behavior is dysfunctional. It would stand to reason then that it will not offer them much or anything that could be associated with a positive idea of happiness, as opposed to the correction of a negative, a failure of this normal functioning that is presumed happy.

In particular, nothing positive could be exhibited as a possible form of life that could be affirmed and pursued, apart from things continuing to be as they are. This means that there would be no beauty. It might mean that the arts would be approached and thought of critically, as pointing out what works badly or makes people unhappy. Such a critical tendency might be political, if it bears on questioning institutions, practices, and other social phenomena. Otherwise, it would be, in effect if not intention, a psychological criticism of individual failures, be they tragic, comic, or something else.

If there is beauty, if there can, even or at least theoretically, be site of the emergence of possibilities that are different from and happier than the life we presently have, then some other science or form of thought would be needed to identify and pursue it. I say that would be an ethics, and doubtless also a politics and an aesthetics, and it would be imaginable in art but achievable as a discourse (consisting of propositions and their entailments and justifying principles) in and as, uniquely, philosophy.

If philosophy is possible, a politics is because a philosophy can enable us to construct a theory of a happier form of life and how we get to it, either as individuals (ethics) or collectively (politics). If philosophy is possible, not only one's own time but a happier future can be grasped in thought. If instead there is only history and science, then there is only the past and the present. Science can tell us what things there are, what kinds they come in, and why they are as they are.

A society that does not value philosophy will encourage curious people instead to satisfy their curiosity for "knowledge" with bits of information about what the world is like. Then every expression of dissatisfaction will be met with a cynical sigh, affirming that this is just how it is, and if you don't like it, someone else will be competing to take your place. This is all there is, take it or leave it. Or, as someone says to the main character in "Twelve Years a Slave," "remember, you're just a slave." Your life is sad, and that's how it is. There is knowledge that will confirm such opinions, but there are inquiries that doubt them and wonder if there can be anything else. There very likely can be.