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0V. A. Medintsev Modern operationalism in unification perspective
Vladislav Medintsev
Annotation: In a commentary to E. Vessonen's article "Respectful Operationalism" published in volume 16, I show similarity main goals ancestors philosophy And methodologies operationalism With one sides, And supporters of the idea and integration of psychological knowledge - on the other. I argue that despite the methodological differences of integrative approaches, in their basic provisions they retain similarities between themselves and with the initial attitudes of operationalists, and that E. Vessonen's article provides the necessary material for such a demonstration. Although methodology respectful operationalism, proposed by the author articles, I considered unproductive, But her thoughtful approach to the problem leaves the impression that she may create a more perfect one in the future scientific product.
Keywords : respectful operationalism, theory and methodology of integration in psychology.
Citation: Medintsev V. A. Modern operationalism in unification perspective. Теоретичш до^дження у психологи: монографiчна серiя. Сост. В. О. Медшцев. Том 22. 2024. С. 73-77. doi: 10.24412/2616-6860-2024-3-73-77.
The volume 16 of Theoretical Research in Psychology contains a translation of E. Vessonen's article "Respectful Opera-tionalism," which, I believe, deserves a separate comment. The fact is that in my publication (in this same volume) I noted the similarity of tasks, which they put before by yourself supporters integration in psychology and adherents of operationalist philosophy. It is noteworthy that the idea of operationalism and its methodolo gical specifications, according to The claims of many of its adherents are applicable to all scientific disciplines, but the intensity of the debate and the bulk of publications concern human studies, then How V natural sciences this topic for a long time has been pushed out of the discussion. And this is despite the fact that the emergence of operational-ism took place precisely in the field of natural sciences and in relation to him.
As I have already noted, the founders of operationalism argued their position with entirely rational premises. In particular, Bridgman wrote about the desire to make science "safe," and drew a comparison with the state of conceptual confusion in physics that arose as a result of the unreflective extension of old concepts to new areas of research, and operationalism will protect against such unreflective extensions thus making scientists less vulnerable to conceptual confusion. In addition, natural scientists and psychologists, who saw the progress of
their sciences in an operationalist perspective, hoped that op-erationalism would ensure intersubjective agreement and repeatability of conclusions - something both saw as urgently needed. For psychologists, especially important was the hope that defining concepts in terms of operations could lead to the elimination of errors and disagreements, which usually accompany conclusions relatively non-operative concepts, which so rich psychology.
Like all other implications of natural scientific instruments, V psychology theory And methodology operationalism has generated heated debates and, in general, rejection. The author of the article distinguishes two histories of scientific progress. In one, the story of a rejected after careful analysis philosophical theories operationalism, and in the other, the history of experimental activity (operationalization) that persists because it has stood the test of time and scientific scrutiny. Thus, although there is no consensus on how operation-alization should be carried out in psychology, this activity permeates all psychological research. For example, textbooks regularly emphasize the need to operationalize target concepts to make them measurable.
Back in the 1970s, G. A. Ball wrote about the special importance of improving the conceptual apparatus in the field of intelligence research, which he was then studying, drawing attention to the interdisciplinary nature of the problems related
to intelligence research (and proposed his own version of a system of concepts for describing objects applications intelligence) [4 ]. A later he argued for the need to search as much as possible more clear descriptions items research in human studies (primarily in psychology), in connection with which studies were then conducted on the use of systemic representations in psychology and others sciences, A Also developments methods universalization of knowledge representation and formalized descriptions in human studies [1 ; 2 ].
In his publications, V. N. Panferov writes about the need to develop a holistic construct of mental organizations human And O new search objective foundations of interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge of different sciences about man [5] . The problem of the holistic reproduction of human psychology as a psychological reality in scientific research activities and synthesis knowledge on man, by his opinion, this is a key problem of psychological knowledge.
Detailing the situation of fragmentation, A. V. Yurevich clarifies that integrative moods reflect not the personal feelings and intentions of psychologists, but the internal need of modern psychological sciences And unsatisfactoriness her many years of development along a confrontational path [1 ]. As a result, three fundamental "gaps" have formed in the structure of psychological knowledge. "Horizontal" - between
the main psychological theories and the corresponding psychological directions (behaviorism, cognitivism, psychoanalysis, etc.). "Vertical" : between different levels of explanation of the mental (intrapsychic, physiological, social, etc.). "Diagonal" - between academic and practical psychology. These three "gaps" have given rise to the general disintegration of psychology - their overcoming or reduction appear to be the main directions of its integration.
In addition to the analysis of A. V. Yurevich, V. A. Mazilov identifies and examines the problem of the paradigmatic status of psychology, the problem of the subject of psychology (multiplicity of approaches), the problem classification of methods of psychology [3] . He comes to the conclusion that The main difficulty on the path to integration is the lack of a special apparatus that would allow it to be implemented. Accordingly, the issue of developing a methodology, theory and specific technology for integration is on the agenda.
Thus, in the studies of problems of theory and methodology psychological sciences we find And evidence of their disintegration, and indications of the direction of work to overcome the current crisis situation through the improvement of the conceptual apparatus of psychology, the development of methods universalization of knowledge representation and formalization descriptions.
In foreign literature on integration, practically the same assessments of the situation in psychological science are given. TO for example, G. Henriques [7] outlines 5 problems of psychology: (1) No generally accepted definitions; (2) no agreement subject studies; (3) is happening the proliferation of overlapping and redundant concepts; (4) there are a large number of paradigms with fundamentally different epistemo-logical premises; (5) the emphasis on specialization is placed at the expense of generalization. In substantiating his multi-component integrative approach, AW Staats points out that the renaming of concepts, methods, principles, phenomena , and other scientific products is generally accepted practice, which does not raise objections, although this practice is contrary to the commitment, economy and non-redundancy of science (italics V. M.) [20]. Speaking about the fact that the unity of language is an important part of the economy of knowledge, recognized as the goal of science, he connects this unity with the possibility and prospect have only one theoretical language instead of many. Thus, the author implicitly translates opera-tionalist goals to the level of construction theories.
In her article, E. Vessonen, after analyzing the history and current state of operationalism in the philosophy of science and psychology, substantiates and presents her version of respectful operationalism . Her goal was to implement the main message of the operationalist methodology in such a way that the new theoretical construct would be free of the shortcomings that were revealed during the critical debates over the
"strong" and "weak" versions of operationalist approaches in psychology. The result was a kind of mediation approach, in which many points for critical attacks were indeed eliminated. However, this resulted in a significant impoverishment of the methodological idea of operationalism, so I have doubts about the methodological value of this product. Her statements that the respectful operationalist Not knows what attributes or entities its measurement tracks, its operational concept is one of many concepts legitimately designated by the same term, and other similar theses indicate that the fundamental goal of op-erationalism, which makes it related to the idea of integrating psychological knowledge, has been forgotten. Perhaps, local benefits of this approach do exist for narrow methodological directions of psychological measurements (at least, its author gives some examples of what looks like the unification of components of empirical research).However, this does not look like a new methodological solution, but rather resembles those heuristic rationalizations that psychologists have long mastered and widely use.
Nevertheless, I express my support for E. Vessonen's aspiration to improve the methodology of psychological science. Considering her deep and thoughtful approach to the problems studied and her research, I hope that her subsequent research will bring tangible benefits in the creation of tools for the integration of psychological knowledge.
References
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Medintsev V. A. Methodological foundations of psychological research in the works of G. Ball and V. Druzhinin
