Hi Nancy,

  I am uncertain if I am following your question/comment, so I apologize if I am repeating myself. Of course, my personal/theory answer is, yes, we need a theory/framework that includes animal behavior all the way down. But, I was pointing out that there are two issues. One is the ToK version of how psychology should be defined, if we had our language/conceptual system coherently organized around it. And the second isthe way the institution functionally operates in modern society. The two are different.

1. The ToK Version of Psychology

 The ToK states that “psychology” can be defined effectively as a singular entity that also consists of three great branches, basic, human and professional. This argument is spelled out in the chapter, Defining Psychology   from my book. Basic psychology should be, first and foremost, defined as the science of mental behavior (corresponding to the behavior of animals, mediated by the nervous system). This would include comparative psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology, the experimental analysis of behavior of animals in the lab, animal cognition, cognitive/behavioral/affective neuroscience, and all other disciplines of this ilk, including everything to do with animal learning. The attachment describing praying mantis behavior was an analysis of basic mental/psychological behavioral patterns.

Then there is human psychology (the science of human/person mental behavior), which is defined by the ToK as a unique branch of basic psychology because humans also operate at the Cultural dimension of behavioral complexity. The third formal, separate branch the profession of psychology, consisting of licensed health service psychologists (what I train and call “psychological doctors”). Here is a visual depiction of these three branches, offering clear parallels with biology (basic psychology), neuroscience (to human psychology) and medicine (to the profession):

2. The Real/Current world of psychologists

A significant weakness of this conceptual analysis provided by the ToK is that it does not align well with the actual roles and functions of psychologists currently in the world. (It aligns better with how American psychology was organized in 1930s). Thus, a very reasonable critique of my argument goes something like this: “But studying animal behavior is not primarily what psychologists do! Ethology is a generally considered biological discipline and virtually everyone who nowadays researches animal behavior (especially animals like insects!) are biologists by training. So the claim that they should be psychologists fails in practice.”

The point I am making here is that there is a tension and a conceptual misalignment between the definition of the field, its history (at least in America), and what modern psychologists are doing (focusing/working almost solely with humans). Given this, then the question becomes what to do about it. I see three main options.

One option, the option taken by the field so far, is to ignore it. Psychologists are what they do. We don’t have coherence anyway, the field is working fine by the influence it is accruing and number of majors and so forth. Who cares about such issues? There is no universal way to define these things, etc.

Option two and three argue that language coherence matters. However, they take different approaches.

Option two is the ToK option that we reclaim the word psychology to refer to mental behavior and stake out that territory. This is what I mean by what I think should happen. (note: I don’t think this will or can happen because of institutional inertia, but in an ideal world, this is what should happen at the level of conceptual coherence).

Option three is for psychology to formally get out of the animal behavior/learning business, at least in terms of the subject matter that makes up our identity (i.e., the thing we study). That would be considered a separate cluster of sciences perhaps, the Mind/Brain/Animal Behavior Sciences. In this formulation, psychology would have links to it, but not be formally aligned with it or defined by it. This has the advantage of being pretty much what psychologists are actually doing in society. But it has the disadvantage of disconnecting the field from its foundational conceptual roots.

Ok, I hope this makes sense and that I was in the ballpark of clarifying my claims.

Best,
Gregg

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1