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Studies in Applied Philosophy,
Epistemology and Rational Ethics

Brian D. Haig

Method
Matters in
Psychology
Essays in Applied Philosophy of Science
Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology
and Rational Ethics

Volume 45

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School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University, Changsha, P.R. China

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John Woods
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Brian D. Haig

Method Matters
in Psychology
Essays in Applied Philosophy of Science

123
Brian D. Haig
Department of Psychology
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand

ISSN 2192-6255 ISSN 2192-6263 (electronic)

Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics
ISBN 978-3-030-01050-8 ISBN 978-3-030-01051-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01051-5

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To my coauthors—
Denny Borsboom
Russil Durrant
Fran Vertue
Preface

Book Overview

In this preface, I briefly explain the book’s title and then offer some orienting
remarks about the nature of scientific method and its importance for science more
generally. I begin by emphasizing the significance of method for science, and
express the belief that the various sciences, including psychology, do not take
methods seriously enough. I then speak to the importance of the interdisciplinary
field of methodology for understanding scientific method. I emphasize the con-
structive role that philosophy of science can play in informing methodology. After
identifying three major theories of scientific method, I provide an outline of one
of these accounts of method, the abductive theory, which features heavily in the
book. In the second part of the preface, I provide a summary of the chapters that
follow.
The main title of this book, Method Matters in Psychology, is intended to
suggest that the focus is on the important topic of scientific method as it relates to
psychology. The subtitle of the book, Essays in Applied Philosophy of Science,
refers to the fact that the discipline of philosophy of science is employed as a major
resource in examining the methodological ideas in the book’s various chapters.
Modern science is a complex human endeavour comprising many parts. It
pursues aims that it seeks to realize; it employs methods in order to facilitate its
investigations; it produces facts and theories in its quest to obtain an understanding
of the world; and it is shaped by the institutions within which it is embedded.
Although all of these dimensions are essential to a full-bodied characterization of
science, a method is arguably its most important feature. This is because everything
we know in science is acquired in good part through the application of its methods,
whether it be our knowledge of substantive matters, values, or the methods
themselves.
Despite its undoubted importance to science, scientific method receives less
considered attention than it deserves, from both scientists and educators. Of course,
scientists take method seriously, but I believe that they do not take it seriously

vii
viii Preface

enough. Scientists themselves, including psychologists, learn about research

methods, and how to use them to conduct their research. However, the nature of this
learning, and the instruction they receive about how to employ these methods, is
better described as a mix of training and indoctrination than as a genuine education
designed to provide a critical, in-depth understanding of the methods.
Psychology, which makes extensive provision in its curriculum for teaching
research methods, uses textbooks that make little or no effort to inform students in
depth about the nature of scientific method. Nor does its curriculum foster a critical
appreciation of the various research methods that its textbooks deal with.
Consequently, both psychological scientists and psychology students tend to have a
limited understanding of scientific method, which in turn contributes to a misuse of
research methods and a sub-optimal level of scientific literacy.
The term method derives from a combination of the Greek words meta, meaning
following after, and hodos, meaning the way, to give following the way, suggesting
the idea of order. Applied to science, method suggests the efficient, systematic
ordering of inquiry. It describes an ordered sequence of actions that constitutes a
strategy to achieve one or more research goals that have to do with the construction
of knowledge (Nickles 1987, Haig 2014). For example, and simply put, the
sequence of actions for the traditional hypothetico-deductive method of theory
testing is: Identify the test hypothesis, derive one or more test predictions, gather
data in accord with the test predictions, check the data against the test predictions,
and confirm, or disconfirm, the original test hypothesis. Regarding science, the term
methodology denotes the general study of scientific methods and forms the basis for
a proper understanding of those methods. It is not a synonym for method.
Methodology is the interdisciplinary domain that studies methods. It comprises
statistics, philosophy of science, and cognitive science more generally, among other
disciplines. Methodology has descriptive, critical, and advisory dimensions: It
describes relevant methods and explains how they reach their goals, it critically
evaluates methods against their rivals, and it recommends what methods we should
adopt to pursue our chosen goals.
As an important part of methodology, the philosophy of science has been
seriously underutilized. This is unfortunate because, in recent years, philosophers of
science have increasingly sought to understand science as it is practiced. Their
discipline now boasts an array of important methodological insights that can sig-
nificantly increase our understanding of research methods. I endeavour to utilize
some of these insights by employing a conception of methodology that is consistent
with a contemporary version of the philosophy of scientific realism.
In this book, I concentrate on discussing the conceptual foundations of a varied
selection of important behavioural science methodological concepts and research
methods, some of which are considered in relation to substantive domains. I do this
by giving greater attention to the philosophy of science than is normally the case.
This stance is justified on the grounds that modern philosophy of science has made
important gains in understanding how successful science is practiced. As just noted,
this is especially so with respect to scientific methodology. I believe that the
Preface ix

philosophy of science can be of major help in providing in-depth, coherent accounts

of the structure of behavioural science inquiry.
It should be noted that, despite casual talk of the scientific method, claims for the
existence of one, canonical account of scientific method are untenable. Instead, we
have a number of different theories of scientific method that are employed for
different research purposes. Arguably, the “big three” theories are inductive
method, hypothetico-deductive method, and abductive method. Inductive method
can take different forms but it often said to involve reasoning by inductive enu-
meration from secure observation statements about singular events to laws or
theories. The hypothetico-deductive method structures hypothesis testing and, for
better or worse, has often provided the larger methodological framework for
empirical research in psychology. The abductive theory of method is less well
known, and emphasizes explanatory reasoning, while assigning statistical methods
a limited, although important, role.
According to the abductive theory of method (Haig, 2014), scientific inquiry
proceeds as follows: Guided by evolving research problems that comprise packages
of empirical, conceptual, and methodological constraints, sets of data are analyzed
in order to detect robust empirical regularities, or phenomena. Once detected, these
phenomena are explained by abductively inferring the existence of underlying
causes responsible for their production. Upon positive judgments of the initial
plausibility of the explanatory theories about these causes, attempts are made to
elaborate on the nature of the causal mechanisms in question. This is done by
constructing plausible models of those mechanisms by analogy to relevant ideas in
domains that are already well understood. When the theories are well developed,
they are assessed against their rivals with respect to their explanatory goodness.
This assessment involves making judgments of the best of competing explanations.

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1 discusses of the nature of philosophical naturalism and its relation to

scientific method. The discussion takes its cue from an interdisciplinary examina-
tion of the naturalization of the philosophy of mind by Kievit et al. (2011), who
employ statistical methods to construct psychometric models of both the identity
and supervenience theories of the mind–body relation. For the most part, the focus
of the chapter is on methods of inquiry. After a brief discussion of two different
attitudes to naturalized philosophy, two well-known views of naturalism in the
philosophy of mind are presented and considered in relation to the naturalism of
Kievit et al. Thereafter, some limitations of structural equation modelling, which is
the authors’ method of choice, are noted, as is the useful but neglected method of
inference to the best explanation. Philosophers and psychologists are encouraged to
use one another’s methods, to the benefit of both.
Chapter 2 adopts the correspondence theory as a plausible theory of truth and
discusses it in relation to science. The correspondence theory is presented in a form
x Preface

that enables one to show that it uniquely fulfils a crucial function in psychological
research, because the interpretation of truth claims as suppositions that concern
states of affairs in the world clearly explicates what it means for a theory to be true,
and what it means for a theory to be false. For this reason, correspondence truth has
the advantage of allowing researchers to properly understand the assumptions of
scientific research as claims about the factual state of the world, as well as scru-
tinizing these assumptions. It is concluded that correspondence truth plays an
important part in our understanding of science, including psychology.
Chapter 3, a broad abductive theory of scientific method is described that has
particular relevance for the behavioural sciences. This theory of method assembles
a complex of specific strategies and methods that are used in the detection of
empirical phenomena and the subsequent construction of explanatory theories.
A characterization of the nature of phenomena is given, and the process of their
detection is briefly described in terms of a multistage model of data analysis. The
construction of explanatory theories is shown to involve their generation through
abductive, or explanatory, reasoning, their development through analogical mod-
elling, and their fuller appraisal in terms of judgments of the best of competing
explanations. The nature and limits of this theory of method are discussed in the
light of relevant developments in scientific methodology.
Chapter 4 examines the methodological foundations of exploratory factor
analysis (EFA) and suggests that it is properly construed as a method for generating
explanatory theories. In the first half of the chapter, it is argued that EFA should be
understood as an abductive method of theory generation that exploits an important
precept of scientific inference known as the principle of the common cause. This
characterization of the inferential nature of EFA coheres well with its interpretation
as a latent variable method. The second half of the chapter outlines a broad theory
of scientific method in which abductive reasoning figures prominently. It then
discusses a number of methodological features of EFA in the light of that method. It
is concluded that EFA, as a useful method of theory generation that can be prof-
itably employed in tandem with confirmatory factor analysis and other methods
of theory evaluation.
Chapter 5 examines the well-known, and widely used, approach to qualitative
research known as grounded theory. In their initial formulation of the methodology,
Glaser and Strauss (1967) adopted an empiricist outlook on inquiry, although one
leavened more by pragmatism than positivism. This chapter presents an alternative
conception of grounded theory method that is consistent with a realist philosophy of
science and an abductive conception of scientific method. Among other things, the
proposed reconstruction of grounded theory method adopts a problems-oriented
conception of research, suggests that theories are grounded in phenomena, not data,
argues for an abductive rather than an inductive conception of theory construction,
and makes good on the claim that grounded theory method accommodates both
qualitative and quantitative methods.
Chapter 6 presents a framework for clinical reasoning and case formulation that
is largely based on the abductive theory of scientific method presented in Chap. 3.
Clinical reasoning has traditionally been understood in terms of the
Preface xi

hypothetico-deductive method. Occasionally, Bayesian methods have been used as

a resource. However, it is suggested that clinical psychology requires an organizing
framework that goes beyond the strictures of these two methods and characterizes
the full range of reasoning processes involved in the description, understanding, and
formulation of the difficulties presented by clients. In the abductive theory of
method, the processes of phenomena detection and theory construction are articu-
lated and combined. Both of these processes are applied to clinical reasoning and
case formulation, and a running case example is provided to illustrate the
application.
Chapter 7 is concerned with the methodological foundations of evolutionary
psychology. Evolutionary psychologists have offered adaptation explanations for a
wide range of human psychological characteristics. Critics, however, have argued
that such endeavours are problematic because the appropriate evidence required to
demonstrate adaptation is unlikely to be forthcoming. More specifically, doubts
have been raised over both the methodology employed by evolutionary psychol-
ogists for studying adaptations and about the possibility of ever developing
acceptably rigorous evolutionary explanations of human psychological phenomena.
In this chapter, it is argued that by employing a wide range of methods for inferring
adaptation and by adopting an inference to the best explanation strategy for eval-
uating adaptation explanations, these two doubts can be adequately addressed.
Chapter 8 undertakes a philosophical examination of four prominent quantitative
research methods that are employed in the behavioural sciences. It begins by out-
lining a scientific realist methodology that can help illuminate the conceptual
foundations of behavioural research methods. Typically, these methods contribute
to either the detection of empirical phenomena or the construction of explanatory
theory. The methods selected for critical examination are exploratory data analysis,
Bayesian confirmation theory, meta-analysis, and causal modelling. The chapter
concludes with a brief consideration of directions that might be taken in future
philosophical work on quantitative methods. Two additional quantitative methods,
exploratory factor analysis and tests of statistical significance, are examined in more
detail in separate chapters.
Chapter 9 considers the nature and place of tests of statistical significance
(ToSS) in science, with particular reference to psychology. Despite the enormous
amount of attention given to this topic, psychology’s understanding of ToSS
remains deficient. The major problem stems from a widespread and uncritical
acceptance of null hypothesis significance testing, which is an indefensible amal-
gam of ideas adapted from Fisher’s thinking on the subject and from Neyman and
Pearson’s alternative account. To correct for the deficiencies of the hybrid, it is
suggested that psychology avail itself of two important and more recent viewpoints
xii Preface

on ToSS, namely the neo-Fisherian and the error-statistical perspectives. It is

suggested that these more recent outlooks on ToSS are a definite improvement on
standard null hypothesis significance testing. It is concluded that ToSS can play a
useful, if limited, role in psychological research.
The book concludes with a short afterword.

Christchurch, New Zealand Brian D. Haig

References

Haig, B. D. (2014). Investigating the psychological world: Scientific method in the behavioral
sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kievit, R. A., Romeijn, J.-W., Waldorp, L. J., Wicherts, J. M., Scholte, H. S., & Borsboom,
D. (2011). Mind the gap: A psychometric approach to the reduction problem. Psychological
Inquiry, 22, 67–87.
Nickles, T. (1987). Twixt method and madness. In N. J. Nersessian (Ed.), The process of science
(pp. 41–67). Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Strauss, A. L. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Acknowledgements

The chapters in this book are largely based on the following published articles.
Haig, B. D. (2017). Tests of statistical significance made sound. Educational and
Psychological Measurement, 77, 489–506.
Haig, B. D., & Evers, C. W. (2016). Realist inquiry in social science (Chapter 4,
pp. 71–92). London: Sage.
Haig, B. D., & Borsboom, D. (2012). Truth, science, and psychology. Theory and
Psychology, 22, 272–289.
Haig, B. D. (2012). The philosophy of quantitative methods. In T. D. Little (Ed.),
Oxford Handbook of Quantitative Methods, Vol 1 (pp. 6–30). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Haig, B. D. (2011). Philosophical naturalism and scientific method. Psychological
Inquiry, 22 128–136.
Vertue, F. M., & Haig, B. D. (2008). An abductive perspective on clinical reasoning
and case formulation. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64, 1046–1068.
Haig, B. D. (2005). An abductive theory of scientific method. Psychological
Methods, 10, 371–388.
Haig, B. D. (2005). Exploratory factor analysis, theory generation, and scientific
method. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 40, 303–329.
Durrant, R., & Haig, B. D. (2001). How to pursue the adaptationist programme in
psychology. Philosophical Psychology. 14, 358–380.
I am grateful to the various journals, publishers, and to my three co-authors Denny
Borsboom, Russil Durrant and Fran Vertue, for allowing me to make use of our
previously published work. I thank the editor of the SAPERE Series, Lorenzo
Magnani, for his encouragement with this book project, and Leontina DiCecco for
her advice on the publication process. Fran Vertue offered valuable feedback on
newly written material, and Joan Gladwyn gave expert assistance in preparing the
manuscript for submission.

xiii
Contents

1 Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Traditional Empiricism: Philosophy and Science Separated . . . . . . 2
1.2 Naturalistic Realism: Philosophy and Science Conjoined . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Varieties of Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.1 Quine’s Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.2 Kim’s Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.3 Lewis’s Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.4 The Naturalism of Kievit et al. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3.5 Speculative Theory and Empirical Constraint . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Naturalism and Scientific Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.1 Structural Equation Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.2 Inference to the Best Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.4.3 Sharing Philosophical and Scientific Methods . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4.4 Conceptual Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4.5 Inference to the Best Explanation Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.5 Other Statistical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.6 Normative Naturalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 Truth, Science, and Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1 Theories of Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2 Correspondence Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.1 Truthbearers and Truthmakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2.2 Correspondence Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2.3 Two Caveats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 Truth and Scientific Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.1 The Procedural Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.2 The Data Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

xv
xvi Contents

2.3.3 The Phenomenal Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

2.3.4 The Causal Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3 An Abductive Theory of Scientific Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1 Two Theories of Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.1.1 Inductive Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.1.2 Hypothetico-Deductive Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.2 Overview of the Broad Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3 Phenomena Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3.1 The Nature of Phenomena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3.2 A Model of Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4 Theory Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.4.1 Theory Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.4.2 Theory Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.4.3 Theory Appraisal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.5 Research Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.6 ATOM and Scientific Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.6.1 Generative and Consequentialist Methodology . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.6.2 Reliabilist and Coherentist Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.7 Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.7.1 Phenomena Detection and Theory Construction Again . . . . 58
3.7.2 The Scope of ATOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4 Exploratory Factor Analysis, Theory Generation, and Scientific
Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.1 The Inferential Nature of EFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.1.1 Abductive Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.1.2 EFA and Abduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.1.3 The Principle of the Common Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.1.4 EFA and the Principle of the Common Cause . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2 Common Factor Analysis and Scientific Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.2.1 EFA and Scientific Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2.2 EFA, Phenomena Detection, and Explanatory
Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.2.3 EFA and the Spectre of Underdetermination . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.2.4 EFA and CFA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.3 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Contents xvii

5 Grounded Theory Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

5.1 The Abductive Theory of Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2 Problem Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.3 Phenomena Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3.1 The Data/Phenomena Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3.2 A Model of Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.4 Theory Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.4.1 Theory Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.4.2 Exploratory Factor Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.4.3 Theory Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.4.4 Analogical Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.4.5 Theory Appraisal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.4.6 The Theory of Explanatory Coherence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.5 ATOM as a Grounded Theory Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6 An Abductive Perspective on Clinical Reasoning and Case
Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.1 The Literature on Clinical Reasoning and Case Formulation . . . . . 110
6.2 The Methodological Distinctiveness of Clinical Psychology . . . . . 111
6.3 Hypothetico-Deductive and Bayesian Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
6.4 The Abductive Theory of Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.5 The Abductive Theory of Method and Clinical Reasoning . . . . . . 117
6.5.1 The Data/Phenomena Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.5.2 Links Between the Abductive Theory of Method
and the Existing Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
6.5.3 A Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
6.6 The Five Phases of the Abductive Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.6.1 Phase 1: Phenomena Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.6.2 Phase 2: Inferring Causal Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.6.3 Phase 3: Developing a Causal Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
6.6.4 Phase 4: Evaluating the Causal Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.6.5 Phase 5: Formulating the Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7 How to Pursue the Adaptationist Program in Psychology . . . . . . . . . 135
7.1 Just so Stories and the Evolution of Mind: The Critique
of Adaptationism in Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
7.2 The Products of Evolution and How to Identify Them . . . . . . . . . 139
7.3 From just so Stories to Best Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7.4 Is Language a Biological Adaptation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
xviii Contents

7.5 Two Theories of Language Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

7.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
8 The Philosophy of Quantitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.1 Quantitative Methods and Scientific Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.1.1 Scientific Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.1.2 Scientific Realist Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
8.2 Exploratory Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
8.2.1 Exploratory Data Analysis and John Tukey . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
8.2.2 Exploratory Data Analysis and Scientific Method . . . . . . . 163
8.2.3 Exploratory Data Analysis and a Model of Data
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8.2.4 Resampling Methods and Reliabilist Justification . . . . . . . . 165
8.2.5 A Philosophy for Teaching Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
8.3 Bayesian Confirmation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
8.3.1 Bayesian Statistical Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
8.3.2 Criticisms of Bayesian Hypothesis Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
8.3.3 Bayesianism and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method . . . . . 169
8.3.4 Bayesianism and Inference to the Best Explanation . . . . . . 170
8.3.5 What Should We Think About Bayesianism? . . . . . . . . . . 171
8.4 Meta-Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
8.4.1 Meta-Analysis and Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
8.4.2 Meta-Analysis and Evaluative Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
8.4.3 Meta-Analysis and the Nature of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
8.5 Causal Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
8.5.1 Causal Modelling and Theories of Causation . . . . . . . . . . . 177
8.5.2 Structural Equation Modelling and Inference
to the Best Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.5.3 Do Latent Variables Exist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
8.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
8.7 Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
8.7.1 Understand Quantitative Methods Through
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
8.7.2 Rethink the Quantitative/Qualitative Distinction . . . . . . . . . 182
8.7.3 Evaluate the Philosophical Critiques of Quantitative
Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
8.8 Additional Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
9 Tests of Statistical Significance Made Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
9.1 NHST: Psychology’s Textbook Hybrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
9.2 The Neo-Fisherian Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Contents xix

9.3 The Error-Statistical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

9.3.1 Development of the Error-Statistical Philosophy . . . . . . . . 193
9.3.2 The Severity Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
9.3.3 Error-Statistical Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
9.3.4 A Hierarchy of Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
9.3.5 Error-Statistical Philosophy and Falsificationism . . . . . . . . 195
9.3.6 Error-Statistical Philosophy and Bayesianism . . . . . . . . . . 195
9.3.7 Virtues of the Error-Statistical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
9.4 What Should We Think About Tests of Significance? . . . . . . . . . . 197
9.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Chapter 1
Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific
Method

Contemporary philosophy of mind is an important source of psychological insight

that is frequently ignored by psychologists in their research deliberations. Conversely,
scientific theories and methods are resources that many philosophers of mind deem
irrelevant to their philosophical work. However, there is a well-established outlook
in contemporary philosophy known as naturalism, which asserts that philosophy is
continuous with science and which attempts to formulate and evaluate philosoph-
ical theories by using the research findings and investigative means of the various
sciences. Naturalism, in all its variety, is probably the reigning outlook in contem-
porary philosophy, and it is especially popular in the philosophy of science and the
philosophy of mind.
In their informative and innovative treatment of the topic, Kievit and his col-
leagues (2011) profitably combine resources from the philosophy of mind, scientific
methodology, and empirical science to demonstrate that two prominent theories of the
mind–body relation—the identity theory and the supervenience theory—can be artic-
ulated and tested using structural equation modelling methods. Kievit et al. are con-
cerned to move these two speculative theories from their customary position of meta-
physical isolation in philosophy into the realm of cognitive neuroscience. In doing so,
the authors have two main goals. The first is to demonstrate how two well-known the-
ories in the philosophy of mind can be made scientific by testing them empirically. As
such, this part of their project can be regarded as a contribution to naturalized philoso-
phy of mind. The authors’ second goal is to show how the statistical methods of struc-
tural equation modelling can be employed in cognitive neuroscience to illuminate the
relation between psychological and neurological properties. In the course of pursuing
these goals, Kievit et al. have instructive things to say about the relation between phi-
losophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience, and about the construction of theories
and the use of scientific methods. Written by authors who combine philosophical, psy-
chometric, and substantive psychological expertise, their article is a testament to the
idea that the disciplines of philosophy and psychology can be profitably conjoined.
In this chapter, I focus on matters that arise from the authors’ pursuit of their
first goal—the naturalization of philosophy of mind—by considering a number of
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 1
B. D. Haig, Method Matters in Psychology, Studies in Applied Philosophy,
Epistemology and Rational Ethics 45, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01051-5_1
2 1 Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method

ways in which philosophy and scientific psychology might be brought together to

their mutual advantage. My focus for the most part is on methods of inquiry. I begin
with a big picture consideration by briefly discussing the philosophies of empiricism
and scientific realism and their attitudes to naturalized philosophy. I then comment
on Jagewon Kim and David Lewis’s views of naturalism in the philosophy of mind
and consider their relation to the naturalism of the target article. Thereafter, I com-
ment specifically on some limitations of structural equation modelling, the method
of choice in their article, and the useful but neglected method of inference to the best
explanation After that, I suggest that philosophy and psychology might be encour-
aged to use each other’s methods to their mutual advantage. Before concluding, I
draw attention to the philosophy of normative naturalism I suggest that it can help
psychologists better understand the foundations of behavioural science methodology.

1.1 Traditional Empiricism: Philosophy and Science

Separated

Given that psychology grew out of philosophy, and has operated as a self-conscious
science for more than 100 years, the suggestion that psychology and philosophy
should join forces to their mutual advantage will strike some psychologists as unwel-
come advice. For psychology is still saddled with the traditional empiricist idea that
philosophy and science are different in kind, both in subject matter and in method.
Many of its practitioners think that philosophy is a discipline with its own unique
problems and investigative styles based on a priori armchair reflection, whereas psy-
chology is regarded as a science whose substantive claims are founded a posteriori
on empirical evidence.
Consistent with this understanding of the differences between the two disciplines,
the philosophy of standard empiricism is taken to be a privileged and unrevisable phi-
losophy of science. It is deemed to exist prior to, and apart from, science and provide
a foundation of certain, or near certain, knowledge about science. As an autonomous
and insular discipline, this philosophy has not looked to learn systematically from
the various sciences.1
Consistent with this empiricist outlook, philosophy is viewed by a majority of
psychologists as a dispensable luxury that has little, if anything, to do with their
workaday world as scientists. Because of this attitude to philosophy, I think it will
come as both a surprise and a puzzle to many readers that the authors of the target
article are intent on evaluating the scientific worth of philosophical theories.

1 Despite its separatist conception of philosophy, classical empiricism’s prescriptions for the con-
duct of inquiry have exerted a palpable influence on psychological science (e.g., the attraction of
operational definitions, the heavy use of Fisherian statistical procedures, and the steadfast neglect
of theory by the publication manual guidelines of the American Psychological Association).
1.2 Naturalistic Realism: Philosophy and Science Conjoined 3

1.2 Naturalistic Realism: Philosophy and Science

Conjoined

It is well known in philosophical circles that orthodox empiricism is an outmoded

philosophy of science and that its conception of philosophy is difficult to defend.
Scientific realism is the major alternative to empiricist philosophy of science.2 One
attractive form of this philosophy, naturalistic realism (Hooker, 1987), is so called
because it is a realist theory of science based on naturalism. According to this theory,
scientific reasoning, including theorizing, is a natural phenomenon that takes its
place in the world along with other natural phenomena. Further, philosophy and
science comprise a mutually interacting and interconnected whole. As a philosophical
theory about science, naturalistic realism has no privileged status and may be revised
in the light of scientific knowledge. Similarly, the naturalistic realist foresees that
philosophical conclusions, tempered by scientific knowledge, may force changes in
science itself.
According to one influential view of naturalism, philosophy and science are inter-
dependent. This interdependence takes the form of mutual containment (Quine,
1969), though the containment is different for each. Philosophy is contained by sci-
ence, being located within science as an abstract, critical endeavour that is informed
by science. Science is contained by philosophy because the latter, among other things,
provides a normative framework for the guidance of science.
Naturalistic realism maintains that philosophy of science is that part of science
concerned with the critical in-depth examination of science in respect of its presuppo-
sitions, aims, methods, theories, and institutions. Philosophy of science naturalized
is in a sense science applied to itself: It employs the methods of science to study sci-
ence; it is, where appropriate, constrained by the findings of science; and it is itself a
substantive theory of science. As such, naturalized philosophy of science is at once
descriptive, explanatory, advisory, integrative, and reflective of science. Being posi-
tioned within science, naturalistic philosophy is well placed to study science, learn
from science, and instruct science. The proponents of naturalized philosophy of sci-
ence are many and varied (Rosenberg, 1996). Prominent among them are Richard
Boyd, Clifford Hooker, Ronald Giere, Larry Laudan, and Philip Kitcher.
Not all of these philosophers are scientific realists (and not all scientific realists
are naturalists), which raises the question, Why is it advantageous to combine sci-
entific realism and naturalism in a philosophy of naturalistic realism? One reason is
that naturalism is the best methodology we have available to us; it gives us our best
methods and encourages us to constrain our theorizing in light of reliable scientific
knowledge. A further reason is that its principled commitment to both antianthro-
pocentrism and fallibilism affords us a realistic defence of realism, one that is true
to our makeup as cognizers. Finally, by embracing naturalism, realism becomes an

2A major debate between realists and empiricists in contemporary philosophy of science pivots
around Bas van Fraassen’s (1980) constructive empiricism and his criticisms of scientific realism.
This debate, and other debates between realists and antirealists, have been widely ignored by
psychologists.
4 1 Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method

integrated whole that affords us the best explanatory theory of the cognitive dynam-
ics of science (Hooker, 1987). I briefly remark on the explanatory worth of scientific
realism later.
What of realism regarding the mental? I think it is evident that we have good reason
to be realists about mentality in both philosophy of mind and scientific psychology.
Realism in the philosophy of mind has all the characteristics of philosophy of science
operating in the domain of the mind. In both scientific and (lay) folk psychology, the
explanatory and predictive achievements of our theories about the mental, modest
though they often are, are sufficient to warrant a realist outlook (Fletcher, 1995).

1.3 Varieties of Naturalism

There are many different forms of naturalism in philosophy, and there is consid-
erable debate about how naturalism should be conceived (Kitcher, 1992). Modern
discussions of naturalism often begin by referring to Quine’s efforts to rehabilitate
naturalism in epistemology (Quine, 1969), and I do the same. I then look at the nat-
uralist commitments of Kim and Lewis in their respective theories of the mind/body
relation, before briefly comparing them with the naturalism of Kievit et al. (2011).
I conclude my selective overview of different naturalist positions by pointing to
examples of naturalism in psychology, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical
methodology.

1.3.1 Quine’s Naturalism

Quine is generally regarded as the most influential philosophical naturalist of the

20th century, and it comes as no surprise that the authors of the target article refer
their readers to Quine’s (1969) landmark essay, “Epistemology Naturalized,” for
philosophical reasons for adopting a naturalist stance in epistemology.3
The primary features of Quine’s naturalism are succinctly characterized by him
as follows: “Naturalism [is] the abandonment of the goal of a first philosophy. It sees
natural science as an inquiry into reality, fallible and corrigible but not answerable to
any supra-scientific tribunal, and not in need of any justification beyond observation
and the hypothetico-deductive method” (Quine, 1981, p. 72). Philosophy, understood
as first philosophy, is different from science. It is a discipline that is methodologically
prior to science and, through a priori reflection, fashions general truths that provide

3 An important part of Quine’s philosophical motivation for adopting naturalism is his scepticism
about a priori knowledge. He famously argued that it is impossible to draw a sharp distinction
between truths of meaning, or analytic truths, which are known a priori, and truths of fact, or
synthetic truths, which are known a posteriori.
1.3 Varieties of Naturalism 5

a foundation of justification for scientific inquiry itself. It is the “supra-scientific

tribunal” for science.
In rejecting this picture of first philosophy, and its assumption that philosophical
knowledge can be obtained a priori, Quine conceives philosophy as broadly scientific,
maintaining that all knowledge is a posteriori and that science is our best means of
obtaining such knowledge. For Quine, philosophy and science are of a piece, and his
naturalism can be regarded as scientistic in the best sense of that term.
With his strong commitment to naturalism in epistemology, Quine has obvi-
ous high regard for scientific method. In this respect, he endorses the hypothetico-
deductive method, claiming that it is a sufficient account of scientific method. In some
tension with this claim, he also emphasizes the importance of theoretical virtues such
as conservatism, modesty, and simplicity, in justifying scientific claims. However,
Quine is not much interested in the details of scientific methods and the patterns of
reasoning that their employment facilitates. And, apart from his account of language
learning, he refrains from exploiting substantive scientific knowledge as a source of
constraints on philosophical theorizing. This disregard for empirical constraint is in
marked contrast to the naturalism of Kievit et al., who identify and justify using the
method of structural equation modelling in order to specify and empirically test the
supervenience and identity theories of the mind.

1.3.2 Kim’s Naturalism

Although Kim sees his supervenience theory as part of a naturalized philosophy of

mind, it is a much weaker form of naturalism than that pursued by Kievit et al. in their
target work. Kim is a well-known critic of Quine’s naturalized epistemology, faulting
it because he thinks it is purely descriptive and has no place for the normative claims
that he maintains are part and parcel of epistemology proper (Kim, 1988). However,
many naturalists, including the later Quine, accept that a proper naturalist epistemol-
ogy can be both descriptive and normative. A proper naturalistic epistemology needs
to embrace the range of normative concerns that have traditionally motivated episte-
mologists but readdress them from the vantage point of a naturalistic epistemology.
For example, contemporary naturalistic epistemology is well positioned to provide
constructive advice on how human cognizers can improve their epistemic situation
by correcting their cognitive biases in a manner that traditional epistemology was
neither able nor motivated to do (Bishop & Trout, 2005). Laudan’s normative natu-
ralism, which I briefly consider at the end of the commentary, is so called because
it maintains that normative considerations are central to a naturalist conception of
methodology.
Although Kim’s commitment to naturalism in the philosophy of mind allows
for a normative dimension, he maintains that we must seek an explanation of the
mind/body relation through natural science, not psychology or philosophy. He him-
self does not provide an explanation of the supervenience relation as such. Instead,
he provides an abstract characterization of the relation in the mode of an analytic
6 1 Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method

philosopher. This approach to philosophy in good part involves clarifying concep-

tual obscurities, detecting and correcting unreasonable arguments, and avoiding
unwanted philosophical positions.
Kievit et al. chose to focus on Kim’s supervenience theory because it is both
well known and well regarded. However, despite being the product of a first-rate
philosophical mind, the substantive content of Kim’s supervenience theory is rather
meagre, and it makes no genuine contact with the mental sciences. These facts are
borne out in Kievit et al.’s necessarily brief characterization of his supervenience the-
ory, a characterization that they are able to expand on by specifying the supervenience
relation as a formative structural equation model.

1.3.3 Lewis’s Naturalism

Lewis was a systematic philosopher committed to realism, both scientific and meta-
physical. He was a reductive materialist about the mind, maintaining that mental
states are contingently identical to physical states, particularly neural states. It is
appropriate, therefore, that Kievit et al. focus on his identity theory as a poten-
tial contribution to reductionist cognitive neuroscience. But Lewis also developed
explicit views about how philosophers should go about their business of philosophiz-
ing (Lewis, 1983; Nolan, 2005). I want to say something about Lewis on this score
in order to better appreciate at a methodological level how his identity theory, as he
regards it, actually compares with its empirical evaluation by Kievit et al.
Lewis took philosophical inquiry to be a form of conceptual analysis, but it was
conceptual analysis with a difference. Many philosophers used to regard conceptual
analysis as the specification of the primary meaning of nontechnical terms that are of
interest to philosophers. This was understood as something quite different from the
construction and elucidation of synthetic theories. However, for Lewis, philosophical
inquiry should, where possible, follow what has come to be called the Canberra
Plan.4 According to this plan (Braddon-Mitchell & Nola, 2009), which Lewis helped
shape, the philosopher’s first task is to engage in a priori analysis of the concepts
and categories employed in everyday thought. Such thought is assembled in our
folk theory of common sense, a theory that Lewis maintained we are entitled to
believe in despite its unsystematic nature. Indeed, Lewis seemed to think that some
commonsense claims are nonnegotiable because we do not have sufficient reason to
believe anything else. For all that, Lewis insisted that the results of such conceptual
analyses are modest and that they yield no empirical knowledge. The second task in
the Canberra Plan is to invoke relevant a posteriori scientific knowledge about the

4 The Canberra Plan is so called because many of its early proponents were philosophers associated

with the Australian National University in Canberra. Frank Jackson and Philip Petit are prominent
among them.
1.3 Varieties of Naturalism 7

basic nature of reality in order to satisfy those folk concepts and categories. This task
involves seeking the referents of these concepts as suggested by our best scientific
theories. And, the successful search for such referents justifies our application of the
concepts in question.

1.3.4 The Naturalism of Kievit et al.

It is this second task in the Canberra Plan that makes Lewis’s identity theory of mind
a part of naturalistic philosophy. However, Lewis’s naturalism is a more restrained
form of naturalism than the thorough-going naturalism of Kievit et al. In contrast,
Kievit et al. take Lewis’s identity theory, treat it as a substantive theory of the mind,
and show that it can be scientifically evaluated by submitting it to empirical test. By
specifying Lewis’s identity theory as a structural equation model, they subject it to a
regimentation that is quite different from the regimentation provided by the Canberra
model, which Lewis himself used. Of course, at the same time, Kievit et al. provide
an additional justification for the identity theory to that provided by Lewis himself.
Lewis was a system builder, and for him the plausibility of his identity theory
stemmed from being part of the broad reflective equilibrium of his total philosoph-
ical system. However, Lewis went further than just relying on the vague notion of
reflective equilibrium, for he justified the credence of his philosophical theories by
appealing to their fruitfulness, that is, to their simplicity, unifying power, explanatory
value, and their conservativeness. In this respect his methodology shares affinities
with that of Quine.
Although Lewis’s evaluation of his identity theory was broad ranging, he did not
submit it to explicit systematic appraisal. By contrast, Kievit et al.’s justification of
the identity theory is more local, stemming as it does from measures of empirical
adequacy provided by structural equation modelling. Their justification is thereby
more explicit and systematic than that provided by Lewis. However, I note shortly
that one can provide a more comprehensive approach to theory evaluation than that
adopted by Kievit et al.

1.3.5 Speculative Theory and Empirical Constraint

In addition to constructing theories about science, naturalism also encourages

philosophers to function as speculative scientists by fashioning substantive theories
a posteriori in their domains of interest. In contemporary philosophy of mind, Jerry
Fodor, Daniel Dennett, Stephen Stich, Paul and Patricia Churchland, Fred Dreske,
and many others, have engaged in the project of constructing naturalistic theories of
the mind. It is a concern that their creative contributions are not being incorporated
into psychology’s mainstream efforts to understand the mind, for they rank among
the most suggestive psychological theories currently on offer.
8 1 Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method

However, it also matters that some of these theoretical contributions are not heavily
constrained by extant psychological knowledge.5 Take, for example, Paul Church-
land’s (1981) well-known critical evaluation of the scientific status of folk psychol-
ogy. He argued that there is no good evidence for the existence of the beliefs and
desires that folk psychology postulates and that we should discard folk psychology in
favour of a neuro-scientific alternative. Churchland’s case against folk psychology is
multifaceted, but it is conspicuous by its absence of a concerted examination of the rel-
evant empirical literature in psychology that speaks to the worth of folk psychology.
Fletcher (1995) has examined the scientific credibility of folk psychology at
length. However, unlike, Churchland, Fletcher examined the relevant empirical evi-
dence in social psychology as well as the conceptual and theoretical issues that are
germane to its credibility. Citing empirical studies of his own, and the research of
others, Fletcher demonstrated that “under certain conditions, folk theories do rather
well in explaining and predicting social behaviour” (p. 89). Naturalistically inclined
philosophers have been reluctant to make full use of the relevant empirical literatures
in their spheres of interest. Fletcher’s work is a good example of how theoretically
oriented psychologists, whose stock-in-trade is empirical research, can helpfully
contribute to a naturalist perspective on the mind.
Relatedly, the work of a number of people whom we regard as prominent psy-
chological theorists cannot be properly understood unless we take them to be nat-
uralistic philosophers as well as psychological researchers. Consider, for example,
Piaget and Skinner. To understand and evaluate Piaget’s developmental psycholog-
ical research we must see it as part of his genetic epistemology, whereas Skinner’s
radical behaviourist psychology should be seen to contain a psychologically oriented
treatment of knowledge processes in science.
I turn now to consider structural equation modelling, which is the method used
by Kievit et al. to empirically evaluate the identity and supervenience theories. I then
suggest that the method of inference to the best explanation might also usefully be
employed to evaluate theories like these.

1.4 Naturalism and Scientific Method

1.4.1 Structural Equation Modelling

By using structural equation modelling methods to evaluate the identity and super-
venience theories, Kievit et al. adopt the hypothetico-deductive method of theory
appraisal. The hypothetico-deductive method, which has long been the method of

5A sceptical philosopher might argue that much psychological knowledge is superficial and far
from the truth, and that it, therefore, ought not to seriously constrain philosophical theorizing about
the mind. I think there is something to be said for this view, but it needs to be argued for on a case-
by-case basis with a detailed examination of the epistemic credentials of the knowledge claims in
question.
1.4 Naturalism and Scientific Method 9

choice for the evaluation of psychological theories, is commonly characterized in

minimalist terms: The researcher takes an existing hypothesis or theory and submits
it to indirect test by deriving from it one or more observational predictions that are
themselves directly tested. Predictions borne out by the data are taken to confirm the
theory to some extent; those that do not square with the data count as disconfirming
instances of the theory.
One feature of Kievit et al.’s research, which makes the hypothetico-deductive
method fit for their purpose, is that it takes the two theories it tests as givens, irrespec-
tive of their origin. In using the hypothetico-deductive method, it matters not that
the identity and supervenience theories of the mind/body relation were formulated
in philosophers’ armchairs. All that matters is that they are stated in propositional
form and can, with suitable specification, be made amenable to empirical testing.
It is a feature of structural equation modelling that it uses goodness-of-fit measures
as a basis for judging the acceptability of the models it tests. Leaving aside difficulties
in determining the corroborative value of these measures,6 it should be emphasized
that goodness-of-fit is a criterion of empirical adequacy (Rodgers & Rowe, 2002)
that by itself provides insufficient grounds for assessing the credibility of competing
models. This limitation is a special case of the problem known as the underdetermi-
nation of theories by data (better, empirical evidence), and an attractive solution to
this problem is to supplement measures of empirical adequacy by appealing to the
so-called superempirical or theoretical virtues such as explanatory power, fertility,
and simplicity (McMullin, 1983). Although the use of criteria such as these do not
“close the gap” between theory and empirical evidence, they do reduce it, thereby
enabling the researcher to manage this particular underdetermination problem.

1.4.2 Inference to the Best Explanation

As just noted, the orthodox hypothetico-deductive method takes predictive accuracy

as the sole criterion of theory goodness. However, when explanatory criteria are
invoked, a quite different approach to theory appraisal is employed—an approach
known as inference to the best explanation (Haig, 2009; Lipton, 2004; Thagard,
1992). I think that this alternative perspective on theory appraisal could be used
with profit to evaluate metaphysical theories like those considered by Kievit et al.
With inference to the best explanation, the ideas of explanation and evidence come
together, and explanatory reasoning becomes the basis for evaluating theories: The
explanatory goodness of theories counts in their favour; conversely, the explanatory
failings of theories detract from their credibility.
According to Thagard (1992), inference to the best explanation is essentially a mat-
ter of establishing relations of explanatory coherence between propositions within a

6 Despite the sophistication of structural equation modelling, a number of authors have raised doubts

about its use of fit indices in model selection. Barrett (2007) and McDonald (2010) are two recent
expressions of concern about the difficulties in determining the fit of structural models to data.
10 1 Philosophical Naturalism and Scientific Method

theory. On this account of inference to the best explanation, to infer that a theory is the
best explanation is to judge it as more explanatorily coherent than its rivals. Structural
equation models are networks of propositions, and theories depicted as networks of
propositions lend themselves naturally to evaluation in terms of considerations of
explanatory coherence.
In research practice, the hypothetico-deductive method is sometimes combined
with the use of supplementary evaluative criteria. When this happens, and one or
more of the criteria have to do with explanation, the combined approach can appro-
priately be regarded as a version of inference to the best explanation, rather than
just an augmented account of the hypothetico-deductive method. This is because
the central characteristic of the hypothetico-deductive method is a relationship of
logical entailment between theory and evidence, whereas with inference to the best
explanation the relationship is one of explanation. The hybrid version of inference
to the best explanation being noted here will allow the researcher to say that a good
explanatory theory will rate well on the explanatory criteria and at the same time
boast a measure of predictive success. Most methodologists and scientists will agree
that an explanatory theory that also makes accurate predictions will be a better theory
for doing so.
Although the use of structural equation modelling in psychology often involves
testing models in hypothetico-deductive fashion, it also contains a minority practice
that provides an example of inference to the best explanation in the sense just noted.
This latter practice involves the explicit comparison of models or theories in which
an assessment of their goodness-of-fit to the empirical evidence is combined with
a weighting of the fit statistics in terms of parsimony indices (Kaplan, 2000). Here
goodness-of-fit provides information about the empirical adequacy of the model,
whereas parsimony functions as a criterion having to do with the explanatory value
of the model. Both are used in judgments of model goodness. Markus, Hawes, and
Thasites (2008) recently suggested that in structural equation modelling, model fit
can be combined with model parsimony, understood as explanatory power, to pro-
vide an operationalized account of inference to the best explanation. They discussed
the prospects of using structural equation modelling in this way to evaluate the com-
parative merits of two- and three-factor models of psychopathy. It would be both
interesting and informative to see structural equation modelling used in this manner
to evaluate the identity and supervenience theories.

1.4.3 Sharing Philosophical and Scientific Methods

Combining philosophy and science in the manner suggested by naturalistic realism

has the important implication that philosophers and scientists should use each other’s
methodologies to further their work. In what follows, I briefly consider three quite
different methods that have been, or might be, used in both philosophy and science.
1.4 Naturalism and Scientific Method 11

1.4.4 Conceptual Analysis

The analysis of concepts has been a stock-in-trade of traditional philosophy. Despite

spirited criticisms of the worth of conceptual analysis to philosophy, its clear impor-
tance in the Canberra Plan discussed earlier suggests that conceptual analysis in
some form still has a useful role in naturalistic epistemology. Moreover, the utility
of conceptual analysis extends to scientific practice itself. Kievit et al. mention the
mereological fallacy as an example. This fallacy involves the mistake of attributing
to a part what can only properly be attributed to a whole. The authors cite an exam-
ple from Bennett and Hacker (2003), who maintained that claims in contemporary
neuroscience like “the frontal lobe engages in executive functioning” attribute to a
part of the brain what can only properly be attributed to human beings.7
The importance of conceptual analysis in helping to improve the quality of psycho-
logical science has received little attention within the discipline. However, Rozeboom
(1977) has strongly urged psychologists to engage in professional critical analysis
of their concepts in order to improve their thinking about substantive issues. He sees
this practice as an important and neglected aspect of scientific methodology that
deserves to be systematically taught and practiced along with statistical methodol-
ogy. Rozeboom understands conceptual analysis in rather broad terms to include
clarifying the meaning of terms, identifying the depth-grammar of concepts, probing
the ideational structure of theories, and evaluating the quality of scientific reasoning.
This broad undertaking he called metathink, which is a detailed working out of the
two pragmatic questions, “What do I mean?” and “How do I know?” In short, con-
ceptual analysis is a neglected, but useful, addition to the psychological researcher’s
methodological armamentarium.

1.4.5 Inference to the Best Explanation Again

Earlier, it was noted that inference to the best explanation is an important approach
to the justification of scientific theories. However, inference to the best explanation
has also been used as a means of justifying theories in philosophy of science, meta-
physics, and other branches of philosophy. For example, a number of philosophers
have offered a defence of scientific realism as the best explanation for the success of
science,8 whereas others in metaphysics have employed inference to the best expla-

7I don’t mean to suggest that we should subscribe to Bennett and Hacker’s Wittgensteinian view
that empirical considerations do not bear on the process of conceptual analysis. Sytsma (2010) is
a recent discussion and demonstration of the relevance of empirical investigations to conceptual
analysis.
8 In this chapter, I have assumed, but not argued for, the tenability of scientific realism. I think that

a form of inference to the best explanation provides us with the best argument for scientific realism
but that its justificatory force is modest. See Psillos (1999) for a general justification of scientific
realism in terms of inference to the best explanation, and Boyd (1996) for an argument to the best
explanation that justifies a realist understanding of scientific methods.
Another random document with
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Swiftly we released her from the tape and wire that silenced and
bound her; then, to our astonishment, we found that she was
chained by the ankle to an iron post of the bed. The Chief
immediately set to work to unfasten the chain, which looked like an
ordinary dog-chain.
By this time, McGinity had discovered a light fixture in the wall, near
the front window, containing one bulb, which he turned on. Mrs.
LaRauche stared dazedly from one to the other of us, giving me no
sign of recognition, although I addressed her by name. But she
appeared to comprehend what we were up to. Still unable to speak,
she raised one hand weakly, and pointed towards the window in the
back of the room, behind the bed.
In doing this, she furnished us with an important clue. LaRauche had
escaped through this window, which was set in the Mansard roof,
and gave on to a broadish ledge, sufficient wide for a person to walk
on. This ledge extended clear around the house.
"We've got to get LaRauche!" Chief Meigs exclaimed, but he couldn't
get through the window because of his rather portly physique. Nor
could I. McGinity, slim in figure, managed it nicely. He had such good
eye-sight that he could distinguish objects which were beyond the
view of normal-sighted people. And he was hardly outside, on the
ledge, and debating whether he should turn to the left or the right,
when he espied a figure, crouching in the dark, at the far end of the
roof extension.
"You see it?" he asked Chief Meigs, who was leaning out of the
window.
"I can't see a damn thing," the Chief replied.
"Next time, you'd better bring your opera-glasses," the reporter
suggested, ironically.
"I wonder if it is LaRauche?" said the Chief, thoughtfully.
"It's a man, at any rate," said McGinity. "Looks like he's wearing
black trousers and a white shirt. No coat or hat at all. He's got bushy
white hair."
"Then it's LaRauche," the Chief exclaimed. "Call to him, and tell him
to come back into the house. Say it's no use trying to escape."
McGinity did as the Chief requested, and there came in reply a
cackling laugh.
"I heard that," said the Chief. "It's the laugh of a maniac." Then he
added quickly: "What's he doing now?"
McGinity did not reply immediately. He had seen something very
strange happen. LaRauche had mysteriously disappeared—
vanished into the air.
"He's gone!" the reporter cried at last. "Escaped! He just flew off the
roof."
The Chief gave a groan of disappointment. "Oh, come back in!" he
ordered gruffly. "Don't be funny!"
McGinity came back through the window, his knees a little unsteady.
Then he explained what he had seen. LaRauche had floated off the
roof, into the air, lightly but swiftly, taking a downward course, and
had been swallowed up in the darkness below.
"You don't expect me to believe a fairy story like that?" Chief Meigs
growled. "Here, let's get downstairs. We're wasting time."
"It's the gospel truth, officer," McGinity declared, vehemently; "but
how he did it is a puzzle to me."
It was no puzzle to me. I had always considered LaRauche mad, and
mad scientists work in a strange, mysterious way. His vanishing into
the air, from the roof, might have a perfectly natural explanation.
Having my own views, which I was not inclined at the moment to
expose, for fear of further disgruntling the Chief, I said nothing.
Five minutes after the Chief and McGinity had gone downstairs, the
reporter to search for LaRauche in the back-yard, while Chief Meigs
reported the mysterious death of Orkins, and summoned medical aid
for Mrs. LaRauche, by telephone, my attention was again attracted
to the back window. This time it was by a bright glare of light.
Hurrying to the window, I was made speedily conscious of what was
happening. LaRauche had, indeed, escaped from the house by way
of the roof, in a manner yet to be revealed, and was now, apparently,
making a quick getaway in his plane.
He had set off a magnesium flare. The small hangar and flying field
were bathed in a weird and eerie silver-colored haze. His plane was
in sight. Even at this distance, I caught the glint of its wings in the
silver-colored light as it taxied across the field. With a roar, it shot
upward, and was lost in the blackness of the night.
McGinity had heard the noise of the take-off, and came running up,
to learn from me, and make sure his speculations, that LaRauche
had really vanished from the roof, as if by magic, and was now
escaping in his plane. I assured him on these two points very firmly
and quickly.
And while he hurriedly retraced his steps downstairs, to report to
Meigs, I again turned my attention to Mrs. LaRauche, whose mind,
although still in confusion, was slowly clearing.
Later, we were to hear some very remarkable things from her.

XXVIII
My intuitive feeling that we had a night's work before us, which I had
voiced prophetically to McGinity earlier in the evening, as we started
for the LaRauche place, with only the faint clue of a woman's voice
on the telephone to go on, proved conformable to fact. Dawn was
breaking when we returned to the castle, weary and heavy at heart.
The place was silent; the only sound that came to us was the swish-
swish of the incoming tide, as it broke against the rocks at the foot of
the cliff.
We were both so saddened and unstrung over our unpleasant and
tragic experiences during the past twenty-four hours, and so
physically dog-tired, that we were averse to talking them over.
The three tragedies, occurring so closely together, first, Niki, then Mr.
Zzyx, and now, Orkins, after all, seemed to have been so
unnecessary; or, as Henry had voiced his opinion about Mr. Zzyx's
fearful death, so senseless. And while there was a logical connection
between them and the perpetration of the Martian hoax, so far they
had contributed little or nothing in clearing up the mystery which was
still baffling us both.
It was here that Mrs. LaRauche came into the picture. My conviction,
from the time I recognized her voice on the telephone, was that she
knew more than any one else did. I had been shocked rather than
distressed at the death of Orkins. A providential death, perhaps, with
LaRauche gone now, and his wife holding the secret.
But where was LaRauche going? Evidently, after the systematic
manner of his escape, he had a set goal. He was an experienced
pilot, and a very expert one, considering his age, and probably knew
of many places where a man could land safely in the dark.
Word of his escape by plane had been broadcast; the machinery of
police watchfulness set in motion along the entire eastern seaboard,
and far inland, as well. Somewhere in the air, a man was flying—
wanted by the police.
Mrs. LaRauche was a badly shaken woman, but her condition was
not serious. I remained at her side until the arrival of an ambulance
physician from the county hospital. He was accompanied by a nurse,
who took her immediately in charge. But she had other ideas than of
going to the hospital. Her brain had cleared considerably, and she
insisted on remaining in her home. I agreed with her on this, and to
the inconvenience of the proprietor of an employment agency in the
village, who had retired for the night, I soon had a competent
manservant, with his wife, on the premises.
By the time they arrived, bringing ample provisions and milk, which I
had the foresight to order, the police had removed the body of
Orkins, as well as all traces of his death. The couple set to work at
once, systematically clearing up and setting things in order. By
midnight, the house was freshened up considerably, and Mrs.
LaRauche made as comfortable as possible in her own, redressed
bedroom, with the hospital nurse in attendance.
What she needed most, the physician decreed, was absolute rest
and quiet. The kindly attentions showered upon her appeared for the
moment to compensate for the loss of her demented husband. She
had come out of a horror, but she was not thinking—or allowing
herself to think—it seemed to me.
The house still seemed empty and queer as McGinity and I drove
away, around one o'clock, trailing Chief Meigs' car back to the
village. The Chief's last act was to station a policeman on guard,
which made me a lot easier in my mind.
The situation was still lamentable enough, but McGinity and I, with
an air of bravado, continued our inquiries on reaching the village.
With police assistance, we had no difficulty in locating the light truck
which Orkins had rented, and once located and properly inspected,
we found nothing to indicate that it had been used to transport the
stolen rocket from the Museum of Science to the East River.
And then McGinity suddenly found something, which was vitally
important. A screw from the rocket. Chief Meigs chuckled; he
couldn't see that a screw could possibly have any bearing on our
situation. When we returned to the police station, I showed him.
"Why, that's just an ordinary screw," he said, after inspecting the
screw more closely. "I don't see how it could mean anything."
"No?" I said. "Then you don't know how they make screws on Mars.
If you think it's just ordinary, here's a screw-driver and a piece of pine
wood. Now, drive it in!"
"That doesn't worry me at all," Meigs bantered. He went to his task
cheerfully, even whistling, and giving a wink to several policemen
who were looking on. But the screw refused to function in the
ordinary way. Finally, he gave it up. "Why the damn thing won't go
into the wood is a mystery to me," he remarked, as he handed the
screw and screw-driver back to me.
"Because it works in reverse to our screws," I explained, as I drove
the screw into the soft wood easily enough by a reverse motion.
"There, I've done the job," I concluded, "which proves conclusively
that only a Martian screw could be jolted out of a Martian rocket. And
as the screw was found in the truck, the van therefore must have
carried the rocket."
The Chief of Police grew pop-eyed in amazement.
"Everything about the rocket has this unusual element," I continued,
"except the metal from which it was constructed, and it is a scientific
fact that the metallic ores which abound on the earth are to be found
in other planets."
The Chief's look of blank astonishment prompted me to go on.
"Now, whatever we may have thought at first about this rocket
having originated on Mars, we know now that LaRauche
manufactured it himself. He had the brain power necessary to create
this fantasy in mechanism, and the means and method of carrying
out his motive, which was to bring my brother Henry to shame."
"All of which stirred the popular imagination, and increased the
circulation of the Daily Recorder half a million," McGinity interjected.
"Well," Chief Meigs drawled, "all I got to say is this. If making screws
that go in backwards is not the act of a lunatic, then I'm crazy
myself."
For several hours, McGinity and I remained at the police station,
occupying ourselves piecing together from this and that all the
information at our command; and at the end, it was as clear as
daylight that we knew no more about the actual perpetration of the
hoax than we did twenty-four hours back. The impression we both
had gained was that tragedy had been obtruded into LaRauche's
suave scheme that was shockingly disturbing, but had nothing
whatever to do with clearing up the case.
There was little or nothing at the LaRauche home for the police to go
on with. No trace of the revolver that had pierced Orkins' heart with
its deadly bullet; no firearms of any sort, in fact. Mrs. LaRauche
heightened the mystery by declaring her husband had an inherent
fear of the use of firearms, as he had of fire, and had never owned a
revolver. Nor was any sort of weapon discovered during the
inspection of his laboratory, or workrooms, in the observatory and
hangar, in which he operated outside his dwelling. No evidence even
was found that would in the slightest degree incriminate him in the
Martian fraud.
The city papers had come by plane, after midnight, and I read them
all with interest. McGinity, fed up on the story, waved them away.
They contained a very full account of what had occurred at the
castle, Orkins' mysterious death, and LaRauche's escape by plane.
About three o'clock, I succeeded in reaching Olinski on the
telephone, at his city home, and he was so upset over the whole
affair, as reported in the papers, that at first all he could seem to do
was to sputter into the mouthpiece.
"I fear, my dear Mr. Royce," he managed to say, finally, "that you and
that reporter fellow have made a great mistake—a serious error. You
have found nothing to prove that the radio message, and the rocket,
did not originate in Mars, now, have you?"
"Nothing," I replied, "except that water-mark we found in the scroll."
"That proves nothing," he fairly shouted. "Some utterly unscrupulous
and wicked person may have changed that scroll after it passed out
of my possession."
"That is your theory, Mr. Olinski?" I asked.
"Can you suggest any other?" he countered. "No; because there can
be no other. Unless you are accusing me of complicity—"
"I didn't say so, Mr. Olinski," I interrupted.
"Yet you believe this Dr. LaRauche, the scientist you've been telling
me about, is at the bottom of this so-called hoax?"
"That is highly possible," I answered. "I myself think so."
"But you have, of course, no idea just how he did it?"
"No idea whatever, but it's quite plain that for motives of his own he
had the opportunity."
"And that," Olinski declared, "that's as far as you've got?"
"At present," I replied.
"And that's as far as you'll ever get, my dear Mr. Royce," he rejoined
in a bitter, sardonic tone, and then suddenly hung up.
When we had thus made an end, a dead silence followed, during
which McGinity and I looked at each other for a moment or two, in
silence. After I had told him what Olinski had said, the reporter
spoke.
"I've put it out of my mind that Olinski had anything to do with this
affair," he said. "The more I think of it, Mr. Royce, the more I'm dead
certain that Mrs. LaRauche is our only hope. Finding her husband
will be a police detail, and several days may elapse before he's
apprehended. Now, if we could get to her, the first thing in the
morning. Do you think that would be possible?"
Before I could answer, Chief Meigs walked in to say that a plane,
answering the description of LaRauche's machine, had passed over
Montauk Point, heading south, a little before three o'clock, had been
picked up by a coast-guard searchlight, but had dodged out of the
light. With this announcement, all thoughts of Mrs. LaRauche
vanished, and—to me, at any rate—did not recur until we had driven
back to the castle at the break of dawn, after a weary vigil of waiting
at the police station to hear further word of LaRauche. But the
reports were blank and disappointing.

XXIX
Interviewing Mrs. LaRauche did not prove as difficult as we had
anticipated. At ten o'clock—McGinity and I were still in bed—the
manservant I had installed at the LaRauche house, telephoned that
Mrs. LaRauche was feeling much stronger, and was most anxious to
see Henry and me on a matter of very urgent business; and would
we please bring along the village Chief of Police, also the young
newspaper reporter who had accompanied the officer and me to the
house the night before.
At eleven o'clock, we drove off. On our way through the village, we
picked up Chief Meigs, and the first thing he did after boarding the
car was to give me a wink, and mutter: "Screws!" Henry was pallid
and trembling. He had been deeply shocked when he learned of
Orkins' death. He seemed to have aged ten years during the night.
McGinity was in a state of excitement. After a late and hasty
breakfast, he and Pat had taken a stroll on the terrace. In spite of the
tragedies and excitement, Pat had come downstairs looking as fresh
and as bright as I had ever known her. I met them as I came out to
get into the car. McGinity had just reached out to take her hand in
his, and she had not drawn it away. She seemed a little breathless.
The strain of the past twenty-four hours, and loss of sleep, had been
too much for me. As we breezed along in the crisp, morning air, I
was no more capable of keeping my eyes open than I was of writing
poetry. My conversation was limited to monosyllabic answers;
between monosyllables, I fell into a light doze.
Nearing the LaRauche place, I became more wide-awake, and
began to speculate whether Mrs. LaRauche knew, and was in a
position to tell, the whole truth. Doubt had entered my mind. Even
after we had been admitted into the house, and had gathered around
her, in a sitting-room adjoining her bedchamber, I felt certain that she
would be able to contribute very little to the sum of information which
we had.
She was dressed in a dark morning gown, and seated in an easy
chair. The heavy window curtains were drawn, to save her eye-sight,
after long imprisonment in a darkened room. In the dim glow of a
shaded lamp, her face appeared pale and worn. Yet her poise was
serene; to all appearances, she was very much mistress of herself.
This was a great relief to me. I was afraid we would have a
quivering, sobbing woman on our hands, and the thought was
terrifying. Only once, when she grasped Henry's hand, on our arrival,
did she show that she was under a strain which was almost at a
breaking point.
She was a comely woman, even in her present pitiable state, and
she had the voice of a woman of refinement and education. I had
often wondered why she had married a man so much older than
herself, and so eccentric. She was LaRauche's second wife. God
knows what became of the first one!
After we had quietly taken seats, Chief Meigs broke the tension of
silence. "Do you feel strong enough to answer our questions, Mrs.
LaRauche?" he inquired.
She nodded, and replied: "I think so."
Then Henry spoke. "I wish to heaven, Mrs. LaRauche, you'd got in
touch sooner with Livingston and me. We've always prized your
friendship very highly, and if it had not been for—"
"Yes; I know," Mrs. LaRauche broke in, as though anticipating his
closing remark; "but I've been unable to communicate with any one
on the outside for several weeks. A day or so ago, I managed to get
the front window open, and waved to a motorcycle policeman, but
apparently he did not see me." She stopped, and glanced nervously
over her shoulder, and added, with a little shiver: "Oh, you don't
know how I've grown to hate this house!" Then, quickly regaining her
self-possession, she looked at McGinity steadily for a moment, and
said: "I haven't the slightest idea who you are. I only know that you
were a very thoughtful and kind young man last night. Are you the
newspaper reporter?"
McGinity nodded, with an embarrassed smile, and was about to
reply when I interjected: "A thousand pardons, Mrs. LaRauche," I
said. "Allow me to present Mr. Robert McGinity, of the New York
Daily Recorder, a young but very capable reporter, in whom we place
every confidence. In fact, we've grown so fond of him, he seems like
one of the family." Turning to Henry for confirmation, I concluded: "I
am quite right, am I not, Henry?"
"Of course, you're right," Henry answered, loudly. "And I don't know
what we're going to do without him when this—er—Martian affair—I
was about to say, Martian inquest—is finished."
I gasped with astonishment at Henry's remarks, while McGinity
turned very red, and said, stammeringly: "Thanks, Mr. Royce." Then
he began to fumble nervously with his inevitable bunch of copy
paper and pencil.
Mrs. LaRauche smiled wanly, and addressed herself again to the
reporter. "I'm so glad you've come, Mr. McGinity," she said, "for what
I'm going to tell, I wish to be given as much publicity as possible. I
want the public to know that Henry Royce was imposed upon, and
that my husband, now a fugitive, although I refuse to believe he's a
murderer, was wholly responsible, with the connivance of Orkins, his
manservant, in carrying out this cruel deception, which, I know, is still
puzzling all of you."
"Even at that, it doesn't seem so incredulous," Henry commented. "I
guess I'm one of the die-hard kind."
There was a little pause, then Mrs. LaRauche turned to Chief Meigs.
"Tell me," she said, "how is the search going? Have the police
discovered any clue to my husband's whereabouts?"
"I'm afraid I can't give you any information," Meigs replied; "no clue
at all."
"It isn't that I want him back," she said firmly, "or would ever want to
see him again, after the many cruelties he practiced on me. But he's
been out of his mind—insane—I'm sure, for weeks now, and is really
unaccountable for his acts."
Her voice had grown shaky, and her face went whiter than it had
been. We remained silent, recognizing the futility of questioning her
until she got control of herself. Our chief interest, of course, lay in the
unraveling of the mystery which still baffled us, and when she finally
got to it, she answered all our questions in a cool collected way.
On my suggestion, McGinity began the questioning, giving us a
specimen of his powers of observation. He omitted no detail of
importance, carefully marshaling his facts and presenting them to
Mrs. LaRauche as expertly as a lawyer examining a witness before a
jury.
"Your married life has been a very unhappy one, hasn't it, Mrs.
LaRauche?" he began.
"Very unhappy," she replied, sighing. "Insolent, quarrelsome, Rene
LaRauche humiliated me in every possible way. I was simply his
housekeeper—a vassal. He was the mighty, brainy scientist, and he
never allowed me to forget it—not for one instant."
"Apparently he did not confide in you?"
"Orkins had been his manservant for some years prior to our
marriage, and to him he entrusted the secrets of his scientific
discoveries and inventions, rather than to me. This was only one of
his many eccentricities, and I submitted to the indignity with
exemplary patience."
"How do you account for his making Orkins a confidant?"
"He was too self-centered, too egotistical, to invite the confidence of
brainy people. He seemed to like to impress—startle—inferior minds
with his discoveries. Orkins was a highly trained servant, and a
general handy man, but he was not intellectual."
"But you could easily have escaped all this bullying and domineering
on the part of your husband?"
"I often considered divorce," was the reply, "but a latent sense of
duty to my marriage vows prevented me from taking that step."
Here McGinity suddenly switched off that line of inquiry, and turned
to another. "Why have you brought us here today?" he asked.
"To disclose certain facts which prove my husband tricked Henry
Royce shamelessly in these Martian revelations."
"When did you come into possession of these facts?"
"Less than a month ago. Up to that time I had been as keenly
interested in the matter, and as gullible as the rest of you, and the
public at large. When Rene found that I had acquired this
knowledge, and that, motivated by a deep sense of justice and fair
play, I meant to disclose the real meaning of these revelations, he
hid my clothes, and locked me up in that attic room, where you found
me."
"How did you manage to get downstairs and phone to the Royce
house, last evening?"
"Orkins, who served my meals, forgot to lock the door after him. He
seemed preoccupied and nervous. It was my first opportunity to seek
outside aid since my imprisonment. I stole out quietly, and crept
downstairs, to the phone in the library, unaware that my husband
was shadowing me."
"And he cut you short, it seems."
"Before I had a chance even to tell my name, he sprang upon me
and choked me off, and then, in his usual cruel manner, bound me to
the chair and bed. He acted like a maniac, I was terribly frightened."
She paused, a little breathlessly, then added: "I am still in some
dilemma as to how my unfinished message was understood."
"You may recall, Mrs. LaRauche, that you spoke to me," I answered.
"Your voice was familiar, yet I couldn't place it at first. Finally, when I
was convinced that it was your voice, the incident put us on the right
track. Mr. McGinity and I already were in possession of several vital,
suspicious facts, and your phone call gave us another important
clue."
Then Henry spoke. "About Orkins. Had you any misgivings, Mrs.
LaRauche, when he entered my service as butler? I took him, you
know, on your husband's recommendation."
"It was not clear at the time," she answered. "Rene invented some
explanation that Orkins wanted to make more money. Now, I know
that he was deliberately planted in your house as a spy, and that he
kept my husband advised on all your secret workings in science. He
betrayed your confidence, as he cold-bloodedly tried to betray Rene,
for that $5,000 reward."
"Do you know anything at all about Orkins' death?" Chief Meigs
broke in, abruptly.
It was a pertinent question to put, but a little cruel. "No," Mrs.
LaRauche replied, almost defiantly. "I do recall hearing a distant,
sharp sound of some sort—it may have been the shot that killed him
—but I associated it with the back-firing of an automobile on the
highway. About an hour later, I heard a noise downstairs."
"That was when I smashed a panel in your front door, probably," the
Chief put in.
"Shortly afterwards," Mrs. LaRauche went on, "my husband entered
the attic room, looking very excited. He threw a sheet over me, and
then I heard him open the back window, and climb through, on to the
roof. I had the uncomfortable feeling that something sinister had
occurred, and that he was bent on escape. But I was bound to the
chair and helpless, and in too much anguish to think clearly."
"Mrs. LaRauche!" McGinity asked suddenly. "We are very anxious to
know how your husband escaped so magically from the roof, like he
had flown to the ground. Have you any theory?"
She smiled faintly, and replied: "Rene invented many peculiar things,
like the robot, now used in all New York subway and railroad
stations, where the traveler's usual questions are answered by a
phonographic voice, by simply pressing a button. He had a great fear
of fire, of being trapped by fire. Some months ago, he installed a
safety device, in case of fire, on our roof."
"What was it like?" I asked, eagerly.
"Simply a heavy wire stretched tautly from the roof to the ground,
and terminating at some distance away from the house, to make the
descent more gradual," she replied. "In case of fire, you step into a
sort of trapeze, which is attached to the wire by a grooved wheel,
and your descent to the ground is something like the 'slide for life,'
often seen at the circus, or in film melodramas. I can see how, in the
dark, it would give the illusion of flying."
 XXX
After the concerted gasp of surprise over LaRauche's weird method
of escape from the roof had died away, McGinity put another
important question: "How did you first discover that your husband
was implicated in these Martian revelations, and that they were a
fraud? Did you find anything—papers?"
"Something like that," she replied.
She took out of the little bag, which lay in her lap, a charred slip of
paper, which she handed to McGinity; and while he passed it round
for our inspection, she continued: "I found this paper in the charred
rubbish, in the log fire-place, in my husband's laboratory, which
Orkins had neglected to clean out. You'll recognize the lettering it
contains as a portion of the code used for the radio messages from
Mars, and its deciphering into English. After I had studied this, I
began a secret investigation on my own, and gradually the scheme
was unveiled to me."
"This detecting business must have been a new and novel
experience," Henry remarked, good humoredly.
"Not exactly," Mrs. LaRauche replied. "You probably don't know—not
many do—that I have written several mystery novels under the pen
name of Martha Claxton."
This disclosure was followed by another concerted gasp of surprise.
After it had subsided, McGinity exclaimed: "Well, that's certainly a
knockout, Mrs. LaRauche! Why, I've read all of your novels, including
the latest one, 'The Country House Mystery,' and I consider Martha
Claxton—you—a close runner to the English Agatha Christie—a
feminine J. S. Fletcher. No wonder your husband, with his jealous
temperament, had this constitutional antagonism against any rival in
his household, in the field of fame."
"Combine jealousy and revenge," Mrs. LaRauche said, "and in these
two forces you have the most perverse evil in the world. Rene was
not only intensely jealous of Henry Royce for his successful findings
as an amateur scientist and astronomer, but he nursed a revenge
against him for the exposé of those faked African jungle films, and
his subsequent expulsion from the Exploration Club. He blamed—"
"Officially, I had nothing to do with it," Henry interrupted, vehemently.
"I simply voiced my belief to a fellow member of the club that the
films looked like fakes to me."
"What raised your suspicions?" Mrs. LaRauche asked.
"Well, I recognized, among those African jungle midgets," Henry
replied, "a Negro dwarf I had seen years ago at a circus side-show.
She was exhibited as a human crow. She had the remarkable
physiognomy and jet blackness of a crow, and she could caw like
one. She must be an old woman by now. In your husband's faked
film, she took the part of a chattering, pigmy grandmother, who was
thrown into the river and drowned because of her great age and
uselessness. As she was engulfed in the river torrent, and sank, I
recognized her pitiful 'caw-caw'."
"Fancy your remembering that," Mrs. LaRauche remarked.
Again Chief Meigs spoke abruptly. "Pardon me, Mrs. LaRauche," he
said, "but how long do you reckon your husband has been out of his
mind?"
She looked startled for a moment, then calmly replied. "He was silent
and brooding for some months past, but I attributed this to his being
deeply engrossed in some new scientific research. It's rather difficult
to say when he passed into the stage of actual insanity. It's my
opinion that all inventive scientists are a little bit cracked." She
hesitated a moment, and smiled apologetically at Henry. "It's my
belief, though," she went on, "that he became definitely deranged
when the success of his scheme centered the attention of the world
upon Henry Royce, and raised him to the heights of fame. Rene had
not figured on this. It was like a boomerang. When he realized that
his scheme was reacting to his own damage, then, perhaps,
something in his brain snapped."
"Have you any personal knowledge of the implication of your
husband and Orkins in the theft of the rocket?" McGinity asked.
She shook her head. "Only a suspicion," she replied. "There were
many, many nights, while I was locked in the attic, when I couldn't
sleep, so I used to listen for sounds from the lower part of the house.
The night the rocket was stolen, I remember distinctly the house was
as quiet as a tomb. I remained awake all night, terrorized at the
thought of being left alone. Towards morning, I heard familiar sounds
again—footfalls in the hall—voices—and went to sleep."
"I wonder what motive prompted LaRauche to do a crazy thing like
that?" I interrogated.
"Dispose of the rocket, and he would be less liable to detection,"
Mrs. LaRauche replied. "He must have become suddenly fearful of
some one tracing the workmanship of the rocket to him. It was public
knowledge that he had made considerable progress in the creation
of a metal rocket, which he hoped, eventually, to catapult to the
moon. No doubt he reconditioned this rocket to meet the
requirements of his mad Martian scheme."
"It's one of the most intricate and puzzling pieces of craftsmanship
and mechanism I've ever seen," I said, glancing at Chief Meigs, who
punctuated my remark with a smile and a wink, and the silent
mouthing of "Screws!"
By this time, McGinity was showing signs of impatience. "If there is
no reason why we shouldn't," he said, emphatically, "I think we'd
better get through with this business now, as quickly as possible.
Mrs. LaRauche is under a great strain, and we must spare her all we
can. So why not let her tell us, in as few words as she can, all she
knows. I leave it to her."
"Very well, Mr. McGinity," she assented, nodding her head two or
three times. Then she began. "There are a great many things I know
nothing whatever about. Some things I say may be true, or partly
true; the rest will be based on my deductions.
"As I've already told you," she continued, "my husband carried on
this work in the greatest secrecy. My curiosity, rather than suspicion,
was aroused when he began to collect scientific books on Mars, and
studies of the ancient inscriptions, cuneiforms and hieroglyphics, of
Babylon and Egypt. He began sending Orkins on frequent visits to
the city. It was Orkins, no doubt, who ordered the making of the
scroll. He fits the old bookseller's description to a nicety—'middle-
aged, well-dressed, well-bred.'
"The time came when Rene dropped his preliminary studies and
research, and applied himself wholly to his work, in the laboratory,
and at his workshop in the hangar. He worked at all hours of the day
and night, in a kind of frenzy. Finally, late in the summer, as I
reconstruct it, matters began to take shape. He must have had in his
possession by that time all the information Orkins had obtained,
surreptitiously, in relation to Henry Royce's and Serge Olinski's
experiments in trying to establish radio communication with Mars.
"Early in August, he did a lot of night flying, always accompanied by
Orkins. The trust he put in that scoundrel, and the money Orkins
must have bled him for! They were usually in the air from nine to
eleven. When I quizzed Rene on the purpose of these night flights,
he said he was conducting a series of meteorological experiments.
But what he was really doing—if my surmise is correct—was flying
high over the Royce castle, or Radio Center, and testing his carefully
thought out Martian code on Mr. Royce and Mr. Olinski, wherever
they happened to be conducting their radio experiments; sort of
baiting them.
"He was perfectly able to do this with the powerful wireless sending
outfit with which he had equipped his plane. Apparently Mr. Royce
and his co-worker were finally satisfied that these signals in code
came from Mars, for we next heard of Mr. Royce erecting two
stations, one designed for transmitting, the other for receiving
Martian radio messages.
"Now, comes the strange story of the public demonstration of direct
radio communication with Mars, at Radio Center. I happened to be in
town that night, having gone there to visit friends, over the week-end,
at Rene's persistent urging that I take a holiday, which was a rather
strange attitude for him to adopt. Up to that time, I was not in the
least suspicious, and listened in that night with a great deal of
enjoyment, although I thought the Martian message, as decoded and
broadcast—well, somehow it seemed perfectly incredulous to me.
"If any man was pleased with the success of this undertaking, Rene
must have been. He achieved it with great risk, in a hazardous flight
into the sub-stratosphere. We must at least give him credit for this
daring feat, also for the cleverness of his Martian code, which he
sent by wireless from this great height, and the perfect artistry of
English into which it was so easily transcribed by Mr. Olinski. My
suspicions of Rene's sub-stratosphere performance, in his plane,
were confirmed after I had discovered a visored aluminum helmet,
and a rubber fabric suit, in which he had received oxygen, hidden
under some rubbish in the hangar.
"It is perfectly amazing to me how he accomplished two such
remarkable feats in one night, transmitting the Martian message from
the sub-stratosphere, garbling it and fading out, to indicate ethereal
disturbance, and dropping the rocket on the water-front. Oh, he must
have dropped it from his plane while flying low over the beach! There
can be no other explanation. He had plenty of time in which to return
to the field, after the altitude flight, attach the rocket under the plane,
on the principle of a bomber, with Orkins' assistance, of course, and
soar off again. The rocket appears heavy, but, as you know, it is
constructed of comparatively light metal, and, without fuel, is easily
handled. The exterior of the rocket was purposely fired in advance, I
found, to give the effect of its having traveled through the earth's
atmosphere at great speed.
"In this stunt, he had the spectacular accessory of the falling
meteors, and he added to the realism by sending off a great quantity
of fire-works from the plane when he dropped the rocket on the
beach. There was little chance of his plane being detected at this
time of night; he was just another strange traveler in the sky. He
carried enough fire-works to equip a Fourth of July celebration. In my
investigation, I found a dozen or so burned out Roman candles, and
other unused fire-works, which he had secreted under his work-
bench in the hangar.
"His mission achieved, he went into retreat. For weeks we lived in
practical isolation, while the world buzzed with the great Martian
revelations, and honors were heaped upon Mr. Royce. It is not easy
for the mind to grasp how Rene managed to put over this
stupendous hoax, having as its object the humiliation of a bitterly
hated rival, unless one considers that it was the cold-blooded
scheme of a great mind gone wrong. And into that deranged mind
there must have gleamed some light of inspiration. His detailed
description of life as it exists at present on Mars, which he set forth in
the cuneiform code, contained in the scroll, I consider marvelous—
absolutely marvelous. It is logical, and it rings true. No scientist,
ancient or modern, has ever given a more plausible picture of the
history of Mars, and conditions of life there. No scientist in his right
mind would have been so fearless. But Rene—the madman—dared.
"I'm sorry it isn't true. I want it to be true. I want to think there are
people like ourselves living on Mars. We know now that it is
technically possible to bridge the space between us with radio, to
register our music, our ideas, in that planet. And we need the
Martian ideas, and their hopes and illusions, as well, to buoy up our
drooping spirit, just as much as they need ours. Perhaps, after we're
all dead and buried, this revelation from Mars will come. Radio was
given to the world to bring about universal harmony, to bring nations
closer together. Why not interstellar harmony? Oh, it's coming! Who
knows?
"And now, my friends, since I've given you every detail I can think of,
what have you to say?"
There was deep silence for a few moments, and then I spoke. "Your
findings and deductions, Mrs. LaRauche, are all very wonderful, and
very convincing," I said; "but there is still one very important matter
to be cleared up. It may be that your memory is at fault."
"Something important that I've overlooked?" Mrs. LaRauche asked,
thoughtfully.
"Quite so," I replied. "We have awaited breathlessly for your theory
regarding the passenger in the rocket—the man-ape."