Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKAJSPAsian Journal of Social Psychology1367-22232005 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd with the Asian

Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association

April 2005811938original articleCulture in social psychologyYoshihisa Kashima

Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2005) 8: 19–38

Is culture a problem for social psychology?

Yoshihisa Kashima
Department of Psychology, The University of Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia

Culture has been regarded as an anathema to psychology as an empiricist research

tradition. Despite the explosive growth of research on culture and psychology
over the last decade of the 20th century and its importance in Asian social
psychology, the ontological and epistemological tension between psychology as
a science and psychology as a cultural/historical discipline introduced in the
writings of the thinkers of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment still
lingers on in the contemporary discourse of psychology. Clifford Geertz once
ominously suggested that cultural psychology may have chewed more than it can.
In the present paper, the interpretive turn in social science as exemplified
by writings of Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur is reviewed and how it may
impinge on the practice of Asian social psychology as an empirical science
in methodological, epistemological, and ontological respects is discussed. It is
argued here that the current practice of Asian social psychology is largely, though
not entirely, free of the challenges mounted by these theorists, and that Asian
social psychology has an advantage of not being encumbered by this traditional
tension due to a monist ontology that is prevalent in Asia.

Key words: culture, epistemology, indigenous psychology, interpretive approach,

methodology.

Introduction

In 1997, Clifford Geertz, an American anthropologist, a grandfather of symbolic

anthropology, a flag holder of the contemporary intellectual life in the USA, ominously
warned that psychology may have chewed more than it can when it embraced culture within
its theoretical purview.
[Bringing culture in to psychology] amounts to adopting a position that can fairly be called
radical, not to say subversive. It seems very doubtful that such views . . . can be absorbed into
the ongoing traditions of psychological research (or indeed into the human sciences generally)
without causing a fair amount of noise and upheaval (p. 196, Geertz, 2000).
Six years since, has the seemingly innocuous conjunction of culture and psychology
generated the ‘noise and upheaval’ in psychology that Geertz predicted? Is it the case that
‘[b]ringing so large and misshapen a camel as anthropology into psychology’s tent is going
to do more to toss things around than to arrange them in order (Geertz, p. 197)’?
Correspondence: Yoshihisa Kashima, Department of Psychology, The University of Melbourne,
Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia. Email: ykashima@unimelb.edu.au
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology
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20 Yoshihisa Kashima

At the heart of this observation lies one of the most significant epistemological issues for
indigenous psychology as a kind of psychology that places theoretical significance on culture.
As we will see, some have argued that when culture is taken seriously, empiricism is a
mistaken epistemology, and empiricist approaches cannot be used to investigate psychological
processes. Rather, a radically different epistemological approach, which may be called an
interpretive approach, needs to be adopted.
This is a serious matter not just for indigenous psychology, but for Asian social
psychology in particular and, in fact, for social psychology in general. Without a doubt,
Asian social psychology takes culture seriously. Asian Journal of Social Psychology has
championed the discourse on indigenous psychology (Sinha, 1998; Kim, 2000; Pe-Pua &
Protacio-Marcelino, 2000; Yang, 2000; Shams, 2002; also for a somewhat critical view, see
Ng & Liu, 2000), an attempt at taking culture seriously and developing psychology from
within. While cultural psychology (Greenfield, 2000; Shweder, 2000) and cross-cultural
psychology (Berry, 2000; Triandis, 2000) vie for academic supremacy, there emerged a
variety of research papers that are rooted in the cultural, socio-historical, and technological
contexts of Asia. More generally, social psychology has turned to culture as one of the most
significant areas of research in recent years (Kashima, 2001, for a review).
Then, has the attitude to take culture seriously tossed things around in psychology, or at
least in social psychology, as Geertz predicted? My observation is ‘No, it has not. At least,
not yet’. Supposing my observation is right for the time being, it does not mean it will never
do so. Granted, debates and discussions are a source of research activities and growing
knowledge and wisdom. Yet, debates and discussions can be more destructive than
constructive when the foundational bases of the differing views are left unsaid. I wish to do
just that in this paper, namely, to reflect on what makes it so problematic to bring culture into
psychology.

Why is culture a ‘problem’ for psychology?

According to Geertz (2000, p. 196), psychology that takes culture seriously argues that:

culture is socially and historically constructed, . . . . that we assemble the selves we live in out
of materials lying about in the society around us and develop ‘a theory of mind’ to comprehend
the selves of others, that we act not directly on the world but on beliefs we hold about the world,
that from birth on we are all active, impassioned ‘meaning makers’ in search of plausible stories,
and that ‘mind cannot in any sense be regarded as “natural” or naked, with culture thought of as
an add-on’

This summary can provide a starting point for a generic definition of cultural psychology.
Let me rephrase them below.
1 Culture is socially and historically constructed.
2 People construe themselves using concepts and other symbolic structures that are
available.
3 People develop a theory of mind (i.e. a theory of how the mind works) to understand
others.
4 People have beliefs about the world, and they act on those beliefs.
5 People engage in meaningful actions.
6 Culture is constitutive of mind.
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Although Geertz was talking about Jerome Bruner’s cultural psychology here (for
instance, as expressed in his 1990 book, Acts of Meaning), I suspect many contemporary
social psychologists would agree with these ideas. In fact, some of these statements are not
controversial. Even the most traditional social cognitive researchers would agree with (2) (3),
and (4), which constitute the standard model of social cognition in which human individuals
are assumed to possess the mind that can manipulate symbols to form beliefs about the world,
themselves, and others, and act on these beliefs. The other three, (1), (5) and (6), in
combination assert that humans construct their own meanings (i.e. meaningful concepts and
practices), and the meanings in turn constitute their own minds. Let me call this the thesis of
symbolic self-reflexivity. As we will see later, symbolic self-reflexivity thesis is one of the
basic assumptions of indigenous psychology and, I would argue, much of contemporary social
psychology. What makes the culture concept problematic for psychology is this symbolic
self-reflexivity thesis, which resonates with the long-standing metatheoretical division
between natural scientific and cultural scientific metatheories within psychology (Kashima,
2000a).
As an academic discipline, psychology grew out of the Enlightenment tradition in Western
Europe. This is not to say that reflection about human psychology had not gone on until then.
Any cultural tradition worth its salt has cumulated such knowledge and wisdom over the
course of human history. The human capacity to attribute others’ thoughts and desires, and
to regard oneself as a target of thought and reflect on one’s own thoughts and wants, and to
abstract such insights and reflections and systematize them into a communicable form must
surely be a universal capacity with its basis in evolution (Tomasello, 1999). Nonetheless,
psychology as an institutionalized discipline in an academic setting (if not the whole of the
contemporary university as an institution of public learning and education) is a product of
the modern Western European and North American cultural tradition. Human nature is
characterized by its capacity to reason, whose behavior is said to be governed by natural law,
which also governs the causal processes of physical nature. As such, early academic
psychology was built on the natural science model, which was couched in the conception of
the person that regarded humanity as part of nature, reducible to the causal processes carried
out by the brain mechanisms, and investigable by experimentation.
However, the counter-Enlightenment tradition of Vico and Herder (Berlin, 1980) took
shape as Dilthey’s Geisteswissenschaften (a translation of his volume I and other drafts to
English were published in 1989) and descriptive psychology (first published in 1894/reprint
in 1977), and its intellectual heirs. In this cultural science model of psychology, the
fundamental premise implied the concept of symbolic self-reflexivity, that humans are self-
constituting beings, in that we humans construct ourselves, and our societies and cultures. To
paraphrase it, we humans make sense of our physical and human world, and act on our
understanding of it. We not only socialize our children and teach younger members of our
society to modify our future society and culture, but also modify our own appearances,
behaviors, and even thoughts, feelings and desires. We construct our social reality by
representing things symbolically in visual, auditory and other forms, making agreements, and
constructing institutions. Clearly, humans do not have total control over what we end up
constructing (see our governments’ attempts at controlling economy as an example!), but it
must be we, and we alone, who participate in the constitution of culture and society. As a
corollary to this main premise, it follows that as humans construct our societies and cultures
in a given period of time, societies and cultures nonetheless change historically over time,
and that insights and knowledge about the workings of a particular group of humans are
contingent on its historical period. To put it simply, the argument is that human agency and
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22 Yoshihisa Kashima

Table 1 Schematic summary of the contrast between natural and cultural science

Natural science Cultural science

Mode of sense making Explanation Understanding (Verstehen)

Key concept Causality Intentionality
Method Experimentation Hermeneutics

self-reflexivity inevitably make human society and culture dynamic (i.e. changing over time)
and knowledge and human activities historically and culturally contingent. (Table 1)
To specify the differences between natural scientific and cultural scientific metatheories
of psychology, Wilhelm Dilthey’s (1989; for scholarly expositions of Dilthey’s work, see
Makkreel, 1975; Kaburagi, 2002) theory of Geisteswissenschaften is probably most useful
and influential. Dilthey was one of the first philosopher-psychologists who discussed this
metatheoretical division in psychology, and argued for a relative independence of a cultural
scientific psychology. According to Dilthey, Geisteswissenschaften (cultural science; or
often translated as human science or human studies) is different from Naturwissenschaften
(natural science), in that Geisteswissenschaften seeks Verstehen, which is often translated
as understanding. In his usage, Verstehen is an empathetic and intuitive understanding of the
subject matter, whereas natural sciences seek a causal explanation as a more detached,
‘external’ sense making. For Dilthey, Verstehen is possible only for human action and its
products; only explanation is possible in natural science where Verstehen cannot be achieved.
For Dilthey, explanation involved a causal explanation; namely, explaining causal relations
among events, whereas Verstehen involved an empathetic understanding of an agent’s beliefs,
desires, happiness and fears, intentions and resolutions, or in short, what we may call the
intentionality of a human agent. Dilthey’s intellectual struggle with this division he created
is symptomatic of the fate of the counter-Enlightenment tradition in psychology.
Nonetheless, these counter-Enlightenment ideas re-emerged in contemporary psychology.
For instance, they are echoed in Gergen’s (1973) now classic social constructionist challenge
to scientific psychology, and his claim that psychology, especially social psychology,
represents historically contingent knowledge. Roughly, this is how the argument goes: If
psychologists develop a theory of human behavior and the theory becomes known to people,
they may modify their behavior in light of the theory. At this point, a new theory of human
behavior will have to be developed to accommodate the modified behavior. The underlying
assumptions are that the humans have agency and are capable of constituting their own social
reality by modifying their own behaviors, and that as humans change their social reality,
different theories of human behavior need to be developed. Hence, psychology is historically
contingent knowledge. Shweder (1984), in launching his brand of cultural psychology, and
Kim (Kim & Berry, 1993), in launching the indigenous psychology movement, both drew
upon the same counter-Enlightenment tradition to justify their research programs. This time,
however, culture was at the forefront, rather than history, as in Gergen’s case. Either way,
the symbolic self-reflexivity of human mind and action, the cornerstone of the counter-
Enlightenment thought, provided the fundamental argument that challenged the natural
science model of psychology. Thus, the concept of symbolic self-reflexivity recalls the long-
standing metatheoretical discord between the natural science and cultural science models of
psychology.
In the contemporary intellectual context, this metatheoretical discord has been played out
as an epistemological and methodological dispute, often as a hermeneutic challenge to logical
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology
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positivism. Logical positivism is a version of empiricist epistemology that reflects the natural
science model of psychology, and a hermeneutic or an interpretive perspective reflects the
cultural science model. With regard to indigenous psychology, this issue emerges as an
epistemological question: ‘Must indigenous psychology adopt a hermeneutic stance, rather
than an empiricist one?’ or ‘Is it incoherent to take empiricist approaches in indigenous
psychology?’ To answer this question, I would like to construct what I take to be the most
important argument for the cultural science model of psychology based on the writings of
two major theorists’ texts: Charles Taylor’s (1971) Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,
and Paul Ricoeur’s (1971) The model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text. I
will then evaluate these arguments from the perspective of a practicing social psychologist
in Asia, who is engaged in psychological research that attempts to take culture and the
symbolic self-reflexivity thesis seriously. In the end, my argument is a general one. There is
nothing incoherent about adopting both an empiricist epistemology and the symbolic self-
reflexivity thesis in social psychology. More specifically, with regard to indigenous
psychology, I would argue that an empiricist indigenous psychology is neither an oxymoron
nor a self-contradiction, but a respectable stance.

Charles Taylor’s hermeneutic social science

Charles Taylor’s (1971) Interpretation and the Sciences of Man is one of the best known
English texts that represent the so-called interpretive turn in social sciences (Rabinow &
Sullivan, 1974), the hermeneutic challenge to logical positivism. He opened this article by
asking a rhetorical question, ‘Is there a sense in which interpretation is essential to explanation
in the sciences of man?’ (p. 25). His answer was clearly in the affirmative. His main thesis
was that an explanation of human action always has an element of interpretation.
In this deceptively simple sentence, two terms, action and interpretation, require further
elaboration. First, interpretation is defined as an epistemic activity to make sense of an
expression for or by a subject (p. 27). According to Taylor, an expression (e.g. human
behavior, or a series of bodily movements involving props and other objects and contexts) is
distinguished from its meaning, and the overt ambiguity and unclarity of the expression is
clarified to bring out its meaning for the person who is investigating the expression. This
investigator may be the actor him- or herself, or someone else. That is, the interpreting subject
can be the very person who is engaged in the expression.
Second, action in his usage refers to a meaningful action, not a muscle spasm due to
facial neuralgia, but an action such as winking. Taylor clarifies the sense in which a human
action is meaningful by stipulating that meaning is of something (in this case, human
behavior), for a subject (a construing person), in a field. For instance, an action (e.g.
subordinate’s demeanor) has a meaning (e.g. respectful) within a field, or the context of
related meanings (e.g. deferential, cringing etc.), which is, in turn, embedded in and
constitutive of social practices that occur in a given social reality. A subordinate’s demeanor
can have a variety of meanings such as ‘deferential, respectful, cringing, mildly mocking,
ironical, insolent, provoking, downright rude’ (p. 33). He suggests that these phrases are
defined within a relevant field that covers the social behaviors that regulate a hierarchical
relationship, and they distinguish different shades of meaning, which are only available in a
society that has a hierarchical structure between a subordinate and the boss, and within the
set of social practices that reproduce the hierarchical structure in their ongoing activities.
Thus, an action has a meaning as distinguished from other related meanings for a person who
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24 Yoshihisa Kashima

Figure 1 Schematic Representation of Taylor’s (1974) Concept of Interpretation.

Note: M1 to M5 are other meanings that are differentiated from the central ‘Meaning’
of a given expression within the relevant field of meanings

is interpreting the action. To this extent, a meaningful action has a triadic conceptual structure
with behavior, its meaning embedded in a field, for a subject.
Figure 1 schematically depicts the relation that defines the concept of interpretation in
Taylor’s theory. The epistemic activity of interpretation is embedded in the triadic relation
among expression, meaning, and construing subject. Taylor observed that the object of a
social scientific inquiry, action, is also embedded in the triadic relation among behavior (as
motor movements in a stream of behaviors), meaning embedded in a field of meanings, and
subject. Both interpretation and action involve the same triadic relation. Taylor’s argument is
that therefore to the extent that the object of an inquiry is a meaningful action, this inquiry
necessarily involves interpretation.
The method of interpretation in this sense (i.e. to interpret a text, a human action, or
whatever) is called hermeneutics (see Palmer, 1969 for an historical and philosophical
exposition). In hermeneutics, an interpretation of a text (or an action in our case) is sought
and established in relation to the interpretations of parts of the text. When a given
interpretation is challenged, justification for the interpretation is sought again by referring to
the interpretations of these parts. Put differently, an interpretation of one part of a text is
justified by an interpretation of other parts of the text, the whole of the text and, eventually,
the language used for the text as a whole. This circularity in justification of an interpretation
has been called ‘hermeneutic circle’. In Taylor’s view, if the purpose of a social science is to
explain a meaningful action, an explanation must be, in part, hermeneutical in this sense of
the term.
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Taylor’s conception of the meaning of human action

Taylor argues that the meaning of a human action is different from the meaning of a word or
other forms of linguistic meaning. Linguistic meaning is of something, in a field, for a subject,
but it is concerned with the relationship between signifiers (e.g. words or symbols) and their
referents in the world. However, in the case of meaning of a human action, which he called
experiential meaning, he suggests that the distinction between signifiers and referents does
not exist. To make this point, he put forward two arguments (p. 34):
1 In ordinary speech, human action is characterized by its purpose and explained by
psychological states such as desires and feelings. For instance, words that describe
experiential meaning such as ‘terrifying’ and ‘attractive’ are closely linked to the words
that describe feelings such as ‘fear’ and ‘desire’, and the words that describe goals such
as ‘safety’ and ‘possession’.
2 In order to identify a psychological state, such as a specific emotion, one needs to relate
it to the situation that has given rise to it and the kind of behavior that is precipitated by
it. However, the situation precipitating a certain emotion and the response precipitated by
the emotion can be understood only in relation to the emotion. For instance, an emotion
such as ‘shame’ is defined in relation to the situation that is ‘shameful’ or ‘humiliating’
and the response such as ‘hiding oneself’. However, the meaning of an action such as
‘hiding oneself’ in this context (e.g. it is not the same as hiding oneself from an aggressive
assailant) is only understandable in relation to the meaning of ‘shame’. In other words,
the meaning of a psychological state that is used to explain a human action in ordinary
speech is defined in relation to the meanings of the situation and the action itself.
In Taylor’s own words, ‘An emotion term like “shame” can be explained only by reference
to other concepts which in turn cannot be understood without reference to shame’ (p. 34).
Put differently, Taylor argues that experiential meaning of human action is defined only in
reference to other concepts, which do not refer to other referents in the world. It is, therefore,
caught in a web of mutually signifying concepts, which are related only to each other within
a closed system of meaning without external anchoring in the world. If this is indeed the case,
how do people come to understand the experiential meaning? Taylor’s answer is that ‘we
have to be in on a certain experience, we have to understand a certain language, not just of
words, but also a certain language of mutual action and communication . . . In the end we are
in on this because we grow up in the ambit of certain common meanings’ (pp. 34–35). In
other words, people can understand the experiential meaning only if they share the same way
of life. This stance amounts to a claim of collective solipsism, according to which only
cultural members can fully understand the experiential meaning - extreme relativism of a
radical indigenous psychology.

Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic social science

Paul Ricoeur is a French phenomenological philosopher, who also made a case for the notion
that human sciences are hermeneutical in a sense similar to Taylor’s. However, his The model
of the text: Meaningful action considered as a text presents the possibility of a hermeneutic
social science that is less radical than that of Taylor’s. Ricoeur argues that meaningful action
can be likened to a written text, and his reasoning is based on the following analogy.
1 A written text, which is a written discourse as opposed to a spoken discourse (or speech),
has four characteristics.
2 A meaningful social action has the same four characteristics.
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Therefore, action is analogous to a written text. To the extent that the hermeneutic method
can be used to interpret a text, it can be used to interpret an action as well.
Then, what are the four characteristics that make a text similar to an action? Ricoeur first
distinguishes discourse from language, and then differentiates written discourse (text) and
spoken discourse (speech). Discourse, according to Ricoeur, occurs between its producer and
its interpreter or audience in real time about something, whereas language as an atemporal
existence is a system abstracted from discourse. In other words, to Ricoeur, language is a
theoretical abstraction, whereas discourse is an event that occurs among concrete people in
time and space. As such, discourse: (i) has temporality, or happens in a specific situation at
a specific time; (ii) has subjectivity, or is generated or produced by people; (iii) has a referent,
or a world that it claims to describe, to express, or to represent; and (iv) has an interlocutor
to whom it is addressed.
How does written discourse differ from speech (spoken discourse)? In a word, written
discourse objectifies spoken discourse, or a speech event, according to Ricoeur. First, writing
‘fixes’ the meaning of the speech event, understood as including all of the locutionary act
(the propositional meaning of what is said), illocutionary act (the speech act implied by the
speech), and perlocutionary act (psychological and social consequences of the speech event).
In this sense, written discourse inscribes the meaning of the fleeting speech event so that it
can be identified and re-identified as having the same meaning. Second, written discourse
distances the writer’s intention from the discourse, whereas there is a certain level of
immediacy for the speaker’s intention in speech. In other words, the meaning making
subject’s intention is more distant in written discourse than in speech. Third, the referent of
spoken discourse is often the immediate and concrete situation common to the interlocutors.
This is the situation that the speakers can identify ostensively by pointing. By contrast,
Ricoeur argues that the referent of written discourse is not the immediate situation, but the
symbolically constructed ‘world’ (as in the expression of the ‘world’ of the classical Greeks,
for instance). Finally, the nature of audience is different between written and spoken
discourse. In speech, the audience is the person who is physically copresent with the speaker;
however, the audience of written discourse is anyone who can read. In other words, a
potential audience of a written text is open, only to be constrained by the reader’s capacity
to read.
Likewise, Ricoeur argues, meaningful action too is objectified. To begin, just as a text
has a fixed meaning in the sense discussed before, the meaning of an action can also be fixed,
for instance, by verbs that describe actions (analogous to locutionary act) and rules that
define speech acts (analogous to illocutionary act). Second, like a text, the meaning of a
social action (especially a complex series of actions) is distanced from the agent’s intention.
It may be the case that given an agent’s specific action, the agent’s intention for it may be
clear, but the action’s consequences do not stop at the immediate situation of its enactment.
Third, a text has a referent that goes beyond the immediate situation of its production;
likewise, an action has its importance that transcends the situation of its initial enactment.
The meaning of an action, in other words, is indicated by the possibility that it may be re-
enacted or reproduced in new situations, or the possibility of its recurrence in multiple
contexts. Finally, just as the meaning of a text may be open to any readers, the meaning of
a social action too is open to interpreters in the future. In summary, Ricoeur argues that a
written text is distanced from the immediate situation of its production in four ways: from
the concrete discursive event, the concrete subject, the concrete ostensive referent, and the
concrete addressee. Likewise, a meaningful action is distanced from the immediate situation
of its enactment in similarly four ways: from the concrete behavioral event, the concrete
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agent, the concrete situation in which it was originally enacted, and the concrete interactant
involved in the action. This way, action can be likened to a text as an objectified entity for
Ricoeur, which can therefore be subjected to a hermeneutic method as a scientific method of
inquiry for human sciences.

Ricoeur’s conception of the meaning of human action

Like Taylor, Ricoeur argues that the meaning of an action can be given by reasons for the
action or what he called ‘motivational background’ of the action. In this ‘motivational
background’, he includes beliefs, desires, and other emotional and motivational states such
as jealousy and revenge. Ricoeur suggests that these psychological terms are used to make
sense of a given action, not only for a person interpreting it (i.e. observer), but also for a
person enacting it (i.e. actor).
In contrast to Taylor, however, Ricoeur argues that the meaning of an action is referential.
That is, the concepts that are used to make sense of the action have a referent world. The
world that serves as the referent of the concepts involved in rendering an action meaningful
is not the world that speakers and listeners refer to by ostention when they are copresent in
the shared world of objects. Rather, it is the socially constructed world in part constituted by
what Searle (1969, 1995) called constitutive rules (the type of rule that says, ‘X counts as Y
in context C’). It is the social reality, which is humanly constructed through the human
capacity for signification (or to use symbols; see Kashima, 2004 for a brief exposition).
Ricoeur insists that the meaning rendering concepts for human action are not circularly
defined in the sense Taylor says they are; they refer to the symbolically constituted world.

Hermeneutic models of the explanation of social action

One of the fundamental differences between Taylor’s and Ricoeur’s hermeneutic social
sciences lies in their models of the explanation of meaningful social action. In this discussion,
it is important to draw a distinction between two senses of ‘explanation’ in this type of
discourse. First, there is the typical English sense of the word, explanation. As both Taylor
and Ricoeur noted, people typically explain a meaningful human action in terms of the agent’s
beliefs, desires, intentions and emotions (Kashima et al., 1998; Malle et al., 2001), namely,
psychological dispositions and states that involve the agent’s intentionality in the technical
sense that philosophers use the term (Stich, 1983). Because these concepts that refer to
psychological states and dispositions are used in everyday discourse, they are often called
‘folk psychological’ explanations of human action. Taylor and Ricoeur both agree that a
version of folk psychological explanation provides a human scientific explanation of a
meaningful social action. However, Taylor suggests that the folk psychological concepts are
only circularly defined, without external referents, whereas Ricoeur insists that they do have
an external referent in the sense described before, the world constituted by constitutive rules.
Second, ‘explanation’ may be used in contra-distinction with Verstehen. As noted earlier,
in Dilthey’s usage, Verstehen is an empathetic and intuitive understanding of the subject
matter and explanation is a more detached, ‘objectified’ and external sense making of the
subject matter. For Dilthey, Verstehen is possible only for human action; only explanation is
possible in natural science. The problem for Dilthey was that in order for a human science
to be a science, a rigorous and disciplined study of human activities, a human struggle for
justified knowledge, it must go beyond a mere subjective impression and attain a degree of
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objectivity. Yet, to Dilthey, this seemed to be a difficult task; how can someone’s meaningful
action understood in terms of his or her psychological dispositions and states be an external
explanation, rather than Verstehen? Ricoeur’s vision of human science is an answer to
Dilthey’s puzzle. He takes pains to establish that human action is more like an objectified
text than an immediate speech and, therefore, explanation is possible even if the subject matter
is a meaningful human action. Taylor, on the other hand, does not address the question of
explanation. His vision of hermeneutic social science does not draw a sharp distinction
between Verstehen and explanation.
In Taylor’s model of the explanation of human action, then, folk psychological concepts
are only understood by those who comprehend and use the language in which those concepts
are embedded, and those concepts become mutually intelligible among those who use the
language simply because they are ‘in on a certain experience’. The lived experience of those
who use the folk psychological concepts may be understood by virtue of the shared experience
in the way of life in the community and, therefore, shared intersubjective meanings. To Taylor,
it is this shared experience and intersubjectivity that sets the boundary of the mutual
intelligibility of the explanation of meaningful human action. In this model, the meaning of
comprehension implied in ‘mutual intelligibility’ above is coextensive with a mixture of
Verstehen and explanation, or the semantic field that is covered by the both concepts. By
contrast, Ricoeur’s model regards folk psychological concepts as embedded in the symbolic
system that holistically refers to the world, which is, nonetheless, in part, symbolically
constituted. Although Ricoeur does not explicitly state this, I would read him as suggesting
that explanation may be achieved by methodically explicating what may be regarded as
constitutive rules of this symbolically constituted social reality.

Hermeneutic social science as a critique of logical positivist

social science

Despite the differences, Taylor’s and Ricoeur’s visions for social sciences are similar in many
respects. For instance, both regard meaningful human action as the subject matter of social
sciences. They both argue that interpretation is an important aspect of social science
understood as such. Both Taylor and Ricoeur suggest that hermeneutic methods must be part
of the methods of this type of social science, and discuss epistemological implications of
hermeneutic methods. They argue that: (i) there can be two or more explanations for a given
human action; and (ii) in order to determine which is a better explanation than the others,
researchers need to refer to relevant information to settle the dispute, and this process involves
hermeneutic methods.
There are some differences between the two, however. On the one hand, Taylor is
skeptical about the possibility that the hermeneutic process of scholarly argumentation and
disputation can eventually show that one explanation is more valid than the others:

We cannot escape an ultimate appeal to a common understanding of the expressions, of the

‘language’ involved. This is one way of trying to express what has been called the ‘hermeneutical
circle’. What we are trying to establish is a certain reading of text or expressions, and what we
appeal to as our grounds for this reading can only be other readings. The circle can also be put
in terms of part-whole relations: we are trying to establish a reading for the whole text, and for
this we appeal to readings of its partial expression; and yet because we are dealing with meaning,
with making sense, where expression only make sense or not in relation to others, the readings
of partial expressions depend on those of others, and ultimately of the whole.
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Put in forensic terms, . . . we can only convince an interlocutor if at some point he shared our
understanding of the language concerned. If he does not, there is no further step to take in rational
argument; we can try to awaken these intuitions in him or we can simply give up; argument will
advance us no further. But of course the forensic predicament can be transferred into my own
judging: if I am this ill-equipped to convince a stubborn interlocutor, how can I convince myself?
How can I be sure? Maybe my intuitions are wrong or distorted, maybe I am locked into a circle
of illusion. (p. 28)

Ricoeur, on the other hand, is somewhat more optimistic. Citing Eric Hirsch’s (1967)
Validity in Interpretation, he suggests that hermeneutic methods can move a ‘guess’ about a
text, which is equated to Verstehen (understanding), to a validated interpretation, Erklären
(explanation) through judicious uses of relevant information. A text is ‘a limited field of
possible constructions (p. 91)’ and therefore ‘It is always possible to argue for or against an
interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them, and to seek for an
agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach’ (p. 91). In other words, ‘[I]f it
is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all
interpretations are equal’ (p. 91). The process of argumentation and disputation may be able
to find a common ground for determining at least the relative validity of one interpretation
over the others. Likewise, the meaning of a human action and its explanation can also be
subjected to an analogous process of argumentation and disputation.
Nonetheless, both Taylor and Ricoeur suggest that the hermeneutic process of choosing
among conflicting interpretations is at worst incompatible or at best incongruous with logical
positivism as an epistemology for social science. In Ricoeur’s view, the hermeneutic process
involves both affirming one explanation as more valid and rejecting other explanations as less
valid (he even cites Popper’s, 1959, The Logic of Scientific Discovery approvingly), but it
does not entail the determination of the validity of one interpretation with certainty. It is true
that the classical form of logical positivism as verificationism or its Popperian variation as
falsificationism sought the determination of truth of an explanation with certainty by virtue
of their use of propositional calculus as a method of reasoning. To this extent, Ricoeur is right
about his charge that hermeneutic methods are incongruous with logical positivism and its
verificationist principle. In Ricoeur’s view, hermeneutic method can only deliver some sense
of relative validity only with some degree of certainty.
In Taylor’s view, hermeneutic methods are radically incompatible with empiricism. He
argues that empiricism assumes that there exist ‘brute data’ whose interpretations are not
contested or disputed in anyway. In his words, brute data are ‘data whose validity cannot be
questioned by offering another interpretation or reading, data whose credibility cannot be
founded or undermined by further reasoning’ (p. 30). The hermeneutic method does not seek
‘brute data’, in Taylor’s view, and he rejects the possibility of brute data. All data can be
disputed and contested. Furthermore, the hermeneutic method cannot meet the requirements
of non-arbitrary verification, which Taylor regards is essential in any empiricist epistemology.
Taylor argues that when empiricism is adopted, one is also inevitably adopting an implicit
ontology, which regards that the subject matter of social sciences can be described by
brute data. In his view, however, intersubjective meanings or the social reality that is
intersubjectively constituted cannot be described by brute data because empiricism must treat
them as data that are attributed to individuals, and as their beliefs and attitudes (p. 43).
Finally, the point that both Taylor and Ricoeur took for granted, that intentional
explanations based on beliefs, desires, and intentions are appropriate explanations for
meaningful human action, is fundamentally incompatible with the standard empiricist model
of explanation. If we were to seek a causal explanation of a meaningful human action, and
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explanatory concepts involve beliefs and desires, the relations among these explanatory
concepts are no longer describing causal relations in the sense empiricists (especially Hume,
including logical positivists) used the term. This is because empiricism makes a sharp
distinction between analytical and synthetic truths. Roughly speaking, a sentence is
analytically true if and only if the sentence can be derived from another sentence (call this
the original sentence) by virtue of the conceptual meaning of the concepts involved in the
original sentence. A sentence is synthetically true if and only if the sentence is not true by
virtue of the concepts involved in the sentence, but by some external observations. Empiricism
typically defines a causal explanation to be strictly synthetic, not analytic. If an explanation
is analytically true, then, it does not constitute an appropriate causal explanation by the
empiricist definition of the term.
So, for instance, if one explains an agent’s action in terms of the agent’s beliefs and
desires, the conceptual meanings of beliefs and desires already imply that an appropriate
combination of beliefs and desires should generate an intention, which can then be translated
into a meaningful action. In this sense, belief-desire explanations already conceptually imply
the action that is to be explained. In other words, belief-desire explanations are not
synthetically, but only analytically, true. Therefore, by definition, explanations involving
beliefs and desires (i.e. folk psychological or intentional explanations) are not causal
explanations. More broadly, if hermeneutic social sciences explain a meaningful social action
using the concepts that conceptually imply the very social action to be explained, this
explanation cannot be what empiricism regards an appropriate causal explanation. In this
sense, hermeneutic models of the explanation of a human action are incompatible with a
fundamental doctrine of empiricism.
In summary, hermeneutic social sciences are regarded as incompatible with the
epistemology implicit in logical positivism. Logical positivism has at least the following four
characteristics according to Taylor and Ricoeur:
1 Logical positivism regards verification of a theory with certainty as the primary objective
of the scientific investigation.
2 Logical positivism seeks brute data as the arbiter of theoretical disputes (i.e. to test
between theories).
3 Logical positivism’s ontology is that intersubjective meanings can be described by brute
data.
4 Logical positivism regards a causal explanation to be a synthetic statement, which cannot
be derived from the concepts involved in the description of the phenomenon to be
explained.
Hermeneutic social sciences have been argued to be incompatible with these
characteristics because the hermeneutic method cannot select one explanation from others
with certainty (contra 1: Ricoeur), the hermeneutic method regards intersubjective meanings
as critical to hermeneutic social sciences and given that intersubjective meanings are always
open to dispute, they cannot be brute data describable (contra 2: Taylor) and, therefore, the
hermeneutic method does not presuppose the ontology that assumes the brute data describable
social reality (contra 3: Taylor). Finally, hermeneutic social sciences seek an explanation of
an action using the concepts that are in part meaningful for the agent of the action and,
therefore, a hermeneutic explanation is analytical (contra 4).

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The practice of social psychology in Asia

Above, I have argued that what I termed the symbolic self-reflexivity thesis may be an
inherent part of a social psychology that takes culture seriously. This thesis takes the following
three propositions as premises.
1 Culture is socially and historically constructed.
2 People engage in meaningful actions.
3 Culture is constitutive of mind.
This thesis presumes that culture is involved in the causal process of mind, and a
psychology that takes culture seriously must implicate culturally meaningful concepts to
explain a meaningful human action. However, the symbolic self-reflexivity thesis touches on
the age-old metatheoretical debate about appropriate models of psychological inquiry, natural
scientific and cultural scietific approaches to psychology, which emerged as mainly
epistemological and methodological disputes about psychology. According to two major
theorists, Charles Taylor’s and Paul Ricoeur’s arguments, there are four major objections from
hermeneutic social sciences to logical positivist social science. Are these objections applicable
to the practice of Asian social psychology? To state my conclusion first, although these
objections are appropriate for the classical form of logical positivism, they are not applicable
to the current practice of Asian social psychology. Let us examine each objection in turn.

Does social psychology regard verification of a theory

with certainty as the primary objective of the
scientific investigation?

First, it is true that the classical form of logical positivism regarded verification of a theoretical
statement with certainty as the primary objective. Popper’s falsificationism took the view that
a theoretical statement cannot be verified by confirming an empirical statement that is derived
from the theoretical statement, but can logically be falsified by disconfirming the empirical
statement logically derived from it. The verificationist or falsificationist approaches did seek
a form of certain knowledge. The classical form of logical positivism or falsificationism is a
now defunct epistemology, and the current practice of social psychology does not take either
view literally. The rhetoric of truth and verification aside, the current practice embodies, if
anything, a pragmatist theory of truth seeking. Given what we know about a certain subject
matter in the literature and what we observe in the data (qualitative or quantitative), we may
draw a tentative conclusion. Nonetheless, the conclusion is not drawn with certainty, but only
with some degree of confidence. Some may subscribe to the subjective probability of
Baysianism, or others may subscribe to an informal notion of confidence. Regardless,
knowledge with certainty is an unreachable ideal, and a current conclusion is only tentatively
held with a lower or higher degree of confidence. This view of social psychological
knowledge is echoed by a number of researchers not only in Asia but also elsewhere (Jost &
Kruglanski, 2002).

Does social psychology seek brute data as the arbiter of

theoretical disputes?

The second objection that logical positivism regards ‘brute data’ as the arbiter of theoretical
disputes is a valid criticism about the classical form of logical positivism as envisaged initially
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and practiced in psychology. Social psychologists too chased the dream of critical
experiments that would test between two competing theories, which would allow them to
verify one theory and falsify the other once and for all. Such critical experiments were hoped
to provide what Taylor called ‘brute data’ that would provide the rock-solid foundation on
which to build the edifice of a scientific theory. However, the current practice of social
psychology (not just Asian, but any social psychology) no longer subscribes to this view. We
recognize that so-called critical experiments are often disputed on the methodological
grounds; for instance, in terms of the validity and reliability of the measures used, the
manipulations conducted and the experimental control used. As Quine (1953) noted from a
logical point of view, in actual experiments, quantitative or qualitative studies, whatever the
data are, their theoretical implications are not straightforward. Even the most sophisticated
empirical procedure does not map a given theoretical construct to a given datum singularly
in a one-to-one correspondence (contrary to Percy Bridgman’s notion of operational
definition). An empirical statement that describes data is derived from theoretical statements
only with the proviso that what Quine called auxiliary hypotheses are assumed to be valid.
Yet, the mapping between a theoretical statement and data can always be disputed in the
current practice of social psychology (this argument is often called the Quine-Duhem thesis).
What practicing social psychologists try to do is to remove alternative interpretations of the
data, so that their preferred interpretation of the data is received by their audience with greater
confidence. Furthermore, even if the results of a ‘critical experiment’ reject one theoretical
position or make the other more probable, theorists may modify the disputed theory by
making additional theoretical assumptions while retaining its theoretical core (Lakatos &
Musgrave, 1970). Thus, a theory is rarely rejected completely.

Is the ontology of Asian social psychology that intersubjective

meanings can be described by brute data?

Taylor’s third charge that logical positivist social sciences would assume intersubjective
meanings to be brute data describable has, in fact, three parts. The first part is Taylor’s
observation that, in logical positivist political science, what should be regarded as
intersubjective meanings are treated as subjective meanings. Second, subjective meanings are
regarded as brute data. Third, the practice of the current social science embodies an implicit
ontology. The second part was discussed above, and I argued that the current practice of social
psychology does not assume the existence of brute data. The first and third parts are treated
below.
First, what does Taylor mean when he said intersubjective meanings are treated as
subjective ones? For instance, the notion of ‘ideology’ may often be examined as an individual
person’s political attitude, rather than as part of the social reality that a number of people live
with. Similar criticisms have been around in social psychology too. Attitude and social
cognition research has been criticized as individualizing what may be better regarded as
intersubjective phenomena from the perspectives of Moscovici’s (2001) social representations
theory and Potter and Wetherell’s (1987) discursive psychology or, more generally, the
perspectives of socially shared cognition (Resnick et al., 1991; Nye & Brower, 1996). Thus,
this part of the criticism carries some constructive force for the current social psychological
research. Nevertheless, two observations are in order here. I do not believe that the above
criticism is necessarily tied to any epistemology. It is probably true that the current social
psychology treats intersubjective meanings as subjective ones, and individualizes what should
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be regarded as intersubjectively sustained social reality. Currently, intersubjectivity may be

more amenable to research by an interview method or other qualitative methods of data
collection and analyses. However, this does not mean that it can never be examined or
analyzed by some other methods. This problem of the current social psychology may be more
due to technological limitations than epistemological problems. Although the current
statistical techniques do not completely address these issues, quantitative methods such as
multilevel analyses (Snijders & Bosker, 1999) and social network analyses (Wasserman &
Faust, 1994) are beginning to address the limitation of the mathematical modeling techniques
that most social psychologists have grown accustomed to (e.g. ANOVA and multiple regression
as special cases of the general linear model). In addition, experimental paradigms such as the
method of serial reproduction can be used to examine some aspects of intersubjective
processes (Kashima, 2000b).
The third part of the criticism is that the current social psychological research method
embodies a particular ontology. Ratner’s (1997) criticism of quantitative methodology also
takes this view. When an attitude or a belief is measured as a variable on which an individual
person is located, this practice implies an implicit ontology that regards social reality as
divisible into variables. Or, to put it differently, this ontology takes social reality to be a bundle
of variables. This is a significant criticism especially when social psychologists use quantitative
methods without an ontological insight. If meaning is understood in the way Taylor understands
it, and if meaning imbued social reality is the subject matter of social psychology that takes
culture seriously, can the usual quantitative methods work? Ratner’s verdict is that they would
not. However, I maintain that it is too early to give up on quantitative methods.
One issue is again the existence and possibility of new quantitative methods that may
not rely on the concept of variables, which may be more suitable than the current methods
for capturing and examining cultural meanings. Obviously, this needs to await further
developments in this area. However, there is another more immediate issue of the
interpretation of the current method of psychological measurement, especially that of latent
variables (e.g. a factor analysis in which a latent underlying factor is regarded as predicting
observed variables). Borsboom et al., (2003) in their thoughtful evaluation of the ontological
status of a latent variable, suggested that a latent variable model is most coherently interpreted
within a realist framework as implying the ontology of a variable as a real entity just as Taylor
and Ratner did. However, they did note the possibility that a latent variable may be interpreted
as a tool for capturing a psychological process without a realist commitment (Borsboom et al.,
2003; p. 211). If a latent variable or a variable as a weighted sum of component observed
variables is regarded as a convenient, but fallible and partial indicator, of a cultural meaning,
even the current methods of psychological measurement may be used to tap into cultural
meanings (Kashima et al. in press; as an example).

Does social psychology regard an intentional explanation

of a human action as an inappropriate causal explanation
of a behavior?

Logical positivism may not regard an intentional explanation of a human action as an

appropriate causal explanation. An intentional explanation would make use of the agent’s
beliefs and desires to explain the agent’s action. Provided that these beliefs and desires are
meaningfully related to the action to be explained, the belief-desire explanation (i.e. intentional
explanation) may conceptually imply what is to be explained. This makes the explanation an
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analytical statement, which by definition is not an appropriate causal explanation because a

causal explanation must be a synthetic statement. The distinction between analytical and
synthetic statements is based on empiricism’s insistence on the difference between some sort
of conceptual truth and an empirical fact. Logical positivists would insist that if there is some
truth, it must be either logically (or conceptually) true or empirically true. Then, an intentional
explanation is more like a logical truth than an empirical truth.
To see how this argument works, take the following example:
[Desire] David wants to do well in psychology.
[Belief] David believes that if he studies hard, he will do well in psychology.
[Action] David studies hard.
In David’s cultural world, it is believed that one can do well by studying hard. By
assuming that he is a reasonable person (i.e. he has the same sort of belief as others in the
same culture), the combination of the desire and belief can make the action intelligible.
Kashima et al. (1998) showed that this belief-desire explanation schema (or intentional
explanation schema) appears to operate in social reasoning in Australia.
Take another example of Xaz, a man who studies psychology in a far-away culture:
[Desire] Xaz wants to do well in psychology.
[Belief] Xaz believes that if he gives a sacrifice to a deity, he will do well in psychology.
[Action] Xaz gives a sacrifice to a deity.
In Xaz’s cultural world, it is believed that one can do well by giving a sacrifice to a deity.
Again, by assuming that he has the same sort of belief as others in the same culture, the
combination of Xaz’s desire and belief can make the action intelligible. Note that the cultural
beliefs may be different between the two cultural worlds, the same form of a belief-desire
explanation works as an explanation. In other words, the point of these examples is that a
belief and a desire can explain an action if they have certain meaningful relationships with
the action. In this sense, the belief-desire explanation (or an intentional explanation) is in
some sense an analytical statement. If: (i) the explainer assumes that the belief-desire schema
is valid; and (ii) the explainer knows the cultural world (or the meanings embedded in the
social reality), this explanation is true by definition.
At one level, this criticism no longer holds a conceptual force. Logical positivism’s
insistence on the sharp distinction between synthetic and analytical truths has been blurred
ever since Quine’s (1953) repudiation of this empiricism’s dogma. Any empirical truth is not
purely ‘synthetic’ according to his argument; empirical facts must always be based on some
theoretical and methodological assumptions. This criticism does, however, hold some
pragmatic force. If an intentional explanation is offered for a meaningful action to the
audience who subscribes to the belief-desire schema and is already familiar with the cultural
world in which this action is meaningful (i.e. the above two conditions, a and b, are both
satisfied), this explanation seems like a truism, and not newsworthy or informative. Note that
this is a version of the oft-made criticism of social psychology (Fletcher, 1995). According
to this, social psychology is nothing but a collection of folk wisdoms; things that
grandmothers know without designing empirical studies, collecting data, and analyzing them
statistically. Nonetheless, if the audience is not familiar with the cultural world (i.e. condition
b is not satisfied), then it is informative for the audience. To this extent, findings of cross-
cultural psychology and cultural psychology are often informative because their audience are
not the agents for whom the cultural world is already familiar. What about indigenous
psychology? If indigenous psychology is for those who already know the cultural world, it
can be subjected to the same criticism as social psychology. If it is for those who do not know
the cultural world, that is, for those other psychologists who have not been informed about
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a different cultural world, it is likely immune to the ‘nothing but’ criticism that social
psychology is subjected to.

Does social psychology take a dualist ontology that

distinguishes intentionality from causality?

Although the four specific objections to logical positivism have been discussed, there remains
one of the most fundamental issues raised by the hermeneutic challenge. What remains of
Taylor’s and Ricoeur’s main point of their hermeneutic social science is their claim that
interpretation is an inevitable part of a social science that takes a meaningful action as a
subject matter of inquiry. Does this cause a problem for social psychology that takes culture
seriously? Prior to advancing my argument, let me clarify where I converge with their
arguments. With them, I do think that a social psychology that takes culture seriously must
take a meaningful action as a subject matter of inquiry; and a social psychological analysis
of a meaningful action must involve interpretation as its aspect.
I diverge from them not so much in explicit arguments as in assessment of what is implied
by accepting this assertion. Both Taylor and Ricoeur cite Wilhelm Dilthey as the originator
of the notion of hermeneutic social science. In so doing, they both implicitly adopt his theory
of science as its implied background. As noted earlier, Dilthey differentiated a cultural
scientific approach from a natural scientific one, and argued that they are characterized by
two different kinds of sense-making activities, Verstehen and explanation. In the current
discussion, what matters most is a tacit ontological presumption that is often assumed to exist.
Dilthey’s metatheoretical distinction between explanation and understanding, natural science
and cultural science, and causality and meaning is often seen to be predicated on a particular
ontology of human nature; that is, a dualist ontology, although Dilthey did not appear to have
subscribed to this (Kaburagi, 2002). In this view, material nature and human nature are
conceptually distinguished, and the two natures are regarded as exhibiting different kinds of
regularities. Generally speaking, in the dualist view, human nature and its products (e.g.
history, culture, society) are distinct from material nature and its products (e.g. physics,
chemistry, biology). The two realms are made up of different types of material, which exhibit
different patterns of behavior and, therefore, should be investigated differently. The
ontological assumption of dualism then justifies the methodological and epistemological
injunction that different methods be used for the investigation of human nature and that of
material nature. Meaning, or what culture is made of, belongs in the realm of human nature,
which then should be investigated by a method suitable for this realm that is distinct from
the method for investigating material nature.
Must we adopt a dualist ontology if we accept the claim that interpretation is inevitable
for a social science that attempts to explain a meaningful social action? I do not think we
must. If we take a view that intentionality is materially realized, meaning is part of a causal
chain, and social scientific investigation is also part of complex causal processes, we can
adopt a monist ontology, in which human nature is not distinct from, but continuous with,
material nature. Nonetheless, this monism is different from the materialistic monism typically
adopted in the Enlightenment natural scientific metatheory. According to the Enlightenment
view, what appears to be a distinctively human realm (e.g. human mind and meaning) still
follows the ‘laws of nature’ and it is the business of natural science to discover them. This
ontology raises an ire of humanistic psychologists (and Anthropology’s romantic rebellion as
Shweder, 1984, puts it), who read into it an acceptance of determinism and a belittlement (if
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not a denial) of human will, creativity, and self-reflexivity. If we are to adopt the symbolic
self-reflexivity thesis, we may feel uneasy about adopting this materialist ontology. What we
need is a monist ontology that is not the materialist ontology of the Enlightenment. It is
difficult to speculate what it looks like until some philosophical investigations clarify this.
Nonetheless, I have a hope that Asian social psychology will not be encumbered by this
metaphysical struggle. For Asian (at least East and South Asian) ontology is, I think,
traditionally monistic and, yet, takes both the inert physical material and the active intentional
being as complementary aspects of the ever-changing whole.

Concluding comments

In the end, the four criticisms against logical positivism, which were made from the viewpoint
of hermeneutic social science, do not hold much force against the current practice of social
psychology. Logical positivism as a philosophy of science and an epistemology is no longer
tenable, and the current epistemological work is being done within a postpositivist framework.
On the part of practicing social psychologists, what is practiced in contemporary social
psychology is not the straightjacket of logical positivism. To be sure, it is empiricism of a
sort - empiricism understood in a broad sense as a respect for data and an acknowledgment
of a need for reality monitoring - however, it is a much softer and flexible version without
its attendant dogmatism. An indigenous psychology can take this type of empiricism without
being incoherent; an empiricist indigenous psychology is not self-contradictory. This ‘soft’
empiricism is not especially true about Asian social psychology, but also shared in social
psychologists in various parts of the world (Jost & Kruglanski, 2002). I think what is special
about Asian social psychology is that it is free of the dualist ontology that is often implicit
in the Western intellectual tradition. It may take a while for Western social psychological
practices to extricate themselves from the dualist thinking that permeates the division between
natural science and cultural science metatheories of psychology. In the meantime, the practice
of Asian social psychology may be able to construct a social psychology that takes culture
seriously unencumbered by the weight of the Western cultural tradition.

Acknowledgments

I thank the editors of this Special Issue for their encouragement and direction in revising the
paper.

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