Social discourse and moral science

Daniel S. Robinson

pp. 17-28

in: Stam, Leendert Mos, Warren Thorngate, Bernie Kaplan (eds), Recent trends in theoretical psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1993

Abstract

It would seem to be beyond dispute that the discipline of Psychology would have to address the moral dimensions of life and the conditions favoring human relationships grounded in considerations of justice. Yet, it is equally apparent that Psychology's traditional modes of inquiry and explanation are especially ill suited to the task. What is encouraging about more recent developments-such as 'social constructionism", hermeneutics, and so-called "post-modernist" perspectives-is their liberation from the methods and explanatory constraints of positivistic psychologies. Nonetheless, these same developments tend to rest on assumptions also inimical to serious inquiries into the foundations of moral thought and judgment. Absent a willingness to take certain aspects of human nature as definitory, and to recognize the non-relative consequences yielded by this nature, the newer psychologies are proving to be as remote from the moral arena as those they set out to replace.