What Is the Problem of Psychology and Why Is It Important?

One of my goals this year is to make people more aware of something I call the “problem of psychology.” It is a clearly defined problem and when you learn to see it, it helps you realize that there are deep and profound problems with the way modern academic systems frame our knowledge about the world.

Given that it is now 2023, it is perhaps fitting to frame our initial understanding by asking the AI chatbot ChatGPT: “What is the problem of psychology?” Here is the answer it gave:

It's not accurate to say that psychology has a single, overarching problem that it is trying to solve. Rather, psychology is a broad field that encompasses a wide range of topics and aims to understand the many facets of human behavior, thought, and experience. Some specific areas that psychologists might study include perception, cognition, emotion, development, personality, social behavior, and mental health. Within these broad areas, psychologists may be interested in understanding how people process information, how they form and maintain relationships, how they cope with stress and adversity, and how they learn and adapt to new situations. The goals of psychology are varied, but they generally involve gaining a better understanding of how people function and using that knowledge to improve people's lives.

This is a good summary of the current state of psychology. At the same time, if you know how to read the chatbot’s answer, it reveals the problem I am referring to. So, what, exactly, is “the” problem I am pointing to and why is it so important? The problem of psychology is the fact that there is no consensual agreement—even in broad outlines—among psychologists regarding the thing(s) in the world that psychological science is about.

For a remarkable contrast, consider the science of biology. All biologists agree that biology is the science of life. Life, defined here as the set of all living things and their structures and behaviors, is a clear and obvious set of things in the world. We can look to the physical sciences and see the same pattern. For example, physics is the science of the behavior of energy and matter across scales, from particles to galaxies to the shape of the whole universe. The behavioral patterns of matter and energy are obvious things in the world that the physical sciences are about.

The point is that the various natural sciences, from physics to chemistry to biology and all the sciences in between, are about well-defined things in the world. We can introduce a technical term to be clear about this, and say that each of these sciences has a clear “ontological referent” for its subject matter. For example, the behavior of energy and matter across scales of space and time is the ontological referent for physics. We can also identify the nervous system as the ontological referent for neuroscience, and the behavior of living organisms as the ontological referent for biology. In each case, the domain of science aligns with a clear ontological referent.

This alignment between the domain of science and the ontological referent breaks down when we get to psychology. That is, there is no agreement among psychologists about the thing in the world that the science of psychology is about. Consider, for example, that some psychologists say psychology is about behavior, while others say it is about the mind or mental processes. For some psychologists, virtually all animals exhibit mental processes or behaviors of interest. And there is a specific branch of the field called comparative psychology that examines mental processes throughout the animal kingdom. And yet other psychologists claim, similar to ChatGPT, that psychology is only concerned with human behavior, thoughts, or conscious experiences. Of course, behavior and mind and animals and humans are very different categories in the world. And hopefully that makes clear and drives home the point that psychologists cannot agree on what psychology is about. The science has no clear ontological referent. And this is the problem of psychology.

It can be stated in the form of a question:

Why do the physical and biological sciences have a clear ontological referent and why does that coherence completely break down when we get to psychology?

In my opinion, this problem should be well-known as one of the great problems in science and philosophy. It used to be the case that many people struggled with this issue. Indeed, to historians of psychology, this problem is known as “the crisis of psychology.” However, even though it is well-documented, over time, the field of psychology lost interest in the problem. They decided that it was something that could not be solved and so they then decided it was not really a problem. My just-released book, A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap, explains in depth why the mainstream view is wrong. It is a very important problem, not just for psychology, but for science and philosophy as well.

My goal for this year is to help other people see why this is such a pressing problem, and why solving it will lead to a transformation in our scientific understanding of the world and our place in it. So, with this blog, I encourage you to increase your awareness of the problem and to wonder why it is the case that scientists have not been able to frame the thing in the world that psychological science is about. In addition, if you know any students in psychology or any professors of psychology, be sure to ask them about the problem and see if they have an answer that makes sense.