352 COMMENTARIES
understanding forward while also confirming or modifying Canithers, M., Collins, S., & Lukes, S. (Eds.). (1985). The category of
the practical routines associated with our understanding of
the world, others, and ourselves (Leary 1990a). Through
our ongoing attempts to thus link empirical observations
(experience) and rational conjectures (metaphors) in the
most effective way, it should be possible for us to advance
psychological theory and practice while avoiding both
pseudoempiricality and pseudorationality.
Note
David E. Leary, Office of the Dean, University of Rich-
mond, Richmond, VA 23173.
References
Baumeister, R. F. (1986). Identiry: Cultural change and the struggle for
self. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Naive Baseball Theory
Peter G. Ossorio
University of Colorado
Smedslund poses anew a question that American psychol-
ogy has not dealt with adequately: Is psychology properly
viewed as being essentially 100% empirical? For most psy-
chologists, the answer is "Obviously-yes!" mostly be-
cause they take it for granted that that is true for science
generally and therefore (obviously)must be true for psychol-
ogy in particular. The question of what would qualify as a
scientific psychology thus enters the picture as a related
question.
"100% empirical" has two components: (a) the attitude of
being completely open to observational discovery, wherever
that might lead, and (b) the thesis or assumption that there are
no a priori limits to where observational discovery might
lead. Proponents of "100% empirical" seem invariably to
take the position that what is being challenged by someone
like Smedslund is (a). In fact, there seems to be no disagree-
ment at all about (a). The issue is (b). Henceforth, "100%
empirical" refers to (b) only.
If there really are no a priori limits to what we might
discover through an empirical study of people and what they
do, several interesting possibilities present themselves. For
example, we might discover that people are really integers or
imaginary numbers; we might discover that appearances are
deceiving and there really are no such things as people (what
we took to be people are really organisms, or brains in a vat,
or . . . ); or we might discover that there really are no such
things as discoveries (there is only information processing,
or . . . ); or we might discover that, if a person has a reason
to do something, he or she will never do it; or we might
discover that people obey Newton's laws of motion, or that
scientists are not persons, etc., etc. (There are many et
ceteras here. )
the person: Anthropology, philosophy, history. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species. London: Murray.
Heller, T. C., Sosna, M., & Wellbery, D. E. (Eds.). (1986). Reconstruct-
ing individualism: Autonomy, individuality, and the self in Western
thought. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Leary, D. E. (1990a). Metaphor, theory, and practice in the history of
psychology. In D. E. Leary (Ed.), Metaphors in the history of psy-
chology (pp. 357-367). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leary, D. E. (1990b). Psyche's muse: The role of metaphor in the history
of psychology. In D. E. Leary (Ed.), Metaphors in the history of
psychology (pp. 1-78). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leary, D. E. (1990~).William James on self and personality: Clearing the
ground for subsequent theorists, researchers, and practitioners. In M.
G. Johnson & T. B. Henley (Eds.), Reflections on The principles of
psychology: William James after a century (pp. 101- 137). Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Marsella, A. J., DeVos, G., & Hsu, F. L. K. (Eds.). (1985). Culture and
self: Asian and Western perspectives. London: Tavistock.
Toulmin, S., & Leary, D. E. (1985). The cult of empiricism in psycholo-
gy, and beyond. In S. Koch & D. E. Leary (Eds.), A centuly of psy-
chology as science (pp. 594-617). New York: McGraw-Hill.
A common reaction to such examples is "Well, I didn't
really mean that." The qualms that such examples evoke
reflect the brute fact that there are many things we commonly
take for granted about people, and the "100% empirical"
position is not only a violation, but an a priori one at that.
It is no secret that the classic way of handling those qualms
is to dismiss them with the following sort of avowal: "Those
a priori limits are there, all right, but that's just a remnant
from the naive psychological theory we all grew up with
because it was embedded in the common sense of our culture.
But that is what we have to put aside in order to be able to
study people scientifically, 100% empirically, as a natural
phenomenon."
That raises a new difficulty having to do with subject
matter. If there were really no limits to what we might dis-
cover in the course of doing "scientific psychology," then
there would also be no limits to how we might properly
describe what we discovered and no limits to the concepts we
might use in explaining or understanding what we dis-
covered. But all this would hold equally if we set out to do
100% empirical physics or 100% empirical economics or
100% empirical theology or 100% empirical anything. So,
then, why in the world call it psychology?
The notion of a 100% empirical anything appears to raise
serious and seemingly intractable problems.
My impression is that a major reason why the issue raised
by Smedslund and others has not been adequately faced is
that the prospect of a priori limitations appears as perverse or
paradoxical ("But how could it possibly . . . ?!") rather
than as offering a genuine alternative.
How could it possibly be the case that the domain of
human behavior is logically structured to the extraordinary
 COMMENTARIES
extent represented by 26 axioms, 83 definitions, and more
than 150 corollaries and theorems, as currently found in
Smedslund's (1988) system of psychologic (PL)?
Although Smedslund uses the axiomatic approach effec-
tively, that alone does little to address the question of why
one should (or how one could) take an axiomatic approach
seriously in this domain. After all, it is relatively easy to
dismiss the whole thing as an artifact based on a set of purely
linguistic conventions in how we happen to talk about people
in our commonsense, naive psychological theories.
I believe one could actually make a case for the a priori
plausibility of an a priori structure in the domain of behavior.
To do this requires the introduction of two basic consider-
ations: (a) the nature of the connection between common
sense and "naive psychological theories" and (b) the notion
of a constitutive conceptual framework.
Common Sense
"Common sense" encompasses several distinct compo-
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nents, only one of which is of central concern here. Two
other components are almost universally targeted by scien-
tistic ideologies as discrediting common sense, and it seems
best to dispose of these two red herrings with dispatch.
First, common sense includes several of what amount to
empirical generalizations (e.g., "plant corn by the light of
the full moon"). They can be wrong; they can have only
limited applicability; they can be outdated. About all that
needs to be said is that this is a feature of empirical gener-
alizations, not common sense, and it applies equally to scien-
tific empirical generalizations. Today we have an empirical
basis for saying that most of our former scientific generaliza-
tions are wrong, misleading, or wrongheaded. We do not on
that account denigrate science. (Common sense is not inher-
ently less self-correcting than science, either.)
Second, common sense is commonly described as being
riddled with contradictions (hence incoherent, irrational,
etc.). How often have we seen examples such as "Out of
sight, out of mind" and "Absence makes the heart grow
fonder" used to illustr,atethe self-contradictions of common
sense? But consider the following example.
A young salesman accompanies an older, experienced
traveling salesman on an extended road trip. After about a
week on the road, the older salesman stops at a florist shop
and sends a dozen roses to his wife. "Why did you do that?"
asks the younger man. "Absence makes the heart grow
fonder" is the reply. The young man nods, "Yes, I can under-
stand that." Two weelts later, the older man makes a date
with a waitress at the restaurant where they have dinner.
"Why did you do that?" asks the younger man. "Out of
sight, out of mind" is the reply. The young man nods, "Yes, I
can understand that."
Indeed, one can understand that. What the example brings
out is that there are a fair number of personally significant
and culturally familiar situations in which competing deci-
sions and courses of action are genuinely available and at-
tractive. Each of these situationshas its own rationale, and, if
the courses of action are incompatible, so, in general, will be
the rationales. And, being culturally familiar, they will be
part of the commonsense repertoire.
Rationales are obvi~ouslynot empirical generalizations.
When the older salesman says, "Out of sight, out of mind,"
he is not giving us a "wheneverx, then y" generalization. He
353
is not generalizing at all. Rather, he is saying, "Here is how it
is with me" (or "This is what I am doing") in a way that
makes what he does understandable.
So much for the "self-contradictions" of common sense.
Common sense tells us that only someone who was extraor-
dinarily naive or who suffered from some sort of trained
incapacity could possibly mistake such a rationale for an
empirical generalization. (Drawing such a conclusion is nei-
ther an empirical generalization nor a case of theorizing.)
Without the distractionsprovided by the notions of false or
contradictory empirical generalizations, it is much easier to
see the really fundamental aspects of common sense:
1. Common sense is primarily concerned with practical
judgment and action, which are universal features of human
beings and are universally context dependent. It is hardly at
all concerned with universal, context-free empirical gener-
alizations or theorizing, which are highly mannered, spe-
cialized, and bureaucratized activities in our cultural milieu.
2. Common sense is learned, and the learning is funda-
mentally not the learning of facts or theories. Rather, it is
learning how. It is learning how to function as a human being
among human beings.
3. There is a difference between (a) functioning as a per-
son among persons and (b) anything else. We learn the dif-
ferences between (a) and (b) by participation, not by learning
definitions, theories, or rules and then applying them. Corre-
spondingly, the criterion for what it is to function as a person
among persons lies in the competence (sensitivities, abili-
ties, judgment) of those who are human beings among
human beings.
4. Nevertheless, there is a strong attraction to the idea of
being able to say, explicitly and systematically, what it is to
be a person and act as a person. (We draw on that competence
in giving an account of what its exercise involves.)
5. In addressing this task, two models are particularly
useful. The first is ordinary games, such as baseball, tennis,
chess, bridge, and so forth. This is because they have the
following features in a noncontroversial way: (a) They are
actual examples of human behavior, (b) an explicit set of
rules governs each activity, (c) there is no real question as to
what the rules are, (d) the games have to be learned, (e)
learning the game does not require learning the explicit rules
and then applying them, and (f) knowing how to play the
game is different from knowing that these are the rules of the
game. These features make it easy to say, "Human behavior
in general is essentially like these special forms of behavior,
even though we can't (yet) say exactly what the rules are." It
is a convenience, then, to talk about "the human game."
The second model is natural language, such as English.
This has most of the relevant features of games, with the
following relevant differences: (a) Whereas games can be
learned without reference to explicit rules, natural language
in general is learned (by participation and observation) with-
out reference to an explicit set of rules, and (b) whereas there
is no real question as to what the rules of baseball (etc.) are,
to codify the rules of English is a difficult, complex, yet-to-
be-accomplished task. Our efforts (and degree of success)
with natural language illustrate the vast complexity of sys-
tematic description that may be required to give even an
approximate formulation of the cognitive counterpart to a
simply and easily acquired competence.
6 . The rules of a game are "givens" for that game. They
 354 COMMENTARIES
will appear as givens in any explicit formulations. Stylisti-
cally, they will appear as axioms, postulates, definitions,
stipulations, tautologies, and so on. What they never are are
merely empirical facts about the game.
Given the foregoing, Smedslund's PL can be understood
to be parallel to the enterprise of writing the grammar of
English, although stylistically it does not have the form of a
grammar. Given the complexity of formulating linguistic
behavior, which is only one form of human activity (albeit a
central one), we should not find it a priori implausible to be
faced with 26 axioms, 83 definitions, and more than 150
corollaries and theorems (and growing) when we talk about
behavior more generally. This leaves us with the issue of
"naive psychological theory."
Constitutive Conceptual Frameworks
If I have a theory about baseball, then baseball is defined
as a phenomenon independently of whether my theory about
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it is right or wrong or whether it even makes sense to apply it
to baseball. Indeed, it is precisely because baseball is already
independently defined as a phenomenon that it can make
sense to apply my theory to that phenomenon and ask
whether it fits.
This is not the case with the rules of baseball. Baseball is
not defined as a phenomenon independently of the rules that
govern that activity. There is not a coherent question to be
asked along the lines of whether the rules of baseball are
correct accounts of baseball games or whether they "fit"
baseball games. Without those rules, there is no such phe-
nomenon to ask questions about.
The rules of baseball codify a conceptual framework that
is constitutive of the phenomenon of baseball. (And the rules
of any game are constitutive of that game.) If a conceptual
framework is constitutive of a type of phenomenon, then the
applicability of that framework is what makes a phenomenon
that phenomenon. And, for example, a phenomenon that
violates the rules of baseball or to which those rules cannot be
sensibly applied cannot be baseball.
The rules of baseball are constitutive of baseball gamesfor
the participants-hence, the rules are inherent to the phe-
nomenon. As an observer-describer, I can approach a base-
ball game with a conceptual framework different from the
rules of baseball, and it will still be a baseball game, although
not for me. But, if the participants (somehow) were not
acting from the baseball framework, then it wouldn't and
couldn't be a baseball game. There is no way to supersede
those rules on any grounds whatsoever and still have baseball
as a subject matter or a phenomenon.
The rules of baseball are not a theory about baseball any
more than they are empirical generalizations about baseball.
A forteriori, they are not a naive theory about baseball, and
we could not sensibly envision the day when they would be,
properly, replaced by a rigorous, well confirmed, scientific
theory about baseball (whereupon we could, at last, play it
properly?).
In the area of natural language, the criterion of participant
competence is recognized and respected. We speak of
"native speaker intuition" and recognize that the speakers
are the criterion of what is (correct) English and what is not
(although it's not a simple matter). There is no talk of "na-
ive" prescientific theories here.
We may do well to reflect on the fact that science is a
human enterprise, not a transcendental one. In this form of
human behavior, as in the others, one primarily learns how to
do it, not just because the rules of this game are considerably
less adequately spelled out than are the rules of English but
because, ultimately, it is a matter of knowing how. At the
same time, because much has been written on the subject,
our learning how is often strongly limited by our learning of
some set of rules to which we then restrict ourselves a priori
and call it Science (real scientists don't use caps).
If we are willing to talk about naive psychological theories
of human behavior, we should be eager to talk about naive
psychological theories of human scientific behavior. Perhaps
then we could look forward to doing empirical research to
discover scientifically (a) what "empirical research" really
is (who knows what we might discover) and (b) which of our
questions about human behavior could be answered by doing
empirical research.
Given the space limitations on the present commentary, I
close with a couple caveats and a kind of empirical endorse-
ment of Smedslund's notion of pseudoempirical research.
Fist, although I am pretty well in complete sympathy with
Smedslund's basic position, and I believe his program is
valuable and viable, as the principal author (Ossorio, 1985)
of an alternative approach-descriptive psychology (DP)-
I'm bound to point out that there are alternatives, including
notably those represented by Gergen (1985), Harr6 (1984),
and Shotter (1985). I believe that one part of DP is closer to
PL than are any of the latter.
Although motivated by many of the same concerns as
Smedslund's, DP is almost diametrically opposed to PL in its
style and its conceptual/methodological implementation (I
am tempted to characterize DP as a kinder, gentler formula-
tion). Two examples will perhaps suffice:
1. PL is based on the models of logic, mathematics, and
geometry-with the attendant primary emphasis on truth and
certainty. In contrast, there are no truths in the basic DP
formulations, and an appeal to truth is never unavoidable.
This is (technically) because there are no statements in the
basic DP formulations. These formulations delineate con-
ceptual structures directly and explicitly rather than indi-
rectly through the tautologies that reflect the conceptual con-
nections in such a structure. Conceptual structures are used
(acted on) or not used. They cannot be (a) either believed or
not believed, (b) either true or false, or (c) either supported or
not supported by evidence.
2. Whereas PL addresses knowledge, truth, and certainty,
DP is grounded in competence and addresses (and nurtures)
competence. Although it makes use of verbalization, the
primary vehicle for learning is practice and experience. The
contrast is underlined by the fact that there are several close
conceptual correspondences and even some cases of near-
identical wording in DP and PL, and yet they work quite
differently. Compare, for example, these two pairs (one part
of DP is a set of maxims):
a l . PL (Axiom 6.1.7): "A person's awareness of thefu-
ture consists of extrapolations from that person's
awareness of trends in the past" (Smedslund, 1988,
p. 71).
a2. DP (Maxim A9): A person takes the world to be as
he's found it to be.
 COMMENTARIES
b 1. PL (Axiom 4.3.1): " A person P tries to do A in the
context C at time t, if and only if, A is the act which,
for P in C at t, has the highest expected utility"
(Smedslund, 1988, p. 57).
b2. DP (Maxim C2): A person will not choose less behav-
ior potential over more.
In DP, maxims are primarily warnings and reminders (or
encouragements) to an observer-describer of human behav-
ior. They are addressed to the issue of how not to go wrong,
how not to do it wrong-where "it" refers to describing
people and their behavior. In contrast to axioms that are
impersonal and emphasize truth and universality, maxims are
designed to be used by a person in addressing another person
who in general already knows but who in that context, for a
given purpose (etc.), may benefit from such a warning or
reminder (or encouragement). The thrust of this set of max-
ims is "Don't violate the a priori requirements that stem from
the fact that we're talking about people, not about, for exam-
ple, material objects, egos, organisms, consumer. Not sur-
Downloaded by [Mary Roberts] at 22:49 19 September 2014
prisingly, roughly 90% of these maxims could also be used
directly as tautologies, although that is not their raison d7&tre
and I don't recommend it.
The second caveat is that there are formulations in PL for
which it doesn't seern sufficient to disclaim that PL is de-
signed only to get at certain "core" meanings in common
sense, not to duplicate the vernacular. Take, for example,
Smedslund's definition of sadness: "how we feel when
something we want comes to be seen as unattainable or irre-
vocably lost." This does seem to be the right kind of defini-
tion, but in detail:
1. This definition glosses over the difference between
being sad and feeling sad. The former does not imply the
latter, although one could connect them with an auxiliary
formulation such as "If one is sad, then one feels sad, un-
less . . ." And, for example, in the classic case of "There's
good news, and there's bad news," if the good news suffi-
ciently outweighs the bad news, I will predictably not feel
sad, and there's no reason to assume that I would be sad.
(Note that even if at a later time, upon reflection on the bad
news, I was sad or felt sad, by then I would have violated the
definition.)
2. The definition glosses over the important differences
among sadness, despair, regret, disappointment, grief, and,
yes, guilt or anger, all of which are plausible reactions to
"something we want comes to be seen as unattainable or
irrevocably lost." Some deeper or further analysis seems to
be called for.
3. Smedslund's commentary on the definition glosses
over the differences between causes and grounds. If I am sad,
it will make sense for s~omeoneto ask me, "What are you sad
355
about?" This would not make sense if it were merely a causal
connection that was involved. For example, if I am hypo-
glycemic, it will not make sense to ask, "What are you
hypoglycemic about?" although it will make sense to ask,
"What caused you to become hypoglycemic?" And similar-
ly for being exhausted, being drunk, being hungry or thirsty,
and a variety of other states. What is tautological is the
connection between an emotional reaction and its grounds,
not between an emotional state and its cause.
I mention this kind of consideration because graduate stu-
dents are frequently (and I believe, needlessly) disturbed by
it ("The whole point is to show what it looks like when you
do it right, isn't it?") and, from that, some others will be
also, I expect. My guess is that, if the job were done impec-
cably, the result would not be all that different from what we
already see in PL. (Of course, if we were studying sadness,
then it would matter.)
Finally, the "empirical support" for the notion of
pseudoempiricalresearch: In the early days of DP, one of the
empirical effects was that all of us who were heavily involved
in generating or using the formulations stopped doing em-
pirical research. When the phenomenon was identified, the
explanation was not long in following: The DP formulations
made it intuitively clear that most of the research questions
actively or prospectively being pursued were not empirical
questions, and therefore it would be not merely useless, but
actively perverse, to pursue them as research questions. (It
has continued to be the case that researchers who begin to
acquire mastery of DP formulations typically go through
such a "fallow" period.) Two factors contributed signifi-
cantly to a resumption of research. The first was that the
conceptual formulations became sufficiently mature so that
the lines between empirical and not empirical were generally
not difficult to draw. The second was that the development of
new research paradigms and research methodology created
new opportunities to address genuinely empirical questions
in a genuinely empirical way.
"Armchair philosophizing" was never in the running.
References
Gergen, K. J. (1985). Social constructionistinquiry: Context and implica-
tions. In K. J. Gergen & K. E. Davis (Eds.), The social construction of
the person (pp. 3-18). New York: Springer-Verlag.
H d , R. (1984). Personal being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Ossorio, P. G. (1985). An overview of descriptive psychology. In K. J.
Gergen & K. E. Davis (Eds.), The social construction of the person
(pp. 19-40). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Shotter, J. (1985). Social accountability and self specification. In K. J.
Gergen & K. E. Davis (Eds.), The social construction of the person
( pp. 167- 189). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Smedslund, J. (1988). Psycho-logic. New York: Springer-Verlag.