3. Is Ameliorative Psychology really normative?

Ameliorative Psychology is no more normative than any other science. Like

Ameliorative Psychology, physics, chemistry and biology give us new reasoning

strategies that are better than old ones all the time. We ought to adopt

these reasoning strategies for solving certain problems, and people often do. So

the mere fact that Ameliorative Psychology is in the business of giving us new

and better ways to reason doesn’t make it any more normative than physics,

chemistry, biology, etc. This calls into question your philosophy of science

approach to epistemology. There is no reason for us to begin our epistemological

speculations with Ameliorative Psychology rather than with any other

successful branch of empirical science.

When there is a theoretical improvement in (say) chemistry, it improves

our thinking only by improving our knowledge of the world—our knowledge

of the subject matter of chemistry. Theoretical advancements in chemistry

do not improve our knowledge of ourselves as human cognizers. They get us closer to the truth about the chemical world. Ameliorative Psychology

is like chemistry in that it improves our thinking about certain

aspects of the world. For example, Goldberg’s Rule improves our thinking

about diagnosing psychiatric patients, credit scoring models improve our

reasoning about credit risks, etc. So, like any science, Ameliorative Psychology

helps us get closer to the truth about the world. But Ameliorative

Psychology also improves our knowledge of ourselves as reasoners. At its

best, Ameliorative Psychology identifies how people reason about a problem

and offers ways to better reason about the problem. And from these

findings, we can pretty immediately draw generalizations about how we

ought to reason. From our perspective, what makes Ameliorative Psychology

special from a normative perspective—what differentiates it from

other sciences—is that the generalizations drawn about how we ought to

reason can (in principle at least) put pressure on our deepest epistemological

judgments about how we ought to reason.

You claim that Ameliorative Psychology yields generalizations about how we

ought to reason while other sciences do not. But this is not obvious. It is clearly

possible that we might be able to draw generalizations about how we ought to

reason from attending to the character of theoretical advances in the natural

sciences. Further, given that the natural sciences offer us the most powerful

ways of reasoning about the world that we have, it seems, in fact, plausible to

suppose that we might be able to extract lessons about how we ought to

reason. For example, suppose one believed that unification is an important

virtue in successful scientific theories (Friedman 1974, Kitcher 1981). One

might reasonably draw a generalization about how we ought to reason—we

ought to seek unification in our belief systems. If this is right, then there really

is no distinction in the ‘normative’ status of Ameliorative Psychology and

other sciences.

This is a tricky objection. We expect to be criticized for our extreme

naturalism. But this objection suggests our approach is not extreme

enough. It says that it’s not just that we can extract epistemological lessons

from Ameliorative Psychology, we can extract epistemological lessons

from all the sciences (or at least all the successful sciences). So epistemology

isn’t just the philosophy of psychology (or the philosophy of

Ameliorative Psychology), it’s the philosophy of all the (successful) sciences!

We have no principled objections to this attempt to push us toward

a more radical naturalism. Perhaps we can extract epistemological lessons

from (say) physics that can put pressure on our deepest epistemological judgments about how individuals ought to reason. Whatever else might be

said about this project, it is certainly going to be difficult. It is going to be

hard to extract surprising lessons from physics about how people ought to

reason in their day-to-day lives. As we argue in chapters 2 and 9, the

lessons of Ameliorative Psychology for how people ought to reason are

fairly clear. So this objection does nothing to undermine our approach.

There are fairly clear—and quite surprising—epistemological lessons to

extract from Ameliorative Psychology. That’s what we have tried to do. If

it should turn out that there are surprising lessons to extract from other

areas of science, that’s great! We await those results.

Ameliorative Psychology is no more normative than any other science. Like

Ameliorative Psychology, physics, chemistry and biology give us new reasoning

strategies that are better than old ones all the time. We ought to adopt

these reasoning strategies for solving certain problems, and people often do. So

the mere fact that Ameliorative Psychology is in the business of giving us new

and better ways to reason doesn’t make it any more normative than physics,

chemistry, biology, etc. This calls into question your philosophy of science

approach to epistemology. There is no reason for us to begin our epistemological

speculations with Ameliorative Psychology rather than with any other

successful branch of empirical science.

When there is a theoretical improvement in (say) chemistry, it improves

our thinking only by improving our knowledge of the world—our knowledge

of the subject matter of chemistry. Theoretical advancements in chemistry

do not improve our knowledge of ourselves as human cognizers. They get us closer to the truth about the chemical world. Ameliorative Psychology

is like chemistry in that it improves our thinking about certain

aspects of the world. For example, Goldberg’s Rule improves our thinking

about diagnosing psychiatric patients, credit scoring models improve our

reasoning about credit risks, etc. So, like any science, Ameliorative Psychology

helps us get closer to the truth about the world. But Ameliorative

Psychology also improves our knowledge of ourselves as reasoners. At its

best, Ameliorative Psychology identifies how people reason about a problem

and offers ways to better reason about the problem. And from these

findings, we can pretty immediately draw generalizations about how we

ought to reason. From our perspective, what makes Ameliorative Psychology

special from a normative perspective—what differentiates it from

other sciences—is that the generalizations drawn about how we ought to

reason can (in principle at least) put pressure on our deepest epistemological

judgments about how we ought to reason.

You claim that Ameliorative Psychology yields generalizations about how we

ought to reason while other sciences do not. But this is not obvious. It is clearly

possible that we might be able to draw generalizations about how we ought to

reason from attending to the character of theoretical advances in the natural

sciences. Further, given that the natural sciences offer us the most powerful

ways of reasoning about the world that we have, it seems, in fact, plausible to

suppose that we might be able to extract lessons about how we ought to

reason. For example, suppose one believed that unification is an important

virtue in successful scientific theories (Friedman 1974, Kitcher 1981). One

might reasonably draw a generalization about how we ought to reason—we

ought to seek unification in our belief systems. If this is right, then there really

is no distinction in the ‘normative’ status of Ameliorative Psychology and

other sciences.

This is a tricky objection. We expect to be criticized for our extreme

naturalism. But this objection suggests our approach is not extreme

enough. It says that it’s not just that we can extract epistemological lessons

from Ameliorative Psychology, we can extract epistemological lessons

from all the sciences (or at least all the successful sciences). So epistemology

isn’t just the philosophy of psychology (or the philosophy of

Ameliorative Psychology), it’s the philosophy of all the (successful) sciences!

We have no principled objections to this attempt to push us toward

a more radical naturalism. Perhaps we can extract epistemological lessons

from (say) physics that can put pressure on our deepest epistemological judgments about how individuals ought to reason. Whatever else might be

said about this project, it is certainly going to be difficult. It is going to be

hard to extract surprising lessons from physics about how people ought to

reason in their day-to-day lives. As we argue in chapters 2 and 9, the

lessons of Ameliorative Psychology for how people ought to reason are

fairly clear. So this objection does nothing to undermine our approach.

There are fairly clear—and quite surprising—epistemological lessons to

extract from Ameliorative Psychology. That’s what we have tried to do. If

it should turn out that there are surprising lessons to extract from other

areas of science, that’s great! We await those results.